Footnotes to Plato

I've accepted an invitation to join the new Footnotes to Plato [edit: "Cogito"] blog at The Conversation. As yet, none of the blog members have dipped their toes in the water and begun writing there, but it's an interesting - and certainly diverse - group of philosophers based at Australian universities. My author profile at The Conversation is here.

I'll link here to any and all future publications of mine that appear on The Conversation's website.

Amanda Marcotte, Black Widow, and Avengers: Age of Ultron

While I'm giving credit to Amanda Marcotte - a cultural commentator with whom I've sometimes disagreed in the past, and one with whom I'll doubtless have disagreements in the future - she also offered some charity and clarity in recently discussing Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Here, the issue was an allegedly sexist representation of the Black Widow, when it's revealed in her dialogue with Bruce Banner that she was forcibly sterilized at the command of her political masters. I share some of Marcotte's annoyance at the frequent valorization of motherhood in our culture, but I also share her understanding that forced sterilization is a terrible event for any woman to have to endure. Moreover, as Marcotte points out, we are given plenty of other information about what else the character was put through in her back story and the deeds she's carried out that make her (in her own eyes) a kind of monster. The attempts to find sexism in the relevant movie scene show an overly hostile or suspicious approach to the movie mixed with (as Marcotte makes clear) a degree of cinematic illiteracy.

Age of Ultron came in for a lot of flak on grounds relating to its supposed sexual and racial politics, but none of the flak really seems to have much merit. In an email exchange with Jerry Coyne, I tried to get clear what the issues seemed to be, and (with my permission) Jerry published my comments in a post a few weeks ago, where he discussed the whole kerfuffle. With one spelling correction, I'll repeat what I said in order to get it all in one place:

I do have some insight into the background, having seen the movie and knowing a bit about the Marvel Comics stories that it draws on. There seem to be four things that have led to the attacks:

1. The movie is as violent (in a stylised way, etc.) as you’d expect of a superhero movie. There’s a scene, as I mention in my review, where it makes some fun of male competitiveness, etc., but as you’d expect a lot of it consists of battle scenes. [Jonathan] McIntosh has been banging on about this on Twitter: “toxic masculinity” and so on.

2. The main female superheroine is the Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson. In her backstory, she was a Russian spy, trained to be a perfect/near-superhuman assassin before she turned good, etc., etc. Some people seem to object to the revelation that she was trained and brainwashed from childhood, which I suppose might arguably deny her agency and responsibility or something. Second, she is captured at one stage by the villain – the malevolent artificial intelligence, Ultron – creating a “damsel in distress” situation. Third, it’s revealed that she was forcibly sterilised as part of the process of brainwashing/training her. In a scene with Bruce Banner (the Hulk), with whom there’s a romantic sub-plot, she reveals this, and she comments that both of them are monsters. This has been taken to indicate that Whedon thinks that women who can’t bear children are monsters. In context, that’s not what she’s saying at all. She’s reassuring him, in response to his fear that any children he had would be freaks, that she can’t have children anyway. She also tells him that both of them are, in their ways, monstrous.

3. At one stage Tony Stark/Iron Man – who is always a bit of an ass – apparently jokes (I missed this entirely) that if he were in charge he’d institute the right of primae noctis. This is apparently viewed as a rape joke.

4. Whedon is supposed to be a racist for presenting two characters – Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch – as Eastern European but not of any other particular ethnicity beyond the fictional Balkan country they are from. In the comics, they were long supposed to be the children of Magneto (who is Jewish) and his Roma wife, and they were brought up as Roma. Eliding this supposedly makes Whedon/Marvel Studios racist. I liked the connection with Magneto myself, and I regret that Marvel has now altered it in the comics as well, but much of what is going on here relates to intellectual property rights. The movie rights to Magneto are held by FOX, not by Marvel Studios. The IP thing with these companies/properties is a mess.

Some of these points about the movie could be worth civil, subtle discussion by aficionados, but nothing in them could possibly excuse the way Whedon has been abused.

I don't propose to go more deeply into these points. Some might be arguable, or at least worth discussion, but they are all dubious, and, once again, at a minimum none merit the abuse that was handed out to Whedon on Twitter.

