Tag: movies

The Dark Herald Reviews: Superman

The ghost of Brightburn haunts this movie.

Brightburn, in case you missed it, was an “evil Superboy” movie from 2019 written by one of James Gunn’s brothers and produced by Gunn himself. Its premise: given infinite power, man will always choose evil. We’re asked to accept—without evidence—that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

This tired adage fallacy is either an unfalsifiable hypothesis at best or glorified folk wisdom at worst, but it’s generally treated as an ironclad law of the human race which is bullshit.

That mindset—cynical, reductionist—has been poisoning Superman stories for years now. Yes, a villain with Superman’s powers could potentially be a compelling threat. But that’s not what we’re dealing with here. What we keep getting instead is Superman himself corrupted by power.

Based on that — and other reasons I won’t get into — I had serious reservations when James Gunn was handed the keys to the DC Universe.

And no, it didn’t meet my worst expectations. But it didn’t come close to my best hopes, either. Gunn didn’t make a Superman movie—he made a James Gunn movie. Which, if we’re being honest, is all anyone really expected of him anyway.

So yes, this is a bad Superman movie.

But I’ll grant this much—it’s a good Clark Kent movie.

Read the whole thing at the Arkhaven substack.

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The Legend at Work

You’re not going to want to miss this one. The movie is based on the first of The Legend’s Levon Cade novels, which we will be publishing collected in leather as part of the upcoming Black Warrant campaign, which will be launched in April. I want to get the standard Hypergamouse books delivered before the Chuck Dixon campaign begins.

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An Interview with The Legend

Fandom Pulse interviewed The Legend Chuck Dixon about his forthcoming film, A Working Man, which launches on March 28th. It’s based on the first book in the Levon Cade series, Levon’s Trade.

Chuck Dixon is a prolific comic book creator having created the infamous Batman villain Bane and crafting the popular Knightfall storyline for DC Comics. He’s also had lengthy runs on the Punisher, Robin, Batgirl, and helped create the Birds of Prey. He even did a comic book adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit as well as adaptations of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time. But he’s also done yeoman’s work with novels crafting an entire time-traveling science fiction series in Bad Times as well as his vigilante thriller series Levon Cade, which is being adapted into a film starring Jason Statham and titled A Working Man.

Dixon spoke with Fandom Pulse about the upcoming film, his relationship with Sylvester Stallone’s Balboa Productions, which is producing A Working Man, and his views on wokeness following the second election of President Donald Trump and how he sees it affecting Hollywood.

Fandom Pulse (FP): You published Levon’s Trade over a decade ago, was there any particular reason why Balboa Productions wanted to adapt this first novel of your series?

Chuck Dixon: I sent both my Levon Cade books and my Bad Times series to Sly and he liked both and discussed with me plans to make either films or a series of both of them. There was, for a moment, a suggestion from him that I recast Bad Time with the Expendables for a feature film. Time traveling Expendables!

Anyhow, Sly decided Levon was the way to go as it wouldn’t require a large budget. It’s not hard to see why the books appealed to Sly. Levon’s the kind of hero he’s played so many times and the books are pure action with an emphasis on fast pace and rapid character development.

FP: Do you know why they decided to retitle it A Working Man instead of Levon’s Trade?

Dixon: No idea. The marketing department tested some titles and this one was chosen from the results, I imagine. A shame since the Levon books have the sequel titles built into them.

As Darkstream viewers know, The Legend and I have been signed to write the script for a supernatural action thriller for an Asian film production company. The script is mostly complete, but rest assured that we’ve made sure to retain the rights to do it as a comic or a novel if the movie doesn’t get made in a reasonable time frame.

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Bond. Jane Bond.

It doesn’t bode well that the Amazon producers’ opinions were so vehemently disregarded by the people who preserved the Bond legacy and maintained it as an engine of profitability. It bodes even less well that instead of taking that into consideration, those opinions were the reason for ejecting them from the franchise.

Amazon acquired MGM in 2022, gaining distribution rights to the films, but creative control remained with Eon Productions under Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. The duo resisted Amazon’s proposed spin-offs, including a Moneypenny series and a female-led 007 project, preferring to maintain James Bond’s traditional narrative.

Tensions between Broccoli, Wilson, and Amazon executives escalated in late 2024. In December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Broccoli privately told friends she did not trust “algorithm-centric Amazon with a character she helped to mythologize through big-screen storytelling and gut instinct.” She also described the status of the next Bond film as dire, with no script, no story, and no actor chosen for the role. In the same conversation, referring to the company while among executives, she said, “These people are f**king idiots.”

