Monthly Archives: January 2012
Superman Final Thoughts
It’s week 2 and I’m already slacking on my project. Luckily I’ve worked ahead enough that I won’t be missing any posts just yet. Finally got around to watching the new Captain America tonight, and the next two movies on the list I own so they shouldn’t be a problem to find. I tried to film a video of my daughter’s thoughts about Superman but this was all I was able to get out of her.
I think the Superman franchise is pretty troubled. Superman is a tough character to have good conflict. He only has one weakness, and he’s generally stronger than anything else that can be thrown at him. That’s probably why the two movies that turned out the best are ones that didn’t have him dealing with someone as powerful as him. The first Superman movie and Superman Returns both deal with Lex Luthor and natural (or technically not-so-natural) disasters. They also deal strongly with his personal relationships and the trouble of leading a dual life, without resorting to sitcom-esque hijinks of a double date. The others tried to give Superman a worthy foe to fight and the only one that came close was Superman II, but the Richard Lester version threw too much slapstick into the mix that deflated what drama was there. Superman III and IV were just awful combinations of low budget or shoehorning plots that don’t really fit just because that’s what the filmmakers wanted in their movie.
I have hope for the new Superman movie, although the only thing I have to go on is a few photos and the track record of recent Marvel and DC movies, then again the buzz wasn’t very good for the Green Lantern which I haven’t seen yet. As long as it’s not yet another rehash of the same plot that I’ve seen twice, and there’s no Braniac fighting a polar bear or a giant spider in the third act, I’ll probably enjoy it. What I would like to see in a Superman movie is a real look at the duality of his personality that’s not directly tied to a love interest. I’d like to see him face off against a worthy adversary that’s not Lex Luthor and is something that actually makes sense. But until then, I’ll just have to wait for it, at least I’ve got plenty of movies to watch in the meantime. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Supergirl
Supergirl 1984
So it’s Christmas afternoon, the presents have been opened and we’re just spending a relaxing Sunday Afternoon together as a family. And I decided to ruin it by looking up Supergirl for us all to watch together this holiday afternoon. Ok, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration but the movie was not that enjoyable aside from the ability to laugh at it when it got so bad it was just plain funny. Of course, since it was Christmas afternoon, and Jena got quite a few presents for herself, she paid almost no attention to the movie, preferring to play with her newfound Angry Bird plushies, Monster High doll, and a Rainbow Brite and Sprite doll.
This was made shortly after Superman III and it’s really in the same vein as that movie, but it didn’t have a well known comedian making funny on the screen, it just had Faye Dunaway hamming it up as Selena with a spotlight shining on her face in every single closeup. It reminded me of Morticia Addams in the Addams Family movies. I always thought in those movies it was done for some comedic effect, at least I thought it was funny. Anyway, she played a witch who seemed to have only recently converted because of her warlock boyfriend, although she felt she had already outgrown him and wanted to strike out on her own for more power.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, while she does take up an ample amount of screentime for her character development as a villain, and by development I mean that she wants power, she gets power, and she gets destroyed by a stronger power. The movie however starts out on Krypton. Well technically it’s not Krypton since that got destroyed, but it’s a city full of Kryptonians that somehow survived the destruction of Krypton and are now living using the power of the spinning globotron. That’s not what it’s actually called, but that’s how I remember it as. Zaltar “borrows” it and lets Kara play with it until she loses control of it, it gets sucked through the wall, into space off to Earth, and straight into Selena’s lap. Zaltar exiles himself to the Phantom Zone while everyone else worries that they will die in a few days without power so Kara takes it upon herself to follow the globotron to Earth and retrieve it.
Did I forget to mention that Kara is Kal-El’s cousin? So when she arrives at Earth she comes fully dressed as Supergirl even though no one was dressed like that on Krypton, I mean Argo City. She shows off some of her powers, including fighting off a couple drunk horny truckers before stumbling upon an all girl’s school and revealing her power to create clothes and change haircolor out of nothing. She cons her way into the girl’s school with a fake reference letter from her cousin Clark Kent and sets up a fake identity as Linda Lee. Because obviously if she would have used her real name Kara then everyone would know who she really was… um… yeah. And to tie her even more into Superman, she ends up rooming with Lois Lane’s little sister Lucy.
