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Showdown In Screamtown Round One: The Satanic Sixteen

The competitors are in the arena.

The matches have been booked.

The introductions have been made.

The crowd is amped up and ramped up.

So, without further delay, let’s get ready to rumble!

MATCH ONE: DRACULA (1) vs PENNYWISE (16)

VS

A classic match-up of Old School Ghoul versus New School Ghoul. They would appear to be pretty evenly paired as far as physical strength goes, but it doesn’t take long for an old veteran to spot the upstart’s weakness.

The fact is that Pennywise’s power is predicated on fear, which is why he primarily hunts children. So, unless Pennywise can transform into a crucifix or a sunrise, Drac isn’t going to fear him very much.

Without being able to charge up on fear juice, the killer clown is just as doomed against one nosferatu as he was against seven preteens.

WINNER: DRACULA (1)

 

MATCH TWO: THE WOLFMAN (2) vs FRED KRUEGER (15)

VS

If this fight takes place purely in the real world, the Wolfman tears through Kruger as quickly as if the latter were nothing more than the slice of pizza that he resembles. But Fred is canny enough to find a way to take their battle into dreamland, where he’ll have home field advantage.

At this point, though, Fred runs into a similar problem as Pennywise did. He killed children in life and teens in post-life, and he was damn good at it. But Wolfie is a grown-ass man and his subconscious, where Krueger has found much success against insecure pubescents, has a grown-ass monster wolf prowling about in it. Old Freddy Knife-Fingers looses in both realms.

WINNER: THE WOLFMAN (2)

 

MATCH THREE: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3) vs MICHAEL MYERS (14)

VS

Michael is far more aggressive, and has racked up a far greater body count that the Creature over the years. I mean, Frank would rather babysit a little girl than stalk and kill her babysitter and said-babysitter’s school chums.

So the murderous Shatner fanboy would come out swinging…or stabbing, I suppose. He’ll put a bunch of holes in the Creature, but Dr. Frankenstein knows how to construct a damn durable dude. It took a flaming collapsing windmill to put the Creature down once, and they had to explode a whole castle laboratory around him to stop him the second time.

Eventually, Capt. Boltneck will get fed up and toss Michael into the river like he was a little girl picking flowers.

WINNER: FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (3)

 

MATCH FOUR: LEATHERFACE (4) vs ZOMBIE (13)

VS

In our shortest, and most lopsided, match of the night the zombie hungrily inquires “Brains?” to which Leatherface – thinking the undead a snob for only wanting to eat the caviar of the human body – fires up his chainsaw and promptly turns his opponent into rotten cold cuts.

WINNER: LEATHERFACE (4) 

 

MATCH FIVE: JASON VOORHEES (5) vs THE THING (12)

VS

Neigh-invulnerable and strong as hell, Jason would jump out on The Thing fast early on. He’ll be hacking and slashing his way to an early victory before Thingie figure our how to use his greatest strength to his advantage. In a stunning twist, it’s revealed that The Thing located Pamela Voorhees and absorbed her corpse prior to the match!

Since Jason is not one to chop up mama, he stops his attack. This allows all the pieces that JayJay already hacked off to attack him from all sides, leaving the primary mass of alien ass-kickery to finish the job. And, just like that, we have our first upset of the night!

WINNER: THE THING (12)

 

MATCH SIX: THE TERMINATOR (6) vs ALIEN QUEEN (11)

VS

With guns, the Terminator makes short work of our royal xenomorph. But, as laid out in our previous entry, no guns are allowed here, so the Austrian Android has to get down and dirty in this fight.

Queenie would scrape off much of Schwarzenator’s synthetic flesh with her claws but, as designed, the murder machine will keep coming after her. This one gets nasty, as Queen Xeno gets torn apart limb-from-limb. But she does nearly as much damage to the Terminator as her acid blood burns through flesh and metal alike.

In the end, the Bionic Bludgeoner finishes the job, but he’ll be in really rough shape for Round Two.

WINNER: THE TERMINATOR (6)

 

MATCH SEVEN: PREDATOR (7) vs BRUNDLEFLY (10)

VS

We’re rolling with the half-transformed Brundlefly here, so he’s still got much of his genius intellect intact. While one might think that’s an advantage here, it’s actually quite the opposite. Brundlefly has a very inquisitive mind, hence his ill-fated teleportation experiment, so he wouldn’t be able to resist asking Predator a million questions about his physiology, his homeworld, his likes and hobbies, and so forth.

The only reason Big P waits so long to tear out his opponent’s spine is because he’s not sure whether to actually consider him a threat. Ultimately, he decided that he may die of boredom if this continues, and so he adds a human/fly hybrid to his trophy collection.

WINNER: PREDATOR

 

MATCH EIGHT: REAGAN MACNEIL (8) vs PINHEAD (9)

VS

This is a tricky one because it’s entirely possible that Pazuzu – the demon possessing Reagan – is actually Pinhead’s boss. That aside, both take a keen interest in torturing poor Reagan and, as a result, Pinhead ends up victorious.

WINNER: PINHEAD (9)

And with that, our Round Two match-ups look like this:

Dracula (1) vs The Thing (12)

The Wolfman (2) vs Pinhead (9)

Frankenstein’s Monster (3) vs Predator (7)

Leatherface (4) vs The Terminator (6)

Tune in next time to see the results of Round Two: The Evil Eight!

The post Showdown In Screamtown Round One: The Satanic Sixteen appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Showdown In Screamtown: The Challengers

With Halloween just around the corner, I’ve decided to dedicate a couple of blog posts to two of my favorite things: Horror Movies and Single Elimination Tournaments.

So, I’ve rounded up 16 of the greatest movie monsters of all-time, and decided to stick them in a series of one-on-one matches to determine who is the baddest of them all!

I’m calling this pay per view spectacular The Showdown In Screamtown.

In the instance of challengers with numerous incarnations throughout film history (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein’s Monster, Zombie) I chose the versions who would be the most proficient in a straight-up fight.

I’m not that big of rules and regulations, so I’ll be playing pretty fast and loose with the matches themselves.

There were, however, some qualifying rules for entering the tournament. The most useful of these rules was placing   and weight limit on the combatants. Basically, if you can’t fit into a WWE-style wrestling ring, then you can’t compete. This rules out monsters like Cloverfield, Godzilla, King Kong, the Kraken, and any other kaiju. Sorry, big guys.

One other rule is that, since I want this to primarily be a hand-to-hand combat tourney, signature weapons are allowed except for firearms. In other words, Leatherface gets his chainsaw and Jason get a machete, but Terminator’s guns and Predator’s shoulder-mounted laser blaster are outlawed

The seeding was based on the first fights I’d be interested in seeing. I haven’t planned beyond Round One yet, so things will get pretty interesting pretty quickly.

From Round Two onward, the tournament will run according to Round Robin rules, with the highest remaining seeds taking on the lowest remaining seeds (1st seed vs 16th seed, 2nd seed vs 15th seed, etc).

