I think more Sailor Moon fans need to check out other Magical Girl Warrior Anime

Back during the era of Nolan's Batman movies it was in certain places online like IMDB message boards very popular to express the opinion that Robin's existence is inherently bad for Batman.  That Batman should be a loner and throwing in this kid sidekick only dumbs the stories down.

I was always agaisnt that mentality, and today most major voices in the internet Western Comic Book Nerd community reject that as really narrow minded and know that you're really not much of a Batman fan at all if you completely reject such a large portion of what the Batman mythos are.

As someone who remembers all of that while currently being a Millennial Otaku in an era where our current Nostalgia cycle has brought a number of old 90s Anime back into public conciseness.  I feel like the Anime equivalent of that is the prevalence of Sailor Moon fans who wish Tuxedo Mask didn't exist, that position is nearly unanimous among the guests on the Sailor Business podcast.

I actually have more sympathy for this position even though it's less supportable (Tuxedo Mask was there from issue #1 unlike Robin) because my own preferences for female lead Anime and Superhero stories are often similar, I'm a Yuri Fanatic who likes watching Anime where it's possible to pretend males don't even exist in that fictional world.  But when it comes to Sailor Moon my position is Mamoru/Darrien is just as essential as Lois Lane is to Superman, or Mary Jane to Spiderman, or Iris West to Barry Allen, or Sif to Thor.

Now talking about Tuxedo Mask is complicated by how the 90s Anime handled him very differently.  This may shock some people to learn, but there are Sailor Moon Manga purists who hate everything about the 90s Anime, but this subject may often be where they'd start their rants.  He's in High School not Collage in the Manga (and in Japan the age difference between middle school and high school is smaller then it is here, they are in fact only 2-3 years apart) Mamoru isn't constantly a jerk to her early on, Usagi isn't nearly as childish and Tuxedo Mask actually contributes more.

That element also fits the Robin comparison, the rejection of Robin was partly from how for a long time the mainstream public perception of Robin was mostly Burt Ward and Chris O'Donnell.  And indeed I think the best western Comic Book analogy for those Manga purists who hate the Anime are people who still hate the Adam West and Shumacker takes on Batman.  Those of us who have read Robin(s) as written by for example Chuck Dixon or Marv Wolfman know the concept can be taken seriously.

However some people don't like Mamoru even in the Manga, or heck some even find him worse in the Manga.  These people simply hate the idea of tuning in to a show about a Superheroine (or "Female Superhero" as the CW's Supergirl pilot kept insisting on saying) where she is also constantly being rescued.  Now most of those "rescues" range from cheer-leading her to adding a little minor assist like female love interests of male superhero also frequently get to contribute, and the final climax of the original story-line is her saving him.  But these fans want male love interests to contribute 0% to their Superheroine stories.

Thing is that apparent contradiction is not a bug but a feature, it is kind of the entire premise of Sailor Moon.  Film Flux did a video on the Sailor Moon Manga that helped me to clarify this.  Superhero stories are at their core wish fulfillment fantasies, and like it or not many young girls fantasize both about being a Superhero and being a Damsel rescued by a handsome Prince (and some young boys have the same fantasies).  While most Mangaka might have written two completely separate stories to express those fantasies Naoko Takeuchi said Frak It and did both simultaneously, she wrote a story where an average Japanese school girl gets to be both Snow White and Wonder Woman at the same time.  The premise of Sailor Moon is foundationally about having your cake and eating it too.

Now you don't have to also be into that, my point is that this Prince Charming isn't something that's part of the story because of executive meddling.  (If anything it's having other Girls helping her that was, Takeuchi's original vision was a solo Super-heroine, it was Toei that wanted a team so they could sell more toys.) And so if you fundamentally don't like that, you kind of don't like the premise of Sailor Moon.

The reason why in America Sailor Moon is popular with many people who actually share only half of Takeuchi's fantasy is because on mid 90s American television she was the only Superheroine we had to choose from at all.

Thing is it's now possible for Americans to watch almost any Anime they want to, and the sub-genre Sailor Moon spawned has evolved to provide plenty of shows that can better provide what these Sailor Moon fans actually want.  I think there are plenty of people who might actually like the rest of the genre more but have still only seen Sailor Moon because they've never searched for Anime beyond what airs on Toonami, or because they're assuming them to be Sailor Moon knock offs with no actual creativity.  But the truth is even the ones most similar to Sailor Moon are still just as distinct as Green Arrow is from Batman.

