Kurt Loder Reviews Birdman and Fury
Comebacks are hard. Twenty years ago, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) was an international movie icon—the masked and feathered crime-fighting superhero Birdman. He bailed out of the franchise after three pictures, but the typecasting damage to his career was done. Now, low on dough and desperate for redemption, he's determined to stake a claim as a serious actor. He has adapted a very serious Raymond Carver story and is bringing it to Broadway, with himself as both director and star. It's not going well. New York theatre snoots dismiss him as a Hollywood has-been, and tabloid jackals pepper him with off-topic questions like, "Is it true you've been injecting yourself with semen from baby pigs?" Worse yet, the Birdman—feathers and all—is making a comeback, too. What a nightmare. Kurt Loder applauds Birdman, writing that few movies attempt to do anything this fresh.