Tucker jumps on the bandwagon
All in all though, if you go with the right people–like the people who can dissociate their desire to masturbate on Malin Ackerman from their desire to watch actors that can actually act in a way that isn’t fundamentally retarded, you can have a pretty good time.
This is fundamentally unfair. Yes, okay, she can’t act. And she did nothing with the role. But let me ask you this…what was she supposed to do? What did the writers and director ask of her? Did they not systematically rob the character of every nuance of characterization? They stopped her cursing; they took away her impatience; they smoothed over her conflict with her mother; they anglicized her last name; they even took away her cigarettes. And why? Because, clearly, they didn’t want silly distractions like personality or a brain to draw attention away from the main thing (or things.)
Ackerman stood there. She wore latex. She looked good. That’s all Zack Snyder wanted from that role. Because he’s a misogynist fanboy shithead.
I guess it’s the old Steppin Fetchit dilemma. Is the actor to blame for playing the part he or she was hired to play? Of course, Ackerman probably couldn’t play any other part. I guess I don’t really want to defend her all that much. Maybe we can just agree to sneer at her and Zack Snyder? Together? In a cuddly friendship circle of hate?
Update: I have a longer post on Laurie from the comic here.
Oh ho ho, you might have wanted to wait to do this until after Nina posted her piece on the Watch. I’ll admit that having the wife lean over in the middle of a film and say “if this girl doesn’t shut up soon i’m going to shoot myself in the face” probably pushed my aggravation with Malin to some pretty heinous levels. If I’d been watching alone, I’m sure I would have focused more on how dumb it was that all the fight scenes involved people being thrown a rough distance of 40 yards.
I’ll look forward to Nina’s review then. You should get her to read the comic, though, if you can. You can’t really hate Silk Spectre in the movie fully until you appreciate how great Laurie is in the comic. I think she’s my favorite character in it at this point.
All the scenes with Laurie and Dan were terrible, and neither actor seemed to have any idea who their character was supposed to be. Which is a shame, because their scenes together in the comic were the sad, little heart of the whole story.
As for Laurie’s smoking habit, it was excised (according to Snyder) because Alan Horn – head of WB studio – really hates smoking. Apparently, he has no problem with rape or murder though.
But the Comedian smokes.
I bet what that means is the studio exec feels smoking isn’t sexy. And since the whole point of the character is to be sexy….
I don’t know why a very few jealous people don’t like her. Her character IS supposed to be a veritable SEXY BOMBSHELL superheroine, voice and all. She sure fills those shoes, and that costume!!
The Comedian is constantly smoking!! And some ladies find him terribly sexy!!?!
Laurie and Dan were supposed to be mushy together. That was the big driving point of their humanity. When they got together it was like an H-Bomb going off. Quite literally!!
The comic is different from the movie anyway, so any amount of arguing will likely get you nowhere.
ALSO, the story takes place in an imaginary universe. Nothing is a dramatization of anything that ever was or is, and that’s the way it is.
They don’t like her because a character who is *nothing but* a sexy bombshell is boring and stupid. Also misogynist. Especially in this context, where you can look at the source material and see a character with a lot more depth.
One could say that Snyder made a stereotype of a female superhero out of a stereotype of a female superhero.
And thus the universe exploded.
I mean, you can say anything, obviously. If you said that Laurie in the comic was a stereotype though, you’d be wrong.
And…universe exploded? Because somebody made a bad movie? With a lousy female character? Yeah, that’s…shocking….
“I don’t know why a very few jealous people don’t like her. Her character IS supposed to be a veritable SEXY BOMBSHELL superheroine, voice and all. She sure fills those shoes, and that costume!!
The Comedian is constantly smoking!! And some ladies find him terribly sexy!!?!
Laurie and Dan were supposed to be mushy together. That was the big driving point of their humanity. When they got together it was like an H-Bomb going off. Quite literally!!
The comic is different from the movie anyway, so any amount of arguing will likely get you nowhere.
ALSO, the story takes place in an imaginary universe. Nothing is a dramatization of anything that ever was or is, and that’s the way it is.”
WALTER: V.I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!
DONNY: What the fuck is he talking about, Dude?
Thank you!
I made this point in my own review of the movie – not only was the part of Silk Spectre II not given much to do but the character was probably the worst developed out of the next generation of heroes. It was the same way in the comic, where the main thrust of Laurie’s story is that her entire identity has never been her own. Her mother tried to turn her into a younger version of herself and when Laurie began to rebel against that, she defined herself entirely by her romantic relationship. Even after she breaks free of John, she immediately falls into the same pattern, attaching herself to Dan.
Of course the grand irony in this is that Moore, in creating this character, is deconstructing and satirizing the equally shallow characterizations of most Golden/Silver Age heroines aka the days when Wonder Woman – Amazon Princess and Champion of Equality – was the JSA’s secretary and Black Canary was Johnny Thunder’s sidekick.
I don’t agree that Laurie in the comic is the weakest or the least interesting of the heroes. She’s my favorite character, actually. I’m going to post about that next week, if all goes well….
Wonder Woman and Black Canary were hardly anyone’s idea of “second-fiddle” characters, whatever that means. Maybe in Alan Moore’s mind, but certainly not in the comics of America. Like Wonder Woman and Black Canary, Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Hulk all had to build themselves up from being pretty obscure or clumsy secret identity or superhero personalities into the monuments they are all today.
I thought I was pretty fair to Ackerman in my review:
http://stars-and-garters.blogspot.com/2009/03/watching.html
“Sure, maybe there were actresses who could have captured Laurie’s cynicism or her expressions better, but her character had essentially been gutted before Ackerman had the chance to read her first line. The very fact that her character in the movie is called “Laurie Jupiter” instead of “Laurie Juspeczyk” is testament to this.”
Hey notintheface. I liked your review, though I enjoyed the movie a good bit less than you did. We’re on the same page with Ackerman, anyway.
Bob, I think Black Canary is definitely a second-fiddle; she’s never had her own title, as far as I know. Wonder Woman is more of a top tier character — though almost more because DC needs a top tier woman character than because she’s especially popular….