#first time watching Superman 1978 and it was so magical seeing the origin of so many iconic scenes!!!!!!

[starleska]

i don't care if it's 'off-brand' for me to simp for Superman, you can bet i was giggling like a schoolgirl at this moment!!! 😳💖💖💖

[abdifarah]

Snake Charmer

I grabbed my sneakers and ball from the backseat of my car. As I stepped onto the basketball court, the palm of a stranger’s hand suddenly hit my chest before my foot crossed the threshold of the out-of-bounds line, as if to protect me from stepping into molten lava. It was in fact hallowed ground he was preparing me to enter. “I don’t want to mess up your day, but Kobe Bryant died.” The words did not register. He must have meant to say Bill Russell or Magic Johnson or some other retired player, up in years or immunocompromised. My heart sank as the words did. Seemingly coordinated with the stranger’s preparatory address, my phone began to shriek. I shared basketball, above most else, with my closest friends, and for those of my friends “not into sports,” they knew I was and that I was probably the one person in their lives that could explain why their instagram and twitter timelines had been commandeered by the news of Bryant’s death. I sat on the court and texted friends I hadn’t spoken with in years. I mentally ran through all of the Lakers fans in my life, like someone tallying loved ones near the epicenter of an earthquake or tsunami. 

The surprises continued. My uncle Kenny called me. Kenny, like most of the men in my life, does not make calls. When I see Kenny during the holidays we do not hug or catch up with small talk. Me and Kenny speak solely in sports. “How are the Cowboys doing?” translates to how are you doing? On this occasion Kenny did not resort to code. “Are you okay?” Kenny asked with a tone of genuine concern in his voice. Strangely, I was not. Stepping out of my body momentarily, I watched myself frantically text friends and scour the internet for updates with large tears welling up in my eyes. Importantly, next to me, five or so other guys on the basketball court were doing the exact same thing. I was dumbfounded, and even a little amused that it was Kobe Bryant, of all people, that elicited this reaction from me. As a basketball fan I loved Kobe Bryant as a player, but I didn’t love him. I loved Kobe the way the world loves the Dalai Lama. Kobe was that inhuman child/god/king we watched grow up, do great exploits, and whose often trite proverbs of ostensible wisdom we warily entertained. His sudden and violent death brought into swift focus that, while famous for almost my entire life, I took Kobe for granted.

Kobe Bryant was the first of us to realize: the camera is always on. In the days and weeks following Kobe’s death I found myself pulling up old games on youtube and having them on in the background while I worked. I was surprised how many of the beats–a certain sequence of plays, a specific call by an announcer–I remembered, like I was watching reruns or listening to a throwback radio station. As much as The Fresh Prince or Martin or Seinfeld, Kobe Bryant was TV. Mostly to my frustration, as someone who ineffectually rooted against the Lakers, Kobe Bryant was always on my screen. Undoubtedly, a cloud hangs over everything related to Bryant now in light of his death, but rewatching games from the 2000 finals, in which Bryant’s Lakers bested the Reggie Miller/Jalen Rose led Pacers, I was reminded of how much uneasiness and sadness I felt for Kobe Bryant watching him even as a teenage admirer. After every exceptional defensive play, flashy pass, or difficult made shot, Bryant made sure the camera saw the fiery glint in his eyes, the licking of his lips, the exaggerated clinching of his jaw. 

Even more so than the NBA’s previous generation of celebrities–Bird, Magic, Jordan–Kobe Bryant seemed to be the first superstar to internalize that basketball was a performance: a movie backed by a John Tesh score, or more specifically, a loosely scripted 24-7 reality show complete with story arcs, heroes, villains, close-ups, and backstabbing confessions. Bryant perpetually signalled: to the camera, to the fans, to his haters, to his teammates, that he possessed the most passion, that he outworked everyone, and that he would stop at nothing to be the best. By all accounts this was all true. But we knew it less because it was true and more because Kobe wanted us to know. Even as a youngster I found his thirst obnoxious. 

Kobe was desperate, but he was also just ahead of the curve. Kobe Bryant proudly admitted to not having a social life, and almost a decade before Russell Westbrook said it, Bryant proclaimed that “Spalding was his only friend;” a both sad and sobering admission for any would-be competitors tasked with defeating Bryant on the court. Bryant’s performative work, that now permeates and characterizes most of millennial culture, predated social media. The author Touré in his book, I Would Die 4U, contends that despite being a baby boomer, Prince was the quintessential GenX celebrity, whose music perfectly tapped into that younger generation’s disaffected, countercultural ethos. Born in 1978, Bryant technically resides in GenX. The intense outpouring from all corners of the digital world over Bryant’s death stems from the fact that he was truly the first millennial celebrity. 