For the sake of completeness and fairness, I should note that Whedon subsequently played down the abuse as a factor in his decision to leave Twitter. I gather that many people think this was disingenuous, but I'm inclined to take it more or less at face value. It seems that it was not just the abuse on this particular occasion that got Whedon to leave so much as Twitter's ongoing effect in distracting him - not only the abusive comments, but even comments expressing praise. As he says (see below), he is used to being "attacked by militant feminists" so that in itself would not have run him off Twitter.

That makes sense to me. Twitter can, indeed, be irritating and distracting. To be honest, I sometimes feel that it's bad for me, helping make me a more anxious, exhausted, distracted, bad-tempered person than I want to be ... and I'm sometimes tempted to leave it, even though I find it useful.

Still, none of that excuses the abuse Whedon received, even if that particular wave of inexcusable abuse was not, in some simple, direct cause-and-effect way, the cause of his departure.

I don't necessarily agree with every point Whedon makes about the internet, Twitter, and the current culture wars, but I must also note (and I share) his exasperation with feminists and liberals who waste time and resources by attacking their allies rather than showing solidarity:

"Believe me, I have been attacked by militant feminists since I got on Twitter. That’s something I’m used to. Every breed of feminism is attacking every other breed, and every subsection of liberalism is always busy attacking another subsection of liberalism, because god forbid they should all band together and actually fight for the cause."

Yes, quite. Later in the same interview, he expresses frustration at the endless, politicized hyper-analysis that he receives:

"I’ve said before, when you declare yourself politically, you destroy yourself artistically," he said. "Because suddenly that’s the litmus test for everything you do — for example, in my case, feminism. If you don’t live up to the litmus test of feminism in this one instance, then you’re a misogynist. It circles directly back upon you." 

That noted, these issues do need to be discussed. But they can be discussed carefully and charitably, with some media literacy (such as I've praised Marcotte for) and without the layers of hostile parsing and decrying, and the "hate and then hate and then hate".

Finally, Marcotte's piece makes a fair point - which I've also made in the past - that it would help if there were more women in leading roles in, for example, movies based on Marvel's Avengers. I'm pleased that there will be a movie based on Captain Marvel, a character I've wanted to see in the Marvel/Disney movies for a long time.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein - review with spoilers

Following yesterday's post about Starship Troopers, I finished reading the book. To keep all this in one place, I'll self-plagiarise, with small adjustments, some of what I said yesterday, before making some observations about the book as I encountered it this time round. I need to talk about some of its overall structure, which inevitably means that there will be spoilers for people who have never read it.

Starship Troopers is one of Robert A. Heinlein's most loved, yet most reviled works. It won Heinlein a "best novel" Hugo Award in 1960, but it is despised by most academic critics and many others.

From my viewpoint, it is a key novel in Heinlein's oeuvre, but also in science fiction's tradition as a literature of ideas. Does that mean I actually agree with its ideas? No. But the book is written off by many people who seem unwilling to grapple with its merits, its philosophy, and its complexities. Up to a point, it can reasonably be viewed as militarist propaganda. At the same time, it is an important and thoughtful didactic novel that deserves careful, imaginative engagement - and some close attention and nuanced discussion.

The book features an ongoing interstellar war between humankind and the alien "Bugs", but it does not portray the Bugs' ultimate defeat. As the novel ends, the war continues, despite some military successes for the human side. It is also notable that no justification is given for the war beyond the rival territorial ambitions of the two species. The implication is that war is inevitable, and must be accepted - and we must plan accordingly. Moral systems that condemn war outright or justify it only in narrow circumstances (as in the scholastic tradition of just war theory) are non-starters. For Heinlein, it seems, morality has to work with inevitabilities, and warfare is one of them. That is going to be an unpalatable message for many of us, and to that extent the book deserves its reputation for militarism.

If the story is not of military victory against the odds, what is it really about? The narrative voice gives us a clue: it is narrated in the first person by its protagonist, Juan Rico, who clearly survives the action and is now reflecting - from a position of greater wisdom and self-understanding - on his own life trajectory. He tells a story of the formation and building of a military officer, from his confused decision to enlist through the accumulation of events that moulded him into a man who can lead other fighting men.

Thus, the story is not humanity's war against the Bugs, but, rather, an individual's psychological (as well as physical) growth through hardship and dedication. As Rico undergoes the rigours of military training and combat, he learns - and we are shown - that military life is an honourable and (if things go well amidst the dangers) satisfying choice. Again, many of us may find that an unpalatable message - one that we might naturally tend to resist - but Heinlein builds an impressive case: this is done not so much through the book's heavy-handed passages of debate and instruction as through the accumulation of events that we share with Rico as he endures and matures.