With that in-mind, let’s meet our tremendously terrifying tournament titans:

1: Dracula (Bram Stoker’s Dracula – 1992)

Dracula is a no-brainer for the #1 seed here, as he’s been the inspiration for so many other monsters. I went with this version of Dracula because he showed a full arsenal of creeptastic powers, including control over night beasts like wolves and rats, mind control over people, de-aging himself, and the ability to transform himself into a big wolf-like thing and a big bat-like thing. Bonus points for the fact that he was still able to seduce Lucy while in wolf-like thing form, which takes mad skills.

2: The Wolfman (The Wolfman – 2010)

There are so many werewolves to choose from, but this one might be my favorite. He looks like a big bad wold ought to look, while still serving homage to the classic Lon Chaney Jr. wolfman. He can run on two legs or all fours, is strong as hell, fast as hell, and nasty as hell. You also have to give props for them getting Sir Anthony Hopkins and Benecio Del Toro to star in this film.

3: Frankenstein’s Monster (Classic Universal Film Series)

There were shockingly few semi-decent film incarnations of Frankenstein’s Monster (not to be confused the Frankenstein, the mad scientist who created him). But since this character probably inspired even more monsters than Dracula (a few even show up in this very tournament) he needed to be represented here. Several of the classic Universal monster films feature the Creature are great, though, so we’re rolling with old flat top here.

4: Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Film Series)

The only fully human competitor who made the cut (so to speak) Leatherface deserves a lot of credit as he’ll be repping the whole human race essentially (I’d still take him over Trump). He’s a whirling dervish of a killing machine who can chop you to bits, then slow cook those bits into some mean BBQ.

5: Jason Voorhees (Friday The 13th Film Series)

To paraphrase DJ Khaled  “All he does is kill kill kill no matter what!” JayJay here is an early favorite for this type of challenge as he puts his SuperZombie skills on display in hopes of winning that championship belt! (Did I not mention there’s a championship belt? Cuz there is. There always is. And it’ll be pretty damn sweet).

6: The T-800 Model Terminator (The Terminator – 1984)

As mentioned earlier, the T-800 won’t have access to the plethora of guns he’s used through the course of five films (of varying quality), but don’t feel too sorry for him – he sure as shit won’t feel sorry for you when he tears your limbs off one at a time. He’s built from a highly durable steel alloy and was built exclusively to do what he’ll be doing here.

7: Predator (Predator Film Series)

The Big P was built for killing like the T-800, but he’s spent his entire life mastering the art of it. This guy might be looking forward to these fights more than any other combatant, as he loves nothing more than to test his skills against the most formidable of opponents. His shoulder-mounted laser blaster may be off-limits, but he’ll still be able to use his retractable wrist-blades and extendable spear.

8: Reagan Macneil (The Exorcist – 1973)

The little demon girl (literally, not figuratively) is less of a physical threat than most of the other challengers, but she’s spooky and running on devil diesel fuel. Her best gameplan might be to talk crazy smack until she gets into her opponent’s head and psyches then out into a making a mistake.

9: Pinhead (Hellraiser Film Series)

He’s iconic, so he had to make the list, but he’s really more into pleasure than pain – even if the specific pleasure is meant to be elicited from extreme, agonizing pain. But he’s all black leather and nails-in-the-face, so I expect he can hold his own in the ring.

10: Brundlefly (The Fly – 1986)

Mad scientist and monster all-in-one, so he’s got brains and brawn, Seth Brundle’s may have transformed himself into a horrifying and nauseating human-fly hybrid, but can he transform himself into a champion?

11: Alien Queen (Aliens – 1986)

Queenie just barely made our weight/size cut off, but she trimmed a few pounds and here she is! She royalty and the mother of horde of neigh-unstoppable apex predators, so she’s going to be a tough out for anyone,

12: The Thing (John Carpenter’s The Thing – 1982)

Thingie pushed right up against our size limit, as his final form is pretty massive, but we let him in. A master of deception who, when found out, can also bite your arms right off. This thing from another world has a chance to go deep in our tourney, but it all depends on what sort of shape he shows up in (cardio and otherwise).

13: Zombie (Return Of The Living Dead – 1985)

So many zombies to choose from, but we’re going with the ROTLD variety as they are the hardest to kill. Brain shots won’t stop them from munching on your brains. Hell, they had to nuke a whole town to stop them at the end of the movie. So he can take a beating for sure, the only question is whether he can deliver one.

14: Michael Myers (Halloween Film Series)

Michael could be interpreted as every bit as human as Leatherface, but he’s really running on some dark and unknowable evil drive. Six shots and a two-story fall didn’t finish him, so he’s a player. John Carpenter’s Halloween kicked off an entire sub-genre of slasher films – not unlike Romero’s zombies – but will that be enough to get his arm raised in victory?

15: Fred Krueger (Nightmare On Elm Street Film Series)

I’m going with “Fred” instead of “Freddy” because the character was a child murderer in life, and that disqualifies you from being on more familiar terms with me (JayJay only every killed teens, so I’m a little cooler with him). But Fred McMeltyFace has been haunting nightmares both on-screen and off for more than 30 years, so he’s primed and ready to get down and dirty.

16: Pennywise The Dancing Clown (IT – 2017)

A very recent addition to the pantheon of famous filmland monster, but a worthy one nonetheless. He does eat children, so he occupies the same pure heel position as Krueger, but the crowd always needs someone to boo! Still, he made one hell of an impression in one hell of a short period of time, so he’s coming in to Round One hot.

Round One Matches:

Dracula (1) vs Pennywise (16)

The Wolfman (2) vs Fred Krueger (15)

Frankenstein’s Monster (3) vs Michael Myers (14)

Leatherface (4) vs Zombie (13)

Jason Voorhees (5) vs The Thing (12)

The Terminator (6) vs Alien Queen (11)

Predator (7) vs Brundlefly (10)

Reagan MacNeil (8) vs Pinhead (9)

Check back next time to see the who managed to survive and advance the Round Two!

The post Showdown In Screamtown: The Challengers appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

Tom Petty Knew How To Cut To The Chase

I’ve always enjoyed Tom Petty’s music, but it’s been a few years since I gave his catalogue a thorough listening. Upon re-visiting it these past few days, it has occured to me that Tom Petty might be my favorite musician of all-time. Strange, and sad, that it never really occured to me before.

Many, many people have written much better eulogies for him than I ever could so, instead, I’m going to pull a couple lines from my favorite Petty songs, and explain what they mean to me.

American Girl: “And if she had to die tryin’ / She had one little promise she was gonna keep” – Don’t we have have that one promise?

Refugee: “It don’t make no difference to me, baby / Everybody has to fight to be free” – And sometime that fight never truly ends.

Here Comes My Girl: “But when she puts her arms around me / I can, somehow, rise above it” – We should all be so lucky to find that someone.

Even The Losers: “Baby, even the losers / Get lucky sometimes” – Even The Losers was almost the title of my first book before I changed it to Misfit Toys In Love.

The Waiting: “The waiting is the hardest part / every day get one more yard” – In this life you have to just keep pushing and you can get there; one yard at a time.

Don’t Come Around Here No More: “Stop walking down my street / Who do you expect to meet?” – An oddly menacing line in a pretty straightforward break-up song that no doubt inspired the iconic Alice In Wonderland themed music video.

