Here’s an unpopular opinion for ya: I liked Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Peter Parker.
No, I’m not kidding. I know a lot of Spider fans were crying blasphemy over The Amazing Spider-Man‘s Peter Parker being re-imagined as a wise-cracking Sk8ter Boy, but I actually didn’t mind this take on the character. Whether Garfield’s characterization was a good fit for Peter Parker/Spider-Man is debatable, but I did like how for once the science-loving whiz kid character wasn’t portrayed as a stereotypical dweeby loser. I found it a refreshing change of pace to see a smart kid who didn’t have a bowl-shaped haircut, thick glasses, a collared shirt buttoned all the way to the top, a pocket protector and high-water pants.
“Easy as Pi! EHHH-huh-huh-huh!”
I plan to one day make a show featuring a super-smart genius kid who isn’t a stereotyped nerd or bookworm. I personally think we need to see more ‘cool’ smart kids. Just because someone’s prolific in math and science doesn’t automatically make that person physically awkward and socially retarded. Mathletes and Science Geeks can be outgoing, savvy and attractive too. To quote ESPN’s Bomani Jones: “Just because your kids are into science doesn’t mean you have to dress them like dorks. Smart kids like cool sneakers too!”
No, this isn’t a raucous slob comedy movie about anthropomorphic letters living in a rowdy frat house chugging beer kegs and throwing toga parties. It’s a famous animated sequence from the early years of Sesame Street, involving an elaborate Rube Goldberg device in a ca-razy house. Enjoy.
Welcome to a new segment on Twinsanity called Unpopular Opinions, where we mention an opinion of ours about cartoons and pop culture that goes against the grain and post our rambling thoughts about them. One shouldn’t be shocked if the things we state here are not commonly thought of beliefs, because we’ve stated their unpopularity at the top of the page!
I’ll get the ball rolling, as it were, by stating an unpopular opinion of mine:
I don’t hate the Smurflings.
It’s shocking, but true. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not in love with them either, as I’ve never been a Smurfs groupie to begin with, but I don’t hate these characters the way that many fans of the TV show do. The reason why could be because I stopped watching the Hanna Barbera Saturday morning cartoon regularly shortly before the Smurflings’ arrival, and so I’ve only caught a handful of episodes that the Smurflings appeared in. Heck, I didn’t even know what the characters’ back story was or even realize that these characters had a backstory until reading about on Wikipedia.
Some fans will cite the introduction of The Smurflings as being the precise moment when The Smurfs jumped the shark, despite the fact that Baby Smurf (a much more useless character, in my opinion) made his debut an entire year before the arrival of the Smurflings. At least the Smurflings could talk, had personalities and could do things. Some fans see them as this shows’ equivalents to Scrappy Doo, but I wouldn’t go that far.
I kind of like Snappy because he reminds of me a bit of Mrs. Fribsy’s son Martin from The Secret of NIHM (who’s one of my favorite fictional boy characters, incidentally). Plus, I like his T-shirt with the storm cloud decal. Sassette seems like a potentially interesting character with some spunk to her that I find appealing (i’m not feeling the whole token girl thing these days, but there we are), and as for Natural (“Nat”) Smurf, I think that getting de-aged was probably the best thing that could have happened to his character. Yeah, he originally loved nature and had a rapport with animals, but he looked like any generic Smurf, and I can’t completely dislike a character who dresses like Huckleberry Finn, bare feet and all. I’m weird like that. Of the four, I’d say that Slouchy is probably the least interesting Smurfling, mainly because he’s the hardest personality to pin down. A lot of the time in the episode that I saw (and there weren’t many of them), he just seemed to be kind of, there. It’s almost as though he was added mainly to fill up the numbers so there’d be 4 Smurflings. Frankly, if the shows’ producers really wanted 4 characters, why not have 2 boys and 2 girls? That would have been more balanced.
Another reason why I don’t hate the Smurflings is because they remind me of an idea that Damon and I have kicked around a few times over the years; the idea of having a juvenile comedy team a la the Marx Brothers or The Banana Splits, so I can’t hate any characters who have given me the incentive to do something creative.