For Bryant, fame came before success. As the photogenic rookie for the Lakers, Bryant had cameos on sitcoms, graced the cover of every teen magazine, took Brandy to the prom, put out a rap album, and pitched every soda and sneaker Madison Avenue could throw at him. But like an inflated college application, Bryant’s extracurriculars read as contrivances. Bryant was named a starter in the 1998 All-Star game, an honor voted on by the fans, meanwhile he wasn’t even a starter on his own team. To suspicious observers, Bryant was an industry plant; the antidote to the fearful influx of hyper-black, hip hop culture embodied in players like Allen Iverson or Latrell Spreewell; a basketball and marketing robot with a pearly white smile, that spoke multiple languages, and would pick up where Michael Jordan left off; ushering the NBA to unprecedented commercial heights.

Despite his superficial charm, Kobe Bryant’s lack of genuine personality proved off-putting, almost creepy. Although possessing a similarly shimmering smile, everyone knew that the real Michael Jordan chomped on cigars, pounded tequila, gambled through the night, and did not actually hang out with Bugs Bunny while wearing Hanes tighty-whities. We acknowledged humanity, healthiness even, in this contradiction. For Bryant’s generation of sports superstars, the public and private arrived flattened. A sports prodigy, a la Tiger Woods, Bryant’s lone-gun, misanthropic persona emerged as a defense against the alienation he felt from his teammates and colleagues around the league, those that did not share his cloistered upbringing. Bryant’s longtime teammate and consummate foil, Shaquille O’Neal, had the nickname, Superman. Despite his titanic presence and supernatural physical gifts, O’Neal epitomized the terrestrial; always joking, dancing; embedded in pop culture; a true man of the people. The true Kryptonian was always Bryant.

As an ignorant seventeen year-old, my initial reaction in 2004 to the accusations of rape against Bryant was amused shock. “Kobe Bryant has sex?!” In 2004, I, like many, put Kobe on the shelf. Less out of a desire to proactively make any bold gestures on behalf of women, but more out of petty schadenfreude. As stated before, I respected the talent, but I was not really a Kobe fan. I always rooted for the underdog, and Bryant was anything but. To the contrary, everything about Bryant was an assault on the concept of the underdog, the diamond in the rough, the idea that anyone, despite their humble or downright degraded beginnings, could rise to excellence. Bryant was born and bread to be great. Sadly, I took grim pleasure in seeing the NBA’s posterboy–the prototype of black celebrity respectability–revealed as the actual embodiment of the entitled, toxically masculine, and sexually predatory stereotype of the black athlete. 

Bryant lost endorsements. Nike released the Huarache 2K4, an all-time great basketball shoe originally designed to be Bryant’s first signature release with the brand, as simply a stand-alone product. The Lakers shopped Bryant around for possible trades. Like Sampson sheared and stripped of his powers, Bryant’s hairline appeared to recede, he cut off his signature fro, and he began shaving his head closer and closer. Bryant changed his number from 8 to 24 as one now changes their Instagram or Twitter handle to represent a break from the past. Like a biblical character after a traumatic or transformative event, like Abram becoming Abraham, or Saul becoming Paul, Bryant adopted the moniker of the Black Mamba. He resigned to allow the sorting hat to place him in his rightful house of Slytherin, and embraced the duplicitous snake that many already viewed him to be. Somewhat strangely, the Black Mamba was the assassin code name of the main character in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, who in the film is left for dead, and out for revenge. Did Bryant see himself as this woman wronged, or as the titular character, Bill, contently awaiting his deserved day of judgement. Knowing Bryant, he probably saw himself as both.    

