Can the Hollywood reboot of The Fantastic Four, now in the works, succeed where the original movies failed? It all depends on whether producer Matthew Vaughn and director Josh Trank have the guts to do one thing: To make The Fantastic Four about the family versus communism.Don't ever change, fella.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
LOOKING IN ON OLD FRIENDS.
We've had a lot of fun with Mark "Gavreau" Judge here in recent weeks, so on a whim I dropped by the rightwing culture mag that employs him to see how he was passing his days. Behold:
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So that none of you have to read it, here's the root of Judge's argument: Dr. Doom ruled a Soviet breakaway republic, therefore COMMIE. He then proceeds to complain that the movie didn't have COMMIES in it. I was going to refute this here, but one of the two commenters beat me to it:
ReplyDeleteThey had to revamp him, as the old Doom was something that no longer
existed. That idea of the despot leader of a feudal Eastern European
satellite country of communism is dated, and Doom was always at risk of
descending into parody.
So Acculturated seems to be on the verge of becoming self-refuting. I don't see why I shouldn't kick back with some lemon cookies and a glass of Knob Creek and just watch the explosion.
For fuck's sake, Latveria was not a communist country! it was an absolute monarchy! And Doom was its ruler. The comics make this explicitly clear. There is no party, no legislature, just the will of Doom.
ReplyDeleteSo much fail in one post.
"Family versus communism".
ReplyDeleteYes, because of course certain political ideologies make you infertile... wait huh?
If the guy must have a Communist villain for the FF, maybe we could work in the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes. Everything's better with monkeys, I'm told.
ReplyDeleteQuick quiz: Is the demographic that spends the most money on summer action movies a) obsessed with communism, or b) too young to remember it? Take your time.
ReplyDeleteFor once, I'd like to see a 'rational capitalist' that's actually rational about capitalism.
It's pretty sad when someone can't even get the simplest form of propaganda right.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Mark ever saw the origin story of the Fantastic Four. In it, Reed Richards is so dang eager to beat the commies into space that he goads his friends onto an untested rocket ship. When Ben Grimm objects due to the reasonable safety concerns of flying a rocket through space, Sue calls him a coward and questions his commitment to "beating the commies."
ReplyDeleteThey go ahead with the test flight and, wouldn't you know, cosmic radiation turns them into a superpowered freakshow. Gosh, it's almost like there's a lesson there about the dangers of letting jingoism get ahead of reason. Nah, coudln't be.
So would I. But then he would cease to be capitalist. At least in the american sense.
ReplyDeleteI think Mark only saw the stupid cartoon show with flaming asshat replaced by a robot.
ReplyDeleteHe shits gravel, I guess.
ReplyDeleteIt really is. I mean, the whole premise was strained and confused in the first place. But this is real "was it over when the Germans invaded Pearl Harbor?" kind of wrong.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's not just about being wrong. It's being wrong about the wrong thing. It's fuckin' category error.
ReplyDeleteNow I know a little of how Paul Krugman must feel when he's facing someone in a "debate who's just making shit up, and not even faking it very well. As others have pointed out, the FF did in fact originally go up in space, and inadvertently got their powers, as part of the space race, and you later had the Red Ghost and his cosmic-powered monkeys (great band name); hell, you could even say that the Skrulls, with their shape-shifting powers and ability to infiltrate and sabotage without being caught, were a symbolic stand-in for the Red Scare. And, of course, almost all of Iron Man's foes in the early days were commies, even including the Black Widow (who fought him largely through her American dupe, a carnival archery trick-shot specialist nicknamed Hawkeye).
ReplyDeleteBut Doom was just a straight-up totalitarian, Big Brother in an iron corset, of the type that had been in power in different places around Eastern Europe well before the Russian Revolution (and have come back in different places after the dissolution of the USSR); he never bothered to justify his rule under any ideology, but just delivered two parts police state (mainly via robots) to one part straight-up personality cult. Lee and Kirby certainly weren't afraid to fall back on the Red Scare for their villains (not to mention the Yellow Peril, in the form of the Yellow Claw and the Mandarin), but they were onto something a little more subtle with Doom and Magneto, who were both victims of ethnic oppression who eventually became more oppressive than their original persecutors (well, maybe not Magneto, who never pulled off anything on the scale of the Nazis). This point has been made many times in the half-century or so of Marvel Comics' existence, and not always very subtly, either.
