Captain America: Civil War

2016 may go down in cinematic history as the year superheroes stopped punching bad guys and started punching each other. Captain America: Civil War is the second and better of these movies, if only because it's the more personal.

After an attempt to stop Brock Rumlow in Nigeria ends with collateral damage the United Nations wants to put The Avengers under their rule. Tony Stark aka Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) is all for it but Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) wants to stay independent. Battle lines are drawn and sides are chosen over the proposed Sokovia Accords. Things get worse when Steve's friend turned brainwashed assassin Bucky Barnes is accused of bombing the signing of the Accords, killing the King of Wakanda. The King's son, T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman), under the guise of Black Panther, wants revenge. Stark wants to put Bucky down. Steve wants to help his friend clear his name. This set up drives the rest of the film.

Yes, there's a lot more of the Avengers in the movie. In fact, this is basically Avengers 3 more than Captain America 3. On Team Iron Man is Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Vision (Paul Bettany), War Machine (Don't Cheadle), Black Panther, and--making his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut--Spider-Man (Tom Holland). Team Captain America has Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Bucky, and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd).

One would think that with that many characters and a 2 1/2 hour running time, the movie would be too much and too bloated. Surprisingly, it's not. It's multitude of characters and storylines doesn't overwhelm it or feel forced. It's not like some of the more unfortunate DC attempts of "oh, look...it's (insert Batman villain)! Oh, look! It's (insert Justice League hero #1)! Oh, look, it's grainy video of (insert Justice League hero #2)." It's not even like the Marvel Netflix shows that attempt to convince you they're part of the same MCU as the movies by vaguely name-dropping a character without actually mentioning them by name. It remains a slick, taut thriller that manages to pull its various storylines together cohesively in the end. It all clicks and clicks wonderfully, especially under the direction of Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of Winter Soldier.

About that ending. No spoilers but this movie duplicates the feat of last year's Ant-Man. There's no apocalyptic situation, no extinction level event going on. The fate of the entire world and life as we know it isn't hanging in the balance. There's no wanton destruction with possibly thousands of unseen lives lost. What there is a simple but brutal fight between former friends. To say that it's as tense if not more so than the finales of almost all the previous Marvel movies is to undersell it. Oh, sure, there's a big superhero on superhero brawl earlier in the film where all the heroes fight each other. But that's not the finale. That's the scene we expected when we came in. The finale is much more personal. You don't root for a winner in these fights. We like all these characters and just don't want to see anything bad happen to any of them.

That may be the secret power of this movie. We have been invested in these characters since the MCU started with Iron Man in 2008. The result is that we like all of these characters. Civil War not only recognizes that fact, it exploits it. The movie never demonizes any of its heroes. We can get behind any one of them at any given time. Most iconic brawl movies clearly delineate who we should ultimately root for in the movie. When you have Ant-Man on one team and Spider-Man on the other, how in the world do you choose who to root for?

On the topic of Spider-Man, Tom Holland has the promise to be the best screen webhead yet. The youngest actor to play Peter Parker and his alter-ego, Holland actually looks like a nerdy high school teenager. He also brings Spidey's banter to life in a hilarious way that neither Tobey Maguire nor Andrew Garfield pulled off. It actually makes one excited to see Spidey's next movie. As for this movie's other major introduction, I never was that interested in the character of Black Panther until this. But like Holland's Spider-Man, Boseman's Black Panther is a fascinating character. Since this movie is almost an origin story, I really want to see where the character goes next.

Some may say this isn't quite as good as The Winter Soldier. If that's true, it's through no fault of the movie's own. It's just that Winter Soldier was just that great. But it's almost like arguing whether The Godfather or The Godfather Part II is a better movie. It's still an amazing movie that has much to say about loyalty, friendship, sacrifice, and the cost of revenge.

3-D Thursday: The Mask (1961)

The Mask is one of those movies that I loved as a teenager. It was the first 3-D movie I recorded off of TV in 3-D back in 1986. I watched it repeatedly, even catching it in 2-D, until I got sick of it.

