Ready Player One: Unpacking the weird 80s obsessions of the Oasis

In READY PLAYER ONE, a weird thing about the Oasis is the preponderance of 80s-era pop culture. I can accept that apparently at some point, culture stagnated and so everyone's left with reheated reminders of the past, but it's weird that things are so heavily 80s and so heavily geek culture on top of that. Where are the musical theater nerds? The Shakespeare buffs? The Ren fair weirdos for that matter? I know we get a couple cameos that scrape the 90s and a bit before the 80s but it stands out that everything is all the "acceptably cool" (and as someone pointed out to me, "Male-coded") culture of the 80s.

Growing up, I got pretty into oldies, but because everything I learned came from oldies radio, not only was I mostly exposed to the hits - I didn't have any window into which hits came from "lame" bands back then. From my father's reaction when I put "Build Me Up Buttercup" on an oldies mix CD, I intuited this was NOT a cool song back in the day. The same thing also divorced The Monkees from their stigma as a novelty band ("Daydream Believer is a great song, shut up) and someone rescues The Dave Clark 5 from being seen as also-rans to the Beatles.

My point is, in 2045, people who didn't live through 80s culture should have an entirely different relationship with it. What if Wade rocked out to Tiffany because he liked the beat of "I Think We're Alone Now?" Maybe he thinks ISHTAR is an incredible comedy, or that ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS represents Mel Brooks at his best. Or hell, what if he thinks THE GOONIES is a fucking annoying movie to watch because of all the screaming kids? The best material will always endure, but other stuff is bound to slip through the cracks and be reevaluated too. I might have found it easier to see so much geek culture thrive in this future if it had been portrayed in a way that felt distinctly different from the nostalgic eyes of someone who grew up in the 80s.

I brought this point up on Twitter and a dozen or so people explained to me that Halliday was obsessed with the 80s and so people became obsessed with 80s culture because they were convinced that was the key to winning the hunt in the Oasis, with the result being that 80s culture became the dominant culture. I think that's a really simplistic way to present a culture, the sort of thing that would only fly in the original STAR TREK, where cultural contamination would lead to an entire planet of 1930s mobsters. More relevantly, this is not how the movie presents things at all.

In fact, 80s culture turns out to not be the main way to thrive on the quest. Wade solves the first challenge by decoding a bit of Riddler-like wordplay from Halliday. Then Art3mis figures out the first step of the second riddle in a similar way, with the solution to the second task being accomplished more through a knowledge of Halliday's past than 80s film simulation they find themselves in.

The third task absolutely rests on 80s geek trivia, I'll give you that.

But in the world of the challenge, no one's beaten the first challenge after five years, so there's not a compelling pointer that would make people assume that engaging the 80s would provide any better solution than studying Halliday. There's some effort made to have the puzzle be about learning from Halliday's regrets and that's kind of neat even if only one (don't be too shy to kiss the girl) seems directly relevant to Wade's life.

Also, if I conceded the point of those who I cite the book, I'd retort by pointing out that the Oasis was already an obsession even before Halliday's scavenger hunt. People were addicted to it before 80s culture became the thing to study, and presumably that's because there were no limits to what one could do there. Given that, is it credible that people would cast aside those obsessions to take on a new one, especially if their goal is just to preserve the thing that fed their original obsessions?

I think the movie dodges a lot of this by showing us little of the real world and by focusing mostly on characters who might have adopted some 80s geekdom along the way. Still, I would have loved to have seen a slightly broader diversity within the oasis. Turns out that limitless imagination looks a lot like the Exhibit Hall of Comic-Con.

READY PLAYER ONE might have thrived more with stronger world-building and a different lead character

So. READY PLAYER ONE. This is going to be an interesting review. I didn't hate the movie, but I'm pretty sure I didn't love it either. And as I start this examination, I'm left with so much that I want to unpack that I can already feel this coming off more negative than I intend.

Let's get this out of the way - I've never read the book by Ernie Cline, who co-wrote the script with Zak Penn. I saw a few excerpts tossed around online with entire paragraphs that were more of a word salad of pop culture references than Dennis Miller having a stroke during a taping of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 that was mocking a Kevin Williamson movie.  Lest you think that colored my opinion against the film, if there's one thing Spielberg excels at is making awesome movies out of shitty books.

(Yes, yes... he couldn't save THE LOST WORLD, but I'm not sure if anyone could have.)

