The Los Angeles Lakers have a sudden roster spot due to Avery Bradley’s decision to forgo the NBA’s bubble league, citing the health and safety of his family. With the opportunity to bring someone on board and a sudden hole in the team’s backcourt, reports indicate that the Lakers are interested in bringing in someone with whom LeBron James is quite familiar.

According to Tania Ganguli of the Los Angeles Times, J.R. Smith’s name is on the list of possibilities to don the purple and gold in Orlando.

Adrian Wojnarowski didn’t just confirm that Smith’s name appears on some sort of list, but he went as far as to say that Smith is a “leading candidate” to fill the hole on the team’s roster left by Bradley.

Smith, of course, has not been in the league since his tenure ended with the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 2018-19 campaign. His name has been floated whenever a team has needed someone to come into the backcourt with nothing ever coming to fruition, and there are questions about whether Smith can still be a valuable contributor, seeing as how he struggled in Cleveland while the team was in the midst of a rebuild and it’s been quite some time since he last played. The Lakers do present a unique opportunity, though, both because he’s worked out for them in the past and he’s a battle-tested veteran who has played in a whole lot of big games next to James.

With Wednesday’s deadline looming for NBA players to opt out of participation in the league’s 22-team bubble restart in Orlando, decisions are emerging across the basketball landscape. Washington Wizards forward Davis Bertans is reportedly set to avoid the bubble in a “preventative measure” before hitting free agency, and Portland Trail Blazers forward Trevor Ariza will reportedly choose to pass on the trip to Orlando in favor of visitation with his son. On the WNBA side, several players have also chosen to sit out the season which will take place elsewhere in Florida.

On Tuesday evening, another prominent NBA player reportedly made a similar choice, with Los Angeles Lakers guard Avery Bradley electing to opt out of the proceedings.

Bradley, who stood alongside Kyrie Irving in helping to lead a coalition of NBA and WNBA players voicing concerns about the restart, is reportedly concerned about the health of one of his children.

“As committed to my Lakers teammates and the organization as I am, I ultimately play basketball for my family,” Bradley told ESPN. “And so, at a time like this, I can’t imagine making any decision that might put my family’s health and well-being at even the slightest risk. As promised also, I will use this time away to focus on the formation of projects to help strengthen my communities.”

Health-related concerns are significant in any decision-making process with regard to the bubble and, in this case, Bradley has a specific family apprehension that certainly plays in a part in the process. Unlike Ariza and Bertans, Bradley is a part of a legitimate NBA championship contender, though, and the basketball-related impact of the decision will be interesting to monitor in that the Lakers will have one less option on the perimeter as a result of the choice.

According to ESPN’s reporting, Bradley is also set to forego approximately $650,000 in salary. As part of the league’s structure around the bubble, the Lakers will be able to sign a substitute player from the free agent market, though Bradley was a fixture for the team this season, making 44 starts.

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I feel like I grew up with Joel McHale, in a way. The Soup, which he began hosting in 2004, was a lodestar in the aughts, a beacon of absurdity guiding us through the soul-sucking amorality of the era. It seemed like the entire world had lost their minds, but at least we could laugh about Kardashians and the cat who ate spaghetti.

Then he was in Community, playing a character he says everyone assumed was just himself even though it wasn’t, for another show that was beloved by millions but never quite made it to the mainstream. McHale is kind of hard to pin down like that, a host, an actor, a comedian — perennially inspiring a cult kind of fandom. Every few years he’ll show up in some kind of dramatic role and be great (see: The Informant!) but people will forget about it and he’ll end up with another semi-obscure hosting gig, or show up on someone else’s talk show or podcast and be the best guest they had that year.

I get the sense that McHale reads “regular guy who sometimes slides into dramatic stuff” to the general public, but he actually has the chops. He finished the acting MFA program at the University of Washington after being a tight end on the Huskies scout team for two years as an undergrad. He just happens to be chill enough to also enjoy stupid humor.