I recently revisited The Mask thanks to an astonishing 3-D Blu-Ray from Kino and the 3-D Film Archive and got to be reminded of what looney fun it was.

The Mask is a not too subtle allegory warning about the dangers of hallucinogenic drugs with the titular object standing in for said drugs. The story concerns respectable psychiatrist Dr. Alan Barnes (the seriously underappreciated Paul Stevens). One of his patients, Michael Radin--a hilariously hyper Martin Lavut--blames visions and nightmares on an ancient Aztec ritual mask. The mask may even have made Radin kill a pretty woman in the rain the night before. Barnes dismisses the notion that the mask is to blame so Radin goes home, mails the mask to Barnes and then commits suicide. Once Barnes gets the mask, he does what anyone would do: he puts it on. When he does, we put on our 3-D glasses and start tripping. Barnes enters a weird and violent world full of demons, human sacrifice, and disembodied body parts.

Barnes thinks the trips are cool but his square girlfriend Pam (Claudette Nevins) thinks he should return the mask to the museum Radin took it from in the first place. What a buzzkill. Luckily, Barnes steals it back before making out with (and trying to kill) his hot secretary. Of course, there's also a pesky piece of wood cop (Bill Walker doing a Jack Webb) who  keeps asking questions about Radin and the mask (but not the girl Radin killed--she's forgotten completely six minutes into the movie). You can tell he ain't hip with that ugly jacket he wears. Oh, sure, Barnes's mind deteriorates the more he trips, but come on--ain't the high the whole ride?

Like I said, the movie is not subtle at all about it's drug allegory.  In the movie's single worst acted moment, Nevins gives an embarrassingly bad speech outright calling the mask a drug. To his credit, director Julian Roffman does try to make the dream sequences look terrifying. However, like too many other "trip" movies, the dreams come off as pretty wild, especially in 3-D. And the 3-D on this is terrific. Like so many other vintage 3-D releases, there's a good amount of depth and a fun amount of pop out gimmick effects without being overly obnoxious.

In terms of the cast, Paul Stevens owns this film. Stevens is best remembered today as Codman in Patton and Dr. Legarde in Marlowe. The Mask was sadly his only starring role and he's a hoot to watch in it. His descent into total bug-eyed psycho is almost worth the price of admission alone. The rest of the cast is sincere and do their parts as such, but yeah. This is Stevens's movie. He should have been better known than he was.

The Mask is a part 3-D film, with three separate dream sequences in 3-D, each one running about five minutes. The rest of the movie is in standard 2-D. Originally shown in anaglyphic 3-D, this may be the best of the part 3-D movies. It certainly beats the pants off Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. The 3-D Film Archive got hold of the left/right separations for the 3-D sequences and have made the movie available for the first time ever in discrete 3-D. That's quite a feat. They restored the film in a few other ways, too.

Back in the 1980s this was one of the movies 3-D Video Corporation offered to stations forThe Mask on VHS and Laserdisc in 3-D, it was the cut version that was offered. The 3-D Film Archive, however, put those scenes back in and, for the first time since the film's theatrical release, included the original intro to the movie with mask expert Jim Moran. To boot, the movie is being offered in it's original widescreen format. So, basically, this is the version audiences saw in 1961, but even better.

broadcast. It was, in fact, one of only five or six the company made available to non-cable stations, the rest being saved for SelecTV. It came with a 3-D hosting segment featuring magician Harry Blackstone, Jr. and, as such, several scenes from the film were trimmed out to make room for the Blackstone segments. When Rhino offered

The Kino Blu-Ray also includes the anaglyphic sequences in their original format. The DVD has just the anaglyphic version, of course, as well as the Blackstone segments as extras and replicas of the original glasses patrons were given in 1961. I got the DVD for those two reasons as well as getting the Blu. I'll say this about the Blackstone footage: it was fun to watch again, but it is rough on the eyes. Ol' Harry is wearing a red tuxedo and this is in red/blue color 3-D. Just sayin'.

