Merin's Blog

A Reply to "Means and Ends"

(Fri 03/30/2007 04:00pm)
or “This Isn't About Vigilantes”

OVERVIEW

It is my intention to summarily respond to Kurt Amacker's views on Tony Stark's actions during Civil War and the morality of negative acts perpetrated by comic-book characters as a whole. In doing so I will touch on Stark's motivations and justifications, on several pertinent philosophical views of morality, and a look at comic-book super-heroism and vigilantism. This essay will not address the specific scenarios he puts forth save in passing or reference, as I plan to email Kurt my direct response to those thought experiments.

It feels that Kurt is implying, and it can be further inferred by his liking of Punisher, that the ends can justify the means. It isn't clear whether he is saying that the ends always justify the means, but his given examples seems to be leaning to prove this is a valid assumption even if the ends are not what was intended. He also buys into Marvel feeding us that Tony Stark is a futurist and that Reed Richards can predict outcomes simply by math. The choice of language and slants in description seem to strongly indicate that he sides with this kind of consequentialistic thinking. Kurt also puts to his readers the mental exercises of placing themselves in the emotional situations of certain heroes after certain events. Overall it is a presentation of Marvel's current trend in comics with Civil War, slanting to favor the direction things are taking while looking at the last 50 + years of super-hero comics as “outdated” - my interpretation, not necessarily his actual intention. He has in the past, however, mentioned that “as we grow up” we are “no longer satisfied” with costumed crime-fighters doing what they do with no legal ramifications.

TONY STARK

Tony Stark says he is a Futurist, and that means what? By his definition he is someone who sees what people will need in the future. That is a definition I'm not aware of nor that I think actual futurists or those who believe in futurism would be happy with. At best he seems to be implying that he is a Predictive Futurist (a statistical forecaster of probable events though study of anticipated choices determined by ongoing choices) though really he feels much more like an Agenda-Driven Futurist (someone who works to create a preferred reality based on what he perceives to be probable indicators of potential activators.) Or perhaps he simply thinks he is a futurologist (someone who's occupation is the prediction of future developments) – yes, these all mean somewhat different things. In any event, despite what he appears to be, what he states he is able to do, and what Reed Richards claims to be able to do with the”science” he himself invented based on an idea in an Asimov novel (psychohistory), is predict the future exactly. Richard caveats that through his math (psychohistory) he can only predict large groups of people (billions), but if he finished the definition of Asimov's psychohistory that it had to be for people who remained ignorant of analysis. The point being that Stark and Richards believe they have prophesied horrendously tragic disasters that can only be averted by all super-powered beings working for Tony Stark (for the government through SHIELD, ostensibly, but in reality Stark believes he is the only one capable of making sure the heroes do the right thing or are kept safe or blah blah blah, but he is the only one. The chosen one. The self-appointed chosen one. Classic case of a Christ complex.)

So what is Futurism? Well, that's hard to define specifically. In general, it is the idea that you can figure out what will happen based on observation and prediction, usually by looking to the past at trends and directions and then statistically trying to pick the most likely direction things will head towards. There are think tanks created for this sort of thing, and some businesses employ futurists to help make decisions on what the company should plan for. This used to be a really big thing, starting around the 40's to 50's, pioneered by science fiction writers and philosophers more than actual scientists. It spread to various disciplines and is now used to try and determine global trends, manage future risks, and help minimize potential losses by considering what has come to be known as “worst case scenarios.” Futurism is on the wane and is largely out of favor, but that's to be covered shortly.

Tony Stark is not much of a real Futurist, however. He could be considered a technical innovator, or an engineer who pushes the envelope, or other such terms or phrases that praise someone who invents and designs things that are considered “ahead of their time.” No, he's not a Futurist, especially looking at Civil War and his “reasons” for needing this huge super-hero group he pushed for through the retconning history of Illuminati. Futurists hedge their bets, figuring their predictions along the lines of looking at several probable outcomes and then what is considered a wild card, or low probability but high impact event. They use these sets of predictions to help a company or government or individual to consider various courses they could take, taking particular care to avoid or plan on being prepared for really bad outcomes of their best efforts, with a positive outcome the desired result. Tony is no Futurist because he predicted exactly what he caused by seeking to avoid what he predicted, and then had negative effects that he failed to foresee. He was as useful as the Oracle at Delphi was to Oedipus, and like that father-beating (worst slur in ancient Greece) mother-loving (cleaned up worst slur of modern age) accursed King, Tony has only caused the very terrible outcome he sought to avoid. I still await his gouging out of his eyes and self-imposed exile – of course, grinding this analogy into the ground, he's just solved the riddle of the Sphinx after killing his father though I think we've yet to see his mother hang herself.

But let's be honest here – and this is especially from someone who is a believer in the scientific method and disbeliever in all things supernatural and pseudo-scientific – Futurism is, at best, metaphysical itself despite what some think-tanks would want you to believe. Don't believe me? Try this article from Wired - http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/view.html?pg=1 – or even this rebuttal from the IFTF - http://future.iftf.org/2003/11/thoughts_on_fut.html – where the futurist organization defending the usefulness of futurism shows, in his arguments, why Tony Stark is full of crap. At its very best futurists simply try to consider likely outcomes and the worst possible outcome, then advise on planning accordingly. This is not a specific science – this is common sense, and I think Sun Tzu would be surprised that many hundreds of years after his death we think we've found “something new under the sun.”* Like psychohistory, this whole concept is in direct opposition to what is understood about quantum mechanics – in short, determinism was discarded as a concept by science in the mid-20th century. As you move closer to the speed of light, or down into the sub-atomic sizes, predictability becomes probability – there's this thought experiment with a cat, a box, and a radioactive atom that would take longer than this blog will be to explain. Long story short, you cannot definitely predict future outcomes, only probabilities, and while Richards mentions this in his explanations Stark acts as if his views are absolute authority.

What Tony really should be called is a fascist. It is important to understand what fascism is first. Dictionary.com says “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism” while American Heritage says “a system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism .” Some believe that fascism was the state controlled by the corporations – wouldn't businessman Stark sure like this now? However you slice it, fascism is strong authoritative control of a powerful state over dominated masses and oppressed minorities. Does that describe Stark? You know some symptoms of a fascist state? How about apprehension of people without warrants or trial and immediate incarceration? What do you think of pointing to a group as a scapegoat for all problems and using a movement against said scapegoat to gain personal power? Could the creation of huge groups of special enforcement agents to deal with subversive elements be a sign?

One definition of fascism is “dominated by a dictator, who usually possesses a magnetic personality, wears a showy uniform, and rallies his followers by mass parades; appeals to strident nationalism; and promotes suspicion or hatred of both foreigners and “impure” people within his own nation.” Dictator (I mean Director of SHIELD and de factor leader of all American super-beings)? Check. Magnetic personality (including optional magnetic repulsor rays)? Check. Showy uniform (again, needs a hooded cape like Doom)? Check. Rallies with mass parades (well, press conferences and 50 States initiative and such)? Check. Appeals to strident nationalism (protecting the whole of heroing community and the country)? Check. Promotes suspicion of both foreigners and “impure” people within own nation (Atlanteans and vigilantes who won't register)? Check. Welcome, Tony Stark, you are the comic-book version of a super-powered Mussolini! The fact that he does most of this by secret proxy and then stands up as if opposed to it all and trying to contain the negatives just makes him a hypocritical, two-faced father-beating mother-lover.
Kurt puts forth that Tony Stark is not a “mustache-twirling, maiden-kidnapping . . . one-dimensional picture of evil with no higher calling than bank robbery.” This is, of course, true. But you know, you can say the same for Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, Genghis Khan or Attila, for Doomsday, Thanos, Darkseid or Mephisto, and I could go on and on. In fact, this is a straw-man argument– I don't think ANYONE EVER was ever remotely claiming that Tony Stark was now Snidely Whiplash. We'll see more fallacies of irrelevance to come.