The comment enraged Bezos, prompting him to take drastic action, the Hollywood Reporter stated. “He read her quote in the Journal and got on the phone and said, ‘I don’t care what it costs, get rid of her,’” an insider told the magazine. Soon afterwards, Amazon struck a deal worth nearly $1 billion to remove Broccoli and Wilson from creative control and bring the franchise under Amazon MGM Studios.

Obviously we don’t know, we can’t know, how this will play out yet. But the most dire sign of all is this: Amazon has not fired every single person who had anything to do with Dem Rangz o’ Power.

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Arkhaven, The Legend, and Levon Cade

Fandom Pulse has an exclusive on Arkhaven Comics and Chuck Dixon getting the crew back together to turn Levon’s Trade, aka A Working Man starring Jason Statham, into a graphic novel.

Chuck Dixon wowed the world in early January when the trailer or A Working Man dropped, a new film based on his Levon Cade novels. Now, he’s partnering with Arkhaven Comics to adapt the first novel, Levon’s Trade into a graphic novel.

While Chuck Dixon is well known for his comic book work as a legendary creator of Bane in the Batman lore, and as one of if not the most prolific writers of all time, until Jasom Statham was announced as Levon Cade for the new film, A Working Man, many didn’t know that Dixon was also an accomplished novelist with several works, including a twelve-book series with Levon Cade.

The first book, Levon’s Trade boasts a 4.4 star average rating on Amazon with more than 700 reviews, a very popular installment for the author. A new review by Douglas Marolla calls the series “great” and highlights the character work Dixon put into not only Cade, but several of the supporting characters.

A Working Man has so much buzz already that comedians are incorporating the film into their routines, with poignant commentary on Jason Statham’s past roles combined with this one.

Arkhaven will announce a crowdfunding campaign for this and another much-anticipated Chuck Dixon project, but not until after the standard Hypergamouse books ship out to the backers.

A working man’s life is often hard.

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The True Anti-Tolkien

George RR Martin isn’t the anti-Tolkien. It’s the denizens of the Hellmouth who are desecrating JRR Tolkien’s intellectual legacy, as Fandom Pulse points out that The War of the Rohirrim is much worse, and much more intentionally subversive, than its box office failure would indicate.

Hera is kidnapped by Wulf and rescued by a strong female shield maiden-to-. The maiden goes toe to toe in combat with Wulf and his forces and rescues Hera singlehandedly. No men are required.

Later, when Helm dies, his one regret (even though both of his sons died horribly in this conflict) is that he didn’t listen to Hera. He affirms, despite her having done no deeds to deserve it, that she should be the one to lead her people, calling her both “cunning” and “strong” to unsubtly reiterate the point of the strong female lead.

However, the institution of marriage is struck again as the film progresses. During the final siege of the keep, rewritten as Wulf not being present but in battle with Frealaf in the original Lord of the Rings lore, Hera puts on a wedding dress to confront Wulf.

While it’s yet another cringy moment in which she goes toe-to-toe with a warrior man, fighting and having no problem being stronger than him in combat, the most subversive element is again an attack on the sacrament of marriage.

While it could be construed at first that Hera is willing to sacrifice herself for her people, she doesn’t. She simply kills Wulf with the help of the shield maiden woman, showing again that women can be stronger than men.

Wulf mocks Hera asking why he would marry her now. She once again reiterates that she will marry no man. This is where it gets creepy as Hera says she is wed “to death.”

Everything is sacrificed on their subversive altar. Literally everything. Heirs and families really should think twice before accepting riches to destroy the legacy their predecessors have left them. While it’s good to see that there is no audience for these absurd abominations, they never should have been made in the first place. And the opportunity cost is severe; there is plenty of room in Middle Earth lore for a dozen movies and series that will never be made because the Hellmouth is totally incapable of respecting the source material.

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When a Pet Thinks He’s a Player

The Hellmouth is always quick to put him in his place:

 In the Heights just launched this weekend.  During what was supposed to be a routine promotional interview the Director, Jon Chu was suddenly being roasted by some sow for not having enough Black Latinos in this movie.  Vox (the crap one), NY Times, The Independent, the WaPo, and the rest of the Woketard media were on the attack over this horrifying issue of “Colorism” that no one had cared about before last week.  Lin-Manuel Miranda finally apologized for this hideous malfeasance on his part.

That is the official story.

The Dark Herald proceeds to explain the actual reason Lin-Manuel Miranda suddenly fell out of favor with the paparazzi.

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The Shadow Cannot Maintain

The Dark Herald explains why the IP holders of the D&D property are destroying the appeal of the Drow, and even more so, the character of the Drow renegade, Drizzt Do’Urden

The problem is that Drizzt was intriguing to D&D players because he was the only good member of a race that was well-known for being unspeakably evil. You hated running into even a single Drow if you were in a low-level campaign.