Michael Weldon, in his Bible of Exploitation Films The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, called The Mask one of the all time great gimmick films. As a gimmick film, it's a load of fun. Sure, it's not as good a movie as Dial M  For Murder or Kiss Me Kate, but it's far better than most of what came after it, at least until the modern run.

So come on, man. Put The Mask On--Now! Take the trip. You know you want to.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

The end of 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger found the WWII era superhero in the modern world. This first sequel picks up on that thread, highlighting the differences between the world Captain America left behind and the modern world.

Chris Evans returns as Steve Rogers, now working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and becoming greatly disillusioned with it. When he finds Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) downloading files for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson in one of those few movies where he doesn't say MF) during what was supposed to be a rescue mission, he confronts Fury about his lies. Fury tells Rogers about a new S.H.I.E.L.D. initiative known as Project Insight: three new Helicarriers designed and programmed to eliminate America's enemies before they can do any harm. This, needless to say, doesn't sit well with Rogers.

When Fury can't access the files, he visits Defense Secretary Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). Not long after, he's attacked twice: first in the streets then later in Steve's apartment. After Fury seemingly dies, Pierce and S.H.I.E.L.D. turn on Cap, making him a fugitive. With war veteran Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Black Widow as his only allies,  Cap investigates Fury's murder and makes the disturbing discovery that old nemesis HYDRA had secretly taken over S.H.I.E.L.D. over the decades and were planning to use Project Insight to eliminate their enemies. Worse yet, their number one assassin--the infamous Winter Soldier--is Steve's best friend, the long presumed dead Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), now brainwashed and with a cybernetic arm.

Evans cements his place in comic book movie history as the definitive version of this character. His Rogers is a character whose values have not kept up with the world around him. We're living in a post-9/11 world where in some ways we've forsaken freedom for security. The movie replaces 9/11 with the end battle from 2012's The Avengers but the parallel between what happened in the years following is not lost. Rogers is a character who has gone from living in a world with easily defined bad guys to a world where the distinction is harder to make. Evans does not fail the character, making him moral enough to stand against Project Insight even before we learn its a tool of HYDRA's but conflicted about fighting his former friend.

He also has a great chemistry with Johansson's Black Widow. In fact, this may be the best of her appearances as the character. She's always been fun to watch in these but this is the most interesting she's been.

Stan is physically awesome as the Winter Soldier, a frightening and mysterious force of nature. His battles with Captain America are brutal and nasty. They're also well shot. The ability to follow the action in an era where directors favor cuts that are at best confusing in nature is a definite plus.

As for the others, they are exactly what you would expect. Anthony Mackie is an excellent update to a character who looked a little too disco. Emily Van Camp as Steve's neighbor who isn't who she seems to be at first is also a plus but could have used more screen time. And Robert Redford is Robert Redford. Does anything need to be said beside that?

If the first Captain America was a serial style WWII adventure film, The Winter Soldier is a 70s style paranoid political thriller ala The Parallax View. The only major difference between this and those films is the number of things blown up.  Directed with style by Joe and Anthony Russo, the twists and surprises in the movie elevate it above standard comic book fare. There is humor to counter the action, too. The best running joke in the movie is Widow constantly suggesting hook ups for Rogers.

You can argue if this or The First Avenger are better but at the end of the day, it's splitting hairs. The Winter Soldier is the best Marvel sequel, period. Captain America is the best Marvel franchise, period. With the Russos in charge of not only the forthcoming Civil War but the next two Avenger movies, things are looking pretty good for the MCU.

Mystery Monday: Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937)

In the 1930s, there were two types of Asians in cinema: the Yellow Menace, most famously personified by Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, and the inscrutable detective, the best known-- and in some ways most infamous-- being Charlie Chan. While the Chan films are a ton of fun, perhaps the best done of these was 20th Century Fox's Mr. Moto series starring Peter Lorre.