Rico tells us about the events in a way that is slightly distanced from them - there is a certain amount of personal reflection woven through his narration, and the prose is not quite as thick and gritty as we might expect from a third-person style of narration focused on the character's moment-by-moment thoughts and perceptions. Nonetheless, we are shown the hardships of military life in considerable detail; indeed, Heinlein ups the ante by presenting us with a military system that is supposed to be extraordinarily efficient, but also very brutal by modern standards, with routine use of flogging as a punishment. (Some of the most off-putting material in the book, from my perspective, is rather crude propaganda for corporal punishment, not only in the military but also in the process of child-rearing.)

Notoriously, Starship Troopers portrays a society in which the right to vote is granted only to retired military personnel - not necessarily those who fought on the frontline, but anyone who volunteered for service and successfully served out their term. This limited franchise is defended not as a reward for virtue or as a recognition of any form of intellectual superiority (the latter idea is explicitly dismissed); rather, the idea is that those who volunteered and served have demonstrated they are exceptionally responsible people who place the welfare of the many ahead of their own personal safety. Thus, they can be trusted with the vote. Supposedly, this system works well in producing wise political decisions.

Since the story is set in the future, Heinlein can postulate new developments in human knowledge, not limited to technological advances. Most importantly, moral philosophy has supposedly become a mathematically exact science. This is bluff, of course, and despite much talk of mathematical demonstrations the classroom debates that we are shown involve rather banal and sloppy arguments. Still, this device enables Heinlein to suggest the possibility of a single true moral theory (at least for human beings) based on various levels of survival: individual, familial, social, etc., up to the level of the species itself. Just how all this is supposed to be reconciled is never explained (perhaps just as well!), but we're assured that the future society can somehow justify all its political structures and decisions, including the various rituals, customs, and quirks of the military.

Although this is bluff, it works to the extent that what we are actually shown (or at least told about in detail) is consistent with the sketchy theory. Rico really does seem to mature as events move on for him, the military forces of humanity really do seem to operate efficiently, the regime of harsh training and discipline seems justified insofar as it produces desired results, and so on. All of this could doubtless be criticised from numerous viewpoints - not least one that notes an element of sentimentalising of senseless violence - but the book is, by and large, successful on its own terms. At a minimum, it is a highly skilled exercise in recruitment propaganda: it shows military life as hard, rigorous, and unglamorous, yet gives that a sort of glamour or allure of its own.

No one could claim that Starship Troopers is an anti-war book that merely shows the honour and the plight of the troops. It openly embraces the necessity of war. Again, that might be an unpalatable (and perhaps untenable) message. However, some critical readings or comments that I've encountered strike me as exercises in avoidance of the book's genuine literary skill and power. Even potentially embarrassing scenes, as when Rico's forty-something father follows his son into military service near the end of the book, are handled rather deftly.

Starship Troopers was rejected by Scribner's for its series of juveniles by Heinlein, and, indeed, despite its relatively young protagonist, this does not feel like a book written primarily for an adolescent market. For younger readers, it offers something of the mystique of military life, but it is also a novel of ideas - primarily ideas in political and moral philosophy - aimed at an audience of all ages. Palatable or not in its ideas and its occasionally over-explicit didacticism, it puts science fiction tropes to serious use in examining deep questions about the nature of a good society and a good life. It merits thought, and perhaps even some hostile scrutiny, but it is not an achievement that we can dismiss.

Currently reading Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

It is many, many years since I read this novel, which is one of Heinlein's most loved and most reviled works. Starship Troopers won Heinlein a "best novel" Hugo Award, but it is despised by most academic critics and many others.

From my viewpoint, it is a key novel in Heinlein's oeuvre, but also in science fiction's tradition as a literature of ideas. Does that mean I actually agree with its ideas? No. There is much, I think, to view with horror! Yet, this book is written off by many people who seen unwilling to grapple with its merits, it philosophy, and its complexities. Up to a point, it can reasonably be viewed as militarist propaganda. But at the same time, it is an important and thoughtful didactic novel that deserves careful, imaginative engagement and some nuanced discussion. I have about 50 pages to go, and I'll give it some sort of review very soon.

