Superhero Movies

[nacho]

I was at superhero movie saturation point in 1999.

[RottingCorpse]

It's a wee bit much these days. Especially now that they're really into the second tier heroes as far "known properties" are concerned. What are the big ones left? Wonder Woman, which nobody seems to want to touch. And Swamp Thing which is tied up in legal maneuvering because of all the exploitation of the 80s and 90s.

So with the third Nolan/Batman movie being released alongside the Spider-Man reboot, we see the future ahead of us. They'll do movies with certain creative teams until that becomes cost prohibitive and then they'll simply reboot it with a new creative team. As long as people go, they'll keep making them.

That's also why everybody is latching into the YA book series adaptations as well. Built in audiences that come see these movies no matter how terrible they are.

I will say that superhero movies are, for the most part, at a high level of quality if a little too safe. But with that much  money involved, can you blame them? I just miss the good old days when superhero movies were truly an event. They've become pedestrian.

[nacho]

God, yes. Remember the buildup to the 1990 Batman? Talk about an event...

[RottingCorpse]

The 1990 (1989?) Batman build up is what everybody has been trying to replicate ever since. Then CGI came along and made making people "believe a man can fly" easy.

My biggest problem with the way super-heroes are handled is that everything in movies has to be a huge world threatening disaster. The irony is that the best superhero stories are usually intimate and personal. That's what made Iron Man Nolan's first Batman movie kind of refreshing. The stories felt insular, at least for the first two-thirds. I think that's also why the new Spider-Man movie kind of appeals to me. from the trailer it seems to be a smaller scale thing.

It's why Green Lantern was bad and Thor wasn't as good as could have been, and inevitably why they'll completely fuck up Swamp Thing. Yet the costs involved with making these movies almost necessitate hitting the widest audience possible.

And here's where I beat the dead horse about how TV is where superhero stories are most successful.

[nacho]

Except superhero shows fail... Flash, Heroes, etc. Always mishandled...and trying to ape the world-threatening movies.

Or, like No Ordinary Family, weirdly too insular.

[Cassander]

[quote author=RottingCorpse link=topic=1818.msg146923#msg146923 date=1328550903

And here's where I beat the dead horse about how TV is where superhero stories are most successful.
[/quote]

Or, you know, actual comic books that only cost you $2 a month.

[RottingCorpse]

Going all Alan Moore on me, eh?

Well, that comic books are the best place for the superhero story is a given I think. However, I also think there's value (however self-serving) in the "live action adaptation." (Could Nolan's batman stories be told in a comic book?) I just believe that TV serves the episodic nature of the superhero story better than cinema.

I was an avid comic book reader collector in my teens. I sold my collection in  college on a whim for easy cash because they didn't matter to me. i have few regrets in life, but selling those books is one of them. I had nearly the entire Uncanny X-Men run, including some of the early stuff from the 60s.

[RottingCorpse]

Really this says it all, right?

[nacho]

Really this says it all, right?

That I'd prefer to watch that than the 2012 movie? Yes.

[RottingCorpse]

Early reviews say it's an Whedon-esque orgasm of an action movie; nothing original, but wildly entertaining nonetheless.

[nacho]

Well... An Avengers CAM has leaked. It's pretty good quality, too. Initial reaction from the community is that it's laughable and silly, but enjoyable. I'm avoiding it... Will wait for the good quality version.

[RottingCorpse]

So The Avengers is pretty good. No Emma Peel, but Scarlet Johansson wears black leather so it evens out.

Actually, Johansson's Black Widow kind of steals the show in some ways. Though since it's Whedon, nobody should really be surprised. She's great. And there's a scene between she and Tom Hiddleston's Loki halfway through the movie that will blow your socks off it's so good. He's great too, by the way. In fact I'd go as far to say that without him as the unifying element the movie would probably be pretty uneven. It teeters dangerously close to being uneven anyway, but that's just fallout from having to stick all the established tones of four different film franchises together into one two-and-a-half hour movie.  Whedon does as good a job as anybody could have putting it all together, and the actors are so good that it's hard to nitpick.

The way Bruce Banner/the Hulk is handled is the best part of the movie. They got it perfect in a way the other two movie's didn't. Mark Ruffalo is pretty engaging as Banner and brings a certain sadness to the character that makes you really love him. I won't give it away, but the Hulk's first appearance (and the scenes with Johansson that follow) is probably the best sequence in the movie.

We did 2D by the way, and I don't feel like I missed out on a thing by not wearing those stupid glasses. Fuck 3D. Fuck it in the ass.

If you liked Iron Man (the first one), Thor, and Captain America, then there's no reason you won't like this.

[nacho]

What if you liked the first Iron Man, but thought Thor was a sad self-aware comedy and Captain America was plain awful?

[RottingCorpse]

Um... I don't know. Things go boom.

[nacho]

Awesome!