Think Fast, Mr. Moto was the first entry in the series, released in 1937 and based on the novel by John P. Marquand. Our memorable introduction to the character occurs during the film's Chinese New Year. Moto, disguised as a street peddler, tumbles to a murder in a curio shop in San Francisco's Chinatown. He manages to escape an incompetent cop and a would-be assassin.

The next day Bob Hitchings, the obligatory Rich White Playboy character (Thomas Beck), is sent by his father to Shanghai. Senior Hitchings runs a shipping line that is under scrutiny by the government due to smuggling activities. Moto, as it turns out, is also interested in smugglers and the Hitchings line. Moto just happens to be in the stateroom next to Bob and befriends him, though to what end we're not sure. They're eventually joined by Gloria Danton (Virginia Field), the obligatory Mysterious Blonde Woman who seemingly falls in love with Bob but may be working with the villains. Attempted murder, kidnappings, and intrigue follow.

Think Fast, Mr. Moto runs a breezy 66 minutes with no filler such as long, bad comedy routines. If that seems an odd statement, consider that most programmers--even the early Chans--did get bogged down with poor comedy routines from the likes of Smiley Burnette and Stepin Fetchit. What humor there is comes organically, much of it done by Lorre himself. There is a song, but it's short, fairly pleasant, and doesn't stop the film dead in its tracks. Interestingly, the film is more of a spy story than a murder mystery. Indeed, Moto is a proto-James Bond, just minus the sex and gadgets. He's polite like Chan but ruthless and sneaky, tossing one villain to his death over the side of a ship and cheating another at cards.

The Moto series started the same year that the Boris Karloff Mr. Wong series started but Lorre does much better than Karloff. Even if Lorre doesn't look even remotely Japanese, he sells the performance and is a delight to watch. The rest of the cast--which includes J. Carroll Naish as one of those stereotypical ethnic villains he would play from time to time--all do just fine. Norman Foster directs the whole affair with a pace that never lags making for an above average programmer. You could spend 66 minutes watching worse movies.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Captain America is one of those characters that's always had a bit of an interesting screen history. By interesting, I mean depressing. His first on-screen appearance was in a 1944 Republic serial, played by an actor named Dick Purcell. It's not a bad serial per-se, but it has absolutely nothing to do with Captain America. In it, he's a D.A. who wears an outfit that sort of looks like Captain America's outfit and who punches crooks out of windows without even attempting to save them. After that, there were two TV movies in the 1970s. TV movies that were so bad, even my 8 year old self didn't like them, and my 8 year old self had occasionally rotten taste in movies and TV. There was movie in the 1990s with Matt Salinger that pretty much went straight to video and which I've never really had the fortitude to try to watch. So when Marvel announced yet another crack at the character, I inwardly groaned. So imagine my delight when this not only turned out to be the best screen version of the character, but one of the best comic book movies ever.

It's 1942 and WWII is at a fever pitch. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) wants to join the fight against the Nazis but has enough medical issues to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) recruits Rogers into the SSR as part of a Super Soldier experiment conducted by Erskine, Col. Chester Phillips (a hilarious Tommy Lee Jones) and British agent Peggy Carter (gorgeous Haley Atwell, who made such an impression she got her own TV show). Erskine's experiment is a success but the scientist is killed by an agent of Hydra, a Nazi offshoot run by Johann Schmidt, aka The Red Skull. Schmidt has just stolen a very dangerous artifact known as The Tessaract and is using it to build super weapons with which to conquer the world.

Rogers is demoted to selling War Bonds until Hydra captures his best friend Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). He then takes it upon himself to take the fight to Hydra. Along the way, he's assisted by Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), who's son Tony will eventually become Iron Man, and Dum Dum Dugan and his Howling Commandos.

The thing that makes this movie stand out is the fact that it's an origin story we haven't seen a million times already. It's not Superman and the destruction of Krypton. It's not Peter Parker being bit by a radioactive spider. It's not Bruce Wayne watching his parents be murdered. You can make that argument for Iron Man and Thor, I suppose, but they don't have Captain America's frustrating film history behind them. For fans waiting to see if the character would ever appear in a good movie, the answer finally became yes.

