This is the kind of movie that always give me pause about how well popular entertainment, particularly popular entertainment that’ll clock in at under two hours, can lay out policy solutions instead of articulating policy problems. Narrative fiction can be very, very good at the former. The Wire handled Baltimore public schools well over the course of a season. Brooklyn Castle, my favorite documentary from SXSW uses the jeweler’s lens of a competitive middle school chess team to examine New York City public school budget cuts and the city’s high school exam system. But the solutions it presents are all temporary, individual fixes rather than system-wide reforms. One student wins a scholarship through a chess competition, but that means of achieving escape velocity isn’t available to all students. The school manages to do some stop-gap fundraising, but not everyone has the extremely dedicated parent base and an extracurricular program that can be a massive rallying point.

I’ll be curious how much Won’t Back Down presents setting up a charter school as a difficult endeavor, and if and how meaningfully it acknowledges charter schools’ closure rates. Triumphal narratives feel good, and I’m all for movies that push back against stereotypes of poor parents as uninvested in their childrens’ education. But if you actually want to mobilize people, you have to valorize the effort, not just the end result. And promising outcomes that are far from guaranteed is a recipe for disappointment.

That said, I’ve always been left, perhaps heretically, a trifle cold by The Great Gatsby, and I’m curious as to how it’ll play when the movie is released in December.

The movie’s class politics are probably best described as universally disgusted. Gatsby makes the error of assuming that wealth can purchase him respect and love, falling into gauche error as a result, while the old monied Buchanans are revealed to be repulsive, crude people. But it’s a lot easier to shudder away from money as a source of happiness in favor of a more refined sensibility in a boom era than it is in a recession. This is neither a revenge fantasy nor a pure escape. But certainly, Leonardo DiCaprio’s exactly the right person to play Gatsby, even leaving aside that he was Luhrmann’s muse before he was Martin Scorsese’s. He’s achieved a kind of profound remoteness. And these days, the idea that someone could lever themselves from one class to another by sheer force of will is a more remote dream than ever.

At least the Norquist cameo promises a few seconds of oddball entertainment. If only the same could be said for the film’s predecessor. Though I see bad movies all the time, I’ve had a particular fascination with Atlas Shrugged: Part I since its release in April of last year. There’s so much to analyze, from its original, failed attempt to stoke the Tea Party fires with a tax-day release date to fact that its original DVD case was pulled from stores after angering fans by making a very un-Randian reference to “self-sacrifice.” (What I wouldn’t give for the Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 equivalent of Hearts of Darkness, in which a documentarian chronicled every behind-the-scenes misstep during the Atlas Shrugged’s bizarre production and promotional blitz).

But the sequel fascinates me even more, because its very existence represents everything the filmmakers of Atlas Shrugged: Part I were railing against: the failure of individuals to bow to the will of the free market, which, it must be noted, resoundingly rejected the first film. There is a “teaser trailer” for Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 – Either-Or. But it’s one of the dumbest teasers I’ve ever seen:

Newscasters. A clip of Rand from 1959, railing about “welfare states” and “destruction all around you.” It doesn’t even feature the name of the movie; just the Roman numeral columns of the number II, as if the first film was such a massive hit that we’ll all recognize its sequel on sight.

But more than anything, the Atlas Shrugged: Part 2 – Either-Or trailer confirms something I’ve suspected for a long time: conservative filmmakers have no idea how to market a movie. With both politics and pretensions aside, let’s acknowledge the real reason most people go to movies: to be entertained. And by comparison, let’s review the most successful liberal movie of all-time: Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the Palme D’Or and grossed $120 million on a $6 million budget. I have many problems with Michael Moore’s gotcha-documentarian tactics, but there’s no denying his skill as a filmmaker. If you haven’t seen it since 2003, watch Fahrenheit 9/11’s theatrical trailer again:

The jaunty music, the stunt journalism, the wacky George Bush clips, the seductive promise of “the year’s most controversial film.” It doesn’t bill itself as a liberal screed; it bills itself as comedy. And it worked.

I was actually one of the few Americans who paid to see Atlas Shrugged: Part I in theaters, owing to both a misplaced sense of film-critic duty and my own perverse curiosity. I expected to disagree with the film’s objectivist politics (and was not disappointed). But I didn’t expect it to be so toothless, so poorly produced, and so ineffective at preaching to its own choir. Conservative or liberal, movies can be political and still succeed – but they also have to remember be movies.

It’s all there: the John Edwards-like obsession with looks, the conviction that the candidate must be at the center of attention even in the aftermath of his own gaffe (or, okay, baby-punching), the pablum of pander. To my knowledge, no existing American politician has declared that “Filipino Tilt-a-Whirl Operators are this nation’s backbone,” but I eagerly await the day when one does. The Campaign looks to be the inverse of Parks and Recreation—hopefully it’ll help us bide time until that noble pean to the best in American politics returns to the air.

