Blog Archives
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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Justice League: Doom
Justice League: Doom 2012
I figured it was time for me to take another trip into the animated DC Universe, this time it’s Justice League: Doom. It still surprises me how many of these things are out there and how many I still have yet to see. This movie is centered around a plot to destroy the entire Justice League using stolen plans initially created by Batman but altered by the Legion of Doom. Of course, this isn’t the LoD from the old Superfriends cartoon, though their base does emerge from a body of water during it’s initial reveal. The members of the LoD are very different, but I’ll get to that in a little bit. The action is up to the usual par, including the level of peril. The first thing I noticed with this movie was also that it included the voicework of Kevin Conroy as Batman and Tim Daly as Superman who really solidified their roles as those two during the 90’s animated series and various other works in the interim.
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Superhero Shorts: Wonder Woman trailer
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I feature a superhero themed short film and ask a few questions of its creator. This time I’m talking with Jesse V. Johnson and his Wonder Woman concept trailer. It’s been a long time since Wonder Woman has really made a good live action presence, and he made it look like it could work in a high action concept with actress/singer Nina Bergman. You can watch it below as usual, or you can check out the short at Jesse V. Johnson’s Vimeo page, Nina Bergman’s official website or YouTube channel.
Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
Lego Batman the Movie: DC Heroes Unite
This is a home video release by DC Premier and Traveller’s Tales releasing on Bluray and DVD May 21st, and it’s actually rather interesting because most of this movie is drawn from the Lego Batman 2 video game. Many of the scenes may have been reanimated to improve the quality and make minor corrections, and there has also been some new material created for the connective scenes, but aside from that it’s directly taken from the video game. While there have been many movies based on video games, I believe this is the first video game turned directly into a movie. I’ve been a fan of the Lego series of video games ever since the first Lego Star Wars games were released on the Playstation 2, they have a very irreverent sense of humor and a lot of meta jokes based around the fact that they are in a Lego world and Batman is no different.
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