Free Fallin’: “I’m gonna free fall out into nothing / Gonna leave this world for a while” – Which was always made easier to do while listening to a Tom Petty song.

I Won’t Back Down: “You could stand me up at the gates of Hell / But I won’t back down” – Don’t let this world push you around. After all, you know what’s right and you got just one life.

Runnin’ Down A Dream: “It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down / I had the radio on, I was drivin'” – Anyone who’s ever cruised down the highway on a spring day at 80 MPH can relate to this one.

Learning To Fly: “Some say life will beat you down / Break your heart and steal your crown / So I started out for God knows where / Guess I’ll know when I get there” – This song really started resonating with me when I left the ‘burbs to attend college in NYC.

Into The Great Wide Open: “Into the great wide open / Under them skies of blue / Out in the great wide open / A rebel without a clue” – Everyone who is, or ever was, a teenager can nod along to this bit.

Mary Jane’s Last Dance: “Oh, my my / Oh, hell yes / Honey, put on that party dress / Buy me a drink, sing me a song / Take me as I come, cuz I can’t stay long” – We all need to cut loose every now and then.

Wildflowers: “You belong among the wildflowers / You belong somewhere close to me” – Take you significant other on a vacation somwhere nice, and then get back to me on this one.

You Don’t Know How It Feels: “I woke up in-between a memory and a dream” – This happens to me every time I wake up in the middle of the night when I’m spending the night in a hotel room.

Walls (Circus): “Half of me is ocean / Half of me is sky” – This underrated gem reminds you that everyone is more than one thing, but they are also at one with every other living thing on the planet.

Angel Dream (No.2): “I followed an angel down through the gates / I can only thank God it was not too late” – This lovely tune hit me most when I met my wife, and then once again when my son was born.

The best concert I ever went to was a Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers show back when I was 19 or 20 years old. Every song sounded just as good as it did on the album, with just enough extra jamming to make it absolutely worth the price of admission.

RIP to the man, but his music will live on through CD’s and playlists until we all join him in the great wide open.

The post Tom Petty Knew How To Cut To The Chase appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

The Killers Were The Soundtrack Of My 20’s

The Killers have a new album out titled “Wonderful Wonderful”, and it’s pretty good.

The title track has a nice riff that sounds a lot like Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain”. “The Man” has an okay rock-funk rhythm to it. While

“Rut” and “Life To Come” both have an inspiring sentimentality. All-in-all, I reccommned giving it a listen and maybe adding a few tracks to your Spotify or Amazon Music playlist.

But this article isn’t really about The Killers’ new album. It’s not even really about their old albums. It’s about the way I experienced those albums.

I was 25 years old in 2004.

I’d gone to college in NYC from 1997-2001, moved home for about a year-and-a-half to save money, and then moved back to the city (well, Astoria, but that’s basically just the upper-upper east side) in 2003.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but I probably did most of my growing up in college and shortly thereafter. I was a bit of a late bloomer and a hardcore non-comformist in high school, who refused to even try listening to some bands that were pretty widely accepted as good.

For example, I spent the first 18 years of my life in New Jersey, but I only had a passing knowledge of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. I thought Tom Petty & The Hearbreakers were pretty decent, but never really owned one of their albums. And I gave the stiff-arm to Billy Joel and The Dave Mathews Band since all the “Cool kids” were into them. I could say similar things about 90’s Alt-Rock acts like the Gin Blossoms and Counting Crows.

Needless to say, I got super into all those bands when I got to college. It even took me that long to discover that The Cure had a lot more good songs than the two they always played on the radio at the time. There were, of course, new acts that caught me attention at this time. Emo-Rock acts like Jimmy Eat World and Pete Yorn hit me right in the soft spot. They never received the same mainstream acclaim as The White Strips or The Strokes, since Garage Rock had made a massive comeback, but I related to them more.

It was out of this feedback-driven soundscape that The Killer arrived with their debut album “Hot Fuss” – the sort of glossed up rock-pop act that sounded as if Springsteen and the Sammy Hagar-era Van Halen had a love child. With my newly-discovered affection for the E-Streeters, and my long-time apppreciation for Van Hagar (a stance I will defend with the David Lee Roth acolytes all day) “Hot Fuss” hit a bullseye in my groove center.

Nearly every song found its way into my personal rotation. Sure, the hit singles “Somebody Told Me” and “Mr. Brightside” were there. But so was the two-part interrogation/confessional track “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” and “Midnight Show”. “Smile Like You Mean It”  and “Change Your Mind” both offered sardoncally good advise for a tweny-something making his way through the concrete jungle.  And anytime any of these songs got queued up at 2 AM in the pub (we didn’t really do clubs) my friends and I would happily (and drunkenly) sing along and bounce up and down in what I suppose we considered dancing.

“Sam’s Town” was released in 2006, while radio stations and bars were still playing the hits from “Hot Fuss”. The driving lead guitar on “When You Were Young” always managed to pep me up, even if – at 27 – I wasn’t quite old enough to appreciate the lyrics. “Read My Mind” was a synth-heavy power ballad that reminded me of my own transition from suburbanite to Manhattanite. Outside of those two songs, though, there wasn’t a lot to catch my interest.

2007’s “Sawdust” and 2008’s “Day & Age” both came and went while I was otherwise occupied. Sam could be said for frontman Brandon Flowers’ first solos album “Flamingo”. “Battle Born”, from 2012, had my favorite Killers song since their first album: “Runaways”. That track went all-in on the Springsteen trimmings, and I was happy to catch up on the albums I’d missed. As much I did – and still do – blast “Runaways” in my car, it was just one song and not a whole album full of treats.

I only gave a listen to Flowers’ second solo album, “The Desired Effect”, one day when I was felling nostalgic in 2015. I’m glad I did though, because that one was loaded with the best stuff I’d heard from The Killers’ corner in a long time.

“Dreams Come True” is a morale booster. “Can’t Deny My Love” is a funk-inflected jam. “Between Me And You” hit upon some of the same stresses that I’d been struggling with for a while before I’d managed to put them to bed. And “Lonely Town” referenced the Gravitron by name, so that brought back happy memories of 12 year-old me running through the Kiwanis Carnival that came to town every September flooding back. Seriously, if you haven’t checked this one out, I suggest you queue it up immediately.

My wife and I left Astoria in 2012 and moved into a wonderful house in the burbs. Two years ago our son arrived, and he’s also wonderful. Which brings us back to the new Killers album “Wonderful Wonderful” which, again, is pretty good. If “Hot Fuss” and everything that came out after it helped soundtrack your life, then you should give the new stuff a listen. I might take a deeper dive into my musical tastes at some point, though it’s a pretty deep pool. Until then, I’ll just keep playing the hits.

The post The Killers Were The Soundtrack Of My 20’s appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

IT Conquered The World!

As a part of my new personal initiative to stay active on my blog, I figure I’ll start posting reviews of movies, TV, and whatever else might strike my fancy.

We’ll kick things off with the biggest movie news of this past week: How Stephen King’s IT smashed all sorts of R-rated horror movie opening weekend records.

