Oscar Wilde once said memoirs were written for two reasons – self justification and revenge. He might have added therapy while he was at it, had he been living in a post Freudian age. Regardless on whether the people in question are interesting in themselves, there are not that many compelling autobiographies (telling your own life is messy in a way fiction isn’t; not coincidentally, Dickens only wrote fragments of straightforward autobiography, didn’t finish them and wrote David Copperfield instead), and/or if the it’s one of your average celebrity memoir written and standardized by a ghost writer.

When last year I heard that JMS would be publishing his autobiography, I was interested because Babylon 5 remains one of the most important and beloved things in my life of imagination and fannishness, and I liked and/or admired in varying degrees many other of his works – a lot of his Spider-Man run, the ill-fated Crusade, Changeling I thought was impressive, Supreme Powers for the first three volumes fascinating, and Sense8, of which he’s one of the three „parents“ (along with the Wachowskis) was something I got really fond of. Also he’s a writer with strong opinions, so no danger of standardized ghost written blandness. About his personal life, I didn’t know anything, so I had no expectations in terms of what kind of story he’d tell. In the lead up to the publication, which happened yesterday/today (depending on your time zone), I gathered he’d had what is euphemistically known as a „tough childhood“, and being a B5 fan, I knew about the various production travails (Did Paramount pinch the concept for DS9? Controversy, Michael O’Hare’s departure and the reasons, last minute grant of a fifth season and so forth). But that was about it.

( Spoilers suspect JMS of being a Stephen King character )

In conclusion: dark story compellingly told. Not just for fans. But definitely not if you’re easily triggered. (Honestly, how that man ever made it out of childhood coherent, I don’t know.)

My inner mule balking at assumed wisdom, fannish consensus and my inner rooter for the fannish underdog kicked in with a vengeance yesterday. You know, I hadn't looked forward to the planned Superman & Batman film, since I had severe ideological and storytelling problems with Man of Steel, though I liked the cast, and basically thought The Dark Knight Rises was rubbish, except for Selina/Catwoman, who was fabulous. Since the production team behind both would also be responsible for the proposed Batman & Superman thing, I was (and still am) suspecting exactly the same problems that annoyed me in the former two films in the future effort. Also, hearing Frank Miller's name thrown about does not inspire confidence.

However. The near universal reaction to the casting of Ben Afflek made me decide at once that come what may, I will see this film in the cinema instead of waiting for an accidental tv viewing, as I was intending to. Because good lord, you'd think they'd cast Tony Blair. Or Mel Gibson. Personal feelings about Ben Afflek: never saw Daredevil or Gigi which I take it are the basis for Afflek loathing, however liked him as an actor in Shakespeare in Love (where he had a blast as Ned Alleyn) and more importantly in Hollywoodland where he played George Reeves. (I also very much like him as a director, but that's irrelevant as to the casting, I know.) Neither performance would put him on my "best current actors" list, but they were enough to give me positive feelings about his abilities. Now given the scripts for both Man of Steel and The Dark Knight Rises, I don't think the Batman/Bruce Wayne this particular production team writes will someone I can be fond of. But then again, he just might, because as I said: the more comments like "The thought of Ben Afflek as Batman makes me throw up a little in my mouth" I read, the more I'm starting to root for Afflek!Batman. Not just because of my inner mule but because I just don't see what Ben Afflek has done to deserve that kind of animosity. He was in a few turkeys a decade ago and also had the tabloids after him and his then girlfriend. This is true about how many actors? I mean, have you seen, say, Michael Caine's resumé? Sean Connery's? On the other hand, Afflek also acted in a couple of enjoyable films, produced some highly watchable, interesting films as a director, he can write scripts, his current marriage and family seems to leave the tabloids endlessly frustrated by being a non-scandal, and he never, whether he was popular or disliked, used his status du jour as an excuse to be an ass to people, let alone violent (which sadly still makes him an exception among celebreties). This makes me like him or at least his public persona, since I don't know the man, more than I liked most incarnations of Bruce Wayne/Batman in any medium, to tell you the truth.

Lastly: the award for best reaction to the Afflek casting goes to Kevin Smith, though. Who, if you recall, put Ben Afflek & Matt Damon in a couple of his films and upon hearing the news graced us with this quote: "Do you know what that means? I've seen Batman naked!"