In the myth of Hercules (not the Disney version) the famous god-man kills his wife and kids in a fit of hysteria inflicted by a vengeful Hera. If we imagine that the mythical figures of today were really just the celebrities and aristocrats of past millennia who had control over the pen of history and whose carnal tales swelled into sacred gospel; the fits of rage and mania brought on by the devil or hades or a poison arrow, were really the Chappaquiddicks, Vegas hotel rooms, and dog fighting compounds of their time; times when our heroes unequivocally and inexcusably committed evil. If Hercules was in fact a real man of some importance to his time–the son of a dignitary–that unfathomably killed his wife and kids, it follows that instead of being sentenced to death or some other fate reserved for the criminal commoner, that he would be given some lesser sentence and a chance–albeit slim–of redemption. Hercules is banished by the gods to serve an insignificant king and accomplish the arduous good works assigned to him as a means of atonement; the great works–slaying the nine-headed hydra, retrieving cerberus –that ultimately generate his immortal legend.  

Bryant’s post rape case/post Shaquille O’Neal years with the Lakers mirror this herculean restitution. Despite years on center stage, the Lakers, like Bryant, were similarly in their nadir, and would spend the middle of the aughts in basketball purgatory. Bryant was no longer primetime television. What happens to a pop-star when no one is watching? Surprisingly, Kobe Bryant kept performing, and at higher heights. Bryant was doing his best work while no one was watching. I remember walking through the door of my college dorm on a non-descript spring day. My roommate, Bryun, yelled at me with no context, “8 1  P O I N T S !” Kobe Bryant’s 81 point game may lay claim as the first social media sports moment. Less because no other great sports moments had occurred between 2004, when facebook emerged, and his scoring explosion in 2006, but because very few people watched that midseason contest between two mediocre teams live. It arrived to everyone, like myself, after the fact.

During a recent lecture, artist Dave McKenzie, when answering a very banal question during a post lecture q&a, about his long term goals as an artist, answered soberingly, “I’m just trying to get through this life and do the least amount of harm.” While we all hope to navigate this life without hurting others, most, if not all of us, will in some way. While we can and must continue to  interrogate why powerful (or at least useful to the actual powerful) men like Kobe Bryant seemingly evade the full reckoning of their actions, we must acknowledge that Bryant became something of a patron saint to those who for whatever reason found themselves on the wrong side of right. Maybe they were the underprivileged black and brown boys and girls in over-policed neighborhoods of LA where Bryant played for 20 years. Perhaps they were not pure victims but made some questionable choices and found themselves caught in the system. Or maybe it was the newly divorced father attempting to win back the respect of his kids after breaking apart his family due to his own indiscretions. Kobe Bryant in this second half of his career, culminating in back to back championships, provided a picture of how one climbs back from the depths of hell, even if they were the one that put themself there. This explains the irrationality of Kobe fans, who defended him in everything, and straight-faced spoke his name in the same breath as Michael Jordan, despite honestly being in a class below. For them, Kobe was bigger than basketball, and while many fans share a vicarious relationship with their sports heroes or teams, Bryant’s winning was more profoundly linked to his fans’ sense of self-worth.

Precocity embodied, Bryant arrived in the NBA a generation too soon. As the son of a former player, singularly focused on professionalizing at a young age, even foregoing college at a time when that was still a rarity, Bryant was an alien compared to most players of his generation. The trajectory of players today more resembles Bryant’s. Gone are the days of Dennis Rodman or Scottie Pippen or Steve Nash picking up basketball late, or being undiscovered and surreptitiously landing on a small college team, eventually catching the eye of the larger basketball world. Now, professional basketball starts disturbingly early. Prospects like Zion Williamson have millions of Instagram followers in high school. Second generation pros are commonplace – Steph, Klay, Kyrie, Devin Booker, Andrew Wiggins, Domantas Sabonis, Austin Rivers, Tim Hardaway Jr., Glenn Robinson III, and so on. Bryant was the cautionary tale, a sage mentor, and ultimately an icon to the generation of players succeeding Bryant, who like him, entered the spotlight and scrutiny of an increasingly voracious sports machine as children. Thanks in part to witnessing the triumphs and travails of Bryant, today’s young superstars arrive to the league encoded with the understanding that the fans, the media, the sports industry writ large, wait with baited breath for them to fuck up off the court as much as they do a spectacular play in the game. To these various stakeholders, it’s all good entertainment.