Which I guess is what makes him feel relatable. Not to get too inside baseball, but I frequently find myself planning my interviews by dreaming up the dumbest questions I can think to ask a particular person. Sometimes it goes badly and the person thinks I’m making fun of them rather than myself (there’s a lot of nuance and intentions that goes missing over the phone); other times the person sounds so serious I can’t bring myself to ask it (see: Guttenberg, Steve). With Joel McHale, I asked the dumbest questions right out of the gate and never worried about offending him. Being the Guy Who Will Play Along seems intrinsic to McHale’s brand.

This month he was promoting Becky, in which he plays a dad whose house gets invaded by an escaped con played by Kevin James with a swastika on his head. Nazi Paul Blart, how’s that for a hook? It’s a movie that tries to compensate for its largely nonsensical plot with excessive gore — which isn’t the worst idea in the world. It’s probably not the greatest showcase for Joel McHale’s acting talent either, but hey, at least it gave me the chance to talk to a guy who helped keep me sane in the Bumfights era. I asked McHale about the legacy of The Soup, whether he suffers from not having a consistent brand, and whether Chevy Chase is really as much of an asshole as everyone says.

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So Kevin James plays a Nazi in this movie. Was he pretty method on the set?

Well, he was definitely prepared. He wasn’t method. I mean, he wasn’t walking around all the time pretending to be a white supremacist, that would be really weird. But he was definitely prepared and really good. He’s wonderfully scary when the camera was rolling and it was one of those things where people were like, “Was it a scary set? Was it weird? Was it dark?” It’s supposed to be so different than a comedy set. It is one of those things where we all know that this is a serious scene, but that doesn’t mean it’s not really fun to make.

Did you ever corner Kevin and try and figure out how you can get a piece of that Adam Sandler money?

Oh yeah. No. I held him down at gunpoint and said, “Son of a bitch. What the hell? I was in Blended, but I’d like something bigger than Blended. So what are you doing for me?” But so far, he hasn’t gotten back to me and I’m sure his security guards would try and kill me. Which they should. I’m a threat.

If you guys were still making The Soup in 2020, what shows you think would be on it?

Geez, there are so many. I think at this point we would have expanded to YouTube and things shared on Instagram, things on Reddit and I think local news would be getting a lot of traction. There’s still the Kardashians, but it’s much more polished than it used to be and there’s not a ton of, like Britney Spears-and-Kevin Federline-with-their-own-cameras. There’s less of that stuff, like when Whitney Houston or Being Bobby Brown was a show, which was just… I mean, God rest her soul and her daughter’s soul, but that show was just bonkers. And there’s not as many like that, but still, all the time there’s crazy stuff. We tried that show on Netflix [The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale], and I wish they had hung in there with it for a little while longer to see if it that habit would catch on, but I was happy to be at Netflix and honored that they picked up the show.

It seems like they’re still trying to figure out how to do like appointment viewing for streaming services.

Yeah, I don’t know why. They don’t need to. They got all the money and they got all the hype and the momentum. So I mean, this COVID thing is terrible and awful and I can’t wait for it to be over, but if you’re a streaming service, they must be drinking Dom Perignon every night.

You’re kind of selling me on the concept of a 2020 version of The Soup. But do you think that the kind of absurdity that The Soup thrived on, does that still work now or is reality too absurd?

No. I would say if anything, reality has refined itself because they have these shows down to a science now. When reality shows really caught on and one of the reasons why they caught on so well is because they were so inexpensive. That continues to be the case so there’s no shortage of crazy stuff being put on. I mean, Love Island is a really good example. And I feel like when people say, “Well, no one’s watching TV anymore.” I’m like, “No, no, no. Everybody‘s watching. They’re watching more than anyone has ever watched. It is all people do. If they leave the house without their phone, they might as well have said, what happened? I forgot my right hand.”

You know, it’s a constantly changing, moving target, but I’m definitely not of the ilk, “There’s nothing crazy anymore so there can’t be a show.” It’s crazy all the time. John Oliver does an incredibly good job at finding clips. It’s pretty astonishing what he does. And so, I would definitely say he’s a good example of a staff that is finding incredible stuff.

Do you guys ever have Soup host reunions?

