Why I Couldn't Miss Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice... Pt. 1

[I began this piece a couple of days before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theatres on the evening of Thursday, May 24th, and finished it well after seeing the film twice already. When I began writing this, the film was already hitting crazy lows on critical mass sites like Rotten Tomatoes due to the accumulation of generally poor to middling reviews from movie critics, and even before the film was going to be seen for the first time by the public, the so-called "fan"-boys and the appropriately named trolls had already pretty much taken the film apart without seeing a frame outside of the trailers. While none of this was going to sway me from my impulse to see the film at my earliest possible convenience -- the reasons why are the thrust of this piece -- seeing that a couple of my long-time friends were not only proclaiming in advance they were not going to see the film, but were ferociously adamant about it, set me to muse upon the situation.]

There is a viral video going about lately that you can find by searching for "The Avengers 1978," though I have seen several different variations under alternate titles. In this video, we are presented with many clips of Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby from their portrayals of The Incredible Hulk and David (not specifically Bruce) Banner from the popular TV show on the late '70s and early '80s. We also see Reb Brown in his star-spangled garb and ridiculous motorcycle helmet as Captain America, featured in a pair of television movies (also from the late '70s). All well and good up to this point.

The year "1978" in the title gets thrown off the track greatly then by the appearance of a fur-laden but still mighty Thor; while he does come straight from an appearance with the Ferrigno/Bixby Incredible Hulk, the clips are from the 1988 TV movie titled The Incredible Hulk Returns (a full decade after 1978). The Iron Man used in The Avengers 1978 gets us closer to the stated year, although it is nowhere close to being the Marvel Comics hero. It is actually David Ackroyd as Exo-Man, the titular hero of a 1977 NBC television movie about a paralyzed scientist who builds an armored suit that allows him to walk again and eventually fight the mob on the streets of his city.

As for the rest of the "Avengers" in this comedic trailer, we get:

• The Black Widow: short clips of a red-haired female in a red outfit (hardly the real Natasha Romanova's fashion choice) doing some clumsy martial arts combat against an assailant. Origin unknown to me at the moment.
• Loki: various shots of Paul Lynde doing his trademark "sneer and snicker" schtick, sadly without audio of one of his usual catty comments. (Great casting idea though...)
• Hawkeye: Alan Alda from M*A*S*H (who else could it possibly be?)
• Tony Stark: a large mustachioed gentlemen of '70s vintage fills in for Iron Man's alter ego and woos women at a cocktail party (or two).
• The Destroyer: Not sure if they are meant to imply Drax the Destroyer of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, but what we get here is Gene Simmons of KISS fame playing his fire-breathing Demon character from KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. We also get a couple of quick shots of KISS with Paul Lynde himself on Lynde's amazing 1976 Halloween special.
• Nick Fury: In at least one version of this video meme, clips of David Hasselhoff playing Fury in an early '90s television movie have been inserted.

The trailer is displayed to the viewer as a "CBS Late Movie" complete with the attendant fanfare music and graphics expected in such a presentation. The joke is obvious, and admittedly, humorous on a first glance. Of course, my geekiness gets the better of me, and I can't but help to point out where they have erred in their attempt, a futile effort on my part that nevertheless becomes emboldened when reading too many comments on Youtube for the different visions of this meme where it becomes clear that the bulk of the millennials viewing these clips are mainly taking the videos at face value, and thinking that The Avengers 1978 was a real show. My guess is that even the Hawkeye Pierce joke is also totally lost on the majority of them. Le sigh...

But The Avengers 1978 fake trailer is not why I am here today. It certainly makes up a small portion of the kindling for this fire o' mine, but it is not the real reason. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is the reason. Or, specifically, the perception of the critical lambasting of the film in advance of the film even coming out is the real reason.

I get that everyone has their take on why or why not they want to see a film. While I might believe that someone's particular stance is grounded in obstinacy or sheer bullshit, I also cannot denounce any opinion they may hold as invalid (at least not publicly). Conversely, I don't want someone to discount my opinion in the same manner. We all have our likes and dislikes, and we use them to color our decisions throughout our existences, both in matters important and trivial. And so I am not going to pick out a particular instance or two that might have riled me recently, nor am I going to do battle against the critical establishment, for in stating what I already have thus far, I must by all means consider each of their opinions in this matter as equally valid in viewpoint and execution.

