If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The B-Team.

If ticket prices were the problem, then you would see a drop for all films. But there’s been no such drop. The “second-tier superhero” argument doesn’t wash either. It’s hard to argue that Iron Man or X-Men were “first tier” superheroes before they hit it big in theaters. And nothing is more first tier than Superman or the Incredible Hulk, yet both have struggled — not to mention Wonder Woman, who can’t even get a series off the ground.

The oversaturation argument is intriguing. On the one hand, oversaturation cannot be THE problem because people wouldn’t turn out for surprise hits like Captain America if they were just sick of superhero films generally. Also, if oversaturation really was THE problem, then why don’t slasher flicks or romcoms suffer from this? Those genres have been steadily turning out the same film year after year for decades. Still, I do think oversaturation plays a part in this puzzle. In particular, oversaturation makes these films less special, which makes people more selective. Being more selective means people are less likely to see films they don’t think are worth their time or money. But what is it that is causing people to choose some superhero films over others? In a word: plot.

Hollywood is using a bad formula for superhero films.

Hollywood wants to appeal both to fanboys and the public at large while also setting up the franchise for future films. But this requires catering to seemingly contradictory desires. The public wants a film that doesn’t require them to read the comic book series to understand the movie. Hollywood thinks that means they need to provide a primer on the series. But the fanboys want a deep, new story and don’t want to see a Cliff’s Notes version of the comic book series. And nobody wants to feel like they’re watching a movie that is just setting up future movies.

Hollywood tries to solve this dilemma by giving the public the origin story for the hero and the villain in the first half of the film, which is meant to teach the public the backstory and set up the franchise while making the public think they are seeing a full story. Then, in the second half of the film, they jam in a truncated version of some story from the series to please the fanboys. Then they finish with an “epic” 40 minute CGI fight to turn you into a drooling idiot and wipe your memory before you can leave the theater and warn people how much you hated the first 80 minutes.

This. . . satisfies. . . no. . . one!

Moreover, the formula used for the origin story stinks. This part of the story is presented in disguised-vignette form, connected only by the thinnest strands of plot. That plot is designed to feed you the information you need to know to establish the franchise and usually takes the form of a romance which connects the hero to the villain in some way. There are two reasons for this: (1) romances attract female audiences and (2) the romance gives the film a semblance of being one single story, even though it is really separate stories connected only by the love interest. The vignettes themselves are predictable and lame. They involve the hero discovering their powers, followed by a cliché-ridden 20 minutes of tired comedy as we see the hero learn how to use their powers through trial and error, the introduction of all the characters you need to know for the franchise and a quick glimpse into their lives, and a short version of the villain’s origin story. Then suddenly it’s off to the second plot, where nothing you just saw is relevant.

“I’ll be in Lex’s story for a while. There’s kryptoniteloaf in the fridge. See you in the second half of the film.”

Think of this in Star Wars terms. Luke Skywalker: Curse of the Jedi Phantom Monster’s Vengeance would waste the first third of the film with Luke bumming around at work until he discovers he has hilarious Jedi skills: “Dude! I can make the coffee droid fly and make my boss change my evaluation.” This would be interspersed with scenes of hip, angry, young Darth Vader, a rich corporate titan who has the hots for Luke’s girl, who just happens to work for Vader LLC. The entire backstory of Vader’s life, i.e. the three prequels, would be condensed to about two minutes of whiny exposition as he woos the girlfriend: “Obi-wan never loved me and the emperor tricked me. . . now the world is going to pay. . . you smell purty!” Then suddenly Vader falls into an industrial grinder, ends up in the black suit, shoots a henchman, kicks a puppy, finds plans for a Death Star on eBay, builds it overnight, and kidnaps Luke’s girlfriend because that’s the only connection his story has to Luke. This forces Luke to use his powers to fight Vader in a 40 minute CGI death struggle as CGI buildings explode all around them. Roll credits. AndrewPrice slams own head into wall.

"I find your lack of faith in my TPS Reports disturbing."

