June 22, 2005

How much would it cost you to do like Bruce Wayne and become a superhero? Forbes Magazine thinks they have it all figured out. In the spirit of their Fictional Fifteen, previously disected at MeFi.
posted by wendell 18 years ago
  • ...it's clear that we are a nation obsessed with the very rich. From avaricious caricatures like The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns... Their example of The Simpsons goes against their case that we are a nation obsessed with the very rich. The focus of of that show is not the rich, but the poor. Most shows don't focus on the rich, actually. How can it be our obsession when its not even our focus?
  • Well, the characters on most TV shows are of the middle class variety yet we very rarely see them at their jobs or hear them complain of money problems. It's as if they're living the life of the independently wealthy but wear the costumes of the average hard working American. They offer a kind of subliminal dream of the "good life" without alienating us. Mr Burns and most of the others listed are of the "evil" variety of the rich and we love those because they're stereotypes; caricatures. If they aren't evil they're dark or weird or unusually generous (and we're even suspicious of the wealthy who are generous - Bill Gates, etc).
  • That looks like an amusing article, but, wow, I think Forbes has found the single most annoying way of presenting information on the web. Instead of waiting for you to click "Next", it just skips to the next page every few seconds. I gave up trying to read it, eventually.
  • Well, the characters on most TV shows are of the middle class variety yet we very rarely see them at their jobs or hear them complain of money problems. It could be that this would make a really crappy show. That's just a theory, though.
  • Well, the characters on most TV shows are of the middle class variety yet we very rarely see them at their jobs or hear them complain of money problems. Um, ever hear of Law & Order or CSI? Not so much with the whining about money, but I'm not sure you could fill a half hour with the non-work scenes collected in a week of those shows. You might have a point with the money angle, but the early soaps where characters were poor actually ended up with people sending them money. Poor characters have been taboo ever since. I'd like to think that people are a lot more savvy now, but I can't quite bring myself to believe it.
  • Poor characters have been taboo ever since. Come on. The TV is full of poor characters. Simpsons and Married with Children are the first that comes to mind, and a bunch others that I don't know the name of. Other monkeys more familiar with TV could definitely list more.
  • Homer isn't poor - he is a nuclear technician, after all
  • Come on. The TV is full of poor characters. Of course you are right. I still think that having the characters' financial plight being a central plot point in a drama is probably taboo. Little Johnny with no health insurance and bad kidneys, and the only way he'll live is if Mom can raise $100,000 would probably still cause some people to want to donate.
  • Roseanne was poor (though she became rich, winning the lottery in the last season). I'm trying to think of a show besides the Simpsons that's on right now and depicts a poor family. I don't watch sitcoms, where there may be something. There are poor characters, like the kid on the OC who moves in with the rich family, and Jess on Gilmore Girls (who moves in with his uncle Luke, who seems fairly well off financially.)
  • I could buy that Roseanne was poor, except for the fact that on Halloween they could apparently afford to hire Hollywood-class makeup and props artists to put together their costumes. Kind of ruined the reality of "just scraping by" they tried to sell you on the show. jacobw: You can click "stop" to make it pause on one set of images until you're done reading, but they should still fire their web designer. Hummingbirds on crack have attention spans longer than the amount of time they give you to view the article before jumping to the next section.
  • ("Stop" as in the navigation link on the page, not on your browser toolbar. Alternatively, disable javascript.)
  • That movie rocked. I saw it last night. I want to be Bruce Wayne! I hated all the other Batman movies.
  • I'm going tonight. I'm all a-twitter. I haven't heard a bad word about it. Several have called it the best superhero film they've ever seen.
  • Its not that good.
  • LIES. YOU TAKE IT BACK.
  • Compared to the previous bat movies, it's mucho grande.
  • The Burton movies were badly cast, but they damn well looked the way a superhero movie ought to look. This latest one- judging from the trailers, anyway- is lacking in visual style. Which would be a superficial complaint if it were anything but a comic book movie. But, shit, I haven't seen it yet; maybe I'm wrong. Batman's not really my thing, though. I could never stand superheroes who didn't have superpowers. I was more in the Marvel camp when I was a kid. I'm looking forward to the Fantasic Four movie even though it's probably going to stink up the joint.
  • I'm so into batman that I have 9mm movies from me as a 4 yr old running around the back yard in a batman costume. They've probably all faded away by now.
  • LIES. YOU TAKE IT BACK. okay I meant it wasn't the best superhero movie ever. I enjoyed it, though, and some of it was very, very good
  • What, in your opinion, is? Tough call for me. I'm hoping that one day I'll say Watchmen, though time will tell.
  • >They've probably all faded away by now. That's for the best. Makes it harder for people to figure out your secret identity. I told my wife a few years ago how sad it was to have had, as a child, nothing better than a flowery dishtowel to tie around one's neck prior to going out to fly around the backyard and fight crime. For my birthday that year, she made me a proper cape...