The cast, as it has been for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is top notch. Evans performance as Cap is as iconic as Christopher Reeve's Superman was. Evans, unlike many of his contemporaries, is playing a hero who actually wants to be a hero. He isn't mopey, brooding, or nuts. In an age when even Superman can be moody, it's kinda refreshing to see a straight out good guy.

Hugo Weaving may not have liked his experience with the MCU playing the Red Skull but he's just behind Tom Hiddleston and James Spader as Marvel villains go. Assistant Armin Zola (Toby Jones) would return in other MCU properties, including the aforementioned Agent Carter.

Perhaps the best thing about the movie is that it's period appropriate. It's easy to forget that many of the iconic comic book characters started in the 30s and 40s. As a result, they don't always translate down the line. The Green Hornet is one of the better examples of a period specific character who doesn't do as well later on. Captain America was a product of WWII. His first comic book cover had him punching Hitler in the face. So it's great that this movie recognized that and went with it. Sure, due to The Avengers, they had to find a way to get him into the modern world, but by not modernising the origin, director Joe Johnson and Marvel gave us something fresh, fun, and different.

Dr. Strangefascist or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Ignore Jeffrey Wells

I'd like to have a very serious conversation with you regarding a problem facing the world today so monumental, there should be a Constitutional Amendment banning it: 1.85 Fascism. I'm not entirely certain what it is, but it must be pretty bad. I think--and anyone who knows better can correct me if I'm wrong--that it involves Studio Heads, Home Video Distributors, and various other people working in the Entertainment Industry wearing brown shirts with arms band with odd shaped film reels giving a Nazi type salute to their Mad Dictator Bob Furmanek as he commits unconscionable genocide on the tops and bottoms of all movies made after 1952. I know the seriousness of this issue because Jeffrey Wells has said so repeatedly on his blog.

Wait. Jeffrey Wells said so? Oh. That explains quite a lot. Strike that first paragraph. Move along. Nothing to see here.

By now, an unfortunate number of people have heard of Mr. Wells and his insane blog Hollywood-Elsewhere. Part of this, of course, is because of the blog itself. Part of it is the sheer number of people who have devoted countless energies to writing about the blog. Nico Lang at thefrisky.com opens his article on Wells by stating "To say Jeffrey Wells is America's worst film critic is to do a disservice to just how truly, incredibly terrible this man is at his job." Anna Merian at jezebel.com writes of "the disemboweling of Jeffrey Wells, film critic". Those two, among others, were posted in response to a ludicrous tweet by Wells that The Revenant was not intended for women. Nikki Finke at deadline.com once famously reprinted an e-mail from Wells to James Mangold begging for nude photos of Vinessa Shaw. Eric Snider wrote angrily of Wells blowing off a panel he was supposed to do for the Oxford (MS) Film Festival in 2099 due to not being able to get good Wi-Fi. Then there's all the angry reactions to his various fat-shaming articles.

Umm, hi, guys and gals: I know I don't post to this blog as nearly often as I should (time constraints) so you're probably all going to say "who the hell is this guy to give us advice?" but can we all agree that Wells is not a film critic or a cineaste (though he claims to be) and is literally nothing more than a troll? Some have actually correctly identified him as such and yet they still howl in anger at his antics. Seriously, why? Why is anyone paying any attention to him at this stage of the game? Oh sure, here I am writing about him saying that we should stop writing about him, which may or may not be self-defeating.

But of course he's a troll. Consider his tactics. He writes some lunacy that he knows will piss people off. When it inevitably does, someone inevitably writes about the lunacy. Other people, not believing that anyone could ever say that, goes to see if it was actually said. Once they see it, they comment or write about it. Rinse and repeat. The man gets views and in this business, views mean money due to advertising. Any schmuck can pull that trick and more than one has. He's just one of the more successful ones due to his infamy.