And in today's variation of lamenting the blueness of the sky:  I don't get the current passion for pairing up characters from different fandoms simply because their actors played a popular slash pairing elsewhere. This post is brought to you by the coincidence of yours truly recently stumbling across the following:

1) Prince Hal, aka Henry V./ Huntsman from Snowhite and....  Here I was, hoping the success of The Hollow Crown would result in more Shakespeare fanfic, which it did, but so far the dominating genre seems to be pairing Hal with a fairy tale character which confused me for the second it took me to remember who plays the Huntsman in the recent film. Okay then.  Personally, I'd have thought Hal was more the type to go for Rumpelstilzchen (until he dumps the guy when getting respectable), but have it your way. And where, I ask you, is my Henry IV./ Marquise de Merteuil fic, based on the fact Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close played husband and wife elsewhere?

2) Charles Xavier/David 8. Not exactly what I was looking for when checking out the Prometheus section  at the AO3. Look, if you want an X-Man famous for falling for doppelgangers of his beloved, Scott Summers is your man. Also, fond as I am of the McAvoy and Fassbender incarnations, nothing will ever surpass Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, and I now post facto am most aggrieved the true passion of Picard and Gandalf was denied. Clearly.

3) Bane/John Blake. Given Selina Kyle was the best thing about the new Batman by almost universal agreement, I checked out the Batman section to see whether there was more Selina, and there was (thanks, fandom!), but there was also the pairing of two characters who never meet on screen in the fine tradition of Hawkeye/Coulson, I'd say, except it was obviously based on That Guy/The Other Guy from Inception, played by the same actors.  What the Trekker in me wants to know: if you can get over Bane's mask and utter lack of interest in cops as anything but canon fodder as an impediment, when is it time for Tom Hardy's Picard clone from Nemesis getting it on with Loki? They sound like soulmates, what with being into mindwiping and non-con, and I think Hiddleston and Hardy were in some BBC costume drama together.

All this being said, I must admit I await the Bilbo/Smaug slash as soon as The Hobbit hits the screen (or rather, earlier, since fandom today doesn't even need interaction as inspiration) based on the actors with some glee. Let's hear it for the true love of a Hobbit and his dragon!

Something I forgot to mention: during those three times I watched The Avengers already, there were, of course, trailers for other superhero movies. If you don't want to be spoiled for Batman and Spider-man trailers, do not read further.

1.) The Dark Knight Rises (I think that's the title?) : aka Nolan goes third. Christopher Nolan's Batman films are basically the Wagnerian opera to the Stephen Sondheim musical that is Joss Whedon's Avengers. (Yes, I think that's a perfectly valid musical analogue and I dare you to say otherwise.) Now I'm actually fond of Wagnerian opera (see also: various reviews of seeing same performed), but I also have to be in the mood for it, plus the trailer reminded me of my Christopher Nolan admirations and frustrations. Visual epic grandeur: he has it, no question. And he's excellent with obsessive, screwed up male characters. But he and his world take themselves so very, very seriously, relentlessly, without a break. Which is fitting for Batman, I suppose, if you want to avoid the camp route, but: it also makes me feel I like a need to breathe after watching his epics and it keeps the characters at a distance for me. (Oddly enough, not in the Prestige, but in every other Nolan pic, not just his Batman films.) Whereas one of the things I appreciate about the Sondheim-Whedon approach is that while all of these characters have gone or go through horrible tragedies as well, most of them do have a sense of the absurd and a sense of humor, and so does the narrative, and this doesn't negate or cheapen the dark stuff at all. Something like the duet between Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd after Sweeney had his epiphany - you know, the "have a little priest" one - would be impossible in Wagner - Wagner could have written Sweeney, but never a character like Mrs. Lovett. And it's impossible to imagine a moment in the Batman-Nolanverse on the lines ( of two spoilery things that happen in Avengers ). And the angsty stuff comes in big, shattering aria form in the Nolan Batverse. I can't imagine a revelation like ( the one Bruce Banner makes while everyone else is arguing ) happening in a Nolan film; it would have been played not as a quiet, understated part of an otherwise stormy scene but as a Big Moment (tm) complete with philosophical statement about lone heroic destinies and the awfulness and tragedy of life.

