Batman, The 2008 Recession & COVID, UFC Stars Back Attempted Murer of Alleged Child Molester, Google's Creepy New Stalker Products.(The Five for 03/05/22)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Apologies this one is a day late…I had to make the call to deliver this on Saturday as a complete issue rather than on Friday, half baked.
Let’s get into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
Amanda and I were able to catch The Batman last night, hyped up on the rumors that the umpteenth retelling of billionaire-who-beats-up-bad-guys was heavily inspired by director David Fincher’s 1995 masterpiece Seven, about the hunt of a serial killer obsessed with perfecting evil.
Even if you’re not a comic book movie person, this one is pretty stellar. But don’t worry….no spoilers to follow.
Instead, I want to unpack how much the world has changed since the last stand-alone Batman trilogy. The biggest movie in that arc, The Dark Knight, opened in July 2008, just months before the massive real estate collapse tanked the economy for the better part of a decade.
Sure, the U.S. was involved in two wars…but this was before social media and YouTube had created a 24/7 anxiety/rage/anxiety cycle.
Bruce Wayne was still aspirational…driving sports cars and dating Russian models as a cover for his crime fighting. Billionaire Bruce steps out into public in tailored suits and takes his meals in the most exclusive restaurants.
He is aided by a handful of collaborators, including butler Alfred (Michael Caine), childhood friend Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal), business leader Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and police Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldham).
Fourteen years later, Robert Pattinson’s take on the character is…a lot more bummed out.
In this version of the character, Bruce Wayne is a recluse with virtually no friends and no life outside of crime fighting. Outside of a public funeral that requires a suit, he resembles a street corner drug addict outside of his time in the cape and cowl.
Movies reflect the era they’re created (mostly unintentionally), and it’s not difficult to see the impressions of skyrocketing drug and alcohol use, overdoses, the months of total lockdowns and severed relationships in this highly divisive era.
It’s not just the differences in the portrayal of the character Bruce Wayne, the 2008 and 2022 films is how the the settings differ.
The Dark Knight is shot (mostly) in daylight.
The Batman is filmed at night, (mostly) in the rain.
The former wraps up with a (relatively) happy ending…the latter ends in a much more depressing, ambiguous place.
Both movies are excellent. Viewed back-to-back, they’re heck of a reminder of how turbulent the last decade has been in American life.
[two]
This week, former UFC heavyweight champ Cain Velasquez was charged with attempted murder after a high speed chase where he fired a gun at a man who allegedly molested one of Cain’s relatives at daycare.
Turns out, the accused may have molested several children.
Velasquez rammed the man’s vehicle several times and fired multiple shots, one of of which hit a passenger who had nothing to do with the situation.
UFC fighters are standing behind Cain with both words and money.
Former champ Ronda Rousey…more or less said she would have committed murder.
Russian fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov pledged his undying support of Cain.
And light heavyweight sent Cain $10,000 for his legal bills.
I…believe them.
Rousey, a new mother and one of the most fierce competitors in the history of the sport, is probably capable of killing the average American man with her bare hands, even before rage kicks in.
It’s still too early to tell whether or not the alleged molester could have been caught earlier…but this situation does feel like a microcosm of a storm that’s brewing.
To recap two stories previously covered in The Five, a professor at Virginia’s Old Dominion University was forced to step down after defending “Minor Attracted Persons,” attempting to make child molestation just another “sexual preference.”
And a self-proclaimed “non-binary” student allegedly raped a girl in a high school bathroom in Virginia, the accused rapist was placed in another school without notifying students and staff of the previous alleged crime…and the non-binary student allegedly raped a second girl. The students in Fairfax Virginia walked out to protest the “one free rape” policy.
This is one of the most brutal sentences I’ve ever penned in this publication…but if the U.S. continues to move away from protecting children from sexual predators by legal means…natural law will be enforced with guns, shovels and late night graves 50 feet from remote gravel roads.
I don’t want to live in a world with vigilante justice. I want the existing structure to work. So do not read this as an endorsement of murder.
But I remember reading an interview with a former mob boss who was asked about how easy it is to get away with murder. “If you don’t have a way to quickly dispose of the body, difficult. If you have a van and a boat to drop the corpse in a body of water, pretty easy,” was his reply.
In other words, for most people living in rural America...it’s pretty easy to make someone disappear forever, without much chance of being caught.
