We Are Never Going to Get a Justice League Movie

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We just aren’t. It’s never going to happen, deal with it. Warner Brothers certainly seems to disagree: the opening weekend success of Man of Steel has them absolutely bullish on a Justice League movie and supposedly David Goyer has been given the go ahead to start working on the script. To them, the new Superman movie can serve as the first step down the path to making DC’s equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).

This optimism is expected from a business perspective, but creatively it makes me wonder if they actually bother to watch the movie they just put out. Because to me, Man of Steel not only won’t be able to feed into a Justice League film, it likely killed off the possibility of that project ever happening.

Look, Justice League was always going to be a bit harder of a sell than The Avengers. For all their superpowers, Marvel’s heroes are for the most part relatively mortal (give or take an invincible rage monster or two) and were designed with interaction in mind. DC’s heavy hitters are…not. Of the seven characters most likely to fill out the JL roster1, only three of them are human. Discounting the guy with alien-granted ‘do anything’ jewelry and the one who can outrun death and we’re left with only Batman as the only typical ‘grounded’ hero, for definitions of grounded that include “owns dozens of tanks, stealth jets, and a monitoring system that would make PRISM wet its pants.” Relatability, then, becomes the watchword, and while blending these characters into an engrossing story isn’t impossible, it’s still a task with a built-in handicap.

Of course even apart from the script, every superhero blockbuster must inevitably erupt into action sequences, and it’s here that Man of Steel should be the final nail in Justice League’s coffin. Ensemble action movies need to allow every member of the team get something unique to do in a fight. This is vital: it lets each character show the audience what makes them special enough to be worth caring about. Obviously some characters can be more effective than others when push comes to shove; in The Avengers, Hawkeye and Black Widow took down a couple dozen aliens combined while Thor and Hulk were blasting entire leviathans and Iron Man nuked a full armada. But even there, the two unpowered Avengers each fulfilled a specific tactical role and contributed to what was very much a team victory.

In contrast, we’re one movie into what Warner Bros hopes will become it’s “DCCU”2 and I’m already seeing some disparities in strength and scale of DC’s heroes that make Hawkeye v. Hulk look like a fair fight. Take Batman. In the comics Bruce Wayne can be shown outthinking and outmaneuvering villains with enough skill to put him on an even playing field with Kryptonians and metahumans. In a Man of Steel world however? Batman would be flattened and killed before he could even draw a batarang. MoS’s fight scenes are astonishing, the purest depiction of superhumans just letting loose on each other we’ve yet seen. But in upping the bar for superpowered throwdowns to a point where brawls inflict $700 billion dollars of damage in minutes, Warner Bros has created a world that is incapable of supporting characters like Batman, no matter how many Wayne Industries satellites they want to toss into their scripts. The way they’ve translated Superman’s abilities onto the big screen puts him so far out of Batman’s league that the Dark Knight’s presence alongside him would shatter all suspensions of disbelief.3

Just for the sake of argument however, let’s say the Batman Problem is solved. Maybe DC gives him a crazy battlesuit, or even cuts him out entirely4. Then we’re left with a team of Superman-level heroes, which has its own problem. Namely, you have a whole team of characters as powerful as Superman. As well-done as Man of Steel’s action was, the fights were so grand in scope and lasted so long that after a while a sense of ‘action fatigue’ set in.  And that was what happened when one god-like entity throws down. Multiply that by seven and the result would be an overload of spectacle. There’s a limit to how much audiences can process at once and if MoS is the baseline then unleashing the full Justice League would result in action that is either incomprehensibly busy or exhausting to watch. When everything is epic and over-sized, nothing is actually special.

So DC and Warner Brothers are left deciding between having the most lopsided roster since Angel Summoner & BMX Bandit or an overwhelming – and by extension, bland – group of gods. They can’t scale down Superman after Man of Steel without appearing to be moving backwards. They don’t even have an obvious option for a villain for their heroes to be fighting against.5 And so I’m calling it: bye bye Justice League. The idea of you had a good run, but it’s time to throw in the towel.

Oh well, there’s always the cartoon…

1: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern (hopefully anyone but Hal Jordan), Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman. The first five would pretty much be locks, substitute Hawkman/woman, Cyborg, or Plastic as needed. Or Vibe if they’re f*cking with us.

2: Working title

3: This would only be made more obvious when Batman is inevitably one of the two main characters. People can still argue Hawkeye’s general usefulness but he also received the least screentime of his team.

