A couple of weeks ago I scored a PS4 for my birthday. It was a happy moment indeed. This was followed up with a copy of Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham in my Christmas stocking. It now shares shelf space with GTA5, Far Cry 4 and Shadows of Mordor. Usually I like my games with more story and character development, a rich setting or concept. I make time for the Lego games though. They’re basically little scavenger hunt games and they are plenty relaxing. Plus I love Batman. And Lego. And geeky in-jokes.
Who’s also a fan? Funk Jr. His favorite is The Lego Movie: The Game because it’s got Emmett and Unikitty in it. But he loves taking the mantle of Player 2 when a superhero themed Lego game is on.
He’s the Hulk to my Iron Man.
He’d watched me playing the new DC Lego game but with only one PS4 controller in the house he hadn’t played. Today, while hiding from the 44.4 degree celsius Australian summer in the mall watching Big Hero 6 again, we stopped by the game shop and Funk Jr. picked out a white PS4 controller for himself. We got home, cranked the air con and booted the game up. Being a 4 year old he’s not especially savvy when it comes to naming all the characters. He knows the Flash, Green Lantern and the Joker but not Cyborg, Lex Luther or Cheetah.
“Dad, who’s that?” goes a typical exchange.
“He’s called ‘Cyborg’. He has robot parts and can change what they do.”
“He turned into a washing machine! That’s funny!”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
It’s good, wholesome fun. Then it happened.
“Dad, who’s that guy?”
We’d been exploring the Watchtower hub world. I was the Flash to facilitate quick stud collection. He was Green Lantern because he likes the green lasers. I glanced over to his side of the split screen to see who he’d met.
Then I did a double take. Who was that? Some guy with a beard and a hockey jersey? What was he saying?
Wait…
WAIT…
Is that Kevin Smith? What the hell is he doing there? We’d seen Adam West kicking around…he was filling the same role Stan Lee did in the Marvel game. Kevin Smith though? He has never directed a DC superhero movie, he’s never played one…he sometimes writes comics that he doesn’t write the ending to because he’s stoned…what is he doing there?
More pressing – how do I answer my four year old son who I’m playing the family friendly Lego game with? I can tell him who Adam West is, he’s seen the old Batman series. Conan O’Brien was there but he was posing as the Watchtowers maintenance man. Kevin Smith was just…there. And a four year old was asking me who he was.
A director who made grossly inappropriate indie movies and now produces crap? Someone who’s best known for taking large amounts of an illegal substance? A guy who published his journal detailing how many hours he spends on the toilet a day to the point that he develops an anal fissure? A narcissist who frequently releases interviews with himself on DVD and action figures of himself as made-up characters? A film-maker who claims to retire after every poorly received hack job only to deliver another pile of crap a year later? A person whose response to being asked to leave a flight due to his weight issues was to point out someone else he thought was fatter?
This guy?
Not one of these answers is one I’m giving a child. And if this is the way to describe a person, I don’t want them in a Lego game. This ranks as one of the most pointless, most poorly thought out cameos in video game history. Not only that, it’s not appropriate for the target audience.
My train of thought continued from there…why is Kevin Smith still a thing? He’s like Star Wars in that no matter what garbage gets produced under the brand they’ll be someone on the forums defending it. People will stand up for Cop Out and Red State based on successes from previous decades. The most recent films range from forgettable to terrible. When a movie is poorly received we get a professional film-maker turned petulant child, taking to message boards to lash out at critics. He even compared people criticising the awful Cop Out to kids picking on a special needs child.
Writing a nasty review for #CopOut is akin to bullying a retarded kid who was getting a couple chuckles from the normies by singing AFTERNOON DELIGHT … All you’ve done is make fun of something that wasn’t doing you any harm and wanted only to give some cats a some fun laughs.
Tusk felt like it was produced primarily for his ever dwindling group of podcast listeners. I can only assume the numbers are dwindling because he’s not making new fans out of the next generation of viewers. Trust me, I teach them. It’s all about Nolan and Tarantino for those guys. Kevin Smith is not contributing to the arts or to the culture, he’s a narcissistic and over exposed fanboy with a shitty attitude. Putting him in Lego Batman 3 isn’t clever or funny, it’s pandering or (more likely) a favour for a friend. He doesn’t belong there. He belongs on his self-run website in his echo chamber of fans patting him on the back. Smith is one more movie away from being straight to video.
Now I’m going to vent my frustration by beating the snot out of his Lego avatar.