A better approach would be to pick one of the stories from the comic book series that really struck a chord with readers and produce that. Forget trying to sample the whole series and forget giving the complete history of each character up to that point: people won’t miss it. Think about it. Do we care that we didn’t see a young Quint getting sunk aboard the Indianapolis or buying his first boat or catching his first shark in Jaws or that we never got to see James Bond’s training before he showed up in Dr. No? Heck no! We do want backstory in our films, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend forty minutes showing it. It’s usually best to bring it out through the dialog as the film progresses.

This is what Hollywood needs to realize. You don’t need a primer to set up a franchise and you probably shouldn’t start with the origin story. Audiences want real stories they can get into, not background information presented as barely-connected vignettes followed by a huge fight scene. And whatever information the casual fans need can be presented as the film goes along in the dialog. Trust me: give the audience a genuine stand-alone story and they will respond.

Know any good superhero films?

Here’s the problem: the most important aspect of any film is the motivation of the characters. Motivation is what we use to decide whether a character is right or wrong, good or bad, justified or not. It is what makes us sympathize with some and repulses us from others. It is what defines the conflicts of the film. Change the motivation and you change the whole meaning of the story. No other story element is as important as motivation.

“What’s my motivation?”

Consider a story about a businessman who kills someone. Suppose he kills for money. Clearly, he’s a villain. But what if he kills because he likes it? What if he kills in self-defense or by accident? Changing his motivation fundamentally changes the nature of the character and thereby the central conflict of the story. All his other traits can be changed with little effect on the story. For example, it doesn’t matter that he’s a businessman or rich or even male. These may seem important at first glance, but they are just details and like Hitchcock’s MacGuffin can be changed without affecting the story. But motivation is different. Motivation is the key factor. It defines the characters and generates the story. Change it and you change everything.

That’s why it’s vital to give a villain a proper motivation. The villain sets everything into motion. If the villain’s motives are pedestrian or nonexistent, then the story is handicapped from the get-go.

But Hollywood has abandoned the idea of giving villains motivations because motivations are complicated and easily confused. Instead, it substitutes blatantly obvious villains who ooze evil from their cardboard pores. They prance around ranting and raving, kicking puppies and shooting uppity henchmen, and they make actual cartoon villains like Snidely Whiplash and Wile E. Coyote.appear to be paragons of depth, sanity and wisdom by comparison. And in those rare moments where the writers feel they must offer a motivation, the villains mumble something about power or money like so many beauty queens babbling on about world peace.

The Socrates of modern villains?

But it wasn’t always this way. At one time, villains had genuine, interesting motives. Consider some of the great villains of the past:

• Darth Vader (pre-whiny Hayden Christensen) was defending the Empire against rebels bent on destroying it.

• Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty could stand no disrespect because he was insecure.

• Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett in Unforgiven wanted a quiet life.

• The Terminator relentlessly followed its programming.

• Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest despised the people under her care.

• HAL 9000 in 2001 couldn’t resolve a conflict in his programming.

Do you notice something about this list? It isn’t what the characters did that made them memorable, it’s why they did it. When you think of HAL or Vader, you don’t think, “oh yeah, he killed that guy,” you think about their mental states and their motivations. And their motives weren’t necessarily evil. Their actions were, but their motives weren’t.

In fact, that’s what’s really interesting: none of these villains actually thought they were evil. That’s the creepy part. It’s also very human. Indeed, few people see themselves or their actions as evil or wrong. To the contrary, we are good at justifying our behavior to ourselves so we can maintain the belief that we are doing the right thing. Even truly evil people rarely think of themselves as evil. Hitler never thought of himself as the bad guy, he viewed himself as the savior of the German people and justified everything he did through his twisted racial theories. The Soviets justified their purges by believing they were only eliminating traitors. East German guards justified killing their own people by believing they were just doing their duty. Some do evil because they feel aggrieved or threatened. Some just think their ends outweigh their means. This list goes on. They’re all wrong, but they all think they’re in the right.

“No Lord Vader, we’re the bad guys. Go kick a puppy, you’ll feel better my young apprentice.”

Yet, Hollywood doesn’t get this. It has decided instead that evil characters must revel in being evil, even though that’s cartoon villainy. And why does Hollywood do this?  Beginning in the 1960s, liberalism adopted the idea that individuals are not responsible for their actions, i.e. don’t judge someone on their actions, judge them on their intentions. That’s how they could excuse the crimes of terrorists (SDS), cop killers (Black Panthers), rapists (Polanski), and even murderous dictators (Mao): because they looked past their deeds and saw only their intentions.