All or at least most Pretty Cure seasons have no Tuxedo Mask analogue, a few have Het love interests who are civilians, like Peter Parker crushing on Liz Allan or Mary Jane in the Raimi films, but most don't even have that.  Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna Is A Hero and Symphogear provide no Het romance for the main character at all.  Pretty Sammy and Nanoha also work, and Prisma Illya is....... not a good one to start with.

Corrector Yui doesn't seem to have a Tuxedo Mask figure from what I've seen so far, on Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne there is one kinda but he's a rival thief.  On Saint Tail the love interest is the guy trying to catch her, so it's like Batman and Catwoman but if Catwoman was stealing things because God wanted her to do it???? I'm still not sure what that show's premise actually is.  In Galaxy Fraulein Yuna there is a Tuxedo Mask but she's a woman, so those of you who enjoy having your sexuality confused by the Takerazuka style Mamoru in the new Musicals might enjoy that.

Even Wedding Peach is distinct on this issue since the person who could be called the Tuxedo Mask of the show is not the title character's love interest.

So I'm hoping once these Sailor Moon fans can get their no Tuxedo Mask Magical Girl fix elsewhere they can be open to appreciating Mamoru once they've seem him portrayed correctly on Crystal( just make sure you're watching the BluRay rips) or even the Live Action show PGSM.  I also still recommend that Sailor Moon Fan Film from 2016.

It's fine if the Villain isn't one of the best characters.

I myself in the past on this very blog have repeated the common notion that having a great villain is a requirement for a great Superhero story.  But a lot has happened to change my mind on that.

It would be pointless to go on about great Genre stories that have no villain at all like the third Pokémon movie or Star Trek IV or the book of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Because that's irrelevant to the argument that if there is a villain the villain needs to be a very engaging and/or entertaining character.

Now I do love great villains, from cartoon villains played by a charismatic actor having a great time hamming it up to complex nuanced psychological profiles.  SSSS.Gridman provided one of each of those making it perhaps the best Anime of 2018 in the villain department.

But there is no story where every character is going to be a super engaging stand out character.  I need some to be fun and/or interesting for me to get into a show or movie, but it's okay if not all of them are.  Even some characters who have a lot of screen time and narrative importance in a given movie are basically just talking plot devices.

This post is about the fact that we tend to see the role of antagonist as one that's uniquely not allowed to be of lower priority.  No one is confused when a Superhero film is well received in-spite of the love interest character not being all that highly regarded.  But I'd argue the person we're supposed to believe the Hero is In Love With should be more important to get right then the person the Hero is trying to beat up.  The old Batman movies got away with relegating Pat Hingle's Jim Gordon to just an exposition device, but when they get one of the villains wrong everyone loses their minds.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe was for awhile perceived as being pretty weak in the villain department besides Loki and maybe a few others.  But those movies were massively successful in-spite of that and certain internet critics were pretty confused, lamenting that society has lost something in allowing villains to get stale.

Now over the course of phase three there is a perception that the MCU has been getting better in the villain department.  I personally like some of the older MCU villains particularly Ultron, and am not as impressed with some of these highly praised recent ones, especially Killmonger and Hella.  But that's not the point today.

I would argue that in the early years of the MCU general audiences and even some Comic readers didn't consider the lack of scene stealing villains a bug and maybe even saw it as a feature.

The 90s Batman movies were largely treated like episodes of the 60s TV Show just now on the big screen and separated by years instead of weeks, and so the fact that each movie had a different villain was treated as the main thing setting them apart from each other.  And to a large extent the 2000s pre-MCU Marvel Superhero movies followed their example.  When Batman Begins came along and the marketing largely underplayed the villains for the sake of selling it as Batman's Origin Story a lot of us thought things would be different.  But low and behold for the sequels it was once again The Joker and Bane who were really selling them.

I think it's possible when the MCU got going many found it darn right refreshing that these Superhero films were not so villain driven, even if often the marketing was seemingly trying to be business as usual in this area.  Even the MCU films that critics weren't so kind to still did well at the Box Office.

Thor: The Dark World is constantly treated by YT Video Essayists as among the worst of the MCU films, but for me it's the best Thor movie by far.  And criticisms of the movie largely come down to finding Malekith a bland boring uninteresting villain with unexplained motives.  I can't even remotely understand criticizing anything else about the film.