Now I’m only familiar with Supergirl from Smallville and from what I remember she’s not too far off from her Smallville counterpart. She’s rather naive but she’s a quick thinker and can take care of herself. Lucy Lane also has some familiar traits, like being headstrong enough to try and stop the runaway construction equipment herself. And Jimmy Olsen makes a return appearance as Lucy’s boyfriend and the only real tie in to the Superman movies aside from a poster in Lucy’s room and the quick radio announcement explanation why Superman isn’t around.
They tried to shoehorn a love interest into this movie by way of a personality-less prettyboy gardener for the girl’s school who Selina falls for and tries to concoct a love potion which of course goes awry and makes him fall for Linda Lee instead. I’m sure no one saw that coming. He supposedly snaps out of it halfway through the movie yet continues to have “real” feelings for both Linda and Supergirl making the connection between them through a kiss. The action scenes were all a joke as well, the first action piece is when Selina sends her shadow demon after Linda which has some pretty decent set up as a giant invisible monster. And yet Supergirl defeats it by charging a lamppost with lightning and shooting it at the beast. I wish I was kidding. The next action scene is when the boytoy gets captured by a giant piece of construction equipment that starts running loose around town. Supergirl stares at the destruction it’s causing for what feels like several minutes before finally jumping in and riding along with it for a bit and ripping the claw off, saving the guy. And the final action scene is mostly a bunch of wobbly glowing floor tiles and a big demon.
If I had to pick something about this movie that I liked, I thought Helen Slater’s performance as Supergirl was pretty good considering all the crap acting around her. There were a few of the flying sequences that were well done and I really loved Selina’s sidekick. I think she was about the best part of the movie. She reminded me a lot of Karen Walker since she always seemed to have either a cigarette or a drink in her hand. It was a shame that she got caught up with Faye in the Supergirl twister thingy that defeated them. And at least Supergirl didn’t have to give everyone amnesia kisses at the end, she just got them agree to not tell anyone about her before heading back to Argo City hopefully in time before everyone died. But of course we never know since it just happens during the credits. We do see the lights go on, but we don’t know if anyone besides Kara was still alive. Oh well. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace 1987
My stack of Superman DVDs are due back today and it’s time to finish it out. I think even Jena has a feeling that this one’s going to be bad because she’s not even interested in watching the movie with me today and doesn’t come downstairs until about 40 minutes into the movie. She vaguely pays attention but never really gets into the movie. Before I even watched this movie I was warned by several people over Twitter that this is an awful movie and they were completely right.
Now on the surface you might think it’s a good idea for a movie. It’s got Margot Kidder as well as Gene Hackman back in full force. Gene Hackman had left during Superman II after Richard Donner was fired and Margot Kidder was delegated to a cameo in Superman III after disagreeing with that same decision. And he’s got a big superpowered villain to face off against in the third act. But ultimately that wasn’t enough to save this movie because everything was just handled poorly by a company that couldn’t give them even half the money they needed to pull it off.
Early on in the movie, while Clark was troubled about a child’s highly publicized request for Superman to rid the world of all nuclear weapons, he revealed his secret identity to Lois so he could unburden himself to her while taking her on a flight around town just like in the first Superman movie. But during the flight he uncharacteristically let her go on purpose so she could start to freak out for a moment before he came back to catch her. That was totally an un-Supermanlike thing to do to her, and to top it all off, immediately after talking to her he gave her another amnesia kiss so she forgets it all once again, just like in Superman II. But unlike Superman II, which was still ridiculous but at least he was doing it to save her the heartbreak and torment of keeping his secret, in this movie he basically used her for his own needs and tossed her a forget-me-kiss so things would be back to normal.
There’s just ridiculous scene after ridiculous scene, like where Clark and Superman went on a double date with the new head of the Daily Planet Mariel Hemingway, who was this movie’s love interest for Clark, and Lois. But it was just excuse after excuse for Clark or Superman to leave the room for just a moment so the other could pop in. And Superman apparently agreed to get rid of the nuclear weapons by having the countries shoot them all into space where he collected them in a giant net and threw them all into the sun. I’m sure several dozen nuclear weapons being tossed into the sun wouldn’t have any major repercussions on Earth… riiiight. And the countries will all apparently forget how to make more nuclear weapons? I’m not even going to get started on Ducky, err John Cryer, Lex’s teenage slacker nephew.
