Superhero Media: Bloodshot

Yes, Bloodshot is a pretty poor film, even by the standards of some of the stuff that gets covered here, and it doesn't have the decency to be at least interestingly bad, just coming out bland and generic. Now, though I was kind of into some Valiant comics in the '90s, I tended to read Harbinger and Magnus, so I didn't have much familiarity with Bloodshot until I heard this film was coming out. Regular readers will also probably know that I tend to be more forgiving of '90s comics than many, embracing the over-the-top silliness and reading them as a kind of high-camp more than grim-and-gritty seriousness. In that, I don't think there's a version of a Bloodshot film that would actually be 'good', but rather, there could have been something at least 'fun' in the manner of Daredevil or Batman Forever. Let's not kid ourselves, at best Bloodshot is basically Deadpool without any of the jokes or irony, so it's never going to be Black Panther or anything.

Where the film does well, actually, is in the messing with of Bloodshot's memories is a plot point, so, if not for the generic nature of much of the rest of the narrative, the whole enterprise could have had an "unreliable narrator" vibe which would have been much more interesting. Frankly, Bloodshot falls into a lot of the same errors that bad superhero films always have, focusing too much on the origin, not letting the characters stand on their own merits and not putting anyone in a costume. By trying to take itself seriously, Bloodshot missed the point of existing, which was to be a possible Iron Man to a potential Valiant Cinematic Universe. As I've said previously when discussing ideas like a King Features/Frew or even a Blackthorne Cinematic Universe, the potential with the lesser-known heroes is essentially unlimited, so why settle for an action film with nothing spicy or interesting happening like Bloodshot?

I really hope the Valiant stuff doesn't end here, as, once again, there is a lot of potential there that seems a shame to waste. Harbinger seems like the obvious one, basically an off-brand X-Men with lots of room to explore the concept of adolescents with super-powers and only really one or two characters that need to be presented with any fidelity, say Zephyr and Sting. Throw in Magnus as a "Superman-lite" for the series and maybe even do the "Magnus: Harbinger Fighter" arc for the first major crossover. XO-Manowar is a little more esoteric, but Marvel Studios has laid the groundwork for this stuff already, so you may as well go nuts rather than make something disappointing like Bloodshot. Even Upgrade was a better version of a similar concept, and did without actual costumes or anything like that. Seriously though, put the characters in their damn costumes, I'm sick of this black leather shit, the Fox X-Men series didn't make it look good, so why still use that as the standard?