It is the year 2045. We're in a vaguely-defined dystopia, mostly expressed by trailer parks built vertically. The point is, life sucks and so these economically destitute people escape their lives with expensive-looking VR gear that provides access to The Oasis - a sort of virtual reality cyberspace that's "limited only by your imagination." The denizens of 2045 must be a particularly unimaginative bunch because our tour is mostly limited to seeing people navigate the world in the skins of their favorite pop culture characters. The world-building is mostly limited to seeing the characters run races or go clubbing, leaving impression that the film could have worked harder to make this place limitlessly imaginative.

The hook - When the creator of The Oasis, James Halliday died, he left instructions for a scavenger hunt of sorts in the Oasis. The first one to solve the riddles and obstacles that lead to three keys will get complete control of the Oasis. In this five years since this particular starting gun has been fired, no one's made any real progress. An evil corporation, IOI, has devoted a great deal of resources and manpower to being the first to do this, with designs on polluting the virtual world with pop-up ads that would pollute 80% of the user's field of vision.

The good news is that Halliday superfan and all around blandly-inoffensive geek Wade Watts is also on the hunt. He's the first to solve a riddle and get the first key, and he's soon joined by Art3mis, a female player of some notoriety with whom Wade is smitten. Of course, during their first few encounters, he only knows her avatar and his interest in her eventually makes Art3mis uncomfortable.

One of the most interesting lines in the film belongs to Art3mis, in a scene where she reminds Wade that she doesn't look like her avatar and that he's not seeing the real her. In the Oasis, she only allows him to "see the parts of me I want you to see." That right there is a perfect metaphor for life online. It's the futuristic version of Instagram FOMO, where people see the curated images their friends post and get depressed that their lives aren't living up to it. (OR when depressed people only post the good images and everyone around them assumes their life is perfect.)

There's an entirely under-explored concept about how the Oasis gives people the freedom to be what they want to be by creating their own avatars. There's a version of this movie that could really sink its teeth into themes of identity and what it means to have the total freedom to escape into fantasy. We get a fleeting glimpse of this when the face behind the macho and muscular Aech avatar turns out to be a black woman named Helen. (She's played by Lena Waithe, who is WAY underutilized here, regrettably.)

I try to stick to criticizing the film I'm presented with and not the film I wanted to see, but it's frustrating to see the film walk RIGHT UP to a really compelling idea and then veer off at the last second. Especially when it writes a check that it fails to cash later.

Remember how Art3mis warns Wade that if he saw the real her, he wouldn't be in love with her? Well, when he meets her face to face, she's played by Olivia Cooke, who... fun fact... is probably FAR prettier in real life than as her Oasis avatar. So to compensate for this, they give her a red blotch of a birthmark that covers her right eye. She tends to cover it with her hair, which only makes me wish her in-Oasis avatar had been Veronica Lake.

That bit of silliness aside, Olivia Cooke is probably the one of the better reasons to see this film. Though she was often under-utilized on BATES MOTEL, her breakout performance was in ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL, in which she played the "Dying Girl." Between those two roles, she displayed a talent for playing characters who present as fragile, but prove to have deep strength and conviction. I'm not sure the script really sold me on Art3mis's love for Wade, but Cooke generates enough chemistry with co-star Tye Sheridan that it almost doesn't matter.

I couldn't help but feel that the more interesting film might have been told from Art3mis's point of view. While Wade is mostly into the scavenger hunt for the money and the escapism the Oasis offers, Art3mis has a much deeper motivation. She wants to keep the Oasis out of the corporate hands of IOI as a way of avenging her father. He fell deep into debt and then basically was forced to become an indentured slave to the corporation, who kept piling on fees and interest to ensure he never worked off that debt before he died. A lot of these concepts aren't introduced into the film until Olivia brings them up, leaving the feeling that something was cut that set all this up sooner.

But the point is that Art3mis is fighting for a cause, while Wade... really isn't, at least for a while. It's a little similar to how STAR WARS gives Leia an active motivation from the start, but Luke himself is aimless and has only a vaguely-defined desire to get off-planet until his aunt and uncle are killed. (Spoiler alert: there's a pretty heavy parallel to that here, one that almost certainly isn't accidental.)