But there’s a new supervillain who’s just as powerful as Superman, right? Well, he’s just as powerful as Superman as long as he’s in direct sunlight, because anytime he gets into the shade for a few seconds he completely powers down, and yet he flew around the world with no ill effects. He’s also so hot to the touch that Lex can light his cigar on his finger, yet he could carry Mariel Hemingway into space and she’s perfectly fine…riiiight. They gave Superman yet another power that doesn’t make any sense. Apparently he has “brick-vision” which allowed him to rebuild a part of the Great Wall of China that got destroyed in a fight with Super-blondie just by looking at it. And Superman figured out Super-blondie’s weakness just by thinking about it for a while, at least that’s what he told Lex at the end of the movie. I thought he was going to do something interesting when he was first created and rebelled against Lex, saying “I’m the father now.” And yet that was the full extent of his young rebellion, he just went back to serving Lex no questions asked.
And if you can’t tell already, there’s just so much going on in this movie that nothing got the amount of time it needed to fully tell the story. There’s a hostile takeover of the Daily Planet by a tabloid millionaire who put his daughter in charge. His daughter was interested in Clark Kent romantically and supposedly cared about the paper more than following her father. There’s the whole nuclear threat that prompted the boy to write a letter to Superman asking him to get rid of all the nuclear weapons. There’s Lex and his nephew using a strand of Superman’s hair to make Super-blondie who was supposedly an altered clone of Superman who looked nothing like him, had only a couple of the same powers and a ton of new ones, and constantly sparked and buzzed which was really annoying. There’s the romantic plot between Clark and Mariel Hemingway, There’s Perry White getting a loan to buy back the paper, there’s a bit about Clark not wanting to sell his old farm to a developer, instead he wanted to wait for an actual farmer, and on and on and on. And only about half of these plot threads even had a resolution. Most were just touched on and then left behind.
The worst part about this movie is it’s not even bad enough to make fun of it. Through most of this movie I was just wondering where the heck the movie was going with this, or why the heck did they just do that? I was constantly puzzled and not in a good way. Why the heck did Super-blondie have Gene Hackman’s voice? What does that have to do with anything? Why does Super-blondie have a crush on Mariel Hemingway when he’s never even seen her before? Why does he have weirdly long fingernails? How does that even make any sense? Superman fighting himself made more sense than this movie, and that’s saying something. It’s amazing that they got all of the original cast to agree to make this movie considering how it turned out. What a way to end a series. Next week I will be watching Supergirl as well as Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. I’d still like to watch Richard Donner’s cut of Superman II, but it will have to wait until I can actually get a hold of it. Don’t forget to leave a comment and tell me what I should watch next, until next time this is Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Violence in Superhero movies
Up until now, most of the movies I’ve been watching for this blog I’ve been able to watch with my daughter. She’s five, I like to think she handles movie violence pretty well. She’s snuck up on us watching some violent shows like Supernatural or Vampire Diaries, I don’t think it was during any of the really gory parts but I know for sure I’m not letting her watch either of those shows on purpose any time soon. But superhero movies can be kind of a grey area. Most older movies are pretty tame with just some physical violence but never any blood.
But watching the 1990’s Captain America gave me a slight pause. It’s the first movie we watched together that really has guns in it, at least guns that aren’t just ineffective tools when used against Superman or Supergirl. There was some blood, nothing major, but it was a bit of violence. Her response was “Is his shirt dead?” Most superheroes aside from the ones that are specifically geared toward an adult audience like Watchmen are geared towards kids and adults. I’ve already questioned which Batman movies might be too much for her. I imagine she should be ok with Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, but the others I’m not so sure about, especially the Christopher Nolan ones.
What superhero movies are out there that are thought of as a “kid friendly” or at least one that you think of as one you might have grown up with that when you watch again as a parent, might be a little bit too violent for a young child to watch. Specifically, what about the new Captain America movie? Leave a comment, let me know what you think. I think I’ll have a short update, blog, or bonus review every Tuesday along with my regular reviews every Sunday and Thursday. Superman IV is up this Thursday to finish out the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Until next time, this is Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Superman III
Superman III 1983
If you’ve read either of my earlier posts, you’d know I’m cranking through the Christopher Reeve Superman movies before they’re due back at the rental store tomorrow. That means I’m watching Superman III today and Superman IV tomorrow even though I’m posting both quite a bit later. As they say, it’s all downhill from here. And of course my daughter Jena, not knowing any better, is still more or less excited about seeing more Superman. As a side note, I’m kind of conflicted for when I get around to the Batman movies. I know several of them get pretty dark, especially the Nolan ones, but at the same time Batman is above all else her favorite superhero next to Wonder Woman. But that’s a decision for another time. Feel free to share your comments on the topic though, I’d love to hear them.