The fact that Tony wanted to prevent what he saw as an inevitable catastrophe is put forth as the reason that he is not a villain. I will go into detail soon about several philosophical angles to this, but for right now I want to address what is commonly know as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The concept is basically that merely intending to have good results by your actions has no meaning if you don't actually do good acts. You can have noble intentions, but if the results are bad your intentions are meaningless. This is a bit simplistic overall, and will be addressed a bit further with virtue ethics, but the basic concept is fairly sound here. Tony wanted to prevent something horrible, and felt that he needed to do morally reprehensible things in order to do so. Sadly he caused the very thing he sought to prevent, and I'd argue is about to cause even worse to happen but we can lay that aside. He warned of heroes fighting heroes, and the public turning against them. Done and done. Were there tons of deaths – well, not on the scale he and Richards were hyperboling. Give it time (World War Hulk.) The chickens are coming home to roost.

In many incarnations / interpretations of Victor Von Doom and Lex Luthor you also get that altruistic “only I am smart enough to make the world a better place” mentality. Doom in particular has the complex that he is not a villain but really someone who's world dominance plans, selfish though they may be, would be for the best of the world as a whole. Comparing to Luthor, during Our Worlds At War President Luthor knew of the incoming alien invasion, did nothing to warn anyone, and then worked to unite the Army and Earth's heroes to successfully overcome Imperiex – a very similar tactic to Stark engineering a near-war with Atlantis to encourage heroes to register or hiring Titanium Man to attack the capital and fight Spider-Man during hearings about the Super-Hero Registration Act. This is devious manipulation for achieving one's ends, and the ends are what they swore to the other heroes they were trying to prevent. That's not just lying, that's not just double-crossing, that's malicious dereliction of duty. Stark is a wealthy industrialist / inventor like both Doom and Luthor, and a politician now too. These are not ALWAYS evil attributes, but are so corollary that they might as well be.

MORALITY

Kurt refers to Tony Stark as being “ultra-pragmatic.” This is a misuse of the concept of pragmatism, though a common one – the philosophy of pragmatism, as created by Pierce and James, deals with several tenets including the primacy of practice (bridging theory and practice), of science ruling over intuition and introspection, and that while all knowledge is tentative there is no need for absolute skepticism. To be pragmatic is NOT to be coldly clinical and to look at things in a purely mathematical nature – for example, killing one healthy person to use his organs to save five people in need of transplants is not pragmatic, though through inhuman logic it is mathematically correct.

In misconstrued layman's terms, as I am sure Kurt meant, to be pragmatic is to not necessarily follow the philosophy of pragmatism but instead to have a practical point of view – to be mindful of the results and to measure the advantages and disadvantages of courses of action. The sense given here, I believe, is that Tony's actions may seem questionable but they really are just the result of emotionless analysis of the data and choosing the lesser of evils or the action that will do the greater good or some such. There are three possible thought experiments here, and I am going to be borrowing them directly from Richard Dawkins, but for right now we'll just take the extreme example. If a vehicle is heading towards five people about to kill them and an observer could stop the vehicle by pushing a fat person (one who's mass is sufficient) in front of the vehicle and thus saving the five but killing the one, the “practical” answers as Kurt seems to imply is to push the fat person and feel guilty but justified (pragmatic.) This, however, is not a proper use of the word practical (or pragmatic, a synonym, for that matter.) I like the following definition of pragmatic - “Practical, judicious, sensible: refer to good judgment in action, conduct, and the handling of everyday matters. Practical suggests the ability to adopt means to an end or to turn what is at hand to account: to adopt practical measures for settling problems. Judicious implies the possession and use of discreet judgment, discrimination, and balance: a judicious use of one's time. Sensible implies the possession and use of sound reason and shrewd common sense: a sensible suggestion.” I doubt very many people would call deliberately killing one to save five is either judicious or sensible.

There is an older meaning to calling someone pragmatic, however. Used to be that to label a person as pragmatic was to be implying that the person was dogmatic, opinionated and meddlesome. Oh yes, this is Tony Stark. Stark is hardly practical – that would have been to tell the heroes what was going to happen to try and stop it by working together, sharing ideas and concerns, and doing damage control along the way while constantly striving to do the right thing for the right reasons to achieve th most desired end results. It is hardly pragmatic to lie to, manipulate, and cause the death of others. Machiavelli would be ashamed of Tony Stark. Pragmatism is nowhere near the same thing as unfeeling cruelty, inhuman indifference nor unlawful law-enforcement.

To the meat of Ends and Means, now. The philosophy of “the ends justify the means”, falsely attributed to Machiavelli who never said or wrote those words at all, is called consequentialism. This is almost unequivocally tied to utilitarianism, but that's a whole other subject. Consequentialism is the belief that the relative importance of consequences is used to determine the rightness or wrongness of a given action or actions. This takes into consideration many factors, such as what are the end results sought and actually gained, whom do the consequences affect, and what weight, decided by whom, is given to said consequences . The major problems with this moral theory are many, some of which are : there is no guide to what right or wrong actions are as this is not decided by the actions themselves but by the consequences of the actions which themselves are unknownable for certain until the actions have already been committed; that it impersonalizes the actions themselves to the point that the actors are unimportant; and that it ignores those affected by the actions taken despite the fact that there are prior results before the end desired result (one is killed so five can live . . . but one is killed and you cannot stop there.) Finally, the ends desired are not necessarily what will be achieved and as such undertaking immoral acts in hopes of achieving a moral end might just turn out to be taking immoral acts for no good result at all. Morality, I strongly believe, should not start off badly and hope for the best.

Kurt seems to me, at least partially, to be assuming most people share this consequentialist philosophy.

In seemingly direct contrast to consequentialism is deontology. Deontology states, among other things, that a person's behavior can be wrong even if the end results of said behavior are the best, most desirable results. Kant is one of the best known for supporting this philosophy. He stated that we have a duty to perform morally right acts and to avoid performing morally wrong acts. Morally right acts, to him, promoted the status of people as rational, free creatures, and conversely any acts that worked to impede a person's status as said rational, free creature would be morally wrong. John Rawls furthered this concept by putting forth that people have a duty to act according to laws that they would wish for if they themselves were unaware of their own socioeconomic status, meaning that you don't know if you are rich or poor, what race you are, if you are the minority or majority – in the Marvel context, the kind of law you'd want if you were mutant or human, powered or not. Example would be that you would want the government to tax more the very rich and give aid to the very poor because if you didn't know whether you were rich or poor, and as the rich are not really harmed and yet the poor need the help, if rich you'd be merely inconvenienced but if you were poor you'd be aided in a bad situation. In short, you should be moral in your acts regardless of the potential consequences. Clearly this isn't how Maria Hill sees things, nor anymore how Tony Stark does.

Briefly I want to point out a third possibility – the one of virtue ethics. I only bring it up as a comparison to the other two philosophies. Virtue ethics says that it isn't the acts you perform nor their end results, but your intentions that matters. If you meant well, but your actions and the results are tragic, then you were being moral. I think this is clearly, up and up, circular thinking at best and destructive naiveté at worst. However I think this is being shoved into the consequentialistic model of Starks, giving him two whole backings for his disgusting actions. As the results of the SHRA have been more negative than he hoped and his actions were largely negative, Stark's only real way to seem moral is to claim “but I meant well.”