The movie isn't actually about Malekith, it's about Thor and his relationships with Loki and Jane and Odin.  And in my opinion all of that is handled beautifully whether or not it was predictable.  Malekith being just an external threat to advance that narrative is perfectly fine and I would possibly even have disliked screen time being wasted on trying to make him more sympathetic or understandable.

Ronin in the first Guardians of The Galaxy is viewed as being the exact same "problem" as Malekith yet it doesn't seem to have hurt the overall critical reception of the film nearly as much.  In that film I think Ronin being a bland character was recognized as being actually thematically relevant, it contrasts him to the fun cast of quirky heroes being established, it even plays into how he's defeated at the end.  And maybe the same idea was at play in using him in a minor role in Captain Marvel.

Malekith's blandness may not be so thematically justified but I'd certainly argue it's narrativly justified.  He's someone who wants to destroy the Universe as we know it because he wants to eliminate all light and return existence to perpetual darkness.  Would it really make sense for that to be a fun one liner dropping character?  And knowing why he is like that or wants that would add nothing to what the film is actually about, it would only be a distraction.

Going outside of Comic Book Superhero movies I feel similarly about the aliens in Darling in The Franxx, and many of the villains of the Pokémon movies, and Count Dooku.  Some Pokémon movies have great villains, like anyone connected to Team Rocket (even if that connection only exists in the Dub).  But it's totally fine that the villain in Pokémon 2000 is just there to start the conflict and then become irrelevant, and that plenty of later ones were just basically that formula being recycled, because the villains are never what I watch a Pokémon movie for.

And maybe it's a problem that for so many Comic Book fans the villains are what they watch Superhero movies for?

Update July 3rd 2019: I have stumbled upon on old YouTube video that perhaps overlaps with the ideas of this discussion.  Though I suspect they're critical of more Plot Device Characters then I am.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGtKCATsUuA

Movies being too long, vs movies being too short.

One common criticism of certain movies I'm not inclined to agree with is criticizing a movie for being too long.  It is my biggest disagreement with the film reviews of James Rolfe (The Angry Video Game Nerd formally known as the Angry Nintendo Nerd).

I like long movies, I like things fleshed out, I prefer adaptations that add (like Prince Caspian) to adaptations that remove.  Those are general rules though and there are exceptions, I do feel there are times when a movie can be longer then it's story justifies.  And I do think over 4 hours is too much to be watched in one uninterrupted sitting.

But thing is I tend to lean towards being interested in the kinds of stories that would need longer lengths to begin with.

The reason studios want shorter movies, considering 90 minutes enough to qualify as feature length, making 2 hours about the average and rarely allowing any blockbuster with a high budget because of action, adventure, SciFi or Fantasy elements to near or pass the 3 hour mark, is purely financial.  They want movies shorter not because they think audiences will like them less but because a shorter movie can have more showings on the same screen.

But it seems simply that being the standard has conditioned some people to think that's how it should be.  But Gone with the Wind, Sound of Music, Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur were long movies that audiences were willing to sit through.  Not to mention most of Shakespeare's plays were written to be 3-4 or even 5 hour experiences. But now prices to see movies have gone up while longer films have become less common.

To me if a movie's story doesn't justify 2 hours it doesn't justify the Big Screen, that should be a 2 part episode of a TV series or a made for TV movie.

And it annoys me that Oscar Bait kinds of movies are allowed 3 hours far more often then Comic Book or Pulp inspired movies.  I feel it is the action and adventure that helps justify a longer length.  I'm more likely to be bored by a movie without that stuff going on forever.  None the less I like The Godfather films.

But to show that even I have standards, I will list the handful of examples where I felt a film was longer then it needed to be.

The Hobbit movies, mainly the second and third, the first was relatively fine.  LOTR was absolutely worthy of 3 three hour Theatrical films and 4 hour extended edition DVDs.  But The Hobbit is a very different kind of story, you can maybe justify splitting it in two films.  But this length issue overlaps with wanting it more like LOTR in tone also, The Hobbit is a simpler more fun and comical story.  It gets a little dark at a certain point, but it really stands out when that darkness happens.

Related to that, but I can't judge entirely since I haven't watched any of them.  But I feel like anytime a YA novel series last book gets split in two for the adaptation it is simply going to cause it to drag.  Whether it's Harry Potter, or Twilight Breaking Dawn, or The Hunger Games, or Divergent, though I don't recall if the Divergent films did that or not.