And, yes, movie Doom is kind of dumb, but there are a lot of things about the FF movies that could be improved upon. (Literally, the only thing I want them to keep from the movies is Michael Chiklis as the Thing.) In particular, having the real Doom bring the resources of an entire nation against four civilians as retaliation for an old grudge could be pretty awesome, as well as have a certain historical resonance. Just please don't let someone like Mr. White People Don't Steal Bicycles get their hands anywhere near it.
"... family versus communism."
ReplyDeleteThere are so many things wrong with this that I don't have the patience to delineate them all.
But, I'm pretty sure that Judge's idea of family is wrapped up in "Terry and the Pirates" and "Blackhawks."
Family of what?
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing rightbloggers are so bad at pop culture, because they literally don't understand the difference between entertainment and propaganda, and/or they don't agree that there should be a distinction between entertainment and propaganda. (Arguably, this may itself be a large part of the reason that they're so bad at pop culture.)
ReplyDeleteFrankly, most superhero movies already seem to me to have a fairly conservative premise, but since I'm not obsessed with the political propaganda value of every fucking movie I watch, that doesn't stop me from enjoying them.
Commies don't have families.
ReplyDeleteThey're grown on collective farms.
And of course, we're never going to have a successful film based on the Hulk comics until we accept that Bruce Banner is a huge green metaphor for privatizing the Post Office.
ReplyDeleteFine gravel, and then they let their pet cat shit in his shit!
ReplyDeleteI'm a suburban/city kid and my granpdarents where too... Oh, no! Commies everwhere and everywhgen!
ReplyDeleteBetter a pet cat than that muthafuckin' robot.
ReplyDeleteYou're thinking of the definition of success that involves 'being well received by the public and making money'. Judge is talking about the definition of success that involves 'being included in john nolte columns about movies that are secretly conservative'.
ReplyDeleteWell, there is the matter of Red Dawn (2: Hysteric Kim Jong-U(n)) in the theaters. I am afraid to look at its Box Office.
ReplyDeleteDang, getting wistful about CoH...
ReplyDeleteSomeone needs to let Judge know guts and stupidity aren't the same thing.
ReplyDeleteDoom is a megalomaniac absolutist ruler who's convinced what's good for him is also the best for his country. If he's a communist, most of the hereditary rulers in history have been commies as well.
ReplyDeleteI mean, it's just really a stretch. Marvel did create communist villains in the sixties. There's the roughly contemporary Fantastic Four baddie the Red Ghost, who's a genuine soviet superpatriot. He'd fit Judge's template much better, but for the fact that only comic book geeks would know who he was talking about.
Alternate history: Judge is in the writers' room of the Simpsons when they're composing the episode where Krusty has lost the rights to "Itchy and Scratchy" and someone says, "Hey, let's substitute an Eastern European cartoon 'Worker and Parasite' in his show." Judge: "Wait, guys, it's not funny unless it's 'Factory Owner and Parasite'."
ReplyDeleteI recently reread the first two Essential Iron Man collections and Kruschev is a recurring villain in the series, portrayed as a buffoon with steam practically coming out of his ears that Iron Man has gotten the better of his agents AGAIN. And the Black Widow's heart is melted by Hawkeye's concern for her, even though she's just using him.
ReplyDeletePeter Milligan wrote a hilarious X-Men story where the REd Ghost was talking about restoring the Soviet empire and he would cut back to the apes, rolling their eyes and thinking "Oh joy, father's talking about THAT again..."
ReplyDeleteI high recommend Milligan's 2007 series the Programme from DC, about lost Soviet Superhumans being unleashed on the modern day United states. Not as good as The Winter Men, about a similar subject, but pretty damn hilarious.
Lava when he's been out drinking the night before. Diamonds when he's constipated.
