La Ron S. Readus
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Why Did Martian Manhunter Reveal Himself? (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-03-22 20:00:03 +0000 UTCAnd to think: I could've made this video 4 years ago. God DAMN...
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Yes, Readers. I watched the Snyder Cut.
Yes, Readers. I enjoyed the Snyder Cut.
Yes, Readers. I understand and respect if you either didn’t like or have no interest in watching the Snyder Cut
And for everyone who feels that way or has opinions of their own and know that mine won't necessarily line up with yours, but still wishes to watch this video because they like and wanna support me MORE than the Snyder Cut or the toxic portion of his fanbase that he publicly denounced online...
(slow zoom in on snicker)
Then thanks so much for being here, and I sincerely appreciate your support
But for everyone else watching this video that isn't here for either the topic in question or myself, my haircut, my blackness, my queerness, or even my Leo-based Capricorn Rising charm, I have 1 question to ask you. Why?
Why are you even WATCHING this?
We are in the beginning of year 2 of a global Panini Press and instead of finding something to watch that first and foremost brings you the most joy as possible, you choose to hate-watch and/or troll a video on a topic you don’t care about -- not even to provide fair and valid criticism if you watched it just to watch it -- when all the person in said video is doing is living they best life? In 2021? In THIS economy?
Go get vaccinated. Take a shower. Get vaccinated. Take a nap. Fry some chicken, or something. Get vaccinated.
Because one of the things that DEFINITELY brought me joy was finally seeing Zack’s initial vision for the first installment of his initial take on the Darkseid War in what’s pretty much...the EXTENDED cut of what he originally planned for us in 2017
Including finally seeing one of the original founding members of the Justice League on screen for the first time in a feature length live-action film, J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter
Who in the Snyder Cut revealed that he was Harry Lennix’s General Swanwick the whole time
(Mrs Doubtfire “The Whole Time”)
Now those of us who follow either Zack or Harry on social media were actually made aware of this revelation months before the Snyder Cut hit HBO Max.
And while I’m usually of the mind to keep myself from looking up certain information -- or even certain final designs of characters to keep myself from being spoiled when I watch the final product upon release -- this revelation was something that I found it pretty hard to avoid.
But in this case, I didn’t care as much. And that was mostly due to me knowing better than to get excited for a follow-up that may never happen thanks to the new head of DC Films Walter Hamada wanting to steer the universe away from Snyder and Terrio’s take on the DC Universe. ESPECIALLY after seeing how Warner Brothers was handling Ray Fisher’s racism allegations against Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Done.
But KNOWING something was going to happen in a movie...is COMPLETELY different than watching it actually play out.
And in the case of seeing J’onn’s first appearance as himself, it was pretty much exactly how I tweeted it.
/Did I already know that General Swanwick was J’onn J’onzz in disguise the whole time 3 months in advance? Yes. Did that stop me from loudly geeking out seeing him shift to his Martian Manhunter form? ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT!/
Now Readers, the funny thing here is that despite the two scenes displaying J’on that we got in this once in a lifetime situation, I know I’m probably NEVER gonna see this interpretation of him again.
I know that unless Warner Brothers execs and Snyder have a good long talk and work something out with each other that’ll make him feel comfortable with finishing out this Final Crisis meets Darkseid War hybrid narrative of his, nothing will really come of the positive reception Zack Snyder’s Justice League will eventually acquire over time.
Yet, despite knowing ALL of this real life information, the fan in me is constantly going over what the revelation of General Swanwick being Martian Manhunter all this time actually means when you look at his overall involvement in the continuity of the DCEU.
Knowing that it didn’t matter because we’re probably never gonna see the end result, I couldn’t help but reflect on why he was the way that he was in Man of Steel. Why he initially didn’t want to play a part in the conspiracy against Superman in Dawn of Justice.
/And more importantly, thanks to the Snyder Cut, why he FINALLY chose to reveal his true self in Justice League. And I think I know why./
Now in order to better understand his reasoning for what he did in the Snyder Cut, we have to better identify the persona of General Swanwick in how we knew him in Man of Steel.
/Back when we thought he was just a regular ol’ human, his actions and demeanor when it came to the conflict between Kal and Zod reflected the more realistic approach David Go-Fuck-Yourself’s script wanted to capture regarding how humanity -- specifically the American government -- would react if extraterrestrial lifeforms as powerful as Kryptonians ever arrived on Earth./
/He’s worried about the Kryptonian threat of Zod’s terraforming of earth yet has to keep a calm head because of his leadership status, and even till the end of the movie is immediately untrusting of Superman/ (Superman? The Alien. That’s what they call him)
This even holds true in his involvement in Dawn of Justice, when Lex’s attempts to frame Superman causes Lois to visit now Secretary Swanwick to try to get answers regarding who outfitted the KGBeast and the rest of henchmen Lex hired to help set him up.
/Even there he wouldn’t budge on his opinions of Superman, which back when we thought that he was just an apprehensive human who doesn’t trust leaving the fate of the world to a superpowered being acting on his own accord./ (Replace his halo. Along with yours)
But now that we know that Swanwick was an alien himself all this time, that makes those of us who care about the films look at things a bit differently.
You see in the comics, one thing J’on and Kal have in common is that as far as they know, they’re the last of their kind; Superman the Last Son of Krypton and Martian Manhunter, the last of the Martians.
That’s because in the comics, J’onn’s origin regarding how he arrived to Earth was thanks to a scientist named Dr Erdel teleporting him from Mars to Earth after J’onn’s brother damn near enacted a Martian genocide that took the lives of his wife and daughter.
