Category Archives: 00’s movies
Hulk vs. Thor
Hulk vs. Thor 2009
As you may or may not know, before Marvel Studios went on to make the first Iron Man film and start its path towards complete box office domination, they cut a deal with Lions Gate Films to make a large handful of animated films based on several different characters. This was a mini double feature produced towards the end of their run and the last ones that I have yet to review, though I do remember watching them around the time that they came out. It’s a title that makes sense on a surface level, one of the biggest things that any comic book fan comes around to at one point or another is the question “who would win in a fight?” and then proceeds to pit two characters up against each other in an imaginary battle. It’s also something that tends to happen every now and then within the comics themselves, so it makes sense that they would pit the Hulk up against two of the most powerful and popular Marvel heroes to see who would win. Today I’m taking a look at the fight between Hulk and Thor. Unfortunately, it’s not the battle royale that one might have expected, instead it’s a bit of a let down similar to the last big pay-per-view boxing event.
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Josie and the Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats 2001
One thing I continuously find fascinating is the year 2001. The year before had several superhero movies: Unbreakable, X-Men, even smaller ones like the Toxic Avenger 4 and the Specials. But just one year later there wasn’t a single superhero movie to be found, at least as far as I can tell, only a handful of non-superhero comic book adaptations covering a wide variety from the macabre From Hell, the teen angsty art film Ghost World, and this bright and cheery Josie and the Pussycats. Even though I never watched the cartoon when I was younger, I was aware of the show through the early days of Cartoon Network when they ran all sorts of Hanna Barbera classics that they likely got the rights cheaply. I don’t remember if I watched the film when it came out in theaters, but whenever I did see it I quite enjoyed it. And watching it again now, it still hits a lot of the right notes where it’s very self-referential with its humor which helps to hide the fairly mediocre and ridiculous plot. The music is fun and it feels very of its time without feeling dated in a bad way. My wife thought it was bizarre, and my daughter grew bored of it quickly, but I loved revisiting nearly every minute of it.
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Next Avengers
Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow 2008
After going through the first two Marvel animated Avengers movies I jumped ahead a bit to watch the only one I actually hadn’t seen before now. I’ve actually heard decent things about this one that follows the children of the Avengers after they have been spirited away with Tony Stark to the Arctic Circle to avoid the detection of Ultron who has now taken over about half of the world. Most of the Avengers are dead, but before they died they paired off and had kids, and now their kids have to band together to defeat Ultron. And even though it doesn’t really make sense when you put it into words the movie actually does work with the concept and make it seem at least partly believable.
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Ultimate Avengers 2
Ultimate Avengers 2 2006
While I’m still moving at a bit slower pace than I planned to, I’m still moving through the animated Avengers movies before writing down a full fledged review for Age of Ultron, though if you can’t wait to hear my thoughts I was on a recent Lambcast where I discussed it with several other Lamb members. The sequel to the animated Ultimate Avengers brings back the entire cast along with newcomer Black Panther. The sequel tries to amp up the action, the danger, and the consequences but it’s difficult to do with the way this cast of characters is portrayed. It doesn’t help that the Chitauri aliens aren’t any more interesting than they were in the first film. The result it a lot of the same old same old that just doesn’t have a big payoff at the end. There’s nothing terribly wrong with this film, but it doesn’t do anything new, fresh, or exciting throughout its entire runtime.
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Ultimate Avengers
Ultimate Avengers 2006
With the popularity of my one-sentence review of Age of Ultron, I decided that I would leave you hanging a bit more and bide my time to give my full thoughts on the latest Avengers movie. Also, since I didn’t cover quite as many animated films last month, I thought I would instead take a look at the other animated Avengers movies that came out before even the first Iron Man movie when Marvel was working with Lion’s Gate to produce a series of animated films which would later tie-in with some of the live action movies. But they actually went the opposite route and began with the big team-up film instead of giving everyone their own separate introduction. It was based on the Ultimates universe and while it does share quite a few things with the Cinematic Universe, there are plenty of departures as well. It has been years since I’ve watched this, and I’m a little sad to say that it doesn’t hold up, especially after seeing them all realized so much better in the flesh, or at least most of them.