Wade might deliberately be a blank slate so the audience can more easily identify with and project on to him, but he still feels half-formed. He's a bland blank slate, with little insight provided as to why these specific pop culture icons mean something to him. Yes, it's cool to drive the Delorean from BACK TO THE FUTURE, but why that? Why not KITT from Knight Rider or James Bond's Aston Martin? Wade was probably born around 2025, when BACK TO THE FUTURE was already 40 years old. What made that stand out to him amid a sea of films? Was it the setting in a simpler time? Does Marty's relationship with his parents press a few buttons for the orphaned Wade?

Tell me your fantasies and I can tell you who you are. The problem is that Wade's fandom is the most superficial kind of obsession. He's obsessed with Halliday because Halliday is the man who created the Oasis, but the heart of what the Oasis means to Wade is only broadly defined. What kinds of things did he do in the Oasis before beginning the hunt? Did he recreate his parents? Did he lose his virginity to a virtual Elle MacPhereson? Did he perform at Wembley Stadium with Queen?

Who is Wade Watts? Who is he without the Oasis? I don't think the movie really knows. He's not totally without merit - he proves his bravery in going to rescue Art3mis. His knowledge of trivia also unlocks the final challenge and then he passes a Willy Wonka-like test that proves his worthiness. (Which actually, means that there's a good chance one of the corporate goons wouldn't have ultimately won.)

A quest movie should ideally be a journey of self-discovery for the film's protagonist too. Let's look at Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, another Spielberg film. Spielberg has always described it as being a quest for the Grail, but in the end, the real Grail is Indy's relationship with his father. If it was just about finding the Grail, the story wouldn't have the resonance it does when Indy's father tells Indy to "let go" of his obsession with the object and in doing so, let's go of his own obsession so that he can heal his relationship with his son. It's a resonance that's missing here. The film tries some slight of hand to make us THINK such a thing has happened, but falls short.

The movie wants us to come away with the sense Wade has grown as a person through his adventure. You can see the end points of the arc called out. He's gone from being a lone wolf to having a group. He's grown from spending every free minute in the Oasis to shutting it down two days a week to force people to live in the real world. By extension, he's realized that there are good things in life beyond the Oasis. If you're taking the Oasis as a metaphor for modern internet life, this isn't a bad rule to live by - "Get out and experience the real world."

But for the purposes of this film, the meaning falls flat because we know nothing about the real world of this film other than it sucks. In THE MATRIX, freeing everyone from the simulation is unequivocally a good thing because they've been enslaved by the machines and are being exploited against their will. Sure, the "real world" there sucks too, but they've been conquered. Defeating the machines is a big enough triumph that it overshadows the truth that what everyone awakens into is going to be pretty depressing.

 In READY PLAYER ONE, the big win is about preserving the Oasis, but then it also shifts into "experience the real world," which thematically doesn't track from anything in the film. It also doesn't help that the action that plays over Wade's voiceover about this is him and Art3mis making out in the real world. Her outfit seemed to be some kind of Japanese dress, with her hair curled into two buns that might have been an attempt at a Princess Leia hairstyle. Whatever it is, it has the air of being some kind of geek fetishization, which is pretty much the exact wrong note to hit at that point.

The film really needed to give us some sense of how shutting down the Oasis is going to be a net gain for society. All the benefits that we can infer only come from mentions made in passing. We're told early on that most people communicate in the Oasis only, as face to face contact has decreased. It's demonstrated more than once that Wade hasn't met his Oasis friends face-to-face, but then he also leaps pretty quick to wanting to meet Art3mis face-to-face, in a way that suggests such contact isn't entirely unheard of.

The Oasis connects people and it's always shown to be a good thing. There's a lot going on in the film, but it would have helped if they'd found a stronger way to underline "These people need to go outside more." Perhaps if the real world was less dystopian, the cyber-addiction metaphor would have been more potent.

Spielberg still can crank out an inventive action scene - even if he REALLY needs to put cinematographer Janusz Kaminski on bee-guarding duty for a movie or two so that we can get a Spielberg film that doesn't feel totally bleached of color. I liked it in MINORITY REPORT, but I've long since lost patience with Kaminski's brand of hazy, overlit cinematography. The Oasis should have been a colorful, beautiful Land of Oz - not a place that alternates between blinding light and dark shadows (the better with which to hide several pop culture cameos in silhouette.)

