I love Batman. Always have. Always will.

I sucked it up and watched all but one of the 80’s/90’s Batman movies Batman & Robin. (Why anyone would look at that and think it was good is just crazy) and used to collect the comic books off and on, watched the crummy 60’s TV show in reruns when I was a kid, so don’t even try and not call me a Batman lover. Not in a Batman/Robin…you know…well…not-that-there’s-anything-wrong-with-that kind of way, but I’ve always enjoyed Batman. Bruce Wayne went from wimpy kid one minute to crazed future vigilante in the next with the death of his parents. He donned the cape, the mask, he became what criminals would fear, and he kicked ass which was the best part.

Superman…yeah, he’s alright, but Batman was a normal person wailing on somebody. You could feel your blood pump and the adrenaline go up as he started in on, as the Fantastic Four’s Thing would say, “clobberin’ time.”

Batman never really cared much about the consequences of his actions like Superman did. Clark was always the fine upstanding man that he was raised to be and was supposed to be. He was good and kind and saw the world in black and white. But the world has never been black and white, sure there are good guys and bad guys, but sometimes the bad guys are on your side fighting for your interests 1 and sometimes they’re not. 2 Sometimes they’re out for world domination and other times they just want money or power or something that makes them look sexy in the eyes of others. And it’s those reasons that would make me want to be a super villain. But not just your normal run-of-the-mill vanilla super villain. No sir. I’m looking to be unique, if possible.

Good guys always have to look out for the innocent bystanders and are racked with guilt if they cause an innocent life to be extinguished in the process of saving others. 3 I’ve read that Warner Bros, the studio that puts out the Superman films, is thinking of taking a hint from the Cristopher Nolan lead Batman films and that they might reboot the Superman series in a darker light. What are they thinking? Superman is sunny, Batman is dark. Is Superman not going to care what he does? He’s the son of Krypton sent to Earth to be this planet’s protector, not some gray-area hero.

Which is why it would be cool to be a supervillain. You just wouldn’t have to care. Your whole reason for living is to gain street cred, or cash, or babes, or something intangible that makes up for that horrific time in your life that made you that evil bastard that you became. And it would be fun because taking out your aggression is fun, even if it’s a planeload of people you’ve never met before, sure, one of them did something that they deserve a huge pounding for. Heat vision to the wing of the plane, that’s the way to do it.

I’d drive a cool car and live in some foreboding super-fortress in the Himalayas and have a legion of warriors at my beck and call and have minions, evil minions, that would do whatever I commanded. They’d probably be ninjas. Or some rogue paramilitary outfit that I have on my payroll. I’d be friends with dictators and international criminals and I’d naturally flaunt it in public, because what’s the fun in being a supervillain if you can’t rub it in the face of the people that you call your mortal enemies?

And I’d have to be best friends with my mortal enemy too, just like Magneto and Charles Xavier. I don’t know anybody who is bald and needs a wheel chair, but I’m evil. I’ll put someone in a wheelchair and then shave his head or something. And after I’ve been caught and put in some foolproof prison where only the hardest of the hard villains reside and my best friend comes and visits me we’ll reminiscence about the old days and I’ll make allusions like I’m planning to escape and he’ll threaten me in veiled terms and we’ll glare at each other and then we’ll laugh as I block his king with my knight in the game of chess we’ve been playing and I breathily whisper, “Checkmate.”

Now that’s a hell of a career right there.

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I should have known as we walked into the theater to see Cars and my son started screaming, “No! No! No!” that I should have heeded his warning. True, he wasn’t screaming at Cars, but at a preview for some film called Ant Bully, but still, dense dad that I am, I should have listened to him. He’s young with those hip new ideas about things, you know.

You know his opinion of Cars, now here’s mine.

Lightning McQueen is a living, breathing car that lives in a strange alternate universe where cars, not people, are the dominant life form on the planet. They do everything that humans do, except that they’re cars. If I were an amateur film critic in this parallel universe he lives in I’d probably say “Cars is 16 cylinders of fun!”, or “Race on down to it!” or something lame like that, since I would also be a car who loves other cars and other car-related things.

But I’m human and not a car and don’t love all car related things. Most of all, I didn’t love Cars.

Starring:
Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Michael Keaton, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Petty, Cheech Marin
Directed By:
John Lasseter & Joe Ranft
Release Date:
June 9, 2006
MPAA Rating:
G
Distributors:
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
2 Stars

It’s not that I don’t love Pixar films. I usually freaking LOVE Pixar films. God bless Pixar, for they are the only reason that Disney makes money anymore, and honestly, shouldn’t Pixar be making ALL Disney films at this point? A Pixar film is a hallmark of cinematic quality; when you see that little bouncing lamp come out at the beginning of their films, you know you’re in for a great time and you’re also going to be amazed in some way. Not only are you going to get great looking animation, but a storyline that is engaging and funny too.

I love Toy Story, both 1 and 2, and The Incredibles is one of the great films of the past 10 years. My son loves Finding Nemo and every time he sees a clownfish it’s named “Nemo”, never “Fred” or “Biff”, just “Nemo”. I have less admiration for Monsters, Inc. and A Bug’s Life, mainly because I didn’t find them as interesting in the plot department, but they still looked great. If you watch the “making of” bits on each DVD for these films you can see the evolution of the Pixar animation process and they grow exponentionally with each new release.

Cars looks phenomenal. You’d think the opening bit, where Lightning is introduced, was the camera panning over a real car it looks so good. Pixar cares about how their films look, and the detail is great, but before where the plotlines were semi-complex, Cars could have been written by me in 2nd grade. Come on man, who couldn’t have come up with this?

An arrogant race car gets lost on his way to a race. While trying to find his way back to where he got lost in the first place, he comes upon a sleepy out-of-the-way town where time practically stands still. In the process of trying to leave the small town, he will come to understand that being arrogant isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be and he will make new lifelong friends where before he had none. He will also overcome adversity in the final “battle” and be successful without overdoing it the way he did before.

Take out the phrase “race car” from the first sentence of the paragraph and you’ve got a generic movie of the week or even some of your friends’ lives. It’s not a very complex story, but it also isn’t a very interesting story. What the Pixar people try to do with this weak story is make up for it with eye candy, but it’s not enough. The plot just doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.