By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to what has slowly developed into the bane of all cinematic existence…the shit-blasting superhero factory that is Marvel Studios!
There’s been a lot of talk lately about superhero fatigue, but you know what? The Butcher has fucking hated superhero movies ever since Christopher Reeve ponced around in his tights and undies back in the seventies! I hated Marvel Studios too, right from the pain-in-the-arse get-go…and it looks like some highly intelligent people might finally be catching up with me, as this hard-cranking superhero machine has actually been catching some shade lately. With The Fantastic Four: First Steps stretching and flame-farting its way into movie houses this week, The Butcher is reminded of how truly sick-to-fucking-death he is of Marvel superhero movies. Fuck, The Butcher hates DC too, but that’s a whole other story!
Whether it’s that star-spangled poser, Captain America (the old dude, and the dick-with-wings…they both blow), the mutant whack-jobs of X-Men, that wise-cracking tool, Spider-Man, or totally lame-arse also-rans like Thunderbolts (that initial * should have indicated “It’s shithouse”) or the TV show Ironheart (currently sitting right atop The Butcher’s who-gives-a-fuck files), it seems like there’s some silly character with a shield or claws or semen shooting from their wrists hitting cinemas every week…and The Butcher is jack of it!
The real blame for this continuing bout of superhero mania can be laid right at the feet of Marvel Studios, the movie-producing arm of the comic book publishing empire that have been riding roughshod over the box office since 2008, when they made their entrée into the market with Iron Man, and then The Incredible Hulk. Fan-boys (a polite term for people who avoid direct sunlight, spend all day at their computer, and think that stalking is just a very modern form of romance) and even critics (who cares about them though, right?) have been slobbering over Marvel’s movies even since, working themselves up to orgasm-like excitement levels whenever tiny little connections and introductions are made (that unfunny dick Sacha Baron Cohen appears as Mephisto in Ironheart…big fucking deal!), and practically having conniption fits every time new announcements are made. And the rumours and leaks about big team-up flicks like Avengers: Doomsday? Well, that’s like the earth shifting on its axis!
What’s the big deal about a bunch of characters from different movies getting together anyway? This whole “multiverse” thing is totally overrated. Get over it! There’s nothing really “ingenious” about it either (TV series have been doing it for years…remember when Magnum PI’s Thomas Magnum bumped into Murder, She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher?) – it’s just characters walking in and out of each other’s movies! And why does everyone always proclaim the Marvel Studios movies to be so “clever” and “snappy”? It’s cheap wisecracking most of the time, and for the large part, these films don’t even make any sense. Rainbow bridges? Blokes frozen in ice for fifty years? Secret shit hidden in mysterious African nations? Witches and warlocks doing jazz-hands while shit goes boom?
And then there was all that S.H.I.E.L.D nonsense! An espionage agency that has existed seemingly independent of any world government since WW2? Who’s paying S.H.I.E.L.D’s power bills? Do they lease those helicarriers? Mmmm…there’s nothing Marvellous about all of this bullshit at all…
Want to hear more from The Butcher? Check out his carve-up of that other cinematic shit-show Citizen Kane.
