seriousfic

Trying my best to put this into an extremely simplified format. This is basically the post-Crisis/New Earth inspired Elseworlds I would write it if DC called me up tomorrow. I wouldn’t want to wade in the Nu52 and start retconning things around to suit me, even if I could get away with it–there’s been quite enough of that from Messners Didio and Johns. I’d rather just tell a damn good story in its own continuity and have that continuity as close to fan-preferred status as possible. Please feel free to debate and comment, I’d love to hear any feedback.

The Zeroth Generation: WW2 and the Justice Society of America, among others. Through various circumstances, a number of these heroes find themselves in stasis to reawaken in the more proper Age of Heroes.

The Lost Generation: Scattered superheroes between the end of the Zeroth Generation and the beginning of the Age of Heroes. Not many are of note; the frequency and fame of these heroes is more akin to guys like the Viking Prince and Jonah Hex pre-Zeroth Generation. Someone’s putting on tights, but it’s largely unremarkable.

The First Generation: (15-10 years before present day) The Age of Heroes begins with Superman debuting in Metropolis, having wandered the globe on a Quest for Peace (heh) since his high school graduation. Urban legends spread of the Batman of Gotham, while Diana leaves Paradise Island for Man’s World. In short order, the rest of the ‘Big Seven’ show up: Green Lantern, the Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter. Over this five year period, the Justice League is formed, then expands its ranks. Many of the heroes acquire sidekicks, who themselves form the Teen Titans. This era roughly corresponds to pre-Crisis comics, John Bryne’s initial Man of Steel comic, Miller’s Batman: Year One (and ensuing stories), the Happy Harbor and Satellite Era of the Justice League, and George Perez’s Wonder Woman stories*. Most heroes are somewhere in their twenties, while sidekicks are adolescents (let’s say Dick Grayson becomes Robin age twelve-ish).

The Second Generation: (10-5 years before present day) The Justice League transitions into the ‘Bwa-Ha-Ha’ Justice League International, the Teen Titans become the New Teen Titans, the Suicide Squad is formed. New heroes are born, following the example of the First Generation. Old sidekicks graduate to higher statuses (Dick Grayson becomes Nightwing, Wally West becomes the Flash, Donna Troy becomes Troia) and new sidekicks take their place (Jason Todd becomes Robin II). This era roughly corresponds to post-Crisis comics of the eighties and early nineties, starting from the Legends miniseries and continuing onward. Adult heroes are entering their thirties. First generation sidekicks are in their teens and very early twenties (Dick Grayson was about 18 and in college when NTT started).

The Third Generation: (5 years ago to present day) The latest generation of heroes and sidekicks arrive, from Tim Drake/Robin III to Cassie Sandsmark/Wonder Girl II to Connor Hawke/Green Arrow II. The Big Seven return to the Justice League, building a new base on the Moon known as the Watchtower. Young Justice is formed. This era roughly corresponds to the post-Crisis comics of the 90s and early 00s, including Grant Morrison’s JLA. It runs until Identity Crisis/Infinity Crisis. Adult heroes are in their thirties and forties (Bruce and Clark have some white hairs). First generation sidekicks are solidly in their twenties.

There’s also a Fourth Generation, obviously, covering the late Aughts and Tens which we’re in now, introducing new heroes/sidekicks like Harper Row, Jessica Cruz, and Jonathan Kent. However, as this period also leads into Flashpoint and strongly features the replacement of legacy heroes with their predecessors–Barry Allen retaking the Flash mantle from Wally West, Hal Jordan doing the same to Kyle Raynor, etc.–I prefer not to acknowledge it in favor of setting my tale within Third Generation and continuing that thread. Also, the new characters I mentioned are largely still being ‘field-tested’ by their creators, so for my purposes, I’d prefer not to give ‘my take’ on characters who largely aren’t established enough for me to give them a take.

I also reserve the right to screw around with canon a bit for the sake of storytelling. So, for instance, in mainstream canon, Barry Allen would die in CoIE right between the first and second generations and by the Third Generation Wally would be married to Linda and starting a family. Because I want to write a love story between them, I put off Barry’s death until the third generation, so Wally has only been The Flash for a few years and is just now meeting Linda. That gives us quite a few stories that strictly speaking didn’t happen, but it’s an AU anyway, and at least I’m not making you read about Barry fucking Allen fucking Patty fucking Spivot.

*Technically, those stories took place during the Second Generation, five years after Superman and Batman had debuted, but no one really likes that retcon and it totally fucks up Donna Troy being a Titan. So… Hypertime.

Like all critics, I worry sometimes about being too negative and only talking about stories that I dislike. Here that’s not a problem though, because I saw two movies and one I disliked, one I liked.

Sleeping With Other People

Okay, which did you think would go first?

Now, if you’re following me, then there’s probably one reason you’ve heard of this movie, and that’s this scene.

You know, this one.

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis onnnnnnnnnnnnnne.

And admittedly, that’s a very good scene. Lots of… backstory.

