As a writer, your biggest fear is not having anything to write about. There’s nothing worse than having the ambition, the drive, the excitement to write, and then sitting in front of your keyboard and finding there’s nothing there. Your fingers sit motionless on top of the keyboard almost as if they’ve never typed anything before while your brain madly scrambles for something, anything, to put to paper. Next thing you know you’re writing nonsense sentences with a ton of curse words like you would do on old typewriters without paper, that you couldn’t possibly publish because it’s the gibberish of a desperate man. A man who has found that there’s nothing in the whole wide world to write about despite how badly that man may want to write. You attempt to write about not writing but that only goes so far. Slowly your fingers slide off the keyboard as your hands fall by your side. The light of the laptop screen openly mocks you as you get up and walk away looking to find refuge in the pantry because that’s where Doritos live and food has never let you down before…
Or something like that.
What they don’t prepare you for is the times when you have too much to write about. When there is literally enough content out there to warrant you calling out sick from your day job so you can spend a few hours spitting out words about all that’s happening on the internet. To throw your voice into the millions of other voices shouting about the same things ultimately resulting in no one hearing anything but you still feeling satisfied that you contributed to the cacophony. Yeah, writing on the internet is fun, he said.
I’ve kind of run into one of those writing surplus problems today. With a regular nine to five, I know when it’s time to write I’m putting it all into one column. I don’t have the time to write three columns anymore on pop culture content. Work is too busy, life is too lifey, and I recently sneezed so hard that I might have fractured a rib… I’m not entirely sure if that’s a joke either. Yay, forty!
When shaping out the writing week, I try to take the most important subjects and space them out into days where they are still a part of the conversation. Granted, conversations on the internet move stupid fast, we’re talking the speed of a cat in a horror movie that knows bad shit is about to go down so it’s just going to excuse itself from the room levels of speed. But today, I’ve kind of run into a problem where there is such an abundance of material that I don’t even know where to begin.
DC Fandome launched its second year on Saturday, and much like last year, the event was a complete success. Say what you will about the products that are being advertised but the event itself is a whole lot of fun. Granted, did it need to be about four hours? No. Was it engaging while providing a bat-load, see what I did there, of new content for fans to drool over? Yes, yes it did.
While first looks at Black Adam…
may have exceeded my expectations, which honestly weren’t that high to being with, and footage from the upcoming The Flash movie…
promised us that we were probably going to live through another live-action re-telling of Flashpoint but this time with Michael Keaton returning as Batman to tickle everyone’s nostalgia and reminding them of a simpler time when superhero movies didn’t divide the internet and for some reason two Ezra Millers (I’m still annoyed we have to deal with one). All of this was exciting but everyone, including DC, knew that the big-ticket item was the new trailer for Matt Reeves’s The Batman, which is why they waited to the very last possible second to roll that trailer.
Who would’ve thought, a gritty Batman movie? Feels very out of left field, insert lolz here. On a more serious note, I’m very excited about the footage of The Batman that we’ve seen thus far. One of my biggest takeaways is how massive Gotham appears. Not in the sense that the city is big, it is, but in how important it feels to the story that Reeves is trying to tell. This clearly is a Batman who is not afraid to break legs, hearts, or dreams and I was excited to hear Pattinson name Tom King as one of his influences on the role as King’s Batman run is an all-time favorite. But for me, it was Zoe Kravitz who stole the show. It seems that Catwoman was developed in 1940 so Zoe Kravitz could play her in 2021. She also gave me Tom King-like vibes but mostly made me feel she was born for this role.
Oh, and I’d like to throw my “I can’t believe that’s Colin Farrell as the Penguin” comment out into the void too. I mean, did I even watch the trailer if I don’t make that comment? Don’t answer that.
And while it would have been well and good to just break down all of the excitement of DC Fandome, there were still so many other things to write about.
Season three of You dropped on Netflix last Friday, reintroducing the internet to complicated feelings over Joe Goldberg. Yes, he’s hot but does that out weight the creepy obsessive serial killer vibes? But he also reads, a lot, so maybe?
There was a new trailer for Hawkeye too and Disney announced that the first two episodes would be dropping on November 24th which they did because they didn’t want the finale taking eyeballs away from the premiere of the Book of Boba Fett. A smart move and gives us double the Hawkeye the day before Thanksgiving. And while this trailer feels like it was casually dropped, it has only upped the excitement factor. This really feels like it has all the Matt Fraction inspiration and should definitely have been directed by Shane Black but if that first episode isn’t the Rogers: The Musical in its entirely, then what are we even doing here?!
Oh wait, there’s more? How about the creeptastic first trailer for Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone, based off a Joe Hill story I forgot I read until the trailer started rolling, which has turned Ethan Hawke into complete nightmare fuel. One, where did you find that mask? Two, can you please burn it so it stops haunting my dreams? Thanks.
Then Netflix decided today, October 19th, which alllllllll Community fans know is more than a day and more like a state of mind, to drop a teaser trailer for Ozark’s final season all but confirming that we’ll be opening the year with season four on January 21, 2022, and concluding it with Part Two sometime in Decemberish. And while there was pretty much no new footage and just voice over work, I couldn’t help but feel… all types of stupid excited. I have missed Ozark, one of those shows that made quarantine suck just a little bit less, and can’t wait to see how this thing ends up. Dear God, please don’t let anything happen to Ruth and while you’re at it, please find a way to retroactively give Tom Pelphrey an Emmy for his performance in “Fire Pink”.
With a full trailer a week away, Netflix also gave us this “The Lost Session” of the upcoming live-action Cowboy Bebop which was not only spellbinding but completely mesmerizing with shades of Tarantino and maybe, Scott Pilgrim? While I haven’t watched all of the anime, and what I have watched is dimmed by a hazy college dorm, I can’t freaking wait for this show. It feels so stylized and smooth. Does that make sense? I can’t imagine what a full trailer of this show is going to look like and I’m anxiously counting down the days for the show’s arrival as well as the anime’s arrival to Netflix on October 21st which is only two days away!
I haven’t even discussed the upcoming Animal Crossing DLC content that might just make your boy shake that COVID PTSD and return to the island. God, I can’t imagine my weed and bug problems. Also, Variety and other news sources have been spoiling Eternals with tweets and headlines which is super professional considering the movie’s red carpet was yesterday and is still two weeks from being released. Not to mention, you should all listen to Kyle Hurford and start reading Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series. I’m seventy percent through the first book of the second trilogy, A Little Hatred, and I’m falling further and further in love with this world with each passing book.
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Alright, I think that covers most of it. I think. I don’t know, I’m delusional at this point. I’m going to turn the floor over to you Geeklings, what are you the most excited about in this surplus of content? Be sure to sound off in the comments or throw me a line over on Twitter @iamgeek32. Let’s break this all down… or take a nap. I’m game for either or.