"I thought you were trying to make a point, Ace, that we're all just little lobsters crawling around at the bottom of the sea. We don't think French Immersion schools have anything to do with our crustacean existence but before we know it we're in a pot of boiling, turning red. Right?"
"I don't know, Al. I guess that probably makes as much sense as what I was saying."
"No, no, no. I get it. You've got a lot on your mind. You don't have to make sense here. In fact..."
Aesop turned away so that Al wouldn't see him roll his eyes.
"...not making sense is the only logical defense against the tyranny of Scientism! We're awakening to a higher purpose, right here, right now. Who's to say the Mayan Apocalypse didn't happen and we're just too brainwashed by our force-fed mainstream media diet to recognize the celestial paradise we're already living in? We just have to free our minds from the fatted-calf mentality that just waits for science to explain everything to us and for us. Science is a religion, too, Aesop, but the only god it prays to is the Atom Bomb!"
"Okay, okay, back to Superman... Where are they taking him this time? Is he the Nietzchean übermensch or is he a Christ figure like last time? Christ on a bike. I can see it now. And what's the deal with the guy in the fedora?"
"Okay, first things first. The last Superman movie was a disappointment. It failed. To fail with Superman is to fail abysmally. Nobody involved with that movie has worked since. Not even Kevin Spacey."
"But--"
"Just go with me, here, okay? One of many reasons that movie failed was that it attached itself to the Superman movies everyone remembers fondly; it used the same music, it ostensibly picked up the storyline, but it was boring. It was forgettable. Both of which are entirely unforgivable in a Superman movie. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good, and why would anybody want to watch a mediocre Superman movie? So it tanked. It became a disaster. The studio just torched the whole Superman factory for the insurance money. 'Never again', that's what they wrote on Superman's grave, y'know?
"But now it's, I dunno, nearly ten years later, most of the crap merchandise that nobody wanted has finally worked its way out of the dollar stores that are the large intestine in the digestive tract of our consumer culture and, I dunno, maybe there's new bosses at the studio and they say, 'hey, let's make another Superman movie!'"
"That's right, Al, they did make another Superman movie. Or they're making one. And it's a clean break from all that came before, right? They're not going back to the failure, they're going forward, forward, forward! New costume! New origin! They've got a blonde Lois Lane! This ain't yer grandpa's Superman!"
"So, why then the man in the hat?"
"Exactly."
"Sounds like another Aesop Mosley Mystery!"
"Yeah. Something like that."
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