I think, clearly, that all three on some level (some more than others) bear some kernel of truth. If you rescue five people but you did so for fame or because you wanted those people indebted to you, your action wasn't moral. Virtue ethics. If you refuse to lie to a serial killer about where his next victim is hiding, your action wasn't moral. Consequentialsim. If you are trying to save a person who needs a transplant and you do so by allowing a suitable donor to die in a preventable accident, your action wasn't moral. Deontology.

The thought experiments I alluded to earlier are as thus. 1 – A truck is about to hit five people but you can stop it by diverting the truck down another street; 2 – A truck is about to hit five people but you can save them by diverting the truck down another street where only one person is; 3 – A truck is about to hit five people but you can stop the truck by knocking a fat person, who is massive enough to stop the vehicle, in front of the truck. As Immanuel Kant would argue, a rational being should never be used as merely a non-consenting means to an end, even the end of benefiting others. And I agree. So I would argue that in situation one you divert the truck without a second thought and are clearly in the right. In the second you divert the truck and feel guilty, but you didn't directly cause the other person to be killed you were only trying to save the five people and even knowing the truck would be sent on a course for another person isn't changing the act of saving the five. The third, however, if you do stop the truck you are actively killing a human being to save five others by purposefully, directly forcing the fat person to die. In this case, though you saved a greater number of people, you were morally in the wrong as you first action was immoral. If nothing else Tony Stark did, he sure as hell knowingly used people against their will, sacrificed numerous people without their consent to arrive at some desired goal of his. All save the most blatant supporters of consequentialism will admit that with the unforeseen negative results of Stark's actions, his immoral acts no longer even have a positive justifying end result.

Going off on a slightly different track, I'm going to briefly address the idea of justice, as it used to exist and as it tries to exist now. First, ancient world – I'm going to stick with a Greco-Roman slant here. It used to be that justice was a personal matter – if I killed you, your family would seek justice by killing me. Unfortunately, the system of justice and duty as existed created a cycle – my family would now be obligated to kill your family member who killed me. So your brother killed me, and now my son kills your brother. His uncle then kills my son. And so on. Even more than this, a debt of justice could be passed on. So if my brother killed your brother, and my brother fled, you could kill me in retribution. This can seem to somewhat work, as long as you don't cross duty lines – if you killed your brother, there's a problem as does your nephew go after you, and does your father then kill your nephew? What if your mother committed adultery, do you kill her even though it is your duty to protect your parents? Regardless, this system is unsustainable in the long run and is especially dangerous when truth is obscured or unknown and assumptions are made. In short, “an eye for an eye” will eventually cause everyone to be blind, as the cliché goes. We've changed this concept from justice to vengeance, and even more so we try to mold it into justifiable means – if a robber killed your dad you could kill the robber, but you would argue that it was “justifiable” and that the robber's family doesn't have grounds to seek vengeance on you. Rarely, however, does the bereaved family ever consider their lost one's culpability. Fans of the Punisher would justify his actions, despite the fact that he is a psychopathic killer, as he only kills the bad guys.

Greece developed the court system, with jurors who were impartial to the proceedings (supposedly) and therefore when the “community” issued forth punishment, there was no person to seek return justice on as the “community” had spoken on the authority of the whole. The rule of law, arguably, is the better system. But I said “as it tries to exist now” and I meant that – even though we can dispassionately read about trials we can say “the law's the law” when we become emotionally involved, say it was our loved one who was murdered, then many of us will instinctively, due to our grief and rage, resort to the old style of justice – a death for a death. Add to this the “mob rule” outrage at the fairly prevalent belief that the court systems are unreasonably slow and largely ineffectual and that very often judges, juries and officers of the law can be bought, biased or corrupt. This strongly held belief is what leads to the popularization of such characters as the Punisher or Judge Dredd, laws unto themselves who exact the “justice” that court systems seem unable to. Despite this widely held misconception (that the system is too flawed and fails far more often than it succeeds) most still upheld a belief that the rule of law is better than personal systems of vengeance and retribution.

This digression into justice ties directly into the last section.

HEROISM

I'm going to give two definitions, and then I am going to roll from here on out as if those are the only definitions that matter. You might disagree with my definitions, but in the context of what I am doing they are the ones I am using so don't insert your own definitions just to prove that my conclusions are wrong, please. A hero, for my purposes, is “someone who does good deeds, is noble and virtuous, and is a role model or the ideal.” A superhero, following, is in this context “someone who does exceeding good deeds above and beyond what a normal hero would, often due to extraordinary abilities or talents that normal people do not have, and is the superior or ultimate example.” Obviously, by my definitions, Tony Stark is no longer a hero, let alone a superhero. And of course the Punisher is just so much supervillain.

Now I am going to make some sweeping generalizations about the two major super-hero comic book companies, DC and Marvel. Note I said “sweeping” and “generalizations” - there will be many examples from either company that will not fit what I am going to say, but at least (I believe) they represent each companies overall tone. DC is for heroes who are larger than life, many are epitomes or sheer perfection in form. They are often moral absolutes, icons of heroism, and hold themselves to higher standards. DC heroes are loved by the public. Marvel is for the troubled anti-hero and (often wrongfully) persecuted guy who's just trying to take the responsibility that his powers have given him. Some heroes are looked up to, but many are feared. They have many personal problems, connect with the readers on a human level, and often make mistakes.

Now this doesn't make DC and Marvel polar opposites, but they are fundamentally different. I have two examples of this – JLA/Avengers, and Infinite Crisis as compared to Civil War. JLA/Avengers was created by one of my favorite comic-duos of all time, Kurt Busiek and George Perez. Their run on Avengers was one of my favorite comic book runs, and their creation of Thunderbolts has me still occasionally checking out the title even though it has fallen far, far down from what it was. In it you see Captain America viewing the DC universe as if the heroes there must be despots due to the statues of heroes and museums, and how clean and safe everything seems, whereas Superman in the Marvel universe feels the heroes must be doing something very wrong to let their world be darker, more crime ridden and to have many heroes hated. If you take the iconic “anti-heroes” from each universe, arguably Batman on the one side and Punisher on the other, their confrontation shows you exactly how different the tones of each universe are – and I never liked Batman more than when he kicked the crap out of Punisher. Batman uses fear as a weapon, but he doesn't kill and he works with the law. Punisher rarely causes fear in his targets but he does kill and work against the law.

The other example, Infinite Crisis and Civil War, shows how the two different companies face similar themes. Both, arguably, saw sagging sales and figured something must be wrong with how they are presenting their stories / universe. DC took the approach that they had made comic books TOO dark, and the heroes were becoming too morally ambiguous: Batman was paranoid and reactionary, Superman was no longer inspirational, and Wonder Woman was becoming too violent. Using the plot device of Alexander Luthor, Superman of Earth 2 and Superboy of Earth Prime, DC showed someone behind the scenes, believing that only he could set things right, manipulating others and tricking his friends, causing great calamity and destruction, to try and “make things right.” At the end, the DC heroes banded together, came to their senses, and worked together to fix things. The big threat, Superboy, who had caused untold death and destruction, was imprisoned instead of killed. I know the end of IC upset many people, but I don't think it could have been better. Then we have Civil War, where Marvel continues to try to be “hip” to what it sees as “public trends” especially among their readers (New Warriors reality show, for example.) Ignoring comparisons to real world events and politics for the moment, Civil War saw a manufactured “tragedy” (Nitro was given something to enhance his power by someone inside Damage Control; the VILLAIN caused the death and destruction that later got blamed on the HEROES due to SPIN by politicians and media; Tony Stark, stinging from the fact that repeatedly his “peers” refused to see the future he “knew” was coming, set about making SURE that future happened by faking an attack on Congress and orchestrating the assassination attempt of an Atlantean delegate amongst other heinous acts of decpetion and manipulation) which was used by Tony Stark to get the “heroes” restructured into what he thought was best and gave him the power and political will to create the protection force that he “KNOWS” is needed. By the end the heroes were torn apart, there were heroes killed by the supposed “good guys” or “authorities”, we saw laws being mangled and a police state instituted. In short, for my purposes here, DC got brighter, Marvel got darker.