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The Condor
The Condor 2007
Even though I watched this film before C2E2, I didn’t get the chance to write about it until now. I really didn’t know much of anything about this film aside from the fact that it was an animated film that came out about the same time as Mosaic based around an original superhero created by Stan Lee, and something about skateboards. It’s even been sitting on my DVD shelf for well over a year along with a dozen other movies that I bought off the clearance shelf specifically for this site that I haven’t gotten around to yet. I didn’t realize until the film started up with a nice little intro from Stan Lee himself that it was essentially based around an even smaller superhero minority than the woman superhero or even the Black superhero, the Latino superhero. As the origin story of the Condor, it basically combines the origins of Iron Man and Daredevil. The tone of the film was also a little off in the same way Mosaic was, where the plot was rather simple as if it was made for a child, but there were scatterings of adult themes tossed around that were a little on the inappropriate side for the younguns. I really wasn’t very fond of this one, it was obvious, dated, and even felt a little on the racist side of things.
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Mosaic
Mosaic 2007
It feels good to finally be getting back into a somewhat regular schedule over here at my home for movies since spending so much time at my second home for television over at Channel: Superhero. I think it helps that I’ve decided to make this month animation month which tend to offer up much shorter movies than the live action versions. I have also been thinking about women led superhero movies so I thought it was a perfect fit to take a look at this film that you wouldn’t even know by looking at the cover art or the title was about a young woman who becomes a superhero. It was one of a brief series of films for original characters including this film, the Condor, and the live-action Lightspeed. Mosaic is about a shapeshifting race of people who evolved from chameleons and have remained hidden within the population, and a teenage girl named Maggie comes in contact with one of their runestones and is imbued with their powers. It generally feels like an 80’s or 90’s style low-to-moderate budget animation with more action than story, but it was a fun little adventure and happens to be free to watch on Hulu, so there’s that.
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TMNT
TMNT 2007
It’s already April of 2015 and I still haven’t followed through with finishing up the 100 Essential Superhero Movies that I finalized back in June of last year. I still have a few more to get to and will also be updating the list for 2015 to include some significant films that came out last year and remove a few that just barely squeezed their way onto the list. This film is often overlooked nowadays as the original 1990 live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the one looked at through nostalgic eyes, and any newer fans of the franchise can look to the current Nickelodeon series or heaven forbid, the Michael Bay produced franchise starter. It was a modest success with a moderate budget but plans for a sequel never materialized. It’s a bit of an oddity in itself, it loosely sequelized the original three live action movies from the 90’s and yet was entirely animated, it also shied away from using the full title and instead opted for just the initials. Something that was akin to the early reports of the Michael Bay version dropping the “mutant” part of the equation and opting for “alien”. And while the story isn’t very deep, it was a lot of fun to revisit these characters an a relatively updated format while still holding true to most of their roots.
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Graphic Horror: Road to Perdition
Road to Perdition 2002
It’s time to finish off my participation in the Graphic Horror Blogathon with a bang by covering one of only a small handful of actually well received and well known comic book adaptations that I have yet to cover here on this site. And while it isn’t exactly a horror film, Road to Perdition does have enough thriller elements and more than enough striking visuals that I’m glad to share it as part of this project. It’s the story of a mob hitman on the run while simultaneously out for revenge, but more than that it’s about the relationship between a father and son and how they end up connecting with each other though these trying circumstances. Not only that, but this is one of the most acclaimed and star-studded comic book movies out there starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, and an early role from the man who would be James Bond Daniel Craig. It’s an amazing film, and if you haven’t seen it before, definitely seek it out before reading this, as I will be delving into this film in its entirety spoilers and all.
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Black Lightning
Black Lightning 2009
While I’m in the middle of my own blogathon this month, I also wanted to have the chance to take part in another blogathon. Over at Movie Sielently Fritzi is doing a Russia in Classic Film blogathon. And while I’m not covering a classic Russian superhero movie since I’m pretty sure there aren’t any, she has expanded the focus of the blogathon to cover not just classic films about Russia or made in Russia, but also any films from Russia from any era. And lucky for me, there just so happens to be a single Russian superhero movie that combines the stories of Spider-Man, Iron Man, and even a little bit of Knight Rider for good measure to create the origin of Black Lightning. While it does manage to have some fun with itself here and there, it unfortunately ends up being much less than the sum of its parts, picking and choosing some of the most obvious bits from well known superhero origin stories and forcing it into one of the most ridiculous superpowers of having a flying car.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 