4

Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash

A few weeks ago, I ended a column by saying that everyone should go see Freddy vs. Jason, which to some probably sounded akin to me asking, "Hey, want a shot of tequila that I've spit in?" And I'm sure that there were even a few of you who figured that I was pulling some kind of ironic thing. There's no way that anyone could sincerely devote a portion of their heart to 2003's greatest "versus" movie. But I do. Shohei Immamura's haunting Vengeance Is Mine, Peter Yates' gritty The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, and Ronny Yu's, ummm, Ronny Yu-ish Freddy vs. Jason -- those are the best three movies of all time. I will fight nearly all of you over this.

I also like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series, so when the comic book Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash was released, I went straight to my comic shop, plowing through customers and racks and collectible figurines to get to it. And it was decent. But in the same way that a shark reacts when it senses blood, I developed an appetite. I was hungry for a movie. We'd already had Freddy vs. Jason. And for the second time in my life, I found myself thinking, "Why not add a third guy to it?" Bruce Campbell, who played Ash in the Evil Dead series, would probably be down for it. I feel like I could invite that dude to an impromptu barbecue in the Arctic Circle, and the only concern he'd have is that "icy deathscape" doesn't show up on Google Maps.

However, soon after this, Robert Englund, who had played Freddy Krueger for years, retired from the role. In the same way that Heath Ledger IS the Joker and Terry from the deli section of the grocery store IS my real dad, Robert Englund IS Freddy Krueger. It's not just his blend of humor and madness, but the way he talks and moves. And one of the best parts of Freddy vs. Jason is that when it came time for Freddy and Jason to fight, the movie was asking us to believe that it was Robert Englund who had suddenly acquired the powers of nine Jackie Chans and a Rey Mysterio.

3

All-Star Superman

All-Star Superman is the best Superman story ever told. It does not attempt to reinvent the character. It does not attempt to make him relevant to a demographic of people who consider goodness old hat. And it doesn't attempt to constrict his character and personality until it fits whatever metaphor the author is trying to shove into our brain space. Instead it bathes in all of the fantastic, science fiction-y things about Superman like a pig in shit. It's a tribute to Superman and the people who read Superman, and it proves that we don't always have to be coming from a place of cynicism if we want to tell a good Superman story.

I've talked to friends who bring up adapting All-Star Superman into some kind of live-action film, and I don't think it's a bad idea. We got an animated version which was nice but about an hour too short. And we have the special effects and the talented screenwriters and directors to make a live-action All-Star Superman happen. Sadly, the character as we know him is kind of stuck in cinematic traffic.

The people behind every Superman movie for the past few decades have done nothing but honk their horns hopelessly. "Beep beep! Come on! Make him popular. Like this dude! Come on!" Sometimes they decide that they don't want to wait in line, so they pull into another lane. The "Maybe this Superman will be introspective" lane, or the "Maybe this Superman will be filled with rage" lane. And it gets them ahead for a second, only for them to become deadlocked in traffic again. It doesn't work, because they never once think about embracing Superman as a character; they were only interested in getting you to embrace Superman.

For All-Star Superman to be made, we'd need someone with a lot of money who doesn't treat Superman like a new cellphone that needs to be updated every few years or the other middle school kids will make fun of it. It needs a Hollywood climate that is unafraid to say "You know what? Our foundation is gonna be that Superman already kicks ass, and we're just gonna go crazy from there." Sadly, we're still stuck between Batman's Goliath 18-wheeler and Wonder Woman's Hyundai Elantra, slamming our palms on the steering wheel and screaming out the window "What the fuck is taking this so long? You should like him now, so do it!"

2

The Killing Joke

Batman probably has more entries in the annals of the Greatest Comic Book Stories Ever Told than any other hero. A great Batman story usually doesn't just provide hours of entertainment and discussion; it also changes the way we see the character. Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns and The Long Halloween and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth are pieces of Batman's skeleton. And if you pull one away, the way we see a modern Batman crumbles. And then there's The Killing Joke, which was a neat Batman story until they created other Batman stories that kind of rendered it useless.

1

The Fantastic Four

We've seen numerous attempts to turn the Fantastic Four into something that moviegoers would like, and they've all been terrible. Roger Corman's unreleased Fantastic Four movie is at least the wonderful kind of terrible, joining Batman And Robin in the pantheon of Movies That Were Seemingly Designed To Be Drinking Games. The two Fantastic Four films that were made in the mid-2000s reek of a time period when we weren't so much interested in making good superhero films as much as we were just interested in getting them released. "We did Spider-Man, Hulk, and Daredevil. What's left? Fantastic Four? Fuck, OK. Let's do it, y'all."

The latest attempt came out in 2015, and kind of had a cool body horror thing going before it remembered that it actually had to pull itself together to form some sort of plot. On film, the Fantastic Four just don't seem to work, and despite four straight inarguable failures, we're still considering it. But the idea doesn't work not because of how we're developing the characters, but because of when we're choosing to develop these characters. Unless you're setting it in the '60s, the decade when the Fantastic Four were first created, they will remain almost obnoxiously unadaptable.

Spider-Man is about learning to grow up and shoulder your responsibilities, no matter how much you wish you didn't have to. X-Men is about acknowledging our differences and accepting them, because they're great. The Fantastic Four are about how much science can fuck your shit up in the best way. Coming hot off the release of films like The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and THEM, which all told us that if something gets hit by science, it will devour mankind, Fantastic Four went the opposite route. "Science ain't so bad," the book said. "It lets you conjure flame, stretch your limbs, turn invisible, or turn you into a rock. OK, that last one is a hard sell, but at least you'll be charming."

Modern audiences, for the most part, don't fear science. Science is great. It helps us live longer and it advances our society. We know that science rules. So someone telling us "No, no. Science IS good" has less of an impact now than it did in 1962, when pop culture science was mostly associated with monster-creating bombs. Set it in the '60s, and you have an interesting atmosphere to play off of. Set it in 2017, and the reaction is "That's real neat, but a billionaire in a robot suit has been solving all of our problems for about a decade. We'll call you, though, when we ... need to reach a really high shelf or something."

Daniel has a podcast about Top 40 music and a Twitter.

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