But for all the faults and questions I have, I didn't hate the film. It falls right between a thumbs-up and a thumbs-down. It'll likely land far outside of most viewers top Spielberg films, but that's a pretty high bar to scale. There are a fair number of moments that played well with an audience, but not enough moments that really connected us to the characters. If there's one thing that the best Spielberg films accomplish, it's vicariously experiencing a sense of awe and wonder through the characters. This film didn't make me feel about the Oasis that I did about Jurassic Park, but maybe I should take a lesson from the movie itself and not look to nostalgia for what I should be finding in life.

LOVE, SIMON is about knowing who you are while needing to find the strength to be seen that way

John Hughes does not have a monopoly on the teen movie genre.

I want to state that upfront because every time a new teen movie really seems to hit the mark, reviews go out of their way to pay homage to John Hughes. There's certainly no question that the man's body of work broke a lot of ground in the teen movie genre. Nor would I deny that his work was an inspiration to many filmmakers who treated teen protagonists as fleshed-out, complicated human beings.

But it's been 25 years, and it's time to acknowledge that teen movies should be free of John Hughes's shadow.

This was one of the thoughts that came to me during LOVE, SIMON, a high-school dramedy about a 17 year-old boy (Nick Robinson) with a secret. You see, Simon is gay. This isn't a movie about Simon realizing he's gay, or figuring out his sexuality, which is a not-uncommon story (for supporting players) in teen films. (Or smaller indie films, if the lead is the one discovering their sexuality.) Simon knows who he is, he just doesn't know what to do about it.

There's a bullshit line that a lot of reviewers use when discussing the experience of walking out of a film as a privileged person who has felt empathy for some kind of "other": "It's not a gay/black/Muslim/etc. story, it's a universal story." It's a line that means well, but when wrongly deployed can seem to be erasing the uniqueness of the black/gay/etc. experience. LOVE, SIMON is a gay story. There's no logic to erasing that. But it's a gay story with so much to say about identity and perception that it allows for identification beyond sexual orientation.

LOVE, SIMON is about finding the strength to be seen as the person you are and realizing that what everyone else thinks about it means both nothing and everything. Unable to come out to those closest to him, Simon begins an email correspondence with an anonymous closeted student at his school. He's at last able to be open about his feelings and his insecurities, in an interesting demonstration about how anonymity and the mask provides helps people be true to themselves.

A virtue of the script, by THIS IS US showrunners Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker, based on the novel Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda is that it doesn't paint Simon's life as one where he'd obviously need to be closeted. To start with, he's raised by two loving, liberal parents who taken an active interest in their children's lives. I've lamented many times how Jennifer Garner seemed like she should have had a career as a double-threat action-star, serious dramatic actress and somehow keeps getting stuck in "mom roles," but this is one of her better mom roles. (Spoilers through the rest of the paragraph.) She's the center of a scene that's arguably the emotional catharsis of the entire film when she tells her newly-out so that he deserves love and that being gay shouldn't change that. As Simon's dad, Josh Duhamel has an equally powerful moment when he asks his son how long he's known he was gay, and then weeps at realizing his son felt he had to hide who he was for four years.

Ten years ago I might have called bullshit on such scenes as being too idealized and easy, but you have to remember that Simon was born into a post-Ellen, post Will & Grace world. I buy that parents of Simon's upbringing would react the way they do, just as I buy the school's supportive attitude, and the fact that Simon deals with some moderate homophobia from two bullies.

This isn't a movie that really addresses the politics of being gay. It doesn't try to be all things to all aspects of that kind of life. Gay marriage isn't addressed, hate crimes and institutionalized homophobia aren't mentioned either. Coming now, in a time where Trump has ushered in a vast increase in anti-Semitism, homophobia, and Islamophobia, it's a little surprising that fear for one's life doesn't enter at all into the decision to come out. I don't think addressing this would do anything other than gum up the story, and it's probably best to leave these matters to films addressing those issues head-on.

The one thing that DOES seem odd to me is the fact that Simon's high school has only one out gay student. That feels unusual for a school that by all appearances is very supportive of students who choose to be open about being gay. The school reminded me a lot of my high school, where cliques weren't really that important and everyone was generally accepting of each other. I can't remember anyone being out in my school, but this was two decades ago.