ReplyDeleteI should have guessed, when Reed Richards devised a five-year plan! Johnny Storm was Flaming Red! Sue Storm Richards was the perfect invisible mole in the Pentagon McCarthy warned us about! (Mole Man was a diversion to throw us off.) Ben Grimm was as hard and stony as Stalinist ideology – only a blind woman would fall for his act! And back to "Dr." Richards, a typical unreliable liberal egghead – stretching and stretching the truth and twisting himself into knots, all to accommodate Communism!
ReplyDeleteFor fuck's sake, Latveria was not a communist country! it was an absolute monarchy! And Doom was its ruler. The comics make this explicitly clear. There is no party, no legislature, just the will of Doom.
ReplyDeleteYes, and one of the better old series (John Byrne era) showed the Fantastic Four shocked that Doom's people liked him so much. He was a super-villain, but did pretty well by the peasantry and gypsies/Roma – at least by the time the series had moved beyond fun pulp and tried to add a little more moral complexity and character depth. (All relative, but still.)
I got out of the boat, and sadly, this is Kulturekampf yet again – Judge really wants to see a film that's little more than triumphalism over Communism. It's like porn for the Saint Ronnie Evangelist set. And jeez, how boring. It doesn't matter that the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991 – in the heart of hearts, they long for Red Dawn on continuous loop, so they can relive their fear and chickenhawk bravado.
Well, remember when during his Senate confirmation process, John Roberts named Doctor Zhivago as one of his favorite movies? (North by Northwest was another.) Several of the Fox idiots on a panel expressed concern and called the film "a little bit commie," because, you know, RUSSIA, never mind the depictions of the communists in the film or Pasternak's horrible treatment at their hands in real life.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know what the phrase "family versus communism" even means?
ReplyDeleteOK, I'm not the only one baffled by this phrase...
ReplyDeleteI could also see him genuinely liking Poochy.
ReplyDeleteIn Sue's defense, she comes from a milieu where radiation and toxic waste, instead of killing you, gives you super powers. Y'know, I liked Gavreau's piece so much I'd like to buy him a drink. Hey, Bartender... another double benzene for Judge, and see what the rest of the boys from Acculturated will have!
ReplyDeleteWhat puzzles me is the way they only refer to him as "Comrade K" in Iron Man. As if it was like the pre-Pearl Harbor comic books where they have obvious Hitler analogues but name them as "Toranian" or something.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Doom battled Hell to save his mother's soul, so it's not as if he doesn't have family feeling himself.
ReplyDeleteI'll just leave this here -
ReplyDeletehttp://dangerousminds.net/comments/communisms_mightiest_super_heroes_what_if_stan_lee_and_jack_kirby
44 million domestic box office; official budget was 65 million. No need to fear that turkey coming back from the dead.
ReplyDeleteOkay, now I have some, well, I guess pity for the poor bastard. Life has to really, really suck when your expectation of entertainment is to receive a political lecture.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the upcoming "Olympus Has Fallen" demonstrates that those pesky North Koreans just never give up.
ReplyDelete...speaking of which, at the end of the first FF movie, how did the Human Torch leave that giant "4" burning in the sky?
ReplyDeleteOne obvious problem with Judge's script idea is that the FBI didn't actually try to shake Doom's control of Latveria--they let him be, even though he repeatedly tried to kill them. That makes them appeasers or terrorist-lovers or something, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteOr there's the Hulk crossover where his sidekick Rick Jones discovers an actual card-carrying Communist ("This is a membership card in a subversive Communist-front organization—he must be a Red!").
ReplyDeleteOh, are the baddies North Koreans? I couldn't be arsed to find out, after all the shitheaded technical inaccuracies in the trailer. (#1: The top of the Washington Monument getting sliced off by the wing of an airplane. Try breaking a cinderblock with an empty beer can and get back to me, sport.)
ReplyDeleteActually, with the breakaway little postage-stamp countries in the Balkans now, it doesn't seem that dated. There was never any sign Latveria was particularly a Soviet breakaway state.
ReplyDeleteEh, why pity him? He should get what he wants, in my opinion. The only issue is that he isn't satisfied with the company of consenting adults*, and he wants everyone to accompany him.
