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But no matter how happy a person is or how much they enjoy life, it is unreasonable to expect them to not have some issues. Everyone has issues. Man of Steel was about Clark learning to embrace his differences and his humanity at the same time. It was freeing, it was inspiring, it was well thought out. So maybe you don't like that version... But it isn't whiny or grimdark. It is just a more "realistic" way to approach the character.

I can't relate to someone who is simply meant to be better than me. I can relate to someone who overcomes. To me, that is what is inspiring. Clark isn't above silly human problems or emotions, and no amount of superpowers will solve every problem. I think he needs to be balanced, which is what he was in the movie.

I'm just tired of people jumping on the back of any writer who dares to consider honest emotional reactions to situations. The term "grimdark" is very dismissive most of the time, in my experience. It is another way to avoid discussing character development or motivation. That's not to say that you have to love Superman or whatever, but if someone wants to discuss the character, they should have an actual opinion to discuss.

The funny thing is, everyone used to call Smallville too "emo" and whiny.

I'd like to see it renewed. It is nowhere near Kripke's best work. It isn't as refined as his Supernatural stuff, and it would be hard to take Timeless too seriously. However, the show is fun to binge watch once I have a few episodes saved up. Definitely better than Legends of Tomorrow.

Anyone remember Journeyman? I will have to see if that one is available anywhere.

Okay, since the dust has been kicked up online again, I have to get back into this...

I keep seeing articles about how the DC slate needs to be scrapped and how it's such a failure. They say that even if they made money, they're being ripped to shreds by critics (which is a bit like a politician being ripped by pundits... it doesn't actually matter in the end).

Math time!!!

Suicide Squad had a budget of $175 million.
Domestic earnings: $325,100,054   
Foreign earnings: $420,500,000
Total: $745,600,054

Doctor Strange had a budget of $165 million.
Domestic earnings: $232,532,923
Foreign earnings:  $443,382,684
Total: $675,915,607   

Now, the fun thing to point out about the foreign earnings is that Suicide Squad was not released in one of the biggest world markets, China. Therefore, the Chinese earnings for Suicide Squad are $0. Meanwhile, Chinese earnings for Doctor Strange are $109,194,913. So if we want to test "success", rather than "earnings", as these articles claim to be doing, we should probably lose $100 million from the Doctor Strange numbers then, right?

Yes, Civil War made more money than BvS. As we've discussed before, this is largely due to the fact that the DC movies aren't aiming for younger audiences, so families aren't likely to go see them over and over again. However, DC did make up for this by releasing a movie which was specifically targeted at children, the LEGO Batman movie. No articles written about the great DC/Marvel war (which I still say isn't a thing) have acknowledged the fact that Warner's plan isn't entirely dependent on the DCEU movies. Batman, the brand, has appeared in three movies within the past 12 months. Each of those has been successful in reaching their desired target. I'm not aware of any Marvel projects that are doing this same thing, making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office, but feel free to mention any that I don't know about.

So let's review overall profits (subtracting budgets):

Marvel/Disney (Civil War + Doctor Strange) - $1,414,220,102

DC/Warner (BvS, SS, Lego Batman) - $1,341,335,084*

*The LEGO Batman movie is still in theaters and earning money

The difference in profits (not counting any licensing deals or marketing budgets, because Hollyood accounting is impossible to navigate): $72, 885, 018

In conclusion... It's China's fault.

Two Arrow/Oliver references and one ARGUS/Lyla reference in this week's Flash.

I guess we can be happy.

It's possible. You never know what happens behind the scenes.

I think that Lyla could also be used more. ARGUS should be all over the place, so it would make sense for her to show up more on The Flash, and it wouldn't require any special contracts since she's not a regular.

Don't know. The LoT Christmas thing was really weird. They had to know the schedule up to the crossover at least, right? So there's no way this ever looked like good timing. Maybe they thought it would play well because it's a time travel show, but it really didn't.

The new contracts that people like Katie Cassidy and Wentworth Miller signed appear to be pretty useless. They're not being used across the different shows. They're not kept available when the shows do want to use them (Katie was off working on a movie and had to work out a schedule for her to appear). So I really don't even know what those contracts mean. Were they purely symbolic?

It would be interesting to have Sara around on Arrow, while they're working up to making Dinah the new Black Canary. How would Sara feel about that? Of course, if the LoT writers were the ones scripting it, she'd probably be banging Dinah within a day. I really hate what they've done to the character on that show. They took a legitimately cool female superhero and turned her into a failed James Bond wannabe. They stripped her of what made her interesting and complex. I hate when spin-offs destroy the character that they're spinning off. What's the point?