I’m a massive Stephen King fan. I’ve probably read more King than any other author combined, but I suppose that’s not saying much considering some of his page counts. But books like IT and The Stand prove themselves worth the time investment.

To go off on a slight tangent here, I’ll add The Shining and ‘Salem’s Lot as my other two favorite King books. I’d still love to see a good version of the former that’s truer to the source material than Kubrick’s film, while the latter has actually had two pretty damn good miniseries adaptations. Of course that doesn’t mean it couldn’t use another go-round now that Hollywood was finally able to produce a great adaptation of one of King’s horror novel

(Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption are great films, but neither was based on a horror story)

I’ll keep my review portion short and to the point: I thought IT was the best horror film I’ve seen in years. It accomplished that ever-difficult feat of making the viewer really care about the protagonists, and want to see them vanquish the terrifying-but-weirdly-charismatic villain.

 

IT works as a coming-of-age story, a story about the everyday terrors of living in a small (and seemingly cursed) town, and a tale of doing battle with an ancient monster.

Perhaps the most impressive thing was – and the team of screenwriters – creating the perfect sort of momentum. When the members of the Losers Club were terrified of Pennywise, then the clown was presented as the most intensely terrifying thing possible. And, towards the end, when the Losers began believing in their ability to defeat IT, the viewer was carried right along in that emotional wave as well.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how good all the kids and Bill Skarsgard were. I’ll always have a soft spot for Tim Curry’s Pennywise, if only because the 1990 miniseries hit me at a very impressionable time in my life, and I was the same age as the protagonists were at the time.

But Skarsgard’s Pennywise scared me when I’m 38 rather than 11, and that’s a bigger accomplishment (the R-rating and advances in visual effects sure didn’t hurt his efforts).

The subject of experiencing IT as a child and re-visiting it as an adult is the perfect segway to my last two cents. Everyone else is throwing their dream cast around for IT Chapter Two, so I’ll offer mine below.

I gave myself a few rules to follow:

The actors need to be able to embody the attributes of the adult versions of their Losers Club child counterparts.
The actors have to be people who might realistically be cast in the role. So we’re avoiding megastars, and actors who command mega-millions in salary.
They need to be able to sell the audience on the idea of being grown-up versions of the Losers Club. Having a passing resemblance doesn’t hurt here.

Without further adieu:

Bill Denbrough – Jaedan Lieberher

Adult: Charlie Cox

 

 

We need someone who can display the scars from a traumatic childhood – Bill more than the others because of the way he lost his brother – but who can also snap into the leadership role when the time comes to confront Pennywise one last time. I feel like Cox brought both those sides to the table over the course of playing Matt Murdock/Daredevil for three seasons.

Richie Tozier – Finn Wolfhard

Adult: Paul Rudd

Rudd can sell Richie as a successful comedian, being one himself, who can simultaneously annoy his old friends and endear himself to them. His performance as Ant-Man also showed that he can shift into the hero mode needed to face down Pennywise.

Beverly Marsh – Sophia Lillis

 

Adult: Amy Adams

 

name has been bandied about for this part, and having worked with Muschietti in the director’s debut feature Mama might give her an edge. But I like the idea of Adams bringing the same emotional energy that she brought to Arrival to the role of Beverly Marsh. If you can deliver an honest emotional response to time bending back into itself once, I believe you can do it again.

Ben Hanscom – Jeremy Ray Taylor

Adult: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Several actors come to mind that could probably play the part of a formerly overweight punching bag who grew up to be a hunky architect. There were guys like (too expensive) or (doesn’t quite have the gravity) so I went with Coster-Waldau, who’s been killing it in an ensemble over 6 seasons of Game Of Thrones, and who also worked with Muschietti in Mama.

Eddie Kaspbrak – Jack Dylan Grazer

Adult: Adam Scott

I’ll have to re-visit IT sometime to confirm this, but I felt that Eddie delivered just as many laughs as Richie. Therefore, we’re casting another comedian who has also shown some dramatic chops in things like Big Little Lies and Friends With Kids. Wouldn’t hurt to bring over some of that frazzled Ben Wyatt energy from Parks And Recreations either.

Mike Hanlon – Chosen Jacobs

Adult: Michael Kenneth Williams

Mike is the one who stayed behind to “keep the watchtower” so he’s spent the past 27 years serving as a librarian in Derry while his friends all dispersed to enjoy highly successful lives in blissful forgetfulness of their child-eating nemesis. Needless to say, Omar from The Wire has definitely seen some shit. Williams can bring both the shakiness that comes from realizing that the monster is feeding again, as well as the steely resolve needed to drag people he cares about back into the horror as the only ones who have a chance to stop IT.

Stanley Uris – Wyatt Oleff

Adult: Jason Segel

 

**SPOILER ALERT**

Stanley doesn’t last very long, opting to off himself rather than return to the place where he almost had his face eaten by the nightmare lady from his father’s creepy-ass office painting. Segel is a familiar face that the audience will be comfortable enough with to effectively feel the impact when he takes that fateful bath.

That’s what I’ve got for now. I’ll be back soon, so thanks for taking the time to humor me with a read.

The post IT Conquered The World! appeared first on Joe Mikolay.

What Lies At Baelwood Manor

It’s been a while, but life takes you down some unexpected roads sometimes.

In my case it was a wonderful road that brought me to the birth of my son. While he has become the most important thing in my life, I still never stopped writing.

My new novel is called What Lies At Baelwood Manor, and it’s my love letter to classic Gothic thrillers such as Frankenstein, The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, The Turn Of The Screw and Jane Eyre.

To celebrate the release of this book, I’m posting the first chapter right here so you can get a head start on it!

I hope you enjoy it enough to take a chance and read the whole story.

 

ONE

Lord Graham Stratford’s wake was turning out to be a rather bloodless affair, thought Amelia Christie as she watched the guests interact with one another in a most sterile manner throughout the main sitting room.

She was not entirely surprised by this, as Lord Stratford was neither presently married, nor had he sired any children of his own. The lack of such persons would naturally lower the expectancy of such swelling emotion. Even so, one would assume that those closest to the man would show more outward signs of grieving – if not shed a tear or two.

In fairness, Amelia herself would be considered amongst the closest of Lord Stratford’s acquaintances, and her own sense of loss was quite subdued. He had, after all, been her late father’s closest friend. And he’d taken on an even more prominent role in her life as the executor of her family’s estate in the ten years since her father’s passing.

And yet, Lord Stratford had always been something of an enigma to her. He would present himself with all the trappings of caring patron, but there always seemed to be something askew about his manner. Amelia immediately reprimanded herself for indulging in such oblique thoughts, but she couldn’t help herself.

She had always been more analytical than emotional. Solving puzzles and unraveling mysteries were amongst her favorite hobbies. And this man, who had been involved in her life for the entirety of it, was still one of the grander puzzles she had come across.

No, the stone-faced reactions and few polite words exchanged should not have come as a surprise at all. Many of the attendees were pillars of society and therefore expected to maintain a stoic facade. But the lack of true melancholy suggested a lack of love.