Simon's friends are another strong support system. He's known Nick (Jorge Lendenborg Jr.) and Leah (Katherine Langford) since kindergarten and really has no reason to think that they'd abandon him just for coming out. As he says later, though, he was scared of this truth changing too much about a part of his life that meant a lot to him. There are a lot of complications with his friends that I don't want to get into too much detail on, except to say there's a point where another student finds out Simon's secret and blackmails him in a way that leads Simon to manipulate his friends.

When the truth comes out, our sympathies are with Simon, who was just trying to keep from being forcibly outed. We almost want to give him a mulligan on everything he did in service of that, but the script doesn't forget that his actions had emotional consequences for his friends. As understanding as they are of his secret, what he did hurt too, and he's not easily let off the hook. There's not a great deal of space for the film to deal with this, but I like that it's even addressed at all.

Like director Greg Berlanti's TV series EVERWOOD, this is a story that remembers everyone in it has a justifiable motivation behind even their most self-involved actions. It was a show that truly understood their characters inside and out, and rarely would fall into situations that were purely black and white. A "good," well-intentioned action could cause justifiably-felt hurt in another person. It was never a show that allowed a "greater good" to deliver a mulligan for bad mistakes. When I look at LOVE, SIMON, I see a film with a lot more EVERWOOD DNA than John Hughes DNA

I recently did a breakdown of EVERWOOD's pilot on Twitter and one thing I liked about it is that it's loaded with conflict, but conflict where everyone is "right." Ephram is at first delighted when the most beautiful and popular girl in his grade, Amy, befriends him. He's hoping for a romantic relationship, only to learn she's concealed that she's got a boyfriend. Understandably, Ephram feels manipulated and angry... until she reveals that her boyfriend has been in a coma for months and that Ephram's father, a world-famous brain surgeon, might be the only one who can save him. So yes, she led Ephram on, but it was in service of saving someone she loved. You can't really fault her desperation, nor do you blame the knots that Ephram ties himself in over this.

It's a fairly chaste story too. Sex itself - both heterosexual and homosexual - is barely mentioned. Aside from a masturbation joke and an allusion to one character's sexual experience level, it's a non-factor in the plot. It's another thing that feels right for the story being told, but when you consider how much play this topic would get in another teen movie, it's one thing that sticks out.

I wish the film had a little more space to explore the friendship between Simon and Leah, and only part of this is my 13 REASONS WHY fandom for Katherine Langford talking. Langford makes the most of the scenes she's given, cluing us into the fact that Leah's in love with Simon while also not tipping that hand so far that it's implausible that Simon misses it. You feel bad for her when it comes out that Simon could never give her what she wants, though the fact Simon's parents have no hesitation about letting her sleep over in his bedroom should have been a pretty good clue she was solidly in the Friend Zone. Langford and Robinson have solid friend chemistry, but another scene or two really showing their connection might have made Simon's determination to not mess it up and Leah's impending heartbreak even more powerful.

(I also have to note that Leah confesses at one point that she always feels like an outsider, like she doesn't belong at parties and that there's an invisible line between her and everyone else. It was then that I realized her character is basically a female Clay, Dylan Minette's character from 13 REASONS WHY.)

I'm going back to spoiler territory to discuss two late scenes. In one, a character hijacks the singing of the national anthem at a school football game to declare his love for a female classmate. It's a grossly uncomfortable moment even before she has to tell him she doesn't feel that way about him. In a John Hughes movie, this would be a grand gesture that wins the girl, but with the reciprocal attraction removed, it becomes a creepy attempt at emotional manipulation and pressure by making a spectacle of things, and the movie correctly recognizes this.

Which is why it's initially unsettling when a now-outed Simon makes it publicly known that he'll be riding the Ferris wheel at the carnival, waiting for his anonymous email pen pal Blue to show himself. Many of Simon's classmates turn out to see if the mystery man arrives, and for a moment, it feels like Simon has manufactured a kind of public pressure that just minutes earlier we were cringing at. I felt bad that their first moments face-to-face had to happen in front of a crowd.

But there's an important distinction between the two: consent. In the former example, the girl doesn't ask to be a part of this, she's targeted and ambushed. Simon gives his mystery lover the option to show up. He's made himself vulnerable, and while there's a really good case to be made that Simon might have scared Blue off for good, in a worst-case scenario, Simon is the only one to be publicly humiliated.

