Here’s a post by Hannah Givens from January of 2014. Are Star Wars Characters Interesting? It stands out in my mind as one of the best posts I read during my first few months of blogging, and since most of you probably didn’t see it the first time around, you should give it a look. And here’s a nice Star Wars-themed video I found to go along with it.
The post touched off a conversation on Facebook that spilled back onto the comment thread and possibly onto twitter as well. (Given that this was 18 months ago, details are a little fuzzy.)
If I recall correctly, this conversation marks the point at which I started keeping up with Natacha Guyot and Rose Fischer — both of which are now friends and have contributed mightily to the blog in the last year. Talk about a stroke of good fortune.
…the ones connected to comic books, anyway. And Star Wars. Because, hey, there are Star Wars comics again! And they’re mostly not bad!
I’m hoping for this to be a conversational sort of post, so please feel free to argue with me in comments, and if I missed anything notable, let me know and I’ll pass judgment.
BATMAN V. SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE
I’m on record in any number of places: I don’t think there has been a good Batman movie since the first Tim Burton movie, and yes I’m including those three abominable Ninja Punchy Man Dressed Like a Bat movies that just came out. I have also loathed the last two Superman movies; the last one in particular drove me into such a berserk rage that I left the room halfway through and never came back.
What I am saying is that I may not be the target audience for this product.
Now, that said: I do like the idea that what is setting up Batman’s vendetta against Superman is that he was in Metropolis during the carnage at the end of Super-Strong Alien with Assholes for Parents. I like everything about Batfleck except for his face; he really wants Batman to come off as crazypants angry and I think most of the time he’s hitting somewhere near “Teenager being forced to eat vegetables.” This isn’t making me want to see the movie, in other words, although I might want to see the movie Jesse Eisenberg seems to think he’s in, where he’s playing Lex Jokor. (See what I did there?)
Blech. Cool blech, probably, but blech.
SUICIDE SQUAD
The best thing about this is Amanda Waller, who appears to have been ripped straight from the comics pages, and the line “I threw them in a hole and then threw away the hole.” I also like that even though Will Smith is in this movie you can watch the trailer and not quite catch that Will Smith is in the movie. I have no particular attachment to any of these characters– I don’t even know who a couple of them are– so it’s gonna be difficult to mess them up for me.
And I like Jared Leto’s Joker, at least the few seconds of him we’ve seen. I hold no affection for Heath Ledger’s version– see above– so I’m comparing him with Nicholson, who was fun but wasn’t scary at all. This one has a sort of twitchiness to him that I like a bit. The tattoos are a bit much but I assume he won’t be shirtless for the entire film.
DEADPOOL
As of this morning, I was able to watch this, but the cellphone video on the site I was using is gone already, and while I suspect you’ll still be able to view it if you’re willing to look around hard enough I doubt Gene’O is super interested in Sourcerer getting a DCMA takedown notice, so I’ll leave it to you if you want to look around. Suffice it to say that this movie really is going for an R rating, and while it certainly captures Deadpool perfectly the number of F-words getting tossed around actually felt gratuitous to me by the end of the trailer. If there are hard-R Deadpool comics out there I haven’t read them; my objection is less to the profanity itself (Read my blog! I love profanity!) than to the rather jarring tone shift from every other Marvel movie and every Deadpool comic I’ve ever read.
That said: The cast is clearly having a tremendous amount of fun, particularly Ryan Reynolds, and I suspect Deadpool fans are going to love this.
FANTASTIC FOUR
“Reed. You’re insane.”
“Thanks.”
I haven’t seen either previous Fantastic Four movie. I have twenty longboxes full of comics in the room with me right now and maybe a dozen of them are Fantastic Four comics. I’ve never been a fan of the series.
I am super psyched about this movie for some reason. I’ve always liked the Ultimate version of the FF more than the 616 version, so making the Four a bit younger doesn’t bother me any. Doom isn’t the typical guy in armor, but I like the look. And I love everything about the Thing other than his voice and his lack of pants. This movie is getting greeted with a lot of skepticism that I’m not certain it deserves; I think if it hadn’t been for the poor reception the two previous films got, people would be more excited about it. I certainly am.