But the problem is that taking justice into your own hands means good men like Velasquez will get caught and spend life behind bars. (And by all measures, Cain is a good, family man who’s respected as a competitor and friend and has no previous legal issues).
And then there’s the problem of retaliation. When there’s no trial, there’s no certainty of guilt…meaning we could get dozens of Hatfield & McCoy feuds all over the U.S. as a result of vigilante justice.
I hope I’m wrong about all of this. I hope we’re smart enough to walk away from this madness as a society and protect children…for both the sakes of the children and those who will avenge them.
I hope I’m wrong…but I think I’m right.
Increasingly casual attitudes about sexual contact between adults and minors will likely push the murder rate up.
[three]
Tesla founder Elon Musk is providing satellite internet in Ukraine to help keep citizens safe and informed during the Russian invasion.
However, Musk refused requests to block Russian news sources…as he’s a “free speech absolutist.”
If that wasn’t newsworthy enough for one week, the inventor also surprised many by calling for more domestic oil pumping to avoid buying Russian energy.
As of 03/05, the U.S. is still buying Russian oil and not increasing domestic oil production, citing environmental concerns.
A gallon of gas is already $5/gallon in parts of California and some experts predict to see $7/gallon prices at the pump by this summer.
[four]
So…Google wants to track all your movements now.
WHAT IF YOUR computer decided not to blare out a notification jingle because it noticed you weren't sitting at your desk? What if your TV saw you leave the couch to answer the front door and paused Netflix automatically, then resumed playback when you sat back down? What if our computers took more social cues from our movements and learned to be more considerate companions?
It sounds futuristic and perhaps more than a little invasive—a computer watching your every move? But it feels less creepy once you learn that these technologies don't have to rely on a camera to see where you are and what you're doing. Instead, they use radar. Google's Advanced Technology and Products division—better known as ATAP, the department behind oddball projects such as a touch-sensitive denim jacket—has spent the past year exploring how computers can use radar to understand our needs or intentions and then react to us appropriately.
This is not the first time we've seen Google use radar to provide its gadgets with spatial awareness. In 2015, Google unveiled Soli, a sensor that can use radar's electromagnetic waves to pick up precise gestures and movements. It was first seen in the Google Pixel 4's ability to detect simple hand gestures so the user could snooze alarms or pause music without having to physically touch the smartphone. More recently, radar sensors were embedded inside the second-generation Nest Hub smart display to detect the movement and breathing patterns of the person sleeping next to it. The device was then able to track the person's sleep without requiring them to strap on a smartwatch.
[five]
The director of Jurassic World: Dominion (out this summer) described teh film as a “James Bond-style ‘science thriller.’”
Huh?
The film merges the main cast from the original 1993 film (including Sam Neil, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldbloom) with the leads from the sequel films, Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) and Bryce Dallas Howard (The Help) for a mega team up or something.
Speaking of “huh,” looks like we’re getting a sequel to the 2007 Will Smith zombie flick I Am Legend, somehow starring Smith again (I thought he died in the first one, but maybe that was in the novel) alongside Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther, Creed).
And speaking of Mr. Pratt, the Parks and Rec alum will be headed back to his first TV show with The Terminal List, a military/spy/thriller series. Last week, I incorrectly reported that this would be a movie, based on (real life former SEAL) Jack Carr’s excellent fiction series.
The first episode hits Amazon Prime July 1.
I don’t even know what HBO's Euphoria is about, but HBO claims it’s their most popular show since Game of Thrones.
Whatever Euphoria is about, hopefully it ends less stupidly than G.O.T.
It’s apparently the most tweeted about show of the 2020’s so far, which I found to be shocking, because I’d never heard of Euphoria until this week. I’m on Twitter a lot, so apparently no one I know watches this.
But hey, seemed newsworthy enough to mention…
This is the second piece of content getting a redux from last week, but it’s worth noting that the VIKINGS: VALHALLA, the Netflix sequel series to the History Channel show VIKINGS has scored the elusive 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (at the time of publication, if you’re reading later, the score may have dropped).
No word yet on whether or not the Vikings making it to North America…which was proven last year, will be in the show. Columbus Day needs to be Lief Erickson Day.
Indiana Jones 5 has wrapped filming! We’ll have to wait until 2023 to see the final entry in the beloved franchise, 14 years after the fourth film and 42 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark.
James Mangold (Logan, Ford v. Ferrari) is directing 79-year-old Harrison Ford’s final on-screen appearance beneath the famed fedora.
Until the next one,
-sth