Now, the red herring used for Civil War and by those who tout the concept of “realism” in Marvel comics is vigilantism. Before you disagree with my labeling the argument about vigilantism a distraction, a fallacy of irrelevance, hear me out. Civil War was about a televised act of violence by a super-villain that was turned into a witch-hunt for all beings with powers because the public was suddenly more afraid than ever. This has never really been about super-heroes running around and, without legal sanction or authority, saving people and stopping criminals. No, it hasn't. So please, please, PLEASE stop saying “would you want vigilantes in the real world?” That is NOT what this about. This is about fear. This is about distrust. This is about a populace becoming over-reactionary due to a very televised, very hyped, very focused tragedy being used to activate the lizard brain of people and cause their fear to overwhelm their common decency. Coming back to real-world parallels – Stamford was 9/11; Nitro/the villains are the largely Saudi Arabian militant Islamic fundamentalists; Speedball and the costumed, powered beings are the people of Iraq and Afghanistan; the quickly pushed through SHRA is the quickly pushed through Patriot Act; Captain America is our real world civil liberties, now both killed; Tony Stark, that guy from Damage Control, Reed Richards and others in the Marvel U orchestrating and benefiting from this manufactured problem are the neocon politicians (like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz) and the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about benefitting from a manufactured “culture war” and instigation of real wars for profit.

I will reiterate again – what happened in Civil War was not about stopping vigilantes. It was about power, it was about control, and it was about security. Civil liberties were destroyed, just as the Patriot Act destroyed civil liberties. What Tony Stark sought to do was NOT protect the public from dangerous super-humans but to organize and control the super-humans to (and look back, he says this multiple times) protect them from themselves, to protect the heroes from the public, and to organize them so they could adequately face bigger threats (Kree-Skrull War level threats.) And only he has the vision and the ability to do it. Despite what his closest friends tell him, despite past history to the contrary, Stark KNEW there would be WMD's in Iraq and needed to punish it for its ties to Al Qaeda, if you don't mind the comparison. The threat to the heroes and the public was known, it was to the north, south, east and west of Baghdad. Stark has made himself something of a unitary power, created himself a very large army (who were lied to when they signed up and suddenly find themselves in a very very bad situation), and violently contained resistance and opposition with seizures and trial-less imprisonment. Tony Stark sees himself as a kind of Lincoln, I am sure, keeping the divided hero community together despite the passage of an unliked by necessary law. I see him better as Benedict Arnold, once loyal comrade and very trusted by George Washington (Captain America, if you like) but due to being ignored about several strategic points and overlooked for greater command authority (both Stark and Arnold) he turns treasonous. Unlike REALITY, however, the traitor won and Washington was imprisoned and assassinated.

Go back and read Illuminati again. Stark had this concept, according to Bendis's retconning, of all the super-powered humans on the planet united under one control. No one agreed with him. He continued to alienate his friends and comrades until only Mr. Fascist, the only one so stuck in cold logic and with a body literally able to really stick his head up his posterior, agreed with him about anything anymore. This is Stark's petty belief that ONLY HE IS RIGHT, and his being right is more important than human rights, than democracy, than self-determination, than rule of law. Go back and look at what Stark did. Hiring Titanium Man (an act of treason, paying for a foreign agent to stage an attack on the capital), building prisons for untried people to be held indefinitely (goodbye several centuries of habeas corpus), manipulating the stock markets for huge monetary gain (regardless of what he used the money for) and all but forcing Captain America to resist so Stark could further cement his control and influence, so that he could become the most important, most looked up to, most powerful hero. Someone more cynical than me could see Stark as being jealous of Captain America's popularity and pull with the other heroes. What I do say is that he has a Christ complex – that he feels he is sacrificing himself for a greater good only he can prevent. Maybe he truly believes that, maybe, but then the best I can give him is that he has cracked. Maybe alcohol has destroyed too many of his braincells.

More importantly, go back and look at what caused Stamford. It wasn't Speedball. It wasn't the Reality Show. It wasn't even Namorita fighting Nitro. Nitro did it, on purpose, with outside aid from a businessman seeking profit from destruction. Framing is important, and we need to stop referring to Stamford as “the trouble with vigilantes.” THIS IS NOT ABOUT VIGILANTES. Stamford was a super-villain's fault, his direct action, and not an action forced by those trying to bring him in. The New Warriors, who were anything but rookies (they've been super-heroes for HOW LONG, and two of their members had been Avengers?) were scapegoats even for Marvel itself and as much victims of Stamford as the children in the schoolyard. If you look at the New Warriors mini-series, they were sanctioned. They could legally bring in criminals. The production company of the show even insured the whole town where an “episode” would take place. The fight was recorded so there couldn't be any immoral acts by the heroes. If there was a more responsible way to do this I don't know WHAT IT IS. Government control wouldn't have made things any better – SWAT and National Guardsman trying to apprehend Nitro would have had no difference in Nitro exploding when he did. Oh, and those “rookie troublemakers”? After their first televised mission they were THANKED by the family of a cop who had been injured trying to bring in the villains before the Warriors got there. Again, people of even the Marvel U appreciated their superheroes doing what regular law enforcement could not.

Stamford happened due to a criminal act (9/11 and militant Islamic terrorists upset about US military bases in Saudi Arabia) and the government attacked non-related heroes (secular government and non-terrorist state of Iraq.) It'd be like Pearl Harbor happened, due to a military attack by Japan's government, and the US government decided to crack down on non-military, US citizens of Japanese descent and put them into concentration camps (oh, wait, it did.) The response is disproportionate and not targeting the problem. An adequate government response would have been, I dunno, registering all powered beings who are criminals and tracking them, and creating special government agencies (with powered agents trained and answerable to the government, sure) to combat said powered criminals. What the SHRA does is force all those with powers or who are costumed crimefights to register as government agents of SHIELD or be thrown in prison (arguably heroes who have no powers and no longer wear the costume could just retire, but this isn't an option for those with obvious superhuman abilities.) They could never just hide and retire as Tony Stark said he would out them, and with them outted they would be hunted. Even the Mutant Registration Act didn't go this far.

To be clear – the starting premise, that Stamford was a tragedy caused by untrained rookie superhuman vigilantes, is FALSE. All else that follows is a HUGE fallacy of irrelevance as a result, but this fallacy (the lead up to the SHRA, the law itself, and the fighting and actions after it was passed) unfortunately is what must be dealt with. AGAIN, it is wrong to start from the argument that costumed superheroes are the problem or had anything to do with Stamford – they are the scapegoats, the easy targets for the fear and anger of a traumatized populace. VIGLANTES were not the cause of Stamford. Vigilantism is NOT the cause that Captain America and his heroes were fighting for. Vigilantism was not what Stark, the government, nor the SHRA were fighting against. Stark wants all superheroes under one unified control to be able to better make the world a safer place – he wants militant control of all powers, placing them under the thumb of a government sanctioned agency, or imprisoned. THIS IS NOT ABOUT VIGILANTISM. Stop trying to make it such. It is a straw-man argument - my position (and I'd say that of most people against the SHRA) is not in favor of vigilantism, its NOT ABOUT VIGILANTISM. Vigilantism is a red herring - it serves to distract from the real topic.  Vigilantism is not the issue.