Yeah! So ha!

Of course, the Oscars are a completely meaningless sham and I wouldn't want one of those things in my house if you paid me (is it really an honor to get the same award that they give to child rapists?)... But ha anyway.

If anyone really wants to come to appreciate the DCEU, check out The Death of Superman Lives. It's available from Showtime now.

Wow. So many people making so many wrong decisions, and taking it completely seriously. Nothing about the new DC movies is anywhere near as wrong as this. Their whole approach to Clark/Superman was backwards and wrong, and it informed their whole project.

I would love to see this happen. Even a panel at a festival would be great.

Good news all around. I'm really excited to see Nightwing on the big screen. DC continues to make me happy with these movies.

Man, that Obama would pardon anyone, wouldn't he?

I don't know that "realism" is the right word for it, but I get what people want. They want laws of reality within fiction. They want something that they can hold onto and relate to while all of the really crazy stuff happens. Once that "reality" is broken, the story falls apart, because it was a violation of the trust between writers and audience. So with Sliders, the "reality" is that Earth Prime is essentially our Earth and we are what they want to get back to. Not because we're super normal and make total sense, but because the real world has to be the jumping-off point for such fantastical storytelling. We can only judge other worlds based on what we have here, so the Sliders represent us.

Over the years, our representatives in that weird world were taken away and replaced by people who came from worlds that aren't "ours" and are therefore harder to relate to. Add to that the fact that the writers took away the jumping-off point of Earth Prime essentially being our world, and the audience had very little to hold onto anymore. Even Rembrandt was no longer from "our" Earth.

Star Trek Voyager asked us to believe in a world where being lost decades from home was scary and isolating, and the crew had to band together with former enemies in order to survive this trip... but they violated the trust of the audience by not following through on the promise of the series. Voyager was always perfectly neat and clean. The former enemies blended seamlessly into the crew. There was no real struggle to repair damage to the ship or keep food on the table. Being decades from home felt an awful lot like the Enterprise being in Federation space.

Then again, we have Fringe where reality was constantly altered and their world was always changing, yet we believed in it because the core relationships shined through... even when those relationships were wiped from history.

I don't know if Punisher or the second season of Daredevil could toward the original contract for the Netflix shows.

I haven't watched the show in months. I started this season watching, but eventually forgot to watch and didn't care. Then I went and watched an episode and it just seemed stupid, so I never went back. I never got past the Ghost Rider story.

I have a theory that Adam isn't in the cage. In my head, there is a story where the loss of Sam and Adam was eating away at Dean, causing Castiel to attempt to pull Sam out (only getting his body). Castiel's failure only drove Dean into more of a depression, so Castiel did some creative editing and made Dean forget Adam the same way he made Lisa forget Dean. This is why Dean only remembers Adam when he is dead (Appointment in Samarra) and neither Sam nor Dean seem to have any memory of Adam in "Fan Fiction").

Given the state of Sam's soul after a few (Earth) months in Hell, I'm not sure that there would be anything left of Adam to save at this point. However, if he died before he and Sam entered the cage (the way Jimmy died when Castiel was blown up), Adam might not be in the cage at all. Of course, Death made Dean choose between brothers. This would seem to indicate that Adam is down there.

But it's my imaginary story inside my head, so I get to decide that Death was just forcing Dean to make a choice to mess with him (or that Death didn't actually know that Adam wasn't in there, because he hadn't been to the cage since everyone was sent back there).

I always assumed the Lucifer or one of his demons grabbed it. It just made sense, so it was never an issue for me. I assumed that it was at the bottom of an ocean somewhere.

The fact that Crowley grabbed it does make sense. It would make for great leverage in Hell.

I'm not saying that it would be ideal. Obviously, that isn't the plan. But I think it could be done, and the resulting movies could be solid. We have the icons for the introduction at least, so by the time it becomes an issue, we have other established members. Plus, it seems like Justice League is being used as a way to introduce the new characters before spinning them off anyway. It is the launching pad, so it makes sense to have characters come and go from the JL movies.

Or recast him. Either way wouldn't be the best option, but either one could work well enough. The MCU is full of characters that most people never heard of before the movies, and they still manage to make money despite their horrible writing.

I had to add a jab.

It has nothing to do with the studio. If we believe the rumors about him leaving, we probably have to believe the rumors about why. A movie didn't do as well as he had hoped, and he is in a funk about it. That has nothing to do with the studio or the DCEU, it has to do with Ben Affleck. Unfortunately, he can afford to break contracts and turn down work. I'm not entirely sure that anyone in the MCU has that ability on that level, aside from maybe Samuel L Jackson (though Chris Pratt is getting there). Even RDJ's comeback and newer success is very closely tied to Iron Man.

