Who Gives a Bloody Pissing Fuck About Batman?

The economy is ghastly, people are suffering horrendous deaths from nerve gas in Syria, and millions upon millions of folk around the world are wondering where on earth they are going to get food for their families tomorrow.

So thank all the stars that I've been given a sense of perspective by the news that Ben Affleck is going to play Batman in some fanboy trouser stirring Superman versus Batman twattery. Twitter is in meltdown - most of the top ten trends all day have involved the words "Batman" and "Ben Affleck" in various combinations.

Stoked by SF mags wishing to keep a high hit count on their advert sodden webpages, the fires of this utterly unimportant debate have blazed all day.

Batman, I think, is a favourite superhero of the middle classes, as they empathise with his pseudo-troubled personality. As they struggle with where to buy quinoa, the independent coffee shop patronisers empathise with a man who struggled to be brought up among endless money and toys to play with.

While people immerse themselves in the privileged backstory of the bat, I have steadfastly refused to give a toss until now, an article written in 5 minutes while I watch a documentary about World Music on BBC4. How can anyone give a monkeys?

Me, I will read and enjoy proper sci fi, as more endless comic books get re-digested and recycled like the water in the International Space Station, and a real world rotates around the sun royally fucking itself up. Thank you and goodnight!

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

I watched some of this too, and like every single other Batman film ever made, I found it entirely un-involving. This was event cinema! I was spending the time setting up a twitter account for my sister and trying to learn a few things about her hTC 8X phone.

I just don't care very much.

I have no investment in the character I think...not that I haven't read a few of the comic book stories and enjoyed them, I thought Arkham Asylum was a wonderfully done and atmospheric piece of work...but I'm not a fanboy and I'm still, perhaps wrongly, of the opinion that all this Young Adult and Comic Book originated film-making is a bit lazy and risk free.

Someone write something entirely new!!!! Find a new story!!! But no, we have to buy into this bloody huge mythos over and over again.

The endless angst about the internal struggle within Batman, this constipated angst, is very off putting, multiplied as it is by Christian Bale's shitting a wardrobe performance and silly growly voice.

He's as rich as Croesus, I don't buy it! He has toys, and pretty girls, and a great life. Tormented? Get to fuck.

Tom Hardy as Bane ought to be a fantastic opponent, but like Batman, his dialogue is often incomprehensible, and when you can hear it it seems like it could have been nicked from Magneto in any X Men movie with an added serving of fruit. Anne Hathaway is gorgeous, but what else?

And finally, as I endlessly tried to find a profile picture my sister wouldn't kill me for, my overall impression of most of the film was watching a man climb a chimney, and falling off, for an hour. This isn't a film, this is the occupation of a seven year old urchin!

Hard On for Trailers

An obsession about trailers is the same as any other fetish really...

There is no difference between the fanboy sweating and getting hot at the latest Prometheus trailer and the man watching an amply sized woman crushing bananas down her cleavage. The kid looking for details upon Batman's new cape is the same as the man who peers intently at the speculumned delicates of his lady love as she rides a shiny set of medical stirrups.

I gave up on it. I got vaguely excited at the Prometheus trailers in a follow-the-herd sort of way, then after the first one wondered why I was bothering...if I want to see the film, I'll see the bloody film, not analyse frame frame by tedious frame some 60 second snippet of it product placing its way into your psyche.

I don't recall the Harry Potter books being read out on the radio, random page by random page, still less anyone getting excited about it. Watch the movies people, don't give in to the endless hype machine of squid-enema-medical-eyeball licking-furry playing trailer porn.

Its getting boring.