I think he’s right, and he’s nailed something important about where we are in the development of comic book movies. Some, if not all, movie franchise are finally fully behaving like comic books, giving us extended explorations of individual characters that intersect with and then diverge from other characters we’re spending time with in parallel, and examining new iterations of characters before the memory of the last version of the same figure has faded. To some critics, that means we’ve succumbed to an efficient, corporatized entertainment system that hits the same beats over and over again. Certainly, one of the reasons Spider-Man is rebooting is so Sony keeps its rights to the character and doesn’t let them revert back to Marvel. And if the lesson Marvel takes from the massive success of The Avengers is that pure repetition is a gold mine, that would be too bad. But I also think that the willingness by Marvel to give us more than six-odd hours over three movies with a set of characters presents an opportunity to demand richer, more unusual, deeper explorations of characters, to turn action movies into the kind of meditations we’re more accustomed to getting from television.

Previously, we’ve been used to superhero movies that come in three parts: a rise, a challenge, and a fall or a redemption. That’s a fine, sturdy structure for storytelling, and I fully expect The Dark Knight Rises to be a powerful deployment of that very reliable format. Previously, when a franchise has been kept alive past three installments, as with the Alien movies, it’s often less because the people involved have an overarching story to tell or set of ideas to explore than because a character is popular and profitable.

Marvel, on the other hand, has planned from the beginning to use these characters for a long time. Samuel L. Jackson’s contract with the company ties him to nine films so they can use Nick Fury as a through line in The Avengers franchise even if only in cameos. Even though at the time he came on board as The Hulk, Marvel didn’t plan to make more stand-alone movies based on the character, Mark Ruffalo was locked up for six movies, and now that his version of the character has become so definitive, the studio has him to work with.

But that’s only an exciting possibility if Marvel has good long-term plans for these characters. And comic book fans, rather than being contented with this smashing success, the proof that the geeks do inherit the earth eventually, should respond to The Avengers by raising our standards, not lowering them. What great television has been able to do in the last decade is recognize that the most momentous periods in people’s lives can’t always be neatly divided into three main acts. The best show play with tone episode by episode, they tell different kinds of stories, and characters emerge into the foreground and then recede back. The Dark Phoenix saga is as powerful as it is on the page because we’ve spent time seeing Jean Grey as both a superhero and as a person, learning how weird it is for Scott Summers to see the love of his life go from an ordinarily super-powered woman to someone who can levitate him to a picnic date without even thinking hard about it.

Maybe it’s time for a movie about how Bruce Banner attempts a romantic relationship as he tries to restrain the avatar of masculine rage and violence that always rests within him, or about how Thor’s existence changes Jane Foster’s understanding of science and the universe. And I’d still like to see Captain America live out some of that culture shock he alludes to, to explore both what we’ve won and what he thinks we lost in his time out of mind. These interludes might not be as flashy as the battles we saw in The Avengers, but they’ll make us value these heroes more highly when we see them put their bodies and peace of mind at risk. Similarly, we shouldn’t be excited for a reboot of Spider-Man so soon on the heels of the end of a three-act exploration of him unless that reboot has something new to say about the character, and perhaps, given the timing, about our old perspective on Peter Parker. There are only so many times Spider-Man and a host of creepy-crawlies can rampage through the streets of New York, only so many heightened first kisses, only so may fire escapes to sneak up or swing off of.

There’s also something that Old Hollywood understood and did well in franchises like The Thin Man that superhero movies would do well to learn from: sometimes our heroes’ development and growth doesn’t have to be the main point of the film. Now that we know these characters, and we’ve seen them grow into heroes, superhero movies can start using our familiarity with them to tell stories about the world. We’ve talked a lot about Marvel’s success in exploring the interior journeys of its superheroes, but that isn’t the only way to use these kinds of characters. What does it mean to that waitress who became the through line for the third-act invasion of New York in The Avengers that there are superheroes in her world, and monsters who invade it? What’s it like to try to regulate these people? To work among them if you’re Maria Hill? To confront their emergence if you’re an Asgardian or a Kree or Skrull official, someone who already sees humanity from the outside?

For most of this decade when superheroes have dominated our blockbusters, from Neo to Natasha Romanov, our main use of these emerging archetypes has been to tell stories about those archetypes themselves, whether we’re seeing rich men turn their privilege to the common defense or fallen, broken people attempt to use their powers to redeem themselves. Maybe it’s time to start using these archetypes to tell stories about ourselves, and our strengths and failings even if they’re unenhanced by wondrous forces, and about our own capacity for belief. We don’t have to worry that these characters are going away any time soon, which means it’s time to think bigger than just smashing up Manhattan.

