Category Archives: Marvel
Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 2007
While I wouldn’t recommend watching the Spider-Man films for the first time this way, I thought it was a perfect way to set myself up for the new Amazing Spider-Man next week. I figured I’d get the final and also the worst film out of the way first and end with the origin movie since it would be the one that would most closely compare to the new movie. This movie is one of those instances where since the first time I’ve seen it, I’ve heard so much negativity about the movie that I was prepared for the worst. And while it wasn’t all that great, there were some genuinely good moments in the movie too. But they were surrounded by bad ideas, too many characters, and too many subplots.
Red Sonja
Red Sonja 1985
2023 edit: I apparently keep forgetting to revisit this movie after watching and reviewing Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues and revising my criteria somewhat and doing a bit of research. While Conan originated in the novels, Red Sonja as a character was created for Marvel comics within the Conan comics which absolutely makes this a comic book movie. Below is the original review presented unedited.
I have been going back and forth on whether or not to have this movie be a part of the rest of the movies or to have it under my “Almost Super” category. It’s based on a character in a Marvel comic book, but since it’s much more of a low fantasy rather than a superhero so I ultimately decided to use the Almost Super tag. Another reason why I wanted to review the movie, aside from the fact that I vaguely remember watching it and liking it when I was younger, is that the Lamb is having its Lamb Acting School for Arnold Schwartzenegger this month, and I’m not quite ready to revisit the 90’s Batman series ending in his portrayal of Mr. Freeze, so I was left to choose between the two Conan movies and this movie. And while the movie is called Red Sonja, Arnold still manages to get top billing as the secondary lead above acting newcomer Brigitte Nielson. While there were some interesting parts in the movie, it did not nearly hold up to my memory of it.
Thor: Tales of Asgard
Thor: Tales of Asgard 2011
I was originally considering to do a mini-marathon of the DC animated movies after the response to my Green Lantern: First Flight post, but at our most recent trip to the rental store, my wife picked up this movie from the free kids movies section so I figured I might as well watch it. I really had no idea what to expect when I started it, all I knew was the tagline saying something about before there was a hammer, there was a sword. So I knew I was in for a prequel of sorts. I thought it covered a lot of the same grounds as the live action movie, and it had a lot of references to the movie, but in other places it went in a completely different direction. I generally liked it and so did Jena, but it seemed like a really odd choice for an animated movie. Especially when you consider the DVD cover which I chose not to picture because not only does it look nothing like the actual animation, but it appears to be an adult Thor, when the movie is about essentially a teenaged Thor. It’s still worth a watch if you’re a fan of Thor or the animated DC movies. It’s also a PG movie rather than a PG-13 and while it does cover some adult themes such as death and war, it does so without any blood, so it’s appropriate for younger viewers as well.
Man-Thing
Man-Thing 2005
For a while, I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not to file this movie under my new “Almost Super” category. It’s pretty much a straight up horror movie, but the fact that it’s based on a Marvel comics character and the fact that it’s similar to Swamp Thing which is more easily a superhero movie, I decided to stick with my first instinct. This was one of Marvel’s early jumps into the independent film-making waters, but apparently the testing was so poor on it that it got relegated to a home video release and later came out as a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. It appears at first glance to be Marvel’s version of Swamp Thing, but it’s handled in a very different way. Man-Thing is much more like a villain, or at least a force of nature that’s been unleashed and destroys anything that gets in its way. And so it would seem to make a great horror movie villain, but they decide to stick with almost every horror movie cliche in the book to make this movie completely boring and unoriginal in the end.
X-Men: The Last Stand
X-Men: The Last Stand 2006
It feels like I’ve been watching X-Men movies for a long time now, there’s been some pretty great movies, and some fairly mediocre movies, but I’m glad I’m done with them and am ready to move onto something different. It makes me glad that I’m not going to try to cram all eight Batman movies back to back to back. After two great X-Men movies by Bryan Singer, he dropped out for the chance to make Superman Returns while the helm was passed on to Brett Ratner. The movie promised a lot of things, some popular X-Men that hadn’t made it to the movies yet, and it centered around the mutant “cure” which could have brought in all sorts of layers of meaning to this movie. But instead, it’s a lot of empty action with little real depth to it all. It’s still a fun watch, but compared to the previous two X-Men movies and even First Class, it felt fairly empty.
X2: X-Men United
X2: X-Men United 2003
I’ve almost finished revisiting all of the X-Men movies and tonight I watched what many consider the strongest out of all of them. It has more characters, a bigger conflict, and the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend plotline. And not only are there more characters, most of the characters are stronger than in the first X-Men and there are fewer weak characters. Where X-Men was the movie that made everyone take notice of the superhero movie again, X2 was the movie that made everyone take superhero movies seriously. At least for a little while. I do have to mention that for whatever reason, the movie didn’t fully hold my interest for the duration. I felt the need to pause it a couple times to check on other things. It’s not a huge negative against the movie because I can be easily distracted, but it is a slight negative. There is still a lot of great things in this movie.
X-Men
X-Men 2000
While it seemed like a good idea at the time to watch all five of the X-Men movies back to back, coming around to watching the first one made me realize that they’re better suited as being treated as separate entities. When you watch them close together, the continuity changes are quite glaring. Aside from that, this movie generally holds up and I can totally see how this one movie really paved the way for the previous generation of superhero movies. I say previous in the hope that the recent Avengers movie, prequels and sequels, as well as Nolan’s Batman movies, lead into the current generation of superhero movies. But X-Men still stands as a landmark in superhero movies.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2009
I continue on my trek through the X-Men movies in a possibly unorthodox manner moving on to what I believe would actually be the next chronological movie. Even though it starts well before First Class, the main portion of the movie takes place sometime before the X-Men trilogy but after First Class, the intention was probably to have it be around 1979 due to the finale being set in Three Mile Island, though it’s fairly vague in its time period, without any obvious 80’s or 90’s fashions. I have had it on bluray for a while now, though I haven’t watched it since I bought it over a couple years ago. I think this is generally the least liked X-Men film alongside the Last Stand. And while I could see a few general annoyances, I still enjoyed the movie a lot.
X-Men: First Class
X-Men: First Class 2011
X-Men: First Class is an interesting idea for a movie. It’s not exactly a prequel since it eschews several elements of the sequels that came before it, but it’s not exactly an entire reboot either because it pulls several parts of its history and future directly from the other movies. It was another late movie for me, something I need to stop doing so much. It’s also one of the rare instances that I actually rented the movie on bluray. I love getting the chance to bust out the bluray player, but I tend to watch most movies either streaming or on the computer’s DVD player, it’s all hooked up to the same monitor though. First Class looked fantastic, even though it did have a few slight hiccoughs due to it being a rental. I guess blurays are scratch resistant, but not completely scratch-proof. It’s a great place to jump into the current continuity of X-Men.
Generation X
Generation X 1996
I was all set to watch X-Men First Class to kick off my X-Men reviews, but as I was expanding my big list of movies to include home video and TV movie releases I realize that I had forgotten all about a 90’s made for TV movie called Generation X. And on top of that, what better movie to bridge the gap between old cheesy movies and the much better modern movies? So with that in mind, as well as coming off of Fantastic Four, I looked up Generation X and watched what is easily the worst X-Men movie even considering some people’s dislike of The Last Stand and Wolverine. The other thing that is pretty funny is that someone who looks back on it now makes it look like just a cheap rip off of the X-Men, although Emma Frost is a little more high profile nowadays.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 