"Hey," Jeff Wells says, "if I post that Amy Schumer is fat and unattractive, the internet will blow up and people will come reading my blog". Of course the internet blows up with righteous indignation. Meantime, absolutely nobody bothers to take a look at the guy posting that comment and thinks that if him and Amy Schumer walked into a bar to pick people up, only one of them would have a major problem with that. If you need help figuring out who, it ain't Amy Schumer. Let's just say that I personally wouldn't throw Schumer out of bed for eating crackers.

Of course, Schumer isn't the only woman Wells has found unattractive. He's made similar comments about Melissa McCarthy, Lena Dunham, and even insulted Cameron Diaz for--gasp and horrors--aging! And while Diaz does have the unmitigated gall to be 43, like Schumer, I wouldn't say no to her.  Of course, I can't imagine the woman that would say yes to Wells. I'm not a particularly good looking guy but somebody broke the ugly stick while beating Wells with it.

I'm sorry. Was that a childish thing to say? Sure it was. But don't lie. At least some of you thought it was funny.

In fairness, Wells also obsesses on the weight of male actors like Vince Vaughn. He especially likes discussing their man-boobs for some strange reason. Personally, I don't pay that much attention to topless men in the movies I'm watching, but that's just me. Sorry Chris Hemsworth, your various shirtless scenes do nothing for me. But hey, if Jeff's all about that, go for it says I.

Some of you may have gotten the idea that I'm a little more flippant than some of the other people who have written about him. Though I will admit that I'd totally buy Anna Merian a drink for her article on him. But I'm flippant because I can't possibly take a thing he says seriously. Nobody who calls themselves a cineaste would write and say and do the things that have been attributed to him. Seriously, this is a man who, in a podcast with Jack Theakston (http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/images/column/dance13/jackdebate.mp3) actually at 42 minutes in says "Who cares what they wanted? That includes the Directors". Who cares what the Director wanted or intended? A so-called film buff says that with a straight face and expects people to ever value his opinions?

The final clue to the fact that he's not any sort of film buff or critic is the fact that anyone and everyone who disagrees with him is obviously a fascist. All those women who take umbrage at his various sexist and fat shaming remarks? Fascists. Clearly fascists. Bob Furmanek is a fascist for wanting movies to be seen the way they were originally meant to be seen. Imagine that! Wanting to see movies the way they were intended! What's next? Purists being against Colorization? The outrage of it all!

Anyone who has read this blog in the past knows that I've mentioned Mr. Furmanek on occasion for his work through the 3-D Film Archive. What the man has done for the preservation of our 3-D movie history alone gets him sainthood in my book. However, he has also done a ton of research on the widescreen era, carefully documenting not only what was shown in widescreen but what was supposed to be shown that way. In other words, he doesn't just argue for things to be released "cleavered" (as Wells puts it). One of his most famous anti-widescreen arguments involved the 3 Stooges short Goof on the Roof. He pointed out that though the short was released widescreen, it was clearly shot for 1.37 and should have been put on DVD that way. Sony didn't listen to him and released it in widescreen anyhow, but that's not his fault.

Wells's argument is that he's watched these 1.85 films in 1.37 for decades on TV. Yes, well, that's how CinemaScope movies were shown on TV for decades, too. Should we watch Jaws or Star Wars only in Pan and Scan since that's how they were shown on TV? Should we miss out on 2/3 of the picture because "boxy is beautiful"? How about 3-D? Since House of Wax and Creature From the Black Lagoon were shown for decades in a 2-D image on TV,is that how we should watch them now? For that matter, movies were shown with commercials every ten minutes for decades on TV. Should we watch them that way now, too?

Seriously, what "cineaste" claims that movies should be put on video they way they were shown on TV for years, even when that clearly isn't the way they were meant to be seen? No one who is a serious film critic, that's for sure. That and the fact that he just freely throws around the word Fascist ("That word? I don't think it means what you think it means", Jeff) prove the pure troll aspect. We're all being played and sadly, the man is making money off our being played. So yeah, can we come to some agreement that his opinions have all the importance of a five year old donkey turd and move on?