  • That's love.
  • Yeah... she's way out of my league, too... I'm a lucky dude.
  • I think even *attempting* to make Watchmen into a movie is a terrible idea. You can still get away with a certain amount of subversiveness in a comic book, but not in a big-budget movie; and I can't think of anything I'd rather NOT see than a focus-grouped, friendlied-up, mass-consumption-ready version of Watchmen. I mean, you know there'd be Watchmen Happy Meals and shit. I guess you'd just have to try to enjoy it ironically. I'm not all that good at that, though.
  • I'm in a state of guarded optimism on Watchmen. TenaciousPettle sent me a link to a three-part interview with the director (I've lost it, so maybe he'll find this and post the links), but the way he's talking, he's going to make it true to the original story or not at all. Whether that's hype or not...well, time will tell. But if it's just hype, then he talks a pretty good game. He speaks like a man in love with the story.
  • >He speaks like a man in love with the story. Well, that's good enough for guarded optimism... the question is how much control he'll be given. It'll probably be an expensive movie, and I imagine The Studio will have many questions. The director may have a job explaining to them why exactly the nation's fourteen-year-olds want to see a movie that's short on action, long on talking, features pudgy, over-the-hill superheroes, and ends with a very successful terrorist attack on New York...
  • >wasn't the best superhero movie ever. >>What, in your opinion, is? The Incredibles!! I knew there was a good answer to that question- took a while to come to me.
  • Roseanne might have had professional makeup artists, but they did the make up to make all the characters look poor. It was a very realistic show - Roseanne looked like my mom did, and Dan dressed like my uncle. Not just poor - regular, with a messy house, and ugly furniture they bought when green was in style, and kid's rooms that look like a tornado hit them. And people did the dishes, and cooked with hamburger and got excited over cheap take-out. There's also Grace under fire - make-up was maybe a bit fancy on that, but the situation (single working mother, trying to get by) was realistic. My mom liked that one a lot (she really identified with Grace). Good actors, too. Malcolm in the Middle also has a family, not poor, but tight for money - lack of money is a constant theme in the shows, a source of stress. It adds to the depth of the characters. Also another for a realistically messy house.
  • I saw the trailer for The Fantastic Four the other day. Wonder how that will be. I admit I'm a big sucker for Julian McMahon, and he's playing the baddy. The Incredibles is a big hit in our house. I wouldn't call it the best superhero movie ever, but then I don't know what I would. (My son calls me Mum Incredible, which is a nice ego-boost...)
  • The best "poor" show was Sanford & Son...but I may be showing my age with that one.
  • A decent nylon utility belt can be procured for about $10 from any martial arts supply store. You can also equip yourself with... WHAAT? Heh. That's the only item on the list that's on a budget. I did rather enjoy Danny Devito in Batman Returns. Cos seriously, how many movies will have a bad guy who rides around in a giant toy duck?
  • Just got back. It was really, really good.
  • Rosanne was popular during the 90's when the economy was booming. I wonder if, during more economic hard times, that show would fly. It's like during the Depression people enjoyed seeing movies about rich people, they didn't want to see, necessarily, stuff that reminded them that they were poor. The Marx Brothers were all about these poor dudes who made fun of the rich. In the 70's when things weren't all that good financially, the best shows on TV were about people living so far below the poverty line (Sanford & Son, Good Times and The Waltons) that even working class people didn't feel so bad.
  • People will watch a TV show about anything if it's well done and/or interesting and/or nothing better is on. (Carla on "Cheers" constantly complained about beong poor and it was perhaps the most popular sitcom of all time (and during the Reagan administration)) Batman is a competently done, fairly boring movie (the villain is a guy with a bag on his head). Apparently all it takes to get good reviews now is to be not horrible.
  • Get that man some coffee!
  • There are always exceptions to stuff but in a broader sense we like to watch the "others" as a way to escape our own situations whatever that might be. I think reality shows are polular for that and other reasons (the threatened writers and actors strike in the late 90's being one of them.) And Batman Begins blows.
  • Someone should do a comic book hero firmly set in the real world. Costumes, yes, but also concussions.
  • The Watchmen trailer is out!
  • *points StoryBored here so he doesn't miss that discussion*
  • Also, Bush is Batman.
  • The Dark Knight doesn't reflect the Bush/Cheney era. It was written by Frank Miller in 1986. The fact that it seems pertinent to the political situation in the US today simply reflects the universality and timelessness of its themes. /pedantic
  • I remember some critic drawing parallels between LOTR and the War on Terror.
  • Oh well that's an easy one. Why wouldn't we? I remember watching the new Superman and being sad that there wasn't a real Superman who could fly around saving people. 9/11? Done. Katrina? No sweat. I bet he could even solve the mortgage crisis. *sad little sigh*
  • I bet he could even solve the mortgage crisis. By flooding the jewel market with a surplus of squeezy diamonds!