No. Well, I just did a show with… oh God what’s her name…

Aisha Tyler.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Aisha. But that was for something else. And she is an impressive human being and her career is no joke. She’s awesome. And I really, really like her. And she doesn’t have to be as kind as she is for as accomplished and brilliant and beautiful as she is. But no, we’ve never had a host reunion. I’ve only met Kinnear once and John Henson, I had lunch with years ago.

But it was friendly with both those guys?

Yeah, it was great. At the time, Dennis Quaid was with Kinnear, and Dennis Quaid recognized me before Kinnear did. And he kind of had to explain who I was. Clearly, Kinnear was not following the show. To his credit, he was making movies and getting Oscar nominations at the time, so I don’t blame him.

If you guys have a tug of war between the past hosts of The Soup and the past hosts of The Daily Show, who do you think would win?

Oh, well that’s a good question, because Craig Kilborn is like a six foot six basketball player. I’m pretty large. Aisha’s pretty tall. I don’t know what kind of an athlete Hal Sparks is, but John Henson, he’s like six four…

Oh, is he really?

…Boy. Obviously, if you had the Daily Show, I mean, Jon Stewart’s probably cagey. You probably don’t think he’s a badass, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “Holy crap.” So I think it’s hard to tell. I mean, if you throw in all the correspondents then The Soup would definitely lose, but I don’t know. I’m set on us.

That’s good. It’s good to be confident. Do you feel like you do so many things that casting directors might not know what to do with you? You’re kind of like a host, you’re kind of a comedian, you’re kind of a dramatic actor…

I’ve not run into that. I mean, maybe it could. I know that my agents sell me on stuff and people go, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.” And so I know that’s the case, but I think because The Soup gets me notoriety as in myself as opposed to acting, but then it really came on with Community. A lot of people were like, “Well, Community is just you,” which was really not the case. So I take it as it comes and like getting to do a movie like Becky or Assassination Nation or Twilight Zone coming up, I love it all. I really do. Hopefully, they stay open to considering me. And if they don’t, then I will make their life hell! No. I really just love performing. I love acting. I love stand up. I love doing the podcast. …So basically I need attention all the time. I’m a golden retriever. I’m just a big golden retriever of a human being and it’s just my cross to bear.

To me, it seems like you’ll be in something dramatic and you’ll get really good reviews and then people will forget about it for a couple of years until you do something again. Is that you not getting those calls or is that you just picking other projects?

Well, with a movie, if the movie doesn’t do great, people don’t really remember it anyway. If you’re in a movie that gets really good reviews and actually gets some award buzz, that can help. But if you don’t get the award buzz, then it doesn’t help. So it’s all over the map as far as how that works. And there’s no sort of code that you can decipher to go, “Oh, this is the code to get you here.” So I don’t ever think about that. I just kind of go, “Oh, well, I like this project and I want to do it.” And believe me, I read for stuff a lot and I don’t get a lot of stuff. It goes to the people that have more established, dramatic acting career stuff.

But when it comes to comedy stuff, I’m offered a lot of stuff and I turn down a lot of stuff, but I find a code in just listening to your Spidey sense. Something like Star Girl comes up and I get to play a superhero, Star Man, and I’m beyond thrilled because I get this childhood dream come true of playing a superhero. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not constantly looking for my next thing. I’m always looking for the next thing. Yeah. So that’s a long way of saying, “I’ll basically take anything offered of me.”

So you played Chevy Chase in the National Lampoon movie [and worked with him on Community] and it seems like the consensus with him is that he’s kind of an asshole. Do you have a good relationship with him? What’s his deal?

Well, I haven’t talked to him in a year. I’ve talked to his wife. I don’t think there’s any sort of tone of secrecy over the fact that Chevy can be difficult. And when he was on Community, he was incredibly funny. He did not like the hours. And he said publicly that he hated the hours and he worked out a way to get himself shot out quickly — and he was a older gentleman with a family, so I get that. But yeah. I mean, the man is not short on confidence in any way. And he was the biggest comedy star of the 1980s. He was higher paid than Eddie Murphy. Yeah. He kind of has a reputation. That said, in A Futile and Stupid Gesture, he loved Doug Kenny. That was his best friend and he was devastated with his early death. And so the man has feelings, but it was devastating that actual event, but Janie and his kids are delightful. I have not spoken to him in a long time. I called him a long while ago to tell him I was doing A Futile and Stupid Gesture and he was very happy that Doug was getting his due in terms of notoriety because he had been forgotten even though he had created so much.

