Fanboys Anonymous

Welcome to another edition of WEEK IN GEEK here at Fanboys Anonymous—a rundown of some of the events, news and stories that went down over the past few days in the geek culture spectrum.


Here are some of the topics I felt like voicing my opinions about:

Jeffrey Wright for Commissioner Gordon in The Batman

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm a big fan of Wright and I think he'd be a great actor in a lot of things, but I don't know if that's how I picture Jim Gordon. Of course, the first obvious thing is the race change, which I'm sure is the one and only thing upsetting some people. I've always thought that there's some flexibility with some characters and that I'm open to the idea of changing a race or gender of a character if it can work out, but it seems like there was specifically a play to do that no matter what, with the rumors of the casting decisions all being in that direction. That, to me, is kind of strange, but whatever—if you're just 100% vehemently against even entertaining that idea, I'll never convince you that you should maybe hear out the concept, and if you're 100% saying it has to be done, I'll never be able to convince you that maybe going in that direction "just to be different" might not be the best "change for the sake of change" argument.

More so, I don't think Wright tends to play as over the top as I think of Gordon. That's what throws me off about this. When I think Gordon, I think that he can't be as gruff and low-energy as Batman is when they're talking and that he needs to be a little more lively, and I haven't seen that from Wright. He tends to speak quietly and come off cool, and Gordon isn't "cool" to me. That's what is throwing me off, more so than the race change that will be the bigger part of this discussion for most people. But I do like Wright and for now, I have to just see how they go. This could be the best thing in the movie, and I do think it's a step up from Mahershala Ali, who I just could not see in that role the more I thought about it.

Jonah Hill in The Batman

Rumor has it he might be The Riddler? Pft...come on. He's not The Riddler. In no way do I look at Jonah Hill and think "Yup, Edward Nygma." That's just making me nervous now about everything. I'm starting to get the feeling the casting director or Matt Reeves himself has some wacky ideas that are risks similar to Jesse Eisenberg for Lex Luthor, and we all see how that worked out poorly.

George Lucas Hates The Force Awakens

In Bob Iger's new book, he talked about how George Lucas thought they would use his outline for the next films and was really hurt that they decided not to. Then, he criticized The Force Awakens, saying that there wasn't anything different in the movie from what he had done before.

He's right.

For all the gruff Lucas gets when it comes to some of the mistakes from the six films he did, like how it's weird that they did the Luke and Leia kiss only to reveal they're brother and sister, or how stupid Jar Jar Binks is, or the bad acting in the prequels, there are some seriously amazing things about those movies and the overall story is wonderful, with some big technological advancements and a different feel to the eras. None of that happened with this new group, at all. They've proven themselves to be a cover band who ruins the lyrics and melody of what they're trying to copy and want to write off the predecessors as not being as good as themselves while being unable to do anything on their own without that foundation.

No More Ghost Rider TV Series

It was previously reported that Ghost Rider would be getting a TV show spin-off. Now, that's no longer going forward, due to so-called creative differences of some kind that we naturally don't know the specifics behind.

Good. I don't think this could sustain itself as a television series. The budget would be crazy or the CGI would be awful, and there are only so many stories you can tell that don't run the concept into the ground. I'd rather see a Ghost Rider film in the MCU, or, better yet, a team-up movie of darker characters by bringing Blade, Ghost Rider and others into one film than doing separate things.

Spider-Man Staying in the MCU!!!

YESSSSS! I have a handful of major gripes with the way these two movies have happened (namely the way they've wasted characters just for the sake of throwing their name out there, like how MJ is not at all MJ and I hate Zendaya's snarky emo girl character, or how it's a shame we don't have a single reference to Uncle Ben, etc) but there was no way I wanted to see Tom Holland's Spider-Man leave the MCU.

I wish Disney just bought out all the rights to the whole network of characters, as I still think Sony's films are going to be awful and I wish they could do things like have Beetle pop up in Thunderbolts for the MCU and such, but hey, I'll take what I can get for now. Very cool!