ReplyDelete*True, they're probably hard to find. But that's your problem, Mr. Judge.
I'm trying to come up with a visual metaphor for a defined benefit pension plan, and the only ones I can think of are kindly grandmothers and fairy godmothers. Now, I'm certain there's an audience that wants to see the Hulk smash the crap out of either (or both) of those, but I have my doubts as to the size of that audience....
ReplyDeleteSo Acculturated seems to be on the verge of becoming self-refuting.
ReplyDeleteAcculturated was self-refuting from the moment they came up with the idea. Why is popular culture popular? It's right there in the adjective, nitwit: unpopular stuff doesn't become part of the culture, does it? Christ, these people have such huge blind spots it's amazing they don't need seeing-eye dogs.
There's ignorance, and then there's aggressive ignorance. It is the latter that Fox both produces and thrives on. Aggressive ignorance produces self-propelling fallacies--sort of a perpetual-motion machine of stupid. For Fox and its viewers, it's a limitless source of energy.
ReplyDeleteRed Ghost and his cosmic-powered monkeys (great band name)
ReplyDeleteSomebody should make this happen, so they can open for the B-52s.
For values of "communism" read "NKVD shooting you in the neck in Lubyanka Prison".
ReplyDeleteSo the Kim du Toit career arc is still considered viable?
ReplyDeletebut I have my doubts as to the size of that audience....
ReplyDeleteOh, come on. Thanks to P90X, Paul Ryan has bulked up significantly. And since we're now on the subject of assholes, Pete Peterson is positively titanic.
"Family" focus-groups a lot better than "patriarchal kleptocracy with theocratic overtones", the form of government that Judge seems to be fondest of. Also, and not incidentally, it's easier to spell.
ReplyDelete"Listen, comrade, brother, we are equals here, workers should control the means of production, it is after all..."
ReplyDelete"Shut up, yegg, IT'S CLOBBERING TIME!"
A snippet from Fantastic Four: The Pinkerton's Ace in the Hole.
This. This.This. Will get this comment taken out for a spin in the patriarchal kleptocracy's rambler and then to a lovely dinner with theocratic overtones.
ReplyDeleteBDSM is a hell of a thing to waste.
ReplyDeleteI always thought he was a metaphor for greed. THINK ABOUT IT.
ReplyDeleteImagine if it was Von Doom and Van Jones teaming up, OMG!!! I know, Van Halen, Von Doom and Van Jones. And then Mr. Fantastic is all "Nuh-huh, not here, you rocking freaks." The Triple V Alliance? YES. And the Human Torch gets almost swayed by Eddie's sweet licks and Van Jones sensible moderate socialism, but then DOOM brings the pain. FUCK!! It can't miss.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it really is baffling. He could have said Cucumbers vs. Bathroom design and it would make more sense,
ReplyDeleteI am afraid to look at its Box Office.
ReplyDeleteStay away from microscopes and you'll be fine.
This guy is brilliant: the Fantastic Four is about families, not how cool it is to have superpowers. For his next trick, he will discover that Spiderman is about teenage anxiety. If he ever figures out that most Spielberg movies are about reuniting families he'll be the smartest conservative ever.
ReplyDeletePlus, Cucumbers vs. Bathroom Design would actually have the benefit of being interesting. In fact, I'm pretty certain "Cucumbers vs. Bathroom Design" is an indie band beloved by hipsters.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we're talking about the Red Dawn remake, this must be read by all.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with focusing on communism is that most people haven't felt threatened by it for a couple decades now. Hell, folks are more afraid of bed bugs than they are commies.
ReplyDeleteOranges and graphic design. They might be giants
ReplyDeleteBut only their first album "Limping Ponies", after that they got too frivolous.
ReplyDeleteThat is worth reading.
ReplyDeleteWhere do the Von Trapp's fit in?
ReplyDeleteYup. Quite good.
ReplyDeleteThe choir
ReplyDeleteFortunately, at the end Van Helsing shows up and lays waste to the commies with that Sacred Wafer he wields by Indulgence from the Bishop of Amsterdam -- exactly the same way John Paul II won the Cold War.