It helps to have seen the previous movies Marvel’s released to enjoy The Avengers—each entry in the franchise builds on the other in terms of plot development and characterization—but it’s not strictly necessary. The town that’s collapsing in this case turns out to be a massive government research facility run by an agency called S.H.I.E.L.D. that’s dedicated to studying a mysterious artifact: the tesseract. In previous films we’ve learned that the U.S. came into possession of that object, which it sees as a source of cheap renewable energy (and maybe other things as well) after they defrost Captain America, who stole it from the Nazis and crash landed the tesseract and himself in the Arctic. It turns out, however, that the Nazis pinched it from Asgard, the celestial kingdom of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Loki (a terrific Tom Hiddleston), demi-gods and brothers who have had a significant falling out, leaving Thor with a human sweetheart and a fondness for earth, and Loki with a hankering for revenge. The Avengers kicks off when Loki shows up, pinches the tesseract along with several government workers, and in the process, collapses the facility. After he gets away, S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), his assistant Maria Hill (a largely wasted Cobie Smulders), and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) regroup on a carrier ship and proceed to recruit the help they need to get it back.

Much of the band they pull together’s in fine, previously-established fettle. Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) may be in the clean energy business and faithful to Pepper Potts these days, but he’s still an arrogant quip machine. “What’s your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Great big bag of weed?” Tony snarks at Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), eager first to figure out how the brilliant scientist maintains his hard-won calm, and second to convince Banner that he might enjoy taking the Hulk out for a spin. Captain America (Chris Evans), now that he’s thawed out, seems awfully depressed and displaced. “When I went to sleep, we were at war,” he tells Fury glumly, taking a break from obliterating punching bags as a form of therapy. “I wake up, they say we’ve won. They didn’t say what we’ve lost.” Thor’s still speaking in Shakespearean text—something Tony doesn’t heistate to ding him for—and getting huffy over family honor, though when Black Widow points out that his brother Loki, on a quest to conquer the world, has killed 80 people in a mere 48 hours, Thor notes quickly “He’s adopted.”

The two characters least-well served by their previous incarnations in Marvel movies, the Hulk and Black Widow, are the ones best served by Whedon’s greatest gifts and strongest tendencies. Previous incarnations have tended to reduce Bruce Banner to something of a victim—his movie depictions haven’t bothered to make the case that the good doctor is worthwhile company in and of himself, interesting not merely because of his struggle to contain what Ruffalo’s Banner ominously refers to as “the other guy.” Whedon’s gifted Banner with a mordant wit and the obligation to point out the downside to situations his more optimistically superheroic colleagues regard as alternately awesome or a piece of cake (to a certain extent, he’s Xander Harris before he gets his hands on a wrecking ball). “Last time I was in New York, I kind of broke Harlem,” he warns them in one moment. When he makes his belated arrival at a battle that’s going poorly, Banner tells his beseiged allies “So, this all seems horrible.” We have a sense of the self Banner loses when he transforms into the Hulk, an understanding that he is valuable, and in peril of losing not just his reason temporarily but his soul permanently.

When Banner explains he knows he can’t be killed because “I got low. I didn’t see a way out. So I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out,” his self-loathing is palpable. And when he prepares to backhand a woman into oblivion, the Hulk seems less like an inconvenient condition that can be effectively deployed than a manifestation of toxic, brainless masculinity run amok. But Banner learns to rein himself in, to become a targeted weapon rather than a rampaging beast, resulting in the wittiest action sequences in the movie’s third act. This is simultaneously the funniest and most thoughtful representation of the Hulk on screen, and Ruffalo deserves enormous credit for his performance, which is the best thing in the movie.

Black Widow is a heavier lift, given her introduction into the franchise in the relatively lackluster Iron Man 2, and Johansson’s limitations as an actress. But Whedon once again enriches his final girl (Maria Hill sticks to the ship’s bridge and isn’t really in contention for the title) by giving her tight, pithy dialogue that implies but doesn’t confirm a rich inner life. Buffy Summers might tell an ex-boyfriend “I’m cookie dough. I’m not done baking,” and go on to offer an extensive explanation of the metaphor. Black Widow, given a personal stake in the fight when Loki brainwashes Hawkeye, tells the villain who wants to know if she’s in love with him, “Love is for children. I owe a debt,” and leaves it at that. Her refusal to clarify leaves room for Loki to speculate, and ultimately to reveal more than he intended. All sorts of skill sets matter in a conflict this big and complex. And without making her a victim or a lesser member of the team, Black Widow’s reactions are a regular reminder that superheroics and space invaders have real impact beyond the financial support of the Cinematic Demolition Industrial Complex. Watching her come back to herself after being badly beaten in a fight is a reminder of how damaging these powers can be when applied to ordinary people. And hearing her tell Captain America in an unconvincing deadpan “It’ll be fun,” when she tries a hugely risky gambit without the protection of enhancement or godlike abilities makes the enterprise seem more serious. These things may be entertaining as hell to watch, but they’d be terrifying to actually carry out.