[A bit of a tangent] As the coronavirus began to ravage New Orleans, in particular the homeless and already vulnerable of the city, I had a group of friends, more acquaintances, who took it upon themselves to collect donations, buy groceries, prepare and ultimately hand out meals to the large number of homeless people mostly living under the I-10 overpass downtown. As a naturally cynical person, I immediately questioned the motivations. All of those same homeless people were living under the overpass before coronavirus, where was this energy then? One friend involved with this effort confided that she was incredibly anxiety stricken in all of this, and that this “project” was taking her mind off things. I chafed at the phrasing of feeding the homeless as a “project.” Additionally, daily I would scroll through the Instagram feeds of those helping and see pics of cute hipsters in masks and gloves and in grungy, rugged, but still impossibly chic outfits posing in Power Ranger formations in front of their rusted Ford Ranger filled with grocery bags to distribute. A masterclass in virtue signalling, the narcissism of it all polluted the entire endeavor for me. When I asked a trusted voice why this all rubbed me the wrong way, this person replied curtly, “What does it matter why or how they do it? They’re doing a good thing.” 

Kobe did not simply embrace this role of elder-statesman to the succeeding generation, he courted it, campaigned for this mantle as aggressively as he once sought championships. Lacking confidence in the intellect of the public to make their own conjectures of how Bryant resurrected his career, he rebranded himself a self-improvement life-couch, and proselytized his “Mamba Mentality,” even staging a parody Tony Robbins style conference as a Nike commercial. He collected young promising players to mentor like Leonardo DiCaprio collects young blonde models to date. Gossipy whispers swirled every offseason, “Kobes working with Kawhi.” or “Watch out for Jason Tatum this year; he spent the summer training with Kobe.” All of Kobe’s newfound openhandedness seemed spiked with self-aggrandizement. Opting to be the mentor of the next generation ensured that the success of future stars led back to him, and that he would be relevant and sought after long after his retirement. 

Whatever the subconscious or even conscious motivations behind Bryant’s mentorship, his movie Dear Basketball, or his show Detail–in which he broke down the games of basketball players across levels and leagues, treating women’s college basketball standout Sabrina Ionescu with the same care and reverence as NBA star James Harden–the result was education, service, stewardship, and love for the game of basketball. 

I started writing this soon after Bryant’s death but struggled to synthesize an ultimate point. In the end I am not sure I have one, just that Kobe Bryant, much to my surprise was a figure of enough complexity and enduring relevance to require re-interrogation. In hindsight, I needed to watch The Last Dance; the 10 part Michael Jordan re-coronation. In 2009 newly elected President Barack Obama, after stumbling over the oath of office during the freezing January inauguration, retook the oath the next day in a private ceremony just in case any of his political enemies, or the fomenting alt right with its myriad factions–from the conspiratorial to the downright racist–tried to invalidate his presidency. While trivial in comparison, Jordan, with The Last Dance is attempting desperately to reconfirm that he is the greatest basketball player of all-time, something only a few lunatics question. While the actual game footage is a wonder and leaves no doubt of Jordan’s basketball supremacy, the final tally of this hagiographic enterprise may result in a net loss for Jordan. Jordan, like a 19th century robber baron, seems to genuinely believe that his misanthropy, arrogance, condescension, usury, brutality, workaholism, and myopic focus on basketball, and consummate self-centeredness were all justified, required even, to win. To win what? Championships? With sports leagues and public officials debating when and if sports can and should come back amidst a virus with devastating life or death stakes, sports and success within them feel quite trivial and quaint at the moment. 

Having won at everything in life, sitting in his palatial mansion, sipping impossibly overpriced scotch, Jordan does not seem fulfilled. He is Ebenezer Scrooge. Unfortunately, it is not Christmas, and no ghosts of introspection are visiting Jordan, only a camera crew determined to retell the gospel of Jordan with a few non-canonical details sprinkled in for flavor. I am reminded of a line in Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season, an autobiographical account of his college basketball days at The Citadel. After a storied career, Conroy’s senior season is a disaster (hence the title). In it he says no one ever learned anything by winning. The inference is that, while winning is great, the actual growth occurs before, in the losing. Jordan in The Last Dance is the ghastly personification of “never losing. Like Bane before breaking Batman’s back, “Victory has defeated you.” With an unimpeachable resumé, Jordan was never required to question his actions or behaviors towards his teammates and competitors. Worshiped unwaveringly by all, Jordan never felt the need to give anything back to the game or to the communities that supported him. 

