Willnac The Magnificent

I was actually all set to just skip any updates today and just take the weekend off yet here I am. The reason I am here is, of course, Big Hollywood, the right wing show business group blog that Andrew Breitbart and his cohorts probably think of as an online version of Galt's Gulch.

Anyway, the reason I'm breaking my rule--well, not a rule, but a strongly recommended guideline--against doing more than one Big Hollywood article per week and not sitting comfortably in the living room watching last night's Lost is because of this gem that dared to show its face in my Google Reader. It's written by comic book writer Bill Willingham. Willingham has already annoyed me in previous BH writings, which was why I couldn't just let this one slide, like when he got upset because a black man dared to suggest that there just might still be a smidge of racism left in America. Willingham's response can pretty much be summed up as, "Nope, not even a smidge, unless you're talking about racism against white heterosexuals in which case there's boatloads."

Isn't much of that in today's offering. Instead of complaints about the loss of White Male Privilege, what we have today is simply an example of something that, if such a thing existed, could have been the cover story of No Shit, Sherlock! Magazine. Basically, Willingham uses his years of professional experience to join the Guys Who Say Dumb Things About The Watchmen Club. Judged against his previous work, it's not especially offensive. It was just so mind bogglingly trite, stupid and boring that, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't let it go. Someone at BH asked Willingham to make some predictions and he responded by showing that they could have saved their money by instead asking any commenter from Harry Knowles' message boards as they could have said exactly the same things.

1) It will be quite successful, financially, and will not, as many have predicted, suffer a sudden drop-off once the hardest of the hard core geek contingent all see it on opening weekend. This is just a gut feeling. I have no evidence or inside information to support it.

Wow, it's just amazing how he's predicting that a major, high concept studio released action film with huge advance favorability ratings and buttloads of already sold out screenings that's coming out on a weekend in which it has no real competition would make money.

2) This success will inspire those who currently run Hollywood to do other “Watchmen”-like projects, only to be dismayed when they discover there aren’t any similar properties available.

Hey, that's even better. Willingham is predicting that the movie industry whose products roughly round out to 1/3 sequels, 1/3 remakes and the remaining 1/3 being ripoffs of those sequels and remakes would see a hugely successful film and try to make something just like it. And...um...I'm sorry, there aren't any similar properties available? In the time it took me to write that sentence, a dozen graphic novels about dark, nihilistic superhero deconstructions popped into my head, some of them written before Watchmen was a gleam in Alan Moore's eye. Hell, Alan Moore's Miracleman covered a lot of the same ground.

Predictions 3, 4, 5 and 6 also ironically cover the "Hollywood is so unoriginal" ground over and over again so let's skip to #7.

7) About twenty minutes into the film, about half of the audience will realize this isn’t a superhero movie, even though it was marketed as such.

He actually goes on for a while about this and I'm not a hundred percent sure what he's talking about. I was rereading Watchmen over the weekend and I distinctly recall people in flamboyant costumes fighting crime, one of whom possesses the power to manipulate atoms, see the future and teleport to Mars so it's not going to be mistaken for a Jane Austen adaptation.

At least one self-appointed victims group will express its indignation that the presence of Gunga Diners in the city scenes are an intentional slight against (East) Indians, and probably the Muslim world to boot.

Ah, he remembered he was writing for Big Hollywood so he had to make at least one allusion to those wacky minorities and their crazy political correctness even if, so far, it's occurred only in his imagination. I predict that if the complaints happen because the Indian characters are portrayed as racist stereotypes who speak in outrageous accents, allow a sacred cow to walk all over their restaurant and suddenly break into a big Bollywood musical number for no reason pausing only to behead a guy who couldn't pay his bill, Willingham and every other right wing blogger on the planet will dismiss their complaints with the phrase "Lighten up."

9) Alan Moore, who wanted nothing to do with the film, will never see it.

GENIUS! He actually managed to predict that Watchmen creator Alan Moore, who has said in numerous interviews that he has no intention of ever seeing this, will never see this.

10) The character Rorschach will enter the greater public consciousness as an icon of the left’s view of extreme right wingers — which, of course, includes all conservatives.

I predict that Rorschach will join Leonidas and Jack Bauer in the pantheon of those No Nonsense-Tough Guy-Do Anything To Get The Job Done icons to whom conservatives with man boobs and small penises like to compare themselves except when they say stuff like, "Barack Obama treats taxpayers the same way Rorschach treats criminals."

If the title makes no sense to you, it's because you don't remember Johnny Carson's famous psychic character Carnac the Magnificent, a man who would be presented questions in sealed envelopes and answer them before he opened them. Carson would hold the envelope up to his head, say the answer, open it and say the question, all for humorius effect. It went something like this:

ANSWER: Kevin Sorbo, William Shatner and Bill Willingham

QUESTION: Can you name a Herc, a Kirk and a Jerk?