Last night the guys at Midnight’s Edge had me on for one of their live shows. I also did a recording for the regular show.
Marvel
The Wilk Report – 22 July 2018
Tom, Larry, and I discuss a range of topics from cartoon reboots, demolition versus reconstruction, James Gunn, Teen Titans, and much more.
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DC Jumps the Shark, Sean “Black-Panther-Critic Combs”, and Castle Rock
You have to hand it to DC-Warner Bros. Even though their half-arsed cinematic universe is has tanked, they’re still hell bent on throwing good money after bad with their announcement, as reported on polygon.com, of movies coming up over the next couple of years.
Upcoming entries in the failed ‘DC Extended Universe’ include this year’s Aquaman; 2019’s Shazam! and Wonder Woman 1984; in either 2019 or 2020, an as-yet-untitled Joker origin movie; and Cyborg, Green Lantern Corps, and Suicide Squad 2 in 2020. Other potential movies include Batgirl and Flashpoint (based on The Flash).
The problem with this is that, with the dismal performance thus far of Warner Bros.’ comic book movies since the end of the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight trilogy, no one is really asking for any of these except perhaps for the Wonder Woman sequel. Silly comparisons of the Shazam costume to the Batman costume notwithstanding, there’s really not much talk from comic fans or moviegoers in general to indicate a demand needing to be fulfilled.
That’s not stopping DC and Warner Bros., though, as they roll out their television trailer for a rebooted Superman comic under Brian Michael Bendis. With comics in serious decline in large part because of craptastic writing and seemingly endless comicversal reboots every couple of years, I won’t hold my breath until I see positive results that last. That said, DC at least listens to fan criticism and takes corrective action when it fouls up, whereas Marvel basically tells readers to f*** off. I guess we’ll be waiting a few decades for before we can finally see the awful One More Day storyline undone. Or maybe not. It seems that Marvel might finally be coming to its senses. We’ll see.
Speaking of Marvel, Sean Combs is talking smack about Marvel’s Black Panther, calling it a “cruel experiment” that isn’t the game-changer the media has hyped it as.
“‘Black Panther’ was a cruel experiment because we live in 2018,” Diddy said, “and it’s the first time that the film industry gave us a fair playing field on a worldwide blockbuster, and the hundreds of millions it takes to make it.”
Diddy views “Black Panther” more as a small baby step to inclusion than an outright game-changer. He told Variety that all industries have the same issue of letting black men and women hold top-level positions, even when black employees have been able to make their respective companies millions of dollars. For this reason, the billion-dollar success of “Black Panther” isn’t enough of a sign to Diddy that Hollywood is on its way to major change.
“For all the billions of dollars that these black executives have been able to make them, [there’s still hesitation] to put them in the top-level positions,” Diddy said of industries at large. “They’ll go and they’ll recruit cats from overseas. It makes sense to give [executives of color] a chance and embrace the evolution, instead of it being that we can only make it to president, senior VP. … There’s no black CEO of a major record company. That’s just as bad as the fact that there are no [black] majority owners in the NFL. That’s what really motivates me.”
Diddy continued by saying the success of “Black Panther” did not surprise him. He maintained that when black creators are given the proper resources in any industry, they always “over-deliver.”
“You can’t do anything without that money, without resources,” Diddy told Variety. “But when we do get the resources, we over-deliver. When Adidas invests in Kanye and it’s done properly, you have the right results. When Live Nation invests in artists and puts them in arenas the same way U2 would be, you have the right results. ‘Black Panther,’ ‘Black-ish,’ fashion; it’s all about access. If you’re blocked out of the resources, you can’t compete. And that’s my whole thing — to be able to come and compete.”
Actually, that’s pretty fair. It does remain to be seen if the success of Black Panther will lead to more opportunities for writers, directors, producers, and actors of color.
Finally, streaming service Hulu is coming out with a new series called Castle Rock, based on the fictional Maine town setting for many of Stephen King’s novels and short stories.
Andre Holland, of “The Knick” and “Moonlight,” plays Henry Deaver, an attorney who had left Castle Rock. He returns after becoming embroiled in the case of a young man (Bill Skarsgard) found being kept prisoner, seemingly outside the bounds of the law, within a secret chamber in the local penitentiary. (It’s the Shawshank State Prison, naturally.) The lawyer’s past in Castle Rock precedes him; just about everyone he meets seems to recall an infamous incident that resulted in the death of Deaver’s father when Deaver was just a child.
I have to say I’m on the fence regarding this series. On the one hand, it’s based on Stephen King’s work, and King has a well deserved reputation as a fantastic writer. On the other hand, it’s based on Stephen King’s work, and the visual media adapted from it over the decades has been hit-or-miss.
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