But then there’s the rest of the movie. The premise is that two people, who are basically sex addicts or serial cheaters or whatever you want to call it (more on that later), strike up a friendship and have all this great chemistry, but they ruin every sexual relationship they have with cheating, so they decide to never become romantic so that they can preserve the friendship.

Now it was probably always going to be dicey to make a movie where the heroes are cheaters, but, if that’s your premise, you should get it right. And I don’t think they did at all.

First we have Jason Sudeikis, who plays Jake. He keeps getting into relationships, but can’t bring himself to end them when they aren’t working for him, so instead he sleeps with his girlfriend’s best friend or sister or something so that they’re forced to break up with him. Which, first off, is just so fucking vile.

I mean, getting past the “cheating to end a relationship thing” in the first place… why does he have to damage, if not destroy, a friendship or familial relationship just to spare himself writing a gender-swapped Dear John letter? Because even breaking up with someone via text would be classier than cheating on them. Or if he has to cheat on them, like, wouldn’t most women be willing to break up with him if he just had sex with a hooker or something? Why does he need to bring literally people’s families into this? Yeah, sure, it works out well for him, he ends up with Alison Brie, but what about all the women he hurt who end up with losing friendships to this sex monster?

And by the way, I don’t mean to imply that the women who… cuckold with him aren’t at fault, it’s just the movie seems to think Jason Sudeikis is some kind of irresistible sex god. I know he dated Olivia Wilde, but c’mon… Jason Sudeikis. It’s not like he’s Chris Pine or anything, and I couldn’t see most women having sex with Chris Pine if he were in a serious relationship with a good friend or blood relative. But the Horrible Bosses movie went with Sudeikis being a sex god too, so I guess that’s just a thing?

Then there’s Lainey, played by Alison Brie. She’s obsessed with what can best be described as an abusive fuckbuddy played by Adam Scott. She keeps having sex with him, even when dating other guys, and even when he’s getting married to another woman who is pregnant. But they make the guy she cheats on a jerk who calls her a whore–you don’t want to side with the guy who calls Annie Edison a whore, d’ya?–and they make her have PTSD from fucking this guy or whatever, like she’ll have a panic attack because she sees Adam Scott in public and can’t get his approval or jump his bones or shit. They even give Adam Scott this child molester mustache for maximum tastefulness.

Get it!? It’s like he’s molesting her or something!

So we have Brie’s character who is just this poor, victimized angel, and then we have Sudeikis, who is a fucking psychopath… it just seems uneven.

I guess we’re supposed to think he has a jerk girlfriend he cheats on just like Brie had a jerk boyfriend she cheats on, cuz the girlfriend pushes him in front of a moving vehicle eventually? I wouldn’t know, because I can’t remember the last time pop culture depicted a ‘woman scorned’ character as out of line.

Her husband cheated on her.

At the end of the movie, Sudeikis even beats up the Adam Scott character for his poor treatment of Brie–you know, the same thing he’s been doing to scores of other women? Movie, you really can’t make Jake the hero of this story when he’s the villain of so many others.

And if he cheats on women to get them to break up on him, how come in one of his first scenes we see him arguing with his cuckolded girlfriend, trying to get her to take him back because they have an open relationship she didn’t know about?

Add to that, I just don’t buy these as motivations for cheating. If you lined up a hundred habitual cheaters, men and women, and asked them why they cheated, I would bet not ten of them would have an answer like “to force my girlfriend to break up with me” or “because I’m mentally ill and obsessing on Adam Scott with a child molester mustache.” So it not only makes for a poor story, but it rings false as well.

And heck, given that Jake’s character flaw is being unwilling to openly and honestly break up with a women, and he dates another woman pretty seriously before finally getting together with Lainey–shouldn’t his character arc end with him mustering up the courage to say “I’m sorry, I don’t feel the same way about you as you do for me, this relationship isn’t working, there’s someone else”? Instead, the Amanda Peet character figures out that he’s in love with Lainey and breaks up with him herself. So his character arc is just going from not wanting to fuck Alison Brie to wanting to fuck Alison Brie. Heck, I had that, it was called ‘finding out who Alison Brie was.’ It didn’t take two hours!

What If

Even with the lame title (it was called The F Word in other countries), this is a rom-com I enjoyed much more. Harry Potter plays a medical school dropout who was cheated on, which combined with his parents’ infidelity has made him stop believing in love. He meets Zoe Kazan as Chantry and falls for her, but she’s in a relationship with Rafe Spall, playing Ben. Still enjoying her company, he decides to become her friend, but when Ben leaves on a prolonged work engagement in a foreign company, the two begin to wonder if there isn’t more to their friendship. Meanwhile, Harry Potter’s friends, played by Adam Driver and Mackenzie Davis, start up a more traditional relationship that progresses from flirting to marriage as the movie goes on. And if any of you A/V nerds watch this movie, please edit some of the Driver character’s dialogue into Kylo Ren’s scenes in The Force Awakens. I want to see him telling Rey “I can see your bacne through that blouse.”