Maybe it's because I've spent most of my life reading as much about what goes into making a movie as I have spent time actually watching movies, but I'm firmly in the "sh*t happens" camp. No matter what business you're in, things happen. People come and go. This is why they invented the saying "the show must go on".

How they handle it will be what matters. If they choose to find a new actor, they need a good one. But they don't even really have to. There is enough story to survive with Batman off camera. He isn't the glue that holds it all together. He is a character who has served a purpose in some of the stories. The DCEU doesn't fall apart without him. He wasn't in Man of Steel and that was a great movie. They won't edit him out of Justice League (probably...) so by the time this becomes an issue, Superman will be back, Wonder Woman will be well established, the team will be put together, and the Aquaman movie probably won't need him anyway.

Man of Steel 2 doesn't need him either.
Gotham City Sirens would actually be a good place to introduce other Bat-family members, so that could work too.

I'm not saying that he hasn't served a purpose, but he isn't the sun around which the whole thing revolves.

I would disagree with that view of BvS (even if we are just discussing the theatrical cut). But we've discussed that a bunch already, so I won't go into it.

You really do need to watch the Ultimate Edition.

It's not really the start at this point, is it?

I guess I just see it differently. It isn't unprofessional, because it has always been a part of the profession. It sucks when it happens. I'm not saying that I like it at all. But it happens. I know that it is Ben Affleck on the screen. I am never convinced that he is actually Batman. So while he may do that job well, I know that others have played that same role well in the past. I would say "oh well, that sucks" and then go on watching the movies, the same way I would if they recast the lead in a Broadway show. I like Angela Lansbury in Sweeney Todd, but Helena Bonham Carter was also good, in a different way.

But then, I watch movies differently than most people. And of course, this is all still hypothetical. There is no evidence that Affleck actually wants out, any more than there is evidence that massive reshoots completely changed Suicide Squad. And if they do recast, they may end up with someone I hate. I have no interest in watching Leonardo DiCaprio or Matt Damon in the role.

And screw Norton! I want Eric Bana back as the Hulk!

Didn't Dean get knocked out when he tried to use the Colt on Lucifer, and it just disappeared after that? I haven't seen that episode in a long while.

I am curious to see how this plays out. Is Mary playing the MoL, or is she really working for them? They made a point of her reading John's journal, so she should have a firm grasp of what the Colt means.

Thea was as a conference of some sort, for a couple of weeks, because Willa Holland was only contracted for 13 or 14 episodes this season. It was oddly refreshing to have her in this episode. She was the only one who wasn't acting like a pod person.

Everyone thinks it's weird that Felicity wasn't more vocally anti-gun, because she was paralyzed by guns in season 4. I have two replies to this...

1. There was no season 4. It never happened.

2. Being shot doesn't automatically make someone anti-gun. Anyone on that team who is anti-gun is a hypocrite.

Rumor has it that WB is looking at Mel Gibson to direct Suicide Squad 2. This could be interesting. He is a great director. I guess he won't be working with RDJ on an Iron Man movie if this happens!

I agree that it's a great way to renegotiate his contract. Even when it comes to the Justice League, Batman isn't always a huge player unless he has to be. It's entirely possible for Affleck to make a killing on relatively little work over the next few years, if that's what he wants.

Would it be a disaster if Affleck left entirely?

I've stopped trying to figure such things out. I thought it was a mistake the get a British Superman (which is like hiring an American Doctor, or Bond), but Cavill's performance was outstanding. I thought it was a mistake to hire Affleck in the first place, and freaked the hell out when my brother let me know about that. Diane Lane as Martha Kent?! Are you serious?! Kevin Costner... actually, that one was always pretty awesome.

Then again, I'm not as big a fan of this Joker as a lot of people. I'm fine with his role being smaller than people expected in Suicide Squad.

For all the defending of the DC movies that I do, people often forget that I've actually been pretty vocally opposed to some of these decisions in the past, and then I had to eat my words because Cavill and Batffleck both worked out pretty well. So would it be a disaster if Affleck left? Would it ruin everything?

I f---ing hated when they swapped out actresses playing Rachel Dawes in Nolan's movies. I still don't like it, really. That said, I get that sometimes, recasting happens. It's always happened, since before film or television existed. So while it my be a bummer and I may not like the idea of a recast, I can't say that it will ruin everything. The Dark Knight was a truly great film, despite having an actress that I personally don't care for very much.