The Avengers is much less a critique of the way we consume entertainment than Whedon’s meditation on horror movies, Cabin in the Woods. But it’s powerfully attuned to precisely why these movies elicit so much joy even as it’s in the process of eliciting it. S.H.E.I.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson, introduced in Iron Man as a fussy bureaucrat who tries to keep heroes in line, and who has developed into a minor badass thanks to subsequent appearances that tie the franchise together and a series of web shorts devoted to him, is, in The Avengers, a full-fledged audience surrogate. Specifically, he’s a huge Captain America fan: “I watched you while you were sleeping,” he explains when they’re formally introduced, referring to his presence at Cap’s thawing-out. “Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards?” Black Widow asks Cap as they arrive for the big get-together. “They’re vintage. He’s very proud.” Coulson’s a believer both in old-fashioned ideas of service to country and humanity and in the rather more modern idea that enthusiasm and affinity are cool rather than embarrassing.

Whedon’s ideas about villains function the same way, carrying the story forward even as they comment on tropes. Loki, since his expulsion from Asgard, has acquired an alien army and somebody’s college Nietzsche library (his interpretations of the latter suggest that he, not Banner, has been relying a bit too heavily on the ganja to ease his inner pain). When he first reappears in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Joint Dark Energy Mission laboratory to snap up a few minions (Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Stellan Skarsgård’s Dr. Selvig, both introduced in Thor), he swans about declaring “Freedom is life’s great lie. Once you accept that in your heart, you will know peace.” Fury, whose order “Sir, please put down the spear” failed minutes earlier, tells the demi-god “You’re talking about peace. I kind of think you mean the other thing.” But coherence isn’t Loki’s strong suit, and not just because, as Banner artfully puts it “his brain is a bag full of cats.” Unlike supervillains of yore, it becomes clear Loki doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. He has a temper tantrum, not an ideology.

In The Avengers, the battle of ideas isn’t between the forces of good and evil: it’s between the people who are supposed to be allies. Captain America thinks Iron Man’s a showboat, while Tony thinks Steve is a hopeless square. They waste time tangling with Thor in a forest before recognizing their common aims. Once they do, those three men plus Dr. Banner, find themselves suspicious of a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. agenda they uncover in the course of gearing up to fight Loki. And Fury manipulates them into coming together as a team even as he tries to hold off the worst impulses of the S.H.I.E.L.D. council he must answer to.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, superhero movies like Spider-Man 2, with its famous sequence of New York City subway passengers lifting up a fallen Peter Parker, were first about what other people had done to us and our capacity to recover. In The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s Batman became a representative of the terrible things we’d do to ourselves and the compromises we’d make to fight back against an external threat. The Avengers takes a third path, positing superheroes as the people who will stand firm both against terrorists and our own darkest impulses and those of the people in whom we’ve invested official governmental power. They’ll be there when we need them, but they aren’t entrenching themselves, amassing power and growing corrupt. It’s in keeping with the suspicion of institutions that’s become a major theme in Whedon’s work.

And we’ll certainly need them again. The introduction of Thor and the conception of alternate worlds and aliens to the Marvel movies opens up huge new possibilities for subsequent films, including for the adaptation of major storylines from the comics. An unwillingness to bring aliens into the mix has weakened prior movies based on Marvel stories: X-Men: The Last Stand, an adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga, should have ended with a showdown in an alien arena after the destruction of a planet. Instead, it concluded in a junkyard rumble. And from the extra scenes in the credits, it’s clear that Loki’s invasion was a first salvo, not the end of our heroes’ engagement in a higher kind of war with a whole new class of combatants. The Avengers may be the result of careful planning and a neatly calibrated movie-making formula that strikes some critics as rigid corporate entertainment. But this franchise, with its long-form exploration of a rich cast of characters and its embrace of a huge, complex universe, has unlocked, at long last, the wondrous, weird potential of comic books to transport us to other worlds and to render our own transformed.

Not incidentally, these were all characters from comics published by Marvel. The characters from competing comics company DC—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Superfriends—were lying fallow, even though the corporation that owns DC also owns Warner Bros. Pictures. Marvel, on the other hand, was doing so well with its A-list characters that in 2005 the company took the bold step of financing its own theatrical releases. It would translate its characters its own way.