What I am going to tell you is why there is not a chance in any imaginary hellscape that I would even think of missing out on seeing Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice in a movie theatre.

And The Avengers 1978 fake trailer is one of the reasons why.

The silly little fake trailer is nothing more than simple fluff, meant to entertain while gathering pageviews and comments on whatever social media page chooses to host or post it. But for certain members of its audience -- namely, me -- The Avengers 1978 hit home in an unexpected way.

An actual Avengers comic from 1978

During the year of 1978, I jumped from thirteen to fourteen years of age, and I was a big comic book geek. While I read comics for much of my young life at that point, I didn't really start collecting them until early in 1977. From the start, my favorite Marvel comic was The Avengers and my favorite DC books, naturally, were the Batman titles. Throughout 1978, not only was I beginning to amass what would turn out to be a huge comic collection, but I was also fully immersed in Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, Ray Harryhausen stop-motion, Hammer horror films (but monster films of all stripes really), Topps baseball cards for all of the major sports (and even the non-sport varieties), and reruns of older TV shows such as Star Trek, The Wild Wild West, Dr. Who, Get Smart, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and my all-time fave and obsession since I was a toddler (quite literally), the Adam West version of Batman. And then there was the prime time television of the day...

As a tried and true comic and also science-fiction fan, my TV obsessions that year definitely included such fare as The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, Mork and Mindy, The Amazing Spider-Man, Battlestar Galactica, Logan's Run, The Bionic Woman, and especially The Six Million Dollar Man (which ended its run early in that year). I also partook of non-genre shows like Fantasy Island, Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, The Love Boat, WKRP in Cincinnati, M*A*S*H, Family, Eight is Enough, Soap, Three's Company, and Charlie's Angels. There were also Saturday morning cartoon shows like The All-New Super Friends Hour/Challenge of the Super Friends, The Krofft Supershow, The Fantastic Four, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour, Jason of Star Command, Space Sentinels, The Godzilla Power Hour, Space Academy, and The Batman/Tarzan Adventure Hour/Tarzan and the Super 7 (amongst far too many others). 

What it comes down to is... I watched a lot of damn television as a kid. And scraping away the non-genre junk (from all the other junk), it became clear that wherever super-heroes, super-villains, monsters, or aliens of all stripes might appear -- and no matter which format or time of day or night -- I would find them. Sure, even at that tender age, I wished that some of the animation in the cartoon shows was better. I was always angry that none of the animated shows had a design half as good as the much older (but still often in reruns) Jonny Quest, then and now one of my fave shows of all time. And I was always frustrated that the live-action shows were always so stunted in showing off the powers of its heroes and villains, or in the rather limited scope of special effects (at least until Battlestar came along).

But we took what we could get. When a TV movie featuring Dr. Strange came on, my fellow comic buddies and I jumped on it like it was made of solid gold, no matter the actual quality of the film. It just didn't matter. The aforementioned Exo-Man was a big deal to us when it came on (though once it was on, it was no longer a big deal; it was a pretty shabby affair, as you can tell from the clips in The Avengers 1978 trailer). Short-lived shows like the very silly Holmes and Yoyo and the more serious Future Cop came and went, but we watched them all in the hopes of see something new, something different, something cool... and something heroic.

In 1978, we got Superman on the big screen, and man, was it a big deal. I still have promotional magazines for the film's release in my collection (included an over-sized jumbo magazine that DC itself put out and the requisite set of Topps trading cards). And when we sat in the theatre and saw the new, charming Man of Steel portrayed perfectly by Christopher Reeve (still the standard) fly for the first time, well, even without being told that we would believe he could do so by the advertising, we really did believe it for a short time. Or at least we were willing to suspend our disbelief long enough to enjoy the experience, even though we were already too touched by Star Wars and the new media concentration on how special effects were created in that day to not see the men behind the curtain. The magazines told us everything, but the effect did still work on us -- because we wished it so -- and it was bigger and better than any superhero effort to that point. We loved it.

Most of the time, however, it was me and my comics alone. Lacking a live-action source for most superheroes (or even an animated one), I read and reread each issue devotedly. In my mind's eye, I treated each comic as it were the latest episode of that hero's television show. The next step was a tad insane. Obsessed with TV listings at that age (even memorizing the times and stations of every prime time program and many of the daytime ones), on paper I constructed my own networks that were to be rivals to television's (then) Big Three. There was a DC and a Marvel network, and I delighted in plotting out prime-time schedules, pitting particular comics against one another in the same time slots. I even had a network for the non-Marvel and DC titles, where Richie Rich, Casper, Archie, and Charlton Comics got their fair shake as well. Whatever I was reading at the time, they got a "show".

