New Pollution #5: Childish Things, or It's a Boid! It's a Plane! It's Super-stan!
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The possessive is earned, yet Zack Snyderβs Justice League (now streaming on HBOMax) is interesting mainly as a point of contrast. We have an inferior theatrical cut overseen by the DC/WB overlords and their disgraced lackey Joss Whedon, as well as a glut of numbing superheroic cinematic/televisual product (mostly courtesy Marvelβ’), against which to compare. The bar is so low an earthworm couldnβt limbo beneath it. But yes, by this debased metric, the βSnyder Cutβ (and boy is he! watch your back, Eli Roth!!) is a distinctive work of art. Which just furthers my belief that one of the greatest challenges we face as a society (in which we live) is how easily we settle for crumbs.
In Snyderβs world, of course, the seed from a sandwich roll can take on the proportions of a galaxy. And its slo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-mo plunge to the ground can be juxtaposed quite beautifully with Barry βThe Flashβ Allenβs (Ezra Miller) split-second-prolonged gaze into the eyes of his future beloved, Iris West (Kiersey Clemons). This is a singular vision, not a corporately collective one, with all the attendant quirks of personality. But letβs not forget that the Snyder Cut was in part willed into being by a toxic social media campaign, mob rule begetting a mystical monocultural object that is finally much bigger than its ostensible creator. That many in the fandom also raised money for suicide prevention as a way of honoring Snyderβs daughter Autumn β whose death occasioned his stepping away from the first version of Justice League and to whom this new cut is dedicated β only shows how muddled the morality of the horde can be.
The jumbled-up nature of being a god among men is the great theme of Snyderβs Man of SteelβBatman v. SupermanβJustice League trilogy/aborted pentateuch. All of βem are kinda-sorta Jesus, with Superman (Henry Cavill) and Batman (Ben Affleck) as the Heaven-Earth dichotomy (Supes strikes yet another Christ pose above the rising-sun-speckled arc of the planet) and the rest some variation in-between. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is Mrs. Paul Schrader, as we all know (thatβs canon). But the movie really belongs to Victor βCyborgβ Stone (Ray Fisher), the metal-machine man whose inner life proves integral to undoing the world-ending βUnityβ of the three Mother Boxes coveted by Tim-Curry-in-Legend-looking-motherfucker Steppenwolf (CiarΓ‘n Hinds, in virtual voice and body). Fisher was clearly done dirty in the Whedon cut and he deserves every bit of praise coming his way, giving this glum behemoth a poignancy that feels grounded, authentic and often at odds with the overemphatic nature of Snyderβs patented sturm und drag. Even The Flashβs tension-defusing wisecracks seem pitched at 0.25 speed.
Snyder wasnβt lying when he said this version of the film shares plenty with Kelly Reichardtβs period drama First Cow. And Iβm not talking about the 4:3 aspect ratio, well-utilized by cinematographer Fabian Wagner for maximum visual overdrive, but the presence here of that much-praised indieβs star, Orion Lee, as a lab tech. Snyder casts consistently well, even in the case of Gadot, whose every-step-a-fucking-adventure enunciation is hilariously adopted by her fellow Amazons. (I never knew I needed Connie Nielsen doing community theater-level cue card-speak until now.) On the flip side is Jared Letoβs wisenheimer incarnation of the Joker, who appears in a newly shot βKnightmareβ epilogue that touches on post-apocalyptic alterna-world plot threads likely to remain unresolved. He can go away now. As for Joe Manganielloβs Hunkypatch or Deathstroke or whateverβ¦the keys are in the mailbox, and the bedroomβs up the stairs and to the left. Iβll be waiting. Bring Aquaman (Jason Momoa).
Though Twitter would like to convince us otherwise, itβs hardly a tragedy that Snyder will never see his self-described trilogy-in-five-films come to fruition. (As with every modern-day superhero venture, thereβs too much IP in the mix.) Snyderβs best effort remains the wholly original grrrl-power fetish object Sucker Punch (2011), which provocatively poked and prodded fanboy culture instead of catering to it. Not much money in that, as Iβm sure there wouldnβt be in Snyderβs long-threatened adaptation, after King Vidorβs swooningly demented 1949 attempt, of Ayn Randβs The Fountainhead, which he said in a recent interview was best left on the back-burner until a less divided country and a more liberal government were in place. See you in, I dunno, fifty years, Zack? Maybe by then youβll conjure an image as ribaldly resonant as Patricia Neal ascending the shaft of a skyscraper into Gary Cooperβs beckoning crotch.
Soleil Moon Fryeβs kid90 (now streaming on Hulu) is breezy on the surface, brutal underneath, though you probably need to be of a certain age (43-year-old meβ¦perfect) to fully connect with the pop-cultural world of the mid-β80s to mid-β90s that it wistfully portrays. Moon Frye β best known for playing spunky Punky Brewster (then and, via a recent streaming channel reboot, now) β was an early practitioner of video journaling, though of the kind uploaded into dusty cardboard boxes as opposed to privacy-detonating electronic nebulas. Now in her forties, Moon Frye has decided to unbox the tapes, scan through the footage, interview some of the surviving participants, and grapple with the past.
Itβs all true: There was a time when you could film it and, unless you were Rob Lowe, forget it. And while she put forth a clean-cut, Just Say No! public image (obligatory encounter with Nancy Reagan and all), Moon Frye privately partied hard and lived it up as the Dorothy Parker figurehead of an Algonquin Round Table of Teen Beaters. Here are Brian Austin Green and Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Sara Gilbert and the Lewises (Jenny and Emmanuel), staring out from a low-res vid-capture world that seems like another planet. Though the pain many of them felt, and rarely expressed outside of semi-soused innuendo, is recognizably eternal.
A fresh-faced youth named Leonardo DiCaprio would make it out alive, while another, Jonathan Brandis (whose hard crush on Soleil comes off in retrospect like a cry for help), would not. And that was just the West Coast crew. When Moon Frye traveled to New York City for college, she befriended the street-trained skater posse from Larry Clark and Harmony Korineβs Kids (1995), several of whom, like the vibrantly hard-edged Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter, also succumbed to drugs and depression.
kid90 plays as a nostalgically frothy journey of self-actualization, and Moon Frye canβt help but be the It Gets Better (If You Let It) cheerleader, reframing some of the toughest circumstances, like her tempestuous relationship with House of Painβs Danny Boy OβConnor, as necessary learning experiences. Yet the footage she filmed speaks for its often queasy self, particularly when itβs of the close-to-home variety, as when teenage Moon Frye, suffering in an assortment of ways from gigantomastia, goes in for breast reduction surgery and her doctor β who never asks for autographs, she swears β asks for an autograph.
These kids were, and to some degree remain, objects treated with more contempt than compassion. Even at their lowest points, noblesse oblige is presumed. The party culture Moon Frye preserved in Hi8 amber was an outlet and a life-line, in addition to a survivalist circling of the wagons thatβs much more difficult to attain in this era with its pervasive We-Live-In-Public ethos. βIt was our β60s!β says present-day Stephen Dorff of those lost decades. Once the cruel urge to snort and rebuff fades, youβre prepared to good-naturedly grant him the sentiment.