Deleted Scenes 11.12.09: Unhappy Surprises

Posted by Robert Sullivan on 11.12.2009

I generally enjoy surprises, but not when they're like this. Come on in.

Hey, people. I'm Rob, this is Deleted Scenes, and welcome back to another variation thereof. Every week gets feedback, but last week's column in particular brought with it many interesting responses, compliments, and criticisms of all kinds. Mostly compliments, however, for pointing out that fevered reactions by political pundits of all stripes acting like "seemingly benevolent aliens actually want to kill us" was some sort of original storyline. Thanks for that, it's always nice to know you're being read.

Well, readers, it's funny. When you're tasked with writing weekly columns on any given subject, you can make preparations of all sorts, but sometimes real world events come along that knock you for a loop. Things you never see coming. Things straight from the blind side that suddenly make everything you wanted to discuss seem trivial, almost irrelevant.

This was one of those things.

I hear you, you're undoubtedly asking what happened to shake up this round of trailers and reaction to The Box? What could've possibly been that bad?

This, people -

Well, actually, before we can get to that, first we gotta do a little bit of business.

The Plugs

http://www.twitter.com/411mania
http://www.twitter.com/411wrestling
http://www.twitter.com/411moviestv
http://www.twitter.com/411games
http://www.twitter.com/411music
http://www.twitter.com/411mma

And after you read all that content, go ahead and make 411Mania YOUR official homepage. You're good people, I know you will.

The Column



This dickhead wants to be The Riddler in Batman 3.

The fucking superfinger guy wants to play The Riddler. I clicked onto 411Mania, scanned the headlines as always, and what do I see.

"Dane Cook Wants to Play The Riddler in Batman 3."



You readers will remember that I am no comic book geek. I don't really give a shit about Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Aquaman, whatever. There will be no protests or boycott movements contained in these pages, not when Christian Bale was announced as the new Batman or Heath Ledger the new Joker.

But Dane Cook? Really? I thought the Eddie Murphy bullshit was bad, but I'd hope Christopher Nolan would have more sense than that. Say, "Hey, man, everybody really loved Kevin Costner bashing your head open with a shovel in Mr. Brooks, but you can pretty much put this out of your head."

Now, there might be some protests from the peanut gallery centered around the examples I myself just named.

"People went nuts about Christian Bale getting Batman, look how well he did."

"Everyone went crazy when Heath Ledger got The Joker, see how well he did."

Well, there's a difference, obviously. Christian Bale? Already proved he had the acting credentials necessary to shut up the disbelievers before the release of the film. Even prior to Batman Begins, Bale had shown in prior films the talent that would easily be revealed yet again when he eventually donned the cape and cowl. As for Ledger, there was even more upheaval, mainly from fans of the animated TV series who insisted that Mark Hamill would do much, much better than Ledger ever could. If it wasn't Hamill, it was Crispin Glover. On and on it went and nobody noticed that, hey, Ledger was no acting pushover himself. He was coming off a revelation in Brokeback Mountain that should've given him the respect he deserved from peeved fans.

This is not the case with Dane Cook. Nothing in his past even suggests that he could be ready to handle the acting rigors demanded by the role. As mentioned above, the most notable thing he's done is get his throat slashed by Kevin Costner, no disrespect to Good Luck Chuck or Employee of the Month.

Actually, yeah, plenty of disrespect given to Good Luck Chuck and Employee of the Month. Come to think of it, didn't both of those cinematic abortions bomb terribly? Weren't we supposed to be done with this asshole because of that?

Alas. When you're selling out Madison Square Garden as a comedian, packing it to the brim with jerkoff college students who can't imagine anything funnier than a guy spastically rolling across a stage and screaming gibberish at the top of his lungs, anything is possible. Just like Kevin Garnett.

At least Kevin Garnett can put up a double double almost any night in the NBA.

What the Hell has Dane Cook ever done?

Oh, and before I get a ton of E-Mails asking me who I think would do the best job, here you go -



He sucks when he's trying to be funny, he's amazing when he's trying to freak you the fuck out. And since he proved in World's Greatest Dad he can still be funny with the right material, I think he'd make an incredible Riddler.

Fuck, on the topic of having proven things, Christopher Nolan has already proven he can get a phenomenal performance out of Robin Williams in Insomnia. Perfectly freaky and Nolan kept his ass on a leash. Let him do it again, Nolan. You'll have a fantastic Batman 3 that way, I'm sure of it.

Until next time.