4: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

5: They had Darkseid, but Marvel preemptive introduction of Thanos into the MCU is an ingenous way to ensure DC’s best option would be constantly compared against his own knockoff.

It's Not Superman, It's You: Why Superman's Not Boring

"Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down."-Grant Morrison

Deciding what to write about is a difficult process. Sometimes you start with an idea but can't develop it enough to finish. Other times there's a big treatise in your head that needs to be pondered for just a bit longer. Hours can while away as you struggle to come up with a topic, any topic.

And then there are days when Cracked posts an article about how you can't make a great movie about Superman and multiple people ask for your opinion on the matter. So strap in, it's Superman Day.

Ironically, despite being a "comic guy" I've never actually been that big of a fan of Superman. While not to the extent his critics would want you to believe, Clark Kent is still a relatively straight-shooting, honorable guy, and while his nobility doesn't cheapen the character it does deny him the shades of grey that add nuance to characters like Batman or John Stewart.1 Couple that with an overpowered set of abilities relative to his Justice League coworkers and a truly dreadful rogues gallery and we're left with a superhero that I never gravitated toward.

But if Superman's far from my favorite hero, he's certainly not a bad one. The central point of the Cracked article, and one I hear again and again when talking with friends, is that Superman is "boring". And that's not true. Superman is not an intrinsically uninteresting character. It's just that writers, when given such a powerful being, too often go for empty spectacle instead of exploring what it is that makes Superman great.

Going back to the Cracked article that prompted this post, the author Soren Bowie (who is for the most part an entertaining read) makes some excellent points about the major pitfalls in writing an engaging Superman tale. But his thesis, that "there's only one way to make a great Superman movie, and that's to make a movie about someone other than Superman", is wrong, and it's because many of his starting premises are flawed. First, he states that Superman, and other epic and extremely strong characters, have nowhere interesting to go with their arcs. The lack of any real threat or challenge to them means that they are never forced to change and evolve for the better and makes them hard to relate to. Of the three angles used in the article, this is the weakest link. For starters despite being the most prominent member of DC's heroes, Superman isn't even the most powerful character within his own universe (Martian Manhunter and Captain Marvel2 immediately jumping to mind). But on a deeper level, this line of reasoning implies that overcoming physical obstacles is the only way for heroes to prove their strength as characters. This is not only overly simplistic, it ignores the fact that what makes Superman exceptional has never been his battles against supervillains but his struggle to temper his power and abilities against his own moral code.

Superman is a superior being, not only to humans but to most of his fellow superheroes. Yet rather than use his powers for his own gain or to rule over our more primitive society, he instead became a man who works tirelessly not only to defend us, but to inspire us to become better ourselves. This contrast between his natural 'outsiderness' and his embrace of humanity is simple to understand, but the way he strikes a balance between those two traits is constantly evolving. This internal conflict in turn is reflected in both of Superman's two non-awful villains: Brainiac is exactly the type of cold, conquering alien threat that some fear Superman could become and Lex Luthor is a man willing to turn his back on his own species in order to be elevated above them. Both of those are paths Clark could have walked but didn't; instead he chose to inspire us.

All-Star Superman #10

Which brings us to the article's second point: that since Superman is defined by having the potential to be unstoppable were it not for his ironclad set of values, when films (frequently) choose to have him lose his powers he no longer has a compelling hook. The thing is though, the option to just start wrecking shit isn't something unique to Superman. Hal Jordan almost eliminated the entire Green Lantern Corps once, Tony Stark shoved his friends into an extra-dimensional Guantanamo because Mr. Fantastic ran some numbers, and there are one-shots where Batman just decides to kill everyone.

I absolutely agree that having Superman get temporarily depowered is bad storytelling, but that's just because it's been overused to death. It happens to every superhero and it's always used in the same way: to show that even without powers Clark Kent (or Bruce Wayne, Wally West, Thor, etc.) is still going to try and help those they can. It's a cliche, and depowering Superman doesn't lessen him any more than it would to other heroes. No one argues that a powerless Peter Parker gets to ignore "great responsibility" every time he loses "great power" is acting up again.

Of course Soren's final point, the one that forms the bedrock of his stance that a good Superman movie isn't actually about him, is that Superman stories are at their most interesting when they tackle the fallibility of their hero. Painting a portrait of what one friend described as "a Superman version of The Wire", the article describes how Superman, rather than acting as a positive force in the world, is a source of constant disappointment and false hope as he fails to save everyone. Every minute he spends stopping a speeding train is a minute where he can't catch a crashing plane or stop a gang war from hurting innocent civilians. Worse, no amount of superheroism can stop systemic problems like world hunger or disease. Therefore, a proper Superman story would focus as much about the world responding to his presence, first with adulation then despair, as it does the hero himself.

