You guys, I’m pretty sure we don’t need John McClane to beat the Russians because we already won the goddamn Cold War:

I get the nostalgia factor on this. But I’m increasingly exhausted by the fact that our inability to get over the idea of Russia as the Evil Empire and our rush to obtain Chinese and Middle Eastern co-production means that our action movies are totally stagnant and unable to think creatively about current geopolitical tensions, and as a result, to come up with new formulas for our movie conflicts. There are times it feels like that old chestnut James Bond is the only franchise that’s been able to think about non-state actors with any amount of creativity, whether in Tomorrow Never Dies or Casino Royale. Even the X-Men stuck with discrimination metaphors rather than bring in the geopolitics of Genosha or Wakanda via Storm. I love Saint Basil’s Cathedral. But I sort of wish that one of these days the movies would decide to leave it exploded for a while and move on to some other landscapes, and some other fears.

By Arturo Garcia

In the wake of the big, clumsy Avengers/X-Men crossover AvsX, which concluded on Oct. 3, Marvel Comics is selling the reintroduction of a version of the original X-Men as a bold move. And the company’s sort of righ–for all the wrong reasons. Because what Marvel’s saying is, a franchise built and marketed as a grand metaphor about race is going to center around white people. “Re(e)volution”? More like Re(e)tread.

As part of the upcoming “Marvel NOW!” marketing line, the cynically-titled All New X-Men will allegedly feature the team’s original five members–the young Scott Summers (Cyclops), Jean Grey, Warren Worthington (Angel,) Hank McCoy (Beast) and Bobby Drake (Iceman)–landing in the present-day Marvel Universe. (I say allegedly because, this being comics, you have to account for the chance they’re actually from Another Dimension, An Alternate Timeline, Skrulls in Disguise, a veiled insult to cosplayers, what have you.) The move is especially disappointing coming from the new series’ writer, Brian Michael Bendis, who has shown the ability–and more importantly, the clout–to elevate characters of color in other parts of the Marvel Universe.

It was Bendis who took Luke Cage from a blaxploitation throwback to a featured player in the pre-movie Avengers franchise, and Bendis deserves credit for not only crafting a heroic death for the Ultimate (alternate) universe’s Spider-Man, but introducing a Black Latino, Miles Morales, as his successor and using the Spider-Men mini-series to solidify his role. So it’s disheartening to read him gushing to Newsarama about some mythical consensus of X-Men fans: “That’s the thing X-Men fans always say they want,” he said. “You go anywhere—’Bring back Jean Grey!’ But they don’t want a reincarnated Jean Grey, and they don’t want a dug-up Jean Grey. They want Jean.”

I’m not sure who Bendis is talking to, but I’m willing to bet there’s also a sizable contingent of fans who’d like to see Storm–a former leader of the team and a former Queen of Wakanda–have a more prominent role than being chained up on the cover of Wolverine’s latest series. Or who would prefer younger characters like X-23 and The Runaways (this group, not that group) to be involved in something other than a Battle Royale homage. It doesn’t say much for Marvel’s confidence in its product or the customers it chooses to listen to see that it would rather dote on characters from 1963 than renew development of more recent properties — nearly 30 years’ worth, as Matt Price pointed out at Nerdage. Price’s post highlights years of opportunity the company has let go by the wayside: all of those teams, introduced as the Next Generation of the Mutant fight for equality, have been stuck in comics Neverland; they’re the Lost Boys and Girls of the Marvel Universe until, well, probably forever, if series like All New are going to be taking priority.

Or maybe it’s just time for Marvel to give up the ghost; while series like Uncanny X-Force and the issues of Uncanny X-Men that preceded AvX were solid when showing us professional superheroes, the fact is that the company has squandered many story possibilities the Mutants-As-Minority analogy has offered, even before the epic racefail that was X-Men: First Class. I talked about that creative stagnation at Racialicious last year, nothing that “We never met, say, a relatively-super-fast courier in the New York depicted in ‘Amazing Spider-Man.’ Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson never hired a legal assistant with an extra-eidetic memory in ‘Daredevil’” Mutants have been part of Marvel’s world, but never really in it, unless they were either engaging in terrorism against “normal” humans, or part of anti-terrorism factions.”