Amanda Marcotte on Game of Thrones - major spoilers if you click on the links

Amanda Marcotte is undoubtedly not my favourite cultural commentator, and she sometimes takes serious missteps. There will be times when I'll want to criticise her judgment. This, however, is not one of those times.

Credit to her where it's due: whatever her faults and past mistakes, she sometimes shows an appreciation of contemporary art and entertainment that is superior to most. At her best, she has an ability to see and explain the complexity of what's in front of her nose when she's looking at, say, a statue, a movie, or a television episode. When she's in the zone, she resists vulgar, crassly politicized interpretations, rather than trying to rationalize them; yet she still provides some sharp commentary.

This week, while many other people were writing pretentious, censorious pieces about Game of Thrones - often seeming to rationalise essentially irrational responses - Marcotte wrote a couple of Slate articles that largely defend the show, and specifically defend its most recent episode.

I don't necessarily accept every general point that she makes in (major spoilers in the link!) the first of these pieces, although where she is critical of GoT I do see the basis for her argument. However (same warning about major spoilers), the second article gives the first more credibility: it is exactly right - exactly what was needed in the circumstances - and it shows a strong intuitive and intellectual understanding of the TV series' dramatic intentions. That gives her more credibility in general.

If she can keep producing analyses as detailed, careful, and critically sensitive as the second of these pieces, in particular, then more strength to her arm.

Ben Radford reviews Mad Max: Fury Road - and some thoughts about media franchises

Ben Radford has a good review here. Watch out for spoilers!

Toward the end, he has some interesting observations about tried and true franchises, with a plethora of movies coming out this year from the likes of Terminator, Star Wars, and Jurassic Park:

As I walked out of the theater, however, I noticed ads for upcoming films whose franchises began many decades ago, including Jurassic World, Star Wars, and the Terminator. As long as there's an audience for these characters and stories, the films will continue to be remade and inspire sequels (don't think for a moment that Peter Jackson's seemingly insuperable version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy won't be superceded in ten or twenty years by a new director with a different vision and a whole new suite of computer-generated tools at her disposal; similarly, the next generation will almost certainly have a Harry Potter not played by Daniel Radcliffe). There's nothing inherently wrong with this, aside from the countless new and original screenplays that would make great films if the studios were willing to take a chance on something that hadn't already proven to be a moneymaker.

Yup. I think some of these franchises have become so popular, and continue to generate stories, because they each speak to something deep in us - or at something least deep in Western culture. Just what that might be will vary in each case, but they have all become culturally resonant, iconic, almost mythic narratives, and it is difficult to create new stories and characters to compete with them for the public's imaginative investment.

Still, it happens. Look at the iconic status that has now been achieved by Game of Thrones (or A Song of Ice and Fire, if you prefer the prose fiction version). There will always be new ideas for characters, worlds, and situations that also achieve this kind of near-mythic status, but it's a challenge. Many very good ideas will likely fail just because of timing, failures of execution, and the like. But others will succeed imaginatively and commercially.

For a time, I wrote media tie-in novels with a bit of success - at least enough success to show that I can do the job competently and that I sort of know what I'm talking about with all this. The Terminator trilogy that I produced about 12 years ago gained some credibility with fans, but my King Kong novel, Kong Reborn, really had no impact - not because there was anything terribly wrong with it (I believe) so much as its timing. It appeared shortly after the tragic death of Byron Preiss, who had commissioned it, and shortly before his publishing empire went bankrupt. (Meanwhile, my main interests were moving in other directions.)

I'm glad to have had the opportunity to work with some of our era's great iconic characters and to create some characters of my own for their worlds. As for King Kong... Radford's point certainly applies. I expect that sooner or later someone will have another go at a King Kong movie, superseding the rather impressive 2005 one directed by Peter Jackson. Meanwhile, there's a sort of prequel, Kong: Skull Island, scheduled for release in 2017. I'll look forward to it.

Currently reading Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction by H. Bruce Franklin

This 1980 study of Robert A. Heinlein and his work is still valuable, though Heinlein went on to publish another four novels, including a very solid SF adventure novel, Friday, and an amusing, Hugo-nominated fantasy, Job. Nothing about that late body of work, however, invalidates Franklin's approach.

Franklin is especially good at explicating Heinlein's fiction against the background of socio-political currents in the US during the period from the 1930s to the 1970s. Sometimes his readings seem politicized to the extent of overreaching and distorting, but Franklin usually wears his Marxist political ideology lightly (and where it does show through, it leads him to opinions, such as those relating to the ills of post-war US foreign policy, that actually strike me as persuasive).

