People Tell Me I Look Like Han Solo.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
First look at Captain America, new Scott Pilgrim trailer
Ain’t It Cool News posted some images of what is apparently the almost-final
costume designs for Marvel’s upcoming Captain America movie. I’m okay with them. I’m not the world’s biggest Cap fan (though the current run, written by the brilliant Ed Brubaker, is some of the best mainstream superhero comics going), so I can’t pretend I have some deep, nostalgic connection to the little wings on his head on his outfit in the comics (but the comic geek in me sort of misses them), but my first thought was this seems like a pretty cutting-edge costume considering the fact that, as I understand it, the bulk of the movie’s action is set during the Second World War. And as a friend of mine pointed out, that there’s really a lot of pouches on there.
All that being said, these are obviously just illustrations, so I’ll reserve my judgment until I see the first actual photos of Chris Evans in the real-life suit. As much as the buzz surrounding Captain America was somewhat negative until Evans’ casting (script problems, budget disputes between the director and Marvel, etc.), I’m cautiously optimistic that the movie will be good. I like Evans a lot, and I really like the stage-setting for Thor and The Avengers Marvel started doing in Iron Man 2. Who am I kidding? Screw head-wings, I’m excited. Captain America: The First Avenger hits theaters next summer.
* * *
Because I am a kind and benevolent movie blogger, I will leave you today with the new trailer for Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I’ve already gushed over how awesome the comic is, and how primed I am for this movie, so I’ll skip that. But I will say that this new trailer (which really showcases the action; I really can’t wait for this thing) also puts to rest a lot of the concerns I had about Michael Cera playing the title role. I’ve said before that the character of Scott Pilgrim and the persona Cera adopts in everything he’s ever done couldn’t be more different, but it looks like he’s finally moving out of his stuttering-wallflower wheelhouse.
I want to see this movie so badly I’m on the verge of tears. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is out August 13.
Labels: comics, Movie news, self-indulgence, superheroes, trailers
¶ 10:13 AM 2 Comments
Monday, April 19, 2010
Review: Kick-Ass
I realize it’s unfair to hold a film’s hype against it – especially if that hype is ostensibly grass-roots (i.e. from people who’ve seen it, as opposed to studio marketing people) – but I found myself watching Kick-Ass, the new superhero action/comedy, waiting to have my mind 
blown. It never happened, and while the film was good – very good, actually – my world, sadly, remains unrocked. This movie’s been getting absolutely insane levels of hype in certain corners of the Internet (“best American action movie in a decade” and “greatest gunfights since Hard Boiled” are the two that stand out in my mind) since last summer’s ComiCon, and I’m not a guy who takes comparisons to vintage John Woo films lightly (check out my review of his 1989 classic The Killer here), to the point where I couldn’t help but let it inform my opinion of the movie. And as much as I went into it with a bit of an “Okay, let’s see what you got” attitude (which is almost never a good headspace to be in going into a review, in my opinion), I must say that while it didn’t rewrite the rules of action cinema for the 21st century, as some have claimed, Kick-Ass is a fun, foul-mouthed and gleefully violent and take on superheroes. I haven’t laughed this hard in an action movie since Punisher: War Zone, a movie I dearly love.
Kick-Ass is about a geeky high school kid named Dave who decides one day to try dressing up like a superhero. His first foray into crimefighting lands him in the intensive care unit, but when he recovers his nerve endings are so deadened that he can barely feel pain. Which helps, as he rises to fame courtesy of an Internet video of him getting beaten up by some thugs. The resulting clip, which becomes the biggest thing ever on the Internet, makes Kick-Ass a household name, and brings into the light the previously unknown father-daughter vigilante team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloë Moretz) and inspiring the Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). All of this is to the chagrin of the local crime boss (Mark Strong), who finds himself having to add “costumed crimefighters” to his list of career headaches.
The idea of a “real-world” take on superheroes isn’t new – Watchmen is the best, and best-known, exploration of that concept – but instead of going the grim, vaguely depressing route that Watchmen did (as well as the recent Canadian indie flick Defendor – check out my review here), Kick-Ass is an ultraviolent day-glo cartoon. See, the “realism” in Kick-Ass doesn’t go much further than the notion that if someone were to actually don tights and fight crime, they’d probably be horribly injured or killed. And they’d also probably have to be insane.
Dave (Aaron Johnson) isn’t crazy, just a geeky kid who takes a chance and does something he can’t believe nobody’s tried to do before. Naturally, it doesn’t go exactly as planned. Johnson is actually very solid in the role (I didn’t realize he was British until after I saw the movie, which is impressive), and he manages to make Dave a loser (and an idiot; it never feels like you’re supposed to think him dressing up like a superhero is a good idea) without making him unlikeable or too much of a pushover (a problem I had with Wanted, another comic-turned-movie from the same comic writer, Mark Millar; more on him later).
As much as he’s clearly the hero of the piece, Dave/Kick-Ass ends up acting almost as an entry point to a larger world that he (and the viewer) didn’t really know about, and that’s the world of Big Daddy and Hit Girl, a hyper-violent riff on Batman and Robin. (Cage is doing an utterly insane Adam West/William Shatner impression while in costume that you have to see to believe.) They’ve been fighting crime for some time, but from the shadows, as opposed to Kick-Ass, who promotes himself with a MySpace page. It’s Big Daddy and Hitgirl that get to do all the cool stuff during the film’s many excellent action sequences, and as much as some people seem to take issue with this (the complaint is that Kick-Ass is a supporting character in his own movie), it really only underlines the reality that the film has set up; Dave isn’t really a particularly good superhero, and usually ends up getting beaten up. But Big Daddy and Hitgirl have been training themselves to do this for years, and they, unlike the amateur Kick-Ass, are very, very good at killing bad guys. When they turn up, the movie’s energy level kicks up a notch, and that’s a credit to both Cage and Moretz (who has gotten a ton of attention as the vicious and foul-mouthed Hit Girl, and she is indeed the best thing in the movie), and the tragedy at the heart of their origin gives weight to characters that could have otherwise just been cartoonish and silly.
But the real star of Kick-Ass is director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Layer Cake), who shows with this movie that he may be one of the best new action filmmakers working in Western movies. His film moves gracefully from action scenes to character moments, and as much as this is being sold as a superhero action film (and it is most definitely that), I took it more as a comedy about superheroes that happens to have stellar action scenes. Vaughn manages to poke fun at superheroes without being too mean-spirited (though believe me, as a lifelong geek and comic reader, many of the jokes in the film ring very true indeed), and as much as he obviously there’s obviously some mockery of genre conventions here, it never feels condescending or insulting to superheroes or their fans.
Kick-Ass is even more impressive in how it eclipses its source material. The film is based on a comic series from Scottish writer Mark Millar, who also wrote the comic Wanted (which was altered much more heavily for the movie version, which is great, because the comic is among of the worst I’ve read), and the film manages to clean up a lot of Millar’s juvenile tics and make them watchable. As much as I’m slagging on Millar’s writing style, which is too clever by half, he’s actually quite good with the basics of storytelling and pacing; there’s some twists and turns in Kick-Ass that I didn’t see coming and some genuine “how are they gonna get out of THIS?” moments in the third act. But Vaughn is a far superior filmmaker than Millar is a comic writer. As a guy who considers himself more of a comic fan than a movie buff (though it’s a close No. 2, believe me), I usually prefer the original comics to the film versions, but in the case of Kick-Ass, the movie is the better of the two versions, by a wide margin.
Kick-Ass is a riot. It’s crass, violent as hell and definitely not for everyone, but it’s also the most pure fun I’ve had at the movies all year.
GRADE: A-
blown. It never happened, and while the film was good – very good, actually – my world, sadly, remains unrocked. This movie’s been getting absolutely insane levels of hype in certain corners of the Internet (“best American action movie in a decade” and “greatest gunfights since Hard Boiled” are the two that stand out in my mind) since last summer’s ComiCon, and I’m not a guy who takes comparisons to vintage John Woo films lightly (check out my review of his 1989 classic The Killer here), to the point where I couldn’t help but let it inform my opinion of the movie. And as much as I went into it with a bit of an “Okay, let’s see what you got” attitude (which is almost never a good headspace to be in going into a review, in my opinion), I must say that while it didn’t rewrite the rules of action cinema for the 21st century, as some have claimed, Kick-Ass is a fun, foul-mouthed and gleefully violent and take on superheroes. I haven’t laughed this hard in an action movie since Punisher: War Zone, a movie I dearly love.Kick-Ass is about a geeky high school kid named Dave who decides one day to try dressing up like a superhero. His first foray into crimefighting lands him in the intensive care unit, but when he recovers his nerve endings are so deadened that he can barely feel pain. Which helps, as he rises to fame courtesy of an Internet video of him getting beaten up by some thugs. The resulting clip, which becomes the biggest thing ever on the Internet, makes Kick-Ass a household name, and brings into the light the previously unknown father-daughter vigilante team of Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloë Moretz) and inspiring the Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). All of this is to the chagrin of the local crime boss (Mark Strong), who finds himself having to add “costumed crimefighters” to his list of career headaches.
The idea of a “real-world” take on superheroes isn’t new – Watchmen is the best, and best-known, exploration of that concept – but instead of going the grim, vaguely depressing route that Watchmen did (as well as the recent Canadian indie flick Defendor – check out my review here), Kick-Ass is an ultraviolent day-glo cartoon. See, the “realism” in Kick-Ass doesn’t go much further than the notion that if someone were to actually don tights and fight crime, they’d probably be horribly injured or killed. And they’d also probably have to be insane.
Dave (Aaron Johnson) isn’t crazy, just a geeky kid who takes a chance and does something he can’t believe nobody’s tried to do before. Naturally, it doesn’t go exactly as planned. Johnson is actually very solid in the role (I didn’t realize he was British until after I saw the movie, which is impressive), and he manages to make Dave a loser (and an idiot; it never feels like you’re supposed to think him dressing up like a superhero is a good idea) without making him unlikeable or too much of a pushover (a problem I had with Wanted, another comic-turned-movie from the same comic writer, Mark Millar; more on him later).
As much as he’s clearly the hero of the piece, Dave/Kick-Ass ends up acting almost as an entry point to a larger world that he (and the viewer) didn’t really know about, and that’s the world of Big Daddy and Hit Girl, a hyper-violent riff on Batman and Robin. (Cage is doing an utterly insane Adam West/William Shatner impression while in costume that you have to see to believe.) They’ve been fighting crime for some time, but from the shadows, as opposed to Kick-Ass, who promotes himself with a MySpace page. It’s Big Daddy and Hitgirl that get to do all the cool stuff during the film’s many excellent action sequences, and as much as some people seem to take issue with this (the complaint is that Kick-Ass is a supporting character in his own movie), it really only underlines the reality that the film has set up; Dave isn’t really a particularly good superhero, and usually ends up getting beaten up. But Big Daddy and Hitgirl have been training themselves to do this for years, and they, unlike the amateur Kick-Ass, are very, very good at killing bad guys. When they turn up, the movie’s energy level kicks up a notch, and that’s a credit to both Cage and Moretz (who has gotten a ton of attention as the vicious and foul-mouthed Hit Girl, and she is indeed the best thing in the movie), and the tragedy at the heart of their origin gives weight to characters that could have otherwise just been cartoonish and silly.
But the real star of Kick-Ass is director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Layer Cake), who shows with this movie that he may be one of the best new action filmmakers working in Western movies. His film moves gracefully from action scenes to character moments, and as much as this is being sold as a superhero action film (and it is most definitely that), I took it more as a comedy about superheroes that happens to have stellar action scenes. Vaughn manages to poke fun at superheroes without being too mean-spirited (though believe me, as a lifelong geek and comic reader, many of the jokes in the film ring very true indeed), and as much as he obviously there’s obviously some mockery of genre conventions here, it never feels condescending or insulting to superheroes or their fans.
Kick-Ass is even more impressive in how it eclipses its source material. The film is based on a comic series from Scottish writer Mark Millar, who also wrote the comic Wanted (which was altered much more heavily for the movie version, which is great, because the comic is among of the worst I’ve read), and the film manages to clean up a lot of Millar’s juvenile tics and make them watchable. As much as I’m slagging on Millar’s writing style, which is too clever by half, he’s actually quite good with the basics of storytelling and pacing; there’s some twists and turns in Kick-Ass that I didn’t see coming and some genuine “how are they gonna get out of THIS?” moments in the third act. But Vaughn is a far superior filmmaker than Millar is a comic writer. As a guy who considers himself more of a comic fan than a movie buff (though it’s a close No. 2, believe me), I usually prefer the original comics to the film versions, but in the case of Kick-Ass, the movie is the better of the two versions, by a wide margin.
Kick-Ass is a riot. It’s crass, violent as hell and definitely not for everyone, but it’s also the most pure fun I’ve had at the movies all year.
GRADE: A-
Labels: comics, Movie review, superheroes
¶ 11:33 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Joss Whedon to direct The Avengers
Great news for comic nerds this week: Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator and geek-TV icon Joss Whedon is in final negotiations to direct The Avengers for Marvel Stuidios. It sounds like it’s not completely official at the time of this writing, but as a fan of Buffy (never could get into the spin-off, Angel) and Whedon’s short-lived sci-fi series Firefly and the movie it eventually sp
awned, Serenity, I think this is wonderful news. As much as he’s being looked at as a director (and he’s pretty good behind the camera, having helmed Serenity and many of the best episodes of his TV shows), it’s his skills as a screenwriter that have me excited. Whether it’s official or not, it’s hard to believe Marvel would be talking this seriously with a guy like Whedon, known more for knack for characters and dialogue than his filmmaking chops, if they weren’t open to him polishing up the Avengers script as well.