It was the fundamental dichotomy of his character that drew people to him. A child of the spider goddess who followed a path of light was somebody you wanted to find out more about.

What made him choose the life of a complete outcast? A traitor to be tortured and murdered by his own people but hated and feared by all else because he was a member of that race. His character archetype is that of the Renegade Hero* and it is their rebellion that fascinates an audience.

The problem is that retards like the people who write for Screenrant are so wrapped up in their Delulu Land paradigm that they can’t be made to understand that turning the Drow into just a bunch of subterranean indigenous people with BLACK skin and cultural differences that white colonizers from Greyhawk or the Wherever Realms can’t acknowledge as being valid utterly destroys the character of Drizzt.

It’s his rebellion against the fundamental evil of his own race that drew his audience to him. His evil race is the very foundation of his character. Take that away from him and he’s just some loner.

We all know that the shadow cannot create. But we’re learning that it cannot even successfully maintain what it holds. It inevitably destroys everything it touches over time.

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The Pain Remains

It’s not over until Jeff Bezos says it’s over. The Dark Herald manfully continues to suffer through the relentless water torture that can’t even rise to the level of a generic and mediocre High Fantasy pastiche:

The series is unsalvageable, everyone involved knows it. You don’t have an exodus of on-camera talent unless they are trying to avoid the taint of association. The Tolkien fans are long gone. Even Hollywood has been forced swallow the bitter pill that the Woke audience they want doesn’t exist. By no possible measure is The Rings of Power a success yet they have to keep doing this. The makers are now going with the minimum risk of remaking Jackson’s Lord of the Rings without knowing how to do that. Whatever financial sleight of hand that was used to finance this has clearly locked Amazon into a multi-season commitment.

Every episode of this show is bad, no getting around that, but one of them had to be the worst. This one was it. They will have to build a high mountain indeed to top this heap of shit. This is the stupidest, most incompetent episode of the entire series so far.

The Legendarium. The Cinematography. The Spacial Awareness. The Basic Physics. The Narrative comprehension. The Avoiding gross demi-incest stuff. This one got every single thing wrong.

Except the title. That was picture perfect.

“Doomed to Die.”

I have to admit, I wasn’t even remotely tempted to watch Dem Rangz last season. And now, well, I just feel bad for Dark Herald and all of the poor actors and actresses are involved. And, of course, for Tolkien’s heirs, who are receiving an object lesson in why Christopher Tolkien was always such a stickler for respecting his father’s legendary work.

“What could possibly go wrong?” You know someone, probably a lawyer, said somewhere along the path that led to Amazon acquiring the rights to ruthlessly and relentlessly rape the literature.

And now we know.

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He Jumped on the Grenade

Greater love for his fellows hath no man than the Dark Herald, who is suffering through the second season of The Rings of Power on our behalf:

It’s been two years since the first season of Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was unleashed on a helpless and unsuspecting world. Seven hundred and thirty days has not been enough to dull the pain of the horrors it inflicted on the genre of high fantasy.

J.R.R. Tolkien was without question the greatest and most influential fantasy writer of the 20th century. Every writer that followed him had to consciously either embrace or reject Middle Earth. The Lord of the Rings was the story of a struggle of good against absolute evil. A story where the protagonist succeeds in his quest to take the One Ring to Mount Doom but ultimately fails in his mission to destroy it. He is saved by Providence and the self-destructive nature of evil.

In the 21st century, there has been a race on to turn as much of the fantasy genre as possible into a pastiche and palimpsest of Professor Tolkien’s life’s work, or perhaps a better term would be a mockery. This production is certainly the pinnacle of that school of thought. There is no ultimate good or absolute evil there are simply shades of grey and at the end of the day everyone is the same and we are all equal. No one has the right to judge anyone for anything unless they are a white male, in which case they bear the sins of all the world and must constantly perform acts of contrition from morning to sunset.

Nowhere is this school of fiction more pervasive than in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

throws back a quick shot of Four Roses

Let’s get after it.

The show starts with a recap of the first season. This is probably a sad necessity for its audience. I know that I personally had to (pauses to shudder) rewatch the entire first season because the brain cells that had been assigned to remember it had died of embarrassment. I’m not the only one, everyone who has to review this has been groaning about having to wallow through the acre of rotting of pig dump that is 2022’s Rings of Power.

Within minutes of starting this new season, you know that Amazon has outdone the last one in terms of sheer incompetence.

It’s impressive that Amazon actually managed to lower the bar. But, as we know, the real purpose of these abominations is to destroy the affection for the source material. Fortunately, the joke’s on them, because we can read old books!

Which is vastly more entertaining than thinly-disguised lectures on girl power and how orcs are people too and they just want a better life for their children, and anyone who doesn’t open the gates of Gondor to them are racists for whom there is no place in Gondorian society.

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