In other words, whereas conservatives first look at the person’s deeds to decide if they acted in a good or bad manner, and only rarely go into intent as a possible extenuating circumstance (like erroneous self-defense), liberals typically start and stop at intent. And if the person had a “good motive,” then liberals will excuse their acts no matter how heinous. Conservatives don’t buy that and except for a small set of defenses (e.g. justified self-defense) don’t care what the person’s motive was.

That’s also what leads to our present problem. When you can only judge someone on their intent (i.e. motivation), then logically, you can only define someone as evil if they intend to do evil. Thus, if you want an evil character, the liberal mindset tells us they must see themselves as evil and must intend an evil motive. Hence the prancing. Blech.

This is a shame and a crime against storytelling. Come on Hollywood, wake up… this isn’t that hard.

So who are your favorite villains and why?

Hawking another one of those prosaic celebrity tell-alls, Fisher spoke to the folks at the entertainment site PopEater.com and when the subject of Obama and the Tea Party movement came up, the one-time heartthrob of nerds everywhere didn’t hold back. They are all “racists” she said.

PoEater.com asked Fisher if she had met President Obama; she hadn’t but wanted to. And then they asked the leading question of the day: “Do you think Tea Party is just people who are pissed that there is an African American president?”

Warming to the presented theme, Fisher took the bait at warp speed.

Yup, and the fact that they chose to call themselves “teabaggers,” which is slang for a certain act involving b***s. It sort of says a lot. I would say a mouthful. Looks like it’s very upsetting for them, but he’s brilliant. The thing is, he’s half white but that’s still not enough — for them it’s all white or f**k off. I think we don’t deserve him and certainly teabaggers don’t deserve him.

Like most of these so-called celebrities, Fisher reveals how ignorant she is of current events. Even simple truth evades her laser sharp mind. Of course, we all know that it was the ribald left that gave the name “teabaggers” to the Tea Party movement, they did not take on the epithet themselves. Seriously, does this spaced queen really think that a political movement would name itself after a crude sexual innuendo? Really? Is she that lost in space? (OK, no more space jokes)

Of course, her blind love of The Obammessiah is amusing, but so common in Hollyweird as to appear simply knee-jerk, unthinking, empty of any substance. “I love him,” the once popular actress gushed, “Hopefully I’ll meet him sometime. I’m just happy he exists.”

Happy he “exists”? Puhlease. This sort of hero worship of a mere politician is so un-American.

Anyway, there you have it, America. If you are a conservative, if you ever attended a Tea Party event or wanted to, you are a b*** juggling racist that wants to wrap the country in a white bed sheet. Nice that Princess Leia thinks that half the American electorate are such evil, monsters, isn’t it?

I go to bed full of hate and wake up the same.  I hate blacks, Hispanics, gays, women, abortion doctors, liberals, Lefties, Democrats, you name ‘em, I hate ‘em if they’re not like me. I especially hate President Obama for being black. Just ask Janeane Garofalo, although being a Stalinist Socialist doesn’t help Obama’s cause any with me. Fact is, Obama could be a GOP Michael Steele Uncle Tom, and I’d still hate him even more than liberals hate Steele. Skin color trumps all. Thank God I was born the right color, or I’d probably kill myself. Wait, the hoods are dry! Be right back.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Joe is my hero and role model, Archie Bunker a distant second, Ted Nugent a close third. I have posters of all of them lining my walls, alongside such conservative Republican heroes as Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Adolf Hitler and Darth Vader.

I used to have one of Robert C. Byrd, but he lost me when he left the Klan and became the Conscience of the Senate. Whatever that means. Didn’t know the Senate had one. But I never understood that. How can a white guy in good conscience leave the Klan? But I digress.

I have a mega-gun collection and a huge stockpile of hollow-point Teflon-coated ammo that’s just itching to be used. Haven’t decided yet on which abortion doctor I’m going to target next. Maybe I’ll just go down to the border and shoot brownskins for sport. dHs, sToP mE BefORe I KilL aGAiN!

