The Signs of the Geek using X-Men Origins: Wolverine

As ever, I'm embarassingly late on the subject of today's blog post, it's not my fault, I've had shit loads of work to do (curse you!) and World of Warcraft to play (love you!) and on the plus side it makes me look a bit less like a band wagon jumping whore. So today's subject is X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Yes, i know everybody's talking about Star Trek now, but this isn't a film review, this is a review review. In particular it's a review of io9's review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Normally I love io9, sure, it has its fair share of 'George Lucas actually constructed a time machine using the billions he's forced from the movie-going masses, gone to the time and effort to find out where I lived when I was seven, gone back in time despite risks to the time-space continuum and his future fortune and savagely raped and sexually abused me in front of my gran leaving us both mentally scarred for ever' crew, but there are often as many sane voices as there are ravenous fanboys/girls who offer moderate commentary like 'well, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped' or 'perhaps my fanatical devotion to this film/TV series/comic book character is a little like a mental illness and I retract that death threat'. Surprisingly io9's writers often demonstrate that they are capable of offering relatively balanced assessments of up and coming sci fi based media, even if it's laced with the inevitable sarcastic undertones particular to the genre (see also T4 Presenters in a future blog post).

Sadly the io9 review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine was all too predictable. Like Bruce Banner and his alter ego the Hulk, the rational side of io9 struggles on a day to day basis with its inner raging geek. For poor Bruce Banner (not the Ultimate Universe one, he's a twat) the warning signs are the white rage in his eyes, greening of the skin, rapidly increased heart rate, ripped clothes and unstoppable strength, endurance and invulnerability. The signs of the raging geek are only a little more subtle, but include misplaced belief that he/she is a much better script writer/director/CG animator etc. than those involved in the film, extreme passive-agressiveness, requirement to suffix any positive statement with something negative, closet conservatism that tends to become overt in discussions of media, feeble attempts to use humour to appear aloof and blatant disregard for proper use of hyperbole.

While the Hulk leaves behind him a trail of smashed cars and crumbling buildings the, the geek leaves behind him a trail of snide remarks, unfortunate allegories and the stench of simmering resentment so let's see if you can spot these signs in the field. It's important, one day your credibility could count on it. Read the review here and then see if you can fit the descriptions below to specific parts of the text. If you get them all right you win an exclusive Charity Edition Star Wars: The Clone Wars Blu Ray disc featuring commentary by select George Lucas' rape victims.

• Metaphors that are supposed to sound clever butcome across like GCSE level creative writing.
• Focusing on a non-plothole when there are plenty of genuine plotholes to pick apart.
• Attempting to criticise an aspect of the film that inadvertantly makes it sound really good.
• Implying that source material is infallible when it clearly isn't.
• Saying something that at first sounds like a compliment, but, cleverly, is actually a criticism.
• Not understanding certain plot elements but still criticising them (note that this thoroughly unacceptable for a so-called geek).
• Monty Python reference.
• Drug requirement reference.
• Mistaking fictional characters for real people.

Gay for Hugh Jackman

Hugh. Jack. Man. Such a bloody bloke, they gave him two men's names, and then stuck a "man" on the end for good measure.

Buff, bristly and brooding - he's exactly the kind of guy you wouldn't mind catching in bed with your missus because, hey, you get it. Hell, you might even try to steal a feel of rock-hard, molten-hot, battle-worn flesh...

Phew! OK, so this is partly an extension of our boyhood crush on Wolverine. In our pastel pink, pseudo-homo daydreams, Hunky Hugh will forever appear as the man's manimal from Marvel. He rides his chopper down the highway of our heart, clad in painted-on leather, whiskers flowing in the wind, with a heady musk issuing from his chewed-down cigar. 

And now, with the added emotional complexity injected into the character by the new X-Men Origins film, we can really picture him cradling us in his arms, watching the light fade from our eyes and vowing to avenge our deaths. Sigh...

Doing the Mandango

by Manflet of the Moment; Paul Forse, of comedy/DJ troupe Hot Doctors.

I am (supposedly) a man. At the tender age of 28 I've given up trying to pretend otherwise, and go about my daily business in a manly fashion. I have facial hair, my voice is deeper than a woman's and my build completes the disguise – but that's all it is, a disguise. I live a parody of the Superman Mythos where Superman is a confused child and Clark Kent is an idealised version of my dad. I've always felt like something was lacking, and even in my late twenties my attitude and actions seem inherently, disgustingly, childish.

Years ago I decided that none of this was my fault. Either my mother or my father or society had failed me. No one had instilled in me a readiness for Manhood or even a real tangible idea of what a MAN is. I don't even know when I'm supposed to become a man, when 'to put away childish things' – and this is the crux of the problem.

Coming of ages rituals and rites of passage have existed for millennia. From the Bar Mitzvah (when a Jewish child reads from the Torah to symbolise their ability to govern their own faith) to the Gempuku (in which a samurai boy is given adult clothes, an adult haircut and even an adult name), these initiations provide a signpost to life, a definitive leap into adult/Manhood – something which seemed to be missing from my own largely secular upbringing.