Teen stories resonate with a wide audience for a multitude of reasons. The obvious one is that the high school experience is full of universal moments and that almost everyone can relate to something in a story about that period. Beyond that, I submit that the emotional experience of being a teenager isn't especially dissimilar to that of being an adult. Teens just have the freedom to wear their emotions on their sleeve more, and their lack of experience in dealing with those feelings means that the intensity of the experience is greater.

But at the core, many of the same emotional drives are there into adulthood: Wanting to work hard to get into college is replaced with wanting to work hard to get that promotion, or that new job. Being determined to fit in with the group never fully goes away, you just get more experience at doing it. We want to be liked, to be loved, to be accepted. And all of this is set at a time in your life when you're not distracted by bigger problems like mortgages and unemployment. There's nothing to get in the way of acting like these aren't legitimate things to be concerned about. It's why I've never been onboard with those who dismiss teen movies and teen dramas out of hand.

Hopefully everyone who sees this movie will find someone to identify with. If it's not Simon, maybe it's Leah, who deals with two varieties of heartbreak. Or Simon's parents, who wish they could have been supportive sooner, or Martin, who's so determined to fit in that he does some horrible things to make that happen. LOVE, SIMON is a film driven by real emotions at every turn. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that empathy is one of the most important feelings to engage, and this movie has it by the gallon.

I ponder different cuts of JUSTICE LEAGUE

JUSTICE LEAGUE is out on DVD and bluray today, and it seems like a good time to mark the occasion by linking to two pieces I wrote for Film School Rejects, but never bothered to link to here.

First up is Justice League and the Fetishization of Longer Cuts. If you followed the production of this film at all, you know that original director Zack Snyder left the project early last year, following principal photography in order to deal with a family tragedy. Joss Whedon stepped in to oversee post-production and the reshoots of the film, which by all accounts were extensive. This all-but-ensured there'd be curiousity about an alternate version of whatever made it into theaters.

It's not that I don't get the interest, but in this case, it seems like fans are clamoring for something that can never exist. I don't think a pure "Zack Snyder Cut" was ever fully committed to film. The movie started shooting less than a  month after BATMAN V. SUPERMAN was released to a lot of negative reactions. All indications are that from that point on, rewriting began to shift the tone away from BvS dour and serious dirge. It wouldn't be surprising to learn there are pieces missing from what Snyder intended when he made BvS, and I seriously doubt that VFX work on scenes discarded during Whedon's tenure were ever finished.

Then follow that article up with a look at what might have been with News from Earth-2: The Never-Seen Zack Snyder Cut of Batman v. Superman. It's a look at an alternate universe where Whedon took over the reshoot of the earlier film and after much fan-campaigning, the "original" cut of BvS is finally seeing release.

If you want to read my review of JUSTICE LEAGUE, go here.

Film School Rejects: If you want to make a Superman show, make a Superman show!

In a recent post for Film School Rejects, I took aim at the latest examples of a trend: TV shows based on comic book properties that don't include the main character of those properties. Until now, GOTHAM was the most visible example, being set in Batman's hometown years before the Caped Crusader makes his debut. As I note, that hasn't stopped producers from mining the source material for other characters, even if it seems they're all debuting too early.

Two upcoming shows spun out of the Superman mythos - Krypton and Metropolis - both sidestep using Superman himself. Krypton takes place two generations in the past on Superman's homeworld, with a time-travel hook that has Superman foes traveling back in time to change history. (This conveniently lets the creators use plenty of characters who don't belong in that part of the timeline.) Meanwhile, Metropolis is focusing on the exploits of Lois Lane and Lex Luthor before Superman arrives.

Based on what we know so far, I'm finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for two properties that take place well before the single most important element of the story, and who will probably take some liberties to introduce a lot of characters early in this prequel setting. There's one thing that would pique my interest, and it's basically the same idea I had to improve GOTHAM  a few years ago:

How crazy would it have been if #Gotham started up with Bruce being killed in the mugging? All bets would be off.

— Bitter Script Reader (@BittrScrptReadr) September 23, 2014

In other words, establish that the villains in Krypton succeed in erasing Superman and Metropolis can be set in the same timeline, where there's no Superman coming to save everyone. The ripple effect of that change can be explored, forcing Lois to step up as a hero and maybe even sending Lex down a different, more noble destiny.

Check out the rest of my thoughts here.

