THROWBACK THURSDAY: My (Continuing) Adventures With Superman

My deep affinity for the character of Superman has a poignant origin story. I had this copy of Amazing Heroes magazine, which takes an in-depth look at John Byrne's impending (at the time) relaunch of Superman for DC Comics (post Crisis on Infinite Earths) when I travelled up to Stoke-on-Trent in 1986.

I was visiting my dear friend Matt, who was studying at university there, and I have a vivid memory of sitting on a small hillock in some parkland, waiting for him to turn up.

As I sat there I was reading Amazing Heroes and becoming increasingly convinced that I was going to really enjoy this era of Superman's comic book adventures.

Now, of course, this is also another strong memory I have associated with my gone-too-soon old pal.

I was already a massive fan of John Byrne's work from his stint on Fantastic Four (still a benchmark by which I judge most other superhero books) but I'd only really dabbled in Superman titles up until that point.

I had a few random Bronze Age issues, including both parts of Alan Moore's classic Whatever Happened to The Man of Tomorrow? story (I was a big Alan Moore fan, as most people were at the time, religiously reading Watchmen and Swamp Thing) and this particularly memorable issue of Action featuring Captain Strong (most definitely not a Popeye knockoff):

As Byrne's The Man of Steel (the six-issue miniseries introducing us to all the key players in the key Superman mythos) was published, I knew I had found "my" Superman.

I treasure my original collection of The Man of Steel, for the artwork, stories and memories

As I wrote on Facebook the other day:

"Although I'm a fan of all eras of Superman (with a particular penchant for the wackiness of the Silver Age these days), it was John Byrne's 1986, post-Crisis, relaunch, with The Man of Steel miniseries, that truly sold me on the character. For me, this remains the definitive take on Superman and his supporting cast."

Luthor was no longer a 'mad scientist' but a corrupt businessman

But, of course, me being me it's not just Superman comics I collect (... and films... and T-shirts), it's also the occasional action figure, miniature, and Funko Pop.

For the longest time, it wasn't even a conscious effort to accumulate these artifacts, but as time passed I realised my 'horde' had a definite Superman bias.

I'm not a hardcore hunter of such Superman memorabilia, but if I see something that catches my eye (and I can afford it at the time) I always like to add it to the shelves of my gamesroom:

Alongside Beppo The Super-Monkey, Bizzaro and Doomsday, one of these Supermen
is actually a "Superman Robot" - can you pick him out?

A selection of Supergirls (from TV and comics),
with Krypto and Streaky The Supercat and Wonder Woman

A comic-accurate Kelex, soon believed to be appearing in the new Superman film

Funko Pops of Superman and Lois from the original Christopher Reeve movie

I love my collection of miniature Smallville residents from the Silver Age comics

My shelf of Superman graphic novels and omnibuses - along with a Daily Planet pen holder.

Malignant (2021)

Retro movie poster by Laz Marquez

After her abusive husband is killed and she miscarries her latest pregnancy as the result of a brutal home invasion, Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis) begins to have horrific visions of subsequent murders committed by the intruder.

Once the police are convinced there is some connection between Madison and the attacker, an investigation begins that starts to unravel the troubled woman's concept of reality.

Following his mega-success with Aquaman, horrormeister James Wan returned to the genre he is most closely associated with, bringing a touch of superpowered magic to Malignant that elevates this bonkers flick above the norm. 

Most definitely a film best appreciated with as little foreknowledge as possible, writer-director Wan mixes the police procedural elements from Saw with an '80s grungy monster movie vibe (one particular franchise comes to mind, but I won't say any more).

The resulting violent, action-packed, ride wouldn't feel that out of place as a villainous origin story in a Venom comic book or film.

While Annabelle Wallis (Grace Shelby from Peaky Blinders) is the heart of this movie, major kudos to the well-written coterie of supporting characters, particularly Madison's sister Sydney (Maddie Hasson), and the main police detectives, Kekoa Shaw (George Young) and Regina Moss (Michole Briana White).

I tend to find that when it comes horror films, the less I write about them in a review the more I've enjoyed them because there's less to take the piss out of and I'm keen not to spoil any genuine surprises for the reader. 

All I'll say is: Malignant is gloriously over-the-top and bonkers, gruesome, insane, and yet truly inspired and rather clever.