‘Becky’ is currently available on VOD. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Winona Ryder has spoken out about her treatment on movie sets in the past, most notably commending Keanu Reeves for not verbally abusing her at the request of director Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Dracula. One claim she did make of verbal abuse, however, got a lot more attention on Tuesday.

Ryder accused Mel Gibson of a series of disturbing things in the same interview with the Sunday Times, including homophobic and anti-semitic comments while at a party. Ryder claimed that Gibson once called her an “oven-dodger” at a party. She described the incident to GQ in 2010:

“I remember, like, fifteen years ago, I was at one of those big Hollywood parties. And he was really drunk. I was with my friend, who’s gay. He made a really horrible gay joke. And somehow it came up that I was Jewish. He said something about ‘oven dodgers,’ but I didn’t get it. I’d never heard that before. It was just this weird, weird moment. I was like, ‘He’s anti-Semitic and he’s homophobic.’ No one believed me!”

The readdressing of the incident this week caused Gibson to respond and deny the run-in happened, including an incident where Gibson used homophobic language with her friend, Kevyn Aucoin, who is openly gay. Ryder has told the story to various publications in the past, but readdressing it on Tuesday brought new denials from Gibson of the event she described as follows:

“Mel Gibson was smoking a cigar, and we’re all talking and he said to my friend, who’s gay, ‘Oh wait, am I gonna get AIDS?’ And then something came up about Jews, and he said, ‘You’re not an oven dodger, are you?,’” Ryder said. The actress has previously talked about this encounter publicly, including in a 2010 GQ profile.

Gibson told Variety through a spokesperson on Tuesday that the incident never happened, nor did he attempt to apologize for the alleged events as Ryder also claimed.

“This is 100% untrue,” a representative for Gibson said in a statement to Variety. “She lied about it over a decade ago, when she talked to the press, and she’s lying about it now.”

Later on Tuesday, Ryder gave a statement to Variety defending her claims and hoping Gibson “has found a healthy way to deal with his demons” but made it clear he would not be given forgiveness for what she alleges happened.

“I believe in redemption and forgiveness and hope that Mr. Gibson has found a healthy way to deal with his demons, but I am not one of them,” she said in a statement to Variety. “Around 1996, my friend Kevyn Aucoin and I were on the receiving end of his hateful words. It is a painful and vivid memory for me. Only by accepting responsibility for our behavior in this life, can we make amends and truly respect each other, and I wish him well on this lifelong journey.”

This isn’t the only instance where Gibson has made comments similar to the ones Ryder accused him of, including to authorities. But it’s clear he won’t be hearing an apology, or getting forgiveness, from Ryder anytime soon.

When Search Party’s third season lands on HBO Max this month, it will have accomplished a feat few shows have before. Call it a comeback, or a rebirth, or a relocation – the show originated on TBS before moving to the newly-minted streaming platform – it really doesn’t matter, not to fans, or to creators Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers. Because, for all intents and purposes, Search Party died. And now, it’s come back to life.

It took two and a half years, but we’re finally going to learn what happened after Dory (Alia Shawkat) and her friends killed a guy and tried to bury the evidence — literally, by stuffing him in a chic carry-on and hiding it in the woods of Canada, and figuratively, by spending another season thwarting police investigators and would-be blackmailers while trying to cling to their sanity.

For Bliss and Rogers, holding this group of out-of-touch Brooklynites accountable for their crimes meant a chance to explore each character’s darker side, which is what happens in season three as Dory and ex-boyfriend Drew (John Reynolds) go on trial while Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) are forced to choose teams. There are new players, old enemies, a fabulously gay wedding, and a brush or two with death in between plus plenty of the twisted humor the show has become known for. We spoke with Bliss and Rogers about the long wait for season three, tapping into the cultural zeitgeist with certain storylines, and exploring even darker comedy this time around.

We’ve made it to season three. It almost feels like we cheated death.