Look, I absolutely agree that Superman can't save everyone, and that him coming to terms with that fact is an important aspect of his character. But that's just it: he does face it. Everyday. So much of the Cracked article seems to overlook the fact that Superman isn't just an invincible symbol in a bright blue suit. Underneath the cape there is a person wielding that power, and how Clark reacts under the strain of his mantle is just as important as how others react to him. You can tell a great, engaging story about the political and societal upheavals that the existence of Superman would create3. But you can't overlook that there is still a character at the heart of those stories, and it's the character that makes them compelling.

There's a great Superman issue in Garth Ennis' Hitman4 where the Man of Steel randomly flies by the titular assassin and the two chat. Superman's in a bit of a funk: while rescuing the crew of an exploding space shuttle, he wasn't able to save one of the astronauts. In and of itself this would be standard stuff; what makes it memorable is the reason Clark takes this death so personally.

Hitman #34

To me, this moment encapsulates the internal nuances of Superman's persona. Clark knows that he can't save everyone and that we can't expect him to. What stings him isn't that he failed, it's that Superman failed. The fact that he has been placed upon pedestal doesn't take away from Superman's complexity but strengthens it, constantly motivating Clark to strive to live up to the standards that have been set for him. It's no less an impossible task than Batman's quest to eradicate crime in all its forms. But Superman works towards it anyways, in the hopes that doing so will lead to others following in his path.

Sadly, struggling to uphold a set of ideals and providing a role model for the masses isn't exactly cinematic, which is why film executives find it easier to just have Superman punch Zod in the face a bunch of times. It remains to be seen whether Zack Snyder's upcoming Man of Steel will prove to be the Superman movie fans have been waiting for or if, like Superman Returns before it, a fundamental misinterpretation of the character will leave it a bland, dull mess of a movie. But even if this newest installment on the silver screen fails it doesn't mean that Superman as a character is flawed. It just gives us something to strive for the next time.


1: The Green Lantern one, unless snarking at Fox News counts as a superpower.
2: Technically "Shazam" in the New 52 butI'm ignoring that. Like almost everything in the New 52
3: See, Red Son
4: Given Ennis' typical attitude towards superheros, the fact he treats Superman with such respect speak volumes by itself

Michael Bay and...Nuance?: Tone in Pain & Gain

The year is 1994. It's Miami (because of course it's Florida). Three body-building friends with no money and a warped concept of the American Dream decide to kidnap a rich asshole who works out at their gym. They have a plan. Things don't go smoothly. And for 40 minutes, Pain & Gain is the funniest film of the year.

The latest film from Michael Bay, Pain & Gain is a passion project for the director, who has wanted to make this "small" movie for years. And it's clear why: the film's plot is chock full of misplaced bravado, disastrously over-the-top scheming, and oozes 'attitude' from every pore. In short, subject matter right up Bay's alley. Yet what makes Pain & Gain work so well is that the director manages to reign in his own chaotic visual style. The editing still jumps from shot to shot with abandon, the colors remain garishly vibrant, and the camerawork once again is defined by its kinetic movement. But if Michael Bay retains his signature touches, here they're used to tell an actual story instead of a CGI-cutscene, resulting in what is the director's best narrative work since Bad Boys (admittedly, not a high bar).

He is buoyed by some tremendous performances by his talented cast. Mark Wahlberg's ringleader, Daniel Lugo, is the film's magnetically compelling center, the actor's playful charisma successfully disguising the utter psychopath hiding beneath the surface. Meanwhile, Tony Shaloub does great work as the businessman the criminal trio targets: despite having done nothing wrong, Shaloub comes across as such an asshole that we understand why no one would miss him. But the true star of the show is Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Really. Portraying an actual character for once, rather than just an intimidating build, Johnson is cast surprisingly against type as a well-meaning but overly trusting co-conspirator. His born-again ex-con finds himself constantly torn between his love of Jesus and love of cocaine, a struggle which is both hilarious and, at times, genuinely touching.

The end result is an exhilarating ride as we follow a stupid get-rich-quick scheme perpetrateded by even stupider criminals. And for the first half of the film, Pain & Gain seems to be a spectacular absurdist comedy. But around the time that Lugo and co. attempt to rid themselves of a now-penniless Shaloub, a sneaking thought entered into my head: They actually did these things to a guy. And at that moment, my film experience took a disturbing turn that it never fully recovered from.