Perhaps that was why she wished to see (and feel) more sadness. For imagining the lack of love in Lord Stratford’s life was as sorrowful as any exhibition of loss that could be shown at a wake.

Claridge Abbey was a sprawling manor. Discounting the serving staff’s quarters, there were still more than thirty rooms in all. The wake was originally to be held in the ballroom, which was the largest room of the house. But the most spacious of the four parlors seemed more appropriate and was of comparable size. After all, ballrooms were intended for celebrations rather than bereavements.

The ceilings throughout the entire house were approximately five meters high, at least where the second-floor rooms sat above them. The walls reached even greater heights of ten meters in the entrance hall, culminating in a domed ceiling adorned with a painting of angels flying over a pastoral landscape.

The walls of the main hallway were powder blue and decorated predominantly with family portraits extending back many generations. Purple plush runners lay upon the hardwood floors, which ran the length of the house from the front entrance to the back.

The door to the parlor that currently hosted the wake was the third one back from the front entrance, and it was positioned on the left wall just before the stairway leading up to the second floor. This parlor was sparsely decorated but well-furnished. An intricately designed Oriental rug covered most of the floor’s surface area.

Rose Christie watched her younger sister from one corner of the rug, but she was unable to gauge just what her feelings were. Amelia’s long auburn hair, hazel eyes and tall, slim figure (currently wrapped in a charcoal gray dress with a deep red collar and chest piece) cut quite the image amongst the black suits and dresses of the older guests.

Rose, though three years her sister’s senior, was shorter than her. With her wavy blonde hair tucked under a black hat, and her blue eyes hidden behind a black veil, she blended in more with the rest of the room.

She was also expected to wear the loss more prominently than anyone else, as she and Lord Stratford had been expected to announce their engagement very soon. And grieve she did, only not for the conventional reasons.

It was, in fact, more guilt than grief – though she did her best to bend the former into the shape of the latter for appearances’ sake. Her guilt was more difficult to quell when Sir Jonathan Claridge began making his way to her from across the parlor.

Spacious as the room was, she was able to see the manor’s new lord coming for what felt like an eternity. The advantage of this was that she could collect her thoughts prior to his offering her a quick bow.

“M’lady,” he began. “Please accept my great condolences for your loss.”

“Why, Jonathan,” she replied. “Much as I appreciate the sentiment, he was your uncle. It is I who should be offering you my sympathies.”

Jonathan straightened his back and rose to his full lean height. His impeccably tailored black vest and long-tailed coat made him appear taller than his fairly modest height. He ran his hand through his thick, short black hair, effortlessly pushing back the few strands that had fallen out of place.

His brown eyes always bore some varying degree of aloofness, but in this moment, they also bore the glimmer of something incredulously apologetic.

“It was truly a great loss for us all,” he said, wrapping up the burgeoning awkwardness.

“And how is your dear sister handling this all?” Rose asked.

“Winnifred?” Jonathan asked before casting a glance over his shoulder at his sister.

Winnifred Claridge was four years younger than Amelia, and so the difference between her age and her brother’s was twice that. But for such a young girl, she was playing her part as the hostess of Claridge Abbey quite adroitly. She was a slight girl, with unwieldy brown curls and eyes that seemed a bit too large for her face. This was not an unusual circumstance for a girl of thirteen years.

“There was some shock at first,” Jonathan continued, with a furrowed brow that seemed somewhat manufactured. “The manner of my uncle’s demise caused us all great consternation. But I believe that having a gathering to see to as lady of the house is keeping her mind from wandering into more disconsolate places.”

He’d given the answer he felt that Rose was seeking. But the truth was that he didn’t believe his sister had any better grasp of her feelings toward their uncle’s death than he had. This was troubling, as his own sentiments were quite nebulous.

“I am very glad that she has you to depend on during this difficult time,” Rose told him, doing her best to reply in the expected manner.

“We shall all be quite dependent on one another going forward, I should think,” Jonathan replied, his words and intentions finally finding each other. “You will, of course, call upon me…or, rather, us…should you require anything at any time?”

“Most definitely,” Rose said with a gracious nod. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really ought to look in on my mother.”

“Then I shall bid you adieu.” Jonathan bowed again and strode over to join his sister’s ongoing conversation with several other guests.

Catherine Christie was still a striking woman as she reached her 41st year. She had the same auburn hair and hazel eyes as her younger daughter. But her shorter, curvier frame more closely matched her firstborn’s. Her hair was much shorter than Amelia’s, and (also unlike Amelia) Catherine made little effort to walk amongst the crowd.

In fact, she remained off to the side, hovering near the tables of food and wine that lined the walls.

She’d only forged relationships with a small number of guests. The majority had been the sort of people that Lord Stratford purely had dealings with in London.

Catherine recognized a few of them, as she had visited her husband in the London office that he shared with Lord Stratford fairly often in years past. But she’d long since lost touch with them.

It was the half-empty wine glass in Catherine’s hand as well as the two other empty glasses sitting on the table beside her that Rose’s attention was first drawn to as she approached.

“Are you quite well, Mother?” she asked.

“Yes, my flower,” Catherine replied unsteadily. “You know how I simply abhor large crowds. So I’ve staked my claim to this corner, and here I shall remain until our departure.”

“Are you certain that you’re otherwise all right?” Rose asked.

“Now, now, my sweet Rose,” Catherine said, lightly cupping one of her daughter’s cheeks. “Don’t you worry about me. I will be just fine once we’ve returned home.”

Rose smiled skeptically at her mother and returned to making her rounds of the parlor. Her concern for her mother had not dissipated, but she had to keep up appearances.

Inspector Edmund Benedict of the Scotland Yard stood over the open casket of Lord Stratford. One thing was for certain: The deceased had the typical aristocratic cast about his face with his curly dark hair, hooked nose and jutting chin.

He watched the ebb and flow of the room, making mental notes of any gestures or reactions that might grant any insight into Stratford’s life – and by extension, his death.

Benedict would only get the broad strokes of the picture by observing rather than interacting. But he always believed that one could not perceive the small important details without first seeing the tapestry as a whole.

Eventually, he turned his attention back to the body. The undertaker had done a fine job correcting the deceased’s twisted grimace into a serene blankness. Many times he had seen less skilled hands unable to completely sculpt the terror out of the visage of murdered men – and that was when the victims were even left presentable enough to work with at all.

Lord Stratford wore a red silk pocket square in his left breast pocket. This made Benedict wonder if the intention here had been an attempt at gallows humor. When the man had been found dead in his small legal office in the nearby village of Halfordshire, the entire left side of his shirt had been soaked through with blood.

But then, perhaps it was an inadvertent joke that only he would consider intentional. It mattered not at this time. What mattered was that soon Claridge Abbey would usher out the guests, and he would conduct his interviews with the Claridges and their serving staff.

Then, the following morning, he would travel to the Christie household and proceed down a similar course with the Christies and their staff.

Benedict was a gifted man, and he generally identified the culprit almost immediately following these inquests. From there, it was just a matter of gathering the necessary evidence to prove that he was right.

Which he almost always was.

He had no reason to believe that case of the murder of Lord Graham Stratford would be any different.

