Superhero teams don’t make sense

Superhero team movies are all the rage these days. If it’s not the Justice League teaming up then it’s the X-Men or Fantastic Four. All of which is very cool. But as I started thinking about the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War movie I came to the realization that a lot of superhero teams really don’t make sense.

The Avengers
The Avengers

If you look at a team like the one in Avengers (2012) of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow, these are characters thrown together to battle some great, unstoppable foe that they can only hope of defeating with each other. Which makes some sense. They all come together for the big dust-up and prevail in the end. What doesn’t make sense is why do they stay together?

Thor is a god who lives on another planet, so making it to Avengers meetings can be problematic. The Incredible Hulk is an unstable monster who’s only kept in check by Bruce Banner and should probably stay as far away from people as possible. Captain America is a super soldier, and as such shouldn’t he be working for the government? Tony Stark/Iron Man is a playboy whom time and time again proves that he doesn’t work well with others.

Who’s paying them? Are they indentured servants giving up any semblance of normal lives in order that they can put their lives on the line day in and day out to battle things like robotic terrors and science gone amok for the greater good? Are they superheroes, or are they superslaves?

I suppose you’ve got Hawkeye and Black Widow who are already working with SHIELD when the movie begins, so they make at least some sense working as part of the team.

But for the others, not so much.

The X-Men
The X-Men

Things get even worse when you take into account the X-Men. The X-Men are a group of super-powered mutants lead by Professor X who secretly teaches outcast mutants at his school where the teachers moonlight as this super-powered team. By day Jean Grey might teach math to a bunch of seventh graders, but by night she’s out saving the world from the likes of Magneto with the other X-Men. So these are teachers, who have to be doing all the things teachers do like helping kids with their homework and coming up with their curriculum. But these X-Teachers are really spending most of their time zooming around the globe trying to stop armageddon. Am I to believe that Scott Summers is aboard the Blackbird grading papers in between fighting Apocalypse and Mr. Sinister?

Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four

I suppose the one team that does make sense is the Fantastic Four. This is a family-ish team with stretchable Reed Richards who’s married to, or at least gets married to at some point in the story, Sue Storm who’s brother Johnny and friend Ben Grimm are all given superpowers after one of Reed’s experiments goes awry. Regardless of the fact that they’re all almost killed by this experiment, them banding together does make some sense because of the whole family angle and the fact that they get their powers at the same time.

While all that might be plausible, at no point did anyone like Johnny or Ben say to Reed, “I appreciate the opportunity to fight the Mole Man once every few months, but I’d really like to go back to school to learn how to become a chef.”

Looking at the superhero team from the outside it’s interesting to see how scary someone like Iron Man is. He’s got the power of a small army at his fingertips and roams around the globe doing whatever he thinks is right no matter what the consequences. Or even the Incredible Hulk who at any moment can Hulk-out can devastate any city more effectively than even an atomic bomb. For them to be running around together to the average person might just be terrifying.

Of course these movies all take place in a fictional universe where all of the superheroes are nice to each other and none of them has ever thought about how much better the world were be if it were their group running it. 😉

Direct Beam Comms #112

TV

The Alienist **/****

TNT has been pushing their new The Alienist TV series for months now. Since last summer with nearly every commercial break TNT would run an The Alienist promo which would lead to the odd pairing of A Christmas Story last month, about a boy’s dream of getting a bb gun for Christmas, with The Alienist commercials that had the line (sic) “We’re hunting a killer of boys…” But I digress, lately TNT’s been trying to get into the (semi) serious drama game with shows like Animal Kingdom and Claws with The Alienist being the latest entry.

Here, it’s New York in the 19th century and someone is murdering kids. Enter Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl) the “alienst” or proto-psychologist, John Moore (Luke Evans) a newspaper illustrator and Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) the first female employee of the police department. Kreizler thinks he’s dealt with this murderer in the past with another unsolved case, but will he Moore and Howard be able to stop the killer before he strikes again? Or will the wheels of the 19th century bureaucracy stop them before they’re even able to begin since those in power are already convinced only an insane person could have committed the crimes?

I think a series like The Alienist is going to stand or fall based on the strength of its characters since the subject matter, a serial killer, has been done to death (haha) over the years on TV. Unfortunately, the characters of The Alienist just aren’t that strong. Or, whatever character traits they do possess seem more like those of TV characters rather than real, relatable people. Like Kreizler is mostly a guy who cares too much about solving the crime and is overtly concerned with his patients. Moore visits prostitutes on a nightly basis nut otherwise doesn’t seem to possess much of a personality at all. Howard is probably the most well-drawn of the characters, but even here her main trait is of a woman living in a man’s world.

A series like The Knick that took place around the same time as The Alienist had characters who felt like they were flawed people with real personalities. The characters of The Alienist mostly feel like stock, blank slates meant to keep the plot moving forward.

Counterpart ***/****

What Counterpart on Starz reminded me of the most, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, was one of the many sci-fi related TV series that seemed to thrive in syndication/cable in the late 1990s early 2000s. The log-line from Counterpart reads just like one of these shows, “A UN employee discovers the agency he works for is hiding a gateway to a parallel dimension.” I could easily see this show airing at midnight every Thursday night before Seven Days and after Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with one killer, trippy opening credits sequence.