But put some pants on the Thing, ferchrissakes.
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS
Not a trailer, I know, but close enough. And if you can watch this without a catch in your throat by the end of it you and I cannot be friends.
I have been skeptical about this “Episode Seven” business. Quite skeptical.
We’re working on building a regular Star Wars theme for Saturdays here — we’ve done several Star Wars Saturday posts over the past few weeks. No post of our own today, so check out this fine post by Johnamarie Macias of The Wookie Gunner.
In fact, online is how a lot fans become friends, couples, and even parents themselves. Take MakingStarWars.net’s Jason and Amanda Ward, for example. They initially became friends through a Star Wars forum in 2003, and today, they’re loving parents of two children, showering them with all things Star Wars. They’re the perfect example of how Star Wars transcends distance, and later on, connects through the generations–like me and my mom.
Her first experience with Star Wars was on the big screen in the late 70s, and even though she didn’t become a hardcord fan, it made an impression long enough to affect me when I eventually came into the picture.
“The reason I said yes without thinking–without questioning–it’s because as children grow older, they tend to have and develop their own relationships and their own lives,” my mom said during the fan question portion of one of our…
I addressed readers directly often during the first year this blog was posting. I’ve done that less and less as our contributor base has grown, because one of my goals for this year was to make Sourcerer a seamless pop culture blog. Since I’ve been scarce around here for the last month, we’ve missed some days, and we’ve had no afternoon photos since May, here’s a quick run-down so you’ll know what to expect from me, and from this blog, through the fall.
Arrr, mateys!
The main thing you can expect is more written posts from me, and more personal engagement on the comment threads. The blog has suffered from my absence this month, and that’s not surprising. I’ve seen it happen before both here and at Part Time Monster. It’s not a cause for concern — periodic absences are a part of blogging, and I’m sure we’ll do better once I’m able to give the blog more attention.
July 4 is a week away. That’s my target date for the slowdown. Doesn’t mean we’re going away, and it’s my goal to update this blog daily year-round, but our schedule during the second half of the year is lighter, and includes more photoblogging, video posts, and reblogs.
Our Silly Rabbit (Monday) and Penny Dreadful (Tuesday) features will finish their runs in the next few weeks. I’m not sure what we’ll do on those days during late July and early August. We’ll continue to have an interview on the first Monday of every month, and I’m considering increasing the frequency of those, because they’re fun and popular.
Comics on Wednesdays is still the top priority.
Throwback Thursdays will continue until I run out of Tolkien posts, so at least through mid-August.
We’ve moved the Weekend Music back to Fridays. On weeks when we don’t have anything else to post on Saturdays, Weekend Music will run on Saturday mornings and Friday will be an off-day.
Star Wars Saturdays, our newest feature, are as high on my list of priorities as comics. I’d like to build this feature into a consistent staple here and write a few of them myself, but that will take some time, and we may miss a few weekends in the next month or two.
Sundays, typically, are either an off day or the day I post social media-oriented things like quarterly stats, Twitter geekery, etc.
We have space for another contributor or two. I’m not going all-out with recruitment, nor am I particularly concerned about a lack of content. But if you’re interested, read our For Contributors page.
Basically, the way I handle contributions is to have people who want to contribute pitch ideas, then brainstorm and tweak them together until we find something that fits. I’ve accepted everything from one-shot guest posts up to long weekly runs in the past, so frequency isn’t an issue as long as we know you well enough to grant you author access to the dashboard and you have the ability to deliver finished posts which include at least one shareable image.
This is where we are. A big thanks to all the friends and contributors who have kept the content flowing during my recent troubles. Once I’m satisfied that I’ve re-established a sufficient personal presence here, I’m back to Twitter and to a few social blogging activities that fell off my radar in June.