In this dream comic television universe, Batman almost always ran concurrently against Captain America and the Falcon, and of course, the Justice League of America always faced off against the Avengers, and so on... Studying the TV ratings announced in the local paper, I was already attuned to which nights were the most popular ones, and tried to adjust my "hero" networks in the same way, putting what I perceived to be stronger shows on the nights that drew the bigger ratings to do battle against the most popular "real" shows.

In this way, when I actually read the comics, they came to life even more for me, since I was now perceiving each one as an actual live entertainment. I would even write out brief synopses for each issue to put in my bogus TV Guide to entice the would-be viewer into watching that "show". And this alternate television universe in my mind also extended to the movie world. Multi-issue arcs, of the time the Avengers were often prone to, were feature films to me. 

My superhero network world collapsed after a year or so, mostly due to maturation (albeit slight) on my part. We grow up and get distracted by other things. Comics were still a major component of my lifeblood; the extra time in my late teens was spent in building fake TV schedules was put into more worthy projects like writing, music, going to actual movies, obsessing over girls (and all of its attendant weirdness), and drawing my own comics. But even though I was growing up, there was one aspect of childhood that I never outgrew: I still felt the world was seriously lacking comic book entertainment beyond the printed page.

I never fell out of love with the fantastical onscreen. Straight through the rest of the 20th century, every major science-fiction, superhero, fantasy, and horror project was treated with equal fervor and excitement before it either came out to theatres or arrived on the television screen. And then, once it was released and viewed, likewise treated with either the acclaim or disdain appropriate to its result. This leads to situations where The Last Starfighter, Krull, and Megaforce all seemed equally interesting in concept in advance of their release in the 1980s, but then I discovered that -- in my opinion at the time (and now), and in order -- that one was a thoroughly marvelous entertainment, one was dull and too derivative in conception, and the last was an insipid pile of horseshit. But I chose to go see each one on the same neutral grounds, and if I didn't come out with the same positive opinion of each one, well, that's mostly on me.

No matter how I felt about them afterward, I was happy to go see all three in the theatre. It doesn't come down to idiotic statements like "I want my money back" or "I wasted two hours of my life that I'll never get back"; you know, the rote things that people who don't take ownership of their actions say when they are upset about the consequences of a simple night out at the movies. No, I chose to spend my own money and see all three films, and it wasn't the excellence of the films in which I was investing those few precious dollars... it was the experience.

Buying a movie ticket doesn't guarantee that you will enjoy the film that is showing on the movie screen that day. It is a contract between you and the theatre owner that you have rented space in one of their seats, gives you access to their refreshment counter (where you will encounter further, sometimes ridiculous fees for usually mediocre food), and allows you the chance to see the featured film at the specific time printed on your ticket. It doesn't say anything about actually enjoying the film; you are basically purchasing a night out at the movies, and whether you end up enjoying the experience or not is up to you.

No one gets refunds on a ticket to the baseball game when the home team doesn't win the game. You are going to the game to see two teams play each other. You are going for the experience. Just like with a movie, your happiness over the few hours you have spent there may depend on the outcome of the game, but that is merely your perception of the event. The doofus next to you in the stands -- or in the same theatre row -- may have had a wonderful time overall.

For me, even seeing a crappy film in the theatre is still an experience worth having. Seeing what you believe to be nothing but top-notch films all the time may sound great, but what it does is whitewash the results of what you are seeing. You have to have a little bit of the bad with the good on occasion to make what is good seem even better. You have to mix it up. Megaforce is a truly terrible film, but we actually had a terrific time making fun of every horrid moment on the screen -- in a pre-MST3K way, since it was only 1982 -- and every stupid line delivered by a truly out of his element Barry Bostwick and company. Once an audience is unified in its belief that what they are seeing is beyond even the help of the most proficient editor in the world, the results can be a ball. 