The Black List and Women In Film Announce Participants and Mentors for Inaugural Feature Lab for Women Writers

Los Angeles, CA, February 23, 2018) – This week, the Black List and Women In Film are hosting their first annual Feature Lab for Women Writers. During this week long, residential Lab, each writer will workshop one screenplay through a peer workshop and one-on-one sessions with professional screenwriting mentors. Additionally, they will attend a series of events and screenings that will further expose them to the realities of a life as a professional screenwriter.

Mentors and special guests include Amy Baer (Founder, Gidden Media), Tonia Davis (VP of Film, Chernin Entertainment), Dana Fox (HOW TO BE SINGLE), Maryam Keshavars (CIRCUMSTANCE), Graham Moore (THE IMITATION GAME), Amanda Silver (WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES), Kiwi Smith (LEGALLY BLONDE), Scott Myers (Go Into The Story), Lindsay Doran (SENSE AND SENSIBILITY), Aline Brosh McKenna(THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA) and Franklin Leonard (Founder, the Black List). The Lab participants’ scripts will be hosted by the Black List website following the Lab and participants will have their final scripts read by industry executives.

The participating writers are:

Déjà Bernhardt // HALF ANGELS
Debbie Castanha // THE DROUGHT
Jessica Ellis // OPERATION CHEESECAKE
Natasha Lewin // FREEDOM RIDES
Lise Pyles // BANNER HERO
Cat Youell // TUSSAUD

The 2017 Lab is supported by Verizon’s go90 – the premium mobile entertainment destination.

About the Participants

Traveling between her disparate homes in Bali, Indonesia and Austin, Texas, Déjà Bernhardt draws upon her mixed heritage finding inspiration to tell both narrative and documentary stories. Her films have screened in over 30 festivals globally and her 35mm graduate school film, THE MIDWIFE'S HUSBAND (2012), was nominated for a Student Academy Award.

Debbie Castanha lives in Santa Barbara, California, where she began screenwriting after mastering tardy notes to teachers and Christmas letters about her amazing family (who she’d leave in a heartbeat to pursue her screenwriting dreams). She is passionate about character-driven stories, and her script THE WATER TOWER was a quarterfinalist in the 2017 Nicholl Fellowship.

Jessica Ellis is an AFI graduate and writer/director of upcoming feature WHAT LIES WEST. Jessica also worked as a story editor for digital series LOCAL AIR, and can be found screaming about television regularly on Twitter at @baddestmamajama.

Natasha Lewin is the Chief Writing Officer for Zuckerberg Media—a multimedia production company founded by the creator of DOT and Facebook Live, Randi Zuckerberg. In 2017, Natasha won the Hollywood Fringe Diversity Scholarship and took home the SHORT + SWEET Award for her play CHATTER.

Texan Lise Pyles learned screenwriting while living in the Outback, after an article she'd written for Air&Space/Smithsonian Magazine seemed best suited as a movie. Now a Nicholl and AFF semi-finalist, she remains dedicated to screenwriting with her third feature script in the works.

Having grown up a sheltered only child in Orlando, FL, obsessed with Turner Classic Movies, Cat Youell paved her way to USC‘s School of Cinematic Arts where she completed her MFA in Film Production. A writer, director, and producer, Cat loves exploring the world and discovering little known true stories, particularly those about strong female characters with a dark twist.

About The Black List

The Black List, an annual survey of Hollywood executives' favorite unproduced screenplays, was founded in 2005. Since then, more than 319 Black List scripts have been produced, grossing over $26 billion in box office worldwide. Black List movies have won 51 Academy Awards from 264 nominations, including four of the last nine Best Picture Oscars and ten of the last twenty Best Screenplay Oscars. In October of 2012, the Black List launched a unique online community where screenwriters make their work available to readers, buyers and employers. Since its inception, it has hosted more than 40,000 screenplays and teleplays and provided more than 65,000 script evaluations. As a direct result of introductions made on the Black List, dozens of writers have found representation at major talent agencies and management companies, as well as sold or optioned their screenplays. In only three years, a half dozen films have been produced from scripts introduced on the website including Golden Globe nominated NIGHTINGALE, starring David Oyelowo. Currently, the Black List hosts over 3,500 scripts for consideration by over 3,500 film industry professionals ranging from agency assistants, to studio and network presidents, to A-list actors and directors. More information on the Black List is available at www.blcklst.com.