The Avengers, in case you’re unaware, is Marvel’s all-star superhero team, featuring Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, as well as a ton of cool B-list characters like Hawkeye, Giant Man, the Wasp and the Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson in this summer’s Iron Man 2). Marvel has been slowly building up to The Avengers since Samuel L. Jackson’s cameo as Nick Fury in the first Iron Man, having signed the main actors in their movies, including Robert Downey Jr., Captain America’s Chris Evans and Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, to multi-picture deals that include The Avengers. A movie featuring Captain America, Iron Man and Thor all together is the stuff of fanboy dreams, and I think Whedon’s an excellent choice to realize that dream on the big screen.
I’ve heard that Marvel likes to let little tidbits like this leak out before anything is official to gauge the fan reaction online (no idea how true it is, but I read somewhere that the Captain America job was basically John Krasinski’s until the studio saw the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the news on the web), but given Whedon’s cred with the geek crowd, I suspect that won’t be an issue here. Whedon has one of the most devoted online fanbases; based purely on Google search results, you’d think both Firefly and Serenity were far more popular than the show’s brief life and the film’s relatively anemic box office take would suggest.
My only concern – and it’s a minor one – is that the scale of The Avengers dwarfs anything he’s worked on before (think city-destroying superhero fights and alien invasions), but Whedon’s nothing if not a sharp guy, and I assume he realizes The Avengers needs a little bit of a Roland Emmerich (2012, Independence Day) vibe. But I had similar concerns going into Serenity – would it just look like a two-hour Firefly episode, or would it actually feel like a movie? – but he put those to rest right quick, showing an ability to handle actions sequences that far more complicated and kinetic than anything he attempted on any of his shows, and the film had a scale to it that was only hinted at in the TV series. I definitely think Whedon’s got it in him to step up his game on a project as big as The Avengers.
Most importantly (to me at least) Whedon is the first filmmaker hired for a Marvel project who is actually a comic book fan. He’s written for Marvel Comics in the past – he has an excellent 24-issue run on Astonishing X-Men that’s a pretty solid entry point for newcomers to the X-Men or superhero comics in general, and another book he spent time writing, Runaways (about a group of teenagers who realize their parents are all supervillans) is also headed for the screen soon. More than Iron Man’s Jon Favreau or Thor’s Kenneth Branagh or Captain America’s Joe Johnston, he understands the dynamics of superhero stories, specifically superhero team stories; anyone who’s seen Buffy, Angel or Firefly knows of his knack for witty team dialogue and relationships.
The Avengers is expected to begin shooting some time in early 2011. You can bet your sweet can I’ll be following the news on this one closely.
awned, Serenity, I think this is wonderful news. As much as he’s being looked at as a director (and he’s pretty good behind the camera, having helmed Serenity and many of the best episodes of his TV shows), it’s his skills as a screenwriter that have me excited. Whether it’s official or not, it’s hard to believe Marvel would be talking this seriously with a guy like Whedon, known more for knack for characters and dialogue than his filmmaking chops, if they weren’t open to him polishing up the Avengers script as well.The Avengers, in case you’re unaware, is Marvel’s all-star superhero team, featuring Iron Man, Captain America and Thor, as well as a ton of cool B-list characters like Hawkeye, Giant Man, the Wasp and the Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson in this summer’s Iron Man 2). Marvel has been slowly building up to The Avengers since Samuel L. Jackson’s cameo as Nick Fury in the first Iron Man, having signed the main actors in their movies, including Robert Downey Jr., Captain America’s Chris Evans and Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, to multi-picture deals that include The Avengers. A movie featuring Captain America, Iron Man and Thor all together is the stuff of fanboy dreams, and I think Whedon’s an excellent choice to realize that dream on the big screen.
I’ve heard that Marvel likes to let little tidbits like this leak out before anything is official to gauge the fan reaction online (no idea how true it is, but I read somewhere that the Captain America job was basically John Krasinski’s until the studio saw the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the news on the web), but given Whedon’s cred with the geek crowd, I suspect that won’t be an issue here. Whedon has one of the most devoted online fanbases; based purely on Google search results, you’d think both Firefly and Serenity were far more popular than the show’s brief life and the film’s relatively anemic box office take would suggest.
My only concern – and it’s a minor one – is that the scale of The Avengers dwarfs anything he’s worked on before (think city-destroying superhero fights and alien invasions), but Whedon’s nothing if not a sharp guy, and I assume he realizes The Avengers needs a little bit of a Roland Emmerich (2012, Independence Day) vibe. But I had similar concerns going into Serenity – would it just look like a two-hour Firefly episode, or would it actually feel like a movie? – but he put those to rest right quick, showing an ability to handle actions sequences that far more complicated and kinetic than anything he attempted on any of his shows, and the film had a scale to it that was only hinted at in the TV series. I definitely think Whedon’s got it in him to step up his game on a project as big as The Avengers.
Most importantly (to me at least) Whedon is the first filmmaker hired for a Marvel project who is actually a comic book fan. He’s written for Marvel Comics in the past – he has an excellent 24-issue run on Astonishing X-Men that’s a pretty solid entry point for newcomers to the X-Men or superhero comics in general, and another book he spent time writing, Runaways (about a group of teenagers who realize their parents are all supervillans) is also headed for the screen soon. More than Iron Man’s Jon Favreau or Thor’s Kenneth Branagh or Captain America’s Joe Johnston, he understands the dynamics of superhero stories, specifically superhero team stories; anyone who’s seen Buffy, Angel or Firefly knows of his knack for witty team dialogue and relationships.
The Avengers is expected to begin shooting some time in early 2011. You can bet your sweet can I’ll be following the news on this one closely.
Labels: comics, geek alert, Movie news, superheroes
¶ 10:30 AM 0 Comments
Friday, March 26, 2010
HOLY ****!: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World trailer
There's a movie coming out this summer that I've been quietly awaiting a trailer for, and that's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. There's a number of factors that has this near the top of my Must-See List, among them the fact that it's the third film from director Edgar Wright, who helmed the too-brilliant-for-words Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (see both immediately if you haven't already), it's based on the incredible graphic novel series by Bryan Lee 
O'Malley, and it's set in my hometown of Toronto (as is the comic; O'Malley's a Toronto guy as well). It stars Michael Cera as the titular character, a twentysomething dude who falls for the girl of his dreams, the beautiful and mysterious Ramona Flowers, only to learn that in order to win her, he must first defeat her Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends (who include Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans and Brandon Routh, among others). The trailer just hit the 'net, and it looks amazing.
The Scott Pilgrim comic is just a blast of pure fun, combining martial arts, classic video games and romantic comedy, and it's one of the best comics being published today (the sixth and final volume, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, is due in stores in July). From the look of this trailer, Wright and crew have totally nailed the tone of the books, which, on the surface, seems like it would be difficult to adapt into a movie. I've been on the fence about Cera's involvement – the character of Scott Pilgrim, a loud, outgoing, fun-loving guy, couldn't be further from Cera's usual on-screen persona – and while this trailer doesn't totally put my concerns to rest (he barely speaks in it), the rest of it just confirms that this movie looks like it deserves the excitement that it's generating in many corners of the Internet (including this one).
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World hits theaters on August 13. See it, or you are dead to me.
Check out the Scott Pilgrim trailer here, courtesy of Apple.
O'Malley, and it's set in my hometown of Toronto (as is the comic; O'Malley's a Toronto guy as well). It stars Michael Cera as the titular character, a twentysomething dude who falls for the girl of his dreams, the beautiful and mysterious Ramona Flowers, only to learn that in order to win her, he must first defeat her Seven Evil Ex-Boyfriends (who include Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans and Brandon Routh, among others). The trailer just hit the 'net, and it looks amazing.The Scott Pilgrim comic is just a blast of pure fun, combining martial arts, classic video games and romantic comedy, and it's one of the best comics being published today (the sixth and final volume, Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour, is due in stores in July). From the look of this trailer, Wright and crew have totally nailed the tone of the books, which, on the surface, seems like it would be difficult to adapt into a movie. I've been on the fence about Cera's involvement – the character of Scott Pilgrim, a loud, outgoing, fun-loving guy, couldn't be further from Cera's usual on-screen persona – and while this trailer doesn't totally put my concerns to rest (he barely speaks in it), the rest of it just confirms that this movie looks like it deserves the excitement that it's generating in many corners of the Internet (including this one).
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World hits theaters on August 13. See it, or you are dead to me.
Check out the Scott Pilgrim trailer here, courtesy of Apple.
Labels: comics, geek alert, trailers
¶ 9:00 AM 1 Comments
Thursday, March 18, 2010
More Captain America casting rumors
Jon Krasinski. So a few weeks ago I went on about how I just couldn’t see Jim
from The Office as Captain America. Despite conflicting rumors that Krasinski has the inside track and that he’s all but out of the running entirely, he’s been stuck in my brain ever since I first heard his name come up. He sort of has a 1940s look to him, and he’s tall enough that he’s in no danger of being dwarfed by Robert Downey Jr. when standing with the rest of the Avengers. I’m still not sure he has the gravitas to be Captain America, but I’m slowly warming to the idea of Krasinski in the role, even if he’s starting to look like a longshot.
Mike Vogel. The fact that this guy is still being mentioned as a contender despite being something of a nonentity (I’ve seen both the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and Cloverfield, and I have literally no memory of Vogel in either of them, which does not bode well for him) suggests to me that he’s Marvel’s Plan B, C or D. I guess if he shaves his permanent 5 o’clock shadow he may look the part, but he seems to lack the onscreen presence to pull off a character as important as Captain America.
Dane Cook. This one, is probably nonsense (or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part). The only guy rumored to be in talks (the “rumor” seems to be generated by Cook’s own Twitter feed, so take it with the requisite amount of salt) that will make me, a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel geek, not go see a Captain America movie. I can think of few people worse for this role, and I don’t want to dignify the concept of Dane Cook playing Captain America any more than I already have, so I’ll just stop writing now, lest I get too worked up and give myself a stroke.
I make no secret of my geekiness, and, as I’ve mentioned here numerous times, I’m closely following the production of Marvel Studios’ potential blockbusters 
set for next summer, Thor, which is about the Norse god of thunder exiled on modern-day Earth, and The First Avenger: Captain America, which is about, well Captain America, and is largely set during World War II (it also apparently ties into Iron Man 2 via Tony Stark’s father, in addition to leading into the planned Avengers movie). I like both characters, and I’m really excited about seeing Thor, Captain America and Iron Man all crossing over in the same movie universe; this is the sort of thing comic book fans have been dreaming about for decades.
On paper, Thor is the more difficult sell, as it combines superhero action and a more Lord of the Rings-like fantasy setting, with frost giants and other mystical creatures, which seems like a tricky balance for a superhero flick. Captain America, on the other hand, punches out Nazis in the Second World War and is frozen in a block of ice until he’s thawed out in the modern day by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, introduced in the post-credits scene in Iron Man), which sounds like a relatively easy film to pull off, at least compared to a movie that has to somehow fuse the more real-world vibe of Iron Man with a story, quite literally, of gods and monsters. But somehow Thor is the production that seems to be humming along nicely with a solid team of people behind it (it’s directed by Kenneth Branagh, stars relative unknown Chris Hemsworth as Thor and co-stars Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Stellan Skarsgård, Ray Stevenson and Idris Elba), while Captain America seems to be rife with problems: the film starts shooting in June and Marvel is still searching for its lead actor (though casting Hugo Weaving, who’s in final talks to play the evil Red Skull, is brilliant), and director Joe Johsnston, who last helmed the flop The Wolfman (though he came onto that film with a couple of weeks to go before shooting, so he can hardly be held responsible for its performance, and it’s actually quite a good movie), has reportedly been butting heads with Marvel over the casting and the budget, and I’ve heard rumblings that the Captain America script is fairly underwhelming.
A few weeks back I mentioned a list of actors Marvel was bringing in for screen tests, which included Jon Krasinski of The Office (a choice that, as much as I railed against it initially, I have to admit is growing on me a little bit). At the time it was believed that the casting of Cap would be finalized any day, but here we are weeks later and all we know is that there are even more actors apparently being considered for the role, the latest being Ryan Phillipe, Chris Evans and Dear John’s Channing Tatum. Given the parade of actors gunning to fill the Star-Spangled Avenger’s tights, as well as my interest in all things Marvel-related, I thought I’d give my thoughts on some of the actors rumored to be up for Cap.