But the biggest thing for me is that when I went to a film in those days, it was more about the communal experience of seeing a film -- any film -- with my friends. The film really didn't matter; it was about sitting in the dark with my best pals and having a good time. Popcorn, soda, red vines... if the movie turned out to be fantastic, all the better. Beyond this, then and now, the movie theatre has become my church. It is where I go to work things out for myself, to perhaps catch a few minutes of quiet in the dark, and just let a movie wash over me while my mind clicks away in the background. (Sorry, unlike many people who prefer that a movie let's them "not think" for a while, I cannot do that.) Sure, I prefer to go see a film of which I might be anxious to check out, but when I need to escape to the theatre, it can be any film. As a result, I do often see movies that are considered subpar on a critical level.

So I learned how to deal with those potential disappointments when encountered on the big screen. Beyond becoming simpatico with a crowd and firing back at the screen (something which totally violates my movie-going code of the past 25 years and which I would never do these days), I learned that the best way to combat ill feelings towards a film was to write them about them; to put these experiences down on paper, and learn to cast a critical eye towards anything that I was watching. Whether or not anyone else was going to read what I had just spilled out on paper (and in those early days, nobody was reading anything that I wrote, even myself), the point was to get it out of my system.

Now, one could say that there is little difference between what I taught myself to do over the years in writing about my movie experiences, and what people were doing in advance of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Weren't they also getting out their disappointment onto, if not paper, then on the internet, and probably on Twitter or Facebook, for the world to see? Well, yes, they were, but there is a critical difference between what I do and what they were doing...

... I wait until I have actually seen a film before I start deciding if it is the worst thing I have ever seen or not.

[To be continued...]

Thor’s Day Flashback: The Avengers #239

There is no trace of the Mighty Thor (or Tony Stark or the good Captain) in Avengers #239 from January 1984. But, who is that on the front cover surrounded by Hawkeye, Black Widow, Wonder Man, the Black Panther, and an upside-down Beast? Why, none other than your pal and mine, Mr. David Letterman, early on in his original late night run on NBC.

Letterman made several cameo appearances in Marvel Comics over the past thirty years, but this one was the first, and the only appearance where he was actively involved fully in the plot of the comic. In 1984, Marvel held an event called “Assistant Editors’ Month,” in which many, if not all, of their regularly published monthly titles had a certain amount of weirdness going on in the pages due, supposedly, to the fact that Stan Lee, Jim Shooter and Mark Gruenwald (Marvel’s normal editors in those days) were off at some comic convention on the West Coast, and thus unable to oversee the people working for them at Marvel’s offices in New York.

Thus, presumed chaos ensued. We see the backs of the Avengers heads in the corner box instead of their faces (and since none of these characters -- bonus points if you can name all six of them -- appear in this issue, it seems appropriate). In the opposite upper corner, there is a circular Marvel Comics logo that bears an "MC," which is meant to be reminiscent of the old DC logo from the Silver Age. And there is a rubber-stamped box stating "Beware: It's Assistant Editors' Month! Don't say we didn't warn you!" Oh, horrors...

David Letterman ends up accidentally teaming up with the Avengers to stop some nebbish named Fabian Stankowicz, one of the lamest characters ever perpetrated upon the comic buying public. Early on, he was known as the Mechano-Marauder, and had already annoyed the Avengers twice before in the preceding two years. A mechanical genius and a lottery winner, he is obsessed with getting famous by testing his creations against Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and uses his winnings to support this goal.

Wonder Man is trying to get his foot in the door in Hollywood, and scores an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. Not confident enough to appear on the show by himself, he convinces the Vision (who has “shut down” and only appears in holographic form -- I won’t explain) to contact several reserve members to appear with him, as the regular team are all away for a variety of reasons. The only active Avenger in the book -- Hawkeye -- opens the story with a nice splash page by carrying his new bride, Bobbi “Mockingbird” Morse (whom you might know from the S.H.I.E.L.D. tv show, though her character dates back to 1971), across the threshold of Avengers Mansion, having been married recently in the Hawkeye 4-issue limited series that Marvel released. Hawkeye’s hearing has become impaired during his recent adventures, and this provides some very clumsy comedy during the Letterman show after Hawkeye secures the list of questions Dave will ask the team so he can prepare his answers.

Marvel does a fairly decent job of detailing the stage atmosphere of the show, and Letterman gets to come across as clever and heroic but still remains a smart-ass, staying true to his basic character. While the Avengers battle Fabian's machines, Dave figures out Fabian’s game, tricks him into revealing a key weakness, and then bashes Fabian over the head with the giant doorknob Dave famously used to keep on his desk back in the day.

