Saturday, June 29, 2013

Love is a first

At my last day on the job lunch with my coworkers/friends, I got talking to my friend Paul who is a huge Trekkie. We got into a discussion about how your vision of a certain character is influenced by who you saw first. He said it's why he prefers Captain Kirk to Captain Picard as a Starfleet Captain should not be "a bald, Earl Grey tea drinking" dude.

Only question I ever thought was hard
Was do I like Kirk or do I like Picard?

I totally disagreed ("PICARD GOT RESULTS") but he mentioned that it was because I grew up with Picard as my captain whereas Kirk was his. He also went on to add that the Tony Stark in his mind was different than the Tony Stark in mine as his Tony was based on the comics and mine was based on RDJ's portrayal.

I thought about it a lot and realized that it was pretty much true. My Batman will always be Michael Keaton. My Superman is always Christopher Reeve. These first characters become your archetypes for what the character should be and it's hard to shake. Though I really enjoyed Man of Steel, I was comparing Michael Shannon's aggressively determined General Zod to Terrance Stamp's cerebral dictator General Zod the whole time.


The only exception to this rule that I can think of is Commissioner Gordon. Yeah the first Gordon I saw was Pat Hingle in Batman but the Gordon in my head became the one I read in comics like Batman: Year One, The Killing Joke, and Birds of Prey. But my Gordon will forever be Gary Oldman's Gordon from The Dark Knight films. Partly because of my love for Gaz but largely because he showed the heart of the character.

Gordon, to me, has always been the example of what a good person of Gotham is. They're not blind to the corruption around them and do what they need to in order to survive but they still believe that things can get better. His desire to do the right thing isn't a weakness. The Dark Knight films were the first time he was a real flesh and blood character and that's why he became the archetype Gordon for me. 

Despite my love for The Dark Knight films, Alan Napier's Alfred from Batman 1966 is eternally loved by me.

They see me rollin'
They hatin'

I'm curious to see who your archetypes are.