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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Review: Fido |Main| "Studio 60": The Occasionally Smug Piety Of The Righteous And The Faith Of Nonbelievers »

June 15, 2007

Amazingly Insightful Thoughts On Superheroes From A Friend Of Mine

By Dan Carlson

"Batman vs. Superman:

I'm not doing a comprehensive look at the comics, movies, and lore of each of these guys. I'm solely going off of the mid-'90s animated series on each.

Batman wins, easy.

If I'm Batman, I'm a bad-ass, shadow-stalking detective with genuinely frightening stories. … I mean villans whose psychosis is so profound they could be an entire lecture series. A show where the bad guy can and sometimes does win. So — gritty darkness wins.

Superman — seriously, that guy is a city planner's nightmare. 'Maybe we should put in the new business center on Fourth Street.' 'Yeah, so Superman can throw someone through it.' No joke, the only thing Superman ever did was beat people up. And not just with his hands: He would through them into building, smash someone else's car over them, and pick trees out of the ground to use as clubs.

I think he got kickbacks from the construction firm Metropolis used."

Comments: 1

Rachael

As a woman, the comparison between Batman and Superman brings out the whole good boy versus bad boy debate I have with myself on a regular basis.

Do I want the incredibly sexy bad boy that's gonna possibly disappear for days on end, live in a basement, and never quite reconcile the forces of good and evil within him?

Or do I want the good guy, the one who will bring me flowers, be attentive, and probably never actually take my breath away?

Batman always wins.

Jun 16, 2007 9:03 AM

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