Spider-Man had been indentured to Sony, and the X-Men and Fantastic Four were already at Fox, but the remaining roster of potential movie heroes was still plenty deep. First up: Iron Man, an alcoholic gazillionaire playboy who builds his own rocket-powered exoskeleton. Then there’s the Hulk, a brilliant scientist who turns into a massively strong, uncontrollable green monster. Oh, and Captain America—a supersoldier from World War II brought into the present—and Thor, a hammer-wielding Norse god with superpowers and family drama that makes the real housewives of Atlanta look like the Osmonds. Unlike the gleaming, godlike DC heroes, Marvel characters are more likely to regard their powers as a curse than a blessing; great power has a pesky tendency to come with great responsibility. And that makes for pretty good movie plots.

I think there’s something to that. But of course, Marvel movies do have gods in the form of Asgardians, and some of the pleasure of watching Thor and Loki duke it comes from seeing gods behaving badly, of seeing these brawls play out on the largest possible scale. I wonder if the secret overall is that, on-screen at least, the Marvel heroes have tended to be funnier and more self-deprecating than the DC heroes, which is not precisely the same thing as angsty. There’s something inherently ridiculous about a god in a pet store, or a rich kid reacting in amazement and pleasure to his new toys, to the fact that he can fly. Acknowledging that absurdity is a useful nod to people who aren’t lifelong geeks, but are letting themselves be talked into drinking the Kool-Aid. And the transmutation of anxiety and darkness into comedic gold is basically Joss Whedon’s sweet spot.

Batman’s owned the flip side of that joyful ridiculousness, a sense of deviance: Gotham residents may not be right about the precise ways in which Bruce Wayne’s head isn’t right, but they’re not wrong that there’s something wrong with him. That comfort with painting the hero as a bit too dedicated, acknowledging our unease, may be why it’s worked better than say, Green Lantern or Green Hornet. One way or the other, the movies seem to require a deep tonal commitment to work.

More to the point, I’m excited to see an intellectual debate between this movie and The Avengers. Christopher Nolan’s Batman’s movies have always had an element of monkish sacrifice to them: to be an impactful superhero, Bruce Wayne’s had to surrender his true public image (in the first film, he acts the playboy to disguise his intentions), the love of his life and of the populace, and now, it’s implied, either his life or his physical health. Bane’s declaration that “your punishment must be more severe” is a looking-glass version of how Nolan’s understood the only way for superheroes to make a difference, to self-abnegate, to foreswear their own happiness, to separate themselves from the people they are sacrificing themselves for.

The Marvel franchise, and The Avengers in particular (without spoiling anything), take the opposite tack. Its superheroes become better individuals more closely drawn to their communities for their experiences as superheroes. Tony Stark stops cackling over his power to kill and begins craving the approval of those around him, a selfish motivation that ultimately teaches him to engage with their needs. Thor falls in love with Jane Foster, and with Earth, a process of attachment that turns him from self-involved Asgardian prince into an admirable man. Captain America, in life and in death, gives the American people something to rally around, not to unify in their disgust at his perceived actions. The great tragedy of the Hulk has been that he’s cut off from reason and attachment precisely at the moment that he could provide the greatest amount of strength to protect people or causes. These two movies are going to make serious bank for their studios. But taken together, they’re also a vigorous argument about superheroism. That’s an exciting debate to have, and I’m looking forward to it.

Alien (1979)
Budget: $11 million ($34.8 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $104,931,801 ($331.5 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: Approximately $33,333 ($105,321 in 2012 dollars)

Aliens (1986)
Budget: $18.5 million ($38.72 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $131,060,248 ($274.3 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: $1 million ($2.1 million in 2012 dollars)

Alien 3 (1992)
Budget: $50 million ($81.8 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $159,773,545 ($261.2 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: $4 million plus a share of box office ($6.5 million in 2012 dollars)

Alien Resurrection (1997)
Budget: $70 million ($100 million in 2012 dollars)
Domestic and International Box Office: $161,295,658 ($230.5 million in 2012 dollars)
Sigourney Weaver’s Salary: $11 million ($15.7 million in 2012 dollars)

Prometheus
Budget: Estimated at $100-$150 million

I don’t think there’s a direct relationship between expensiveness and badness—The Avengers cost $220 million, which doesn’t count the expensive advertising campaign around it, and is just jaw-droppingly great (it is killing me not to be able to talk to you guys about it yet. Friday cannot be here soon enough). But at the same time, you can afford to do weirder things if there’s less money sunk into them. The Avengers kind of earns back some of that freedom—and I think Prometheus does, too—to be funny and weird and interesting and frightening because it’s guaranteed to make all of the money even if it was wretched. But a lot of the time when someone like, say, Michael Bay is in that position, they take precisely zero advantage of it. It’s one thing to be creative because you have to be to have a prayer of getting noticed and loved. It’s another to be creative because you have the luxury to be. On bad days, it seems like everyone else is just checking boxes. But this year feels to me like a time when the movies are new and exciting. I could be proven wrong. But it’s been fun so far.