While never verbally conceding, Bryant seemed to embrace being the loser. Bryant realized early, perhaps as early as Colorado, that he was never going to be as beloved as Jordan. He began planning early for a life outside of basketball. He started a production company. He braved eye-rolls for the n-teenth time when he proclaimed that he was going to be a “storyteller.” Beyond a cliché adage, Bryant became a “family man,” and focused on this part of his life with the same ferocity that he once attacked the basket. Despite braving turmoil very publicly as a young couple, the bond between Bryant and his wife Vanesa appeared, at least on the outside, genuine. They welcomed their newest daughter, Capri, just 7 months before his death. While no less ambitious or busy in retirement, the Bryant who once wore his insecurity and desperation on his sweaty armband, strangely appeared content, happy. The guy who once proudly proclaimed “Spalding his only friend” relented to a verdant life with others.

While undoubtedly compounded by the tragic and sudden nature of his death, the truly astounding outpouring for Kobe–murals the world over, calf-length tattoos, millions of twitter handle re-namings–stands as an accomplishment, or better said, an acknowledgement that “better” athletes like Jordan or LeBron or Tiger or Brady will probably never receive. He wasn’t the best of us, and in many ways we loved him even more because of that. Before The Last Dance we got a preview of the more candid Michael Jordan during Kobe Bryant’s memorial, where Michael, who unbeknownst to us all was a confidant of Bryant’s, admitted that Kobe made him want to be a better father, a better person. In the end even the GOAT was a disciple of the Mamba. It’s only right that the first millennial superstar gained the biggest following.  

[kiwigreenflame]

The watching one or more Jesus films at Easter is a common activity for Christians individually or as communities. These might be documentaries or one of the many versions of cinematic Jesus that have cropped up over the years. (For some examples, see my list here at Jesus films – updating media). But while these films might directly referring to the person of Jesus of Nazareth, within the wider cinematic world there are characters whose portrayal and actions resemble, in some way, those of Jesus in the gospels. We’ve probably come across films or TV shows like this, where a character of the situation models or reminds us of Jesus and the gospel stories, and gives us a kind of cinematic Jesus.

This identification is strengthened when the structure of the film follows what Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence call the American monomyth (related to Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey). They describe particular plot structure as:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition: the superhero then recedes into obscurity.

This structure with its superheroic, messianic protagonist looks similar to the messianic trajectory of the gospels. We might see the hero sacrificing his or her life for their friends or a community in order to save them; or the hero having divine or mysterious origins or being a prophesied deliverer; or being able to both demonstrate superhuman power while also being very human. However, there are key differences from the gospel story. The superhero typically defeats evil by enacting (and therefore redeeming) violence upon that evil, something that jars with Jesus journey to the cross. Moreover, it is almost always a temporary reprieve from evil (convenient for film sequels), while the work of Christ on the cross is seen as definitive once and for all time.

So, given that as a caveat, here is a small selection of films that characters that might be considered Christ or Christlike figures.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363771/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia:_The_Lion,_the_Witch_and_the_Wardrobe

C.S. Lewis’ classic Christian allegory, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, made its transition to the big screen in 2005, directed by Kiwi, Andrew Adamson. The character of the lion Aslan is titled King of Beasts, the son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, and the King above all High Kings in Narnia and is this story’s Christ figure. The Stone Table substitutes for the cross, deeper magic for a ransom/Christus Victor form of atonement, and the White Witch as Satan.

The Fifth Element (1997)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119116/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element

Luc Besson’s science fiction film The Fifth Element brings a mix of action, surrealism, humour, and a classic evil vs. unprepared good together in a way the actually works for the most part. The character of Leeloo, a naive, alien saviour sent to save the world, is the titular fifth element – that of self-sacrificial love. The character has her own Gethsemane moment before choosing to sacrifice herself to defeat the impending evil, and is then ‘resurrected’ at the conclusion of the moving. Oddly powerful given the goofiness of much of the movie.

Whale Rider (2002)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298228/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_Rider

https://southpacificpictures.com/productions/details/337/Whale-Rider

Whale Rider is for many people an obvious choice for a film with a Christ-like saviour character in Kahu Paikea Apirana. From the being an kind of outcast, to the imagery of death and rebirth located in the riding of the whales, people have made that connection. A question remains though – is this simply an appropriation of the story regardless of the context and culture because we want it to be this way.

