Blog Archives
Batman: Year One
Batman: Year One 2011
After first hearing about these DC animated movies several years ago through Kevin Smith of all places (based on the fact that he has a one-liner in Doomsday referencing his well-known work on the scrapped Superman Lives script), watching several of them before starting this site and loving every single one of them through varying degrees, I’ve finally watched every single one of them that has currently been released. I still have to re-watch Gotham Knights and Justice League: New Frontier so I can review them, but I have seen all of them until Justice League: War comes out next year. You can expect a top ten list in the near future. But for now I’m just talking about Batman: Year One, based on the Frank Miller run about both eventual Commissioner Jim Gordon and Batman’s first year in Gotham. It shows how deep the corruption runs in Gotham from the outset but while it is called Batman: Year One, I almost think it should have been called Gordon: Year One, and I’d be perfectly ok with that. It has some weak points, but it’s still a great addition to the library of animated DC titles.
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DC Animation Should Make a Theatrical Feature and it Should be The Killing Joke
I’ve said before to anyone who would listen that DC Animation should release a theatrical feature. They haven’t done one since practically their first all the way back in 1993 with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm which was more or less a spin-off of Batman: The Animated Series and had a fairly limited theatrical release. Since then, they’ve released several other spin-off movies for Batman: TAS, Batman Beyond, and Superman: TAS before releasing their first stand-alone Superman movie Doomsday in 2007 based on the Death and Return of Superman comic book arc. Their very next one, Justice League: The New Frontier would be their first PG-13 rated feature. In the following years, they’ve released 15 other straight-to-home-video animated movies based on other popular comic book runs as well as a handful of short films included on some of the DVDs. The stories they tell in these animated features are much more like what you would find in a Japanese Anime movie, these aren’t kids films, they are grown up stories based on well written comics. They are done on a direct-to-home-video budget, but it is used efficiently and often has some amazingly high quality animation, as well as a superbly chosen voice cast. Marvel is dominating the box office while DC is hit and miss, and I think a well placed animated movie could be a great selling point for DC.
Second Opinion: Lego Batman the Movie – DC Superheroes Unite
For a little while, I’ve actually wanted to allow other people to share their opinions about superhero movies more than just in the comments section. And while I’d rather not post someone’s opinion on a movie that I haven’t seen or reviewed yet because I am still adamant in my quest to watch and review every superhero movie I can find, I thought it would be interesting to get someone else’s opinion on a movie that I’ve already reviewed. I’m sure sometimes it will be quite different, and in some cases it will be very similar. If you’re interested in sharing your opinion on a superhero movie, just let me know, especially if your opinion differs from my own. But today’s opinion comes from someone with similar tastes as me, and I often use him as a good estimation of whether or not I will like a movie more than just the general critic consensus and he’s got plenty of reviews under his belt over at Today I Watched A Movie.
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The Flashpoint Paradox
The Flashpoint Paradox 2013
While I haven’t been able to make it to the theaters these past couple weeks to catch up on a lot of the big superhero movies, I did manage to watch DC’s latest animated venture The Flashpoint Paradox which manages to continue The Dark Knight Returns’ trend of pushing the limits of a PG-13 rating with a very adult story and some graphic violence. That said, I’m a big sucker for time travel, and especially timeline altering movies. I always loved those episodes of Star Trek, and I even quite liked the first Butterfly Effect. This is right alongside one of those with a great alternate timeline brought about by Professor Zoom using his super speed to go back in time and alter something, and somehow the Flash retains his memories of his former life, but not his former powers. In this reality, his mom is alive, but Aquaman and Wonder Woman are fighting a war that’s about to destroy the entire Earth. The scale of this movie is pretty epic, the violence is devastating, the themes are mature, and it does great justice to the character the Flash. This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, and it probably won’t be the last, but this has come close to being my favorite DC Animation once again.
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Superman & Batman Apocalypse
This movie was sort of billed as a sequel to the animated Superman/Batman Public Enemies, although it really is a stand-alone piece with only a brief callback to President Luthor’s impeachment to tie it to the previous movie. I hadn’t really heard much about this movie compared to some of the other DC animation so I really didn’t know what to expect, other than Darkseid considering the title of the movie is Apocalypse even though they went with the traditional spelling of the word rather than the typical comic book spelling of Apokolips. But even with the Superman & Batman title, this really could have been called Supergirl: Apokolips, as she is the main focus of the movie and Batman doesn’t get much screen time at all. But I am a big fan of Supergirl as a character so I really enjoyed this movie and it quickly rose as one of my favorite DC animations. From the great tone that’s set early on to the amazing action sequences towards the end, it’s really an all around great movie and one to check out if you haven’t seen it yet.
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FTMN Spotlight – Building Better Superheroes Infographic
Just last week I shared a Superman infographic and shortly afterwards I received another e-mail from someone else who made a superhero-related infographic. Eddie takes a look at various superhero reboots along with a few bits of trivia and decides which one is better. I don’t think I agree with his estimations 100%, but it looks pretty sweet and I’m happy to share it with you. Click to view the original at his site. Enjoy!
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Man of Steel
Man of Steel 2013
More than any other movie this summer, the one I’ve been looking forward to the most was Man of Steel, and at least right now just getting home from the theater, it did not disappoint. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but my hopes were high coming off of all the glorious trailers and the incredible cast. Even though it was treading on yet another origin story, I was willing to go with it. With Zack Snyder behind the helm, I was hoping for some visually amazing battles, and with Christopher Nolan overseeing the story, I was hoping for some real character depth. In my opinion, I got both. There may be some problems that come into my head after the fact, but at the moment I just had an amazing time at the movie theater, this review will likely have some spoilers so if you haven’t seen the movie. Go see it! Then come back and read my thoughts on it.
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5 Obstructions #1: Batman & Robin
Obstruction #1: Write a good review of a bad movie
When I saw this blogathon I immediately thought it was a great idea, in fact, I even had the idea for the first “obstruction” a while back. For full details, check out the overview post over at Nostra’s My Film Views. But basically the idea is five writing challenges inspired by a movie that challenged the filmmaker to make the same movie five different times, each time with a different challenge, or obstruction. For the first obstruction, I figured I could easily find a bad movie that I’ve seen recently and I decided to make that challenge into a “sell out” review. That is to say I am writing this review as if I had been paid by the filmmakers to give it a good review, and I figured the best place to use that marketing double-speak is for the film Batman and Robin. Enjoy.
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FTMN Spotlight – The Saga of Superman Infographic
I got an e-mail yesterday introducing me to a great little infographic by Roslyn Willson about Superman and she thought my readers would enjoy it, and so do I. It’s a real nice piece and I hope you enjoy it, you can view it below or check out the original
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Superman Doomsday
Superman Doomsday 2007
This was advertised as the first animated Superman movie rated PG-13 and was really the start of the DC Animation boom that’s continued to this day. Before this, most of the movies released were drawn from the various animated series like Batman, Batman Beyond, and The Adventures of Superman. This one was based on one of the most popular comic books of all time, the Death of Superman, though there were many significant changes to the story. I was actually vaguely familiar with the Death of Superman story because one of my friends bought into the whole craze at the time so I read through the first issue shortly after it first came out. When this movie came out, I had heard that there was a brief cameo by Kevin Smith which referred to the giant mechanical spider he was asked to include during his work on the Superman Lives script. In the end, it turned out pretty well, though I do think it is one of the weaker animated projects, likely due to the fact that it was one of the earlier ones.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 