“Oh I’d be happy if they add the Black Panther and maybe Dr. Strange,” Lee told I Am Rogue during a recent interview. As for which characters he’d like to see get their very own franchise entries, a la “Iron Man”, “Thor” and “The Hulk”: “Those two [Dr. Strange and the Black Panther] and probably Ant-Man, which I think they are working on [Edgar Wright has been indeed been developing a solo Ant-Man flick for several years now]. Maybe I’ll play a little role in that.”

As much as I would love to see this happen, I only would want it to happen if it could be done right. And I’m not sure how Marvel’s formula would handle a black man who’s king of an African empire that’s more technologically advanced than the West, who’s done battle against the Ku Klux Klan and the apartheid regime in South Africa. I got back and forth on this, because I think there’s real value in positive portrayals of powerful black men in our media, but I wonder if a Black Panther movie that’s barred from talking about race would be worse than no Black Panther at all.

The Law & Order franchise’s formula of voiceovers is the clearest condensation of this approach. It’s”"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” Or “In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.” Or “In New York City’s war on crime, the worst criminal offenders are pursued by the detectives of the Major Case Squad. These are their stories.”

In all three cases, and in many other crime-solving shows, the point is clear. Crime in our culture is about the people who arrest and prosecute criminals. Criminals exist as obstacles for those people to foil, problems for them to solve, people for them to break. Victims exist to provide meaning to that process. People who seek to prevent crime, or to heal victims of the trauma from it are largely incidental—when we see psychologists on television, they’re largely present to help detectives and prosecutors assess criminals or obtain convictions, or to help make prosecutors and detectives more effective and functional. There’s no question that crime affect the people who investigate them, and that case investigation is a neat package for television storytelling. But officers of the law are not the only people affected by crimes. And arrests and trials aren’t the only ways to tell stories.

The Interrupters is a phenomenal movie, and lots of people have laid out why, but I want to discuss it here as an example of how to tell crime stories with different people at the center of the frame, and through different processes. The movie, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is about violence interrupters in Chicago, people who work directly with people who are at risk of committing crimes to de-escalate both short-term and long-term situations that could lead to violence, acting on the presumption that violence is a public health risk that can be combatted by disrupting cycles of behavior. “The story about sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you? Words can get you killed,” Says Ameena Matthews, the daughter of Jeff Fort, an influential Chicago gang member who herself was involved in gang activity until she was shot. She’s since converted to Islam, and works to disrupt conflicts, whether she’s wading into an impending fight; confronting gang members who are hanging out with a much younger child and putting him at risk and telling them “This is unacceptable for me to be holding this young man’s obituary. Schools, church’s, your mama’s house…those are safe zones”; helping arrange a burial for Derrion Albert, an honor student who was beaten to death in a case that drew national attention; or taking a young woman whose mother is an addict on a carousel ride for the first time.

All of these scenes are gripping, as are the scenes of Cobe Williams taking a young man to apologize to the barbershop employees he held up, both of them listening to tearful explanations of how the robbery shattered their lives; or Eddie Bocanegra doing as many good deeds as possible every year on the anniversary of a murder he committed at 17. And they don’t require the presence of a detective, or an active gang leader, or a baroque criminal of any level a la The Wire to generate that drama. Mediation has a sort of squishy aura when compared to police work, and shows like USA Network’s Fairly Legal have given the impression that it’s the kind of thing you can do while looking hot in Louboutins. But marching into a potential beating is serious working that requires tremendous courage. A show based on the Violence Interrupters’ work wouldn’t have to generate a jot of artificial tension or baroque crime to be tremendously gripping, and it would give us a much more meaningful look at the roots and impact of violence than shows about cops who dip into communities and families only when a crisis has already happened.

Appropriate Adult is less of a departure from the standard police procedural (and it’s a dramatization of a real case). Janet (Emily Watson), the main character, is a trainee social worker who’s been certified to act as an appropriate adult, a term in the British legal system for a parent or social worker who needs to be present during the interrogation of a vulnerable person who’s been arrested. She’s called in for her first case, which turns out to be that of serial killer Fred West (an amazing Dominic West) and put in an impossible position: she’s supposed to be responsible for making sure he understands the proceedings and is under pressure from the police to get him to give up valuable information because of her connection to him, but she’s increasingly horrified by his crimes. She’s asked to be sympathetic, condemned when she gets emotionally involved in the case, and excoriated when she collaborates with a journalist who manipulates that sympathy. It may be the same system that we’re used to, but it’s seen through drastically different eyes that render it new, and less neatly just.