There's a good chance that it will be horrible and ruin everything, but there's also a good chance that we will forget that it happened by the time we reach the halfway point in whatever movie this happens in. This isn't Iron Man. Ben Affleck doesn't define Batman. He just plays the part well.

James Bond.

So do I just skip this week's Arrow? We all know that it will be a preachy mess, written by people who probably think that guns are super scary. I highly doubt that the end of the episode will see Curtis coming around to Rene's point of view on guns, so if there is an arc to the story it will probably be Rene realizing that he doesn't need guns to feel like a big man.

The producers seem to think that preachy current event episodes went out in the 90's. I would argue that they don't watch enough TV. A lot of us are really tired of being preached at by TV writers who have no real grasp of the other side.

I realize that I write stuff that is pretty biased myself. But I don't package it as a deep and meaningful exploration and debate of the subjects at hand. It is a pretty extreme "what if" scenario in my books.

The Robin story kinda occupies the negative space in these movies. The events happened and they're rippling out, and the events that we're seeing are happening around those stories, but the Robin story isn't the story that we're seeing, so it isn't being addressed. I don't know if they're waiting to tell some larger version of that story, or if it is intended to stay in that negative space.

Of course, there's always the rumor that the Joker we're seeing is actually Jason Todd. I don't really buy that, but it would be a spin on an idea that was used in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

It's hard to say for sure which Robin it is, just by looking at the suit. Warner Bros. did confirm that it was Jason's suit, by labeling it as such on one of their tour websites. This could be changed, of course, but it probably won't be. So I think we're supposed to use the information that we have from the comic books and extrapolate what that suit means.

The Harley element is interesting. The way she was written in the Suicide Squad movie gave her so many layers to play with. She wants a normal life, but she wants a normal life with the Joker. Does that mean that she is simply tolerating his craziness because she loved him? She gave El Diablo hell for killing his family, which potentially hints at her feeling some amount of guilt over killing a "kid" herself, or being a party to it at least. I think they really got her character right in that movie. I was worried that they would just make her hot and crazy, but they managed to hold onto the humanity that has always been a part of Harley.

She did kill someone else in the extended cut, in order to win over the Joker. So Jason wouldn't have been her only murder.

Story idea:

Assuming that they can get Affleck to play the lead in the Batman movie, what if they did a story where Batman responds to a call at Arkham Asylum and finds that the prisoners are going insane... While fighting to get them all put back in their cages, Batman finds himself in an abandoned wing of the asylum and is attacked by the Spectre, who has come to make Batman pay for his crimes.

So, you have Batman in the Asylum, battling his enemies, but also battling his worst moments as Batman, which include falling out with Dick, getting Jason killed and getting Barbara injured. The story would be an insane frenzy, somewhere between Suicide Squad and A Christmas Carol. In the end, we could have Dick show up as Nightwing and pull Bruce back from the edge.

People would hate it. Spectre isn't really a villain, so the movie wouldn't have the same engine as most comic book movies. It would be about Batman's psyche and coming to grips with what he's been through while wearing that costume. A trial, of sorts Is he Bruce or is he Batman? Is he a murderer for bringing Jason into this? Does he deserve the justice that Spectre is threatening?

I don't see it as a huge mystery. A lot of it is implied, for those who don't know the comics. But it is also put out there for those of us who do know the story. Jason died. Dick and Bruce are estranged. Tim is a question mark, I guess, but that's the only mystery that I see. If that story is given to us in bits and pieces instead of one big movie, I'm fine with that. Even if they never fully explain it in detail, that story influences what we see on screen. It's an interesting way to do it.

Depends on your perspective.

Yeah, the Nate/Amaya thing made no sense at all. They forced them together in this episode, and then they forced them to have this sex subplot, while their teammates were on the chopping block. It was horribly conceived.

Also, Nata and Amaya don't really work together. Earlier this season Nate had some good chemistry with Sara. It was interesting and natural, and they're such opposites that it just might work. But the show is now insisting on forgetting that Sara is not a lesbian, she is supposed to be bisexual. Except they don't want her to flirt with or sleep with any dudes, because that would be too straight or something. It's really bugging me, because they've started playing her up as this sex-crazed rebellious hero figure while also cutting her potential love interests in half.

And yes, the colony thing was stupid. But then again, I'm still trying to figure out why Jax wouldn't just break a mop handle and stick it in the telescope. If I had a relic that was that ordinary to look at, but super powerful, I would have Gideon make a dozen copies, just to throw off the bad guys.