Anyway enough stalling, it’s time to talk about Superman III and boy is there a lot to talk about. I won’t go into too much detail about Jena’s reactions to the movie this time. If you read about what she thought of Superman I and II, it’s pretty much the same here. Her favorite scenes were Superman rescuing the kid and his dog, Superman fighting himself, and Superman fighting the giant computer.
Now for my thoughts, I could tell right away that this movie was going to take a turn for the worse when it started off with a Rube Goldberg-esque comedy of errors over the opening credits complete with a blind guy and several pratfalls. It then had Lois Lane going away for no reason (other than Margot Kidder didn’t agree with the producers for firing Richard Donner) to Bermuda and another random couple from the Daily Planet won a free trip to South America for no reason other than a cheap gag later in the movie, while Clark went back to Smallville for his High School reunion and a claim that it would make a great story. While there he ran into Lana Lang, the prettiest girl in High School and his new love interest in this movie. Since Lois was a no-show, this gave Clark another chance at love and the chance to be a father figure to Lana’s son. Personally, I could never get over the fact that he was kind of dating his own mother as Annette O’Toole went on to play Martha Kent in Smallville and that’s what I know her best as.
Then there’s Richard Pryor, more or less the “man” in “Superman III”, in other words he’s almost as much if not more of a main character than Superman himself. So much so that when he sets off a tornado in Columbia, instead of showing Superman foiling the disaster, they showed Richard Pryor re-enacting the scene with a pink tablecloth before he skied off the side of a skyscraper. Yet he still managed to survive the fall without being caught by Superman. Even though he spent half the movie trying to kill Superman, he had a sudden change of heart when he and his employers were on the verge of succeeding in that plan. In the movie he played a genius that acts like an idiot, at one point he even admitted that he had no idea what he was doing. It was basically just an excuse to let Richard Pryor do a bunch of comedy bits which for me were very hit and miss.
The big setpiece in this movie, at least the one that’s not just being described by Richard Pryor, was when Superman came into contact with some homebrew low tar Kryptonite which turned him into drunk-dad Superman. You could tell he’s evil because he always has a grimace on his unshaven face and dirty tights. But luckily Lana and her son came into town and he gets through to Superman with the oh so powerful words “You’re just in a slump!” Because I know when I get drunk and start doing evil and destructive things for the fun of it, some kid telling me that I’m in a slump will perk me right up. He then inexplicably splits into two and has a fight with himself, the good side being represented by Clark Kent. This fight was laughable in the fact that after throwing huge objects at Clark, the thing that knocked him out was an incredibly weak kick to the face. And Clark finally defeated evil Supes by violently choking him to death.
Aside from the non-villain that is Richard Pryor, there’s the rich billionaire that wanted to get richer and his blonde bimbo girlfriend. Of course she’s just pretending to be an idiot so she can… um… show that she’s smart at the end of the movie by saying a couple so-called smart things before being pinned to the wall and… um… that’s it. They hint early on that she’s pretending to be smart and it seems like a set up for something, yet they never really pay it off aside from the other villainess saying “how’d you know that?” before glossing over it. And then the final villain in the movie is a giant computer made from blueprints that Richard Pryor drew on a bunch of random wrappers that the homely villainess suddenly revealed that she knew perfectly well how to use, and became self-sentient and self preservation kicked in, causing it to attack and/or assimilate anything that threatened it including its creators.
Yet somehow through all the ridiculous stuff going on, I somehow enjoyed watching it. I believe I mentioned it somewhere on this site but I’m not here to completely bash these movies even though it may seem like it in this review. Maybe it was all the ridiculousness that won me over. I thought drunk-dad Superman was hilarious, as well as the fake-dumb blonde bimbo sidekick. I thought it was really over the top in the scene where she was seducing drunk-dad Superman and her necklace was a snake and an apple. And even though the comedy was over the top and out of place most of the time, it was genuinely funny some of the time. At least this movie didn’t give Superman some completely random superpower that he’s never had before or since. Check out my thoughts on Superman IV this Thursday to finish this series off. Next week will be Supergirl because I couldn’t easily find the Richard Donner cut in my area, and Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Leave a comment to let me know what I should check out next. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 