This Week in Geek: The Dark Knight Rises and Goes International, and the Enterprise Surprise

1. Enterprise-d: In a move destined to set the cause of geek-dom back thirty years, the Internet rose up in fury over the accidental naming of the Star Trek Enterprise. In an article on Australia’s News.com site they accidentally referred to Captain Kirk’s ship as the Enterprise-E instead of D. They were hit with so much hate mail they were forced to send out a retraction:

“There was no intention whatsoever to suggest Captain Kirk may have commanded the Galaxy Class Starships Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E. Any damage to the Star Trek brand incurred by the use of the term ‘hyperspace’ is regretful. No malice was intended and a correction to the original article will be made.”

Is this an over-reaction or an under-reaction?

Maurice M: OVER-REACTION. Is anyone really going to think that Kirk was the captain on Star Trek: The Next Generation because of a typo? Let it go, people. Australians are backwards, anyway.

Monkey Migraine: This is hilarious. All that fuss over a stupid letter that most people wouldn’t notice. Just shows Trekkers are obsessive-compulsive. And the apology is hilarious. Like it was an insult to mix up the spaceships.

2. Batman Incorporated – In the latest issue of Batman and Robin #16, Bruce Wayne holds a press conference to announce that he is really Batman, and that he’s starting a global organization called Batman Incorporated to fight crime around the world.

Maurice M: I was listening to a podcast where Gaiman was talking about this, but he was so vague that I wasn’t sure what he was saying. He was saying this is going to focus on the Bruce Wayne side of Batman and make him more human. This is about the same level of idiocy as Superman walking across America. He’s a force of nature. Batman’s origin is based on cowardly superstitious criminals, not the U.N. Peacekeeping force. It sounds good in theory, but breaks down in execution. ODDSMAKER: Batman will retcon this incident in six months? 39%, because they’re launching a new title. That will be hard to sweep under a rug.

Monkey Migraine: I don’t know how to address this without launching into a rant. Maybe I will in a follow-up post. But the short version is:

• Stop messing with our superheroes! That goes for DC and Marvel. No taking away powers, no more changing costumes, no more killing characters off, no more amnesia. Just let them be who they are.
• Batman as a character is inherently mysterious. When people know who he is, it takes away from his power. Batman’s no longer a primal force of terror. He’s some rich guy in a costume. This is a horrible idea, is never going to last, and will take years to fix. Take a tip from Spiderman’s unmasking that they had to have a deal with the Devil to fix. 
• What’s wrong with secret identities? Why do they keep trying to take them away?

3. The Dark Knight Rises – The other buzz this week is on the new Batman movie’s title. Nolan announced that the new Batman movie is going to be The Dark Knight Rises. In the same article, it revealed that the Riddler will not be in the third movie.

Maurice M: The title is lame since it’s named after the second movie and not the first. “Rise” is a lame title word, anyway. List of bad movies with “rise” in the title:

GI JOE: Rise of COBRA

Monkey Migraine: My opinion, I don’t like it. I didn’t like that he went with The Dark Knight for the second movie, but at least it was a cool title. Dark Knight Rises sounds lame. In fact, “rises” shouldn’t be in any title. It’s too passive. Batman doesn’t rise, he swoops.As for the Riddler not being in the third movie,  that’s disappointing. I thought Nolan could’ve done a good job, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great. So who’ll the new villain be now?