The prospect of interpreting the character Pai (short for Paikea) in Whale Rider as a Christ-figure raises some potential objections, because Whale Rider seeks to represent indigenous Maori spiritual traditions, and imposition of a Christological framework onto the film may be viewed as another instance of Christian cultural imperialism. After all, among the world’s spiritual and religious traditions, Christianity holds no monopoly on the valorization of self-sacrifice, and Jesus is not the only figure in the history of religion and mythology to undergo a death and resurrection. On the other hand, both the film and the novel upon which it is based appear after some 200 years of Maori contact with European colonialism, and from the earliest anthropological and ethnographic recording of indigenous traditions until the media portrayals of today, the centrality of the Christ-narrative in the dominant Christian-informed cultures has affected both the telling and the hearing of religious stories. … But the portrayal of Pai as a Christ-figure may be read alternatively as a subversion of colonial religion. In portraying Pai as a Christ-figure, the film could be saying in effect, on behalf of Maori people, “We don’t need the white man’s Jesus—we are capable of producing our own Maori saviors.”

David Fillingim. “When Jesus Was a Girl: Polymythic Female Christ Figures in Whale Rider and Steel Magnolias.” Journal of Religion and Film 14, 1 (2010). https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol14/iss1/8/.

Superman Returns (2006)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348150/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_Returns

Comparing Superman to Jesus Christ is fairly common, though the comparison would be better to Moses. In Superman Returns, director Bryan Singer makes the Christ-likeness explicit with Superman hovering over the earth while Marlon Brando’s voice-over from the original 1978 Richard Donner Superman film playing in the background.

Live as one of them, Kal-El Discover where you strength and your power are needed Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be They only lack the light to show the way For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061512/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Hand_Luke

Paul Newman stars as the prisoner, Luke, who won’t conform to the prison system and so stands in contrast to the way things work. The film positions Luke as a Christic figure, both in terms of the way the prisoners are influenced by him and in the punishment he endures. This Christian symbolism can be seen after Luke’s death with a final photograph of him superimposed over crossroads at the end of the film, highlighting a crucifixion motif.

  The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003)

The Matrix: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/

The Matrix Reloaded: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234215/

The Matrix Revolutions: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242653/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise)

The three films, The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) follow Jewett and Lawrence’s monomyth structure closely, with each film offering a kind of version of that. This is particularly the case in the first and third films, where the central character of Neo, the One, is portrayed using explicit messianic, crucifixion, and resurrection imagery.

The Matrix

The Matrix Reloaded

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still

In this 1951 classic, the alien, Klaatu, comes to Earth to judge humanity for its warlike ways and to destroy the earth because it poses a threat to other alien civilisations should humanity’s progress be left unchecked. In order to move around among people, Klatu takes on human alias of Mr. Carpenter (one of many Christic references), experiences the worst humanity has to offer, before forgiving humanity and attempting to save us from our violent nature. (He also has a killer robot – perhaps an apocalyptic angel?).

The movie was rebooted with Keanu Reeves in 2008, but as with most of these things it’s best to watch the original first. A definite classic.

For further reading:

  Kozlovic, Anton Karl. “The Christ-Figure in Popular Films.” KINEMA (Fall 2005). https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/1090/1270?inline=1. (A little dated now, but still helpful)

David Fillingim. “When Jesus Was a Girl: Polymythic Female Christ Figures in Whale Rider and Steel Magnolias.” Journal of Religion and Film 14, 1 (2010). https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol14/iss1/8/.

  Christ-likeness in film at Easter The watching one or more Jesus films at Easter is a common activity for Christians individually or as communities.

[thejohncamp3ablog]

Is the DCEU in trouble, i don't think so by looking at the stats!

Contrary to popular belief, i think all in all DCEU will emerge as the winner in the long run !

A few things based on some hard facts and numbers rather than opinion and of course, I do point some speculation, which can be perceived as my own opinion in regards to the success of the DCEU or DC Films.

We have all been witness to internet false news, scoops that don’t turn out true, negative articles towards the DC Extended Universe. So far it sounds like a bunch of old man that do not want to see Super hero movies with a deeper script than punch, get punched, fight back!

It started with Man of Steel back in 2013, which critics call divisive, but monetary the movie is the biggest Superman solo grossing movie, now in terms of sold seats Superman 1978 might take the crown, but back in 1978 we didn’t also have piracy on the internet, BluRay/DVD sales, streaming etc. , so let’s just assume that a movie did what it did and then VHS sales were hard to track due to the lack of internet, tracking sites and tools for us mortals to use and find how much it generated after being released on home entertainment. I am sure that someone at Warner’s knows how much it did in VHS sales, but I personally don’t have this info. Basically, coming to the conclusion that both movies did fairly good in their respective times and conditions of release.