Some of the gems include a careful account of why I Will Fear No Evil (perhaps my least favourite Heinlein book, and Franklin seems to dislike it even more) found and entertained a large audience, and a detailed, relatively sympathetic, thematic analysis of The Number of the Beast. The latter is a book that I should dislike on principle, with its endless self-reference and apparent self-indulgence... and yet, the characters are fun and likeable, and the story can be enjoyed on its own terms if you're sufficiently a fan of Heinlein's earlier fiction and the other SF and fantasy worlds that are endlessly referenced. Someone approaching it without that background would, I imagine, be hopelessly lost and quickly out of patience with it.

I wasn't sure how useful a 35-y.o. critical study of Heinlein would be. I'd dipped into Franklin's book many years ago (I think... I read a lot of SF criticism in some earlier phases of my life), but it made no lasting impression. However, it does offer thoughtful, plausible perspectives on Heinlein's fiction, identifying elements that might be elided in less historically and politically savvy readings. It is written straightforwardly - to provide information and express ideas, rather than impress with its author's cleverness and erudition - and it will have insights for almost any student or fan of Heinlein's work. It's fitting that this is still considered an important book its field.

Hugo Awards voters packet

I've just downloaded most of what is in the Hugo Voters Packet, which became available to members of the World Science Fiction Convention a couple of days ago. Although it's now most unlikely that I'll make it to the Worldcon in Spokane (a pity, but that's the way it goes), I do intend to vote for the Hugo Awards, at least in what I still think of as the main categories: i.e., the various categories of prose fiction.

I'll be reading as much of the material as I can, and I'll be voting squarely on what seem to me the merits of what I read. As is well known, there has been much controversy over the Hugos this year, and some people are even urging that we all vote for No Award in many of the categories. In my opinion, that would be an extreme reaction. It's unfortunate if some outstanding material has not ended up on the nomination lists because of politicized campaigning by some parties, but as long as there is material that I consider good enough to deserve an award I'll vote for it.

The Hugos have always been partly a popularity contest - i.e. popularity within the amorphous (but somewhat consistent) group of people who join the Worldcon from year to year. Very often, awards have been won by work that was probably not the best of the year, judged by the criteria that professional critics might use. And often, I expect, some deserving work has been overlooked. (That certainly applies to other popular awards with which I have some experience!)

Whatever the extent of the genuine problems, there has been a massive overreaction this year by a group of people (or, seemingly, two rather different groups of people) who are disenchanted.

I can think that those people have greatly exaggerated whatever real problems existed with the Hugos - and that they have made things worse by introducing an unprecedented level of blatant, politicized campaigning - without  wanting to take part in a campaign of retaliation that could destroy the awards. Further: I can think that those people are probably wrong, misguided, thinking about the issues ahistorically, acting counterproductively, etc., while also thinking that they, or at least most of them, are decent, sincere individuals who are doing their (misguided) best and may even have identified some good material that would normally be overlooked. As to the latter, we'll see. Meanwhile, some of these people have been subjected to personal vilification and abuse, harassment, and even death threats; there is utterly no place for any of this.

Once again, in any event, I plan to play it straight. I will vote for material on its merits, and I'll try to review some of it here.

Mad Max: Fury Road - shortish review with various vague spoilers

You are warned about the vague spoilers.

Okay, I loved this movie, though it will not be for everyone. Most of the action consists of two long, epic, expertly directed road battles. The pace seldom lets up, and if this causes a problem it's just that the various crashes, gunshots, explosions, and hand-to-hand beatings take place with such unrelenting speed and density that you need to concentrate to keep up.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a quintessence of its franchise - think of the vehicular battle scenes in Mad Max II (aka The Road Warrior) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome dialed up to eleven.

Indeed, if this movie had appeared in the late 1980s we might have wondered what was the point. Although it is even better than its predecessors in its loud, catastrophic, metal-wrenching effects - all set against a stark, hot, dusty desert backdrop - there is a sense in which it would once have been simply more of the same, or even a kind of devolution. But appearing thirty years after Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Fury Road is not so much a repetition or a dumbing down as a brutally beautiful distillation.