Channing Tatum. This guy is one of the new additions to the list of
people Marvel has apparently approached, and I hate it. Tatum, who I keep hearing is actually a very good actor, has sucked in the stuff I’ve seen him in. He was the dead weight in the otherwise fun G.I. Joe, and given how similar the characters of Duke and Cap are (charismatic soldier and leader of men), I really don’t need to see the Marvel movie universe sullied by a Captain Marblemouth film. I get that someone up high has decided that Tatum will be a star, I just want him to do it as far away from Marvel Studios as possible.
set for next summer, Thor, which is about the Norse god of thunder exiled on modern-day Earth, and The First Avenger: Captain America, which is about, well Captain America, and is largely set during World War II (it also apparently ties into Iron Man 2 via Tony Stark’s father, in addition to leading into the planned Avengers movie). I like both characters, and I’m really excited about seeing Thor, Captain America and Iron Man all crossing over in the same movie universe; this is the sort of thing comic book fans have been dreaming about for decades.On paper, Thor is the more difficult sell, as it combines superhero action and a more Lord of the Rings-like fantasy setting, with frost giants and other mystical creatures, which seems like a tricky balance for a superhero flick. Captain America, on the other hand, punches out Nazis in the Second World War and is frozen in a block of ice until he’s thawed out in the modern day by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, introduced in the post-credits scene in Iron Man), which sounds like a relatively easy film to pull off, at least compared to a movie that has to somehow fuse the more real-world vibe of Iron Man with a story, quite literally, of gods and monsters. But somehow Thor is the production that seems to be humming along nicely with a solid team of people behind it (it’s directed by Kenneth Branagh, stars relative unknown Chris Hemsworth as Thor and co-stars Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, Stellan Skarsgård, Ray Stevenson and Idris Elba), while Captain America seems to be rife with problems: the film starts shooting in June and Marvel is still searching for its lead actor (though casting Hugo Weaving, who’s in final talks to play the evil Red Skull, is brilliant), and director Joe Johsnston, who last helmed the flop The Wolfman (though he came onto that film with a couple of weeks to go before shooting, so he can hardly be held responsible for its performance, and it’s actually quite a good movie), has reportedly been butting heads with Marvel over the casting and the budget, and I’ve heard rumblings that the Captain America script is fairly underwhelming.
A few weeks back I mentioned a list of actors Marvel was bringing in for screen tests, which included Jon Krasinski of The Office (a choice that, as much as I railed against it initially, I have to admit is growing on me a little bit). At the time it was believed that the casting of Cap would be finalized any day, but here we are weeks later and all we know is that there are even more actors apparently being considered for the role, the latest being Ryan Phillipe, Chris Evans and Dear John’s Channing Tatum. Given the parade of actors gunning to fill the Star-Spangled Avenger’s tights, as well as my interest in all things Marvel-related, I thought I’d give my thoughts on some of the actors rumored to be up for Cap.
Channing Tatum. This guy is one of the new additions to the list of
people Marvel has apparently approached, and I hate it. Tatum, who I keep hearing is actually a very good actor, has sucked in the stuff I’ve seen him in. He was the dead weight in the otherwise fun G.I. Joe, and given how similar the characters of Duke and Cap are (charismatic soldier and leader of men), I really don’t need to see the Marvel movie universe sullied by a Captain Marblemouth film. I get that someone up high has decided that Tatum will be a star, I just want him to do it as far away from Marvel Studios as possible. Ryan Phillippe. He seems too physically small to play Captain America (who’s usually portrayed as a tall, beefy guy) but otherwise he has the right look. I have no doubt Phillippe would bulk up for the role, but purely in terms of height his Cap would probably seem tiny, especially next to Hemsworth (who looks massive in everything I’ve seen him in, like A Perfect Getaway and Star Trek), who plays Thor, one of the members, along with Iron Man, of the Avengers. Phillippe also seems a little bland to play a guy who is supposed to be, quite literally, an icon.
Chris Evans. Evans has already been in a Marvel franchise – his Human Torch is the best thing about the utterly the mediocre Fantastic Four movies – and he had powers in the excellent little sci-fi/action film Push (a likely future Under the Radar entry). And despite his good looks, he’s actually a fine actor as well; I thought he was just another pretty face until I saw him in Danny Boyle’s overlooked Sunshine (it’s like Event Horizon, but good), where he actually acts. He’s got the charisma and he looks like a superhero. Of all the actors said to be under consideration, Evans is probably my favorite.
The Supernatural guys. Supernatural co-star Jensen
Ackles is reportedly one of the contenders, and he certainly looks the part with his square jaw and Aryan good looks. As much as I think he’d do a fine job (he’s pretty great on from what I’ve seen of that show, and he’s also solid in the fun slasher flick My Bloody Valentine 3D), I actually think it’s his co-star, Jared Padalecki, who would make a better Captain America. He’s taller (he’s almost the same size as the hulking Jason in the Friday the 13th remake), and already solidly built, so he’s essentially just a peroxide bottle away from being Steve Rogers.
Jeremy Renner. The Hurt Locker star was reportedly in talks with Marvel for quite some time (sometimes rumored for Cap, sometimes for Hawkeye in The Avengers; it’s speculated the character turns up either in the Thor film or Captain America in a cameo), but word is the low salary Marvel’s offering, coupled with the apparent nine-picture deal required by the studio, turned off the recent Oscar nominee. I think Renner would probably make a better Hawkeye (the character is traditionally portrayed as a cocky smart-ass, which is right up Renner’s alley), but you could do a lot worse than having an Academy Award nominee and star of the recent Oscar darling playing Captain America. If it were up to me I’d pay Renner what he wants and give him the shield and get to it.
Garett Hedlund. The star of the upcoming Tron Legacy is apparently
one of Marvel’s top choices for Captain America, but once again, he’s said to have balked at the studio’s low fee. His name’s still in the mix up though, and between the positive buzz Tron Legacy is building up online (and not just from yours truly) and the fact that he’s still in this discussion, it sounds like Marvel may try to meet Hedlund halfway. I dig the actor’s work (he’s great in Friday Night Lights and is solid enough in the underwhelming Troy), and again, he certainly has the right look. I think he’d make a pretty fantastic Captain America.
Ryan McPartlin. I’ve never seen Chuck, or McPartlin in anything else. All I’ve seen on the Internet are a lot of pictures of this guy with his shirt off, and he’s certainly blond, handsome and ripped. Who knows if he can act, but if I wanted a picture of a guy dressed as Captain America, I’m sure he’d be great.
Chris Evans. Evans has already been in a Marvel franchise – his Human Torch is the best thing about the utterly the mediocre Fantastic Four movies – and he had powers in the excellent little sci-fi/action film Push (a likely future Under the Radar entry). And despite his good looks, he’s actually a fine actor as well; I thought he was just another pretty face until I saw him in Danny Boyle’s overlooked Sunshine (it’s like Event Horizon, but good), where he actually acts. He’s got the charisma and he looks like a superhero. Of all the actors said to be under consideration, Evans is probably my favorite.
The Supernatural guys. Supernatural co-star Jensen
Ackles is reportedly one of the contenders, and he certainly looks the part with his square jaw and Aryan good looks. As much as I think he’d do a fine job (he’s pretty great on from what I’ve seen of that show, and he’s also solid in the fun slasher flick My Bloody Valentine 3D), I actually think it’s his co-star, Jared Padalecki, who would make a better Captain America. He’s taller (he’s almost the same size as the hulking Jason in the Friday the 13th remake), and already solidly built, so he’s essentially just a peroxide bottle away from being Steve Rogers.Jeremy Renner. The Hurt Locker star was reportedly in talks with Marvel for quite some time (sometimes rumored for Cap, sometimes for Hawkeye in The Avengers; it’s speculated the character turns up either in the Thor film or Captain America in a cameo), but word is the low salary Marvel’s offering, coupled with the apparent nine-picture deal required by the studio, turned off the recent Oscar nominee. I think Renner would probably make a better Hawkeye (the character is traditionally portrayed as a cocky smart-ass, which is right up Renner’s alley), but you could do a lot worse than having an Academy Award nominee and star of the recent Oscar darling playing Captain America. If it were up to me I’d pay Renner what he wants and give him the shield and get to it.
Garett Hedlund. The star of the upcoming Tron Legacy is apparently
one of Marvel’s top choices for Captain America, but once again, he’s said to have balked at the studio’s low fee. His name’s still in the mix up though, and between the positive buzz Tron Legacy is building up online (and not just from yours truly) and the fact that he’s still in this discussion, it sounds like Marvel may try to meet Hedlund halfway. I dig the actor’s work (he’s great in Friday Night Lights and is solid enough in the underwhelming Troy), and again, he certainly has the right look. I think he’d make a pretty fantastic Captain America.Ryan McPartlin. I’ve never seen Chuck, or McPartlin in anything else. All I’ve seen on the Internet are a lot of pictures of this guy with his shirt off, and he’s certainly blond, handsome and ripped. Who knows if he can act, but if I wanted a picture of a guy dressed as Captain America, I’m sure he’d be great.
Jon Krasinski. So a few weeks ago I went on about how I just couldn’t see Jim
from The Office as Captain America. Despite conflicting rumors that Krasinski has the inside track and that he’s all but out of the running entirely, he’s been stuck in my brain ever since I first heard his name come up. He sort of has a 1940s look to him, and he’s tall enough that he’s in no danger of being dwarfed by Robert Downey Jr. when standing with the rest of the Avengers. I’m still not sure he has the gravitas to be Captain America, but I’m slowly warming to the idea of Krasinski in the role, even if he’s starting to look like a longshot.Mike Vogel. The fact that this guy is still being mentioned as a contender despite being something of a nonentity (I’ve seen both the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and Cloverfield, and I have literally no memory of Vogel in either of them, which does not bode well for him) suggests to me that he’s Marvel’s Plan B, C or D. I guess if he shaves his permanent 5 o’clock shadow he may look the part, but he seems to lack the onscreen presence to pull off a character as important as Captain America.
Dane Cook. This one, is probably nonsense (or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part). The only guy rumored to be in talks (the “rumor” seems to be generated by Cook’s own Twitter feed, so take it with the requisite amount of salt) that will make me, a dyed-in-the-wool Marvel geek, not go see a Captain America movie. I can think of few people worse for this role, and I don’t want to dignify the concept of Dane Cook playing Captain America any more than I already have, so I’ll just stop writing now, lest I get too worked up and give myself a stroke.
Labels: comics, geek alert, Movie news, superheroes
¶ 8:15 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Hughes Bros. to helm live-action Akira
I saw The Book of Eli a few weeks ago, and I liked it quite a bit. It doesn’t really reinvent the wheel when it comes to post-apocalyptic action films, but it’s a solid entry in the genre, buoyed by a great performance from the reliably 
excellent Denzel Washington. The style and craftsmanship on display, in particular, really clicked with me, and it reminded me how talented the Hughes Brothers are as filmmakers. Now it’s being reported that they’ve signed on to helm another post-apocalyptic story, this time adapting the legendary 1982 Japanese comic Akira, (which was in turn adapted into a legendary animated film in 1988 by writer/artist Katsuhiro Otomo) for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company and Warner Bros.
As far as I can recall, Hollywood’s been threatening to remake Akira for more than a decade (at one point it was to star Ben Affleck!), and I don’t think it’s any better an idea now than it was before. The story, originally told in a mammoth 2,100-page graphic novel (divided into six huge tomes), follows youth biker gangs in futuristic Neo-Tokyo years after a mysterious explosion destroyed the city and triggered a world war. Tetsuo, the youngest member of one of the gangs has an encounter with a strange, blue-skinned child on the street who, we later learn, has been broken out of a secret government facility researching mind powers. Tetsuo ends up in the program himself after he’s found to have incredible potential, and soon Kaneda, one of his older friends in the gang, tries to break him out of the program, only to learn that Tetsuo has gone mad with power. Screaming, exploding heads and another apocalypse ensues.
The graphic novel is much deeper than the animated film, delving into the society that springs up after Tetsuo triggers another mysterious apocalyptic blast that levels Neo-Tokyo once again, while the film (written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, who wrote and illustrated the comic) has Tetsuo’s city-destroying meltdown as its climax. Word is this new version of Akira will actually follow the route of the comic, and in order to accommodate the much longer story, word is the movie will be released in two parts. Ambitious, to say the least.
I’ve read the Akira comic (it’s pretty incredible in its scope and ambition, and Otomo is an ridiulously talented cartoonist), and I really love the animated film (the opening sequence where the gang is racing through the streets of Neo-Tokyo while the taiko drums swell on the soundtrack is absolutely amazing, especially with a high-end DTS sound system), and as much as I pride myself as not being a guy who hates remakes just for the sake of hating remakes, I can’t envision a live-action adaptation of Akira with, presumably, an all-Western cast that isn’t terrible. That said, assuming this version of Akira moves forward – and that’s a very big “if” indeed – I can’t pretend I won’t be following this project closely going forward.
excellent Denzel Washington. The style and craftsmanship on display, in particular, really clicked with me, and it reminded me how talented the Hughes Brothers are as filmmakers. Now it’s being reported that they’ve signed on to helm another post-apocalyptic story, this time adapting the legendary 1982 Japanese comic Akira, (which was in turn adapted into a legendary animated film in 1988 by writer/artist Katsuhiro Otomo) for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way production company and Warner Bros.As far as I can recall, Hollywood’s been threatening to remake Akira for more than a decade (at one point it was to star Ben Affleck!), and I don’t think it’s any better an idea now than it was before. The story, originally told in a mammoth 2,100-page graphic novel (divided into six huge tomes), follows youth biker gangs in futuristic Neo-Tokyo years after a mysterious explosion destroyed the city and triggered a world war. Tetsuo, the youngest member of one of the gangs has an encounter with a strange, blue-skinned child on the street who, we later learn, has been broken out of a secret government facility researching mind powers. Tetsuo ends up in the program himself after he’s found to have incredible potential, and soon Kaneda, one of his older friends in the gang, tries to break him out of the program, only to learn that Tetsuo has gone mad with power. Screaming, exploding heads and another apocalypse ensues.
The graphic novel is much deeper than the animated film, delving into the society that springs up after Tetsuo triggers another mysterious apocalyptic blast that levels Neo-Tokyo once again, while the film (written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, who wrote and illustrated the comic) has Tetsuo’s city-destroying meltdown as its climax. Word is this new version of Akira will actually follow the route of the comic, and in order to accommodate the much longer story, word is the movie will be released in two parts. Ambitious, to say the least.
