Think of the Children

Well, the genie’s out of the bottle now. His name is Deadpool, he’s a superhero, and his movie got a pile of rave reviews and made an even bigger pile of money. It was also rated R, and for a slew of good reasons: over-the-top violence, nudity, sex, adult situations, and swearing out the yin-yang. Not the kind of movie you want to take the little kiddies to, though their mid- to late-teen siblings would probably get a kick out of it.

Deadpool is hardly the first superhero movie to earn big bucks at the box office, and it’s not the first R-rated superhero movie. (I’m not sure what that was. Punisher: War Zone? One of the Blade movies? I don’t think it was Watchmen.) However, as far as I know, it was the first superhero movie to be both popular and earn massive moolah with an R rating attached. And with Hollywood involved, we all know what that means: more, more and even more of the same, as Tinseltown rushes to cash in on what they think made Deadpool so profitable. Which means we’ve got a tidal wave of R-rated superhero flicks looming in our movie-going future.

I can think of a couple comic-book characters that could handle and even benefit from the adults-only treatment. Wolverine, for starters. Let’s be honest: Wolvie’s shtick is that he goes into berserker rages and guts people. That’s what the claws are for. Check out this scene from X2: X-Men United. This is the Wolverine we know from the comics. This is the scene we wanted to see in the first X-Men movie but had to wait for. Wolverine is beloved by fandom. Put him in a film with no ratings restrictions and people will line up around the block.

I’ve already mentioned the Punisher and Blade. If the upcoming Suicide Squad isn’t rated R, there is no justice in the world. We deserve to see Harley Quinn in all her psychotic glory. Batman? Not necessarily. His is a whole other breed of nutzoid, and doesn’t require ratings restrictions. The Joker? Definitely. DC is releasing an animated version of The Killing Joke graphic novel, and it’s rated R. Yes, you heard me. A cartoon based on a mainstream comic book has been given an R rating. If you’re familiar with the story, you know why.

There’s talk the recent Superman v. Batman should have gone after the R. I think the Blu-Ray has added scenes that bump the rating up a notch.

Whoa. Superman? Are you telling me Superman belongs in an R-rated movie? No. Just no. No way, no how. Superman and Spider-Man are where I draw the line.

Aren’t you people forgetting something? All these big-budget blockbuster flicks are based on comic books. Once upon a time, comic books were disposable entertainment for kids. Little kids. Interest in comic books generally waned around the time puberty hit, when girls became more interesting than musclebound guys in tights. But until hormones kicked in, comics were something to keep kids quiet on rainy afternoons.

All that began to change in the 1960s, when Marvel Comics discovered their reader demographic was mostly college students and older, and adjusted their sights accordingly. Also, the comic-book readers of yesteryear had grown up to become the comic-book pros of the present. They wanted to tell stories for the people they were now, not the children they’d been. So the storylines began to skew upward, into more grown-up themes.

Then Watchmen came along, with its deconstruction of standard superhero tropes, and showed violence, nudity, heroes having sex, and “heroes” who were flat-out wacko. It was hailed as ground-breaking. It made a lot of money, which meant from that day forward all heroes must be violent emotional basket cases. If you’re sick to death of all the “grim and gritty” comics that have clogged up the stands since the 1980s, go blame Alan Moore.

Or maybe not. In Back Issue magazine #79, artist/co-creator Dave Gibbons had this to say: “The message that was perceived by a lot of creators was, ‘Oh yeah! We gotta get really dark! We gotta make all our characters mentally ill and emotional wrecks.’ We didn’t ever intend that to be the case and we felt very sorry for all the depressing comics that came in the wake of Watchmen.”

What he said.

There should be room in the market for a little of everything, but comic books for pre-teens seem to have gotten squeezed out. Bad enough we’re now paying $4 for a flimsy pamphlet we can read in ten minutes and we don’t even get a full story. Those stories aren’t even aimed at the kids that were once comics’ primary market. Publishers like Harvey, that catered to little kids, aren’t around any more. Archie Comics, for decades a cartoony bastion of all-ages comedy, recently revamped its line into a more realistic style, with teen-centric realistic stories. And now kids can’t even go to the movies based on these comics unless they’re 18 or older. Where’s the audience of tomorrow going to come from, if there’s nothing for them to get hooked on early? Will nobody think of the children?

That’s why I feel Superman needs to be exempt from the grim-and-gritty grownup world. He was the first. He epitomized what used to be the traits we wanted our kids to aspire to. The alien being from another planet showed us all the heights a human could achieve. And you want to make him a scowling, psychotic jerk who solves all problems with punches? Batman already is a scowling, psychotic jerk, and even he stops short of killing people. We don’t need another one.

Ditto Spider-Man. He was the first teen superhero who wasn’t somebody’s sidekick. He was a geeky science nerd who couldn’t get dates and was bullied by the football team. Even those of us without spider powers could relate. Spider-Man taught us “with great power comes great responsibility.” And he did it without going dark.

Ease up, creators. Give Superman and Spider-Man back to the kids. We took all the other heroes away from them. They should get to keep the icons. If you want to make an R-rated superhero movie, then show us Wonder Woman in all her 1940s glory, with the bondage and the fetishism intact. I’ll bet Deadpool himself would pay big bucks to see that.