But, the aforementioned clumsiness defines the rest of the book. Fabian is exceedingly grating (oh, the voice I put on him in my head while reading his lines) and his motivations are pouty and ridiculous (nowadays, he would just trick someone into giving him a reality show). A series of Fabian’s poorly conceived contraptions attack the Avengers during the show and give them barely any trouble at all (as they should, given that they are created by such a clod). Paul Shaffer, wearing a Captain America jersey, gets to say the word “nutty” while he tries to divert the audience’s attention with music. Don’t even get me started on the Black Widow sunbathing scene. And the artwork by Al Milgrom, apart from that splash page, has that “Marvel in the mid-’80s rush job” feel, that proved especially disappointing to me back in the day when I got suckered into the Avengers with back-to-back runs by George Perez and John Byrne, and then was stuck with lesser lights on pencils for a long, long time (with occasional highlights from the likes of Don Newton and Michael Golden, for example). (Luckily, “Big” John Buscema was on his way back not far down the road.)

The worst part? Through 1999, Fabian Stankowicz made somewhere around 50 appearances in Marvel Comics titles, mostly The Avengers and Captain America. He keeps kicking around, sometimes being villainous, then appearing to reform, trying out for but getting turned down by the Avengers, then getting a serious drug problem, cleaning up his act again, etc., etc. To be sure, I have not read some of these issues, as I no longer collect comics, so I cannot speak to their overall quality. But, based solely on his early appearances in the Avengers (and another couple dozen issues I do own which feature him), please, please, please, Marvel: do let me know if you plan to do a 35th anniversary "The Death of Fabian Stankowicz" issue (2017 by my estimate). Because I not only want to buy 300 copies of that issue and read each and every one of those copies, one after the other. I want to write that fucker into his grave.

Thor's Day Flashback: The Avengers #1

This is the big one. This is the best present I have ever received from anyone. Period. Stop trying!! (Well, don't stop trying to give me presents... but you simply can't, within the bounds of natural, earthbound processes, possibly top this...)

This is the front cover of my copy of The Avengers #1 from September 1963, which basically means the comic is just over one year older than I am (please recall that the dates on the front cover of most comics are projected by a couple of months, sometimes several).

Sure, it isn't the prettiest cover. As you can see, the back of the cover can be seen lightly through the front, which is how it has looked since it was bestowed upon me by the wonderful Mr. Tony D. Batres over 30 years ago or so.

Tony can correct the details in the comments, but I believe he purchased it -- the price of $100 springs to my mind -- from a real pain-in-the-ass dive called Comic Book Cosmos, which served as the first comic book shop in Anchorage, Alaska (or at least the first one of which we were aware at the time). Cosmos had really odd hours, and half the time we went all the way across the city to Mountain View, it would be closed even if you went according to the posted schedule. My recollection of the place was that you pretty much had to deal with what they had at hand (I was never successful at having the owner order anything for me that I wanted), but when Marvel went "direct market" with some of their titles in 1981-1982 (thereby skipping newsstand circulation), Cosmos briefly became the only game in town for us (at least until the still-thriving Bosco's Comics & Cards opened up in mid-1984 in Spenard).

The comic itself? I have only read it by hand thrice: once when I first got it, once when I first bagged and boarded it a couple of years later, and the third time just the other day, when I switched it to new mylar and a protective case. Surprisingly, for a cover that has always looked like it was hand-dipped in Wesson oil personally by Florence Henderson, the inside pages and the color on them are still holding up quite well.

What is it worth now? Why haven't I graded it? How did I get so lucky to have a lifelong pal like Tony? The answers: 1) Don't care, because I will never sell it; 2) Because of the answer to the first question; and 3) Don't know. I guess you had to be there.

Thor's Day Flashback: The Avengers #67

Another Thursday, another Avengers cover from my collection. This one is from August 1967, when I was not yet three years old (technically, the comic actually came out a couple of months before that, so I was even younger).

The issue has the team in combat with that Ultron guy. Some of you may have now heard of him, or at least the version from the movies. The one in the comics was actually created initially by Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym (the original Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, etc.)

Of course, I did not own or even read this issue until many, many years later when I picked it up at the regular flea markets that were held in the old Anchorage Sports Arena. Got this comic for $3, which seemed exorbitant at that time (but only because I was buying about 50 other comics off the guy for the same price). I would really like to go back in time with about a thousand bucks and clean that booth out. The person who owned that booth would probably like it too.