I’ve read the Akira comic (it’s pretty incredible in its scope and ambition, and Otomo is an ridiulously talented cartoonist), and I really love the animated film (the opening sequence where the gang is racing through the streets of Neo-Tokyo while the taiko drums swell on the soundtrack is absolutely amazing, especially with a high-end DTS sound system), and as much as I pride myself as not being a guy who hates remakes just for the sake of hating remakes, I can’t envision a live-action adaptation of Akira with, presumably, an all-Western cast that isn’t terrible. That said, assuming this version of Akira moves forward – and that’s a very big “if” indeed – I can’t pretend I won’t be following this project closely going forward.
Labels: animation, comics, Movie news
¶ 9:47 AM 0 Comments
Friday, February 5, 2010
A winning trailer for The Losers
When I went to see Mel Gibson’s new movie, Edge of Darkness last weekend (it sucked, don’t bother), the best part of the entire experience was seeing the first trailer for The Losers, an adaptation of the cult comic series from 2003-06 by writer Andy Diggle and illustrator Jock (yep, just one name). It’s one of my favorite comics of the 2000s, and is basically a cooler version of The A-Team crossed with Ocean’s Eleven. It follows a team of special-ops badasses (played by a solid cast including Jeffrey Dean Morgan of Watchmen, Zoe Saldana from Avatar and Star Trek and Idris Elba from The Wire) who are betrayed and left for dead by their handler, Max (Jason Patric), and enact an elaborate revenge plot that involves shooting things, blowing stuff up stealing trucks with helicopters.
The Losers is a pretty great comic, and the movie looks like it’s a lot of fun. My only gripe with the trailer is that it gives away one of the coolest moments in the short-lived series (despite critical acclaim, the book never sold particularly well, and was cancelled after 32 issues, though the entire series is collected in five graphic novels that tell a complete story), the gag where Chris Evans, playing the team’s tech geek/smartass, “shoots” some guards with the help of the squad’s sniper.
I’ve been quietly anticipating the movie version of The Losers since I heard it was being adapted, and it looks like it was worth the wait. April 9 can’t come fast enough.
One quick little thing before I go: Canadian screenwriter Terri Tatchell, who was just nominated for an Oscar for co-writing District 9, has revealed that her next gig is once again adapting a cool-looking short film into a feature (District 9 expanded director Neill Blomkamp’s Alive in Joburg short), this time a short called Terminus, about a guy being followed around by a big stone creature whose presence begins to drive him insane. The short, which is below, is pretty damned crazy (and also pretty cool), though I have no idea how this will be expanded into a feature-length movie. But given how much I loved District 9, I’m fairly confident the full-length version of Terminus will, if nothing else, be unlike anything I’ve seen before.
¶ 10:25 AM 0 Comments
The Losers is a pretty great comic, and the movie looks like it’s a lot of fun. My only gripe with the trailer is that it gives away one of the coolest moments in the short-lived series (despite critical acclaim, the book never sold particularly well, and was cancelled after 32 issues, though the entire series is collected in five graphic novels that tell a complete story), the gag where Chris Evans, playing the team’s tech geek/smartass, “shoots” some guards with the help of the squad’s sniper.
I’ve been quietly anticipating the movie version of The Losers since I heard it was being adapted, and it looks like it was worth the wait. April 9 can’t come fast enough.
One quick little thing before I go: Canadian screenwriter Terri Tatchell, who was just nominated for an Oscar for co-writing District 9, has revealed that her next gig is once again adapting a cool-looking short film into a feature (District 9 expanded director Neill Blomkamp’s Alive in Joburg short), this time a short called Terminus, about a guy being followed around by a big stone creature whose presence begins to drive him insane. The short, which is below, is pretty damned crazy (and also pretty cool), though I have no idea how this will be expanded into a feature-length movie. But given how much I loved District 9, I’m fairly confident the full-length version of Terminus will, if nothing else, be unlike anything I’ve seen before.
¶ 10:25 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Sony hires new Spider-Man director
It’s official: Sony has hired Marc Webb to direct the new Spider-Man movie. Webb, who helmed last summer’s indie romantic comedy hit, (500) Days of Summer (which I haven’t seen, but I’ve heard both good and bad things about it), is apparently the hot director in Hollywood righ
t now, and will reboot the franchise, moving the setting back to high school and focusing on the adolescent problems of Peter Parker, complete with a love quadrangle (with bully Flash Thompson, Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy, played by Bryce Dallas Howard in Spider-Man 3).
The new Spider-Man films will be based more on the Ultimate Spider-Man series of comics launched in the 1990s, which similarly revamped the story for a more modern audience, as opposed to previous Spider-Man director Sam Raimi’s movies, which were inspired by the original Spidey books from the 1960s. The Ultimate version focuses more on teen angst than action, and the budget for the new film (around $80 million, which is actually pretty small for a modern superhero movie; Spider-Man 3 is said to have cost anywhere from $200 million to $300 million) seems to reflect that. It’s also assumed that unknown actors will be cast in the main roles.
Now, I hate to be that guy, but I have to be. This sounds like a terrible idea. It sounds like Sony’s chasing the Twilight/teen romance trend. And while I can appreciate the studio wanting to lower the budget in these tougher economic times, it’s hard to take this news as anything other than a step downwards for the Spider-Man cinematic franchise. I’m not even a huge fan of Spider-Man (the movies or the comics), but this is very disappointing news.
None of this is a knock against Webb; even the negative things I’ve heard about (500) Days of Summer acknowledge Webb’s visual talents, so I’m not worried that the movie will look bad. I just feel, as a fan of superheroes and superhero movies, that the genre, in film, is just starting to get to some interesting places, and I think Spider-Man (basically the mascot of Marvel Comics, the way Superman and Batman are at DC) deserves better than to be subjected to the Twilight treatment.
My negativity aside, I’m not going to pretend I won’t be following the development of this project closely. I’m trying to keep an open mind; I don’t want a crappy Spider-Man movie, but right now I’m not sure I can see how this new film will come close to the great, genre-defining movies Raimi crafted.
t now, and will reboot the franchise, moving the setting back to high school and focusing on the adolescent problems of Peter Parker, complete with a love quadrangle (with bully Flash Thompson, Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy, played by Bryce Dallas Howard in Spider-Man 3).The new Spider-Man films will be based more on the Ultimate Spider-Man series of comics launched in the 1990s, which similarly revamped the story for a more modern audience, as opposed to previous Spider-Man director Sam Raimi’s movies, which were inspired by the original Spidey books from the 1960s. The Ultimate version focuses more on teen angst than action, and the budget for the new film (around $80 million, which is actually pretty small for a modern superhero movie; Spider-Man 3 is said to have cost anywhere from $200 million to $300 million) seems to reflect that. It’s also assumed that unknown actors will be cast in the main roles.
Now, I hate to be that guy, but I have to be. This sounds like a terrible idea. It sounds like Sony’s chasing the Twilight/teen romance trend. And while I can appreciate the studio wanting to lower the budget in these tougher economic times, it’s hard to take this news as anything other than a step downwards for the Spider-Man cinematic franchise. I’m not even a huge fan of Spider-Man (the movies or the comics), but this is very disappointing news.
None of this is a knock against Webb; even the negative things I’ve heard about (500) Days of Summer acknowledge Webb’s visual talents, so I’m not worried that the movie will look bad. I just feel, as a fan of superheroes and superhero movies, that the genre, in film, is just starting to get to some interesting places, and I think Spider-Man (basically the mascot of Marvel Comics, the way Superman and Batman are at DC) deserves better than to be subjected to the Twilight treatment.
My negativity aside, I’m not going to pretend I won’t be following the development of this project closely. I’m trying to keep an open mind; I don’t want a crappy Spider-Man movie, but right now I’m not sure I can see how this new film will come close to the great, genre-defining movies Raimi crafted.
Labels: comics, geek alert, Movie news, superheroes
¶ 10:03 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Disney buys Marvel: A geek’s take
So the big news this week is that Disney is buying Marvel for $4 billion (I’m still sort of wrapping my head around it), and considering the one medium I love more than film is comics, I feel almost duty-bound to comment on the deal. When I read comics growing up, I always preferred Marvel to rival DC (which isn’t to say I didn’t read plenty of DC books as well, but
Marvel has most of the characters that helped get me through adolescence, like Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Avengers), so I have more interest than a lot of moviegoers in the future of Marvel’s cinematic universe. One of the things that was so exciting about the bulk of Marvel’s upcoming movies was that Marvel was producing them essentially as a big indie, with major Hollywood studios (like Universal for The Incredible Hulk and Paramount for Iron Man and several other upcoming projects like Thor, Captain America and The Avengers) essentially acting as the distributors. That meant no studio suits who don’t understand the comics or characters mucking with things, so my first instinct when I read that Disney, the studio that’s quite literally synonymous with “kiddie entertainment,” was buying Marvel, my heart sank a little bit. Would this mean Wolverine would stop gutting people with his claws, or the Punisher would start dealing with criminals with stern lectures instead of hollowpoint ammunition?
But after doing some reading (and thinking, always with the thinking) it seems pretty clear that Disney was primarily looking to gain a foothold in the lucrative young-male demographic that’s eluded them for so long. It doesn’t appear likely that Disney folks will actually involve themselves too heavily in Marvel’s business (though that’s what everyone always says when deals like this go down; we won’t really know for sure for months or even years after the deal is done how the companies are fitting together); I read a recap of the conference call that took place shortly after Monday’s announcement, and one Disney exec basically said the folks at Marvel seem to know what they’re doing with these movies.
And make no mistake, this deal was about movies and other related media and merchandise, and had didn’t have much (if anything) to do with what was once Marvel’s core business: comics. To say the modern North American comics industry is a speck compared to the movie business is a laughable understatement, so I’d be pretty astounded to find out Disney ownership gives that part of Marvel more than a cursory glance. Time Warner is the parent company of DC Comics, and Warner almost never concerns itself with what DC is doing in terms of comics publishing (though one time a few years back Warner brass apparently got all worked up when they learned that DC was publishing a comic featuring Superman and Batman analogues who were gay lovers), and I assume Disney will take a similar approach to Marvel’s publishing line. It’s about the movies, and about having characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Hulk in the same stable as Mickey Mouse, Goofy and WALL-E.
Which brings up another strange part of the Marvel movie landscape: the fact that some of Marvel’s best-known characters aren’t even owned by Marvel in the medium of film. Many years before the comic book movie bonanza, Marvel sold the film rights to several of its biggest characters in deals it would never agree to now, and as a result, 20th Century Fox technically owns anything to do with the X-Men (and all related characters, which easily number in the hundreds and include many of Marvel’s most popular characters, including Wolverine), the Fantastic Four (the book that quite literally launched Marvel as we know it in 1963) and Daredevil, and Sony owns the film rights to Marvel’s unofficial mascot, Spider-Man. I’m sure not a day goes by that someone at the Marvel Films offices doesn’t wish they had a time machine to undo those deals – Fox owns those characters in perpetuity as long as they continue to produce films based on them, which is why Fox has been making noise about rebooting its aggressively mediocre Fantastic Four franchise lately, and plans to crank out lackluster X-Men-related movies for the foreseeable future – so as much as my nerd-heart fills with joy when I think about, say, a Pixar-crafted Fantastic Four movie (I just bit the inside of my mouth I got so excited for a second there), it’s probably not going to happen.
The other thing that bears mentioning is that the Disney deal has no impact on existing agreements between Marvel and other studios, so Iron Man 2 will still come from Paramount, as will the little Avengers universe they’re establishing; the upcoming Thor and Captain America movies will apparently all tie into an Avengers movie in which those characters will all have to team up to fight off a massive threat (smart money on the Internet seems to be either a rampaging Hulk or an alien invasion…either one, if done right, could be amazing). All this really means is that after those movies (and possibly a comedic take on Ant Man, which has been talked about for a few years as a project for Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright), Disney will be the home for the bulk of Marvel’s movies. Which, if nothing else, will probably mean the movies will have a bit more big-studio cash behind them. In the mean time, there’s a wealth of lesser-known Marvel characters that would make for some cool movies (and TV shows and cartoons), and I’m looking forward to finding out more about Disney’s plans for the House of Ideas.
Marvel has most of the characters that helped get me through adolescence, like Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Avengers), so I have more interest than a lot of moviegoers in the future of Marvel’s cinematic universe. One of the things that was so exciting about the bulk of Marvel’s upcoming movies was that Marvel was producing them essentially as a big indie, with major Hollywood studios (like Universal for The Incredible Hulk and Paramount for Iron Man and several other upcoming projects like Thor, Captain America and The Avengers) essentially acting as the distributors. That meant no studio suits who don’t understand the comics or characters mucking with things, so my first instinct when I read that Disney, the studio that’s quite literally synonymous with “kiddie entertainment,” was buying Marvel, my heart sank a little bit. Would this mean Wolverine would stop gutting people with his claws, or the Punisher would start dealing with criminals with stern lectures instead of hollowpoint ammunition?But after doing some reading (and thinking, always with the thinking) it seems pretty clear that Disney was primarily looking to gain a foothold in the lucrative young-male demographic that’s eluded them for so long. It doesn’t appear likely that Disney folks will actually involve themselves too heavily in Marvel’s business (though that’s what everyone always says when deals like this go down; we won’t really know for sure for months or even years after the deal is done how the companies are fitting together); I read a recap of the conference call that took place shortly after Monday’s announcement, and one Disney exec basically said the folks at Marvel seem to know what they’re doing with these movies.