He would be very wrong.

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Stranger, Better Things

 

A lot has already been written about the new Netflix show Stranger Things, so I’m not really going to take too deep a general dive into it here. Though I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the overall strong writing, directing, musical score, set design and performances.

 

This show features a number of teen, and pre-teen, actors and not one of them annoyed me. In fact, I’d say each of their performances holds up nicely against some of the better actors of any age you’ll find out there. Millie Bobby Brown – who plays the enigmatically gifted Eleven – and Finn Wolfhard – playing classically geeky and goodhearted kid Mike – deserve special mention for carrying much of the burden for bringing the viewer back to that age where the world really started changing for them en route to young adulthood.

Stranger Things

On the grown-up side of things, Winona Ryder gives a very nice performance as grieving mother Joyce, who spends much of the season bordering on insanity until she’s proven right. While David Harbour – who plays Chief Hopper – imbues the character with the sort of 1970’s-1980’s era of wry but steady masculinity defined by roles like Roy Scheider as Sheriff Martin Brody, or Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

What I’m more interested in here is taking a personalized look at the influences that inspired creators/show runners The Duffer Brothers, as they are many of the same things that influenced my tastes and own creative endeavors.

But let me first take a quick moment to applaud Netflix for taking a chance on show for such a specific audience, even though it has rather surprisingly found its way to much larger audience. But it reminds you of why Netflix exists, and was so successful, in the first place: taking chances on shows like this one.

Here’s the basic plot, as told from a child of the 80’s like myself (be warned, there will be some spoilers below):

Imagine E.T. but, instead of an alien, the kids find and bond with the girl from Firestarter or Carrie. Together, they’re searching for their missing friend in a similar end-of-the-innocence quest to the one in Stand By Me (of course the kid they’re looking for in Stand By Me is already known to be dead, while the kid in Stranger Things may not be).  Either way, the boy’s been taken by a monster not unlike Pennywise The Demonic Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s IT.

Honestly, there is a lot more Stephen King spin present in this show than has been explored in some other reviews. Hell, even the main titles font from the opening credits looks like the vintage cover to a Stephen King novel.

 

 

Meanwhile, the teens are dealing with a sort of A Nightmare On Elm Street situation as this same monster presents itself as something that seems to be able to defy the laws of nature and bend reality to its will. This is not far from the truth, as there is some heavy extra-dimensional action happening a la H.P. Lovecraft stories like From Beyond or Dreams In The Witch House.

Lastly, there’s the adult characters’ story arc. This one gets a bit of the short shrift, though that’s clearly by design as The Duffer Brothers know where their bread is buttered here. Still, Winona Ryder gets to lose her mind over a lost loved one like Karen Allen in John Carpenter’s uncharacteristically sensitive Starman. And the other primary adult character, David Harbour’s police chief, ends up having to deal with your classic secret government cover-up prior to he and Ryder confronting the facehuggers from Alien and the shark from Jaws.

 

That all may make it sound very derivative but, seriously, everything is derivative. It’s just a matter of where you derive from, and how well you adapt it to your purposes. In the case of Stranger Things, they’re pulling from some of my old favorite things and shaping them into one of my new favorite things.

Now, my enjoyment of this show is actually due to more than just it hitting my nostalgic sweet spot. Stranger Things hits the emotional punching bag pretty hard too. It took me across the spectrum from the first tugging of love on my youthful heartstrings in the Mike & Eleven relationship, all the way to spending half of the season finale choked up for reasons I would not have understood until more recent years thanks to revelatory scenes from Chief Hopper’s past. And you better believe it takes a lot to get me choked up.

I do want to make one last mention of the fantastically retro, atmospheric synth-heavy musical score comes right out of John Carpenter’s best work. This is not a surprise, as it was composed by the same people who did a similarly awesome score for The Guest. The songs they licensed and used at key points in the show are amazingly on-point as well.

Speaking of The Guest – that film, as well as films like It Follows, Super 8, and Midnight Special, are kindred spirits in tone and theme to Stranger Things even though none were actually set in the 1980’s. Regardless, I can only hope this means we’re on the cusp of a whole new cinematic movement, as long as it gives us more gems like the ones mentioned above.

Oh and, by the way, in case I didn’t make it clear you should DEFINITELY watch Stranger Things. Believe me, you can burn through those 8 episodes this weekend. In fact, you’ll have a hard time not doing so once you start.

 

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America Is “R”-eady!

Deadpool just became the highest grossing R rated film of all time, which is awesome, but I’m not here to discuss Deadpool specifically. Rather, what I’m here to discuss is what that film’s success means for the future of film in a more general sense.

The boxes checked off by Deadpool are comic book adaptation, action movie, and comedy film. It would be faulty logic to try and delineate which of these flavors were the biggest reason for it’s record breaking success, as the combination of all three is clearly what led to it. What I’m more interested in is which of those genres will benefit the most from Deadpool’s big win.

We’ll start with comic book movies, as brand recognition certainly factors into box office success. But you can’t really make any more money bringing DC and Marvel characters to life than they already are. These films have made billions of dollars and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Also, let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that Deadpool was the first ever successful R-rated comic book adaptation. The three Blade moves were all rated R and – while only the first two were actually good movies – they all turned a profit. Kick-Ass was also received well enough by critics and audiences to warrant an admittedly inferior sequel. The Punisher (2004) and Punisher: War Zone (2008) were not especially profitable, but they were both enjoyable enough to sit down and watch whenever they come on TV some evening or weekend afternoon.

While James Gunn’s Super was very good, it was also an original property, so it may not entirely qualify for this list. But last year’s Kingsman: The Secret Service was a highly entertaining and well-reviewed R-rated comic adaptation. In fact, Kingsman itself did strong enough business to get a sequel greenlit. What I’m ultimately saying is that, even though the money Deadpool made was unprecedented for an R-rated comic book movie, the R rating itself was not.

Comedies with an R rating never really went away. You can track back even just the past 10 years to the films of Judd Apatow and Paul Feig to see that. The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Trainwreck, Bridesmaids, The Heat, and Spy all made money hand over fist and have strong reviews across the board on Rotten Tomatoes. However, those last two movies lead me to what I believe will be the real genre winner here: action movies.

Yes, The Heat and Spy were billed more as comedies than as action movies. But they are really just a slight shift in ingredient measures away from films like 48 Hrs, Lethal Weapon, and Die Hard.  Action films used to proudly hoist their R rating before theaters began to crack down on underage viewers buying tickets to those movies. This is why memorable and fun 80’s and 90’s vehicles like the ones listed above, along with movies like Cobra, Predator, Bloodsport, Out For Justice, Con Air, and Face/Off (and numerous more that I could fill out a whole other blog post with) were replaced by a bunch of fairly toothless PG-13 movies.

It doesn’t seem like the general admission crackdown is going away anytime soon (I might write a post about how the overly Puritan mindset of the American public at-large is doing a disservice to entertainers and those they wish to entertain at a later date) but as long as you can make an R-rated action movie that parents and their tween or teen kids are interested in, then we could see a real Renaissance.