I really appreciated the fact that the script was full of crafty, well-earned, misdirects and red herrings, sending the plot in directions I certainly didn't expect (because I'd managed to avoid all spoilers from its cinematic release in 2021).

Malignant is a must-see for fans of the more pulpy end of the well-made horror movie spectrum.

Hellboy - The Crooked Man (2024)

It's the late 1950s and, following a train accident, Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and rookie Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense researcher Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph aka Agatha from The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) find themselves stranded in the Appalachian Mountains.

They soon become entangled in the life of Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White), an ex-soldier and former resident of the area who has returned to try and undo a pact he made with a demon when he was a child.

Initially, they accompany Tom to visit his former childhood sweetheart, Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), who has since become a witch.

Tom explains to the BRPD agents that he had been seduced by a witch called Effie Colb (Leah McNamara) who had taight how to create a lucky totem and urged him to summon a local demonic ghost-entity called The Crooked Man (Martin Bassindale).

Cora returns to her home, telling Tom and the agents that she is being persued by other witches... and it tunrs out that they are being led by Effie, who looks exactly as she did when Tom met her all those years earlier.

She is riding a white horse that turns out to be Tom's transformed father (Anton Trendafilov), who promptly dies when Effie is scared away by Hellboy.

Tom wants to take his father to the nearby church, to be buried in consecreated ground.

However, on the way they are attacked by a demonic snake that kills Cora and injects Hellboy with its toxin, causing him to have hallucinatory visions of his mother, Sara (Carola Colombo), herself a witch.

At the church, the group - meeting the blind Reverend Watts (Joseph Marcell aka the legendary Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) are besieged by The Crooked Man and his coterie of witches.

Through some clever magic, our heroes manage to repel the supernatural attackers.

Hellboy and Tom then chase after The Crooked Man to the abandoned mansion that was once his home, while Jo and The Reverend head into the old mines that crisscross the mountain, believing that that is the source of The Crooked Man's power.

Working from a screenplay co-written by Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy) and Christopher Golden, his frequent collaborator, director and co-writer Brian Taylor serves up a Hellboy movie unlike any that have come before.

I have to confess that, for all my decades as a comic book reader, I might have only read a handful of single Hellboy issues and they've never really hooked me as Guillermo del Toro's early 2000's pulpy Hellboy duology did.

But, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, an adaptation of a 2008 Hellboy mini-series of the same name by Mike Mignola, steps away from the superheroic blockbuster nature of the del Toro era and leans, instead, heavily into Hellboy's horror roots. 

It's of a smaller scale, and more focused on its single driving narrative, than we might be used to - cinematically-speaking - from movies involving Hellboy and his compadres in the BPRD.

But have no doubt, Hellboy: The Crooked Man is a phenomenal down-and-dirty work of  mesmerising, disorientating weird Appalachian folk magic that has more in common with the works of HP Lovecraft (who gets namechecked) and atmospheric films like The Blair Witch Project, Night of The Demon, The VVitch, and Evil Dead.

If you know my taste in horror then you can see why I loved The Crooked Man.

The verisimilitude of the world created is second to none, relying mainly on practical effects, and proving you don't need a honking big Hollywood budget to produce memorable horror movies.

While this is very much its own thing - officially unconnected to del Toro's wonderful flicks and whatever the dickens that 2019 mess was - I could see an argument for Jack Kesy's charismatic Hellboy being a younger version of Ron Perlman's take on the character.

I can also see why The Crooked Man might not be for everyone, but given that this was co-written by the character's creator, I have to believe that this is the closest iteration of Hellboy to the source material.

Introducing PROJECT 60

In the middle of 2024, I announced on Facebook - as much for myself as anyone else - that I was launching PROJECT 60.

The primary aim of this overarching idea was that by the time I hit 60 (in a few years' time) I will have assembled and researched an actual historical skirmish wargame... set in the age of the Border Reivers.

Superficially it's a Medieval (Tudor) "Wild West" on the border of Scotland & England (The Debatable Lands), with swords, horses, black powder weapons, lawlessness, family loyalty etc

Bizarrely, it was a random mention of this time on an episode of Antiques Roadshow that first piqued my interest.