 

Pain & Gain is based closely on a true story, and this is simultaneously its greatest strength and its eventual downfall. On one hand, the sheer absurdity of the real-life events ironically work to ground the film, creating a world where the audience is willing to go along with anything. In a late scene, Johnson waves to neighbors as he grills pairs of human hands and the words "This is still based on true events" are thrust onto the screen. It is blunt, crude, and deeply unsettling; it also is one of the film's biggest laughs.

Ultimately, however, the knowledge that I wasn't watching a hijinks-filled caper but an embellished version of real-life crimes gnawed at me as the film went on. To Bay's credit, this seems to be part of his point. By casting people like Wahlberg and Johnson, the audience is pre-inclined to align themselves with them, and early scenes play up the trio's bumbling earnestness in order to make us root for them. But then their amorality accelerates, more and more unspeakable acts are committed, and I felt uncomfortable watching the action onscreen. More than that, I felt complicit. It's a bold move for the film to take, and in the end it doesn't quite work as well as the film wants it too. What it did do though is make me think about myself as an audience member and how I approach film, which means that Michael Bay has made the most thought-provoking movie I've seen this year. Again, really.

Pain & Gain is far from a perfect film. Many of Bay's second-act attempts at comedy are played so earnestly that it undercuts the guilt-inducing tone he's just managed to establish. There is also an insane overabundance of voice-over narration throughout the movie (When a random stripper gets a V.O. backstory I thought the film was parodying itself. Instead, it kept introducing even more narrators). But if it's not a great film, then Pain & Gain is just shy of great. It's entertaining as hell until it isn't. And "until it isn't" manages to be the most interesting part.

The Best Stupidity of G.I. Joe 2

I just came back from watching G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the sequel to the 2009 film the world was craving for. Guys, it is dumb. It is dumb as hell. But it is the best type of dumb, the type that emerges from a perfect storm of poor decisions and baffling plot choices that comes all the way back around to be laughably entertaining.

Thus, in lieu of an actual review, my five absolute favorite dumb moments of G.I. Joe: Retailiation:
(oh, spoilers below if you care)

5. The G.I. Joe team becomes convinced that the President of the United States has been replaced by a doppelganger because he has started saying "Sort of" instead of "Kind of". This is discovered by analyzing every public statement he has given in the past several months using computers from the '90s that they found in an abandoned rec center.

4. They confirm the President is an imposter by running his hair through a portable DNA scanner disguised as a tube of lipstick. Which they built using leftover parts. From '90s computers. That they found in an abandoned rec center.

3. Cobra Commander activates his doomsday weapon by pressing a button in a briefcase. If the exact same button is pressed a second time, it not only stops the launch but causes all seven of his billion-dollar satellites to EXPLODE. No lock is put on this briefcase.

2. At the start of the movie, COBRA frames the by having Storm Shadow (the white, evil ninja) dress up as Snake Eyes (the black, good ninja) and assassinate the President of Pakistan. This is literally step one of their plan in the movie; making the world think Snake Eyes killed a world leader is vital. And yet, rather than just, temporarily, use swords with black hilts (you know, the type Snake Eye would use) Storm Shadow uses his same swords and just puts slide-on black covers over the ends. You guys, there's committing to a costume and then there's this.

1. When the imposter President makes a joke about North Korea, "Kim Jong Il" throws his arms out and acts totally offended like the US had just the violated Bro Code.

"What'd I do? C'mon guys, that's really uncalled for."

The Shifting Realities of Following TV

Last week, TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote a piece questioning if we're reaching the point where audiences are faced with the prospect of too many quality television shows being aired. Too much good TV? Absurd, I said! No one complains that about too many books, or too many quality movies. Besides, in the current television landscape (where there exist four separate pawn-shop series, where a NASA-founded channel now assigns an entire night of the week to wedding shows, and where a broadcast network at one point devoted 1/3rd of their prime-time line-up to procedurals distingusihed from each other mostly by how they arranged the letters S, C, and I in their titles) we should be delighted at all of the options for well-written TV that we have at our disposal.

But then I thought about how I stopped watching The Americans after the pilot episode. How I have yet to get into Bob's Burgers despite it's critical acclaim and prescence of H. Jon Benjamin. How every new series that gets recommended to me gets added to the end of an ever-increasing mental list. And I realize Sepinwall may be right.

