My battle against Thor is less than epic
There are battles brewing on the home front. A storm is imminent. Forces are building and it feels like I am headed toward an Infinity War. Or a Dawn of Justice. Or a Ragnarok (wait — what is a Ragnarok, anyway?).
Here’s my problem. My wife loves the superhero movies. She can’t get enough of those Avengers or X-Men or Bat guys or Spider dudes. She seems to have a certain special thing for Thor.
Stupid Thor. He was never an A-list superhero. He never had a cartoon or a cereal or an action figure. And now, all of a sudden, the guy is a big star and everyone in the world knows what a Ragnarok is except me because I haven’t seen Thor’s latest movie.
Oh, my wife has seen it. And she’s seen the newest “Spider-Man” and “Wonder Woman” and will no doubt soon catch “Justice League,” the newest superhero flick to hit the Cineplex until the next one lands any day now. She tried to get me to “Justice League” last Sunday. It was a dastardly sneak attack. There I was just lounging and chilling on a Sunday morning and Ka-Pow! Kerrrang! She hit me with no warning. “Let’s go see ‘Justice League’!”
I tried to fend her off with Rotten Tomatoes and other reviews that all seem to say the same thing: “Justice League” is not a very good movie. And I don’t really love the idea of spending $50 or more on tickets, popcorn, five gallons of pop, Goobers and KitKats to see a bad movie when I could just stay home and watch bad movies on Netflix.
And I’m a superhero guy. I always loved the superheroes. When I was a kid, we played Batman and Robin all the time. We fought over who would be Batman and who would be Robin. I usually won because we had a really good blue towel that I would use as a cape. No one had a better Batman towel cape so I was almost always Batman.
I played with superhero toys, I read superhero comics and I watched superhero cartoons. I have a rich background in the superhero world.
In 1989, “Batman” came to the big screen. This was monumental. It was the first live action Batman since the old TV show — which was goofy and lame and I still loved it. But “Batman,” with Michael Keaton (in a black suit!) and Jack Nicholson and a soundtrack by Prince was huge. My friends and I banded together to line up for tickets on opening night. We packed the theatre, we cheered, we loved it; we went back again and again. It was awesome.
Since then, Hollywood has delivered about 8,000 more superhero movies. I used to see them all and I had to see them on the big screen with the big sound delivering the big action. But I’m tired. I can’t keep up. The superhero movies are coming out faster than a … than a … hmmm. I can’t come up with a good metaphor for speed. They’re coming out fast, though. And there are TV shows, too — lots of them.
My wife and a few other friends of mine still try to see all the superhero flicks in theatres. I am so far behind that I have just stopped caring. For example, “Thor: Ragnarok.” I’m sure it’s a fine film. I don’t know what a Ragnarok is and I don’t feel like spending two hours finding out. I do know that Thor is part of the Avengers and those guys are trying to save the world from something but I don’t know what. Josh Brolin, I think.
“Justice League” was one of my favourite cartoons as a kid but back then it was called “Super Friends.” I would probably watch the new movie version but I’m not rushing out to spend money on it. There are lots of movies on DVD and Netflix now featuring people in tights or capes or masks and whatnot. I can catch up on those. In fact, there are so many of these movies out now that I could watch the same one more than once and not really know the difference. There’s a hero, there’s a villain. Life is great, life is really bad, fighting ensues, all is well, the end, roll credits.
But wait! Something else the superhero movies have done is they all add scenes during the closing credits. So you can’t leave to beat the washroom line or the traffic. You have to watch the credits for the bonus scene that tells you … uh oh, a sequel is coming.