What Are You Nerds So Mad About?

The very first comic book I ever read was a Batman/Superman team up. I was five and I found a stack of comics in a basement we shared with our neighbors. Every since then I have been a huge fan of comic books and more specifically DC Comics. I have collected the books, watched the cartoons, movies, owned lunch boxes and have even written some fan fiction of my own.

 My favorite stories have always been the crossovers and my favorite aspect of that is the idea of a shared universe where all those characters live in one big amazing world and bump into each other buying milk or at the laundromat while washing their costumes.  Marvel has done a great job of bringing that the big screen and with the success of Man Of Steel DC is making moves to do the same. One would think it would be a great time to be a fan of either one but I have noticed an especially high level of anger and outrage from DC Comics fans.

I don't get DC Comics fans.The only blogs, comments, news sites I come across when I'm looking around are full of  negative remarks but someone is keeping this company afloat. I've seen very few people say anything positive about Batman V Superman and all they have to go on is a couple of color muted pictures of Ben Affleck in a pretty great looking Batman suit and one picture of Wonder Woman that looks a lot like, well, Wonder Woman.

A few years back DC wiped out their continuity and rebooted the entire line of comics. (with a few caveats tossed in for certain characters). Fans were peeved to say the least. I think what has really happened is a lot of people have been mad at DC every since the reboot, went into MOS with that in mind and then the Affleck casting pushed them over the top into full on nerd rage.

I have enjoyed the shit out of the post reboot DC continuity and liked Man Of Steel. To be fair, I might be in a place in my life where I needed my comic book characters to do some changing and slate cleansing for inspiration but that is a whole other blog post. I should mention that the Green Lantern was pretty disappointing for a lot of fans as well but if we're being optimistic about this GL could easily be dismissed as the Incredible Hulk of the DC Cinematic Universe.

 Every announcement from DC(WB films) is met with knee jerk negativity. I saw people complain how skinny WW looks. I saw one article where they were saying how bad Affleck will be based on the idea that he was seen out at a restaurant having a drink and a cigarette so he can't possibly be taking the role seriously.What do people want Affleck to be doing? Suiting up and fighting crime to prepare for the role?

DC fans make me miss the days when we didn't know shit about a movie until it came out. Especially this far in advance. I was probably eight or ten years old when the 89 Batman came out and I had no idea it was happening until I watched it.

Maybe I'm wrong and maybe Superman V Batman will be the Coyote Ugly of Superhero movies. (That means really, really bad.) In the meantime, there's a movie being made with Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and then it gets even bigger with the Justice League and sequels to all of these movies. So I'm going to go ahead and be excited about that. The worst case scenario is that we get a Superman Batman movie with great effects and not much of a story. But I have already seen Batman and Robin with George Clooney multiple times and it can't possibly be worse than that.

My Guide to the American Dream

Years 0-5 
This is not a bad time. Mostly being fed and learning basic human behaviors like walking , talking and not shitting yourself. Develop a taste for processed foods.

Years 6-10
 Things are starting to pick up. You start school and start to act more like a person. There's less crying and shitting yourself has almost completely stopped. Keep eating processed foods.

Years 11-15
These are very busy years. You go to Middle School and start High School and also spend roughly the last two years of this time masturbating. You go years at a time without shitting yourself. Your parents get you involved with sports and hobbies to counteract the processed foods.

Years 16-21
The latter half of puberty. You spend a huge chunk of this time masturbating in between getting your Driver's License, graduating High School and starting College. You think you know who you are by now but you don't. You may have shit your pants once or twice when you first start drinking legally. Add alcohol to your processed foods.

Years 22-30
Finish College and start climbing the corporate ladder.For the first half of this time you drink a lot because you have a hard time accepting that it is time to grow up and start thinking about retirement and buying a house. You get married, take out loans and start talking about having children to fill up the house you're paying off for the next 30-40 years.

Years 31-50
Work and drive kids around to their activities and hobbies. Get your butt checked by a doctor, beat some kind of cancer caused by the processed foods and continue thinking about retirement. Go on short lived diets and maybe spend one week out of the year either on a  beach or at home doing renovations on the house you're still paying off.

Years 51-65
Pay off house.Think about retirement. Start shitting pants again here and there.

Years 66-90
Mostly watch all of your friends die off and shit your pants.

Years 90 and above
If you're still alive you did it wrong.

Dead Or Alive You're Getting a Reboot

What the fuck? They've remade Robocop as a PG13 Movie?

This betrays everything I loved about the original. 

Does it? Does it really? 

The original Robocop in my opinion was about the possibilities of a police state and over the top violence used by police in real life on a regular basis. It's funny that the film was made so long before computers and the internet actually made it possible for the US Government to become a real life version of OCP. From the spoof ads to the nature of the big evil in the Robocop films(One and two-don't bother going any further) in many ways Paul Verhoeven's dark view of the future has become all too true.You only need to go to youtube and search police violence at protests to find out that a big chunk of our police forces are completely out of control at this point. Marry that with the truth we all now know about the NSA Surveillance programs and it is down right terrifying how much life imitates art these days. 

What does this have to do with the Robocop remake?

When I first heard that the remake would be a PG 13 version I was apprehensive to say the least. 

The original Robocop was ultra violent and that was the point. In the late eighties before the internet and checking in on Facebook, Twitter etc. it would have taken a pretty violent police force to get people to check in with authorities on a constant basis. We were terrified of anything that carried even a whiff of Orwellian undertones. 

It's a sick sad world and as much as we need a Robocop more than ever, we don't need the same Robocop from the late 80's. Let's face it, if you build a Robocop in 2014 all you need to do is add a Facebook ap, a camera and throw us some points towards some stupid fucking farming game and most people would willingly comply and he never need fire a single shot. In 2014 you don't need bullets to coax Americans into giving up their rights. It's far easier to create a fear and conveniently be the only ones with a plan to protect us from that fear. Robocop doesn't have to be violent he just has to wrap himself in an American flag and promise safety. 

This is not to say that Police brutality is no longer an issue. As I mentioned before you can find countless examples of it on youtube. Unfortunately in the comments under each of those videos there are just as many people who think the victim had it coming.

 "Well they shouldn't have been protesting, the cops are just doing their job."

That's the mantra of a busy, complacent, and lazy public too scared to ask any real questions and too helpless to demand answers if they did ask questions. Robocop doesn't need to be overtly violent anymore. We just assume if police are involved that it's violent. The violence is no longer effective in the story telling because we all know it. Most of us just don't care. 

I guess my point is that Robocop can totally work in 2014 as a PG 13 movie. My hope for the film is that much like the world we live in the surface level of things is sanitized and shiny to draw as many people in as possible. Hopefully, the layers underneath have the same grimey quality as the original. Even though I won't see a recreation of the Dad from that seventies show snorting coke off of a hooker's tits I look forward to seeing this new take on an American classic. I just hope the director/writers have put as much thought into it as I have.

In the end I will approach this the same way I do every remake. Ultimately, I won't care unless someone goes around destroying every copy of the original.