Thor's Day Flashback: The Avengers #44

As Jen and I head to our new local theatre cluster to take in one of a number of advance screenings of Age of Ultron, here's an Avengers cover from my collection, Issue #44, September 1967.

Not only do you get Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch in early action with the team, but in the upper right hand corner (near Hercules) you have the Black Widow in a version of her earlier get-up, which plays more like lingerie than anything else.

And, for what it's worth, please don't go messing with the Para-Sonic Thermo-Ray...

The Clash of One Titan and Some Also-Rans

Iron Man
Director: Jon Favreau
Marvel Studios/Paramount, 2:06, color
Cinema 4 Rating: 8

My pal Proty informed me a couple of weeks ago that Iron Man was “alright.” Actually, Proty said: “It was eye-ight,” with a more than slight upswing in his tone on the last word of the sentence that imparted to me that it was more than merely O.K. with him, and that Proty either likely enjoyed it or was at least pleasantly surprised, though not liked it quite nearly enough so that his statement could end with some form of emphatic punctuation such as an exclamation point. Of course, Proty just had to add the notion that “it was kinda like Transformers.”

Iron Man is more than “eye-ight.” And no, my pal Proty, except for the heroes in both films sporting metallic armor of some variety, it wasn’t at all like Transformers. Transformers, despite some fairly competent action sequences, sucked beyond belief. Transformers sucked in exactly the same way that was meant by the acne-laden, mouth-breathing, hoodie-wearing teen that sat behind me at Cloverfield, as he defiantly stood up midway through that film's credits and shouted "That fuckin' sucked!," even though he nearly shat his pants twice during the film. (Gee... so the payback for a purportedly scary film actually turning out to be scary is that you will tell your friends it isn't scary, all because you have to play tough?) In fact, I am pretty certain that this same teen absolutely loved Transformers, and then when he did go to Iron Man, he probably told all of his friends that it "ripped off" Transformers. But that is the way of Generation Oops: the idiot, uninformed youth.

But outside of that minor comparison of individual armories, otherwise -- in the realm of things on which the true quality of a film should depend: characterizations, storyline, dialogue – Iron Man is lights years past wherever Transformers barely dipped a toe. Even using characters and a plotline rehashed from comic books twenty years before the point that the Transformers flickered crudely animated onto American television screens, Iron Man still soundly quashes that latest example of Michael Bay’s general ineptitude at anything beyond flashy effects sequences.

And then there is the acting. Don't get me started on actor-by-actor comparisons, because that is truly an unnecessary undertaking in cases like these. These films draw big-time talent like flies. Especially with big-budget blockbuster films, where many actors don't really care about the potential quality of the piece, but rather about the CA$H and blockbuster exposure (which leads to even more CA$H). While there are those actors who will take a part in a comic book-style (or children's) flick because a) their kids love it, or b) they loved it as a kid, for the most part, actors take these parts because they can smell the green when the initial call from the producer gets left with their service.

Assuredly, like many of these films no matter the quality, Transformers has some wonderful actors in it, but they are mainly just there to catch a piece of the residuals. For the most part, outside of that LaBeouf twink, they have done far better work in at least more entertaining projects, if not more important or better made ones. John Turturro, Julie White, Jon Voight, Bernie Mac, Anthony Anderson -- they've all done or will do far better things. They simply collect their checks and move on...

Shia LaBeouf won't -- he's already linked to Transformers sequels for however long audiences will put up with soulless dreck -- and he has already convinced several big-name directors, in much the same way that Cruise and Keanu Reeves did before him, that he is the heir apparent to Hollywood star status. This has to be solely through the sheer power of his box office take, because acting-wise, he has done nothing in the way of convincing me that he can play anyone but himself. Such a centrally-based talent is fine for someone like Carrot Top, who really has no other choice but to be his teeth-grinding self, but LaBeouf the Grating will now be inescapable for the near future. At least Chris O'Donnell had the common decency to just be flat-out bland and kindly bored casting directors into all but killing his career. But LaBeouf actually seems to represent his dead-eyed, self-possessed generation in such a way that he shines out like a beacon in an otherwise starless night to people like Spielberg and Bay, who like anyone, are anxious to capture that core demographic, no matter the cost in credibility. And so now I have to put up with the weaselly, little snivelshit tomorrow night in the new Indiana Jones flick. If only there had been a horrible accident on the set of Disturbia, I would have been spared everything he's done since. Wait -- let's move that accident bar back to Constantine.