Also Peter Jackson's King Kong from 2005.  And again I have other issues besides the length, and overall I like it.  But such a simple story didn't need LOTR length.  Now I'm all for making it longer then the 1933 original film.  Most of what I'd remove is probably stuff from before we first see Kong, 40-50 minutes before we see him works, you do want to build that up, but over an hour is too much.  After that I'd cut the voice over quoting that really racist novel, and do what I could to trim the overblown T-Rex battle, 3 T-Rexes was overkill.

Once again, I'm forced to mention the existence of Superman Returns, I don't like being a hater.  A shorter length would hardly save this film, but it's notable that it is the only film that is under 3 hours that is still able to make me of all people think it was longer then it's story justified.

A Superman movie absolutely could justify being that long or longer, but not without an actual super powered villain for him to fight.  A remake (disguised as a sequel) of Superman The Movie doesn't need more screen time then the original, especially when it lacks the mini-movies about Krypton and Smallville.  It's also the biggest offender in my book in going on too long after it's climax.  It's justified for ROTK because it's the end of 3 movies not just one.  Batman Begins was a little shorter and it felt like more happened.  The Dark Knight was the same length and it's my favorite movie, it felt like a 5 act play, not 3 stretched out acts.

Last, let's discus a movie that I am on many levels conflicted towards.  Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

It's Ultimate Cut is 3 Hours, how do I feel about that?  For the DVD it's fine, like the LOTR extended versions or Watchmen, that extra stuff on the DVD versions aren't needed but they are fun.  For home viewing you can pause the movie to take a break, to use the restroom or eat something, or in this film's case watch funny YouTube videos to relieve the stress.  You can also skip scenes you personally don't like but that others might appreciate.

But theatrically, no.  A Batman/Superman crossover film absolutely could justify three hours in my opinion, if it had some levity and brightness and overall more variety in the emotions in evokes.  At one time I felt like The Dark Knight Returns would have needed 3 and a half hours, but upon watching how well it was done as two 70 minute animated films, I now feel it wouldn't need more time then The Dark Knight Rises even if you made a point to do more then those Cartoons combined did.

However what I would cut and keep for the theatrical version would be different.

As much as I love the Injustice like Future Vision and then immediately The Flash trying to tell Bruce something from the Future.  We don't need that, what it tells us about Bruce's motivations we more then got from seeing his experience at the beginning and what he says to Alfred.  So I'd cut that or at least trim it down to a 30 second montage.  Also when Diana opens the file Bruce sent her taken from Lex, I'd show the three logos, that's all the Justice League tease we needed, I'd save her watching the three videos for the DVD extended edition.

What isn't in the Theatrical version and that I'd still keep out is first the Steppinwolf scene, it looks cool but isn't needed, and only a subset of even nerds recognized the character.  And I'd keep Batman confronting Lex in Prison as it was theatrically, adding the reference to Arkham is cool for Nerds but wasn't needed.  That scene as it was theatrically gives us all the future movie threat set up we need.  And since she wound up not being a comics character, Jena Malone's scenes weren't needed, they just elaborated on Lois's story-line which was handled fine in the theatrical cut.

What the Theatrical Cut absolutely did need was the additional Screen-time and Dialogue for Clark Kent/Superman, the actual main character, especially his investigation of Batman.  It needed the elaboration on what happened in Africa at the beginning as much as I hate confirming that CIA agent to be Jimmy.  It needed showing that the branded criminals being killed in prison was orchestrated by KGBeast presumably on Lex's orders.  And it needed the additional stuff with the woman from Africa and the Senator, and her being killed.

I could go either way on the football game.

That hypothetical edit might still be longer then the theatrical cut we got, I'm unsure.  And it wouldn't save the film's joylessness problem.  But it would be a far better film.

But I ultimately feel like there are far more films that needed more time to flesh out their details, then there are films that dragged too much.  In general I feel if you want the film to end you're simply not enjoying it, and if you don't want it to you are enjoying it.

For some reason the first example of one to pop in my mind is usually The Haunting of Molly Hartley.  It's not exactly a film others would think of in terms of run-time debates at all.  But I really like the premise, it's an Omen like tale but with a young woman, and I enjoyed most of it as is.  I would end it's narrative sooner actually, the ending graduation and putting in her dad in the institution scenes it didn't need.  I wouldn't add anything to the first act or maybe even first half, but it does need more fleshing out and development before we reach the climactic sequence.