Even the theme of Counterpart, that a seemingly ordinary person is thrown into a world of intrigue and espionage with a more experienced partner is a well-worn TV trope too — the “buddy cop” show.

Of course while Counterpart might share some of the same themes/DNA of these earlier shows it’s of a pedigree well above them. The series was written and created by Justin Marks who wrote the Academy Award wining The Jungle Book and stars prolific actor J.K. Simmons who’s an Oscar winner himself.

And while those 1990s/2000s series might have also starred Academy Award winners too, it was usually actors who’s time in the spotlight had past and were only forced to do TV as a way to pay the bills. Today it’s a completely different world where popular actors are lining up to do series like Big Little Lies, Fargo and, yes, Counterpart.

The first episode of the series mostly deals with lowly cog Howard Silk (Simmons) who has a weird job for a UN agency in Germany where he goes into a room and recites certain preselected phrases to another person in a similar room separated by glass. What Silk learns when he meets a copy of himself at the agency is that during the Cold War an experiment accidentally created a duplicate Earth 30 years ago and ever since then the two Earths have been diverging and have entered a dimensional Cold War of sorts. Enter alternate Howard Silk (also Simmons) from this other dimension. If our Howard Silk is meek-mannered then this Silk is a man of action who’s a secret agent who shoots first and ask questions later. He’s on our Earth chasing an assassin who’s slipped over and is out to murder meek Howard Silk’s wife.

But can we trust this alternate Howard Silk when there’s really no way to check his story other than his history with our Silk? Does he have other motives from crossing back and forth between the two Earths?

I enjoyed Counterpart a lot but unfortunately don’t get Starz — I got to watch the first episode over a free preview weekend. So while I might get to see the rest of the series later I didn’t think the show was strong enough to turn me into a subscriber.

Comics

X-Men: Legion – Shadow King Rising

With Legion being a much talked about show on FX, Marvel has started releasing collected edition of comic books that featured David Haller the main character of that series. One is an edition entitled X-Men: Legion – Shadow King Rising.

From Marvel:

David Haller is no ordinary mutant. Son of Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, David’s incredible mental powers fractured his mind — and now, each of his personalities controls a different ability! And they’re not all friendly, as Xavier and the New Mutants find out the hard way! But as Legion struggles to control the chaos in his head, he attracts the attention of one of Xavier’s oldest and most malevolent foes: Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King, who’s secretly been stalking and manipulating the X-Men and their allies. When the Shadow King sinks his hooks deep into David’s mind, will two teams of X-Men be enough to defeat him — or will David be the key to the villain’s ultimate victory?

Movies

Threads

One of the scariest movies ever made, and is now more relevant than ever, is set to get a Blu-ray release.

From Severin Films:

In September 1984, it was aired on the BBC and shocked tens of millions of UK viewers. Four months later, it was broadcast in America and became the most watched basic cable program in history. After more than three decades, it remains one of the most acclaimed and shattering made-for-television movies of all time. Reece Dinsdale (Coronation Street), David Brierly (Doctor Who) and Karen Meagher (in a stunning debut performance) star in this “graphic and haunting” (People Magazine) docudrama about the effects of a nuclear attack on the working-class city of Sheffield, England as the fabric of society unravels. Directed by Mick Jackson (THE BODYGUARD, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE) from a screenplay by novelist/playwright Barry Hines (Ken Loach’s KES) and nominated for seven BAFTA Awards, “the most terrifying and honest portrayal of nuclear war ever filmed” (The Guardian) has now been fully restored from a 2K scan for the first time ever.

The Cured trailer

The Death of Stalin trailer

The Movie Chain: #4: Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Last week: Strange Days

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

One of the more controversial movies of the last decade is Zero Dark Thirty. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow of last week’s Strange Days with script from Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty presented a cinematic version of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the eventual raid on his compound that would lead to him being killed by elite Navy SEALs.

The controversial part of Zero Dark Thirty was that it depicted torture as being used as one of the ways that would eventually lead to the location of Bin Laden. On the one hand I can see the controversy here since the movie links torture to the eventual outcome, which may or may not be factual depending on who you trust. But on the other hand if it is historically correct why not put it in the movie and then audience members have the debate if it was necessary/right or not? Which is kind’a what happened.

Regardless, if Zero Dark Thirty was controversial it’s got to be the most controversial yet influential movie in modern history. By my count there are at least four TV series on now that all, shall we say, borrow heavily from the raid on Bin Laden’s compound by the SEALs featured in Zero Dark Thirty. There’s SEAL Team on CBS, Six on History, The Brave on NBC and Valor on CW. Now these series pretty much ignore most of the theme of Zero Dark Thirty — that it was years of hard work by people working on the ground in dangerous places to that lead to the raid — and instead just concentrate on the action aspects of soldiers kicking down doors and shooting guns while wearing night vision goggles.

Next week: Motion capture never looked so good.

The Reading List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week