Tag Archives: ding-dong

Superman II 2.21: First Contact

Superman II, , , ,

“Hmm, a primitive sort of lifeform,” Ursa muses, as she assesses the rattlesnake. Ursa’s just arrived on the planet, and she doesn’t know that you’re not supposed to pick up unfamiliar lifeforms. That snake probably had other things on its schedule for today.

Annoyed by the interruption, the snake strikes, burying its fangs in Ursa’s supposedly impenetrable skin. Wincing, she throws the reptile to the ground, and then sets it aflame with her magical heat vision.

“Did you see that?” she calls to her friends. “Did you see what I did? I have powers beyond reason here!”

Yeah, it’s called white privilege. A lot of us have it, unfortunately.

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Superman 1.88: Toward a General Theory of the Ding-Dong

Superman: The Movie

Consider Otis: sidekick, lickspittle, punching bag, emotional support animal — and, most importantly, a ding-dong.

The ding-dong is the guy who sets off the alarm during the break-in, the one who forgot he couldn’t swim. When someone asks, “Why are we whispering?”, he’s the guy that says “I thought you knew.” His purpose in life is to stand next to a smarter character, and make them wince.

Strangely, ding-dongs still show up, even with network sitcoms on the decline. You would think that the race would die out; he seems like exactly the kind of thing that natural selection was organized to prevent.

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Superman 1.83: Superman’s Pal

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And we take you now to scenic Hoover Dam, where perpetual cub reporter Jimmy Olsen is taking photographs of Hoover Dam, which you’d figure has already been pretty comprehensively photographed. It’s not much of a scoop, for a young man trying to make his way in the photojournalism racket, but he got a free airplane ride, and it’s just nice to get out in the fresh air.

Storywise, there isn’t a lot of justification for depositing Jimmy on top of this particular explodable landmark, but this is the part of the movie where they want to get as many peril monkeys on the board as they can. We’ve also got Lois having a scenic conversation with a scenic Native American gentleman, en route to the explodable gas station.

The real question is why we even have a Jimmy Olsen in this movie in the first place, if he’s not going to be involved in the plot in any way. This question also applies to Superman II, Superman III, Supergirl and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. In fact, Jimmy Olsen is the only character to appear in all five of the Salkind Superman films, and he doesn’t have a single discernible plot point in any of them.

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Superman 1.78: The Reading Room

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It’s one of the silliest party tricks in fiction. A contestant appears at the door of 221B Baker Street, and the great detective observes, “Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.”

This appears to be a brilliant act of deduction, but Holmes waves it away. The client’s right hand is bigger than his left hand, which is apparently a thing that happens when you do manual labor; he’s wearing a Freemason tiepin, which is apparently a thing that you wear when you’re a Freemason; his shirt cuff is shiny, which is apparently a thing that happens when you do a considerable amount of writing lately; and he’s wearing a T-shirt that says Spring Break China 1891.

These are just sound effects, obviously, because it’s all a setup. Arthur Conan Doyle deliberately festoons these chumps with splashes of mud from a specific area where the clay is a unique shade of ochre, just to impress us with Sherlock’s amazing ability to deduce things from the clues that Doyle put there to be deducted upon. The author already knows where the treasure is; all the character has to do is dig.

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