Batman Forever is a movie I like as is, but could be a much better film if you add all the DVD deleted scenes and re-arrange the first act so the sequence of events is more like in the novelizations.  I've heard there are Fan-Edits that have done this, I haven't gotten to view them yet because torrents are to complicated for me.  I wish there were streaming sites like pirated Anime has for Fan-Edits of Hollywood films with available deleted scenes and/or disputed length issues.

Superman IV The Quest for Peace could be similar, but not all it's deleted scenes are found and many lack needed polishing.  I also had an imaginary ideal edit of Superman II in my head once, which may be longer then either the Lester or Donner cut.  I'll need to watch them both again to fully remember what it was.  The deleted scenes that made neither cut were also a factor, though I wouldn't add all of em.

The movie version of the Les Miserables Musical is as it is in my top 10 movies of all time easily.  But the thing is I like everything added that wasn't in the original Musical, but lament that other stuff got removed because they still wanted the total run-time to be the same.

Every movie version of The Count of Monte-Cristo.  I think it's an uphill battle enough as is to try telling the story as a stand alone single movie rather then a more serialized format.  But every attempt becomes more pathetic then it needed to be by not allowing itself to go over 2 hours, while at the same time not skipping the Origin Story part.  If you are going to include the backstory, it should be a 3rd to a 4th of the story, not half of it.

My opinion of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith is interesting, it is overall by far the best of the Star Wars movies.  Yet it is also the only Prequel, in fact the only George Lucas produced Star Wars film, I have any real criticisms of at all.  Those issues mostly relate to it's handling of female characters.

Much of that could be fixed by adding not all of the deleted scenes, but just the origin of the Rebellion plot-line.  It gives Padme Amdiala, the female lead of the trilogy, something to do in the first half.  Same with Bail Organa so his becoming a main protagonist during the second half doesn't come out of nowhere.  And Mon Mothma being in the film would give it more female representation.  It would give context to when Padme tells Anakin about feeling like they might be on the wrong side.  And the last scene that also adds another Palpatine and Anakin scene has him plant the seed to distrust Padme giving more context to his getting paranoid and force choking her at the end.

Many old movies of the 30s and early 40s, like some Warner Gangster and Universal monster films, I feel are kept from true greatness only by lacking more time to flesh out their stories.

I could and might make a separate post on the issues many DC Animated movies have from being limited to 70 Minutes (Especially Year One).

I think there is a chance The Incredible Hulk could have been saved by adding some of it's deleted scenes.  Many including the suicide scene didn't even make the DVD special features, and I now think that is best left as a story he tells in The Avengers.  I really like the movie as it is.  But it particularly annoys me anytime a Superhero film is under two hours.

I'm sure I'll later think of more examples that I'll be mad at myself for not remembering now.

Final scene should be The Bat flying into Bruce's study

In the original iteration of Batman's origin story, published in Detective Comics No#23 in Novembers of 1939.

The Legend of The Batman and how he came to be
The origin of Bruce getting the idea to become a Bat was him sitting in his study knowing he needs a disguise and trying to think of one, saying "Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot" so determines it should be a scary disguise.

Then a bat flies in through the window and he goes "A Bat!That's it! It's an Omen. I shall become a BAT!"

This scene has never been dramatized in Live Action. And even in Animation only in the adaptation of Miller's Year One that adds unneeded additional drama with Bruce bleeding out and planning to kill himself if he doesn't see some sort of sign.

In the 80s Denny O'Niel had introduced an alternative explanation of Bruce as a kid falling into a Cave with Bats. Both Batman Forever and Batman Begins borrowed this. But Forever made it a giant Bat-Demon, which I felt was a DKR Homage.

The BTAS continuity establishes in Mask of The Phantasm him getting the idea from a swarm of Bat's cockblocking him.

I remember on Smallville's IMDB board we had a lot of fun giving our own ideas on what the very last shot of Smallville should be. Clark ripping his shirt open to reveal an S on his chest was a popular suggestion.

I think, IF this show manages to last 10 seasons and end with Bruce 20 or older. That Iconic scene should be how it ends. I really want to see it in Live Action, out-dated dialogue and all.

My Revenge of The Joker fan trailer

This is a Fan Trailer I wrote but that SolyentBrak1 edited

I wrote this years ago, long before The Dark Knight Rises came out.

The Premise is The Joker breaking out fo Arkham a decade after the events of The Dark Knight.

The source materiel is The Dark Knight and it's Soundtrack, a deleted scene form Batman Forever and a scene from Halloween 4.