Calling the fact there are so many high-quality series on television right now a "problem" isn't exactly accurate. It's a fact that celebrates the possibilities and variety that can be found in the medium, and TV afficianados should rightly cheer whenever a new great series emerges. However we have finally reached the point where, for the first time, there are so many good shows that it has become impractical for one person to see them all. And that means that TV critics (both amateur and professional) need to accept a few things.

For a long time TV followers have been able to get away with being a completionist lot. There were X number of 'must-see' shows, and for the most part that number was small enough that those who wanted to could stay completely caught up. Now however, that possibility no longer exists. Where before the limited number of channels capped the number of series that aired (with a new show unable to premiere until another was canceled), the growth in original cable programming ensures that more series get made each year, any of which could establish themselves as yet another 'must-see'. At the same time serialized plots have wormed their way into even the most episodic sitcoms, making it harder and harder to skip out on any given episode. Thus, TV fans are now being forced to choose between which series to follow, an experience that's a bit of a rude awakening.

So we're going to have to come to terms with not being able to watch everything. Fine, we'll adapt. Unfortunately even as TV viewers will have to adjust their expectations, certain aspects of current television analysis and fandom punish this approach. The proliferation of internet reviews, many of which review series episode-by-episode, have done wonders for promoting critical discussions about the medium. The most obvious downside however, is that spoilers are everywhere. It has become difficult enough to dodge leaked plot twists for shows you are only a couple of episodes behind on. Yet when it comes to completed series one just hasn't gotten to yet, it's even worse. The conclusion of The Sopranos is already The Sixth Sense of TV endings in terms of ubiquity, and you can bet that when Mad Men ends next year the fate of Don will become equally entrenched in pop culture. I don't believe that being spoiled on certain points is an inherently bad thing (I knew the endings of Se7en, Fight Club, Oldboy, and The Usual Suspects before I saw them and still consider them amongst my favorite films). But it does change the viewing experience, and so people are encouraged to embrace the 'need to see everything now' mindset in order to ensure their sense of surprise.

One other big factor that needs to be acknowledged is that the fan engagement and discussions around certain series really do make them a higher priority to watch "live". In general, a show that focuses on plot and action over character stands to lose as viewers stop pushing themselves to keep up with every series. Lost was a phenomenal series that made its 'as-watched' discussion a big part of its appeal and experience. The trade-off is that its legacy is less clear; a friend of mine who just watched the series remarked that he greatly enjoyed the show, but was saddened that most of the debates and conversations he wanted to have about the show had already occurred years before. Contrast this with series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel, which have less constant narrative momentum but allow new viewers to engage in their own debates and analyses almost a decade after their they ended.

I'm not saying that dodging spoilers or prioritizing plot-heavy shows is the best way to juggle the glut of great series we find ourselves with today. There's no clear answer to how best to watch shows, not one that fits everyone in a medium as personally engaging as television. But these are exactly the issues that audiences must face as TV evolves and expands. It's not just television that is changing; how we watch it is going to have to change too.

Disney Re-watch Part 2

Part of the fun of re-watching old Disney films is that I get to pick up on things I'd never quite noticed before. For example, they got to call people 'jackasses' in Pinocchio, something that would never fly in today's environment. More importantly however, I've come to realize that the world of Disney has a system of government that appears to be based on one simple thing: can you talk to and/or command animals? If you can, congratulations! You're a princess! One would think there are better ways to set up a monarchy, but then again I'd expect King Triton would just lightning bolt the first timid shrimp that suggested forming a republic.

Moving on to more specific thoughts...

Pinocchio
I mentioned above that some of the language Disney got away with in this movie surprised me. That's not the only thing that makes Pinocchio a product of its times: it notably lacks the karmic retributions that are so prevalent in most children's fare. Stromboli attempts to kidnap Pinocchio as an indentured servant, the fox and cat duo lead him astray twice (though really, after the first time that's on Pinocchio for not learning anything) and the coachman runs a horrifying magical slave market. While our hero escapes all of these foes, none of them are ever brought to justice and remain free to prey on others. It's a jarring disconnect from pretty much any modern Disney tale (and it's a bit ironic here, seeing as Pinocchio is all about acting good so that good things will happen to him). And yet I think this attitude works very well here. I'm not saying the villain has to win (as much as some of my favorite films may seem to dispute that theory), but not spending time on the bad guys' comeuppance is a refreshing change of pace and it allows the story to focus solely on Pinocchio and his adventures.