As for the latter additions to The Smurfs, such as Grandpa Smurf, Nanny Smurf, Wild Smurf, Scruple and the like, I have no opinion on them because I haven’t seen any of the episodes where those characters appeared. By that time, I was all Smurfed out and I wasn’t even watching the show sporadically anymore. I think that Lisa Simpson said it best when she said:
“Most TV shows add new characters when they’re running out of ideas.”
There’s far too much animosity in the world today.
After a while, I get tired of seeing pairs of characters constantly hating each others’ guts and always being at each others’ throats. This is why today’s Nerdvana takes the opposite approach and pays tribute to some of my favorite besties in fiction. Today we celebrate…Super Best Friends, some of my favorite fictional best friend duos. As you should know by now, we’re big on duos here at Twinsanity.
BLUE BEETLE II (TED KORD) & BOOSTER GOLD
I know these days lots of peoples’ favorite Blue Beetle is Jaime Reyes because “he was in Young Justice and that was the best DC show eva and I hate Cartoon Network for cancelling it for Teen Titans GO! and blah blah blah blah blah”, but my favorite Blue Beetle is and always has been Ted Kord, the goofy genius with the amazing tech. For a time during his reign, it looked like Ted was being groomed to be the Tony Stark of DC, and I definitely could’ve gotten behind that. Ted wasn’t dark, brooding, perfect or overly serious; he was fun, good natured and self-effacing, something you rarely see in capes nowadays. Another reason I like Ted Kord is because he was bosom chums with another C-list at best superhero, Booster Gold, everyone’s favorite time-traveling glory hound. Together the 2 of them formed the duo of Blue & Gold, getting into wacky shenanigans and even dare I say…
While Booster Gold has made a few TV appearances already, we’ve seen very little of Ted in animation, mainly because by the time of the DCAU and the subsequent superhero media boom, Ted Kord was already deceased in the comics. Darn shame. Maybe after DC reboots and retcons their universe for the umptee-seventh time, they can resurrect Ted, and then maybe we can finally get some Blue and Gold antics on a TV show or DTV movie. Personally I’d totally be up for some “BWAH-HA-HA!” action somewhere. Fun, goofball superhero buddies are sadly rare.
Let’s get ludicrous!
SUPERGIRL & BATGIRL
I’ve already went over this briefly in Carpin’ and Gripin’, but one of the many reasons why Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice left me cold is because I’m personally sick and tired of Supey and Batsy’s nonstop pissing contests that DC and popular media insist on perpetuating post-Dark Knight Returns. This is why I’m glad to see that whenever Superman and Batman’s female counterparts, get together, they actually get along. When Batgirl and Supergirl team up, they don’t start fuedin’ and fussin’ like cats and dogs, they’re fast friends, working together and complimenting one another, Kara’s arsenal of alien powers meshing well with Barbara’s big brain and incredible tech arsenal. (In fact, their friendship calls to mind a show idea I tried developing many years ago called Super Trouble!, about 2 silly young aspiring girl heroes who were always getting into crazee situations, think Broad City meets Freakazoid!.) I still dig Superman and Batman as they’re the parentheses of the superhero world, but I’d really like to see this ongoing chest-pounding contest between them come to an end; they could learn a lesson from their teenage girl offshoots. maybe one day we can get a response movie called Batgirl & Supergirl: Dawn of Besties.
LYRA HEARTSTRINGS & BON BON
No, these 2 aren’t superheroes or even main characters, but our site, our rules. My favorite 2 background ponies, each one belonging to my 2 favorite Pony Tribes (no offense to the Pegasi, but I’ve always liked the unicorns since they can do magic, and the Apple Family, Mr. and Mrs. Cake and Bon Bon made me a fan of the Earth Ponies–I can’t resist the country, candy and desserts); the MLP fan base turned these 2 random characters into a cute and endearing coupl…er, um…DUO. Yeah, duo. When Lyra and Bon Bon finally made their speaking debut as said characters in Friendship Is Magic‘s 100th episode “Slice of Life”, they didn’t disappoint:
OK, 3 things:
Awwww, obviously.