We’re talking about a company, after all, where an executive feels it’s okay to publicly state that a team of black Avengers would be “contrived.” Why expect it to show enough awareness to introduce a political successor to Charles Xavier? Instead, we get characters from the Mad Men era. The idea has a little bit of charm–Jean as Joan? Scott as Don? Bobby as Pete? Comedy alert!–and will probably goose sales for the immediate future. But it would be easier for Marvel to make their “events,” and their overall line, mean something if it invested more in characters who were most relevant after the Civil Rights struggle it claims to be trying to evoke.

Arturo R. García is the Managing Editor at Racialicious and an Editor at The Raw Story

I know. There aren’t a lot of competitors for the mantle. But I’ve been catching up on SyFy’s Alphas, a show about people with remarkable abilities, the people who want to exploit them, and those in their number who want to declare independence from humanity, and I’m increasingly impressed by its political savvy. While at first blush, Alphas might seem like a rip-off of X-Men, it’s turning into a deeply thoughtful meditation on extremism, equality, and the profound difficulty of achieving political consensus.

Many science fiction or fantasy franchises have a range of villains who stand in for a series of big ideas, like Magneto’s representation of mutant superiority in the X-Men, or the Lizard’s advocacy of evolution beyond humanity in Spider-Man. Alphas has one big question—how people with abilities can live in a world where they are a minority—and a lot of people who believe they have the correct answer to it.

Dr. Rosen believes that integration, including channeling his charges’ abilities in service of law enforcement and helping them manage the manifestation of their abilities so they don’t do damage or make other people uncomfortable, is the best way to go. Red Flag, the terrorist organization the advocates for Alpha dominance, isn’t a monolithic organization. The first member of it we meet, Anna, an autistic woman with the ability to translate languages and invent them, believes that Red Flag is necessary as a way to force a truce with normal humanity. If humans had their way, she believes, they’d prevent people like her from being born, both because they’d see her autism as a defect, and because they find her gifts threatening. Later, Brent Spiner played Dr. Kern, an Alpha who went a step further, sowing active DNA in prenatal vitamins in the hope his experiments on non-consenting women would result in the birth of more of the people he sees as a miraculous improvement on humanity’s base state. And lately, the show’s been spending time with Stanton Parish, an apparently unkillable Alpha who’s murdered more moderate members of Red Flag.

It’s a fascinating approach, turning a villain-of-the-week formula into a more deeply nuanced exploration of a question that deserves that kind of sustained interrogation. Gary, an autistic member of the core team, complained in an episode in the first season “Why do we always have to fight people with abilities? It’s annoying.” It’s a question that almost anyone who cares about politics has asked themselves at some point, wishing it was easier to get it together to win an election or a legislative vote. But the answer is that the big questions aren’t resolvable quickly or easily. It takes time to reach a consensus, and even then, there will likely remain people outside of it. Alphas is the rare science fiction program smart enough to understand that, and it’s making for fascinating television.

The bridge is yours.

-I hope Elton John is okay.

-Here are all of your summer TV premieres.

-Someone’s going to try to turn Shadow of the Colossus into a movie.

-Hipster X-Men.

-I am so excited to hear about this Christopher Guest series even if I’m not sure it’ll actually happen.

One of the best things about writing about multiple media is that you’re not subject to the tyranny of Best Of lists. I could no more decide between Shame and Hugo for a numbered slot than I could pick between Revenge and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (though can we please get Kanye writing rhymes for and about Emily Thorne? I need an update on Snoop Dogg and his Sookie Stackhouse obsession). However, there were a lot of things that made me happy this year, and because Oprah’s not rockin’ it anymore, here is a semi-chronological-but-unranked list of my 26-odd favorite things to consume or discuss in 2011. A similar list of my least favorite things will follow tomorrow.

1. Frank Ocean makes us all hurt so good: I’m more irritated than anything else by the antics of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. But it’s worth it for Frank Ocean, who rocks specific melancholia like nobody’s business. “Novacane” was one of my favorite songs of 2011.

2. Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch: Before y’all accuse me of getting all Armond White up in the business, let me be clear. I don’t think Sucker Punch is an affirmatively good movie or that Snyder is a visionary director (though I appreciate that he actually has a distinctive visual style). But as aestheticized meditation on the horrors of lobotomy, a frightening and overlooked part of American mental health history, I found it unexpectedly moving. Plus, Snyder circumvented a ban on female leads with the movie.

