Woke is a big part of the modern movie scene right now. We needed Captain Marvel because there had never been a comic book movie with a female main character!
People praised Black Panther not because it was good, but because Black Panther was THE FIRST superhero movie with a black main character!
Next thing they’ll probably do is make a black guy in a wheelchair into a superhero. Wait, that already happened.
M.A.N.T.I.S. was a 1994 made-for-TV movie created and written by Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm, two men with strong comic book movie bona fides. Hamm had written both of the Tim Burton Batman films. Raimi had recently directed and co-written the superhero movie Darkman and would go on to direct a trilogy of Spider-Man movies as well as a Dr. Strange movie. The made-for-TV movie was a pilot for a series of the same name, but the series is not a direct continuation, more of a soft reboot. The series ran for one season on FOX with the final two episodes airing when the show moved to The Sc-Fi Channel (before they re-branded to SyFy).
Carl Lumbley stars as Dr. Miles Hawkins, a brilliant scientist who was confined to a wheel chair after being shot. Hawkins invented an exo-skeleton to be able to walk again, but while testing the apparatus found out it gave him enhanced strength and agility. This being a superhero show that means he decides to start fighting crime with his new abilities. Lumbley would go on to do more work in the genre, appearing as The Martian Manhunter’s father on the Supergirl TV series as well as voicing characters in DC animated projects.
The character seems to be somewhat inspired by Iron Man. Dr. Hawkins made a fortune milking the teat of the Department of Defense, but has sworn off deadly force after he suffered violence himself. Also, where Tony Stark created the Iron Man suit as by-product of curing himself* so does Dr. Hawkins. However, while Stark’s technology does indeed aid in keeping him alive the M.A.N.T.I.S. (“Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interception System”, or “Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interactive System” for the series) suit actually makes Dr. Hawkins’ paralysis worse the more he uses it. This adds a philosophical angle to the show about making self-destructive decisions for a greater purpose.
The movie version of the show has elements that would now be called Woke, but it doesn’t play out the same as today’s propaganda. Dr. Hawkins was shot in the back by police while he is trying to save child during a riot (this was being produced in the wake of the LA Riots). The female protagonist, played by a pre-Firefly Gina Torres, gets called an Affirmative Action hire by her white co-worker who thinks all young black men are gang bangers. The villain is hired by a white tough on crime mayoral candidate who is trying to start a gang war so he can win Donald the election. Somebody actually brings up Social Justice (in 1994!).
However, Dr. Hawkins is presented as a black conservative, and he’s the fucking hero! It is shown that he has softened on his stances since he was shot, but he still maintains an heir of being more right than left. That mention of Social Justice comes when the race hustling employee of the current soft on crime mayor confronts Dr. Hawkins:
Pike: Aren’t you part of Chief Stark’s election committee, sharing all your ideas on Social Justice?
Hawkins: The only justice, Pike, is the justice you make for yourself.
Pike, a black man, is shown to only be in politics for money and celebrity. He is in fact the villain that was hired to start the gang war to get the tough on crime white guy elected.
M.A.N.T.I.S. was released on DVD in 2008 and is available to pay to stream on Amazon. (You can also find most episodes on Youtube, although the episode numbers may be wrong or it may inexplicably be in German)
*For the non-nerds, Tony Stark created the Arc Reactor that powers the Iron Man suit because he needed to power an electromagnet to keep irremovable shrapnel from penetrating his heart.
Is Vamperella any good?
Also, didn’t that Catwoman movie get shelved?
Just the remake. That’s the Halle Berry one in the post.
As I recall….no.
“written by Sam Raimi and Sam Hamm”
Uhhhh….no. They were in grade school when that was written.
1970’s TV movie pilot. I dont remember the name. Everything old is new again.
Even Mrs. Suthenboy is complaining about everything being a reboot, remake, prequel, sequel etc. No original ideas in decades.
Ah hah! Found it. Exo-man, 1977.
My, what an incestuous bunch the Hollywood crowd is. It starred David Ackroyd, and Raimi wrote the remake.
This was Raimi, not Ramis.