But back to Iron Man, where if the actors did indeed sign up only for the bucks, they at least were signed to parts practically perfect for each one. Downey has certainly climbed back fully from the abyss in which he mired himself (there's no one else to blame, really), but then, I thought that when I saw him in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. (Really, people. Avail yourself of this film already. It's a riot.) Unlike Kiss though, Iron Man is putting yourself out in front of people on one of the most grandiose levels that one can. It takes balls to possibly destroy your career further by taking on the lead role of a superhero, especially in a film that potentially could have destroyed an upcoming studio should it have failed on any level at all. But it doesn't fail anywhere, and while the entire cast is terrific, this is Downey's film to carry and the true responsibility for its success should lie upon him.

Now, a word to reviewers who love to describe Jeff Bridges' acting in this film as "over-the-top" or "hammy" or "scenery-chewing." Honestly, I felt he underplayed the role. In fact, he is so far in the background until a pair of huge scenes, I thought the scenery was chewing him instead. Yes, in those big scenes he elevates his emotions to almost shocking levels. But what the hell do you want in a movie which is derived from a comic book? (And this is no knock on comic books -- I am a lifelong collector.) Look, I just reread the original Iron Man story once again last week, and do you realize that the only word balloons that don't end in exclamation points are the ones that end in question marks. And those are fairly rare. Comic books -- and comic book heroes and villains -- are supposed to be accompanied by exclamation points! And while I am at it: !!!!!!!!!!!

Sure, you could point out that this would then give an excuse for that thankfully rare Batman & Robin fan out there to claim this is the proof that Ah-nuld or Uma were actually dead-on in their portrayals of Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy. I say thee "Nay!" There is a monstrous difference between "good" over-the-top acting and the "bad" variety. Of the examples given above, only Mr. Bridges represents the former.

To this point, even after the first two Spideys, the original two Reeve Supermans and the Burton and Nolan Batman flicks, Iron Man could turn out to be the saving grace for modern superhero films. It’s the one where the ratio of regular guy audience connection to super-powered alter-ego action is finally mixed perfectly. Seriously, I am a Batman-aholic, but the Caped Crusader as envisioned currently can be a tough nut to crack for even the hardiest of fans. Iron Man, mainly due to Downey's completely infectious performance, may be the specimen that allows hoity-toity film reviewers from even far-flung lands – who will spend a good portion of their review explaining how normally they find all that super-hero action to be greasy kid's stuff and far below their notice – to finally recognize that these types of films can have their benefits.

The best of superhero stories can possess what the best of any genre should have, and they can have ideas beyond simple good vs. evil. They can weigh in on far more serious matters beyond "I'm lonely and misunderstood... boo-hoo! -- Hey, I have superpowers!" Iron Man touches on the military-industrial complex, war profiteering and terrorism. Tony Stark himself will even likely have a fall from grace in the movie sequels due to his rampant alcoholism, and if it sounds old hat today, when I was first reading those stories in the seventies, I was absolutely shocked with how I suddenly had to deal with such an adult issue. (The mind reels with how Downey will play this aspect of the role.) Soon, we will have the Watchmen onscreen with their ever-present nuclear clock, and while the answer to the question of "Who Watches the Watchmen?" will likely be answered, "Not huge audiences..." (it is a cult concept at best, and the film must be rated a very hard "R" to be pulled off properly), it will show once more that superhero comics are not just greasy kid's stuff after all anymore.

True, the use of these powers can often right the world for the character in a simplistic fashion, and it's also true that often the use of these powers can be seen as being ironically fascistic. But those that condemn the genre automatically -- and those that assume that this attitude is the only prevalent standard within comics -- have clearly never been fully exposed to the genre. They don't understand that the genre, especially in the past thirty years, has grown up enormously, and that it is far beyond the donning of some colorful tights. Or a shiny metallic suit.

All of these concepts are far beyond those to be found in Transformers. Yeah, it too has shiny metal heroes. What it doesn't have, and what it's director will never have, is any concept of a soul. Sorry, Proty. It's a surface-to-airhead missile that the likes of Tony Stark would never have designed on his worst day.