EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN - Vol. 37, March 2022

Everything Old Is New Again

Vol. 37 - March 2022

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, Podcast Czar

Good morning, afternoon, or evening. Welcome to Everything Old Is New Again, my monthly column covering Remakes, Adaptations, or Long-Gap Sequels coming to screens great and small in the coming month. If it’s based on a book, game, fable, or older TV series or movie - it’s EOINA material and I’ll endeavor to do my level best to find a great cross-section of films & series to talk about.

Except not this month. It’s been, to put it mildly, a busy month for me personally and I just have not had the time to devote the kind of attention I usually do to sniffing out EOINA fodder while still accomplishing the plethora of average responsibilities I handle, day-to-day. So this will be a relatively slim column, with only three films in the PREMIERES section and the usual EOINA-applicable recommendation in the SPOTLIGHT at the end. Apologies in advance, OR, alternately, you are welcome.

Here we go:

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PREMIERES - Films or series coming to screens great & small that meet the EOINA requirements

MARCH 4th

The Batman (dir. Matt Reeves)

Where: In theaters

Y’all know Batman. His parents are dead, he’s vengeance, he’s the night, yadda yadda yadda. Ok, and y’all are aware he began in the comic book format in 1939 and was created by Bob Kane & Bill Finger? Yes? Okay, so that’s all outta the way. Now a thing you maybe aren’t aware of, or maybe don’t think about a whole lot is Batman’s sobriquet of The World’s Greatest Detective. Superheroes get these kinds of titles/nicknames all the time: the Big Blue Boyscout (Superman), Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing (the rocky guy from Fantastic Four), etc. But sometimes they’re so ubiquitous that you don’t really focus on them.

Zach Snyder, for example, for sure didn’t bother thinking about it when he made the pretty abysmal Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, because not only does Batman not do any detective work at all, but we are actively shown Wonder Woman doing some. So the movie found a way for detective work to fit into its narrative, just not for the World’s Greatest Detective to be the one doing it. Cool. Well. It SEEMS that this is no longer the case. I mention BvS:DoJ because this current Batman began its conceptual life cycle as a vehicle for Ben Affleck’s version of Batso. Allegedly (I haven’t read any treatments, but if anyone would like to send me one, I have contact info at the bottom of the column) the Batfleck film would have focused more on a detective/noir vibe, and was originally being written by Batfleck himself, with an eye on him directing. Many, many changes later and what we have here with Robert Pattinson’s Batman seems to have maintained at least a passing resemblance to what was allegedly Batfleck’s take. Do I personally feel any need for another Batman relaunch? Nope. Not the tiniest twitch, but if it’s gotta happen (and it seems like studios are aiming to have some of their perennial characters get rebooted with a regularity that would put the tides to shame) then at least I’m glad to see a somewhat different take on the character.

But. When you say to me “a Batman movie that seems more focused on detective work”, my mind’s eye - drawing on a childhood spent absorbing the unbeatable Batman: the Animated Series after school every day - conjures up Batman, slinking around in alleys, in the rain, taking soil samples, maybe even using an honest-to-goodness magnifying glass and sussing out criminals. Matt Reeves’ The Batman seems to have a lot more stylistic DNA in common with Zodiac than, say, Kiss Me Deadly. This feels like a two steps forward, one step back approach to updating this character as, though you’ve got a somewhat novel, semi-fresh approach to the character, you’re portraying it thru a lens that appeals almost exclusively to the same some of usually-quite-toxic fans.

No disrespect to David Fincher, or Zodiac, or Matt Reeves, etc., but there is a certain kind of fan that seems to only respond to the perceived edginess of this style, rather than what the style is being applied to. But as is the case with all EOINA columns, I haven’t seen the thing for myself yet and I’ve been hearing some very positive word of mouth from MJ’s own Rosalie Kicks and Ryan Silberstein both of whose opinions I trust, so maybe this movie actually rules. I will definitely check this out eventually, but it is not worth it to me personally to visit a theater in person to see it.

18th

Cheaper by the Dozen (dir. Gail Lerner)

Where Disney+

Cheaper by the Dozen, as a concept, is actually inspired by a semi-autobiographical book written in 1948 by Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey describing their childhoods growing up in a family of twelve. The original film adaptation starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy was released in 1950. In 2003, the film was rebooted with Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the leads. Now, Gabrielle Union and Zach Braff have stepped up to the plate as the parents of 10 rambunctious kids. If I’m being honest, and I am; always, this looks like the usual Disney claptrap with a message about how being different doesn’t mean you’re less-than. That’s a great message, I just wish these kinds of movies looked like they were actively trying to be the best things they could be. With timely jokes about TikTok dances, the Fast & Furious franchise, and RuPaul’s Drag Race, this will definitely appeal to some folks but not me. Since I’d prefer not to end on a negative note, I will say that the kids in the trailer, from what I can tell, look like pretty solid performers. I was particularly impressed with (I believe) ten year old Mykal-Michelle Harris’ ability to deliver dialogue while doing a relatively complex TikTok dance. There are full grown adult actors who can’t perform dialogue and choreography simultaneously this well.

