Batman vs Avengers

Here's an interesting article on the difference between Batman: the Dark Knight and Avengers Assemble.  It's all about how optimism and cynicsm are treated in those movies.  It's good. It's thought provoking and it's written with a love for the characters.  Go read.

Wolverine: Origin

I watched it.  I liked it.  I got the impression that it was panned, but I don't get why.  OK, comic fans might hate it cos it doesn't follow canon, but as a film it works ok.  It's a good bit of fluff for a Sunday afternoon.

Hugh Jackman makes a good (hot) Wolverine.  I was pretty surprised by Scott Summers not being ridiculously annoying, and actually displaying some balls (not literally).  Emma Frost was also pretty good.  Gambit was annoying and rather moody, but I expected that.  Deadpool was barely in it, but I was gratified to see that Ryan Reynolds wasn't playing Hal for Deadpool.  It was a good superhero movie.  Lots of powers, lots of fight scenes, lots of angsty romantic bits and basically pretty much all I want from a superhero movie.  Still, I was a bit puzzled to see Ma and Pa Kent turn up halfway through..  Did Stan Lee get a cameo in this one?  I didn't notice.


Now tell me, is this movie still canon in the X-Men franchise and if so, how does that X-Men First Class movie fit into movie canon?

I should probably talk about the Green Lantern movie

I really enjoyed it.  As a superhero flick it's a bit by-the-numbers, but as a Green Lantern fan and Hal Jordan hater I loved it.  Ryan Reynolds did a suprisingly great job as Hal and Carol Ferris was also surprisingly effective.  She could have done with a bit more strength to her voice, but nevermind.

I thought I'd hate the movie, but I enjoyed every second of it.  The rubbish CGI looks far better on the big screen so I quickly got over my hatre dof the suit/ring/lantern.  The Guardians and Oa looked fab, and Kilowog said poozer and ring slinging!  Hal made a couple of giant green fists!  And was none too bright.  And was an ass.  Yeah, I liked it.  If you like superhero movies, go see it.

I missed the scene in the credits though. :(   I must youtube it.

If any non comic fans have seen it, I'd be interested in your views.

Thor!!!

I really really liked it!  I hadn't read any Thor comics before I saw the film (although by the time this post goes live I should have my grubby mitts on at least one trade) and so I didn't really know what to expect from it.  It soon became apparent that the Marvel story is very different to the Eddas (I wasn'nt surprised) but it was fun nontheless.

Heimdall was ace.  As was Looki and Thor.  All the actors were great and Thor and Heimdall were huge!  Thor is also really fucking hot.  I got quite excited.  Asgard was impressive as was bifrost (although I'd have preferred something a little more ethereal and lighter in colour).

Thor was all gung ho until he lost his hammer, and the poor guy just deflated.  He looked utterly crestfallen.  the final fight was great fun!

In terms of the female characters, Sif was a warrior in this, not the earth goddess I thought she was, and Frigga was, well, not named.  I mean, what the fuck?  She's the Queen of the Gods and not once was she named in the film.  Ahe was stately and regal (and handy with a sword), but she wasn't NAMED.


Add to this the secret scene at the end of the film where it's the male scientist who gets invited to SHEILD, depsite the fact that Jane is the major character in this film, and I get cross (again).  This casual sexism makes me angry.

Apart from that, it was good.  Jane was a typical eccentric scientist type (this is usually a male character) and the comic relief was female (again, usually male).  One of my male friends commented that he was annoyed the way the comeptent female characters tend to get sidelined as love interests (at least that's what I think he was saying).  I'm not sure that's appropriate in this film's case but I thought it was an interesting view.

I also got to see the Green Lantern trailer on the big screen!  It still has it's problems but I am now really really excited to see it!

Pah

The Wonder Woman animated movie is only available on import from the US. Which make sit expensive and risks import tax. Pah. Not impressed.

Who Watches the Watchmen? (spoilers)

Well, me for a start. Along with many other people.

Har Har.

Lame ass joke I know. The boyfriend wanted me to title this post Who Watchted the Watchmen, but I thought that was wanky. Unlike my idea.

Anyway. So yes, I did see this movie, and it was after a long weekend boozing in honour of my sister getting married. Dear god did I feel ill on Monday when it was all over. But that’s another story, not really suitable for here.

Not that precious young eyes can read this blog; my teacher friend tells me how his school’s servers block access to here! It must be all the swearing and references to sex and porn.

Onto the movie. Please bear in mind that I haven’t read the book and until I saw the movie I knew 3 things about the plotline:

• Who Watches the Watchmen? is the tagline
• The smiley face with blood
• Alan Moore wrote it

Other than that, nada. So I have no idea how it compares with the book and anything written in this post, unless stated directly will not be a criticism of Alan Moore.

My initial thoughts on seeing the movie posters were that those costumes look bloody ridiculous. Unlike say, Hawkman’s, Captain Marvel’s or Terra’s (ha!).
About 30 minutes into it I thought the costumes were wonderful, with the exception of 1 (take a guess as to whose I didn’t like).

Also bear in mind I may get some character’s names wrong, I’ve never been good at keeping track of them.