Highly Illogical

Must be the age thing. The older I get, the pickier I get in regards to entertainment. I hardly ever go to the movies any more because I don’t want to spend $8-$10 for something that might suck. Similarly, I don’t buy books at full price unless I skim them first, or get them from the library. TV’s even easier. If a TV show starts sucking, you just change the channel until you find one that doesn’t, or else turn the damn thing off.

My problem is that I’ve come to demand logic from my TV shows. I know, I know. Incompatible concepts. Especially since I like the fantasy shows, like The Flash and Supernatural. Expecting believability from shows about people who fly or hunt demons or run faster than a speeding bullet train is an inherent contradiction in terms. But just because it’s a show about people with superpowers doesn’t mean it can skimp on the internal logic, or good old common sense.

Case in point: Legends of Tomorrow. This one just started, and I’m still on the fence about it. A Time Lord—pardon me, a Time Master. Totally different, non-copyright-infringing thing altogether—gathers up a bunch of second-string superheroes (and a couple of villains) to stop an immortal bad guy who’s been creating chaos throughout history and is destined to destroy the world. The team includes a woman with wings, a guy who shoots fire out of his hands and the Time Master who owns a ship that can fly through the time stream. I can accept all that. I grew up reading comic books. Stuff like this is pretty standard in your average superhero comic.

What I can’t accept is how they’re going about it. This bunch is huge on superpowers and low on common sense. Last week they needed to steal documents from the Pentagon. They went through this elaborate mini-caper bit infiltrating security, which of course went awry and ended in a fight scene. Why? They’ve got the Atom on the team. He’s a scientist with a supersuit that lets him shrink down to the size of a molecule. What’s to stop him from shrinking, flying in through an air vent, downloading the needed files and flying out again? The plot, that’s what. If you let the Atom do all this—which he himself suggested at the start of the story—you don’t get any suspense, or the mindless action scene. These shows have an hour to fill, and they can’t afford to let logic screw them up. God forbid, the writers might have to come up with intelligent characters and more coherent plots.

Or how about the bad guy himself? It’s been established he’s immortal. He can’t be killed. No prob. Just turn to the Atom again. Atom shrinks down, comes up behind the guy, and surprises him with a face full of chloroform. Then stick him in cryogenic suspension. They’ve got that technology on the ship. No more bad guy. And no more series. That right there explains why common sense isn’t used more often on these shows. Although, in my opinion, if a show has to rely on illogical moves in order to stay on the air, maybe the writers had better think real hard about beefing up their premise.

The Flash isn’t this bad, but it has its moments. There was the one early episode with the bad guy who could turn himself into living steel. The only way for the Flash to stop him was with some supersonic punch that required a high-speed approach from several miles away and, if delivered wrong, would shatter Flash’s bones. Uh, no, not the only way. He could have used a trick from the comic: run around the guy at super speed and create a vacuum. Suck all the oxygen out of the bad guy’s vicinity. Bad guy passes out, Flash wins. But that’d be way too easy. We’ve got to keep those viewers glued to their seats. If common sense won’t do it, create unnecessary suspense. Works every time, or at least until the viewer catches on and switches over to Survivor or something.

On to Lucifer. I caught the pilot episode the other week. Yes, it’s that Lucifer. The fallen archangel. The source of all evil on Earth. This time around he’s living in Los Angeles. (Why not Las Vegas? He was headquartered in Vegas in the Vertigo comic series this show is supposedly based on. Vegas makes a lot more sense for the Prince of Darkness.) He also has a British accent, which seems to be de rigeur for the Devil these days. How about an Australian accent for once? Or a Scottish Satan? Or Canadian? The Devil as a Canadian hockey player. Haven’t seen that one yet.

Anyhoo, Luci’s handsome and charming and British and living in LA. And he’s—wait for it—helping a lovely young female cop solve crimes. The Lord of All Evil is a good guy.

I could swallow even that—I mean, this is broadcast television—if only he was halfway skilled at it. In the pilot episode a shooter kills a friend of his. Another lovely young female. Well, it’s set in LA. Luci interrogates the dying gunman. Why did you kill her? “For money.” The next logical question should be, “Who hired you?” I kept waiting for Luci to ask him. Who’s going to lie to the Devil? If the gunman had died before he could answer, I’d have accepted that. But Luci never asked. C’mon. I’m not Satan or even a cop, and even I know that much. He could have saved himself, and us viewers, forty minutes of TV time running around LA questioning red herrings with a simple, three-word question. But no, we’ve gotta fill up that space between commercials, even if the filler makes no sense.

I won’t be watching Lucifer again. Besides, Supernatural’s Lucifer is a far better character. He’d eat this poser for breakfast, British accent and all. He would have asked the gunman who hired him. And then brought his friend back to life. Or maybe not. He’s mercurial. I like that in a devil.

That’s what the producers of Legends of Tomorrow should do: ditch the heroes on the team and turn the show over to the bad guys. They’re a lot more interesting than the heroes anyway. You don’t expect common sense or logical reactions from them. You don’t know what to expect from them. That’s what makes them fun. The writers would recognize that, if they just applied some common sense. Or maybe I’m expecting too much.

I guess it’s back to reality shows, and wondering why nobody from Hell’s Kitchen has ever sued Gordon Ramsay for harassment and creating a hostile workplace environment. Really, would you work for that guy? Hell, he’d not only eat Lucifer’s Lucifer for breakfast, he’d serve him up on a plate with a side of fried beans. Now there’s a show I’d tune in for.