Of course, I went to see Captain America: Civil War at the weekend.
Pretty much the only thing wrong with it, in my eyes, was that I'd seen Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice only a week before.
Civil War is a much, much, much better movie - grounding the fights in emotional beats, rather than CGI ones - but I was at my limit of how many super-powered people punching one another I could handle in seven days.
Still. Remember when we had no super-powered people punching one another? What a glorious time we live in... that we can have too much of this good thing.
If you grew up as any sort of geek, try to imagine what your younger self would've made of the world today. New Star Wars movies every year, all the Marvel movies you could want, Spider-Man and Captain America, and zombie TV shows, and Doctor Who, and video games on demand. Our enormous games offer whole new worlds to explore.
Being a geek is no longer about being part of a subculture. Now we are the culture.
Pretty much the only thing wrong with it, in my eyes, was that I'd seen Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice only a week before.
Civil War is a much, much, much better movie - grounding the fights in emotional beats, rather than CGI ones - but I was at my limit of how many super-powered people punching one another I could handle in seven days.
Still. Remember when we had no super-powered people punching one another? What a glorious time we live in... that we can have too much of this good thing.
If you grew up as any sort of geek, try to imagine what your younger self would've made of the world today. New Star Wars movies every year, all the Marvel movies you could want, Spider-Man and Captain America, and zombie TV shows, and Doctor Who, and video games on demand. Our enormous games offer whole new worlds to explore.
Being a geek is no longer about being part of a subculture. Now we are the culture.
PEGG IT
On Saturday, the day after I watched Civil War, we put on Simon Pegg romcom Man Up. Aside from being spat out the other end of it feeling like I'd been waterboarded at a middle class, media elite, dinner party, it was a throwback to a time when people who made Hugh Grant movies stalked the earth like they owned it.
It's a film - ironically starring Simon Pegg, who doesn't shy away from his geeky credentials - which feels like it had been made by people who live in a bubble, oblivious to the rest of us. The hares to our rocket-powered torties.
These people go to their art galleries, and have their drinks parties, and read their self-help books, and do their bickram yoga, and go on mini breaks to Florence, and eat their quinoa nibbles, and attend summer concerts at Somerset House - unaware that the balance of power has shifted. While they were distracted, the geeks inherited the earth.
Of course, not everyone who made Hugh Grant movies is that blinkered: Four Weddings and Notting Hill writer Richard Curtis wrote an episode of Doctor Who, and directed About Time - his own clumsy grab for the hem of geek, which seemed like a half-measure designed not to alienate his existing audience.
Interestingly, Ricky Gervais' latest one-draft movie also popped up on Netflix last week. In Special Correspondents, his wholly unconvincing character states, clumsily: “I think that’s why I play video games, ’cos they’re more interesting than my real life.”
What this tells us even more than what a terrible writer Ricky Gervais is, is how chronically out of touch Ricky Gervais is. That he can still use video games as a mark of the loner, the sad, the fringe-dwellers. It's lazy. It's outdated, and shows him to be part of that media elite that I mentioned. A cosseted, walled-off community. A clique of middle-aged, middle-class, white people who have never picked up a joypad in their lives.
On Saturday, the day after I watched Civil War, we put on Simon Pegg romcom Man Up. Aside from being spat out the other end of it feeling like I'd been waterboarded at a middle class, media elite, dinner party, it was a throwback to a time when people who made Hugh Grant movies stalked the earth like they owned it.
It's a film - ironically starring Simon Pegg, who doesn't shy away from his geeky credentials - which feels like it had been made by people who live in a bubble, oblivious to the rest of us. The hares to our rocket-powered torties.
These people go to their art galleries, and have their drinks parties, and read their self-help books, and do their bickram yoga, and go on mini breaks to Florence, and eat their quinoa nibbles, and attend summer concerts at Somerset House - unaware that the balance of power has shifted. While they were distracted, the geeks inherited the earth.