Also getting off scot-free: Gepetto, cat-kicker

Of course one of the reasons that the story works out this way is that the film's based on a series of serial stories. As a result, Pinocchio is far more episodic than an organic whole. The movie can be essentially divided into four distinct sections, all of which are introduced abruptly. The final act literally starts with a note that reads 'BTW, a whale ate Gepetto :p' Even Pinocchio's lie-lengthened nose is only mentioned in a single scene, and even there it's not actually utilized. Still, all of these different mini-arcs give Pinocchio a good amount of variety and it's definitely an enjoyable lark.

Sleeping Beauty
Story-wise this film isn't exactly a cinematic triumph. Running only 76 minutes, Sleeping Beauty's plot still manages to feel simplistic and padded. The motives of the villainess never go beyond "she's EVIL", potentially interesting dynamics and conflict between the two kings and Prince Philip are cut short, and Princess Aurora herself is around for less than 1/4th of the picture. Instead, the three good fairies are put front and center and their role is...problematic.

For the first two-thirds of the movie, pretty much everything bad that happens is these three's fault. Maleficent only curses Aurora in the first place after the blue fairy provokes and insults her. They spend sixteen years in hiding only to prove too impatient to wait another two hours before casting spells, a move that brings about the princess' discovery and spindle-prick. Then, in order to stall for time rather than admit their failings, they curse the entire kingdom with their own slumber spell. I can't underscore how awful a plan that is: it's not only a shortsighted and drastic solution with no end in sight, but because of it they almost miss learning about their only chance at a cure. And yet in the third act, the the fairies' competence level is suddenly boosted to a perplexing degree. During the final confrontation their spells are so strong that they seem to barely need Phillip's help in slaying Maleficent at all, a move that sadly undercuts the heroism of the film's male lead and serves as a fittingly frustrating capstone to the trio's scattershot characterization.

What Sleeping Beauty does have going for it though, is that it's absolutely beautiful to look at. The animation is a wonderful blend of stylized, storybookesque backgrounds mixed with smooth and fluid characters, giving the film a unique look as Aurora and the others dance through a series of fantastically-drawn sets. The effective "look" of the movie also proves exactly why Maleficent has become the poster child for Disney villains. While her personality may be cliche, her horned cowl, flowing cloak, and regal posture is a strikingly effective character design that is as ominous as it is elegant. Plus, dragon. Dragons are awesome.

Snow White
Looked at with a critical eye, the plot of Snow White isn't actually any more complicated than that of Sleeping Beauty. If anything, this movie (whose story only spans about 36 hours!) might have even more filler. But it doesn't feel that way, and it's because each of Snow White's many interludes is different and charming by itself. Sure Snow fleeing through the woods, the forest creatures cleaning the house, and the dwarves washing their hands for dinner each take around five minutes, but they manage to stand alone as distinct 'silly symphonies' that also manage to work into the greater plot. Snow White also wastes no time getting started: we've met Snow, the Prince, the Queen, and had an assassination attempt and flight within the first ten minutes. It's not all great: the animation of the human characters mostly is distractingly creepy (especially the Prince) and "Someday my Prince Will Come" terrible and overrated. But it is charming and funny, and holds up not just as an animation landmark, but also a genuinely good movie.

The Little Mermaid
This movie, more than any other in this batch, is where my memory diverged the most from what's in the film. Ursala has stood out in my mind as being one of the better Disney villains, but upon a rewatch I was surprised to discover that her character and motivations are very simple and under-developed: the awesomeness of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" had led me to oversell a relatively average antagonist. Even weirder, while I remembered the fish Flounder, I had completely forgotten about the seagull Ariel deals with despite the fact he's extremely relevant to the plot while Flounder mostly just swims around nearby things.

Considering it hasn't been that long since I'd rewatched The Little Mermaid, I'm a bit surprised at how much of it felt new to me. The songs are famous enough but I'd overlooked how phenomenal the score is as well, and how atypically proactive Eric is as a prince, taking in random shipwreck victims into his home (and risking his life and a messy succession dispute in order to save a dog). But these things are exactly the point of this project: to rediscover things.

Comic Panel of the Week (March 13)

Thor #365

This is part of a three-issue story where Thor gets turned into a frog by Loki, then leads a band of  Central Park frogs against an army of rats. Also involved is a sewer-dweller who controls alligators Pied Piper style and the revelation that one of the other frogs is also a transformed human.

God I love comics.