Overall, I was only half impressed. It’s definitely not a superhero film though is it? They are more like hired mercenaries, what with the gleeful murder and all (this isn’t a complaint against the film).

The good things about the film:

• The 1940s style sequences at the start were glorious.
• All the costumes were really well done and looked very slick.
• Owlman in civilian clothes as a bespeckled 40 something? Great.
• Dr Manhattan. Wow. I thought in the movie poster he looked really stupid, but when watching it, wow. Really well done. Really good examination of his separateness from humanity, very well portrayed

And naked! In the first shot of naked him we saw down to the top of the pubic bone, I assumed that was all we’d see. But no, he’s naked for 3/4s of the movie and we get to see his knob and everything! It’s not an exciting knob, and from my vantage point he appeared to be nutless, although I admit I’m half blind, but still, naked knob!

• The cinematography – I hasten to add looking pretty does not make a good film.
• Rorschach. And his mask, the moving mask. The actual actor when not in the mask was very arresting. He reminded me of a young Johnny Rotten – he had a similar intenseness in the eyes. Not what I expected from the masked Rorschach.
• The unmasked Watchman with the lazy accent. He was goooood.
• Mars. Mars was fabulous.
• The Comedian. Skanky horrible man. Good acting.
• They had a lesbian in the original team. And she was out, and brave and in control.

The bad things about the film:

• It was very violent and it revelled in it’s violence. This could just be a sign of me getting older – as a teenager I would have loved this and wouldn’t have been remotely squeamish. Now, at the ripe old age of 28, I wonder if it’s really necessary.
• The culmination of the unmasked guy’s plotting and machinations. I think that destroying millions of people in order to save the world from it’s own divisions/politics is a tired, contrived and overly simplistic idea. As one of my friends commented, it won’t work – the world is now living in fear that Dr Manhattan will strike again, how will that permanently make the Commies and the Capitalist pigs work together?
• It clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes. That’s too long.

The obligatory feminist criticisms:
Not very diverse is it? OK, so yay they had a lesbian! About 10 minutes into the film she was killed, for being a ‘lesbian whore’. Not so yay. This left one woman on the team – the Silk Spectre, real name Laurie.

One woman whose role boiled down to being the obligatory love interest. I know she was also a superhero, but she did fuck all. She starts off as Dr Manhattan’s love interest, later when Manhattan unwittingly spurns her she ends up with Owlman. During this brief fling with Owlman she did indulge in some ass kicking but this turned out to make him hot for her and so they shagged.
Even her relationship with her mum (the original Silk Spectre) was shown through the lens of the menz – it was all about her father (the Comedian) and his attempted rape of her mother (oh joy, yet another rape scene where the woman is saved by men, gee I don’t get tired of those, ever) and then how the original Silk Spectre later slept with the Comedian and conceived Laurie.
And oh yes, Laurie found this out b/c Dr Manhattan did his crazy hand/thought thing.

So, everything is seen through the lens of men, every interaction/discovery of her life seems to be related to men.

I’m not really stating that it’s bad that a man showed how she was conceived, that was just a convenient way to move the plot along.
Maybe if there were more women in the movie Laurie may have been more interesting, maybe she would have been allowed a life outside of her love interests. As it stands, the men were all allowed to display interests, desires and goals outside of their personal relationships, but the women weren’t. There really was no point in Silk Spectre 2 being on the team.

They could have further explored why she became a superhero – there was one throwaway line about how she donned the costume because of her mum. It could have been really interesting to look at that more in depth, and it’s a shame they didn’t.

And the costume is fucking stupid – she’s in bloody fetish gear for gods sake, for no apparent reason. Latex and suspenders. Interestingly enough, I believe that the promo posters don’t show the suspenders.

The other significant woman in the film was Dr Manhattan’s first girlfriend, and all we saw of her was her status as girlfriend.

This film fails the Bechdel test. Yes so there is more than 1 women in the film, but only 2 of them talk to each other and I’m fairly certain it’s not about anything other than a man. Is it too much to ask for fair 3 dimensional representations? Because 2D shit like this seriously impairs my enjoyment of the movie.

There were fuck all ethnic minorities as well. In this alternate universe did they shoot all the Blacks and Asians? Possibly.

I will read the book, and I hope that it is somewhat better than the movie.

Currently listening to: The Pillows

No. No no no no no no

This is really not a good idea. Batman works a as a dark movie, yes. Batman is a dark character, that's fine that works for him. Superman isn't. Superman is about light and hope. That's partly why the Supes/Bats comics work so well - light vs dark. They bounce off each other.
Applying the same methodology and thinking to both of them will result in at least 1 fucked up movie. Plus, the darkness wasn't what made The Dark Knight movie so good. There were loads of other factors - plot, acting, characterisation, detail, thought.
Superman doesn't work when he's made dark. He's uplifting, he shows us there's a better way, and he shows us what the possibilities are. He's not Batman!

And also I thought Superman Returns was a damn good movie and Bardondon Routh made a good Clark and Supes. As a lifelong Christopher Reeve fan that's saying something! The only fault I can find with it is that more dialogue would have been good - it was very action orientated. That doesn't make it a bad movie, but it could have been better. And the apparent stalking doesn't bother me, at all.