And make no mistake, this deal was about movies and other related media and merchandise, and had didn’t have much (if anything) to do with what was once Marvel’s core business: comics. To say the modern North American comics industry is a speck compared to the movie business is a laughable understatement, so I’d be pretty astounded to find out Disney ownership gives that part of Marvel more than a cursory glance. Time Warner is the parent company of DC Comics, and Warner almost never concerns itself with what DC is doing in terms of comics publishing (though one time a few years back Warner brass apparently got all worked up when they learned that DC was publishing a comic featuring Superman and Batman analogues who were gay lovers), and I assume Disney will take a similar approach to Marvel’s publishing line. It’s about the movies, and about having characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Hulk in the same stable as Mickey Mouse, Goofy and WALL-E.
Which brings up another strange part of the Marvel movie landscape: the fact that some of Marvel’s best-known characters aren’t even owned by Marvel in the medium of film. Many years before the comic book movie bonanza, Marvel sold the film rights to several of its biggest characters in deals it would never agree to now, and as a result, 20th Century Fox technically owns anything to do with the X-Men (and all related characters, which easily number in the hundreds and include many of Marvel’s most popular characters, including Wolverine), the Fantastic Four (the book that quite literally launched Marvel as we know it in 1963) and Daredevil, and Sony owns the film rights to Marvel’s unofficial mascot, Spider-Man. I’m sure not a day goes by that someone at the Marvel Films offices doesn’t wish they had a time machine to undo those deals – Fox owns those characters in perpetuity as long as they continue to produce films based on them, which is why Fox has been making noise about rebooting its aggressively mediocre Fantastic Four franchise lately, and plans to crank out lackluster X-Men-related movies for the foreseeable future – so as much as my nerd-heart fills with joy when I think about, say, a Pixar-crafted Fantastic Four movie (I just bit the inside of my mouth I got so excited for a second there), it’s probably not going to happen.
The other thing that bears mentioning is that the Disney deal has no impact on existing agreements between Marvel and other studios, so Iron Man 2 will still come from Paramount, as will the little Avengers universe they’re establishing; the upcoming Thor and Captain America movies will apparently all tie into an Avengers movie in which those characters will all have to team up to fight off a massive threat (smart money on the Internet seems to be either a rampaging Hulk or an alien invasion…either one, if done right, could be amazing). All this really means is that after those movies (and possibly a comedic take on Ant Man, which has been talked about for a few years as a project for Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright), Disney will be the home for the bulk of Marvel’s movies. Which, if nothing else, will probably mean the movies will have a bit more big-studio cash behind them. In the mean time, there’s a wealth of lesser-known Marvel characters that would make for some cool movies (and TV shows and cartoons), and I’m looking forward to finding out more about Disney’s plans for the House of Ideas.
Labels: comics, Movie news, superheroes
¶ 10:34 AM 1 Comments
Friday, August 21, 2009
Wolf Man trailer and . . . Shazam!
Another interesting trailer today (though nowhere near the “big deal” yesterday’s Avatar teaser was), this time for the much-delayed remake of Universal’s classic The Wolf Man, starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins. This thing was originally supposed to come out, if I’m not mistaken, last November (I believe I saw footage from it after ComicCon in 2007), but it’s now set for release on February 12, 2010.
This trailer actually looks pretty cool. I know that usually when a studio delays a movie as much as The Wolf Man has been delayed, it’s often seen as a bad sign, but this trailer’s got me interested. It’s got top-class acting talent, a nice, slick look, and I appreciate the period setting. And those transformation sequences look like they could be awesome. And because I can tie just about any movie news back to comic books, another reason I’m looking forward to checking out The Wolf Man for myself is that director Joe Johnston was signed a few months ago to direct the Captain America film for Marvel. And you can bet your sweet can I’ll be covering that movie as more information surfaces. Stay tuned, true believer!
To keep the comic book movie theme going, The Hollywood Reporter is, erm, reporting that Warner Bros. has hired actor-turned-director Bill Birch (he was on Grey’s Anatomy, a show I don’t watch) to write a script for Shazam!, an adaptation of
the DC Comics title. (The character is actually called Captain Marvel, but he’s always better known by the magic word he exclaims to transform from a young boy into a barrel-chested Superman riff. It’s also more fun to say.)
A Shazam! movie’s been in the works for years, and last I heard WB cooled on the more kiddie-friendly superhero after Speed Racer (which was geared at younger audiences) tanked and The Dark Knight (which was most definitely aimed at adults) was a box office phenomenon. Personally I’ve always thought a superhero movie specifically targeted at kids is a brilliant idea; superhero stories are all about adolescent wish fulfillment, and a movie about a 12-year-old boy who can transform into a beefy adult with amazing powers seems to me like a license to print money. Get Smart director Peter Segal is apparently still attached to direct, and while that movie didn’t blow me away, Segal proved he can balance action and comedy quite astutely. As awesome as The Dark Knight was, Iron Man shows there’s still plenty of room for “fun” superhero movies as well, and if done right, there’s no reason Shazam! can’t be similarly successful.
Hey, another trailer! This time it’s a proper trailer (as in, includes actual footage from the movie) for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. Say what you will about Moore and his previous movies, there’s never been a more appropriate time for a movie about this subject. If nothing else, it will hopefully spur some more discussion about some very real issues facing not just America, but the world. I know I’ll be checking it out.
This trailer actually looks pretty cool. I know that usually when a studio delays a movie as much as The Wolf Man has been delayed, it’s often seen as a bad sign, but this trailer’s got me interested. It’s got top-class acting talent, a nice, slick look, and I appreciate the period setting. And those transformation sequences look like they could be awesome. And because I can tie just about any movie news back to comic books, another reason I’m looking forward to checking out The Wolf Man for myself is that director Joe Johnston was signed a few months ago to direct the Captain America film for Marvel. And you can bet your sweet can I’ll be covering that movie as more information surfaces. Stay tuned, true believer!
***
To keep the comic book movie theme going, The Hollywood Reporter is, erm, reporting that Warner Bros. has hired actor-turned-director Bill Birch (he was on Grey’s Anatomy, a show I don’t watch) to write a script for Shazam!, an adaptation of
the DC Comics title. (The character is actually called Captain Marvel, but he’s always better known by the magic word he exclaims to transform from a young boy into a barrel-chested Superman riff. It’s also more fun to say.)A Shazam! movie’s been in the works for years, and last I heard WB cooled on the more kiddie-friendly superhero after Speed Racer (which was geared at younger audiences) tanked and The Dark Knight (which was most definitely aimed at adults) was a box office phenomenon. Personally I’ve always thought a superhero movie specifically targeted at kids is a brilliant idea; superhero stories are all about adolescent wish fulfillment, and a movie about a 12-year-old boy who can transform into a beefy adult with amazing powers seems to me like a license to print money. Get Smart director Peter Segal is apparently still attached to direct, and while that movie didn’t blow me away, Segal proved he can balance action and comedy quite astutely. As awesome as The Dark Knight was, Iron Man shows there’s still plenty of room for “fun” superhero movies as well, and if done right, there’s no reason Shazam! can’t be similarly successful.
***
Hey, another trailer! This time it’s a proper trailer (as in, includes actual footage from the movie) for Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story. Say what you will about Moore and his previous movies, there’s never been a more appropriate time for a movie about this subject. If nothing else, it will hopefully spur some more discussion about some very real issues facing not just America, but the world. I know I’ll be checking it out.
***
Talk about an about-face. A few months back, following a decidedly unspectacular debut at Cannes, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds was being talked about in some circles as a potential misfire for the one-time Hollywood golden boy, especially after he underwhelmed just about everyone with his half of Grindhouse, Death Proof. Now QT’s World War 2 flick is looking like one of the best-reviewed films of the year. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, particularly Christoph Waltz as the movie’s villain. I mentioned not long ago that up until the latest trailer I wasn’t really all that excited about Inglourious Basterds, but now I can’t wait to see it. Watch this space for my take on it next week. Labels: comics, Movie news, trailers
¶ 10:13 AM 0 Comments
Friday, April 17, 2009
The Spirit is...um, well, it's complicated.
So I finally saw The Spirit, a movie I’ve been incredibly curious about for a long time (though, apparently, not curious enough for me to have seen it in theatres; it flopped and was only in cinemas for a couple of weeks, lost in the Christmas glut). It’s 
based on a comic strip started in 1940 by the late Will Eisner, who was kind of like the Orson Welles of comics, and written and directed by Frank Miller, the cartoonist behind Sin City and 300, as well as 1986’s The Dark Knight Returns, considered by many to be the best Batman story of all time, almost always mentioned in the same breath as Watchmen. I’ve loved Miller’s work since I was in high school, so the prospect of him making a movie on his own (he co-directed Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Sin City) was, to say the least, very intriguing to me.
Speaking objectively, as a guy who reviews movies, The Spirit is not a “good” movie. It's bad, even. Miller’s writing is incredibly stylized even by comic book standards, so for the medium of film it’s pretty out-there, often coming across as painfully hokey. And as much as I appreciate Miller’s eye for casting beautiful actresses like Eva Mendes and Scarlett Jonahsson, they’re really not up to the task of delivering his dialogue in a way that doesn’t induce cringes in the viewer (see also: Rosario Dawson in Sin City). And the over-the-top visual style – take Sin City and multiply it by 10 – worked for me (I can forgive a lot if a movie looks cool), but it may be too much for some viewers.
All of that said, I sort of loved The Spirit. As much as the film has a truckload of flaws, it just felt like a Frank Miller movie, and the mere fact that I’m sitting here typing that phrase (“a Frank Miller movie”! Awesome) earned it major points with me. While there are individual writers I prefer and artists whose work I like more, Miller mostly writes and draws his own stuff, giving his work a very singular vision that even an amazing collaboration between writer and artist can’t quite match (though such collaborations obviously have their merits, like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in Watchmen). The Spirit has a similarly unique aesthetic, which is particularly impressive given how much more collaborative filmmaking is as a process – Miller is, after all, working with a cast of actors and is filtering his ideas through a cinematographer and a film editor, etc. The scene where the Spirit runs across power lines above the city streets is kind of silly, but it’s also so Frank Miller I couldn’t get over it, and as a guy who’s followed his career for over 15 years, I got a huge charge out of seeing stuff like that on the screen.
Also, the two-disc Spirit DVD is pretty sweet. I can’t wait to watch the movie with Miller’s commentary, and there’s a great featurette in which Miller discusses his career, and comics in general. I could listen to him talk about this stuff for hours, but 15 minutes was all I got.
Overall, I can’t say I really recommend The Spirit to a broad audience, but I‘ve been thinking about it almost non-stop since I watched it last night, and I can’t wait to watch it again. That’s not normally something I say about a movie I don’t like. It’s a fascinating bit of cinema, and, unfortunately, given its weak showing at the box office, it may be Frank Miller’s first and last chance at directing a movie on his own. I’m just happy it exists.
¶ 11:13 AM 0 Comments
based on a comic strip started in 1940 by the late Will Eisner, who was kind of like the Orson Welles of comics, and written and directed by Frank Miller, the cartoonist behind Sin City and 300, as well as 1986’s The Dark Knight Returns, considered by many to be the best Batman story of all time, almost always mentioned in the same breath as Watchmen. I’ve loved Miller’s work since I was in high school, so the prospect of him making a movie on his own (he co-directed Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Sin City) was, to say the least, very intriguing to me.Speaking objectively, as a guy who reviews movies, The Spirit is not a “good” movie. It's bad, even. Miller’s writing is incredibly stylized even by comic book standards, so for the medium of film it’s pretty out-there, often coming across as painfully hokey. And as much as I appreciate Miller’s eye for casting beautiful actresses like Eva Mendes and Scarlett Jonahsson, they’re really not up to the task of delivering his dialogue in a way that doesn’t induce cringes in the viewer (see also: Rosario Dawson in Sin City). And the over-the-top visual style – take Sin City and multiply it by 10 – worked for me (I can forgive a lot if a movie looks cool), but it may be too much for some viewers.
All of that said, I sort of loved The Spirit. As much as the film has a truckload of flaws, it just felt like a Frank Miller movie, and the mere fact that I’m sitting here typing that phrase (“a Frank Miller movie”! Awesome) earned it major points with me. While there are individual writers I prefer and artists whose work I like more, Miller mostly writes and draws his own stuff, giving his work a very singular vision that even an amazing collaboration between writer and artist can’t quite match (though such collaborations obviously have their merits, like Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in Watchmen). The Spirit has a similarly unique aesthetic, which is particularly impressive given how much more collaborative filmmaking is as a process – Miller is, after all, working with a cast of actors and is filtering his ideas through a cinematographer and a film editor, etc. The scene where the Spirit runs across power lines above the city streets is kind of silly, but it’s also so Frank Miller I couldn’t get over it, and as a guy who’s followed his career for over 15 years, I got a huge charge out of seeing stuff like that on the screen.
Also, the two-disc Spirit DVD is pretty sweet. I can’t wait to watch the movie with Miller’s commentary, and there’s a great featurette in which Miller discusses his career, and comics in general. I could listen to him talk about this stuff for hours, but 15 minutes was all I got.
Overall, I can’t say I really recommend The Spirit to a broad audience, but I‘ve been thinking about it almost non-stop since I watched it last night, and I can’t wait to watch it again. That’s not normally something I say about a movie I don’t like. It’s a fascinating bit of cinema, and, unfortunately, given its weak showing at the box office, it may be Frank Miller’s first and last chance at directing a movie on his own. I’m just happy it exists.
¶ 11:13 AM 0 Comments
Monday, March 9, 2009
I watched the Watchmen...
So I guess today I have to write about Watchmen. I’ve been fighting to contain my excitement (and, I believe, have been largely successful) about this movie for the past several months, and it finally came out on Friday and I finally saw it (also on Friday). So while this won’t be a proper review, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention it in 
some way now that I’ve seen it.