3. Cedar Rapids sets Ed Helms loose: Up In the Air, but for people who actually live in flyover country, and Parks and Recreation with a deeper undercurrent of bitter darkness and isolation. There should be more popular culture about the struggle to be fundamentally decent.

4. War photographers movie The Bang-Bang Club and HBO’s biopic of the Louds, Cinema Verite: After the death of Tim Heatherington and as Joao Silva recovered from his injuries, The Bang-Bang Club offered a look at what it takes not just to put yourself in danger as a war photographer, but at what it means to be an observer rather than someone who intervenes. Conversely, Cinema Verite went back to the invention of reality television to explore what it means to be watched — and dissected — by a mass audience.

5. Game of Thrones is brilliant, and even the frustrating A Dance With Dragons is grist for the mill: I worry that George R.R. Martin’s universe is spiraling completely out of control, too big for any series to contain. But the first season of the HBO adaptation featured great performances, particularly by a host of very young actors and a smart sense for cuts and world-building. I don’t know if we’ll reach the end of this fascinating, maddening saga any time soon. But the ride looks like it’s going to be delightful.
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The bridge is yours.

-I’m not a huge short story person, but the new Don DeLillo sounds fantastic.

-Michael Fassbender has ideas for a new X-Men movie, but I just want to see Wolverine fight the Spanish Civil War.

-I wonder what it would mean for TV storytelling if the Supreme Court dramatically limited indecency regulation.

-The IMDb age discrimination suit heats up.

-I can retire now. I have everything I’ve ever wanted:

The bridge is yours.

-Jennifer Lopez. Live-action Carmen Sandiego movie. It’s a thing.

-Head of major studio admits something everyone knows.

-Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren are shopping a reality show.

-We’re getting an X-Men: First Class sequel.

-William Gibson on the co-option of cyberpunk.

The bridge is yours.

-Occupying Sunnydale would probably be pretty challenging, particularly in terms of getting folks through the night.

-Someone just give Spencer Ackerman a side hustle writing for X-Men already.

-Have Axe’s advertising campaigns worked too well?

-If you don’t want to read long fantasy books in long series, you probably shouldn’t read long fantasy books in long fantasy series.

-Seriously. Not good:

The bridge is yours.

-Justin Townes Earle is, in fact, really awesome.

-The best TV children right now.

-Exactly what the women of America need: yet another television show about why we’re not married yet.

-Ideas for an X-Men: First Class sequel.

-Chloe Moretz and an adorable robot? I’m in:

I like Charlie Jane’s post at io9 on how to avoid the too-many-supervillains problem, but I want to offer a slight variation on two of her proposals for how to solve it. She suggests:

It’s not the number of villains, it’s the number of stories. There’s a limit to how many subplots your average movie can contain, especially subplots which are about the villains of the movie. In the end, the antagonists of the movie have to tie into the main storyline, and there has to be one of those. So if there’s more than one villain, the villains still have to work together as part of the central story, thematically and from a plot standpoint. The Dark Knight does this brilliantly, by making the Joker’s effect on Harvey Dent a central part of the film’s arc…

Each villain is a different lesson. This is another way to go — it’s a bit of a cliche to say your enemies are your best teachers, but it’s still definitely true. And if you’re going to go having more than one villain in a film, then each villain ought to be teaching a different lesson — or at least, a different version of the main lesson. Maybe there are different weaknesses that each villain plays on — or different wrong-headed ideas on the hero’s part that each villain represents.

I’d suggest more specifically that it’s a matter of figuring out what the core issue in a movie is. Spider-Man 3 is exploring two totally divergent issues: the question of whether power’s made Peter Parker a jerk, and the issue of whether his narrative of his origin story is true. These are both full-sized stories that could interlock, but aren’t made to, and as a result, the movie feels squashed. Thor, by contrast, is a movie about one issue, the responsible use of power, but the multiple obstacles Thor faces are all ways to explore that issue. The Dark Knight is about the failure of institutions and norms, all of which are tested in different ways by the Joker, the police department in Gotham, and ultimately even Batman himself. The X-Men movies, which use huge teams to explore the notion of citizenship, have always understood this incredibly well: every character on both sides represents a facet of that ancient argument between assimilation and separatism. The point being: pick your issue first, and the best villain or villains to explore it second. And as a side note, I’d really like to see some superhero movies from the villain’s perspective.