I've since been circling this idea - as either a wargame or RPG setting - for several years now, but finally decided 2024 was the time to get stuck in.

For figures and rules I shall be concentrating on those produced by Flags of War, as those were the first I discovered for this little-known period.

While I have yet to fully grok the rules system (at first glance there's an air of Savage Worlds about it that I rather like), one of the joyous things about this game and its setting is that it's very much a skirmish game, for a handful of figures on each side.

So there's no need to invest in hundreds of minis, that would then bust the bank if I wanted them painted up nicely.

It actually turns out that several other manufacturers produce miniatures - and terrain - suitable for this period, but the Flags of War ones are my favourites by far, and so will be my primary focus.

My first batch of miniatures are currently with my figure painter, and I'll let you all know once they are done. 

I've organised the games room a bit, so the table is ready for the miniatures. At some point, I must try to drybrush the model church and graveyard, add some flocking and so on to make it look less plastic.

What's really surprised me, as I accumulated my library of historical tomes about the Border Reivers, is that while there are a handful of factual documentaries about them as far as I can tell there has never been a motion picture made about these characters.

I'm gobsmacked by this missed opportunity, as their stories are full of action and larger-than-life antiheroes, very much akin to the Western cinema that was the backbone of Hollywood in the "golden age" and still produces epic classics to this very day. 

Part of my research has also involved reading the late Robert Low's superlative trilogy of Border Reivers novels, which my old university chum, JJ, sent me when he heard I'd taken a fancy to this period of history.

On the roleplaying front, it has finally struck me (in the last couple of days actually) that the games I fiddle about about with, house rule, and generally rewrite aren't actually being designed for me to run!

What I'm actually doing (subconsciously until now) is creating rules systems and worlds (such as my defunct superhero setting Knight City) that I want to play in, that I want to create a player-character for and have the kind of adventures I've always fantasised as the ultimate manifestation of this marvellous hobby.

This is why I would often get frustrated when I ran a campaign (usually an aborted superhero one) because it wouldn't turn out how I imagined it should. It wasn't that I was railroading the Tuesday Knights towards specific outcomes or trying to dictate the emerging story, but that it wasn't emulating the genre as I perceived it.

Most recent batch of Tekralh booklets - a mix of new and updated material

If you know me on Facebook you will have (possibly) seen posts about my recent work on Tekralh (the name I'm sticking with for my Frankengame), as the RPG strand of my  PROJECT 60.

I've broken the mass of my writing down into smaller booklets, which - at a future date - makes them more cost-effective to edit and reprint.

The building blocks of my Tekralh house rules

And what got me excited about all this again?

Back in March, I ran a single session of Shadowdark for The Tuesday Knights. Everybody said they loved it, but there was something that didn't click for me.

It took me a moment to twig: it was a very good system... but it wasn't MY system. I'm certainly not knocking the multi-award-winning Shadowdark, but several of the things I liked about it were also things I liked about my own Frankengame.

Yes, my house rules are a lot crunchier than Shadowdark and maybe not as easy for people to instantly grok, but I kept coming back to the point that my Frankengame was my game... and, ultimately, if I only get one final shot at running an open-ended, mega-campaign, I'd really like it to be my own baby.

The original Arduin Trilogy - the biggest influence on my DIY RPG ideas

To try and explain what I'm going for with my bundle of house rules (that build off of Newt Newport's Crypts & Things and Matt Finch's Swords & Wizardry), I want to point you towards the main influences and inspirations for Tekralh:

• Dave Hargrave's Arduin - my very first 'postal purchase', from a small advert in the back of White Dwarf, paid for with postal orders (!!!). I have no recollection what drove me to buy this (had I already read the introductory article by Dave in Different Worlds magazine?). But I've never looked back since those original three little booklets arrived at my parents' house. Over the years I went on to buy all the original booklets... and quite a lot of the later material (there's even a new edition on the horizon), but it's the original trilogy I keep returning to for ideas.
• Dave Arneson's Blackmoor - another first for me. After I'd purchased my Holmes' Basic Dungeons & Dragons booklet, the first actual gaming supplement I remember picking up from the Dark Tower in Tunbridge Wells was, appropriately, Judges Guild's The First Fantasy Campaign, a delightfully rough and ready collection of notes from Arneson's ur-campaign, the foundation upon which ALL campaigns that followed were built.
• Gary Gygax's Greyhawk - I've always had an interest in this campaign, for similar reasons to my love of Blackmoor: it was a campaign formulated before the rest of the gaming world knew what "fantasy roleplaying campaigns" were. Sadly, while there are early editions of the rules books that grew out of this available, there isn't the random notes and unfiltered enthusiasm of my first two choices. And, the deepest sorrow is the lack of a true rendition of the legendary Castle Greyhawk. I've seen - and own replicas - of some material, largely courtesy of Gary's co-DM Robert Kuntz. 
• Robert A. Wardhaugh's The Game 