About Women In Film

Women In Film advocates for and advances the careers of women working in the screen industries -- to achieve parity and transform culture. Founded in 1973, Women In Film supports all women working in film, TV, and digital media from emerging to advanced career. Our distinguished programs include: mentoring, speaker & screening series, production training program, writing labs, film finishing funds, legal aid and an annual financing intensive. We advocate for gender parity through research, media campaigns and ReFrame, a collaboration with Sundance Institute. Women In Film honors the achievements of women in Hollywood through the legacy series, annual Emmy and Oscar parties and our signature event, the Crystal + Lucy Awards. Membership is open to all media professionals and more information can be found on our website: www.womeninfilm.org.

About go90

Verizon Media’s go90 is a premium mobile entertainment destination for the best in live sports and original content. go90 is part of Verizon's digital media network of video content and platforms, which includes AOL, HuffPost, Yahoo View, Yahoo Sports - and Complex Networks and more. go90 features 1,400 hours of originals from sought-after creators and talent and 25,000 hours of live sports and TV. go90 content can be viewed free from the app on iOS, Android or at go90.com.

The time has come for the next generation to save us from guns and the GOP

At this point, I do not understand how anyone can say with a straight face that they believe in the Republican Party. A fiction writer could not craft such a comically evil and corrupt organization without being smacked for a depiction of pure scum that was dead on the nose.

On every subject - workers rights, healthcare, race issues, LGBT issues, law enforcement, education, environment, conservation, taxes, the economy, national defense - they are on the wrong side. Every single policy seems designed to benefit only the richest of the rich, at the expense of hurting the poor and the middle class for not being rich.

In short, I've spent the last year saying "Fuck off and die" to the Republican Party so much that I felt like it was beginning to lose all meaning.

And then last week brought another mass shooting at a school that claimed the lives of 17 people. The blood had barely dried before the usual talking points were trotted out: "We should arm teachers!" "Guns don't kill people! People kill people!" "Now is not the time to talk about gun control!" "Don't politicize this!"

And my absolute favorite: "Laws won't stop criminals from getting guns because criminals don't obey the law." If you parse that out, it's really an excellent argument against laws of any kind.

Even for a party that has cornered the market on intellectual dishonestly, this is lunacy. We've spent 20 years trying to have a conversation with people who aren't willing to discuss the issue in good faith. Nothing ever changes and we keep trying to engage these right wing zealots as if they can be reached. 90% of the country - that's Republican and Democrat voters - want sensible gun care and it's blocked by the 10% of Republican politicians who are bought and paid for, and the sociopathic voters so desperate not to see the truth that they would rather believe all the shootings are staged false flags with crisis actors.

Fuck Alex Jones. If you have someone in your life who listens to the shit he peddles, cut them out completely. There's no saving them.

I've spent 20 years feeling like the only thing we can do is wait for these aging white bigots to die off and become demographically insignificant. Then, miraculously, in the shadow of tragedy... I got a glimmer of hope.

The teen survivors of Stoneman Douglas High School have done what no other school shooting survivors have done - become aggressive advocates for new laws and gun control. These kids aren't asking for change. They're demanding it. They're throwing down the gauntlet and telling lawmakers that one way or another, change is coming whether they like it or not.

Showing them rev up for "Here are our terms of surrender, you NRA prostitutes" has brought into sharp relief that this has been long overdue. It's time to treat this debate for what it really is - not a Socratic debate between equally good-intentioned sides, but a hostage negotiation. We've wasted our time trying to reason with the Party of Reagan, when it's been clear to all that to swallow the pro-gun shit they shovel, one's mind has to be as dementia-ridden as... well... you know.

(Okay, if I get off on the "Fuck Ronald Reagan" tangent, we'll be here all day. After the kids burn the NRA to the ground, maybe we can get started on Reagan's legacy. Even if you ignore that Iran-Contra was way worse than Watergate, the guy fucked the economy over for generations and let the AIDS crisis explode due to his homophobia.)

The generation that grew up about teen heroes fighting tyranny in YA dystopian novels is now faced with their own Voldemort and President Snow. Watching every right wing gas bag throw impotent punches at them has been a true delight and whine about how unfair the fight is has been a true delight.

So I wrote a piece for Film School Rejects about what I've dubbed "Generation Rey." Like the female star of The Last Jedi, it's fallen to them to solve the crisis that was created by and ignored by the heroes of the previous generation. Check it out here.