Charles Rogers: I think we did die, but now we’re back.

Every season of the show explores a different genre. Why did you want to tackle a courtroom drama this season?

Sarah-Violet Bliss: It’s just kind of naturally progressed. As the show has been evolving, a courtroom drama had been spoken about, and we had thought that that would actually be kind of later down the line, but it just ended up making more sense as the third season was coming together.

Did you watch any true-crime series while writing this season?

SVB: Yes. We watched a lot of true crime. The Staircase was something that we watched. I watched a lot of Dateline, a lot of SVU as well, People v OJ Simpson. John Grisham, that’s a big reference for us like The Client and Amanda Knox.

There’s more dark humor this time around. How do you balance the comedy and the drama so both feel equally important?

CR: It feels like the first stages of figuring out the plot just feel so deeply unfunny because it’s just about the drama and the turns. And it’s just like, “Oh gosh, I hope this is funny.” And then we started like twisting everything a little bit, so that it’s maybe the less expected choice or something strange or the version you haven’t seen before. So with all of the themes around the courtroom stuff, we really wanted to satirize the ways in which the country is so divided right now and how people will see the same thing or the same person and have completely different perspectives on it. Everyone’s projecting their own stuff onto everything. So that was like the “Laurel/Yanny,” “Blue or Gold dress” moment was… when we thought about it in the writer’s room it was like, “Oh, that’s a very simple and fun way of just being really specific about this whole cultural moment.”

The story becomes about a detached person who lies more and more. We wanted that to be a big theme in the show, about believing lies, whether they’re your own or they’re coming from authority figures.

This season really explores Dory’s dark side. Why did you choose that character to push to the extreme?

SVB: She’s the one who ultimately had to make a decision to commit murder and can’t live with that part of herself that was able to do that. What does it mean? Does that mean that she’s a bad person? And how do you live with yourself if you are capable of doing such dark things? How does denial come into play?

Everyone struggles this season, especially when they start getting famous because of the case. How does that spotlight affect the group’s ties?

CR: Yeah, this season, the friends are all becoming famous in their own ways. There’s a side to that, that’s a little bit more comedic, like with Elliot’s wedding or all the sort of expected ways in which they would all play that up. But the thing that we thought would be the most interesting is finding out that Dory has a secret taste for fame and how that really says a lot about her kind of covert narcissism.

When we were writing the second season, it was really tricky to figure out like, “Okay, so if that was what the first season was — Dory wanted to believe this big fantasy about Chantal, but none of it was true — and it was kind of like this, like Wizard Of Oz, an earth-shattering moment for her then, what do we want to keep saying about her relationship to her inner fantasy life?” She’s kind of always on a journey of unpacking her shadow side. She wants everyone to think that she’s innocent and good, but she can’t help but love the spotlight and love the notoriety. That’s kind of at odds with how she wants to portray herself and so she just becomes more and more divided as a person.

There are plenty of different ways you could read between the lines of this show and this season in particular, but is there a lesson in Dory’s downfall?

CR: I think what we’ve unintentionally been trying to say is to not be afraid to know yourself, and I’d love to be like really fancy with that and act like it was all a big plan, but on some unconscious level, I think that we’ve been exploring the depth of Dory’s psyche and how far she’ll go and the extremes within her. In a strange kind of perverse way her whole journey is like a journey of self-realization and that there’s a lot of dark pitfalls and scary places you go through when you really examine yourself.

Obviously you can’t help the timing of the show, but do you think it will hit different for people watching now?

CR: It’s interesting. I think that as far as the quarantine part goes, season one in a strange way maybe speaks to that vibe the most. But then, the Black Lives Matter movement is also in play right now. The intensity of this social movement and the climate right now is so pronounced. Even though we made season three in 2018, there’s a lot of thematic overlap with the justice system and privilege. And so that is almost the thing that takes more of the spotlight in terms of wondering how people absorb the show. We have had no control over how the show’s moved from TBS to HBO Max and then been withheld and all these things so I think we just kind of feel like spectators to how it will be absorbed really right now.

‘Search Party’s third season lands over at HBO Max on June 25.