For the record, if by chance he is serious with his "boxy is beautiful" and "this is the way I watched these thing for years" arguments, I have a little message for him:

It's okay, Jeff. The 70s are over now. Disco is dead, all the TVs are color now, and LSD is no longer the cool drug. They even gave women the right to vote. We made it into the 21st Century and Y2K didn't blow us all up. You don't need to stick to the Castle Digest Super 8 anymore, Jeff. They have things now that let you watch the whole movie. They call them Blu Rays and DVDs. Technology is a wonderful thing. It's okay to come into 2016 and be part of the real world.

Why Idris Elba Won't Be Playing James Bond

Let's talk James Bond. Daniel Craig, who theoretically is signed on for a fifth Bond film, has stated that he never wants to play the character again. Spectre may or may not be his last film as Bond. Assuming he is out, we will once again get a new OO7, a fact that has caused some degree of speculation on the internet. The internet has told us that a fan favorite for OO7 is Idris Elba. I personally know nobody who wants to see Idris Elba as Bond, but the internet says it so it must be true, right?


Actually, there are people who want Elba to play Bond. You see them in the comments section of almost any article decrying the fact that he won't be Bond. Apparently, the rumored front runner is Damien Lewis of Homeland. I personally remember a time when the rumored front-runner to replace Roger Moore was Tristan Rogers and we got Timothy Dalton instead. So I suspect that none of the rumored front runners--Elba and Lewis included--will be OO7 and it will once again be the person we least suspect. Literally there are only two times a Bond actor was played by someone we expected and it took both of them years to get the part. I refer to Roger Moore (who was supposed to do it in 1962) and Pierce Brosnan (who was also supposed to suceed Moore).


Bond is an industry. He's been on the screen for 53 years now, played by six different actors. While each actor brought a little touch here or there to differentiate their version of the character, they all played the same basic character. None of the Bonds are really all that different. Quick: which Bond had a wetsuit with a duck decoy on his head? That was Sean Connery in Goldfinger, not Roger Moore which is what most people might assume. Which Bond threatened to break a woman's arm in order to get information from her? Roger Moore in The Man With the Golden Gun. Sure, Craig is a little angrier than the others and Moore was funnier than the others, but all in all, it's the same character.


The battle cry is that the producers don't want to do something different with the character by hiring Elba. "Bland, James Bland" is the snark going around. Yes, the producers probably don't want to radically change the character. Because if they did, he would cease to be James Bond. All of the major Bond characters to be played by mulitple actors have simply been variations on those characters. There have been four versions of Moneypenny in the series. Outside of giving her a gun and making her black in Skyfall, there isn't a whole lot that is different about Naomie Harris as Moneypenny. She was given more to do in the previous film than Lois Maxwell or Samantha Bond, I'll give you that, but the function of the character is pretty much the same.


The only one to be that radically different is Ben Whislaw's version of Q, and even he does much of the same sort of thing that Desmond Llewelyn did. Spectre isn't the first time Q went into the field to help OO7 out. Whislaw's arguably has more of a sense of humor than his predecessors and is a lot younger, but otherwise, he's Q.


So, outside of skin color, what about Idris Elba's Bond would end up being that different from Sean Connery's? Answer: not much. The times they've tried changing Bond up haven't worked out too well. Remember Timothy Dalton, the safe sex Bond who stuck to one girl per film and whose second movie could have been any action hero? Yes, he quit after the second, but he was unpopular enough that the studio didn't want him to do a third film anyway. Proof of how well a one woman Bond went over was Goldeneye, when he went back to being the James Bond we all knew and had sex with three different women. Even Craig has had more than one girl per film. That may sound crude, but it's true.