Unitary power, submit or be imprisoned, IS. Being forced into something due to an accident or nature of your birth or face unlimited jail time IS.

And a final major point: this SHRA is NOT a new concept. This is NOT Marvel suddenly trying to deal with things in a new, modern, realistic way. Claremont addressed it in X-Men during the 80's with the Mutant Control Act, and later the passed into law Mutant Registration Act (which, as far as I can tell, is STILL law in the Marvel U USA and look at how well that's protected them from Magneto and such.) Many stories and comics dealt with the government trying to enforce the MRA. WAKE UP TO HISTORY! This concept is, at least, about three decades old. We had government sanctioned teams (Freedom Force) of registered mutants trying to capture unregistered mutants. We had Captain America (granted, not Steve Rogers) trying to apprehend mutants for the MRA. Frak, one of my favorite comics, the original X-Factor series, had the five original X-Men (to Tartarus with Deadly Genesis and it's abhorrent retconning) playing on public fear of mutants and used the MRA to create the mutant hunting organization, X-Factor, as an attempt to subvert the law and actually help mutants they “contained.”

In the 90's there was the first Superhero Registration Act was proposed. The Fantastic Four testified before Congress against it. Reed Richard convinced the lawmakers on the committee considering the SRA that it was an unnecessary and useless act – and his best argument (outside of “how do you define superhuman?”) was that superhumans were largely an effect positive while those who'd be irresponsible with their powers are almost universally supervillains and hence registration wouldn't stop them from breaking the law. And I point to this Reed Richard, the Mr. Fantastic whom I love and believe in, not the Skrull who's replaced him, as being right – the SHRA that has passed in Civil War only punishes the innocent and aids the guilty.

Even Canada in the Marvel U had a Superhuman Registration Act in the 90's. This is NOT new. This is not modern realism. This concept has been explored in Marvel U, repeatedly. The only difference now is WHO IS WRITING, WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THE COMPANY, and EVENTS IN THE REAL WORLD. These aren't new ideas, just different ones recycled and playing off current feelings in the USA.

And it isn't even an original idea from Marvel. DC did it first, paralleling McCarthyism and the Red Scare instead of racial issues for mutants in X-Men. The Justice Society of America disbanded instead of unmasking before the House Un-American Activities Commission. That was the late 70's, folks. (Hmmm . . . the SHRA as compared to McCarthyism, thus further pointing out the Civil War as promoting witch hunts! Where is Arthur Miller with a new version of the Crucible?) To stay in the DCU, let's finally put to rest the concept that we are accepting a “conceit” that super-humans are just allowed to illegally operate as vigilantes – there's something called the Keene Act, which both grants the government the greater powers in imprisoning superhuman criminals than normal criminals AND affirms that superheroes can operate with secret identities. A later Ingersoll Amendment allows, in times of great conflict, for the government to have control over the activity of superhumans (like a draft in times of need.) In Moore's Watchmen alternate universe the Keene Act simply makes vigilantes outside of government control illegal, but that's a dark reality and Moore is always speaking about too much power in government hands and such.

Going back to Busiek for a moment – his Astro City series brilliantly dealt with this superhuman registration very well. This was middle 90's. Winged Victory was the vocal opponent of the act. Of course, this act was the machinations of a malicious actor (wait, how does that make it different than Stark?) and was repealed (ah, there's the difference.) Mark Waid has done it twice fairly recently with Empire and Hunter Killer. But, again, let's just finally, with the excellent example of Busiek, put to rest the notion that the comic-reading public finally needed someone to address the ridiculousness of vigilantism, can we please? IT HAS BEEN DONE, MANY TIMES. You want your dark world with government outlawing costumed heroes, go reread Watchmen and see what a nice place that was.

CONCLUSION

This started as a rebuttal of the points that Kurt Amacker put forth and it will end with me directly addressing them and then putting out my view.

Kurt starts from a standard that seems to be supportive of consequentialism, and posits Tony Stark's motives as altruistic, pragmatic and even noble (for the greater good.) He even seems to accept Stark's claim to being a futurist (as put forth by Marvel) and seems to accept that Stark's vision of the future was inevitable and that his solution was the only one, or at least never calls any of these into account.
Branching from Stark Kurt puts forth three thought experiments, all of which rely on putting the thinker into an emotional, engaged position instead of a rational distanced position, with some unbalanced conditions - all of which will be touched upon in the actual email I submit to Kurt as those are a slightly different issue. In any event, he continues to accept straw-man of the vigilantism argument while also repeating the same misnomer that the tragedy was due to untrained vigilantes and not due to a super-powered criminal (a conspiracy by a criminal and a corporate exec, actually.) Finally Kurt continues to put forth something that is both an argument of incredulity and also a straw-man – the concept that “As we grow older, we can only read about costumed heroes foiling bank robberies and stopping purse snatchers for so long before the inconsistencies bother us.”

I have endeavored to show that consequentialism has its major flaws and should not be defaulted to as the basis for morality. In explaining futurism I have tried to show that Tony Stark, as portrayed in the events dealing with Civil War, is not a futurist and that futurism is not acceptable as science in any case. With many details and points I attempted to refute the claims that Tony Stark was pragmatic or heroic or that his actions were justified. I have strongly tried to point out that vigilantism is not the central issue of Civil War.

And as for that concept of Kurt's, that “as we grow older” blanket statement, there are three major problems with it. It assumes that at least the majority's (of superhero comic book readers) tastes, by a matter of inevitability, change from liking idealistic fantasy towards gritty realism – false; some do; some start out liking gritty realism; some never like gritty realism; and some start liking gritty realism and end up liking idealistic fantasy (I won't pretend to know any statistics on how many of each happen, thought for that last category I'd point to men who become fathers as some who suddenly question the morality of the kind of entertainment they used to enjoy) It simplistically asserts that prior to the Civil War that most stories for superheroes spent their time apprehending common criminals in the most pedestrian and morally clear manner – false; the SHRA is not the first such attempt in superhero comics to address the concept of government regulation of superheroes on even a grand scale (what I see as the intended point of the argument); most of the superhero comics I've read and enjoyed from 30+ years worth of material rarely even show such pedestrian “heroics” as anything more than a side-action; and moral ambivalence in superhero stories, the tough choices and the questionable acts, is as old as the medium itself. Finally, it puts forth that superheroes apprehending criminals is a logical inconsistency – false: most heroes in most comics have some level of authority to do what they seek to (up to the Keene Act in DC and the Avengers often being government agents to the Fantastic Four being called in by local law enforcement and thus being, by law, granted authority); there exists good samaritan laws and citizen's (misnomer – one need not even be the legal citizen of a country to do this) arrest rules for the US (including the explicit rights in at least one state for a person with probable cause to detain another person against their will); and finally (though I dislike using this example) people in reality are quick to back posses and mob rule justice and lynching so if they go so far as to often fall behind support of that level of distasteful “justice” it is NOT a huge mental leap to assume they'd back a superpowered guy stopping a runaway bus or knocking out a bank robber regardless of them having a badge. It's a simplistic and misrepresentative argument that holds little truth to it beyond the concept that some people grow out of believing in ideals even in their fantasy.

It comes down now to how I see things. I am eclectic in my philosophy of life, though I tend to be much more of a deontologist. I think the ends can rarely justify immoral means, to the point that it isn't safe to start from that premise. I know that Civil War is a collection of bad planning, or brilliant planning (depends on your views of the writers and such involved) that has many readers seeing it as something it is not – a story about the dangers of superheroes running around untrained and unsupervised, about vigilantism, due to rookie superheroes accidentally causing a major tragedy. I know that my tastes in comics have moved from “gee-whiz” excitement at the powers to “why don't the villains ever succeed” incredulity about all media showing the good guys always successful to “I like superheroes because they are heroic and moral in ways the real world rarely ever is” enjoyment of the escapist fantasy it truly is.

