What I Learned's blog

Joss Whedon's Avengers 2: Don't ruin the villains

 I'm happy for Joss Whedon, after hearing the announcement he'll write and direct Avengers 2. I like to see a geek inherit the Earth.

But I worry about the franchise in general. Whedon has a tendency to make his villains too comfortable around the heroes. Considering he worked with vampires so long, I'm surprised how quickly he removes his villains' teeth and makes them just ordinary guys and gals. Perhaps he just likes villains better, like Dr. Horrible. But I'm afraid that, in Avengers 2, Loki will be joining the heroes for a shawarma dinner.

Which one is better?

	In the beginning...	Later on...
Spike from Buffy	Dangerous. You never knew what side he was on.	Just kind of hung around because he had nothing else to do.
Danger from X-Men	Living embodiment of the Danger Room. Coolest and most deadly new villain in the mutant titles.	Just kind of hung around and poked fun of the heroes because she had nothing else to do.

 

 

 

Spider-Man 4?

Back when Sam Raimi was helming the Spider-man franchise, I came up with a natural progression of who the next villain should be: The Lizard.

 

Spider-Man 4 needed a visual villain. So what if the serum Curt Connors uses is successful – at first. So successful, in fact, that he shares his creation with the world. Amputees from all over the world come, and he is inadvertently creating dozens of lizards.

 

I thought that the Lizard by himself would not be a good enough villain after Spidey's already fought goblins and Sandman. But a legion of lizards, some of which with special powers. That gets interesting.

 

You can read the script treatment here:

 

http://whatilearnedbywriting.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/spider-man-4/

 

Spider-Man 5?

Peter has taken on a job teaching high school science at a really troubled school. No one will teach there. They're too afraid. That's how he was able to get a job without a teaching degree. As luck would have it, the gym teacher there is none other than Flash Thompson. Their rivalry begins anew.

	All the hype and buzz about Spider-Man 5 should revolve around the new villain, Hobgoblin, 

and how he is connected to the Osborn legacy. There should also be a note on IMDB or something where

 he teams up with Shocker. But when you’re watching the movie, there’s this intricate plot involving people 

you don’t know. Later, when Spidey tracks the Hobgoblin down, he is in league with Shocker, Stunner, Vulture, 

Hydro-Man, and the Jackal. During the fight with the new Sinister Six, Spidey starts to realize that his spider-sense

 isn’t going off. In fact, nothing seems to be really happening in the fight.

	It’s then that Spidey realizes all these people are illusions. He leaves and tries to find what’s really happening.

 This was all to distract him from Mysterio’s (“Miss Cheerio?”) ultimate plan, which involved all the subplot stuff

 in the beginning that seemed unnecessary at the time. 

 

5 Best Marriage Equality Bumper Stickers

After several states voted against same sex marriage, such as North Carolina, and President Barack Obama said marriages should be fair, I made these pro-marriage equality bumper stickers. Hope they make you happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Avengers fixed the problems of the Marvel prequels

At one point during The Avengers, I suddenly realize that here I am, in a big screen theater, full of people, watching a live action Thor and Iron Man fight. And it's good.

Decades of comic book movies have brought us to this point: Where we can have high budget movies with A-list actors and directors bring our comics to the screen for the mass audience.

Sure, there have been some bumps along this road. But Marvel's The Avengers paved over a lot of them.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow's Pepper Potts had more charisma in five minutes of screen time than in the previous two movies put together. (But why was she dressed like that?)

Chris Evans stopped being a boy in man's clothes who didn't emote (like how he was throughout the whole Captain America movie) and started being the take-charge man of principle that we all know he is.

The Hulk looked less like a cartoon, and more like a big, green Mark Ruffalo (This is a good thing). Ruffalo did a good job playing the conflicted Bruce Banner, and you could see in every scene that he's trying to hold it together. I think Edward Norton could have done it well, too, but these things happen.

Black Widow was given something to do. Instead of just slinking around and kicking people, she was the brains of the operation in a way that Stark and Banner couldn't be.

 

Joss Whedon's fingerprints were all over this thing. The bickering. The long stretches of dialogue. The humor.

There were times when a few characters are talking, then it switches to another scene where a few characters are talking, and then another. Compare that to the X-Men movies, where there's a few minutes of dialogue and then someone is attacked. It was a welcome change, with all the testosterone flowing around, for people to have intelligent, character-revealing dialogue.

I'm very happy for Whedon. He helmed a very large, very expensive, and very high profile project and he did it well. However, I do NOT want him to direct any sequels. Whedon has a tendency to get too familiar with his characters, rendering villains harmless and heroes little more than people who just hang out together.