And though I really hate homos like the Good Book says I should, I spend a lot of my free time cruising aiport rest rooms and tapping footsies like Larry Craig. If I’m lucky, I’ll get some real teabagging in. If not, I’ll try to get some in at my local Tea Party. Of course, my shotgun wedding Handmaid’s Tale wife with the nice tooth doesn’t know about any of this. She’s usually home watching Jerry Falwell and the “700 Club” most of the day, and role-plays being Sarah Palin for me at night. Is that kinky or what? God, I love my wife! Would never be unfaithful to her with another woman.

As to being with other men, well, nobody in the GOP’s perfect. But it beats being a liberal! Except for the part where they get away with murder, and we get stoned for jaywalking.

Our favorite day is Sunday, named after our favorite radical fire-and-brimstone preacher Billy Sunday. We sing hymns like ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and wash ourselves clean in the Lord. Really necessary for me. A conservative Republican can get real dirty during the GOP workweek. Good thing my wife’s family is rich. Her toothless redneck dad gave us a beat up ‘78 Ford pickup with NASCAR and confederate flag bumper stickers and an Easy Rider rifle rack. Pride of the Bayou!

I want war. Lots of it. Want the economy to get a boost? Works every time! Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran! Of course, in the interest of disclosure, I must confess to being a consultant for Blackwater, Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Big Oil. And so what if we all staged 9/11? Made a ton of dough and dusted enough Islamist ragheads to fill the new Yankee Stadium, didn’t we?

Liberals are such pussies! And screw Global Warming! I WANT the world to burn! Only then can Jesus bring Paradise to earth. Speaking of which, where’s that landing strip for Christ in Yosemite National Park James Watt put on order? Days are gettin’ short! And don’t forget, Jesus is white, and might is right. I’m sorry, what was the problem with slavery again?

Actually, I have to confess yet again. All the above is only what I aspire to be, i.e. the best GOPer Repug Nazi I can be. Like most mortals, I fall far short of my goals and dreams. I don’t even own a gun or hollow-point Teflon-coated ammo, but I support the Second Amendment, which is just as bad. May as well be a co-conspirator with Scott Roeder and James von Brunn.

I detest the corrupt Mengele-like genocidal statutory rape-hiding abortion industry that needs reform even more than Iran’s government, but support a woman’s LEGAL right to choose. It’s the law. Until and unless it’s overturned, what can you do? Shoot up clinics? Ya, in my Rethug dreams!

I’m really not a bathroom footsie player, or like cock and hairy ass in general. But gay marriage is legal in my home state of New Hampshire and I haven’t been sodomized yet, so live and let live. What can I say, I’m weak. And even though as a six-year veteran I believe in General Douglas MacArthur’s axiom that “no one hates war more than the soldier,” sometimes they just gotta be fought if civilization as we know it must survive. Be it a cold war with the Russians or hot ones with Hitler and bin Laden, the dirty deeds must be done. And without quarter until victory is complete.

Fight a war to the end or don’t fight it. You can’t do both. One way assures victory, the other defeat. The Art of Fighting Without Fighting doesn’t work with the abu Musab al-Zarqawis of this world.

Worst of all? I was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now THAT’S a confession! How can I ever face my conservative redneck Republican sister-banging moonshine-guzzling Zionist drinking buddies at the NRSC and AIPAC again?

I put it all on the table, people. Now, if only liberal Democrat lefties would freely admit to all the world that they’re all hypocritical, mentally disordered, drug-addled, tree-hugging, America-hating, nihilist anarchist recruiting office-bombing, terrorist and dictator-loving, tinfoil hat, limp-wrist pansy spoiled brat full-grown trust fund Stalinist toddlers who couldn’t get gangbanged by the Green Bay Packers hard or fast enough (practice squads included), maybe we’ll get somewhere in this country.

I seek progress, not perfection. We can all sit down together and have one big ideological circle jerk. Get it out of our systems, you know? Hey, we’re all Americans here! Confession is good for the soul. Or your metaphysical, Pagan or Wiccan existential plane of being, depending on your religious or non-religious proclivities and inclinations.

God, I feel so good now. Got it all out. Okay, let’s hear it in the comments section now. No holding back. That includes you, Unrighteous Bubba and Cognitive Dissonant. Tell us about all the kinky things you like to do with tinfoil, Vaseline and vacuum cleaners while watching sick online German porn in your mothers’ basements