There have been some very good non-comic book “restricted” action movies that have come out just in the past year or two. A few that spring immediately to mind are The Guest, Blue Ruin, John Wick, and The Purge: Anarchy. None of these films carried anything approaching even the relatively low $58 million budget of Deadpool, and none of them had anywhere near the full court marketing press as that movie, but I found them all just as enjoyable.

There is still a market for “adult” oriented action, you can tell just by looking at some of the biggest television hits of the recent past. Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones were/are all excellent shows that bring in millions of viewers each week. Every one of those shows is much closer to an R rating than a PG-13 rating and, in fact, three of them are comic book properties. I can also guarantee that nearly half the viewers for these shows are under the age of 18.

You don’t need to be over 18 to want to see this sort of content but, if you are, then you’re not allowed to go to the movie theater and buy a ticket for it. Odds are that 99.8% of them suffer no mental trauma by watching these shows, this I say from personal experience, but now we’re moving back towards that Puritan values problem I mentioned earlier. My point is that, as long as the product is good, and as long as it is advertised and available enough, films of this nature will be successful.

My theory will get its first real test at the end of May when The Nice Guys opens. Shane Black’s last movie was Iron Man 3, so I suppose it brings a little secondhand comic book brand recognition. But he’s more well known for directing and co-writing great R-rated action films like the aforementioned Lethal Weapon and, one of my favorite action-comedies of the last 16 years, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Yes, there are some big stars in The Nice Guys. But this is not the sort of Oscar bait that most R-rated star vehicles are these days. In fact, it looks a lot more like a fun, old school romp in the spirit of something like Deadpool.

Obviously, I’m not banking on this as the be-all, end-all, since most of The Nice Guys was filmed before Deadpool was even ramping up its massive marketing campaign. But it bears watching trends over the next few years, and I’m personally hoping we get more of those vintage style action movies that I remember from when I was technically too young to watch them, but watched the hell out of them anyway.

It would be a nice break from the 21st century assembly line of sterile, overly polite versions we’ve been force fed. After all, the famous line does not go “Yippee Ki-yay, Jerkface!”  it goes “Yippee Ki-yay, Motherfucker!”

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Batman v Superman v Batman & Superman

I’m about to lay out my take on Batman v Superman, so be warned, there are massive spoilers ahead.

 

The majority of reviews were pretty harsh on this movie and, to be honest, mine will be as well. But there were some things I liked about Batman v Superman, so I’m going to hit on those first.

One big positive takeaway was that Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot were both very good in their roles. They really did the best you could expect actors to do considering the material they have to work with. Their performances managed to get me interested in seeing solo Batman and Wonder Woman films. One other sort of character note was that Doomsday was scary as hell, so they nailed that.

 

This movie, like any other Zack Snyder film (even Sucker Punch), was great looking. Say what you will about his movies as a whole – and I will do so below – but the guy knows how to work an aesthetic. A more specific example of this is that, like in Man Of Steel, the fight scenes were all very well executed and exciting.

Some of the content from said fight sequences were questionable, but you can’t question that they were purely visceral. I’d like to also single out the scene towards the end where Batman systematically takes out a group of thugs is genuinely the best cinematic realization I’ve ever seen of the Dark Knight in full ass kicking mode.

Now for the rest.

Batman v Superman was absolutely joyless. Everyone acted like a dick to everyone else, and it seemed like the movie took place in a parallel world where smiles were punishable by death.

I’ve seen Henry Cavill be charming in other things, like The Tudors and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. But he’s not allowed a single moment of levity in this movie. Superman was all dour and depressed and nothing else. You think that you’d got to at least give the guy a chance to show how simply awesome it is to be Superman, but apparently you’d be wrong.

 

There’s a montage of him saving people and, in every example shown, he looks like he’s pissed off at having to pull these fools’ asses out of the fire (literally in some cases). That is not Superman. Superman, in pretty much ever incarnation, enjoys saving people and gets a sense a purpose and satisfaction from doing so. Zack Snyder’s version has more in common with Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, a distant and removed God among mortals doing what we must for no other reason than because it’s expected of him.

I’m well aware that Snyder directed a pretty good adaptation of Watchmen in 2009, but he clearly didn’t understand that Dr. Manhattan was meant to stand in stark contrast to Superman. He was written to be a version of Superman who lost his humanity, which is quite possibly the defining characteristic of Kal El. Even clinically gloomy Alan Moore wrote a more relatable Superman in stories like Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow and For The Man Who Has Everything.

Batman, meanwhile, was blowing people up left and right with no regard for whether they lived or died. That works for a certain type of protagonist, but it is not who Batman is. Tossing severe beatings to the bad guys is very much within the Dark Knight’s wheelhouse, and flipping over their cars is par for the course. But Zack Snyder could not lay off the explosions. A flipped car here and there is cool but, for crying out loud, they do not need to explode and ensure that everyone in the theater has no doubt that those dudes are dead.

I was willing to give Jesse Eisenberg the benefit of the doubt in his portrayal of Lex Luthor, even though the trailers gave me some pause. But he played Luthor as a jittery bundle of nerves, which seemed like the exact opposite of an appropriate characterization. I’m all for giving an established character a bit of a different spin, but completely routing out the traditional cold and calculating core of Lex Luthor is doing a disservice to the character.

Which brings up to the real problem. Warner Bros has never trusted the source material for their DC comics adaptations. Meanwhile, Marvel pretty much films the trade paperbacks panel by panel. As such, WB gave the keys to Zack Snyder and David Goyer, neither of whom seems to have any real affinity for the legendarily storied history of Batman or Superman.

Everything is darker, grittier, more violent, and more melancholic than it ought to be. And this comes from a guy who really liked the dark, gritty, violent Dark Knight Trilogy. But it’s just not the right tone for a movie that includes Superman and Wonder Woman. If I had to guess, I’d say the general flaw in their thinking is that they need to makes things as stylistically different from the generally bright and sunny tones of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a result, they’ve painted themselves into a corner.

Yes, Batman should have some edge and darkness. But Superman is meant to represent the diametric opposite of that. If the symbol on his chest stands for hope, then why is his outlook – and the outlook of this film – so hopeless? BvS just came off as Dark v Darker, and this ain’t Punisher v Wolverine (as awesome as that would be). The filmmakers simply pressed too hard for distance between their brand and the Marvel brand, and ended up in a shadow realm.

WB Films should take some notes from their TV brethren. Greg Berlanti and his team have made a fully fleshed out and realized world that is the closest thing to a comic book brought to life ever seen to television. Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl bring the heart and the fun to the party. In fact, the recent crossover episode they had might as well have been called Supergirl xo The Flash.

But these shows also manage to hit the darker notes when they need to. The big difference being that they don’t start off somber leaving only a deeper abyss to descend into when they want to raise the stakes. When you feel the need to have Superman beaten down by Batman, blown up by a nuclear missile, and THEN stabbed through the chest by Doomsday in the same night to make a point about how hard it is to be a hero, then maybe you ought to reconsider your starting point.