Thanks. I am old and my memory is for shit. I got the whole thing completely screwed up. I have two crowds of people mixed up.
For the non-nerds, Tony Stark created the Arc Reactor that powers the Iron Man suit because he needed to power an electromagnet to keep irremovable shrapnel from penetrating his heart.
Is this canon from the comic books? I never read Iron Man.
Yes. In the comic there were pieces of shrapnel that would move toward his heart and ultimately kill him if not for the magnet keeping them in place.
As in the movie, he had the shrapnel removed at the end of Iron Man 3, the Chinese doctor who did the surgery had his own subplot for the CCP release. I don’t believe the Arc reactor was in the original books, but it seems to have been retconned and it’s hard to tell, since google sucks now I gave up after the first page trying to find out if the arc reactor was a thing before the movies.
I grew up in the ’40s reading comic books. Mostly they were the softer type, Disney/Archie/ an occasional Batman and Superman. There were not many other superheros/fantasy. My Dad would occasionally be given a stack that a client’s kids had outgrown. We were into Boy’s Life and all the outdoor magazines. Pre TV meant we had to escape via the printed word. Kids lived in a way different world.
Stop bragging.
Scrooge McDuck was my hero, but I read Sgt. Rock too. He never came up against a Nazi who could shot straight.
The only real Mantis.
I was waiting for this.
Dr. M.A.N.T.I.S. Toboggan.
You know what was a good show? Alf. You remember Alf, right? Well, he’s back. In pawg form.
I mean that literally. They gender swapped him with an overweight white trans woman.
I have no idea what you are talking about.
That’s because you aren’t with it anymore, old man. The future is now.
Here’s a postcard to let you know the time.
The future is queer? That is unsustainable without turkey basters.
Well, invest in turkey baster futures!
We ain’t Muskogee but Podunkville is pretty close.
Was or was not Alf a muppet?
No. No he was not. Muppets are funny, and Alf was unfunny. That is all.
Re: the bill to ban tik-tok – let’s give the same people who tried to create the Disinformation Governance Board their wet dream: the ability to shut down any website they want.
First up, shut down X.
What could go wrong?
It’s a uniparty, and you aint part of it. It doesn’t represent you.
Where is “Shaft”? Black action hero and one bad….. Shut your mouth!
Dolomite!
Black Dynamite!
That is a great movie.
Related, the Black Panther crowd completely overlooked Blade. It was a successful movie, people. That’s why there were sequels. Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Tell that to Jennifer Lawrence.
More proof actors and actresses are dumb.
They just exist in their little MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEEEEEEE bubble. LOOKATME!!!
👍
Ok, this is a great story.
https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/03/13/two-georgia-men-who-bombed-a-womans-home-wanted-to-unleash-a-python-to-eat-her-daughter-n4927278
Bombs, pythons, dumbasses.
You know, people have this innate need to infantilize and make excuses for women who make really stupid fucking decisions. Something tells me that the woman who dated the guy looking to blow up her house and release a python after her daughter wasn’t exactly a shining example of feminine nobility herself.
Agreed.
Based on the number of women who write Dear Abby about some scumbag and abusive boyfriend or husband, but say “But I still love him”, I have to agree.
All I’mma say is, yeah, some women make bad choices, but some of those bad choices could cost them their lives, so I think we can extend a little grace to women who are physically unable to fight back or get away once they realize what they’ve done.
Hopefully she has learned not to date guys who fantasize about their pet pythons eating people.
We can hope.
There are a whole lot of really broken people out there.
Out there?
Speaking of broken, there is a registry edit you can make to Win11 to make the taskbar dock to the right.
I’m not saying she deserved what she got. Simply expressing my own opinion that people tend to be attracted of people of similar character. I know people will vehemently disagree on that point. And there are of course exceptions even in my outlook.
Same thing with people who are friends with assholes. At a certain point, I start questioning how nice that person really is if they tolerate the asshole.
I tolerate assholes far longer than I should because I don’t care enough to let it affect me. Until I do.
