Pretty much anybody that knows me well will attest to the fact that I’m a pretty big dork. I’ll own that. They will also say that there are times when I get rolling on a subject and you just have to sit back and let me go until I realize that the person to whom I’m speaking has glazed over eyes and has stopped listening. I’m going to talk about just such a conversation but hopefully stop before you get to that point.
We started with season three, episode one of Titans, a show on MAX ( previously HBOMAX ) that is based on DC Comics characters. I won’t get too carried away here but we both agree that Liam Glen’s portrayal of an older, grittier, Bruce Wayne is one of our favorite renditions of the character. The only other Batman that she knows is the Robert Pattinson version. That was a fine movie and I’m eager to see what he does in future films but it was a reminder that there are some characters that transcend the actor playing them. It wasn’t necessarily George Clooney’s fault that his movie was so terrible but for the most part you put that symbol on somebody’s chest armor or designate them as 007 and I’m there for it, regardless of the actor. Give me a new Conan the Barbarian or Robin Hood and chances are that I’ll be in line.
The second show of the day was the finale of season one of Star Trek, Strange New Worlds. She spent most of that one sitting at the computer playing video games but paid enough attention to realize that some of the faces didn’t match up to some of the names that she knew. There was a time when I never would have imagined that anybody other than the originals could step into these roles but this is now my third version of Spock and I am surprisingly OK with it.
Is anyone off limits? Probably not. It seems impossible to consider but one day there will probably be another Indiana Jones. There was probably once a time when people would have sworn up and down that nobody other than Johnny Weissmuller would ever be Tarzan of the Apes.
It made me wonder if there was any character that my daughter would have a hard time seeing played by other actors and the distressing part of the conversation was how long it took to even find any fictional figure that she cared about at all. She went through a Supergirl phase but will Melissa Benoit always be who she imagines when she thinks of Superman’s little cousin? Probably not. The only thing that she could come up with was that if Disney makes any more Descendants films they shouldn’t recast Cameron Boyce, the young actor that played the son of Cruella de Vil and tragically died of complications from an epileptic seizure at age 20.
It made me a little sad. I understand that not everyone is like me, with Peter Pan tattoos and Incredible Hulk bobbleheads sitting next to their computer but don’t we all need heroes? Guardians of the Galaxy 3 did all right and Barbie is currently crushing the box office but Ant Man 3, The Flash, Mission Impossible whatever, Fast and the Furious 100 and a geriatric Indiana Jones all either bombed or vastly underperformed expectations.
Are there just too many heroes, of questionable quality? I feel like these kids are bombarded with so much content from so many different sources that nothing is making an impression the way that things did when we were kids. If you are my age, how many times have you seen Jaws, ET, Back to The Future, The Terminator, the original Jurassic Park?
We put on the television and had three choices. Maybe that’s the difference. Maybe my kid is just not as big a nerd as I am? That can’t possibly be it, can it?
Nah, That’s not it.
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Flickr