There are things about Bond that have become familiar over the last 53 years, things about the character people enjoy. The one-liners (even the bad ones), the gadgets, the promiscuity, and the fact that he's not just any action hero. He's fairly unique among action heroes, actually. The espionage is one of the things that sets him apart. That's the thing people disliked about License to Kill. It's not that it's a bad movie, it's that it's a standard issue revenge flick and that's not James Bond. License to Kill could have starred Arnold Schwarzennegar, Chuck Norris, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone or any other action hero of the 80s and been basically the same movie.


I'm not saying Idris Elba couldn't play Bond. I'm saying that his Bond isn't going to rock the boat as much as people are expecting. Rocking the boat is not what the producers of the series are looking to do. Even the Craig reboots follow much of the formula the series has established. Why do you think there are so many scenes in them copying earlier Bond films? That's why Gemma Artertron's character in Quantum of Solace meets a fate similar to Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger and the DB-5 keeps showing up. It's called fan service.


Familiarity may breed contempt but it also breeds comfort. People go to these movies knowing what to expect and so long as they get that, the films will continue to suceed. The producers are not going to hire someone who is going to take the character in a wildly different trajectory than he's already been. It's also why you won't see Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino direct a Bond movie. Their movies have a particular stamp on them that is separate from what the franchise has been. Seriously, how many people picture a Tarantino Bond movie as having the main characters dropping F-bomb after F-Bomb? "Pay F-----g attention, OO7" may sound funny to say among friends, but it's not a line anyone would actually want to hear in a Bond movie.


When you do try to radically change an iconic character like Bond, you end up with a disaster of epic proportions. Don't believe me? I submit the case of the 1998 version of Godzilla. It may seem pretty silly to compare Godzilla to Bond, but not really since the two have been in popular culture for roughly the same amount of time. The first Bond adaption, a TV version of Casino Royale, came out the same year the first Godzilla movie was released. That said, the 98 version of the character of Godzilla radically changed practically everything audiences knew about him. Not only did he look totally different from the Toho version (sort of like an over-sized Iguana really), he acted differently. He perched on buildings, had baby Raptors, and was killed by missiles while perching on a bridge. Godzilla does not perch on buildings. He towers over them. He laughs at missiles. And he does not have baby Raptors in Madison Square Garden. Had that movie not been called Godzilla, it may not have drawn the ire that it has. Godzilla fans have a special amount of contempt for that movie. But I submit that had it been called anything else and the monster in it been called anything else, it might have been considered a harmlessly stupid but fun monster on the loose movie. Why do you think Gareth Edwards version strongly resembles the Toho version, right down to the atomic breath, and battles other monsters?


I could also use the New Coke argument where Coca-Cola decided to listen to people who said they should change the formula so they discontinued Coke and introduced New Coke in 1985. New Coke was so poorly received they brought back old Coke as Classic Coke before finally dropping New Coke entirely.


Are the producers wrong? The box office figures would suggest not. Pretty much every Bond movie since Goldeneye has made more money than the one prior to it. People are flocking to see Spectre not because it's radically different but because it's just like classic Bond. Critics are saying that you could swap out Craig for Moore in Spectre and have the same movie. Of course you could. You could also swap out Craig for any of the others and have the same basic movie. But you can do that with most of the Bond movies, at least from Goldfinger on. Seriously, You Only Live Twice has been made three times already in the series, each time with a different Bond: Connery in You Only Live Twice, Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, and Brosnan in Tomorrow Never Dies. But look at them: they're the same basic story.


That's why you won't see Idris Elba as Bond. There's no need to make that radical a change to the character. Even if they did give it to Elba, they wouldn't make huge changes to the character. I'm quite certain the producers have an awareness of things like New Coke and the 98 Godzilla and see what happens when you go that far against the grain and have no desire to run that risk. Nor should they. At the end of the day, nobody really wants a New Coke James Bond, even if they say they do. Because if they got that, they'd complain it wasn't the James Bond they grew to know and love over the past 53 years. Didn't think of it in those terms, did you?