Of course, not everyone who made Hugh Grant movies is that blinkered: Four Weddings and Notting Hill writer Richard Curtis wrote an episode of Doctor Who, and directed About Time - his own clumsy grab for the hem of geek, which seemed like a half-measure designed not to alienate his existing audience.
Interestingly, Ricky Gervais' latest one-draft movie also popped up on Netflix last week. In Special Correspondents, his wholly unconvincing character states, clumsily: “I think that’s why I play video games, ’cos they’re more interesting than my real life.”
What this tells us even more than what a terrible writer Ricky Gervais is, is how chronically out of touch Ricky Gervais is. That he can still use video games as a mark of the loner, the sad, the fringe-dwellers. It's lazy. It's outdated, and shows him to be part of that media elite that I mentioned. A cosseted, walled-off community. A clique of middle-aged, middle-class, white people who have never picked up a joypad in their lives.
THE WRONG MANS
For me, that's what's wrong with The Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman.
They feel like they're being made by someone who doesn't understand or respect the geek community. Somebody who isn't connected to it.
That he's instead used those characters to make the movie he wants to make... and it was different to the one we all waned.
Admittedly, director Zack Synder isn't totally useless; he made an obsessively faithful movie out of Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel Watchmen... but it was also one that missed entirely the point of a comic that was, above all else, about the form of comics.
Marvel get it. They make their movies using the characters and worlds already established in Marvel comics. If anything gets changed, it's in the service of the story, or to streamline for the purposes of a movie - but that story, by and large, serves the characters. And more than that, it serves the audience.
And in doing so, Marvel has proven what we knew all along: the reason those characters endured is because they were fine in the first place. Consequently, more people go and see Marvel movies than read Marvel comics; the formula works, and always has. Why change it?
For me, that's what's wrong with The Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman.
They feel like they're being made by someone who doesn't understand or respect the geek community. Somebody who isn't connected to it.
That he's instead used those characters to make the movie he wants to make... and it was different to the one we all waned.
Admittedly, director Zack Synder isn't totally useless; he made an obsessively faithful movie out of Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel Watchmen... but it was also one that missed entirely the point of a comic that was, above all else, about the form of comics.
Marvel get it. They make their movies using the characters and worlds already established in Marvel comics. If anything gets changed, it's in the service of the story, or to streamline for the purposes of a movie - but that story, by and large, serves the characters. And more than that, it serves the audience.
And in doing so, Marvel has proven what we knew all along: the reason those characters endured is because they were fine in the first place. Consequently, more people go and see Marvel movies than read Marvel comics; the formula works, and always has. Why change it?
MY BIG FAT GEEK WEDDING
Growing up, geek was an insult. If you liked sci-fi, or computer games, or role-playing, you were considered to be on the fringes.
The generation who grew up like that are now the ones in charge. The ones who saw the potential of the things they loved.
Star Wars is being made by Star Wars fans. Doctor Who is made by Doctor Who fans. Marvel movies are made by people who grew up reading Marvel comics. Harry Potter fans can visit Hogwarts for real.
Video games are made by those who saw the potential of games - who saw beyond the limits of gaming - and are now breaking down those walls to reveal the lands beyond. Face it: games have never been better. We've never been so spoiled.
We're at a stage where popular culture is giving me everything that I ever wanted, and more. And that's happening because we're no longer the minority. They are.
Growing up, geek was an insult. If you liked sci-fi, or computer games, or role-playing, you were considered to be on the fringes.
The generation who grew up like that are now the ones in charge. The ones who saw the potential of the things they loved.
Star Wars is being made by Star Wars fans. Doctor Who is made by Doctor Who fans. Marvel movies are made by people who grew up reading Marvel comics. Harry Potter fans can visit Hogwarts for real.
Video games are made by those who saw the potential of games - who saw beyond the limits of gaming - and are now breaking down those walls to reveal the lands beyond. Face it: games have never been better. We've never been so spoiled.
We're at a stage where popular culture is giving me everything that I ever wanted, and more. And that's happening because we're no longer the minority. They are.
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