Sitting cross-legged is quite an achievement for a horse, and
I think it’s pretty obvious that DHX is, or is at least teasing hardcore, that these 2 are supposed to be a couple. If there was any doubt before, then we got this:
No, I’m not delusional, I know that’ll NEVER happen in canon, but I wouldn’t be against it; I find Bon Bon (or Sweetie Drops) and Lyra to be profoundly cute together, in any regard, I’m OK with them just being BFFs (Best Fillies Forever).
“I dunno y’all, I’d like to see me some filly on filly action. That’d be groovitatious!”
Guys, I have to say that seeing the “blockbuster” film Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice a couple of weeks ago, as well as the lukewarm reception the aforementioned film has received from both viewers and critics has left me feeling a tad blue.
“Hello, darkness, my old friend…”
You see, we here at Twin Images are Superman fans. We have been for years now, and speaking as a Superman fan, I have to say, it’s really hard these days to be one. There hasn’t been a decent take on Superman in the media since Superman: The Animated Series and if one counts it, Smallville. And Big Blue’s latest venture on the big screen has just been one flop after another. Granted, neither Man of Steel nor Batman V Superman bombed at the box office, but the reception for these films has not been stellar. Many fans (myself included) feel that our hero Supes is just being continually dumped on through both of these movies. And while Batman is enjoying the success of the Arkham Asylum video games, Superman’s most noteworthy game Superman 64 is is infamously known for being one of THE WORST video games of all time. In this current society of “Dark, moody and angsty = AWESOME!!” and most kids preferring the darkness of Batman, it’s especially trying on those of us fans who prefer the light.
One can only imagine what must be going through Supes’ head right now…
The thing of it is, Superman used to be The Man, and he can be that again, but a couple of things need to happen first. For one, writers and directors need to stop getting these two guys mixed up with each other.
Superman is NOT Batman! The 2 heroes AREN’T the same! They’re at opposite sides of the DC Heroes’ spectrum. Batman is dark, brooding and gritty. Superman is not! Superman represents hope, light, idealism. Supes is the hero that other super heroes aspire to be like. And while we’re on the subject, Superman’s city Metropolis does NOT look like this:
This is Gotham City. Gotham is the seedy, crime infested hell hole. Metropolis, by contrast, is a beautiful city.
You see this? Notice the bright colors, the blue sky and how everything here isn’t shades of gray?
My point: Don’t write Superman the way that you would Batman because they AREN’T the same. Superman averts Armegeddon while Batman deals with the crazies. I’m not denying the awesome-ness of Batman, Wolverine and their ilk, but not every super hero needs to be Batman or Wolverine. Much like how you can’t have a top without a bottom or a front without a back, dark super heroes can’t exist without the light ones. A world in which every single super hero is dark and angst ridden is not a world that I’d want to live in. I can’t put it any better than JustSomeRandomGuy voiced through Spider Man on his YouTube channel:
“The light super heroes compliment the dark super heroes and vice-versa. If every super hero were dark, that would be boring because they’d all be exactly the same.”
There is a ray of hope, though. Reportedly, after the lukewarm reception of BVS, DC plans to be more “hands on” with the future DCEU films, and there’s even talk of bringing in the likes of Bruce Timm as a consultant for the Justice League movies. It’s too late for Warner Brothers to give Zack Snyder the boot as director (as much as I’d like for that to happen), but word is that while Snyder will still be directing Justice League Part 1, there may be a different director for JL Part 2.
You see, Superman used to be The Man, and he can be again, but Big Blue needs to directed by someone who understands the character and who respects the character’s mythos and just plain gets Superman. I’d like to see another good Superman movie in my lifetime, so it’s time to step your game up, WB.
Wouldn’t you like for things to be like this again?
Twin Images 
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