I know that Tony Stark is a fascist, not a hero. I know that the monstrous actions he took could not be justified even if the perfection he seeks is ever attained, just like even if democracy eventually comes to a stable Iraq and stabilizes the whole Middle East in a century as a result of the Iraq War that the preemptive invasion of Iraq was still illegal and immoral. I know that futurism, beyond simply trying to plan for the best and anticipate the worst, is as “real” as astrology, phrenology and ghost hunting. I know that Stark's heartless, cold, inhuman logic used as reason for his horrible conduct in order to create one unified superhuman fighting force was not pragmatic nor practical but sick, disgusting, immoral and abusive.

I believe that my views on Stark's actions are best described using a comparative situation. After Bruce Wayne recovered from the injuries he received at the hands of Bane and decided to retrain himself to stop Azrael who was standing in as Batman, he had gone to Lady Shiva for a crash course. As Shiva sent endless warriors against Bruce he realized that the only way she'd stop sending more men to fight him was if he would kill one. He resorted to a deadly attack and fell his final opponent without knowing that Nightwing and Robin were watching and believe that Bruce had killed the fighter. Paraphrasing, Robin said “It makes everything you stand for a lie.” and Nightwing said “Killing that guy doesn't make you as bad as the people we put away, it makes you worse!” Now Bruce HADN'T killed his opponent, but the statement stands. Because you KNOW better, especially when you supposedly stand for what is right and good, when you resort to the tactics of your enemy you become worse than the threat you seek to stop. This isn't wishy-washy unrealistic ideals – this is the only way that being a good guy works, the only way that you can be looked to as a protector and a savior. If you use all the same tactics as the criminals or the terrorists you are not the “good guy” fighting a “bad guy”, you are just the other side of a conflict with no moral justification.

I know that bringing up vigilantism is a straw-man argument as it's used to misrepresent what the side opposing the SHRA is saying. It is a red herring – especially bringing up real world vigilantism - as it distracts from the topic at hand. Civil War is not about vigilantism.

Finally, I believe that the SHRA is not only wrong in the reality of the Marvel Universe but it is an unoriginal, hackneyed and poorly executed story idea that has taken the comics into a darker realm that just is not where I want to go for entertainment. By birth or accident people should NOT be forced into a particular lifestyle, especially dangerous government service, especially if resistance means permanent imprisonment. I think even the Mutant Registration Act, which arguably just treated mutants as if they were gun owners, is wrong, but that's a different topic.  And registration and control of superhumans in comics books is pretty old, having been dealt with by multiple companies in multiple story arcs over the last few decades.

If you've managed to read all of this, my hat is off to you.  I very much welcome discussion of this topic!

* the quote is from Ecclesiastes, yes, but the Sun Tzu reference is that he was a brilliant strategist

Looking forward to Hulk's Return!

(Sun 03/25/2007 08:22pm)
I just read the newest Planet Hulk book today, and I'm stoked.

I also read the TPB "Road to Civil War" today, too.

(I was working at the book store and had time to kill.)

I want Namor's prediction to come true so bad.  I want Hulk to come back and really, really ruin Tony's day.

I do feel that Richards is getting off light with Sue.  At least she's saying "Things can never be the same again."  But she's giving Mr. FanFascist another shot.

C'mon big and green, Richards and Stark and Strange (poor Stephen!) slung you to an alien world, and even when you'd made the best of that world, they come along and blow it up on you!

I want two things -

Hulk back on Earth.

and

Hulk SMASH!

Who's with me?

Merin's Definitive Critique of X-Men: The Last Stand

(Wed 03/21/2007 08:48pm)
or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Bomb"

X3 was atrocious.  Let me start with that as my premise.  It isn't simply that I hated the film (I did) or that it moved onto my very small list of films I wished I could get my time and money back from (Lost World and Men In Tights the other two - nope, not even Uwe Boll has me wanting my money back - House of the Dead was a learning experience), but because of what the film should have been and what it actually turned out to be.

I need to come up front and acknowledge a few things before we get going, so you can see where my biases lie.



 I have nothing against Brett Ratner (well, prior to this film which is nowhere near entirely his fault IMO) - I really liked Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2, the only other projects he directed that I've seen
 I am a big X-Men fan.  Not fanatic, but if there was something I could be accused of being a fanatic about it's probably X-Men (or Bioware.)
 My favorite comic book super-hero characters are, in the following order, 1 - Cyclops, 2 - Rogue, 3 - Silver Surfer.
One of my least favorite major comic-book characters is Wolverine, largely due to fan-boy love and vast over-exposure.
Chris Claremont is probably my favorite X-Men writer.
 I loved the first X-Men movie and saw it 4 times in the theater.  There aren't many films I've seen that many times in at the cineplex. (Terminator 2 is about all that comes to mind.)
 I'm a stickler for the "essence" of something being maintained in translation, whether that means a character or a story.
 I'm a stickler for continuity, a "four-letter word" to people like Bendis and Quesada.
 The Phoenix Saga is one of my favorite story-arcs in comics.
 Whedon's "Gifted" storyline is another favorite of mine.



There's obviously a pattern in my biases that is leading to me to not like X3, but I'll ask that you bear with me because I promise you that its not just personal dislike that makes me say that X3 was horrid.  Honestly.  If it was just me not liking the film (like, say, Matrix Revolutions or Magnolia) I'd let it go at me not liking it.

There will be two prongs to my critique.  First I shall go through the personal reasons  I disliked the film.  By personal I mean things that strike against my tastes and seems insulting to things that I like.  Second I will go into reasons why X3 was bad without looking at anything outside the X-Men trilogy itself.  These are criticisms that should make sense to anyone who's only seen the one movie, or at most all three movies.

As a palate cleanser before moving on to the main course, I'll point out what I thought was good in the film.



Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde - well cast and well acted
Shawn Ashmore as Jimmy Olsen! No, that's his brother Aaron- ok, as Iceman then - he's probably IMO one of the best things about X2 and X3

Kelsey Grammar cast as Beast - could have been good in another film
Ben Foster's acting as Warren (I thought he was good, despite the part being poorly written)

That's about it.  On to the critique.

Personal reasons.

The film should have been titled "Wolverine: God of War", "Logan, the Mutant Spartacus" or some such.  He's the leader, he's the uniting force, he's the inspiration, and he's the only one who can stop the Phoenix.  Seems vastly unlike the Logan of the previous films, let alone the comics.  Wolverine is the ultimate loner and the ultimate killer, by his own admission.  This is just one of many drastic character changes.

Cyclops is destroyed, and I do not mean just that he was killed.  Scott Summers would not become so useless for so long, and he would not leave.  It's part of him to be an X-Men, even in the films.  This is a drastic misrepresentation of a character, almost solely for the purpose of having to give the actor no screen time due to his leaving this crapfest for greener pastures (you know, at the time I was very angry with Singer for trying to take his whole crew away from X3 for Superman - now I wish he'd grabbed more of the cast.)  His death is meaningless, and a major plot hole that I'll address in part two.

Rogue is destroyed.  One of the main characters of focus in the first two films, she is relegated to "Bobby's baggage" and "example of why the cure is attractive."  I love Anna Paquin as Rogue, she does a great job - except this film, but that's not her fault.  She was almost written out in the same way as Scott.  My assumption - Halle Berry wanting Storm to be more prominant or she'd walk.

The Morlocks are a joke.  Oh, sorry, Magneto's Omegas.  Whatever.  Why did they make Callisto a cross between Quicksilver and Caliban?  Why did they make so many New X-Men Academy students into 'villains'?  Why did Leech become normal looking?