The standard crime-arrest-trial narrative may be comforting, but that doesn’t mean it’s complete. In this, as with all things, diversity helps us get closer to the truth in all its complexity. And it would make for vastly more varied, richer storytelling.

It’s Baron Cohen’s boldness applied to a project that almost no American filmmaker would dare touch (though the Brits have) and almost none could: treating terrorists as if they and their awful aspirations can be funny, as well as horrific. And there’s something really valuable in making terrorists small and pathetic, rather than giants we need to cower in fear from. Laughing at someone’s ideology is a good way to marginalize it. But I also like something I didn’t realize the movie was going to do, which is tackle the lives of dictators in exile. There’s something pretty funny in juxtaposing the tweeness of New York organic crunchiness with the excess of kleptocrats. Baron Cohen’s dictator has more in common with the Real Housewives than he does with them.

The members of Ron’s news team are posturing, peacocking, competitive, wannabe gentlemanly idiots even before Veronica Corningstone, a sexy, smart female anchor transfers in to join their team as part of the rising tide of women’s lib:

Once she arrives, the team reacts with sheer panic. Has there been a better encapsulation of uninformed, sexist ranting in terror at the loss of privilege than Brick Tamland hollering “I don’t know what we’re talking about!” and “Loud noises!” in the movies since?

These guys know absolutely nothing about women.

And the great joy of the movie is that, by its end, it’s about feminism’s victory. The women at the station where Ron and his team work stand up for themselves and demand better treatment. Veronica proves herself as a smart, competent reporter and anchor. Sports reporter Champ Kind learns that just because Ron’s heart is engaged doesn’t mean he’s lost his best friend. No one loses, unless you count Luke Wilson’s repeated maiming in the news team anchor rumble, still one of the funniest action sequences in quite some time. We need more men in pop culture to have that realization that the rise of women doesn’t automatically make their lives poorer. When it comes to family bands and bear births, feminism can mean that everybody wins.

Betty: I dunno. Men are sometimes as freaked having to go shirtless as women are getting naked altogether. For me, once I was down to my undies, or a string bikini, I might as well go for broke. What’s a nipple or two between friends? Several times I’d be in some flesh-colored bodysuit or G-string, but they’d keep catching the edge of it on-camera, so I’d just take it off to expedite the filming process. Since I never did an X-rated movie, I trusted that whatever body parts they caught on film that they didn’t want, they’d deal with in editing. But unfair? Probably, but there are so many unfair things about being a woman in film — and other industries — what’s one more?

Veronica: No, I guess not. Let’s face it, for male nudity to be anything meaningful they have to show their dick. A woman doesn’t have to go all the way for it to be a big deal. Guys have so much at stake: “Is it big enough, is it shaped well, is it all shrunk up?” It is harder for a guy to be aesthetically pleasing when naked, in my opinion.

Archie: I don’t think it’s unfair that women show more nudity in movies at all. As a dude, the truth is that a man’s package is way more, well, visible. You’re never going to see much more than a bit of muff from a woman in a scene, and that is really little more than the coming attraction for what really lies beneath. On the other hand, once you see an actor’s dong, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the kind of firepower he’s packing.

Or it could be that women are expected to be naked and visually available in way that men aren’t, so actresses have to get over that expectation or lock themselves out of certain kinds of work while men are allowed to treat their naughty bits as if they’re delicate flowers that will wilt if exposed to the light, and millions of viewers. It’s why Jason Segel and Michael Fassbender get credit for going full-frontal while Sarah Jessica Parker gets treated like she’s a prude for not wanting to go topless in Sex and the City.

The trailer shows the neighborhood watch volunteers, including Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill as feared (if somewhat over the top) figures in the suburban streets they patrol, dragging a white child into a police department for pelting them with eggs:

A Fox spokesman told the Hollywood Reporter that, “We are very sensitve to the Trayvon Martin case, but our film is a broad alien invasion comedy and bears absolutely no relation to the tragic events in Florida.” That’s probably true. But it’s worth interrogating why we find images of over-the-top approaches to law enforcement funny or compelling, whether it’s the main characters in 21 Jump Street busting out their guns to keep the peace in a sun-filled, peaceful public park, or Elliot Stabler beating up a suspect on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. It’s not just laughable when this sense of puffed-up bravado is played out in the real world. It’s downright dangerous.

