The Four Color Media Monitor

Something I'd wanted to address before, but only now am I getting around to it, is the kind of Batman stories the pretentious filmmaker James Gunn considers genius. Movieweb gave the story of what Gunn considers his favorite Masked Manhunter tales and writers:

As Gunn explained, although he has “so many favorites” he is able to narrow it down to three particular iterations of Batman that have really stuck with him, and could be influential for the character’s upcoming appearance in The Bold and the Brave. Gunn’s choices were Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween, Grant Morrison’s entire Batman run, and One Bad Day: The Riddler by Tom King and Mitch Gerads.

Wow, not a single bit of praise for Denny O'Neil or even Steve Englehart, huh? If that's all Gunn can think of, that's all one needs to know his upcoming movie projects will be pretentious. (Also, notice how the words Brave & Bold have been reversed from how the official title of the 1955-83 series was actuall spelled out? How peculiar they put it that way.) The latter example is particularly telling, seeing how King's already spent the last several years alienating audiences with his phony metaphors for trauma exploration.

Everyone has their favorite tales of the Dark Knight of Gotham City, and while there are still many who adore the Golden Age of DC, it is hard to deny that the beauty of the artwork in more modern comics elevates the stories to another level from the very simple and linear early years of comic books. Of Gunn’s selection, the earliest is The Long Halloween, which ran from 1996 to 1997 in a 13-issue story and was later collected in many omnibus editions. Being set just after Batman: Year One by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, the story is one that has been adapted into an animated movie and also partly inspired last year’s The Batman.

Interesting he doesn't cite Miller's stories as favorites, and it wouldn't surprise me if very few of O'Neil's stories ever got adapted to animation by contrast. No doubt, Loeb's TV and film connections are what got this story adapted in part, but the guy's writing is so otherwise devoid of real substance, I just don't understand what these modern charlatans of moviedom see in them.

While Superman: Legacy is the first of Gunn’s new DCU movies to hit the big screen, not far behind it is The Bold and the Brave, which will introduce another new Batman, but will also tell a much different story to other iterations of the character that have been seen in the past. What is interesting is that one of Gunn’s favorite Batman comics is written by Grant Morrison, whose Batman and Son arc is expected to heavily feature in the new DCU’s Batman’s story.

So overrated Morrison - not O'Neil or Englehart - is the wellspring for making a new movie adaptation. Again, we have a classic case of turning to the easy choices, not the hard ones. It's insulting in the extreme how far better writers of the past are being rejected for the sake of overrated writers of the present.

This is decidedly enough to ensure I'll be discouraged from watching whatever adaptations Gunn has planned, and it's regrettable how live action adaptations have only served to diminish the impact animation could do better at providing.

Update: and lest we forget, Gunn's past online behavior was offensive, can't be overlooked, and what he said still casts a dark shadow over the proceedings of his upcoming movies.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, golden calf of villainy, moonbat writers, msm propaganda