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Blame it on the sad fact that we’re often remembered for the loudest noise that we make, but it feels weird that Batman is the identifier most attached to Joel Schumacher’s name in articles commenting on the sad news of his death at age 80.

Schumacher has a well-rounded resume filled with interesting films scattered across nearly 40 years as an active director. The high point is doubtlessly his enviable run through the ’80s and the early ’90s, pairing some of the eras shiniest stars — Julia Roberts and members of the “Brat Pack” — with material that challenged them and their developing brands. Count The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and St. Elmo’s Fire among them. Schumacher was basically emo John Hughes. Eventually, though, he pivoted, splitting time between commercial fare — John Grisham legal thrillers like The Client and A Time To Kill, which were, incidentally, the best of that very ’90s sub-genre — and provocative dramas like 8MM and Falling Down that focused on kink, violence, rot, and rage. And then there were those Batman films — Batman Forever and Batman And Robin — memorable and impactful for different reasons, they’re not Schumacher’s best, but they are his loudest noise, and not just because the latter made a thud.

There’s a lot to like about Batman Forever. Val Kilmer is an excellent Bruce Wayne, the rest of the cast is clearly having a lot of fun dining family-style on every scene, and the soundtrack is an all-timer. I’m not just talking about Seal and U2’s contributions. Go listen to Method Man’s “The Riddler” or “Bad Days” by The Flaming Lips — that album is an eclectic batch of delights.

Batman Forever‘s wildly colorful and cartoonish vision of Gotham City is a direct and interesting counter to the grey and bleak gothic color scape of Tim Burton’s more serious Batman films. Unfortunately, those bold style notes get literally iced over and ravaged by weeds in Batman And Robin as the overall film suffers from both a lack of discipline and from paper-thin characters that deliver wince-inducing dialogue. The whole thing overshoots the clever-camp of Schumacher’s first, wasting its stellar cast (George Clooney, Uma Thurman, etc). It’s a spectacle, careening to the screen to make a release date and appease corporate overlords. And so, as the popular criticism goes, they delivered a “toy commercial.” Schumacher has said that he was rushed but took responsibility. He apologized multiple times in the press for the film and also for the dreaded nipples on the batsuit, which he joked would be on his headstone (let’s hope not).

Batman And Robin didn’t sink a studio. I feel like it’s important to say that when remembering the impact of its failure. As box office bombs go, the fallout seems to have been minimal. It made $100 million less than its predecessor and got savaged by critics, but it still made more than $230 million. Really, its legacy is born more from the fact that it erased the franchise’s bulletproof status and gave Warner Bros pause about making new Batman films for nearly a decade after, abandoning plans to let Schumacher make a third film and churning through a few other rumored takes from others. In falling short of expectations, Batman And Robin was like a lot of other comic book movies from that era — films that sucked and/or sank like The Phantom, The Shadow, the first Judge Dredd, and Steel — echoing the message that audiences were tired of being disrespected by the idea that they’d pile into theaters at the first sign of a cape or a cowl no matter how poorly developed the plot or cheesy the action.

Two weeks after it debuted, Batman And Robin got knocked out of the top spot by Men In Black. That’s a wild factoid because those movies feel like they were made in completely different eras. Men In Black is also based on a comic book, but it has multi-dimensional characters, an actual story, and game-changing special effects. It’s fun and funny and aims to please. A year later, Blade opened with a decidedly more grown-up and blood-spattered approach to comic book movies. In 2000, X-Men debuted, nestling mutants within a world that looked a lot like our own. These are three very different movies but they were all seemingly made with the understanding that comic book movies couldn’t survive if they were only geared toward kids and comic book fans. Especially if the idea was to expand out and find success with characters that weren’t wildly familiar icons like Batman and Superman. Jurrasic Park, Independence Day, Con Air, Mission Impossible — this was the competition and the comp.

I’ve written about this previously. It was about 8 years ago, well before the full immensity of the MCU, DC’s shared universe and their current disjointed (but promising) plans were known. I still believe that Batman And Robin is one of the most important comic book films of all time. It’s foundational for the onslaught that has followed, driving pop culture and billions of dollars in business. I’m just not as sure as I used to be about what it all means.

