As anyone with a social media profile is aware, there are numerous celebrities, artists and public figures who have fallen from grace these days, their reputations and careers falling under the banner of that oh-so-dreaded term “cancelled. "Although the term is often misused, people who have actually been shunned from the limelight they once enjoyed often deserve their fate, so much so that any attempt to get them back would have to be extremely delicate and good," one opined.

Time and time again, The Canceled continue to make bizarre, creepy, unwelcome mistakes as they shamefully struggle to regain the reputation they've since lost (see: Spacey, Kevin and his annual Weird Frank Underwood videos). Today, we can add Armie Hammer to that inauspicious list of actors looking to return to Hollywood by jumping on a project that wouldn't be favorable in any capacity, let alone a disgraced celebrity. According to Variety , Hammer has signed on to star in the aptly titled The Dark Knight (gee, wonder what wool the producers are trying to pull the audience's eyeballs on there), which is about, surprise, surprise, a crime-fighting vigilante. Even more unpleasant than the project's reminiscence of a certain Christopher Nolan classic is the fact that the film is to be written and directed by Uwe Boll. the infamous German director whose films generally no one enjoys.

Of course, this pairing makes a kind of sick sense when you think about it, as Ball has continued his film career unabated, almost regardless of how much his work has been despised, and Hammer's recent comments seem to have a tone of antagonism towards them. , also. Indeed, the pairing of the two is no great surprise; The real question is whether two wrongs could ever make a right.

Here's the thing: throughout the history of cinema, there have always been lunatics, hucksters and exploitation filmmakers, the types of people who want to get their way into seats by any unscrupulous means possible. The difference between the kind of trash they tend to make and Ball's output is that the former actually want to entertain people, while Ball seems to despise his work and his audience. Even a film that should have been a cheese locale of the '00s genre, 2005's BloodRayne, was thwarted by Ball, verbally abusing screenwriter Guinevere Turner, putting her first draft of the script into production, then letting them to the actors and others to change the script. during shooting at will, according to this interview with Turner. Add to this questionable work ethic Ball's now infamous practice of antagonizing (if not outright combating) his critics, and you can see that Ball is not the art he's dealing with.

Apparently Hammer is interested now Boll's method of antagonismmaking a film out of spite more than anything else. The Dark Knight filing looks like Hammer is getting some weird kind of revenge for rumors that he he might actually have played Batman when George Miller was supposed to helm the Justice League movie. In all seriousness, there was a time when Hammer could have been a legitimate contender for Batman, having done films like The Social Network and Uncle Man before sexual misconduct allegations broke against him in 2021. Now, he's happy to join Ball in a film that, according to Variety, involves a man named Sanders "who takes justice into his own hands as he goes on the hunt for criminals," with the vigilante becoming a social media hero. despite the authorities trying to stop his actions.

If that sounds extremely close to the plot of Nolan's The Dark Knight, producer Michael Roche claims that "our film is very different from Chris Nolan's film, so there is no danger of confusion." It's a lot of tosh, of course; sewing confusion is exactly what these fellows hope to do. At least, given Ball's reputation and Hammer's rapid descent into mediocrity (if not obscurity), we probably shouldn't worry about anyone getting confused about the quality of this cinematic sadness they call a movie when it ends up it will come out. If their intention is to try to stir up controversy and antagonism, then the sweetest revenge is not to throw back the invective, but to simply ignore their rant. Don't call it a comeback; they really haven't been here in years.