Importantly, the movie stands on its own. Anything you need to know about the background is conveyed transparently enough, without a need to see any of the earlier instalments of the series. Thus, it's an entry point: younger viewers could watch it, then go back and enjoy the original three movies, treating them more or less as prequels.

The events of Fury Road could, indeed, take place at any time after the original Mad Max. I.e., there is little to suggest that they happen after the events of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome: for all we know, they could happen even before Mad Max II, or between it and Beyond Thunderdome. This is not about further development of Max Rockatansky as a character so much as another example of Max getting caught up in a series of events in which he emerges as a culture hero - contributing to one of the new, more civilized societies that supersede the brutal epoch of warlords following a nuclear apocalypse triggered by warfare over oil.

If anything, Max seemed younger to me than he did in Beyond Thunderdome (though Mel Gibson was somewhat younger at the time than Tom Hardy is now). Messing things up for anyone who wants internal consistency and realism, it becomes clear that a considerable time (seemingly a couple of decades or more) has passed since the events of Mad Max... and yet, the hero does not seem much older. Never mind: it has never been crucial to this franchise that we are able to reconcile the larger framework of events in a literal way. More generally, the Mad Max franchise thrives on symbolism and visual aesthetics rather than any commitment to continuity.

As is now widely known, the plot of Fury Road involves an effort to rescue a handful of "wives" (basically sex slaves) of a crazy theocratic warlord, Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Burn, who also played the Toecutter in the original Mad Max). Immortan Joe is, more or less, the Australian desert's answer to Darth Vader.

The five beautiful, scantily-clad young women (scarcely, it appears, more than adolescent girls) are initially timid and helpless (not to mention more or less interchangeable) as spectacular battles are fought over possession of them. As events continue, however, they become much more than eye candy for the gaze of whoever is interested: they are gradually differentiated as individuals, while also being shown as pulling themselves together, doing their best to assist in the running battles, and gaining in determination, grit, and competence.

Charlize Theron co-stars as Imperator Furiosa, a high-ranking functionary for Immortan Joe who commandeers his massive "war rig" to transport herself and the wives to safety. Furiosa is a kickass strategist and warrior, though she is not a match for Max himself when they initially come to blows. That episode aside, it's refreshing to see such a formidable female character (think of the Australian desert's answer to Alien's Warrant Officer Ripley). Theron/Furiosa never quite steals the show from Hardy's impressive version of Mad Max, but she is a powerful, likewise impressive, off-sider for him.

Even more refreshing, perhaps, are the tough, brave women from whose clan Furiosa was stolen years before (when she was only a child). Just for once, in a Hollywood movie, we see women of middle (and older) years represented as competent planners, culture builders, and fighters.

Amongst it all, however, Max is the dominant figure. As in the previous movies, he is a complex, dangerous, yet essentially decent man: he is tortured by what he has seen and done in a terrifying past, extraordinarily competent in all the skills and ways needed for physical struggle and survival, and devastatingly destructive to his enemies. Again - as in the previous movies - his talents are all important in defeating the crazies and warlords, enabling a better society to come about. But (again, as in the earlier movies) he does not take part in the new social order for which he has been a catalyst and a liberator. As he edges off at the end, with barely an acknowledgment from the other survivors, he appears doomed to go on roaming the red-and-brown desert, finding sustenance where he can, and endlessly clashing with motorized barbarians and evildoers.

As I observed a decade ago, writing about Mad Max and the Mad Max franchise for The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, "The old civilization had gone, and there seems to be no place for such men in any new one that he has helped bring about."

Latest on Box Office Mojo - Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, and more

The US Box Office this past weekend was dominated by the new musical comedy Pitch Perfect 2, which rode all over Mad Max: Fury Road. The latter nonetheless made a whopping $45.5 million over the weekend, as shown in the actual figures for the weekend (which update/correct the figures in the article I first linked to).

All the box office figures for Avengers: Age of Ultron show it not doing quite as well in the US domestic box office as the original Avengers movie, though it still looks headed for half a billion or more dollars. What interests me about all the figures, though, isn't any of this - it's the monstrous figure tucked away of nearly $160 million for Age of Ultron in its first six days in China. This continues the trend for China to become an enormous, expanding market for Hollywood action movies, especially, but not solely, superhero movies. These are now being aimed largely at the Asian markets, especially China, but also Japan and South Korea - with increasing use of settings in those countries, sometimes with local star actors, and with care taken not to offend local sensibilities.