ReplyDeleteTo understand this kind of thing you really have to strap on the chest waders and venture into the wingnut conceptual cesspool, where all terms denoting or connoting things that are "good" can be used interchangeably ("democracy", "family", "freedom", etc.) and likewise all those for things that are "bad" ("terrorism", "communism", "fascism", etc.)
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite contrasts of the sort was after Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, there was some movie touted by cons as the antidote or some such; it was one of those epic-imagery shows with georgeous flyovers of the Grand Canyon and other wonderful American scenery - AFAIK, no political message at all and, if I remember right, not even any words. How that was the Anti-Fahrenheit 9/11 made no sense at all unless you saw it in the wingnut frame i.e. "Fahrenheit 9/11 says America is bad, this movie says America is good."
You know what I'm afraid of? Communist bedbugs.
ReplyDeleteБEДБUГS: They'll wait in line for hours to bite you! Talk about a gutsy directorial move.
ReplyDeleteThere are many worlds beyond your own. On one it has come to pass ...
ReplyDeleteThis is the biting line? I thought I was getting toilet paper!
ReplyDeleteThis is the only explanation that even remotely makes sense to me...which makes me so sad.
ReplyDeleteI prefer families to Nazi prison camps, however. Just putting that out there.
Relieved to hear it.
ReplyDelete(Looks like I got the film wrong - it's more pointedly USAian than I thought, but still all that overtly political, from the sound of it. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20040702&slug=heart02 )
Of course, this only reinforces, hones, and strengthens my point, aside from being central to it.
ReplyDeleteDon't you know, comrade, that you stand in line and take whatever it is that they have in stock? Sometimes it's toilet paper, sometimes it's bedbugs. Sometimes it's vodka, sometimes it's VD. За тебя!
ReplyDeleteMy uncle Vlad still gets morose about the time he mistakenly bought 6,000 drunken syphilitic bedbugs. But he only had to stand in one line!
ReplyDeleteNot to be missed wrestling match?
ReplyDeleteNONE MORE METAL THAN DOOM.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why I shouldn't kick back with some lemon cookies and a glass of Knob Creek and just watch the explosion.
ReplyDeleteWear goggles.
As long as we're praising Milligan, if you can find trades of the old Shade the Changing Man series from Vertigo, jump on them. X-Statix is a lot of fun too.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's always a bummer when you think you're standing in line to get into a hot pub but you end up at CPAC.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds kind of boring, but I would definitely watch a remake of Fail-Safe where the U.S. accidentally launches a nuclear family against Moscow.
ReplyDeleteGuh. So this film celebrating America (which I have no problem with, btw...sounds like a perfectly lovely film to me) is somehow the conservative equivalent to Michael Moore's film...even though the two films have nothing to do with one another? I'm not confused...I'm just...these people are weird.
ReplyDelete*snort*
ReplyDeleteI'm kinda baffled by "Don't even change, fella." Is that a typo?
ReplyDeleteI thought it was about the Communist Menace and fear of the Atomic Bomb. Gamma Rays, innit.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I now expect Judge to jump on the whole "green monster" eco-terrorism thing. But then, somebody on the interwebs has probably already done that. And if they haven't......First. :P
When's he going to write an article about why Atlas Shrugged was such a pile of crap because it didn't concentrate on the cuddly family-first subplot?
ReplyDeleteThe Torch is a mass of incandescent gas....
ReplyDeleteNow now, surely that's because he has Mother Issues.
ReplyDeleteThe dirty no good commie weirdo...
Patriarchal Kleptocracy drives a Rambler? I'm thinking Lincoln Town Car.
ReplyDeleteI think there's just a little glob of something on your screen, under the R.
ReplyDeleteBlame Anal!
Or Ariel. One of those.
Yes it is -- or rather was, as I have "memory-holed" my typo by replacing the "n" with an "r" without so much as a correction/apology to Breitbart.com. That's my MSM lie for the day!
ReplyDeleteComic book movies need more political propaganda in them. Especially now that Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is complete.
ReplyDeleteWhat can the Amazing Spiderman tell us about the wisdom of capital gains tax cuts?