A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Swamp.
Howdy, y’all. McEric here, whom was previously minding his own business, drinking coffee and listening to Suicidal Tendencies, when this lead was delivered by a nervous-looking young man in a full hazmat suit. The kid couldn’t have been over 19, but the impending mortality in his eyes as he shakingly handed over the steaming canister made me immediately empathize with him. I thanked him and as he turned to head out the door I grabbed a nearby plastic tumbler and threw it to the ground, causing a loud bang. He jumped in the air and screamed like a goat, then bolted down the stairs as though on fire. I just laughed and laughed.
Empathy fades, you guys.
What could be so terrifying, I wondered, as I took to the arduous task of breaking through the hermetic seal of the biohazard canister. And then, there it was:
First, a little history about me and Swamp Thing: love the guy, perhaps only because I love an underdog, and as far as getting shit on, this guy takes all the cake and pie and brownies. Seriously, this is a dynamite comics property begging for a fair shake at a screen adaptation after several failed attempts. Originating in 1972 by creator Len Wein, Swamp Thing is most famously known for the 1982 film helmed by Wes Craven. This film holds the distinction of being the earliest memory of a movie fucking me up. Witnessing Arcane’s “dry” transformation as he hung screaming from the rafters shook me to my core as a young boy. Before I ever picked up a comic book, Swamp Thing was a horror antihero already in my consciousness, perhaps at the apex of its definition. Later reading Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Mark Millar take on the character further cemented this distinction and fostered in me a hope that I would see this hero again on the screen in an incarnation that befits its legacy.
The years that followed offered no such reward.
From his glorified cameo in TV’s “Justice League: Action” episode “Abate and Switch” to his poorly executed appearance in JUSTICE LEAGUE: DARK, DC seemed to keep missing the mark. Then their rifle just fucking exploded in their face when they dropped him in the stinking pile of tonal garbage that was BATMAN & HARLEY QUINN. I’m sorry; I love you, Bruce Timm, but everything about that movie was absolute swamp shit.
So when I heard that Swamp Thing was coming to the DC Universe streaming service next year in a live-action series produced by James Wan (all the goddamned CONJURINGs and DC’s AQUAMAN) I got genuinely excited. Wan has already demonstrated his proclivity for horror and what I’ve seen thus far of his Arthur Curry tale, he seems to have the proper reverence for the superhero genre, as well. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Enter Len Wiseman. Sure, he shares a first name with the character’s creator, but the good news ends there. If you’ve forgotten who Wiseman is, or didn’t know in the first place, I’ll give you the hits first. He worked on Fox’s “Gifted”, a pretty rad little Marvel mutant show. He also is an executive producer on “Lucifer”, which I’m told isn’t absolute dreck, so that’s good.
His other television credits are less celebrated. He produced Fox’s “Sleepy Hollow”, which some people liked. Not me, but some people, I’m told. Then there was the Hawaii Five-O revival that no one asked for, as well as “A.P.B.”, which no one saw.
He is also responsible for the UNDERWORLD film series, which was one half-decent idea stretched into decades of underwhelming tedium, as well as one of the really bad DIE HARD films (and he’s been announced as the director of the reboot; ugh), and the lesser of the two TOTAL RECALLs. That he is executive producing and directing the first episode of the series does not fill me with confidence.
The writing team on the show’s first season is Mark Verheiden (TV’s “Hemlock Grove”, “Daredevil”, and “Falling Skies”) and Gary Dauberman (IT, several of those fucking CONJURING films), so I feel at least that the story will hold a dark candle to the source material’s horror-action roots. But we’ve all seen a good idea coarsely driven like a bent nail into our collective psyche by poor studio choices and bad directors, haven’t we? We’re looking at you, squarely, DC.
So, yeah. What do you all think? Am I being too gloomy and doomy? Does DC have the capability to finally pull out a W with this project? Will “Swamp Thing” and “Titans” right the wrongs of the Snyder-verse or is DC just going to keep stinking up the current wave of superhero programming? Sound off below.
In the meantime, I have to find a new place to live. The canister fell over. Hoping to speak at you again, soon…
-McEric-