 

The plot was paper-thin, when compared to what Loki attempted in the Thor movie. But, this movie was all about bringing the heroes together, and there might not have been room for an overly elaborate villain plot. That's debatable. The heroes spent almost as much time fighting each other. That may have been the plot, actually.

Loki was a bit too brutish with some of his combat. I don't see him as the type to bring down helicopters with an energy weapon while riding on the back of a truck. He is the master of illusion. However, maybe his fight was just a ruse. As you see later, when he gets caught.

There was a hint of romantic subplot that may happen at some point, but there was no burden of forced romance when there are a bunch of big storylines running around.

 

So, I'm very psyched for a sequel, although I have no idea how they're going to top the villain they introduced (I saw it coming, for the record!) for the eventual part 3.

 

Best and Funniest Mother's Day Gifts

Be honest with your mother. 

Sure, you love her. But is she the best mom in the whole world? How many moms have you met to compare her to?

This year, for Mother's Day, give her a gift that says "I love you" without exaggerating. 

 

Funny Gun Control Stickers and Shirts

Someone told me that 85 million gun owners didn’t shoot anyone yesterday. I don’t find that a particularly reassuring statistic. What about the day before?

And maybe they were just not trying hard enough. So I made a t-shirt and bumper sticker. I hope you enjoy:

http://www.zazzle.com/85_million_gun_owners_have_terrible_aim_tshirt-235101380489441678

http://www.zazzle.com/gun_owners_must_have_bad_aim_bumper_sticker-128687226493356228

 

Why it doesn't matter if the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are mutants

When Eastman and Laird created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they gave them a ridiculous origin: They were turtles that were touched by some kind of mutagen that turned them somewhat humanoid. Then a giant rat named them and raised them. It was a goofy beginning (and a Daredevil parody) that became a serious comic and then a goofy cartoon.

The mutagen in question is just some random thing: a story starter. It could have been magic. It could have been aliens. It could have been anything, because the heroes were nothing before this.

It's not like you're making Bruce Wayne be bitten by a radioactive bat. Or make Peter Parker's parents spies (grumble grumble grumble).

That said, how are they going to be named after Renaissance artists? This movie will have the problems that “Wolverine” did: They're going to have to come up with all new reasons for everything.

 

I'm not the biggest TMNT fan, but Michael Bay's announcement bodes poorly for the movie. If this is different, what else will be?

I am the biggest Transfan, but I finally said “enough” and refused to see Transformers 3. I'm sure this didn't hurt the movie's bottom line one bit. But if 100,000 fanboys don't watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and don't take their 2 kids to see it, that's $3 million in revenue. Still, maybe not enough to make a dent in a $100+ million payday, but refuse to buy the merchandise and maybe you'll send a message.

Of course, that also hurts two creators who were fortunate enough to make a living doing what they love on a property that took off as a pop culture touchstone.

I'm happy for Eastman and Laird, but sad for storytelling in general.

 

This article pretty much sums it up:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/michael-bay-signs-50m-deal-to-fuck-up-thundercats,2702/

 

 

 

Lego Friends: Character Personalities Done Right

Wandering through Target with my daughter, she stopped me for the new Lego line "Friends." It's a pack of cute, Lego-sized dolls where you built them and their play sets. Brilliantly simple idea and a fine execution.

She asked me to read the descriptions of the four girls on display. What took me by surprise was that they actually had negative sides of their personalities. One of them loves to plan parties, but she can be bossy. One of them loves to perform, but is a bit of a drama queen.

This, I thought, was fantastic. Most of the times, personalities for kids' toys are very straight and narrow. They never have a bad side to them. "This one loves animals and the color pink!" That's about as much as you'll get from some of them.

It's so bad that the "books" that are put out to support the toys (or do the toys support the books?) just pick a toy as the main character and put words in her mouth. The characters are that interchangeable that it just doesn't matter who says or does anything.

So I was pleasantly surprised that, in just a few short sentences, the Lego Friends were well described and set up enough things for them to do.

What I Learned: For a story to happen, there has to be conflict. The best conflict comes from between characters. But they have to be different enough for that to happen.

 

How Beauty and the Beast Should Have Ended

We brought our daughter to see "Beauty and the Beast," re-released in the theater. (We saw it in 2D, however!) I got to thinking of a better fate for Gaston, the movie's villain.

He's probably one of the more personal villains in Disney movies. And his goals and the ways he goes about it are more cruel than the power-hungry villains like Aladdin's Jafar. But I was always surprised he died at the end.

What should have happened is that he falls....and lands on Lefou, the toady. Lefou is then seen as a hero in the people's eyes, and Gaston becomes his toady.

Jafar, Ursula, or Scar...they will never rest, so of course they die at the end of movies. But Gaston is the type of character that utter humiliation is worse than death.