I'm not looking for replicate these games and settings, but I definitely aspire to emulate them... because I want to play in a version of them.

It explains why I've always found myself at a loss when it comes to dreaming up scenarios. I can picture odd set-pieces (which are MOMENTS I'd love to be a part of in a never-ending old school campaign), but creating an actual scenario whole cloth always leaves me at a loss.

And this is why: I can see how a story could start, but I want to be part of the group that discovers how events unfold from there. I ant to be an integral part of the developing story rather than the gamesmaster setting out all the pieces on the board for us to play with.

If you've made it this far you're probably wondering what this all means?

Honestly, I don't know. Even after a year away from blogging I'm still no closer to reaching any definitive conclusions on the gaming front.

I want to play in a game like the ones that have inspired me, like the one I've tried to create, but nothing on the Tuesday Knights docket comes to close to this "aspirational holy grail".

3.10 To Yuma (2007)

Yee-haw, I sure loves me some Western action!

It was the Deadlands roleplaying game (the original, pre-Savage Worlds, pre-d20 detour, version) that rekindled my childhood passion for the Wild West.

However, it really blew up when I was at university and researching my major, final third year project - a film script based on the life of Elfego Baca, the wannabe lawman who held off a veritable army of riled cowboys from within an adobe hut. The hut (a jacal) took about 4,000 bullets during the 36-hour gun battle but Baca was unharmed!

During that time at university, I watched wall-to-wall Westerns, from the true classics (such as Shane and Hombre) to the cult favourites (like Django and The Magnificent Seven), and read whatever text books I could lay my hands on, to immerse myself in the culture and language of those wild, frontier times.

Sadly, after University, my love of the genre kinda cooled. I'd probably rather overdosed and none of my old gaming buddies shared my interest in the genre (we are British, after all, so I guess it's not even our history!) so except for a few shoot-outs with a homebrew miniatures system I knocked up and the odd DVD purchase, the West rode out of my life and into the sunset.

However, as the 2000s dragged on, I noticed it sneaking back in on the coat tails of my 'discovery' of the whole 'pulp' thing (that is, putting a name and classification for a style of entertainment I already enjoyed), helped by Deadwood and several mainstream cinematic releases, such as Seraphim Falls and this one.

Turns out that as a cinema genre, Westerns weren't dead - they'd just raised their standards.

In 3.10 To Yuma, Christian Bale is crippled, ex-Union sharpshooter-turned-struggling-farmer Dan Evans, who volunteers to escort charming, stone cold killer and outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) to the train station to catch the 3.10 to Yuma prison.

Evans' 14-year-old son, William (Logan Lerman), who sees his father as a coward and rather idolises Wade, tags along in the small posse - which includes a grizzled bounty hunter (Peter Fonda) and the town's doctor (Alan 'Firefly' Tudyk).

The film starts in Unforgiven territory, but becomes increasingly Young Guns as the escort party's troubles escalate and numbers are whittled down by Wade's pursuing gang, renegade Apaches, troublesome railworkers and in-fighting.

It all builds to a dynamic, heroic and rather far-fetched climax as - having turned into a reluctant buddy flick - Evans and Wade make a final dash for the train, facing up to Wade's merciless gang and vigilante townsfolk.

The ultimate conclusion is suitably powerful and emotional, undermined only by a rather silly final scene.

Crowe is perfect as the supremely confident and calm killer, while Bale is, simply, superb as always; both of these actors are at the top of their game and guarantee a solid performance with every role they take.

Snakes Alive! Solomon Kane Gets His Own Comic and Conan Crushes FCBD Again!