After describing my (ex)bestie on Zoom one night, Sloper pointed out that she was an asshole, which … I’d never really thought of her that way. Then she turned it on my kid and I was all, “Yep. Sloper was right.” It wasn’t a surprise that she’s an asshole. I know who I am and I’m not going to change, warts or not. There’s very little that she could do to me that would make me cut her off after a 30-year friendship.
But. I never thought she’d turn it on someone 25 years younger than she, whom she professed to love. I probably shoulda seen something like that coming.
Well, I’ve been unfriended and had to unfriend a person. Seems like I won both times.
Now if Gio can only get things worked out with Dot and still keep her family happy….
People talk about whether NASA is hiding evidence of artificial structures on Mars. No one is asking the right question. Is NASA hiding evidence of Firsts on Mars? Is Mars the ancient homeland of the Firsters? The First-garden told about in the Five Books Of The First?
The whole alien/UFO thing is perplexing. If they exist, and are hostile, there’s no earth military technology that can defeat their technological capacity. If they exist, and are friendly, then they will let us know when the time comes. So why panic or worry about it?
Everyone keeps assuming aliens are a bloc. Just because humans are social and form governments doesn’t mean aliens do.
From a logistical standpoint, the kinds of large projects involved in becoming an interstellar species, you’re looking at either a social species, or a hivemind.
If we were doing the visiting, you could find anarchic aliens, but you’re not liable to get them visiting us,
Though factions are inevitable.
I swear to God this guy is a stalking horse/catspaw for establishment Dems trying to claw back some mainstream appeal by putting a somewhat genial face on common-sense, popular opinions that don’t play well to their extremist lefty base. They shuffled the golem into office despite his obvious infirmity, expending a ton of political credibility, and now they’re saddling him with all their worst baggage: Pro-Israel? He’s on it. Anti-immigrant? He’s about the border.
Dehe’s more refund the police.I’m positing this: they put up this bank shot candidate without much hope, but when he won, decided he was the perfect face for attempting to roll back the excesses of their party. Maybe he actually believes what he says, maybe he’s merely been unleashed rather than coached, but he’s the Pelosi-wing’s hope of reining in the progressive wing.
And that’s my theory how M&Ms have sex.
Fetterman came out for the removal of Sen. Menendez earlier this week. Safe opinion because he knows it won’t happen with the Dems holding that slim majority in Senate.
You seem to be using a lot of words to say he’s a senator from a swing state possibly going red-ish.
That state is blue for a century. Reddish. Ha!
Biden by 5, 9 post fortification.
Mmm, Gina Torres.
Random thoughts.
Post-nasal and Post Malone are in the same category as post-grad. Something that is chronologically beyond. Post hole and postal are not.
Big rocket go boom tomorrow morning.
Love & Rockets/Big Audio Dynamite reunion tour?
Bauhaus w/o Peter Murphy is just Love and Rockets.
You know what else goes boom? https://youtu.be/7y5N3f1WVDc?si=wW1n96I-XB-pbmY4
So, I finally started reading “Gazeteer #1: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos”. A Dungeons and Dragons supplement published in 1987.
Some interesting stuff, for a book about a fantasy land. The gist is that a nobleman from fantasy the Byzantine Empire finagles the emperor into giving him allodial title to a piece of the imperial frontier. The place is in need of adventurers to deal with the various monsters that infest the wilderness.
It has an adventure concerning a man who is petitioning the Duke to ease up on taxes for certain natives who were pilfered when the Duke’s army conquered the land. The local mafia boss gets wind of what the man is doing, and orchestrates a scheme to get the Duke to lower taxes for all merchants, not just those who were robbed. The text then says, “The problem is, most people think that Davinov’s request was that all Traladaran merchants pay much-reduced taxes, which would cripple the Karameikos economy if it were allowed.”
Face.
Palm.
So, if I run this adventure, I’m going to have to figure out a different scheme for the mafia boss to concoct. Probably something like raising taxes on imports, or restricting imports. Maybe the petition is changed from lowering taxes to outright payments to merchants from the treasury, for reparations.
Nerd!