There were other issues with BvS, such as too many nonsensical subplots, and an Apokolips teasing dream/vision sequence that absolutely no one would have missed had it ended up on the cutting room floor. Yes, it was cool to see parademons, Darkseid’s omega symbol burned into the ground and the classic Apokolips fire pits. But all that ate up 10 minutes of screen time that did nothing to serve the story as a whole.

Here’s the thing, I did appreciate the film for what it was. It had a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to be the launching point for a new muti-film franchise. It wasn’t what I’d call enjoyable, but I will certainly watch it again when it’s released on home video, even if I happen to zone out through a good half of it. And I am glad that it had a massive, record breaking opening weekend. A unified DC Universe deserves the chance to exist on the big screen. The upcoming films on the slate simply need to do better in terms of quality.

Maybe giving Snyder and Goyer a little time out, and allowing some DC people like Geoff Jones and CW people like Berlanti a place at the table would be beneficial. I’m not especially hopeful that WB suddenly decides that 80 years of continuous interest can translate to the movies, or that Snyder and Goyer will step back and re-evaluating their vision for the DC Cinematic Universe.

But the world of pop culture and entertainment will be a more interesting place with good, proper DC movies hitting the theaters every year. I just hope they can get out of their own way enough to get it right.

 

 

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Roman Reigns vs Dean Ambrose A.K.A. Vince vs The WWE Universe

If you’ve clicked to read this blog then you already have some sort of interest in the current WWE product, and so you don’t really need an elaborate introduction into their current quagmire.

So, the short version, Vince McMahon is thrusting his choice for top guy Roman Reigns at the WWE Universe despite how hard the universe resists. Meanwhile, Dean Ambrose has gotten himself way over in a very organic fashion and is clearly the WWE Universe’s choice for the next top guy.

Here are the most pertinent factoids about Dean Ambrose: he lacks the in-ring skills of a CM Punk, a Daniel Bryan or a Seth Rollins, but he can hold his own with his take-a-beating-but-keep-on-fighting ring psychology. What he does have is Punk’s anti-authoritarian charisma and Daniel Bryan’s “never give up even when his opponent is clearly physically superior to him” attitude. He also clearly has the WWE fans’ support in a way that Roman Reigns probably never will.

Roman Reigns is fine in the ring, he sells well, and his offense looks like it it might actually do some damage to his opponent. But his mic skills are underdeveloped and he lacks any genuine natural charisma to lure in fans with his presence alone.

 

Another major knock on Reigns is the way he’s been booked, which is not his fault in any way. Popular opinion is that they tried to get the WWE Championship on him too soon. He has never worked the mid-card, or won a mid-card title, and his lack of true rivalries has cut off his chance to develop as a character.  While some of this is true, the truth is that they’ve waited too long to make him WWE Champ.

Money In The Bank 2014 was when he should have become WWE Champion. He was coming off a fantastic Royal Rumble match, and the Shield has just wrapped a great program against Evolution. The fans were completely in Reigns’ corner and he was white hot at the time. The crowd was also ready for something new – as illustrated by Daniel Bryan’s rise to the top – and so they would have been fully behind Reigns winning that ladder match and becoming champion.

Instead, WWE decided to go back to John Cena for the umpteenth time. Sure Cena served as little more than a transitional champion to Brock Lesnar, but Lesnar never needed to be champion to have heat with the crowd. He could have run through Cena, and some other top guys en route to a collision with Reigns for the title at last year’s WrestleMania. Sure, Lesnar may have had the fans cheering him over Reigns by that point, but it was a risk worth taking.

Instead all these stops and starts with the title have only hurt Reigns’ credibility with the fans. Couple that with the fact that he keeps being given opportunity after opportunity on top of already being shoved down the WWE Universe’s throat by Vince McMahon, and now you’ve got a big problem: The WWE Universe is already ready to move on from Roman Reigns.

Ambrose faces a similar, if not worse, credibility issue at this juncture. He has been in several high profile feuds against the likes of Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt, and has lost all of them. An Intercontinental championship feud with Kevin Owens was fun, but did not elevate him like winning out in either of those other programs would have.

Still, the fans pop for him louder than for any other full-time act. But, if WWE is not careful, they might end up with Dolph Ziggler 2.0: a guy who is super over for a while until the fans realize that he’s never going to be allowed to really win the BIG one and so they lose interest in him.

 

People in the business like to say that wins and loses don’t matter in professional wrestling, but that’s simply not true. Wins are the currency for the fans that help them decide who to invest their energy into supporting.

Heels who get big wins are proven to be true threats to any who cross their path. On the flip side of that token, the babyfaces who then beat those dangerous heels feed into their fans’ belief that their guy really can make it all the way to the top.

When the right guy wins the right match, it’s an exuberantly cathartic experience for thousands or even millions of viewers (see: CM Punk at MITB 2012 or Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXX).

At WrestleMania this year Roman Reigns will beat Triple H for the WWE Championship. That’s a close to a certainty as you’ll get in professional wrestling. The problem here is that, because his Vince-mandated crowning was so long delayed, he’s already beaten every heel on the roster and even some of the top babyfaces.

Sure, there’s a Brock Lesnar match in there, but that’s about it as far as intriguing match-ups go. The best bet here, and honestly for Reigns’ future in general, is to turn him heel. It’s a more natural fit for him, it will offer fresh matches, and it might finally give him a chance to have some fun and develop more of a character.

Speaking of Brock Lesnar, the people really want to see Dean Ambrose beat Lesnar in a no holds barred street fight at WrestleMania, but don’t really think he’ll be able to. In pro wrestling, that is the exact set up you want in this situation. If Ambrose does somehow beat Lesnar, then it will be the biggest win of his career, and he will become a bona fide main event draw by becoming the first man in more than three years to pin Lesnar in the middle of the ring.

Allow me to fantasy book for a moment here. If I were running the WWE I’d have Ambrose pull the shocker of the century and beat Triple H for the WWE Championship at Roadblock on March 12th. The main event of WrestleMania on April 3rd then combines the two big matches currently booked into a no disqualification, no count out Fatal 4Way match of the Champion Ambrose vs Lesnar vs Reigns vs Triple H. Yes, you’d have one less big ticket match on the show, but this match would drive the 90,000 people in the audience into an absolute frenzy.

 

The result here is Ambrose pinning Lesnar, followed by Reigns making an entrance during an Ambrose celebratory promo the next night on Raw, and nailing him with a spear to ferocious jeers from the crowd. Then we’ve got the most popular babyface as champ, Reigns in the monster heel position he belongs in, and a nice championship feud to kick off Ambrose’s title reign.

What is far more likely to happen is Ambrose loses to Triple H due due a distraction by Brock Lesnar at Roadblock. This would be followed by Reigns beating Triple H at Mania and Ambrose putting up a helluva fight against Lesnar but ultimately losing. Raw kicks off the expected Reigns-Lesnar feud, and hopefully they find something worthwhile for Ambrose to do.

The great thing about professional wrestling is that storylines and plans can change direction at a moment’s notice. Of course, that’s also the frustrating thing when the powers-that-be refuse to change things that are clearly not working.

I’ll keep watching, regardless, as I always have appreciated the art of the performance. And, as deluded as it may be, I will always keep hoping that WWE actually listens to its fans and gives them what the really want.

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