Xavier's twin brother?  Twin brother?  Argh, I hate Cassandra Nova, and now in the films we have Christopher Nova or some such.  Ugh - why borrow plot ideas from Venture Bros?  Speaking of plots . . .

Pick a damned universe.  Is it the regular Marvel U?  Is it Ultimates?  Is it Claremont's run or Whedon's?  And, while you are at it, pick a single story (or two, MAYBE three) and not seventeen.  We have the Rogue / Iceman / Kitty triangle from Ultimates, the "cure" from Astonishing, the Phoenix from Ultimates, I assume, as its not the Phoenix form 616 reality.  (Heh.  616, the original sign of the devil.  Anyway.)  I know, I know, movies will deviate from their source material . . . but this is ridiculous.  You even had Days of Future Past tossed in there (the Danger Room scenario.)  There's more tossed in there, too.  It's TOO MUCH story for a movie that has remarkably little story to it.

Sporadic cuts.  Meaningless battles.  Endless boring fight scenes.  I am baffled how people found this mindless, soulless action exciting.  Many fights seemed to exist only because they wanted some combat.  Roger Ebert must be getting senile for liking this aspect of the film - to quote, ""I liked the action, I liked the absurdity, I liked the . . . mutant powers, and I especially liked the way it . . . lets them fight it out with the special effects."  (Not quote mining, mind you, but removing irrelevant parts of the quote for brevity's sake - which I just destroyed via this explanation.)

What Singer was going to do.  He had plans for Jean's resurrection that included the White Queen as a major enemy.  I really, really wish we could have seen that film.

Okay, that's not nearly all that I personally hated.  But its an expansive sampling that gets the point across.

On to why X3 was bad on its own, outside of and then inside the context that it is the third installment in a successful and largely admired series.

First lets stick to logic consistent (or, as I'm trying to point out, inconsistant) within the film itself.

The cure.  X-Men as a comic, as a concept, and the first two films - all commentary about racism, prejudice and bigotry wrapped up in super-powered entertainment.  But this film diverts from that formula and instead attempts to make an allegory about mutants being like homosexuals.  Like there's a possible "cure" for this "disease" that the "afflicted" would want.  Ignoring that this is a very, very different parable than almost any other X-Men story I've seen (no, I don't get the same vibe from "Gifted") it is a terrible analogy.  Rogue's inability to touch others is NOTHING like having a different sexual orientation, but she becomes the one in the story who wants to go 'straight'.  Any thinking individual who isn't homophobic should feel disgusted by the comparison, regardless of the fact that the thrust of the film is pro-gay, er, pro-mutant.  Horrible, horrible analogy.

The sheer violence and level of death.  This is a super-hero movie.  This is a movie that is supposed to be at least somewhat family friendly.  And yet here's a higher body count than most slasher flicks.  I'm all for good action sequences, even movies that are almost entirely focused on the action sequences (I loved 300.)  I'm for sacrifice, noble deaths, or even showing the horrors of war (I loved 300.)  But the deaths in this weren't tragic, they weren't poignant (save MAYBE Xavier's, yet who resurrects in the same freaking film anyway), they were for 'shock and awe'.  This is the kind of violence I understand parents not wanting their children to see.

The almost incoherent story.  What is it about?  Is it about Wolverine and Jean?  Is it about Magneto raising an army?  Is it about the government against mutants?  Its it about a cure for mutation?  Is it about Rogue / Bobby / Kitty? (Nope, not that - Rogue doesn't have enough screen time.)  Is it a film celebrating diversity against conformity?  The cuts make it hard to follow, how it jumps around from shallow scene to shallow scene (with exceptions, like Kitty and Bobby), from meaningless random fight sequence to meaningless random fight sequence, I couldn't figure out what point it was trying to make.  Or was it trying to make a point?

Taking the "hero" out of super-hero.  This film wasn't about super-heroes.  Who or what were the X-Men trying to defend or protect?  They didn't save anyone, they didn't defend an ideal - they went off to save / kill one of their own and to fight Magneto, that's it.  Super-heroes do fight super-villains, I know, I like comic books - but usually it isn't "find Magneto and bop him" it's "Magneto's attacking the power plant, protect it and stop him!"  You COULD argue they were trying to protect the cure, or rescue Leech (I think they knew he was there, you'll forgive me as I could only sit through it once), or stop the soldiers from killing Magneto's army . . . but those are excuses.  The X-Men went to stop Jean and Magneto, for no other reason thematically other than they were the "black hats."  I know people are going to disagree with me on this, but I strongly feel that much of this movie's story was tailored around this battles they wanted to show off.  This whole film as a convoluted way to show many mutants with many powers bashing on each other.  You want heroic?  The tragic heroine is killing people and the main hero kills her.  That's heroic!

And now the big one.  The Phoenix.  Here I will stick to what is only inside of this film, not in the other films or in comics in general.  The Phoenix, as presented in X3.  We are told that Professor Xavier had suppressed the Phoenix persona of Jean because the Phoenix was a chaotic entity, that she was a passionate, unrestrained terror.  Follow me here.  She's dangerous and emotionally unstable.  Can't be let to run loose or who knows what havoc she'll cause.  So . . . why does she do nothing unless confronted?  At her house she is just sitting in a chair until attacked.  With Magneto she wanders through trees and stands at his side and says nothing, does nothing.  Only when soldiers try to attack her does she go on a killing spree.  Friends, that's not passionate, nor is that chaotic, nor is that unrestrained.  That's apathetic; that's neutral; that's reactionary.  The only time she uses her power is when she is directly threatened, otherwise she's almost catatonic.
-
There's more.  Her telepathy is off the scale.  Her telekinesis can atomize in a second.  Yet she can be surprised (the two groups converge on her when she wants nothing to do with either of them - unless she is so "apathetic, neutral, and reactionary" that she doesn't care they are coming) and, here's one of my biggest problems with the film, she cannot atomize Wolverine faster than he can heal.  With a wave of her hand she can erase concrete walls and people by the dozens in less than a second, but Wolverine can heal his atoms being torn asunder faster than she can rip them apart.
-
An argument is often made that Jean is fighting back against killing Logan because she has feelings for him.  I disagree that she does, but that's an argument for the next part, and still I can show with reasonable certainty that this doesn't hold water.  Scott was her true love and she killed him without a moment's notice.  Xavier was like a father to her and she erased him unhesitantly (while he was telepathically fighting back.)
-
There's no reason she'd go off with Magneto.  None.  The film gives nothing.  She just does.


Ok, still with me?  Need a break?  Maybe you should go get a bite to eat, watch a show, read a book, take a nap.  At least grab some caffeine.  We're well past the half-way point now, so buck up if you are willing to continue.  And thanks for coming with me this far.

Now on to the second part, looking at X3 as part of a trilogy.  Without going to outside sources (the comics and their stories, novels, previous writers, cartoons, etc.) and just sticking with the films you should still have continuity.  There needs to logical consistency between story-lines and characters.  Even with a change in writers and directors.  Look at the Harry Potter films, they do it just fine!  Superman 1-4, even as bad as the later films got, still were consistent in character and tone and didn't retcon themselves.

X3, in my opinion, shreds its predecessors mercilessly.  Theme (racism to homophobia), tone (heroism and family to mindless violence and divison), and more are changed beyond recognition.  As this is already longer than most will tolerate reading, I'll only pick a few major points and conclude.