First of all, I loved it. Watchmen is not a perfect film by any means – I could pick nits about tiny plot points and what was excluded or changed from the graphic novel, or which performances didn’t quite work for me – but that’s sort of one of the reasons I loved the movie as much as I did. If I’d walked out of Watchmen saying to myself that I’d just seen something akin to a perfect movie, I’d know deep down that I was lying to myself. But I’m a big fan of the book, and Zack Snyder has done what I (and many, many others) had long thought impossible, and actually translated the “unfilmable” graphic novel into a movie. It hits all the notes the book does, and the changes, while minor, are for the most part totally understandable (I’m also not the kind of person who gets all uppity just because something was changed; I try to understand why it was changed, and with maybe one or two very small exceptions, I get and agree with all the changes Snyder made), and I got a huge charge out of seeing characters I love in the book truly represented on the big screen. There’s a small moment between Rorschach and Nite Owl late in the film where Rorschach basically apologizes for being so difficult that’s probably my single favourite scene in the book, just a tiny little character moment, and I got chills seeing it recreated onscreen – it was a scene that very easily could have been cut with little or no effect on the plot, but Snyder included it. Snyder’s on record saying he’s as big a geek for the source material as just about anyone, and his goal was to make a film for Watchmen fans, and on that count he was amazingly successful.
But that same devotion to the graphic novel is also what’s been dividing many critics because of the film’s density and the argument that you need to be familiar with the book to follow what’s happening. While I’d say the latter argument probably has some merit (if I hadn’t read the book I very well may have been lost too, or at the very least needed to see the movie once or twice more to fully process everything, but obviously I can’t really access the headspace of someone going into the movie cold), and I guess how the movie performs at the box office beyond the first week will reveal whether the word-of-mouth on Watchmen is positive or negative. It made a ton of money this weekend, but it’s still unknown how much of that was due to the hype. I have no empirical evidence on this, but
in the Friday afternoon screening I attended, I detected more than a few people who seemed to be losing patience with the movie by the mid-point. Whether this was due to a lack of traditional “action” or the dense, more cerebral story I have no idea, but I think people who paid their money thinking they were getting the next Dark Knight or, god forbid, Iron Man probably were disappointed, and rightfully so. Watchmen is nothing like any other superhero movie; it’s an attempt to examine how superheroes would affect American culture and society, not just an excuse to show people in cool costumes beating up thugs (though there is a bit of that as well). It’s less a “superhero movie” in the traditional sense than it is an “alternate history” sci-fi story about a world very much like our own in which superheroes live. Which probably sounds like a minor distinction to make, but I think it’s a distinction that will help people who aren’t familiar with the graphic novel understand why this movie isn’t hitting the traditional superhero-movie beats.
I’ve heard the comparison to Blade Runner already, and while I’m reluctant to make that comparison myself (if I had to pick one, I’d probably take Blade Runner as my No. 1 favourite movie of all time, so I should excuse myself from any comparisons between it and Watchmen, a movie that just came out and I’ve only seen once), I can sort of see the argument. Blade Runner was seen as a flop when it came out, and audiences largely didn’t “get” it. It took years and the advent of home video for Blade Runner to find its audience (I know I didn’t care for it the first time I watched it back when I was in high school), and despite the big opening weekend, I suspect things will go similarly for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen. There’s a lot of information in the film to chew on (and Snyder’s already said he’s planning an even-longer extended cut either for a limited theatrical run this summer or, at the very least, on DVD), and my first-hand experience watching the film in a packed theatre left me with the impression that a sizeable chunk of the audience didn’t really “get” the movie either. While Watchmen obviously isn’t for everyone, I suspect a number of people who were initially left cold by the film will eventually come around, presumably on DVD. Another reason I’m sort of reserving final judgment on Watchmen is that I still haven’t seen the full version (there’s a comic-within-a-comic pirate story subplot from the book that was animated and will be released in a couple of weeks on DVD as Tales From the Black Freighter, and it’s expected some or all of that footage, as well as many more smaller moments from the book, will be incorporated into the “final” DVD version of Watchmen). Now that superheroes are a full-on film genre of their own, the time is right for a movie that examines them as seriously as Watchmen does. Whether or not audiences are ready for it right at this moment will remain to be seen – I know that most people ascribe Blade Runner’s initial failure to it being too far ahead of its time, and I have a feeling the story on Watchmen will run somewhat similarly. Either way, the movie was made, and it’s an amazing piece of cinema, and as a Watchmen fan, the movie’s existence is enough for me.
some way now that I’ve seen it.First of all, I loved it. Watchmen is not a perfect film by any means – I could pick nits about tiny plot points and what was excluded or changed from the graphic novel, or which performances didn’t quite work for me – but that’s sort of one of the reasons I loved the movie as much as I did. If I’d walked out of Watchmen saying to myself that I’d just seen something akin to a perfect movie, I’d know deep down that I was lying to myself. But I’m a big fan of the book, and Zack Snyder has done what I (and many, many others) had long thought impossible, and actually translated the “unfilmable” graphic novel into a movie. It hits all the notes the book does, and the changes, while minor, are for the most part totally understandable (I’m also not the kind of person who gets all uppity just because something was changed; I try to understand why it was changed, and with maybe one or two very small exceptions, I get and agree with all the changes Snyder made), and I got a huge charge out of seeing characters I love in the book truly represented on the big screen. There’s a small moment between Rorschach and Nite Owl late in the film where Rorschach basically apologizes for being so difficult that’s probably my single favourite scene in the book, just a tiny little character moment, and I got chills seeing it recreated onscreen – it was a scene that very easily could have been cut with little or no effect on the plot, but Snyder included it. Snyder’s on record saying he’s as big a geek for the source material as just about anyone, and his goal was to make a film for Watchmen fans, and on that count he was amazingly successful.
But that same devotion to the graphic novel is also what’s been dividing many critics because of the film’s density and the argument that you need to be familiar with the book to follow what’s happening. While I’d say the latter argument probably has some merit (if I hadn’t read the book I very well may have been lost too, or at the very least needed to see the movie once or twice more to fully process everything, but obviously I can’t really access the headspace of someone going into the movie cold), and I guess how the movie performs at the box office beyond the first week will reveal whether the word-of-mouth on Watchmen is positive or negative. It made a ton of money this weekend, but it’s still unknown how much of that was due to the hype. I have no empirical evidence on this, but
in the Friday afternoon screening I attended, I detected more than a few people who seemed to be losing patience with the movie by the mid-point. Whether this was due to a lack of traditional “action” or the dense, more cerebral story I have no idea, but I think people who paid their money thinking they were getting the next Dark Knight or, god forbid, Iron Man probably were disappointed, and rightfully so. Watchmen is nothing like any other superhero movie; it’s an attempt to examine how superheroes would affect American culture and society, not just an excuse to show people in cool costumes beating up thugs (though there is a bit of that as well). It’s less a “superhero movie” in the traditional sense than it is an “alternate history” sci-fi story about a world very much like our own in which superheroes live. Which probably sounds like a minor distinction to make, but I think it’s a distinction that will help people who aren’t familiar with the graphic novel understand why this movie isn’t hitting the traditional superhero-movie beats. I’ve heard the comparison to Blade Runner already, and while I’m reluctant to make that comparison myself (if I had to pick one, I’d probably take Blade Runner as my No. 1 favourite movie of all time, so I should excuse myself from any comparisons between it and Watchmen, a movie that just came out and I’ve only seen once), I can sort of see the argument. Blade Runner was seen as a flop when it came out, and audiences largely didn’t “get” it. It took years and the advent of home video for Blade Runner to find its audience (I know I didn’t care for it the first time I watched it back when I was in high school), and despite the big opening weekend, I suspect things will go similarly for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen. There’s a lot of information in the film to chew on (and Snyder’s already said he’s planning an even-longer extended cut either for a limited theatrical run this summer or, at the very least, on DVD), and my first-hand experience watching the film in a packed theatre left me with the impression that a sizeable chunk of the audience didn’t really “get” the movie either. While Watchmen obviously isn’t for everyone, I suspect a number of people who were initially left cold by the film will eventually come around, presumably on DVD. Another reason I’m sort of reserving final judgment on Watchmen is that I still haven’t seen the full version (there’s a comic-within-a-comic pirate story subplot from the book that was animated and will be released in a couple of weeks on DVD as Tales From the Black Freighter, and it’s expected some or all of that footage, as well as many more smaller moments from the book, will be incorporated into the “final” DVD version of Watchmen). Now that superheroes are a full-on film genre of their own, the time is right for a movie that examines them as seriously as Watchmen does. Whether or not audiences are ready for it right at this moment will remain to be seen – I know that most people ascribe Blade Runner’s initial failure to it being too far ahead of its time, and I have a feeling the story on Watchmen will run somewhat similarly. Either way, the movie was made, and it’s an amazing piece of cinema, and as a Watchmen fan, the movie’s existence is enough for me.
Labels: comics, Movie review, Watchmen
¶ 10:42 AM 1 Comments
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Dark Knight double-dip
Like millions of humans, yesterday I picked up my copy of The Dark Knight on DVD. The movie is still amazing (I think it’ll only get better with age as the cringe-inducing hype that still surrounds the film dies away and we can just appreciate it on its own merits – I look forward to a day when Heath Ledger’s death is more of a footnote in the film’s legacy), but I’m pretty underwhelmed by the DVD’s extras.
First of all, this “digital copy included” thing has got to go as a selling point or an excuse to add another disc to a package in order to make it seem like it’s more bang for the customer’s proverbial buck. I’m not interested in watching a two-and-a-half hour c
rime epic on my iPod or my laptop, though I guess I appreciate the option they’re giving me to do so, especially with the growing spectre of online piracy, and I realize that some people do enjoy that sort of thing, but as an excuse to bolt an extra disc onto a release and proclaim it a “special edition” is pretty weak (no commentary and a couple of featurettes and trailers). It’s not that I had a problem with the extras that are on the two-disc Dark Knight DVD – I dug the fake talk-show segments, particularly the one with Eric Roberts, whose presence in the film is a gift that keeps on giving – but it’s pretty obvious that there’s a much more in-depth DVD of The Dark Knight coming down the pipe. Which I’m not necessarily complaining about – I’ve happily done the DVD double-dip for movies like Sin City, which director Robert Rodriguez was pretty up-front about doing more DVD editions of down the line from the get-go, which is either commendably honest or shockingly cynical, I’m not sure which. And I, like millions of others, has been patiently awaiting the long-promised Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which Quentin Tarantino has been promising for several years now. But the bottom like is, The Dark Knight is a pretty astounding piece of cinema, and I will happily shell out for the even-more-special edition I’m sure is coming some time in 2009 – presumably with another digital copy.
* * *
This week saw the release of complete-series DVD sets for the two best televisions shows I’ve ever seen, HBO’s The Wire and Deadwood. Both are so good I want to punch someone in the face, but I personally prefer The Wire because 1) I prefer cop dramas to westerns and 2) it has an actual ending and is therefore more satisfying on the whole. And for some connective tissue between these three items, Dominic West, who plays the lead character in The Wire, is absolutely phenomenal as the villain Jigsaw in Punisher: War Zone. If Heath Ledger hadn’t changed the game up for comic book movie bad guys in Dark Knight, West would have been my pick as best movie villain of 2008, hands down.
A little bit of movie news: John Stevenson, director of the excellent animated film Kung Fu Panda (read my review here), is attached to adapt the comic book WE3 into a film. WE3 is a three-issue s
eries by probably my two favourite comic creators working today, writer Grant Morrison (to whom I refer as a genius without hesitation) and artist Frank Quitely. The story follows three animals, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who are the subjects of brutal government experiments aimed at creating living weapons, fusing the animals’ nervous systems with cybernetic weaponry. It’s a remarkable piece of storytelling, both incredibly violent (for a while the film was rumoured to have been “cleaned up” to be more family friendly, which couldn’t miss the point of the source material more) and utterly heartbreaking. I’m not among them but I’ve heard many people who’ve read it admit that WE3 is the only comic that has made them cry. With a talented filmmaker like Stevenson at the helm, and an apparent desire on the part of the producers to keep the material in R-rating territory, WE3 could be something pretty special.
* * *
The last thing I’ve got for today is a fulfillment of my earlier promise in this space to not miss an opportunity to talk about Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen, due in theatres in March. Apple has the three minutes of footage shown at Comicon last summer, which initially set the Internet afire with buzz. Several months (and three to four trailers) later and the footage is officially online courtesy of iTunes. Check it out here, but be warned, you must have iTunes installed on your computer to watch it. Also be warned that this movie looks totally awesome.