In case you missed it: following the incredible success of its Conan The Barbarian comics, Titan is broadening its offerings from the worlds of pulp scribe extraordinaire Robert E Howard with the launch of a new Solomon Kane miniseries in March.

Although little is known at present, Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring will be written - and illustrated - by Pat Zircher (who has delivered the mighty fine Solomon Kane strip in the Savage Sword of Conan magazine this year).

Legendary artist Mike Mignola (of Hellboy fame) will be providing variant cover art for, at least, the first issue.

The hardnosed, 16th Century Puritan monster-slayer Kane, of course, co-starred in Titan's recent Howardverse crossover comic event, Battle of The Black Stone, alongside Conan and a host of other Robert E Howard creations.

Keeping with the serpent theme (a common motif in Howard's work), Titan is also announcing its next "event" storyline, Scourge of The Serpent, with its 2025 Free Comic Book Day offering.

The serpent god's influence tightens its coils around the Hyborian Age and every other age linked to it... Three stunning supernatural stories will spiral together to answer a chilling question framed in past and present. What is Set’s grand plan for humanity and, now that it has begun, can it be stopped? The newest epic Conan event, begins here!

Conan: Scourge of The Serpent will be available, for free, from your friendly, local comic book shop on Saturday, May 3, along with a host of other 'taster' titles.

Gwenevere (2023)

Poster by Sarah McIntyre

Banished from Camelot, Queen Gwenevere (Laura Frances Martin) must travel across wild country to the abbey where she is to live out her remaining years. She is accompanied by her loyal lady-in-waiting, Laudine (Joanna Neary) and young knight Sir Ruan (Jonny Hibbs). But their journey is interrupted by the menacing Knight of the Wild Woods...

Gwenevere: a film by Philip Reeve & Sarah Reeve, starring Laura Frances Martin, Joanna Neary, Jonny Hibbs, Tessa Arrowsmith-Brown, Sasha Innes and Roseanna Lambert. Guest appearance by Alan Lee. Shields designed by Sarah McIntyre. Music by Brian Mitchell. Filmed on Dartmoor.

As a long-time fan of the work of author Philip Reeve, I was delighted to learn that he was planning to bring his passion for Arthurian legends to life in a low-budget, short movie to be shot on Dartmoor, where he lives.

The resulting film, Gwenevere, was officially released on YouTube at the end of 2023.

It is a half-hour film following the titular queen (Laura Frances Martin) after she has been exiled from Camelot for her dalliance with Lancelot (Arran Hawkins).

She has been commanded to walk across country to the abbey where she will see out her days in quiet contemplation, accompanied only by her faithful handmaid, Laudine (an outstanding performance from Joanna Neary) and reluctant young knight Sir Ruan (Jonny Hibbs).

However, passing through some woodland their way is blocked by the mythical Knight of the Wild Woods (Niall Parker).

In the ensuing melee, Sir Ruan is rendered unconscious and the ladies bear him away to a nearby village, where they learn the story of the Knight of The Wild Woods.

Gwenevere then takes it upon herself to bring an end to the monstrous knight's reign of terror.

The beautiful short film is full of ethereal visuals and lyrical, evocative dialogue - as readers of Reeve's books have come to expect - strengthening the mythological bedrock upon which Gwenevere is built.

Dream logic and otherworldly rules lay at the heart of the story, while the smoke-filled forest is a visual tie to another classic of British fantasy film, my old favourite Hawk The Slayer.

The Wind (2019)

Following such delights as Curse of The Demon Mountain and Bone Tomahawk, 2019's The Wind combines two of my favourite genres - horror and Western - to create a compelling, character-driven, psychological drama.

In the late 19th Century, Lizzy Macklin (Caitlin Gerard) and her husband Isaac (Ashley Zukerman) have carved themselves out a homestead on the desolate American frontier.

When a new couple of settlers - Emma (Julia Goldani Telles) and Gideon Harper (Dylan McTee) - set up home about a mile away, the Macklins are initially delighted to have company, but become increasingly concerned that the new arrivals aren't cut out for the hardships required for living off the land.

The film, written by Teresa Sutherland (one of the staff writer's on Netflix's new Midnight Mass) and directed by Emma Tammi, opens with the aftermath of pregnant Emma's suicide. 