Man of Steel finished it’s run at 668 Million USD worldwide and added another 67 Million in DVD sales, that’s it not including the money it made from streaming and TV rights to various giants like Netflix. Now with all that being said, a Rotten Tomatoes score of 55 % is a bit of a head scratcher to me, since this movie has great and complex story, amazing visuals and one of the best musical scores out there for a superhero movie, along with TDK trilogy, Superman 78, Spider-man original trilogy, Batman 89 etc. You can like it or hate it, still the movie launched the DCEU and made many people that laughed at the idea of a Superman movie in 2013, after Superman Returns performed not especially high for WB, watch out for his next movies.

Now Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad the next movies in line to come out from the DCEU were bashed critically by the same RT reviewers, even worse than MOS, again the movies both performed very good in the Box Office, enough so that combined with Wonder Woman, it gave them enough money to go past the critically beloved MCU both domestically and internationally on average gross per movie. Have in mind that Marvel the teacher’s pet and favorite, is now a franchise associated with success on critical and financial terms, where there is turmoil just as much as any studio, directors leave, writers leave, people get replaced in parts without re-boots etc., but lacks the same negative press 24/7.

What I look at today is the more facts versus hear say, facts are that currently, the DCEU is doing the following average numbers per movie domestically $339,513,662 Million and internationally $776.500.000 Million, compared to Marvel’s Cinematic Universe $291,576,450 Million domestic average per movie gross and $743.700.000 Million. So, all said and done, if DC keeps on giving in the same financial aspect, we can expect the average gross per movie to remain in DC’s favor, I don’t see how Justice League doesn’t do 850 M plus or much more ( 1 Billion is the magic number) and I from what we have seen and heard about Aquaman, I think it is safe to say it will be really easy to reach that 800 M mark, which is all it needs for the trend to continue in 5 movies, reaching a good 5 Billion in 6 movies. For comparison, MCU’s first 6 generated around 3.8 Billion and they all were highly praised.

Now here is where things get interesting, we are waiting for a Batman movie by Matt Reeves, who made an Ape franchise profitable and this is something that we have seen lately, where anything non superhero related tanking at the BO, so expect The Batman to be a smash for WB. It’s possible that he gets back to his Billion dollar days as seen previously with Nolan’s last two movies, and as reported WB/DC are looking to do a trilogy. So we might be looking at a 3 Billion franchise there alone, something no Marvel solo character has done so far. Also, coming up is a Suicide Squad 2, a movie which in the hands of a great director like Gavin O'Connor could overperform the first one (made 745 M USD worldwide without China). So with a critically loved sequel, a better script and a great villain, this is another contender for the 800 M + club. Then we have Wonder Woman 2, the first movie is now closing in at 819 M worldwide gross, which we already know the sequel will beat as internationally people didn’t know the character as well as they do other properties from the 90s. We know superheroes can move pass 400 M USD worldwide once they are established to the local audience, so with WW2, i personally expect a 850 M + worldwide gross or more.

Then we have the Flash movie that will feature a Flashpoint story, and probably will feature some additional characters like Wonder Woman and others, so you know with the popularity of the TV show we are in for a winner here, another possible 800 M + movie is a no brainer. Batgirl by Joss, I would say, based on female lead action movies resurgence and adding the fact that DCEU fans will turn up to see it, it’s possible that this will be a 600 M + movie or least have this to be its finish number worldwide. Joker origin movie with Martin S. producing, that could be huge, depending on who they cast and the look and feel of the movie, Nightwing is another movie that by associating itself with the Bat world is a 650 M + optionally, Gotham City Sirens with a brand new Catwoman another one that can easily do 650 M +. Black Adam and Shazam, based on the fact one has the Rock and the other will be a more fun kid oriented flick, both can overperform, but at their lowest we are looking at 600 M +, then we have a Green Lantern Corps movie, which if done right can be a contender for those upper 800-900 M + BO numbers, if done right! So, with the DCEU ranking in good money, and possible sequels for Justice League and Batman, Wonder Woman fighting for that billion spot, I am definitely not worried for them.