I have 9 levels in Nerd, 7 levels in Geek (which uses CHA instead of INT for spellcasting), and 3 levels in Dork, for the bonus feat.
So you’ve give up on using anything above a 4th level spell?
You should have specialized.
The Gazetter series is example N+! why the BECMI edition of D&D was the best.
*Is* the best.
You can get a PoD copy of the Rules Cyclopedia for $20 or so. Many of the adventures are available as either pdf or PoD.
A moose slept in our yard last night and then I was summoned for jury duty. I looked out the window and gave the same answer.
Does Jury Nullification exist in America’s Toque?
I hear tell that in Canada if a moose sleeps in your yard under a full moon the local convenience store will run out of Molsens. It’s bad juju, Festus.
As long as there are Gauloises in stock all will be well. Habits ain’t cheap
This might come in handy for Brocheddarward.
That’s quality.
⬅
Hey hey, modern comedy that’s actually funny. Subscribed
Watching Air Bud..lol
Get up and kick some ass!
🌄☕😀
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_NWjehpGSO0
🎶🎶
😑
Good morning, U!
Morning. How goes?
Very well, thanks, though I’m exasperated to have been right about the cause of yesterday’s main work annoyance: Turned out that our payroll processor, had, in fact, neglected to send the money for our 401(k) contributions and loan payments from our last pay because they chose the wrong option during the information submission process – They selected something like “plan will initiate payment” instead of the correct ACH option. 🤦♀️
How about you?
I overslept, but at least it’s a remote day. I have a headache, and the meetings on today’s calendar don’t seem to be good for it.
😟 Most meetings are only good for causing headaches, not curing them.
Good morning, Sean!
I’m conversing with you this morning from under an EXCELLENT brand new roof, completed in what seemed like record time – they showed up shortly before 8 a.m. yesterday and reportedly were done by around 3:00 p.m. (Happily, the weather was perfect.) Today, however, the Excellent Brand New Roof is liable to get its first workout. Top headline in today’s Too Local news:
👍👍
Excellent! We just got a repair done and it looks like just in time for some heavy winds tonight. Stay safe tonight GT!
You do the same, OBE! Might be tuning into Ryan Hall, Y’all this evening to see if he’s live streaming some storm tracking. (Shout-out to KK for putting me on to his YT channel.)
Hondurans, El Salvadoreans or Nicaraguans? They kind of all look alike but all bust their butts on the roof. I had El Salvadoreans do a couple of roofs, I rewarded them with fresh garden stuff (including watermelons and jalapenos) half way through the project. They left with smiles and a hearty “Gracias, senor”
I seem to recall a comment from the guy who quoted the job to the effect that if we were lucky, we’d get the Guatemalan crew. Did not confirm whether that’s who we got, but in addition to excellent, efficient work, they cleaned up thoroughly – including running a large magnet on a pole around the yard and on the driveway to pick up any stray nails so they wouldn’t be run over by lawn mowers or cars. 👍👍
That is sometime the greatest benefit of a quality crew and well worth the money. We are still picking up some wood from the first people we hired to redo the deck.
🙂
Ah, I see Damon Wayans’ Blankman, the handicapped superhero that falls out of the window, at the top there. That shit’d never get made now…hell, if a writer proposed that he’d be fired.
Likewise, I suspect In Living Color couldn’t be made now, which is a shame.
Yep: Firemarshall Bill, Men on Film, Ugly Wanda, the Fly Girls-all pretty damn problematic.
Likewise the recurring bit that I think was called the Homeboy Shopping Network.
And the gnashing of teeth with the “Men on Film” bit…
NSF – IFT3 coverage
The Launch Pad – IFT3 coverage
My guess: 60/40 on successful separation with a 70% chance if successful completing the whole flight.
LabPadre – IFT3 coverage
Happy Birthday!
ttps://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/chuck-norris-celebrates-84th-birthday-feels-48hday!
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/chuck-norris-celebrates-84th-birthday-feels-48
Calendars don’t have a Chuck Norris birthday. Chuck Norris chooses the day he wants to age.