So this one I thought succeeded much better at depicting a somewhat taboo or ‘edgy’ concept with a great deal of sensitivity and insight and enough of a deft hand to avoid any problem areas. Because you read that synopsis and you think oh, there’s gonna be some kind of friend zone thing, it’s gonna be bad, and I really don’t think it is. Daniel Radcliffe’s Wallace isn’t entirely innocent, but he isn’t a scumbag either, and he struggles with this situation of having feelings for his friend but not wanting to be the type of guy who breaks up a relationship, or tries to twist a friendship into sex, while Chantry tries to be faithful to her boyfriend while also wondering where their relationship is going and what exactly her feelings for Wallace are.

And I also liked that the movie was self-aware enough to know a lot of the rom-com cliches, and subvert them, but then also not make a big deal of “oh, look, we’re so subversive, we’re not doing the cliches that everyone has already mocked in those Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movies!” No, this is a case where avoiding the cliches makes for a better story. Like at one point, Chantry flies out to surprise her boyfriend and finds him talking with another woman, and you expect that he’s cheating on her and so she can break up with him with a clear conscience and get together with Wallace with a clear conscience–no, she’s just a friend, and the boyfriend is actually a very nice guy, and resolving the relationship drama won’t be nearly that convenient.

So I wasn’t really planning to comment on the rumor that there would be a trilogy of Wonder Woman films, with the first one set in the 1920s, simply because it sounded so spurious. Okay, I suppose I can believe that, even having committed to doing a WW2 Wonder Woman film because that’s how it was in the 1970s (!!!), DC would then make that the sequel to one set before the character was even originated.

(That’s really the only reason to do a WW2 movie. I’ve read quite a bit of Wonder Woman and she doesn’t ever really seem to deal with fall-out from the Nazis the same way Steve does. She doesn’t have any lingering foes or lost loves. It doesn’t work to make Cap the result of a supersoldier experiment during the Gulf War, but it works fine to have Steve Trevor crash on Paradise Island during the 2010s. So the only reason to tie Diana to WW2 is Silver Age nostalgia, so fuck that. I mean, we’re not going to even have a non-“used car salesman” Lex Luthor until next year. Of course, then he’s going to be so new-fangled that he’s some Mark Zuckerberg evil geek, so I fully admit I’m a hypocrite there. But c’mon, Smallville got this right. Smallville and a bunch of children’s cartoons. Bald guy, suit and tie, hates Superman, loves money. Doesn’t seem that hard)

But the thing about the movie starting off with “warring factions of Amazons” misses the point about as much as a Star Trek movie starting with a Federation civil war, or a Star Wars movie about trade disagreements. And honestly, I don’t think any studio plans out whole trilogies in advance—at least, not like this.

The whole idea of the franchise is that you do a movie, then you do it over again. You’ve got James Bond, Q, M, Moneypenny—sequel time, you get more Bond, Q, M, Moneypenny. With this plan, you’d pretty much be changing settings and supporting cast every movie. Now, Marvel’s done that sort of planning, but they’re clearly next-level: With TWS, they’ve lost all of the first movie’s stuff, so they bring in Peggy for a cameo, make Bucky the villain, and make Black Widow the female lead to tie it into The Avengers—making that movie a sort of Captain America 1.5.

DC—they make Man of Steel because their Superman copyright is about to run out (no, really), then when that underperforms, they add Batman to the sequel. Then they decide to make that sequel a launching board for every other character in their stable as well. I imagine that’ll go about as well for them as Amazing Spider-Man 2 worked at launching The Sinister Six.

Speaking offfffff, now that it’s turned out that Marvel was being totally truthful about working on a Peggy Carter TV show, a Black Panther movie, a Captain Marvel movie, et al—Is it really so hard to believe that they are working on a Black Widow movie, it’s just taking a while? Unless you want to believe that Marvel decided to do Black Panther and Captain Marvel the minute DC announced Wonder Woman and a Cyborg movie (yeah, that’s never gonna happen). What can I say, these things take time. Feige’s been wanting to do a Dr. Strange movie and it’s still only now happening.

So, drawback, with a BW movie happening in 2020 or later, I don’t think there’s any way they can make Scarlett Johansson look younger than she did in Iron Man 2 for it to be a prequel/origin story. Not a huge loss, since we saw how well “let’s explain the hero’s mysterious backstory in mindnumbing detail” worked for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. My prediction is that Widow will leave the Avengers after Infinity War, and with Johansson no longer being ‘double-booked,’ they’ll give her and Hawkeye a team-up movie in Phase 4 that’ll touch on the Red Room and all that but in some clever way—using the Yelena Belova storyline to give insight into what Natasha went through without us ever seeing Teen!Nat.

Also, a Wonder Woman period piece really seems derivative of Agent Carter at this point, who is a possibly a bigger fixture in pop culture right now. She was in the Captain America movie, the sequel, the one-shot, Agents of SHIELD, now a TV show… meanwhile, if you don’t read comics, about the only place you’ve seen Wonder Woman is The LEGO Movie.