In the 20 years that have followed since that three year run highlighted by Batman And Robin, Men In Black, Blade, and X-Men, comic book movies (and, to an extent TV shows) have ratcheted up the scale of these endeavors and the complexity of their characters and storylines. A transformation largely impacted by the critical success of the trilogy of grounded Batman films that eventually followed Batman And Robin (films that were, incidentally written by David Goyer, who also penned Blade). Adults and teens are the target audience now more than ever. Kids seem tertiary. A full 180 from the mandated focus Schumacher had to make a more family-friendly series of Batman films. These films are still toy commercials, it’s just that the toys are luxury cars, watches, and mobile phones. A fringe benefit of setting nearly all of these films in realistic worlds.

Things aren’t perfect. On top of sometimes heavy-handed product placements, there are missed opportunities to lean into comic book lore’s tradition of speaking, powerfully, to larger issues. Additionally, villains and visuals often feel uninspired — bigger, but not deeper. The homogenization of comic book films is a growing problem, but the floor seems higher than the past era’s ceiling, people get genuine joy from these things, and the potential exists for better and more impactful work (see: HBO’s Watchmen). Though that may be in conflict with a risk-averse business model that seems focused on courting worldwide appeal that insulates these films from the kinds of failures previously seen.

I don’t think it’s conjecture to assume that Joel Schumacher’s Batman And Robin unintentionally became a kind of Keyzer Soze level ghost story that haunted the dreams of studio executives in the late ’90s, sparking this tectonic shift in the way comic book movies (and the business of comic book movies) are approached. What they’ve done with it isn’t so much on him or the film, but you gotta have a spark to make a fire — be it one used for warmth or to burn your house down. I choose to assign that level of import to Batman And Robin because of the anecdotal evidence and because, to be honest, it’s more interesting than the thought of Schumacher as the man who almost killed the Batman franchise. It’s a better, louder, and more lasting noise for a filmmaker who deserves better than to be forever linked to failure.

Some police shows have had a considerable reckoning in the wake of the death of George Floyd in police custody, which has sparked a widespread protest movement in the United States and around the world as governments are pressured to reform departments and prevent more police brutality.

Cops was abruptly canceled after it was pulled from the air, and Live PD got the same treatment shortly afterward. While Brooklyn 99 has not had the same fate, the once-revived NBC comedy has apparently gone back to the drawing board when it came to its next season. Terry Crews said the show scrapped a number of planned episodes in the wake of Floyd’s death and the subsequent national conversation about race and police brutality.

According to Access, Crews said the show’s writers were four episodes into plotting out the next season and decided to throw out what they had been working on, starting over with new context about what the show should be in light of the changing perception of police on television and its impact on an audience’s perception of what they do.

“We’ve had a lot of somber talks about it and deep conversations and we hope through this we’re going to make something that will be truly groundbreaking this year. We have an opportunity and we plan to use it in the best way possible,” Terry revealed. “Our show-runner Dan Goor, they had four episodes all ready to go and they just threw them in the trash. We have to start over. Right now we don’t know which direction it’s going to go in.”

Crews also spoke about his own experiences with the police, explaining that he’s always been seen as a “threat” in any role he plays because of his size and physical fitness. But he said that’s gotten him into uncomfortable situations with the police in the past.

“You’ve seen me, in movies or whatever but before all this, I was always a threat. I would be going to the mall or going different places. I’ve had guns pointed at me by police officers in L.A. This was before I was famous. The thing is, they had the wrong guy,” Terry explained to Scott and Kit.

“It’s something that every black man has been through and it’s hard to really try to get other people to understand. I have to say, right here, what is going on right now is Black America’s Me Too movement. We always knew this was happening, but now white people are understanding,” Terry shared.

One episode of Brooklyn 99 did take that lesson to heart and have his character confronted by a white police officer. But often the show has not done the best job of recreating how police are perceived elsewhere, especially in the Black community. A season one plot line, you may remember, involved a contest between two officers racing to arrest as many people as possible. It’s just a TV show, of course, but it seems that Crews and the others involved with Brooklyn 99 understand the opportunity they have with the show to tell different kinds of stories moving forward.

[via Access]

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