The reason why he’s the last of his kind however, is that the experimental device that Dr. Erdel used to teleport J’on to Earth actually did so by displacing him from both space and TIME.
So by the time he arrived on Earth, so much ACTUAL time had passed to the point where just about all of the surviving Martians were already dead.
Now of course those of you who only know about J’onn from Justice League the animated series have a DIFFERENT origin for J’onn in your head. But the fact of him being one of the last Martians in existence remains the same.
/So if you look at General Swanwick and his actions in both Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice knowing that he’s keeping a variant of this type of trauma within him, his actions and REactions over the course of these two movies make more sense./
Because from what we know now with the new information the Snyder Cut gives us, J’onn as General Swanwick was doing everything in his power to lay low and remain unnoticed.
He watched his wife and daughter die. He was possibly teleported to Earth so far in the distant future than the timeline he originally belonged to that the Martian race is pretty much extinct. Although, I don’t think that’s the version of his origin Snyder had in mind for him in this universe, but we’ll talk more about that later on.
In essence, he is a refugee who discovered the ability to shapeshift upon arriving on Earth and now has a way of surviving that will keep him from being observed as either a monster or a threat to mankind due to them fearing what they don’t understand.
/Then Zod and his renegade Kryptonians show up and force Clark to reveal himself, and everything he worked hard to gain via assimilating with this planet’s ruling species is immediately being threatened./
So right then and there, knowing that he’s actually a Martian, we can see why he as Swanwick was so apprehensive of Superman in Man of Steel and even in Dawn of Justice.
With the arrival of Kryptonians, the Earth now has a target on its back; one that J’onn doesn’t really appreciate how quickly it showed up considering how long it possibly took him to get used to life here thanks to his shapeshifting abilities after the traumatic experiences he had of losing both his family and his people.
So playing into this character he established for himself, a military man showing hesitancy to trust an extraterrestrial lifeform with powers human beings couldn’t even possibly imagine having is both par for the course of both his disguise and himself.
/And it was both a facade and a mentality he kept up regarding the world learning about and dealing with the existence of Superman, even when a demographic of humanity began to trust him/
/And...other things.../ (I just think he’s kinda hot)
But one person did begin to wear him down, though. And -- as you can imagine -- that person was Lois Lane.
Over the course of Lois investigating Lex Luthor’s framing of Superman, J’onn as Swanwick got to see her persistence and tenacity first-hand, despite keeping up his appearances regarding his opinions on the Kryptonian.
/But even then, there was enough respect in how she handled trying to get to the bottom of things to help her out with the information she needed. But, y’know, just enough to not jeopardize himself or his human alias/ (I like my job; I’d like to keep it)
Then we fast forward to Lois grieving Superman’s loss in Zack Snyder’s Justice League and we see how the process has changed her.
/She hasn’t returned to work since he died. She visits the destroyed memorial everyday. She’s isolating herself from the world./
From the moments the two characters interacted with each other over the course of this continuity, this is a safe indicator that this is NOT the Lois Lane J’onn was used to seeing and used to dealing with. This isn’t the same Lois that was adamant in believing in Superman so much, that she was willing to risk her life to expose Lex Luthor’s machinations behind his setup.
/So when J’onn decided to pay Lois a visit in the Snyder Cut disguised as Martha Kent and we see that his goal was to get her back out there as a reporter, we can see the type of impact she left on him./ (The world needs you TOO, Lois)
But while the movie doesn't really show it, context clues point to J'onn realizing that part of what he noticed in Lois was, in turn, left on her by Superman.
It was in seeing how not just the world was impacted by Superman's loss, but someone as close to him as Lois Lane was affected to the point where she couldn't even bring herself to become the reporter she once was -- the reporter he knew her to be thanks to them constantly crossing paths -- that not only inspired J'onn to give her that pep talk as Ma Kent in the first place...
/But also have him second-guess not only his opinions on Superman over the years, but also his decisions of just wanting to stay isolated, insignificant, and out of the equation for the sake of self-preservation when he could honestly be doing just as much good as the being who placed the planet on Apokolips' radar./
If anything -- like Future Barry stated in Dawn of Justice -- Lois was the KEY. Not just in preventing Bruce’s Knightmare vision of an Earth ruled by Darkseid and making Superman a slave of the Anti-Life Equation, but also in showing J’onn that it was time to INVOLVE himself; his TRUE self.
/And if we take into consideration the knowledge J’onn has of Darkseid from what he shared with Bruce during the Epilogue of the Snyder Cut, it seems like he’s already well acquainted with Apokolips enough to know what they’re dealing with./ (we need to be ready)
Maybe so well acquainted, J’onn thinks he’s the last of his kind like he does in the Earth 0 comics and Justice League animated series, but in the Snyderverse it’s because Darkseid already took Mars once upon a time and he was forced to escape to Earth as a lone refugee.
/In which Superman drawing the possible attention of the destructor of J'onn's homeworld to said refugee homestead being the main reason he didn't necessarily care for his presence in Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice in the first place./
But that all depends on how Zack wants to approach introducing J’onn to the League proper in the NEXT film...that we’ll...never get...a chance...to see
I just made myself sad again
And you’d think that after being unemployed during a Pressure Pot for almost a year, I’d run out of things to be sad about at this rate.
But, I digress, Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below why YOU think Martian Manhunter decided to reveal himself in Zack Snyder’s Justice League if you’ve seen it.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, if you want to see this version of Martian Manhunter exist in some way shape or form now that the Snyder Cut gave us a taste.
Whichever you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts.