Moving away from apples versus oranges and staying with the apples, the trailer offered me my first look at Nolan's take on Selina Kyle, which is the one thing I'm most curious about in this outing because famous for three dimensional female characters, Nolan is not. There are several interpretations of Catwoman to choose from - the bored socialite going jewel thief from decades past, the former prostitute remaking herself into a vigilante (I think Frank Miller came up with thish one in the 80s, though the small sketch from Year One was made into a more interesting and elaborate story by another writer in Her Sister's Keeper), Tim Burton's bullied secretary going empowered domina, and some others. Nolan's Selina, going by the trailer, shows up as a socialite but actually appears to be of poor origin, going by what she says to Bruce Wayne, and with a have-not grudge against the haves. The Dark Night caused a bit of a discussion about inherent authorianism of the genre and the depiction of the population of Gotham as people who can't handle the truth and need to be protected from it (though I thought that was balanced by how the Joker's suvivalist game actually played out, which was an affirmation of faith that no, humans (non-superhero, ordinary ones) can also be able to choose not to kill under extreme pressure instead of confirming humanity is rotten. Anyway, I'm not sure a class war story can be done well in Nolan's Batmanverse without ending up making some statements about only pyschopaths or misguided people being for a revolution, but that's actually not due to any Christopher Nolan viewing experience of mine and more due to Frank Miller's Return of the Dark Knight, so maybe I should be more optimistic. And get in the mood for Wagnerian opera again.

2.) The Amazing Spider-Man. Poor Peter Parker. Doomed to be rebooted in continuities everywhere because the people in charge just don't want him to grow up. The big argument Quesada & Co. used for Brand New Day, which changed comicverse Spidey from a married adult who'd spent the last two decades being written in a stable relationship with his wife to a luckless eternal adolescent living with his aunt was that the appeal of Peter Parker otherwise was lost since according to them it consisted in him being a figure of identification only if, other than his superpowers, he was the eternally bullied unlucky in romance overlooked teen. But at least that happened after a few decades wherein the poor guy was allowed to actually grow and grow up, whereas the movieverse reboot happens with breathtaking speed. Now actually I'm not die-hard about the Sam Raimi movies as the best ever, and no, I don't mean that just the third is, err, flawed; the first two which tend to be praised by most have their big problems for me as well, though they certainly entertained me. And if the trailer is anything to go buy, Garfield!Peter actually quips, which makes him closer to the comicverse version than Toby!Peter. (I had seen the first Spider-Man film before reading any of the comics, so the first big difference I noticed when catching up on the comics was that being a relentless quipster is actually a core Spidey character trait, and it's suprising that Sam Raimi, otherwise quite at home with the quippy heroes, never used that.) Also a plus: Gwen Stacy seems to find out about Peter's secret identity early on. Which is good fo rme because I'm so over keeping-your-super-ID-from-your-significant-other tales right now. But it looks like a big part of the plot uses the Ultimateverse idea of Peter's parents being experimenting scientists etc., and you know, I never liked that all too much. Leave the "my parents were murdered! Therefore, I fight crime!" thing to Bruce Wayne, people. And the "your superpowers were no accident" thing of destiny is not something I like, either. To me, one of the appealing things about Peter Parker in the traditional 616 continuity is that he really had a normal life before that spider and wasn't chosen or or trained or inherited anything; it was just an accident, and what resulted from it was what he made of it.

Lastly: now I know Spider-man, like the X-Men, was licensed to other studios because the Marvel one had not yet been established when the first Spider film was made, and therefore we don't get crossover scenes, but a line or so of dialogue would be nice and not impossible.

Horribly rl business makes for short lj entries. But:

ST: Voyager vid rec:

Machine is a cool and well-made Seven of Nine character portrait. I never was as fannish about Voy as I was about TNG and DS9, but I liked Seven, the Doctor, Janeway and Torres a lot, so when I see fannish endeavours featuring any of them, I perk up a bit. This one worked really well for me both for the great match between song and subject and because while we see Seven develop, and her interaction with the characters having an impact on her (and vice versa), like Janeway, the Doctor, Naomi Wildman et al, a certain part from the end of s7 is ignored as it should be.

Apparantly the next Fringe episode to be broadcast is called "Firefly", which made some talented person use the Fireflytitle sequence and match it to the Fringe characters, here.

And lastly: re: upcoming shows and genre movies: am still undecided whether or not to continue with Being Human (aka the "Nina and Annie love versus George and Mitchell dislike, which one will win?" dilemma), no opinion on the casting of Anne Hathaway in the third Nolan Batman movie (my image of Selina Kyle is forever influenced by having read Her Sister's Keeper, which means she looks utterly unlike Anne Hathaway or Michelle Pfeiffer), but I wonder whether jesuswasbatman' speculation about Nolan's interpretation of Catwoman will turn out to be true, and they're making it hard for me not to look forward to X-Men: First Class with posting stills like this one featuring young Charles and Erik.