First of all, this “digital copy included” thing has got to go as a selling point or an excuse to add another disc to a package in order to make it seem like it’s more bang for the customer’s proverbial buck. I’m not interested in watching a two-and-a-half hour c
rime epic on my iPod or my laptop, though I guess I appreciate the option they’re giving me to do so, especially with the growing spectre of online piracy, and I realize that some people do enjoy that sort of thing, but as an excuse to bolt an extra disc onto a release and proclaim it a “special edition” is pretty weak (no commentary and a couple of featurettes and trailers). It’s not that I had a problem with the extras that are on the two-disc Dark Knight DVD – I dug the fake talk-show segments, particularly the one with Eric Roberts, whose presence in the film is a gift that keeps on giving – but it’s pretty obvious that there’s a much more in-depth DVD of The Dark Knight coming down the pipe. Which I’m not necessarily complaining about – I’ve happily done the DVD double-dip for movies like Sin City, which director Robert Rodriguez was pretty up-front about doing more DVD editions of down the line from the get-go, which is either commendably honest or shockingly cynical, I’m not sure which. And I, like millions of others, has been patiently awaiting the long-promised Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which Quentin Tarantino has been promising for several years now. But the bottom like is, The Dark Knight is a pretty astounding piece of cinema, and I will happily shell out for the even-more-special edition I’m sure is coming some time in 2009 – presumably with another digital copy. * * *
I mentioned my skepticism about Lionsgate’s new Punisher movie, Punisher: War Zone in this space not too long ago, and I checked it out last weekend. I’m happy to report my skepticism was totally unfounded, as it’s the most fun pure action movie I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s shockingly violent in all the right ways – the rocket launcher/parkour scene alone was worth the price of admission – and manages to capture the tongue-in-cheek black humour of the best recent Punisher comics. It’s too bad the movie opened pretty poorly, barely making $4 million in its first weekend. Hopefully it will find the audience it deserves on DVD (as many Lionsgate films do), because to me, Punisher: War Zone is second only to Iron Man in terms of Marvel movies in 2008. The worst movie Marvel Studios released this year was The Incredible Hulk, and that was a solid B+ in my estimation. So if you want to have a laugh at mobsters getting their faces blown off with shotguns, Punisher: War Zone is the movie for you.
* * *
This week saw the release of complete-series DVD sets for the two best televisions shows I’ve ever seen, HBO’s The Wire and Deadwood. Both are so good I want to punch someone in the face, but I personally prefer The Wire because 1) I prefer cop dramas to westerns and 2) it has an actual ending and is therefore more satisfying on the whole. And for some connective tissue between these three items, Dominic West, who plays the lead character in The Wire, is absolutely phenomenal as the villain Jigsaw in Punisher: War Zone. If Heath Ledger hadn’t changed the game up for comic book movie bad guys in Dark Knight, West would have been my pick as best movie villain of 2008, hands down.
* * *
A little bit of movie news: John Stevenson, director of the excellent animated film Kung Fu Panda (read my review here), is attached to adapt the comic book WE3 into a film. WE3 is a three-issue s
eries by probably my two favourite comic creators working today, writer Grant Morrison (to whom I refer as a genius without hesitation) and artist Frank Quitely. The story follows three animals, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, who are the subjects of brutal government experiments aimed at creating living weapons, fusing the animals’ nervous systems with cybernetic weaponry. It’s a remarkable piece of storytelling, both incredibly violent (for a while the film was rumoured to have been “cleaned up” to be more family friendly, which couldn’t miss the point of the source material more) and utterly heartbreaking. I’m not among them but I’ve heard many people who’ve read it admit that WE3 is the only comic that has made them cry. With a talented filmmaker like Stevenson at the helm, and an apparent desire on the part of the producers to keep the material in R-rating territory, WE3 could be something pretty special. * * *
The last thing I’ve got for today is a fulfillment of my earlier promise in this space to not miss an opportunity to talk about Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen, due in theatres in March. Apple has the three minutes of footage shown at Comicon last summer, which initially set the Internet afire with buzz. Several months (and three to four trailers) later and the footage is officially online courtesy of iTunes. Check it out here, but be warned, you must have iTunes installed on your computer to watch it. Also be warned that this movie looks totally awesome.
Labels: comics, Iron Man, Movie news, Random thoughts, TV on DVD, Watchmen
¶ 11:12 AM 0 Comments
Friday, November 21, 2008
The Punisher vs. The Spirit
2008 was a banner year for comic book movies. The two biggest films of the year were Iron Man and The Dark Knight, and while The Incredible Hulk rather ironically ended up making almost exactly the same amount of money at the box office as Ang Lee’s 2003 movie (which Incredible was supposed to erase from all of our memories), it was successful enough to put Iron Man’s popularity in the wider context of a Marvel cinematic universe, which, as a comic geek who grew up reading mostly Marvel books, I couldn’t be more excited about. And Hellboy II: The Golden Army was just released on DVD; if you haven’t seen it, I personally put it up there with The Dark Knight and Iron Man in terms of quality.
But there are two more comic book movies left this year, both smaller-scale films and characters than this summer’s blockbusters: Punisher: War Zone (out Dec. 5) and The Spirit (Dec. 25). These two films don’t have that much in common, though they share a similarly dark tone, and both feature urban vigilantes rather than brightly-coloured superheroes, but that’s about it. But for no other reason that I thought I might enjoy it (and I could use a bit of a break from the DVD reviews), today I’ll be handicapping the two with an arbitrary new system I just devised. Enjoy!
The Punisher: War Zone
WHAT’S THE DEAL?
The Punisher: War Zone is actually the third trip to the screen for the Marvel Comics vigilante, following 1989’s The Punisher, starring Dolph Lundgren (of Rocky IV fame), and 2004’s The Punisher, starring Tom Jane. Both the previous films suck for very different reasons – the first was just really low-budget and cheap, the second seemed to be made by people who all totally misunderstood the concept of the character on its most
basic levels – but this one looks like they might have finally got it right. I’m not sure how much the character’s origin has been changed for the new movie, but in the comics Frank Castle was a military vet whose family was killed in the crossfire of a mob shootout. He basically goes nuts and starts using his military training to kill criminals, often rather brutally. The Punisher was actually one of the first comics I collected when I was a kid (I bought my first issue because there was a ninja on the cover), and there’s something deliciously simple about the premise: he’s like a no-frills version of Batman who uses automatic weapons instead of clever gadgets, and his appeal to teenage boys is pretty obvious. War Zone, like The Incredible Hulk, is a reboot, and doesn’t follow any of the other movies. I’m not even sure what the plot is, but the trailer looks violent as hell, which is an encouraging sign.
WHY IT MIGHT BE GOOD
Well as I said, the trailer makes the film look incredibly brutal, which isn’t normally a barometer of quality for me, but in the case of a Punisher movie, it becomes one. (One of my big problems with the Tom Jane movie was the character was tricked and manipulated his targets into killing each other, which may be a cool gimmick for another action/revenge movie, but not The Punisher. He just kills people. That’s it.) And given the character’s over-the-top testosterone appeal, hiring a woman to direct, Lexi Alexander, is an interesting choice (I hear good things about her previous film, the soccer-hooligan flick Green Street Hooligans). Add to that a solid cast – Ray Stevenson from HBO’s Rome is in the title role, and Dominic West, the hero from the incredible HBO cop show The Wire, plays the villain, Jigsaw – and Punisher: War Zone might – MIGHT – prove that the third time’s the charm for Frank Castle’s cinematic career.
WHY IT MIGHT SUCK
I try not to pay too much attention to this sort of thing, but for months (mostly this past summer) there were behind-the-scenes rumours about the studio, Lionsgate, not being happy with Alexander’s work and that she’d been fired (later refuted by all, and Alexander still seems to be promoting the movie), and as much as some or all of the talk is probably bull, it’s not usually a great sign when those sorts of stories start making the rounds. And as much as, on paper, the Punisher is one of the easiest characters in mainstream comics to adapt for a movie – his “costume” is basically just black clothes with a white skull on his chest, and nobody has any powers that require viewers to suspend disbelief – there have been two unspeakably bad Punisher adaptations previous to this one, so it’s hard not to be at least a little pessimistic about the movie’s quality. We shall see.
The Spirit
WHAT’S THE DEAL?
I’ve been a huge fan of Frank Miller’s since The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City blew my mind when I was in high school. He’s one of the true geniuses of modern comics (his landmark work on Batman includes his amazing collaboration with artist David Mazzucchelli, Batman: Year One, one of my favourite of Miller’s works, and Batman Begins borrows heavily from it). But his insanely over-the-top,
hard-boiled dialogue works better in comics than it does in movies – a lot of people I know groaned at many lines in the Sin City film, which were largely lifted verbatim from the books – so his first work as a solo filmmaker after co-directing Sin City with Robert Rodriguez is a tricky proposition. It stars an unknown (Gabriel Macht) in the title role of an adaptation of a character who’s somewhat obscure even among comic book geeks.
The Spirit was one of the early creations of Will Eisner, hands-down one of the most important figures in the history of comics. Eisner, for whom the comic industry’s most prestigious awards are named, died in 2005, and occupies a similar place in the comics industry as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock do in film. He and Miller were good friends, and Miller considers Eisner his mentor. So Miller obviously has a lot invested in The Spirit, which, though I’ve never read any of the original Eisner material, I’m familiar enough with both creators’ work to know that the film of The Spirit has far more in common with Miller’s aesthetic than it does Eisner’s.
The Spirit follows a cop named Denny Colt, who was killed and then returns from the dead, apparently now immortal (at least he seems to be in the film; I’m not sure how faithful this is to the comic). He dons a simple domino mask to fight crime. The Spirit began as a newspaper strip, and has more in common with old pulp characters like The Shadow than with more traditional superheroes like Superman and Spider-Man.
WHY IT MIGHT BE GOOD
The first images and trailer for The Spirit I saw just looked bad. It looked like everything that made me cringe about Sin City was magnified, with none of the parts that made the movie awesome. As excited as I was about one of my favourite comic creators getting to direct his own movie, I was underwhelmed by what I saw. But the full theatrical trailer, which included more plot points and hinted at the more supernatural aspects of the film (and showcased more action), looked far more interesting. It’s really a matter of tone – I’m sure the movie will at least look kind of cool, which goes pretty far with me – and I have no idea if Miller the filmmaker will be able to nail it. One of the things I enjoy about his comics – and that a lot of readers seem to miss – is the tongue-in-cheek, almost satirical edge in a lot of his work, particularly his superhero stuff. The latest trailer has hints of that, and if Miller has crafted a visually stylish, fun action flick that doesn’t take itself too seriously, The Spirit could be very cool. And Lionsgate moved the release date earlier this year to Christmas, which is typically a sign that they’ve got faith in it.
The bottom line is I really want The Spirit to be good, partly because I want it to be successful enough that more comic creators might get a chance to adapt their own work to film (something that happens somewhat regularly in other parts of the world where comics have more cultural clout, like Europe and Japan). I want Frank Miller to succeed as a director because I have a dream that in a few years, when Warner Bros. decides to move on beyond Christopher Nolan’s current Batman films, they might tap Miller to adapt The Dark Knight Returns himself (anyone else doing it would screw it up; Miller very well might too, but at least he would be the one screwing up his own adaptation). Failing that, Marvel Studios would do well to consider Miller for directing a revamped Daredevil (the character on whom Miller cut his teeth as a writer and artist). Ah well. A geek can dream.
WHY IT MIGHT SUCK
As I mentioned, the initial stuff I saw from The Spirit was not encouraging. In order for the film to work it will have to walk a pretty tough tightrope, and as Miller’s solo debut behind the camera, it’s a tall order. It appears that Samuel L. Jackson, as the villainous Octopus (who is never actually seen in any of the Eisner comics, which allowed Miller to create his look himself), appears to wear a different outlandish costume in every scene, and it’s a concept that seems like it would work in a comic, but in a movie it could be a remarkably distracting – and silly – detail. And Miller, an unabashed fan of the female figure, has cast some incredibly gorgeous women as his femme fatales, but unfortunately as great as Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes are to look at, they’re also two of the worst actresses around today, and coupled with Miller’s tin ear for dialogue, I expect to be cringing through many of their scenes. The Spirit looks to be a toss-up between being a refreshingly unique comic book movie or an absolute mess (though I’d put my money on the latter), but one way or another I can’t wait to see it.
But there are two more comic book movies left this year, both smaller-scale films and characters than this summer’s blockbusters: Punisher: War Zone (out Dec. 5) and The Spirit (Dec. 25). These two films don’t have that much in common, though they share a similarly dark tone, and both feature urban vigilantes rather than brightly-coloured superheroes, but that’s about it. But for no other reason that I thought I might enjoy it (and I could use a bit of a break from the DVD reviews), today I’ll be handicapping the two with an arbitrary new system I just devised. Enjoy!
The Punisher: War Zone
WHAT’S THE DEAL?
The Punisher: War Zone is actually the third trip to the screen for the Marvel Comics vigilante, following 1989’s The Punisher, starring Dolph Lundgren (of Rocky IV fame), and 2004’s The Punisher, starring Tom Jane. Both the previous films suck for very different reasons – the first was just really low-budget and cheap, the second seemed to be made by people who all totally misunderstood the concept of the character on its most
basic levels – but this one looks like they might have finally got it right. I’m not sure how much the character’s origin has been changed for the new movie, but in the comics Frank Castle was a military vet whose family was killed in the crossfire of a mob shootout. He basically goes nuts and starts using his military training to kill criminals, often rather brutally. The Punisher was actually one of the first comics I collected when I was a kid (I bought my first issue because there was a ninja on the cover), and there’s something deliciously simple about the premise: he’s like a no-frills version of Batman who uses automatic weapons instead of clever gadgets, and his appeal to teenage boys is pretty obvious. War Zone, like The Incredible Hulk, is a reboot, and doesn’t follow any of the other movies. I’m not even sure what the plot is, but the trailer looks violent as hell, which is an encouraging sign.WHY IT MIGHT BE GOOD
Well as I said, the trailer makes the film look incredibly brutal, which isn’t normally a barometer of quality for me, but in the case of a Punisher movie, it becomes one. (One of my big problems with the Tom Jane movie was the character was tricked and manipulated his targets into killing each other, which may be a cool gimmick for another action/revenge movie, but not The Punisher. He just kills people. That’s it.) And given the character’s over-the-top testosterone appeal, hiring a woman to direct, Lexi Alexander, is an interesting choice (I hear good things about her previous film, the soccer-hooligan flick Green Street Hooligans). Add to that a solid cast – Ray Stevenson from HBO’s Rome is in the title role, and Dominic West, the hero from the incredible HBO cop show The Wire, plays the villain, Jigsaw – and Punisher: War Zone might – MIGHT – prove that the third time’s the charm for Frank Castle’s cinematic career.