30th

Moon Knight (series)

Where: Disney+

Moon Knight has a very complicated history in comic books. Originally created to be the mercenary antagonist of the horror-adjacent title Werewolf by Night in 1975, he was popular enough to repeatedly get retooled. In 1980 he was given his own series, with a backstory stating that he was betrayed by another mercenary and left to die in Egypt. Taking shelter in a temple dedicated to the moon god Khonshu, he dies and is resurrected by the god, and tasked with becoming a protector in order to redeem his life of immoral actions. He returns to the U.S., and uses his mercenary bankroll to adopt multiple secret identities including a billionaire playboy, a taxi driver, and a police consultant, which gave him access to different tiers of criminal activity. In 1985, the series was rebooted and tweaked, giving the character multiple personality disorder (as it was known then) which he developed as a result of maintaining these separate cover identities (it was the ‘80s). In the intervening years, the character has died and returned, and his mental health has come into question repeatedly in some pretty ridiculous ways (for a while, his alternate personalities were his approximations of Spider-Man, Captain America, and Wolverine for example). It’s all very complicated in a distinctly “comic books” way, but as far as I know, more recently the different personalities are supposed to be due to a mental link to Khonshu (now believed to be some otherdimensional entity) and linked to the being’s four distinct personality phases (mirroring the phases of the moon).

With that business out of the way: the Moon Knight trailer shows Oscar Isaac as Steven, a man so sleep-deprived that he can’t always tell the difference between his waking life and his dreams. He’s also kind of a push-over, being bullied by his boss at his museum job which puts him in just the right place to answer a ringing cell phone where someone calls him Marc. My guess is that “Steven” is a cover identity (unless Marvel/Disney is going with the, as we now call it Dissociative Identity Disorder angle) that has somehow usurped his real identity of Marc and now whomever is on the other end of that phone call is going to activate him.

There’s some supernatural-looking locations and imagery, such as something that looks like a temple, an animated tattoo of the scales of justice, and a janky CGI mummy-esque being (perhaps Khonshu?). Also Ethan Hawke is there and he appears to be some kind of a religious leader or …perhaps a wizard?

So far the Disney+ MCU miniseries haven’t slayed me. They’re kind of hit and miss but Moon Knight looks like it could be fun. As always, I kind of hate the choice to use CGI when a cool practical effect would do the job just as well but this is the world we live in. Mayhap one day cool people who value craft will be making the Big Decisions and the Big Studios but for now it seems to mostly be nerds who are more focused on quantity over quality.

Moon Knight looks fun though.

SPOTLIGHT - Not always new, but always EOINA-friendly and always recommended

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) (dir. David Blue Garcia)

Where: Netflix

Please allow me to make my case for 2022’s The-less Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I covered the impending release of this flick in my last column and wasn’t super hot on it. But. Having thrown it on after a long day at work and watched it while enjoying a batch of homemade chili, I have to say: I had a good time. Let me get right out in front of this and say that I love the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (it’s a perfect movie) and I kind of think that none of the sequels are actually very good as sequels to it.

That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy them! I fucking LOVE The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, but it is a wholly different animal from the original and that is what makes it so incredible. On a similar metric, I don’t think TCM 2022 is a great follow-up to tTCsM 1974 but I believe that if you think about it as a really fun slasher that’s heavily inspired by the original, you’ll be able to have a good time. The kills are creative and brutal, and are depicted with a nonchalance that reminded me of John Wick. There’s also some damn fine cinematography which includes some really fresh imagery when viewed against the whole of the TCM franchise. There are sunbleached desert vistas sure, but also those sunflowers that everyone has seen on the poster and across the internet, and there’s a legitimate honest-to-goodness actual chainsaw massacre happening in Texas here!

There are some really odd choices with regards to some of the characters and/or their backstories, and were I making the flick I would definitely have made different choices, but that’s not the case. Check it out and see what YOU think.

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Thanks for reading, as always. If you’ve got something you want to chat about, you can find me on twitter, instagram, or letterboxd, or just drop a comment below!

You can find more film opinions from me all across MovieJawn, but especially the Hate Watch/Great Watch podcast, which I co host with the lovely Allison Yakulis. We’re currently in the midst of Lovin’ with Luhrmann, a miniseries covering the feature films of director Baz Luhrmann that started as a two-parter and has expanded into a complete five-part coverage of his filmography. So on March 9th, check out our episode on Baz’s modern fable Australia (2008) starring Nicole Kidman & Hugh Jackman, followed on the 23rd by his adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2013) starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, and Carey Mulligan.

Thanks as well to the MJ crew for all they do and their continued support.

Until next time - Long Live the Movies!