And so I have been left to wander the wastelands of boyishness, not blokey enough for the men down the pub and far too tall to still be in the comic shop. I have no legacy, no legend, and no Manhood. I have vowed that this ends here – that any son of mine will be prepared, will be ready and waiting for Manhood. I will train him and make him Man!

I have updated one of the most basic rituals, in order to prepare my own flesh and blood for Manhood: The act of dominating another species by bringing about its death. I could never actually kill something myself and, although it’s probably the fastest route to Manhood, I could never make my child do it.

Instead: from an early age, my son shall be taught the intricacies of frozen meat. He will learn the exact defrosting time of pork in comparison to its own weight. Via a series of picture cards and unannounced quizzes, he will learn a variety of techniques for separating 200g of frozen mince from a 400g packet. And on the day of his 16th birthday, I will unplug the microwave, arm him with a knife, present him with a whole frozen chicken and tell him; “mother will be cooking fajitas, if he can provide the chicken pieces.” He will sweat and he will fight and he may want to give in but, like Luke entering the mysterious tree in Star Wars, he will emerge a Man!

And so my son will not fall foul to the same fate that felled me. But what of my own misplaced Manhood? Well, I have decided to take action. I have procured a bearskin from eBay and will not return from the wilderness of Camberwell Green until I have killed (or at least harmed) one pigeon…

Geek Cred: or ‘why geeks love The Dark Knight and aren’t really that into Watchmen’

Call me contrary, but I really enjoyed ‘Watchmen’ and found ‘Batman: The Dark Knight’ a bit on the dull side. Having browsed blogs and forums across the web I know that there are a few people out there who agree with me on this one, but usually The Dark Knight is held up as a master piece of super hero cinema and Watchmen as either unfathomable or unfaithful. My problem with this view is that The Dark Knight is not a super hero film. Sure it has a guy in a bat suit in it, but he doesn’t really do anything a super hero should do. And by that I mean he absolutely sucks at fighting. Isn’t Batman supposed to be one of the best hand to hand fighters in the DC comic universe or something? Watchmen, on the other hand, was a big surprise in the action department. The action in the Watchmen comics was never really that great, so seeing them kickass in a genuinely superheroic manner in the film made it for me.

Now I know what the pro-Dark Knighters are saying: that the Dark Knight’s fight scenes were ‘realistic’ and that action doesn’t make a film great etc. I’ll answer the second point first. No, action scenes don’t make a film great and yes, too much time and energy spent on them will probably damage a film, however the Watchmen film also had a great storyline (I know I’ll get shit for this, but I actually preferred the film’s ending to the comic’s ending) and amazing action. Whereas The Dark Knight did have a good storyline (I’m not too bothered by the plot holes etc.) but the action was woefully bad. Leading me back to the first point, Batman is a superhero. True, he has no superhuman powers, but we’re talking about the super hero genre here. I’m not sure what the latest theories on the idea of the ‘super hero’ are, but one thing’s certain, super heroes are supposed to be able to do things that we as mere mortals cannot do, or at least things we can't do very well. Some of these things are obvious, like flying, being invulnerable, being a god etc. others are less fantastical, like being super smart, having cool gadgets and being able to perform incredibly skilled physical actions.

Much is made of Batman’s role as a ‘symbol’ of salvation for Gotham’s citizens, but he never at any point really embodies any of this in action. Yes, he drives really fast and does the cool flying bit, but these sequences feel almost shoehorned in. Given that the director felt the need to explain the flexible neck on Batman’s costume, we don’t really get to see him take genuine advantage of it. Watchmen on the other hand shows super heroes, regardless of their social status, as highly capable and efficient at their job, far more efficient than genuinely super powered individuals like Superman and Spiderman have been portrayed in the past. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl’s scene in the alleyway and the prison break, not to mention the opening scene of the film, demonstrate realism as it should be in a super hero film. That is, if a regular guy takes a punch from a super hero they should damn well feel it, not in the form of a split lip or a bruised eye, but in the form of crushed faces and snapped limbs. It’s brutal, but surely so is the realistic take on the super hero world which is what pro-Dark Knighters got so excited about in the first place, right?

Getting back to the main point of this piece, The Dark Knight diluted its super hero elements so much that it stopped being a super hero film and became a thriller with a guy dressed as a bat as the hero. Watchmen managed a really good balance between characterisation, story and action, in many ways it delivered the perfect adult super hero movie. Geeks, however, are very sensitive about their status in society. Certainly they have greater status than 20 years ago, thanks in part to comics (I refuse to call them ‘graphic novels’) like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, but status is a precarious thing, look what happened to the Star Wars films. So the Dark Knight hits all the right ‘geek cred’ buttons, it’s ostensibly a super hero film, but eschews anything which visibly references super hero comics apart from the costume (maybe they’ll have ditched that too by the time the next Batman film comes out). Whereas Watchmen’s use of extended action scenes fits the super hero stereotype far too comfortably for geeks. So, future directors of super hero films, if you want to make a film that keeps the geeks happy just leave out as many of the super hero bits as you can, they won’t appreciate them anyway.