Wolverine and Rogue.  The first two movies saw the film through their eyes, a little less so the second one, but the stories were largely about them and their being X-Men.  Wolverine was the loner, the one who kept things real by refusing to just wholeheartedly buy into what Xavier was selling.  He was seeking his past, had an unrequited love for Jean, and refused to set down roots despite caring about the others. By the end of the second film, however, he was part of the team and part of the family, no longer fighting against the connection there.  Rogue was the outsider, the one who was even different from the other mutants.  She was trying to lead as normal a life as possible, was young and couldn't control her powers, and longed for a human connection.  Her crush on Logan was cute, and her developing relationship with Bobby was giving her confidence and strength.
-
Then comes X3.  Wolverine is suddenly the commander, the leader, the inspiration to others.  He's the one criticizing Scott for his lack of commitment.  Yet at the drop of a hat he's forgetting everyone else to run after Jean, saying all he cares about is her, nothing else.  And yet he's back giving orders and others are following his lead.  WTF?!?! Make up your damn minds, writers!  Is he Wolvie from film 1 or film 2?  Does he only care about Jean, or does he care about Rogue and the rest of the team.  Well, obviously not Rogue anymore ("we'll look out for each others") as she runs off and he doesn't give her a flipping second thought - no one but Bobby seems to.
-
Rogue loses all the progress she's made in the last two films because she can't touch Bobby.  Uhm, wasn't she getting control of her powers?  She kissed Bobby without knocking him out in two?  Oh well, forget that, we need her depressed so she can be the poster child for the anti-gay camp, er, I mean cure, the mutant cure!  She is SO weak in the film it makes me ill.

Scott's missing.  I think he's dead, I think the film is STRONGLY implying Jean killed him, but all we REALLY get is the floating glasses.  At the end we get a tombstone, so he must be dead or presumed dead.  But NO ONE mentions him after the lake.  No tears, no eulogy at the end, he's just erased from the film as if unimportant.  Well, for a film that wants you to feel Jean REALLY loves Logan (and I think there's an argument to be made either way for that in X3) and especially for one that has the actor cast as Scott fleeing to stay with a good director, you better erase him.
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The mishandling of Scott's character, the unforgiveably stupid death scene, and the complete lack of concern by ANYONE in the film about his death floors me.

It's pretty well established that Charles and Erik are friends.  Xavier and Magneto.  In the films.  And yet Magneto just lets Jean kill Xavier.  I think this is really out of character for the Magneto of the film.

Storm and Jean are good friends.  We only get a bit of this in X2, but it is established.  In X3 Storm doesn't seem too hurt / upset that Jean is bad (other than that she's a threat) and seems to have no special feelings at the end for her being dead.

The first film the X-Men save the day, and the government probably knows that.  In the second film the X-Men save the day and PROVE IT to the government.  Now it is completely rational that the President and his advisors would still consider mutants, even the X-Men, as a threat.  But the actions of the X-Men at the end of X3?  Sentinels are DEFINITELY in production and I don't think there's a single X-Man really considering how their actions have caused more fear and hatred.  The spirit of what's important about the X-Men as a concept is gone from this film.

Xavier's dream is established in both previous films.  Mutants and humans living together peacefully.  The third film barely acknowledges the dream, then tosses it out the window for "mutant rights" instead.  Equality is not the same thing as getting into fights with others of your kind, the military, and trying to stop a "cure."

The Bobby / Kitty relationship, though one of the few well-acted and fairly decently scripted parts of X3, flies in the face of the previous films.  Bobby doesn't care about Rogue's inability to touch as much as he cares about her.  His flirting with Kitty, while minor, strikes me as at least a little out of character.  It's also a shallow plot device, existing to push Rogue out of the story.

Overall, it feels like X3 is an attempt to erase much of what Singer created.  Like a punishment for him leaving.  It almost certainly is NOT the case, though if they were trying to do so I doubt they could have gone much further without recasting for a complete reboot, and that would have been box office suicide.

Whew, that's enough.  Time to wrap it up!

In conclusion, the reason I think X-Men: The Last Stand is the worst super-hero film, possibly one of the worst films ever, is not because of the actual overall quality of the film.  X3 has good production values, good special effects, great actors, decent acting, not horrible dialog, not an overly convoluted and full of holes plot, and lots of (mindless) action.  No, X3 is so bad because it is bad for the X-Men as a franchise.

In many ways It is like the Chuck Austen run on the books.

It disregards what came before although it wants to say its part of the continuity.  It destroys the hard work of those who came before.  It can't decide what it wants to be.  It came from two critically acclaimed and fan-loved films, being part of a successful and good series, and ruined it about as bad as the Matrix sequels or the Star Wars prequels.  It shat on characters left, right and center. 

It takes the concept of "mindless popcorn" to a new level.  The film reinforces the mainstream belief that super-hero movies are meaningless fluff that even when they try to tackle important real-world topics cannot help but devolve into pointless slugfests and explosions.

I hate this film.  I cannot think of another film that I hate.  I cannot think of much in my life that allows me to use the word hate so much and not feel guilty for having such strong emotions.  I hate this film for making me feel hate.  It is just a film, and I can ignore it (I try to, other than having to bring it up as "the worst super-hero film") and just pretend that X-Men ended at 2.  But I can't help it.  I see the DVD at a rental place or a store and suddenly my day has grown a little bit darker.

Compared to this film, I think Civil War was brilliant.  I enjoyed Bloodrayne more. You get it the level of disgust?

I hope that after reading this (some of you made it this far?  you deserve a medal) that you can at least understand WHY I dislike this film so much.  I may not have persuaded you at all just how bad X3 is, but hopefully from now on you'll at least see what it is that I saw when I watch X-Men: The Last Stand.

Needless negativity and name-calling.

(Mon 03/19/2007 04:49pm)
I can imagine the flaming that will result as of this, but here goes in any case.

What is with the posts that seem to just be excuses for name-calling and belittling?  I understand this is an open forum, and that people are allowed their own opinions, but is a modicum of courtesy and respect too much to ask?

It is okay to dislike a film, even hate it (though maybe that's too strong a word, I find myself using it sometimes (X3)) and to say how much you hate it.  It is okay to dislike an actor or director or writer, to dislike the decisions he or she makes, and to call them out on what you think their motivations are.

But do we have to insult those who like said film?  Is there a need to personally attack and name call that writer?  What is the point of open forum discussions if it will just degenerate into name-calling and bad-mouthing?

Is anyone really impressed when someone calls someone else a derogatory name?  Does that win points for his or her argument?

I'll never understand the acceptance of this.  I get the urge to do this, when one is frustrated, but I don't get the fact that most just let it slip by.

It solves nothing.  It builds nothing.  It proves nothing, except perhaps a lack of creativity or confidence on the part of the one engaging in such attacks.

I fear this will fall on deaf ears for those who need to hear it most.  I am prepared for more of these kinds of assaults to come directed my way.

But I am not willing to sit back and watch the attacks without pointing them out and calling them for what they are - wrong.

Comic Book / TV Show Reviews Requests

(Sat 03/03/2007 01:25pm)
I'd like to do some regular reviews of some comics and / or tv shows that I regularly read / watch, but want to know what others would like to see more.  If you have a preference, just drop a comment on what you'd like me to write about.  It'll help me decide, especially if there's a strong interest in a particular item.  I'm gonna avoid the very popular stuff (Lost, BSG, Heroes, JLA, X-Men, Runaways) as plenty of others have that covered and I can just comment in their reviews.

Some Comics I Read:
Birds of Prey
Brave and the Bold
JSA
Supergirl
Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes
Friday the 13th
Gen13
Nightmare on Elm Street
New X-Men
Battlestar Galactica (current show comic, not old show comic)

Some TV Shows I Watch:
Bones
Smallville
Supernatural


So if you have a preference or desire, let me know in the comments.  I'll probably try doing at least 1 comic and 1 tv show, depending on how much free time I have.