Gideon and Isaac then ride off to the nearest settlement to make arrangements for the Harper's property to be shipped back East, leaving Lizzy to clean up and attend to the Macklin's smallholding.

The narrative then unfolds in a series of flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, intercut with Lizzy trying to cope on her own.

As well as learning that Lizzy and Isaac's son, Samuel, was still born, we also see that Emma was instantly attracted to the more "manly" Isaac, with the suggestion that the attraction may have been mutual.

However, when she falls pregnant, Emma - possibly influenced by a pamphlet on Demons of The Plains - rapidly descends into madness, making wild assertions about "something" being after her child.

She tells Lizzy that Gideon refused to believe her, dismissing her claims of hearing strange voices as simply "the wind".

In due course, though, we discover that when she was pregnant with Samuel, Lizzy also became convinced that there was some demonic force living in the area as well.

Are the women really being hunted by a "demon of the plains" or is it all in their imagination?

It's nearly impossible for most of us to comprehend the sense of terrifying, utter isolation and loneliness a person would feel in this situation, trying to carve out a living under such unforgiving conditions, without any semblance of modern communication nor any other living soul within miles. 

Beautifully shot in New Mexico, The Wind does a magnificent job of charting the mental toll of this lifestyle, particularly as exemplified by the barnstorming central performance of Caitlin Gerard, who you might recognise from Insidious: The Last Key, American Crime, or The Last Ship.

With its emphasis on the atmospheric Western setting, there is an ambiguous, folkloric rural horror aspect to The Wind, which has led people to compare it to The Witch and - with its strong female cast - The Babadook.

The film has a Gothic quality to its narrative, heightened by Emma's own passion for Gothic literature, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I would also add there's an element of John Carpenter's The Thing here as well, given how central feelings of isolation and paranoia are in Lizzy's story.

While the bulk of the horror is psychological, there's a single jump scare that works surprisingly effectively because this doesn't feel like a film where such a gimmick would be appropriate. 

Initially a slow burn, The Wind gradually develops its creepy and unsettling tone as the layers of the onion skin are peeled back and we finally get a picture of what's truly happening.

Jonah Hex (2010)

To be fair the much maligned Jonah Hex doesn't start off too badly, but this sense of bon hommie fails to last through the opening animated credits when it becomes obvious that some idiot (almost certainly in a suit) decided that because Hex is a comic book character he must have a superpower!

Clearly no-one of any import in this production has actually read a Jonah Hex story or else they wouldn't have given him the mystical power to "bring the dead back to life" or screwed-up the movie's first, proper, Western gunfight with horse-mounted Gatling guns.

The handiwork of the daft suit(s) shows itself again when, clearly loving the 'hugely successful' Van Helsing, they felt it necessary to equip Hex with a range of bizarre, steampunky weaponry (because it also worked so well in Will Smith's Wild Wild West). 

The mystical element of the film is totally misguided, adding absolutely nothing more than further Sturm und Drang to obfuscate the fact that the film has little, or no, story - several flashback scenes are repeated to pad the film out and it still only runs to 78 minutes.

Like some mind-numbing Italian horror, much of Jonah Hex comes across as a series of random scenes thrown together at high speed, where the titular character (Josh Brolin) is moving from one place to another, with little explanation as to how this advances the main plot... until Hex finally confronts his arch-nemesis, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich).

Megan Fox is in there as well, but her character - Lilah the soiled dove, supposed a love interest for Hex - is about as redundant as the lead character's newly acquired paranormal abilities.

Lilah's main purpose is to serve as a hostage and could easily have just been a stranger Turnbull had plucked from the street.

And there's some poppycock about Turnbull building a nonsensical superweapon, but, like pretty much everything here, it amounts to very little in the greater scheme of things.

Even taking the comic book source material out of the equation, Jonah Hex fails to engage as a fantastical western - The Adventures Of Brisco County Jnr, with Bruce Campbell, did it first, and way better, and on a TV budget.

Everyone associated with this mess of a film should be thoroughly ashamed of what they have produced, especially given what a classy, solid Western comic Jonah Hex was at this time.

It wouldn't have taken much brainpower to have just translated one of those storylines to the big screen.

But the "Hollywood suits" always think they know better!