This has been bubbling under for a while now, and over the past couple of months enough has transpired to ensure that no amount of my usual mild mannered-ness and not speaking my mind-ness can hold it in any longer, so here goes…
I have something important to tell you all and I beg that you listen and then pass this information on to any geek friends that you may have.
And the information is this: all those comic characters you know and love?
You do not own them. And also there is the additional and connect fact that you cannot see into the future.
Connected?
How so?
Well, I’m glad you asked, let me explain….
I’ll start with Judge Dredd.
As you may have picked up if you read the things that come out of my head, I’m a big fan of this character.
I’m also not a fan of the celluloid abortion that was the Stallone movie (but that is a conversation for another day), so I was excited to hear about the new Dredd movie which is currently in production and stars Karl Urban.
All well and good- then we got a few leaked set pictures of some vehicles.
Big deal, you say.
And you’d be right.
But as this is the internet, things did not stop there!
Oh no, because these were vehicles from 2011 that had been slightly modified (for some reason the producers had not seen fit to invent time travel and get some cars from the actual future), some corners of fandom decided that the movie would be rubbish.
That’s right- there are people out there who think they can tell is a movie is going to be good from a phone picture of some props in a backlot.
Then when a picture of Dredd’s bike was leaked…
Well…
True, it does not look like the bike in the comic.
True, the Batpod in The Dark Knight had a real Dredd feel to it.
But it is also true that TDK had a $185 million budget- not $45 million or whatever Dredd has.
And you do not own the character.
And then there’s Spider-Man.
I have actually heard people complaining the costume doesn’t look like the Spider-Man costume.
Let us investigate this… it’s red and blue and has web patterns all over it and a big spider on the chest.
I have something to say that may shock you- it does look like Spider-Man. It looks exactly like Spider-Man. You show a picture of that costume to anyone on the street and I bet they’ll say it’s Spider-Man. And furthermore, you cannot tell if the movie will ‘suck’ or not from a couple of set pictures.
No! Shut up- there’s no argument here. You can’t.
Best of all though, was when Henry Cavill was announced as the new Superman.
Oh, and as an aside- yeah, Batman, Spidey and Superman are all played by Brits. Get over it- we had to suffer Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe debasing our mythical heroes- so turnabout is fair play!
Where was I?
Oh yeah- Superman. On the day the lead actor was announced there were so internet seers telling us that this movie was going to be rubbish.
Seriously? I mean, it hasn’t even started filming yet, you utter idiots. It is not due out until December 2012, and these Special people are already able to review it!
And I can’t even begin to explain what’s wrong with people complaining the Chris Evans is playing Captain America after playing The Human Torch. Are people really so easily confused by these things? The old Han Solo/ Indian Jones thing must have really screwed you up, eh?
(EDIT) I was about to submit this piece when someone directed me to this little gem.
If this guy is being ironic, I think he may be some kind of genius, but I’m afraid he isn’t. I’ve just looked up the sales figures for Uncanny X-Men, and they are around 73,000.
That is nothing. Do these people honestly think that everyone who goes to see a superhero movie reads comics, or has ever read a comic?
No, they went because Halle Berry/ Famke Janssen or Hugh Jackman/Jean-Luc Picard was in it.
99% of the audience don’t really care- or are even aware of the fact that Cyclops should be wearing bright yellow tights.
Hell, I’m a comic fan and I don’t care.
And why? Because I know I don’t own these characters. I can reason that this movie will not affect my comics in any way- in fact there is a chance that it may help them. You never know, someone might start reading the things after seeing the movie, and that would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?
I know that people will read this thinking that I’m shooting fish in a barrel. But sometimes the obvious needs to be said.
It’s damned embarrassing to read ignorant and arrogant comments like these- because when the rest of the world looks at us geeks this is what they see. And we’re not all like that.
Are we..?
3 Comments