On the other hand, Marvel are still protected by the fake news media, and their whole YouTube movie talk family, taking it easy on all their movies by default. But facts are Spider-man Homecoming (who’s profit went to Sony not Disney just FYI) is considered a success, but all I see is a Spider-man movie featuring the biggest seller in the Marvel family Iron Man that is still behind Spider-man 3 which was terrible! Also let’s not forget that Spider-man’s IP (Intellectual Property -all rights to merch and games etc.) is 3 times more valuable than Superman and Batman combined, so when MCU fans attack Batman V Superman for underperforming at 832 Million, then considering popularity, a single Spider-man movie should be easily a 1.5 + Billion dollar movie following that logic right?

I see Inhumans (already cancelled by ABC for a 2nd season) and Iron Fist holding the records for lowest rated superhero shows and movies with 7% and 17 % and I see a Defenders show in Netflix that didn’t perform better than any of the solo stuff on Netflix in terms of streaming numbers. Also, all MCU movies featuring the Avengers like: Marvel’s the Avengers, Age of Ultron and Civil War have performed with a 100 Million or more less in the BO over time, so if Infinity War doesn’t manage to rake in more than the original movie back in 2012, then the budget of the movie will kill it financially. People try to compare it to how Star Wars The Force Awakens performed in the BO* (BO- Box office), but that movie was 40 years in the making since the first original hit cinemas in 1977, and no one considers the prequels (episode 1 to 3) as successful and they didn’t really feature the original cast. So with that being said, with MCU giving people 2-3 movies per year, I think their audience has been solid but, not really taking them past a billion very often, so lets say this movie is a bigger event that The Avengers back in 2012, should be able to make 1.6-1.8 Billion right? Well, the only thing we haven’t seen from them is a full cast assembly and a good villain, the first is promised, the second is very doubtful for now. Anyway, I don’t think Infinity War will win general audience, with a plot about magic stones as much as MCU fans think, and I don’t think a pink giant will be a villain that will have regular movie goers running to the cinema, but it might catch up to the original, or do a “Iron Man 3” numbers 1.3 B USD. It is not easy doing Avatar or Star Wars numbers, Avatar at the time it came out, had a first ever 3D movie experience feel to it, not a lot of people went because they like sci fi as much, but more or less to see an event, this feel is now gone and I don’t expect the follow ups to score this pay day again.

You have each individual star in that movie from the entire MCU line up, plus additional actors for villains and supporting cast showing up, and we know RDJR charges a minimum of 15 M just to show up, not mentioning the backend, then we have Chris Evans who might have gotten 300,000 USD for the first Captain America movie, but since Winter Soldier I doubt that he gets paid even close to that number, he is getting  around the 10 Million for sure, and you can assume Scarlet, Mark, Chris H. etc., are not far away as numbers, so a movie that is spending close to 200 + Million on salaries and another 200 M on the movie itself or more, should be aiming for a 1.6 B at least.

This year Marvel escaped the long stick of the critics, since they all love them so much, but we know GOTG Vol 2 was just not good at all, Spider-man was not the best movie of the franchise, it managed to save itself with the MCU origin story and Iron Man crammed in it, but was pretty basic Spider-man storytelling and Thor 3 is up with a movie advertising itself as a Thor vs Hulk scenario, which from the trailers we already know, will not happen for more than 10 minutes.

So while you little bloggers point to the downfall of DCEU and call it as such, all i see is its rise and the decrease in attention for MCU movies slowly and effectively by general audiences, even FOX are doing more interesting things with X Force, New Mutants and Deadpool 2. Even with critics pretending that movies coming from the MCU in the style and quality of the Incredible Hulk, Thor 2, Iron Man 2, Hulk (which is only referred to as non MCU, but actually continues the story in TIH as it left off with different actors), Ant-man and other super basic movies that have 0 re-watch appeal, I can tell, that if Marvel/Disney don’t start putting 110 % effort in their solo movies and stop relying on their team up’s to carry water for their other movies, they will lose the box office very soon. Not to mention that Avengers 3 and 4 have 1 year time in between them and will most likely leave audiences waiting for the full conclusion, which might leave some people pissed off.

All in all, they might perform good, considering it will be an all-out war and someone in the MCU might die for real this time, and I don’t mind if they perform good, not at all. Still I just don’t see how people would come and see your movies for over 10 years when you don’t evolve with them (your audience). Most of the fans of the MCU are young guys (of course not only, it’s all ages and genders, but they do have a lot of kids as fans as well) and they haven’t stopped growing, just because Marvel has at some point. When they reach that 25 + age range, these films will lose some of their appeal to them.

See you in all in cinemas across the world on November 17th for the first ever DC shared universe event that has the entire League united!

Geek on!