Lionsgate, which is set for a record-breaking opening weekend with its movie adaptation of the dystopian young adult novel The Hunger Games, has reconsidered the takedown notice the company sent to imagine Better, an organization running an anti-hunger campaign inspired by the franchise.

The takedown notice, exclusively reported by ThinkProgress yesterday, targeted the Hunger Is Not A Game campaign, which is building support for Oxfam’s GROW program aimed at making food aid more efficient and less wasteful. The entertainment company accused Imagine Better of “causing damage to Lionsgate and our marketing efforts” — even though Lionsgate had previously wished Imagine Better luck while declining to sign on as a formal partner.

But now Lionsgate has reconsidered in the wake of widespread fan outrage. The company will not pursue legal action to back up the takedown notice. And Kate Piliero, the vice president for corporate communications for Lionsgate’s film division, emailed me to say that the company’s main concern was that their official charitable partners for the film have exclusive use of the film’s official images and logo (Imagine Better had created its own, separate set of images and branding).

“Lionsgate’s partnership with the United Nations’ World Food Programme as well as Feeding America, both tied to the release of The Hunger Games, is helping to generate awareness of and funds for this global issue,” she wrote. “We absolutely support and encourage the efforts of organizations battling world hunger and would encourage fans to join our efforts by visiting www.hungergames.com.”

In America, if not in Panem, it seems, fans and corporations can co-exist without a legal fight to the death.

Why is the town so hot and bothered about what started as a self published e-book that flew under the radar until a Today Show segment and New York Times article turned up the heat? Those who don’t get it are scratching their heads and dismissing it as “mommy porn” and say while it will be aimed at the female demo that embraced Eat Pray Love and Sex and the City, these two go at it like rabbits in vivid S&M and bondage scenarios that will lead to a sure-fire R rating at least. Guys probably aren’t coming, and that rating locks out the young girls.

Those who do get it say that the author has tapped into a perfect storm of female sexuality and taboo romance with an unattainable man, themes common to works like Twilight Saga and True Blood. They say the book has stimulated an elusive zeitgeist hot button that every studio wants in a book to movie franchise. Guys might not get it, but it’s spreading like wildfire among females age ranging from young women to grandmothers.

I’m amused, but there’s something pretty pathetic about the fact that the entertainment industry is still surprised by the idea that ladies have erogenous zones, and sometimes like having them stimulated by pop culture. Have they ever been to the romance novel section of a bookstore? Or had an assistant who’s been to the romance novel section of a bookstore? I hope a lady executive lands this project and makes major bank off it. Though history suggests that even if that happens, her male counterparts won’t learn a damn thing from the experience.

It actually makes me wish someone would do A Moveable Feast, which has that same sense of impassioned naivete and openness to the world, that promise that “we’ll never love anyone else but each other,” “no. Never.” And I’m excited for HBO’s upcoming Hemingway & Gellhorn which is the experience to those stories’ innocence:

I’m not sure it’ll be good or not, but I do appreciate that it’s from Gellhorn’s perspective. She didn’t want to be a footnote in his life while they were both alive, and it’s nice to see she’s not here.

I think we may err, and I would include myself in this as I say “we,” in being a little bit too eager to promote some of those rare projects on the Right. It was very hard for me because I love “Atlas Shrugged” the book. “Atlas Shrugged,” the movie… I couldn’t believe that so many on our team contrived to like it. Because it was not a successful film, it wasn’t good. So I think to that extent, partially, the Right-wing stuff is very often very ad hoc and it’s a one-off. Which is why it’s so remarkable when something comes outside… way outside the system of extraordinary high craft-quality, let alone artistic quality. Like “The Passion of the Christ” or even “Fireproof.” “Fireproof” was not a masterpiece, it’s not an Oscar-worthy film. But it was emotionally, I think, an interesting film and sound and reasonably well-crafted.

He cites as two examples of movies he really loves Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, particularly noting the latter’s focus on the immigrant experience. I’d really love it if the latter in particular could be remade or updated and embraced by conservatives and liberals alike, though I suspect there’d be less conservative sympathy for the immigrants if they were Latino rather than European and undocumented rather than products of Ellis Island. And Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is really more an anti-corruption movie than a Democratic or a Republican one.

While these two movies might not be fantastic proof, it is true that conservative ideas and decently-crafted filmmaking aren’t inherently incompatible. I thought there were a lot of things that didn’t work about Act of Valor, but the movie did really reinforce for me that if we’re going to send people away from their families to do extremely dangerous things on our behalf, they may have to live by an alternate set of values than my own to get through it. You can sell forceful projection of American military force through action movies, or fiscal responsibility through family comedies. There are a lot of options for pairing ideas with genres, and a lot of people you can hire to make dialogue sing rather than thud. You don’t have to make a movie bad to make it authentically conservative.