WHY IT MIGHT SUCK
I try not to pay too much attention to this sort of thing, but for months (mostly this past summer) there were behind-the-scenes rumours about the studio, Lionsgate, not being happy with Alexander’s work and that she’d been fired (later refuted by all, and Alexander still seems to be promoting the movie), and as much as some or all of the talk is probably bull, it’s not usually a great sign when those sorts of stories start making the rounds. And as much as, on paper, the Punisher is one of the easiest characters in mainstream comics to adapt for a movie – his “costume” is basically just black clothes with a white skull on his chest, and nobody has any powers that require viewers to suspend disbelief – there have been two unspeakably bad Punisher adaptations previous to this one, so it’s hard not to be at least a little pessimistic about the movie’s quality. We shall see.
The Spirit
WHAT’S THE DEAL?
I’ve been a huge fan of Frank Miller’s since The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City blew my mind when I was in high school. He’s one of the true geniuses of modern comics (his landmark work on Batman includes his amazing collaboration with artist David Mazzucchelli, Batman: Year One, one of my favourite of Miller’s works, and Batman Begins borrows heavily from it). But his insanely over-the-top,
hard-boiled dialogue works better in comics than it does in movies – a lot of people I know groaned at many lines in the Sin City film, which were largely lifted verbatim from the books – so his first work as a solo filmmaker after co-directing Sin City with Robert Rodriguez is a tricky proposition. It stars an unknown (Gabriel Macht) in the title role of an adaptation of a character who’s somewhat obscure even among comic book geeks.The Spirit was one of the early creations of Will Eisner, hands-down one of the most important figures in the history of comics. Eisner, for whom the comic industry’s most prestigious awards are named, died in 2005, and occupies a similar place in the comics industry as Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock do in film. He and Miller were good friends, and Miller considers Eisner his mentor. So Miller obviously has a lot invested in The Spirit, which, though I’ve never read any of the original Eisner material, I’m familiar enough with both creators’ work to know that the film of The Spirit has far more in common with Miller’s aesthetic than it does Eisner’s.
The Spirit follows a cop named Denny Colt, who was killed and then returns from the dead, apparently now immortal (at least he seems to be in the film; I’m not sure how faithful this is to the comic). He dons a simple domino mask to fight crime. The Spirit began as a newspaper strip, and has more in common with old pulp characters like The Shadow than with more traditional superheroes like Superman and Spider-Man.
WHY IT MIGHT BE GOOD
The first images and trailer for The Spirit I saw just looked bad. It looked like everything that made me cringe about Sin City was magnified, with none of the parts that made the movie awesome. As excited as I was about one of my favourite comic creators getting to direct his own movie, I was underwhelmed by what I saw. But the full theatrical trailer, which included more plot points and hinted at the more supernatural aspects of the film (and showcased more action), looked far more interesting. It’s really a matter of tone – I’m sure the movie will at least look kind of cool, which goes pretty far with me – and I have no idea if Miller the filmmaker will be able to nail it. One of the things I enjoy about his comics – and that a lot of readers seem to miss – is the tongue-in-cheek, almost satirical edge in a lot of his work, particularly his superhero stuff. The latest trailer has hints of that, and if Miller has crafted a visually stylish, fun action flick that doesn’t take itself too seriously, The Spirit could be very cool. And Lionsgate moved the release date earlier this year to Christmas, which is typically a sign that they’ve got faith in it.
The bottom line is I really want The Spirit to be good, partly because I want it to be successful enough that more comic creators might get a chance to adapt their own work to film (something that happens somewhat regularly in other parts of the world where comics have more cultural clout, like Europe and Japan). I want Frank Miller to succeed as a director because I have a dream that in a few years, when Warner Bros. decides to move on beyond Christopher Nolan’s current Batman films, they might tap Miller to adapt The Dark Knight Returns himself (anyone else doing it would screw it up; Miller very well might too, but at least he would be the one screwing up his own adaptation). Failing that, Marvel Studios would do well to consider Miller for directing a revamped Daredevil (the character on whom Miller cut his teeth as a writer and artist). Ah well. A geek can dream.
WHY IT MIGHT SUCK
As I mentioned, the initial stuff I saw from The Spirit was not encouraging. In order for the film to work it will have to walk a pretty tough tightrope, and as Miller’s solo debut behind the camera, it’s a tall order. It appears that Samuel L. Jackson, as the villainous Octopus (who is never actually seen in any of the Eisner comics, which allowed Miller to create his look himself), appears to wear a different outlandish costume in every scene, and it’s a concept that seems like it would work in a comic, but in a movie it could be a remarkably distracting – and silly – detail. And Miller, an unabashed fan of the female figure, has cast some incredibly gorgeous women as his femme fatales, but unfortunately as great as Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes are to look at, they’re also two of the worst actresses around today, and coupled with Miller’s tin ear for dialogue, I expect to be cringing through many of their scenes. The Spirit looks to be a toss-up between being a refreshingly unique comic book movie or an absolute mess (though I’d put my money on the latter), but one way or another I can’t wait to see it.
Labels: comics, superheroes
¶ 11:11 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Watching the Watchmen
The New York Times is reporting that since the release of the trailer for Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen was released around the time The Dark Knight came out (it was supposed to debut attached to The Dark Knight, but leaked online the night before), sales of the graphic novel have soared, with DC Comics printing an additional 900,000 copies to meet demand. I know that as soon as I walked out of The Dark Knight on opening day with a fri
end, said friend and I immediately crossed the street to a bookstore so he could buy a copy. And I’m currently re-reading my own yellowed, dog-eared copy for the seventh or eighth time, this time with an eye towards how Snyder could potentially adapt it.
Watchmen is the brilliant graphic novel from writer Alan Moore (one of two comic writers I unhesitatingly refer to as a genius) and artist Dave Gibbons (no slouch himself) that has long been considered unfilmable. Moore, one of the greatest minds the comics medium has ever seen, has an unfortunate history of his incredible books being horribly bastardized in movie adaptations (his most complex work that I’ve read, the terrifyingly well-researched Jack the Ripper story, From Hell, was made into a generic murder mystery with Johnny Depp and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie shares only the title and vague concept with Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s wonderful series; the V for Vendetta movie was pretty good, as well as pretty faithful, but still nowhere near the book’s quality) has since refused to be involved in any film versions of his own work – including refusing any payment.
As great as it is that interest in the film is leading to interest in the graphic novel, Watchmen has been a consistent top-seller since long before the current boom in comic book trade paperback collections, going back pretty much to when it was first collected in one volume back shortly after its publication as a 12-issue series in 1986 and 1987. It’s often hailed as the greatest comic of all time, which I don’t know that I agree with, but I’d call it the best superhero comic of all time (medium and genre being used interchangeably being a pet peeve of mine and most other comic readers who don’t just read superhero books). The story is, on the surface, pretty standard: it starts off as a murder mystery involving a small group of aging superheroes in various stages of retirement, with the narrative eventually stretching from the 1930s to the present (“the present” in Watchmen being America in 1985 where Nixon is still president). The hook is that Watchmen was the first comic book that really tried to examine what the world would actually be like if certain people felt compelled to don gaudy costumes to fight crime. Some are well-meaning but naïve, some get a special kind of “excitement” out of it, and others are just flat-out nuts. (The book’s other nod to realism is that only one character, the godlike, blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan, has what could accurately be described as “superpowers.”) It’s been considered one of the medium’s high points pretty much since its release more than 20 years ago, and it even made Time magazine’s list of the 100 greatest English-language novels.
The reason Watchmen has been considered unfilmable is because it’s stunningly complex; I always tell people that every time I re-read it I discover something new, and I’ve yet to prove myself wrong on that front. Bu
t as my excitement for the release of the film next March grows with every image I see or interview with Snyder I read (I say stuff like this a lot and often regret it later, but it’s looking like Watchmen is basically a lock as one of my favourite movies of all time), I don’t know that it will actually live up to the book, because I don’t know if that’s even possible. Watchmen, the book, is very much about comics, not just superheroes, but the medium itself. It comments on the tropes of the superhero genre (and some ultra-hardcore fans of spandex books resent the book’s critique), but also on the medium itself; I’ve never read a comic as meticulously constructed as Watchmen, from its rigid panel composition to its thematic use of symmetry, it truly is a remarkable work of craftsmanship. In terms of displaying its creators’ mastery of the form, it rivals cinematic masterpieces like Citizen Kane. So as stoked as I am about the movie adaptation, I really can’t see it living up to the original. Which is okay; so much changes in translating any work from one medium to another that a great book can be made into a mediocre movie (see pretty much any previous Alan Moore adaptation), or a mediocre book can become movie legend (I’ve never heard anything particularly great about Mario Puzo’s Godfather novel, but the movie is, well, The Godfather). What I do think is possible – hell, I expect it – is that Watchmen will be the first movie adaptation of an Alan Moore comic to really get everything right.
If the trailer piqued your interest and you’re at all interested in reading Watchmen to see what all the fuss is about, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of the book as the hype for the movie builds. I’m polishing off my latest read-through of it (just finished Chapter 10 on the streetcar ride to the office this morning), but I’ve got an oversized hardcover version due to arrive from Amazon any day now, and I can’t wait to read it all over again. There's a lot of time to kill between now and March 6, 2009.
end, said friend and I immediately crossed the street to a bookstore so he could buy a copy. And I’m currently re-reading my own yellowed, dog-eared copy for the seventh or eighth time, this time with an eye towards how Snyder could potentially adapt it.Watchmen is the brilliant graphic novel from writer Alan Moore (one of two comic writers I unhesitatingly refer to as a genius) and artist Dave Gibbons (no slouch himself) that has long been considered unfilmable. Moore, one of the greatest minds the comics medium has ever seen, has an unfortunate history of his incredible books being horribly bastardized in movie adaptations (his most complex work that I’ve read, the terrifyingly well-researched Jack the Ripper story, From Hell, was made into a generic murder mystery with Johnny Depp and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie shares only the title and vague concept with Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s wonderful series; the V for Vendetta movie was pretty good, as well as pretty faithful, but still nowhere near the book’s quality) has since refused to be involved in any film versions of his own work – including refusing any payment.
As great as it is that interest in the film is leading to interest in the graphic novel, Watchmen has been a consistent top-seller since long before the current boom in comic book trade paperback collections, going back pretty much to when it was first collected in one volume back shortly after its publication as a 12-issue series in 1986 and 1987. It’s often hailed as the greatest comic of all time, which I don’t know that I agree with, but I’d call it the best superhero comic of all time (medium and genre being used interchangeably being a pet peeve of mine and most other comic readers who don’t just read superhero books). The story is, on the surface, pretty standard: it starts off as a murder mystery involving a small group of aging superheroes in various stages of retirement, with the narrative eventually stretching from the 1930s to the present (“the present” in Watchmen being America in 1985 where Nixon is still president). The hook is that Watchmen was the first comic book that really tried to examine what the world would actually be like if certain people felt compelled to don gaudy costumes to fight crime. Some are well-meaning but naïve, some get a special kind of “excitement” out of it, and others are just flat-out nuts. (The book’s other nod to realism is that only one character, the godlike, blue-skinned Dr. Manhattan, has what could accurately be described as “superpowers.”) It’s been considered one of the medium’s high points pretty much since its release more than 20 years ago, and it even made Time magazine’s list of the 100 greatest English-language novels.
The reason Watchmen has been considered unfilmable is because it’s stunningly complex; I always tell people that every time I re-read it I discover something new, and I’ve yet to prove myself wrong on that front. Bu
t as my excitement for the release of the film next March grows with every image I see or interview with Snyder I read (I say stuff like this a lot and often regret it later, but it’s looking like Watchmen is basically a lock as one of my favourite movies of all time), I don’t know that it will actually live up to the book, because I don’t know if that’s even possible. Watchmen, the book, is very much about comics, not just superheroes, but the medium itself. It comments on the tropes of the superhero genre (and some ultra-hardcore fans of spandex books resent the book’s critique), but also on the medium itself; I’ve never read a comic as meticulously constructed as Watchmen, from its rigid panel composition to its thematic use of symmetry, it truly is a remarkable work of craftsmanship. In terms of displaying its creators’ mastery of the form, it rivals cinematic masterpieces like Citizen Kane. So as stoked as I am about the movie adaptation, I really can’t see it living up to the original. Which is okay; so much changes in translating any work from one medium to another that a great book can be made into a mediocre movie (see pretty much any previous Alan Moore adaptation), or a mediocre book can become movie legend (I’ve never heard anything particularly great about Mario Puzo’s Godfather novel, but the movie is, well, The Godfather). What I do think is possible – hell, I expect it – is that Watchmen will be the first movie adaptation of an Alan Moore comic to really get everything right.If the trailer piqued your interest and you’re at all interested in reading Watchmen to see what all the fuss is about, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of the book as the hype for the movie builds. I’m polishing off my latest read-through of it (just finished Chapter 10 on the streetcar ride to the office this morning), but I’ve got an oversized hardcover version due to arrive from Amazon any day now, and I can’t wait to read it all over again. There's a lot of time to kill between now and March 6, 2009.
Labels: comics, Movie news
¶ 1:43 PM 0 Comments
