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FTMN Poll: What superhero/comic book movie are you looking forward to in 2013?
I’ve looked back at this past year, now it’s time to look to the future. As of my cursory search through IMDB, these are the comic book and superhero movies I found that are coming out so far in 2013. Which one are you looking forward to the most. Myself, I’m looking forward to Man of Steel. I’m not the biggest Superman fan in general, but I’m very curious if they can finally pull it off, which they haven’t really done since the first one.
Thanks for a wonderful 2012
Like many people, the holiday season has kept me busy, and away from the television for the most part. I’m currently taking in all of Watchmen for a hopefully epic post in the near future. I watched the theatrical version, and Tales from the Black Freighter, and plan to watch Under the Hood and hopefully the Ultimate Cut and some more special features before writing my post on it. But for now, I’ll join everyone else in taking a look back at what 2012 has brought me.
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Elf-man
Elf-Man 2012
I have to start off by saying that I’m not very big on the holidays, especially Christmas. I’m not a Grinch or Scrooge by any means, but it just doesn’t get me very excited. I dislike most of the Christmas music I have to hear at work or on the radio, and I’m not a big fan of very many Christmas movies. This year, I watched four. I watched A Christmas Story last week, which is my favorite Christmas movie. And then on Christmas day I watched A Christmas Story 2 which I had to watch just to see if it was as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t. Of course, it wasn’t anywhere near the quality of the original, but it was just fairly mediocre. I ended Christmas day with Christmas Vacation which I hadn’t seen in years and loved every minute of. And somewhere in the middle I fit in Elf-Man. It turns out that superheroes and Christmas don’t intersect very often. As far as I can tell there’s only this movie and Batman Returns which takes place during Christmas. If there’s any others, I’m not aware of them. This movie came out just this year and I figured Christmas day was as good a time as any to get it out of the way. Similar to Christmas Story 2, it wasn’t quite bad enough to enjoy it on a whole different level, but it’s also not the next Christmas classic either. For Jena’s part, who I realized I haven’t mentioned much in a long while, she enjoyed it quite a bit and has already mentioned wanting to watch it again.
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Superhero Shorts: Green Goblin’s Last Stand
Welcome to another edition of Superhero Shorts, where I take a look at a short film and have a brief talk with the filmmakers. This week I’m talking with Dan Poole and by far the earliest fan film I’ve shared on this site, his film Green Goblin’s Last Stand which came out in 1992. You can watch the first part of the rather long film, clocking in at over 45 minutes below or you can visit Spike.com to watch it in its entirety. I was also able to ask a few questions about The Photon Effect, the full length feature film that Dan Poole made just a few years ago.
The Mask
The Mask 1994
For a while, I was trying to figure out what I should watch next. I was thinking about watching some superhero movies with some relation to the holidays, but the only ones I could think of were Batman Returns which I already watched, and Elf Man which looks horrible. So, I just picked a random movie from my collection I hadn’t gotten around to yet: The Mask. I was never a huge fan of Jim Carrey’s old comedies even though I did watch them, and the catch phrases made their rounds at my school. This movie also has the distinction of being the debut of Cameron Diaz. It’s based on a Dark Horse comic, and it’s typically thought of as more of a zany comedy rather than a superhero movie, but it works for me.
The Photon Effect
The Photon Effect 2010
With only a couple weeks left to go, I finally reached my goal to watch and review 100 superhero movies in 2012. Not only that, but this is what I feel as the perfect movie to be number 100. When I started this site, I had planned to only write reviews. But as the site evolved and grew I added other elements, blog posts, polls, blogger interviews, and most importantly short film reviews and interviews. I remember when I first decided to add Superhero Shorts to this site, I was listening to one of Kevin Smith’s podcasts and heard about a guy who made a fan film based on the fictional origin of that podcast. I thought it was a fun little short, and since he’s just a regular guy I figured he would be easy to get a hold of, so I asked him for an interview. He agreed, and Babble-On Begins became the first edition of Superhero Shorts. Since then, I’ve talked to many fan filmmakers as well as a few who have made a name for themselves. One of the earlier fan filmmakers I contacted was Dan Poole who made a short film called The Green Goblin’s Last Stand. Several months later, I got a reply saying that he didn’t even realize that he had made the e-mail account I had sent my inquiry to, and that most of his time was spent working on the Photon Effect. So I checked out the site, thought the trailer was pretty sweet and said that I’d still be interested in interviewing him, but would like to also watch the Photon Effect so I could talk about that experience as well. So be on the look out for my next edition of Superhero Shorts in the near future.
Hellboy: Blood & Iron
Hellboy: Blood & Iron
This movie finishes out my Hellboy marathon and is my 99th superhero movie review of the year. I’m very happy to finish out my goal of watching and reviewing over 100 superhero movies this year. My 100th movie is a great one and a nice way to cap off my goal, though I will keep reviewing over the last couple weeks of the year. But back to Hellboy, Blood & Iron was the second animated movie and even though it came out after Sword of Storms, it takes place before the first Hellboy movie, focusing quite a bit on Professor Broom and shedding some light into his backstory. After many years of retirement from active duty, Broom takes on one more assignment that was initially introduced as a publicity stunt, though it ends up bringing back an old horror from the Professor’s early days in the BPRD. In other words, this is Hellboy’s take on vampire mythology. Taken as a whole, the Hellboy movie series really runs the gamut of different mythologies, giving them new life and putting the Hellboy spin on it. Instead of the typical vampire origin, this brings in the Greek Goddess of the witches, Hecate, and a figure from history just as infamous as Vlad the Impaler, Elizabeth Bathory. I was actually somewhat familiar with the story of the Blood Countess due to a City of Heroes player who created a custom mission arc with her history which I made a trailer for. Vampires, especially nowadays, are such a popular topic they have almost been done to death, and yet this movie was able to breathe some new life into the undead creatures, even though once again it briefly reminded me of Vampire Hunter D, the sequel this time. There was also a bit of Memento inspired chronological order shifting, with the flashbacks being intercut with the current day story in almost the same way.
Hellboy: Sword of Storms
Hellboy: Sword of Storms 2006
In between the two Hellboy movies, there were a couple animated movies that were released on DVD. Apparently they also aired on Cartoon Network, but I never knew that until just now. It’s a little tough if you really want to nail down the timeline between all four of the movies, but since this one doesn’t include any references to Professor Broom, I imagine that it takes place after the first movie, while the next animated movie: Blood & Iron takes place before the first movie. It doesn’t really matter much though, because they are all separate stories that really have no connection to anything else. They are both very stand-alone BPRD missions, but in the context of what Hellboy and the rest of the BPRD do, it makes perfect sense. One of the things I greatly enjoyed about this movie is its exploration of Japanese mythology. In fact, taken as a whole, each Hellboy movie seems to explore a different facet of the world’s mythology, with Cthulhu in the first movie, Irish and other European folklore in the second movie, Japanese mythology in this movie, and vampire mythology in the second animated movie. And yet they all are tied together with a slightly tongue in cheek yet at the same time completely serious tone.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hellboy II: The Golden Army 2008
It had been a long while since I had seen this movie. I actually bought it on Blu-Ray before I even started this site and had not gotten around to watching it again until now, and that’s a real shame because this is such a gorgeous and amazing movie. It has so many things that are very different from the first movie, but what it does keep is the sense of fun and the fantastic visuals. What the first film did for the Cthulhu mythology, this movie does with a completely different set of mythology. Not only that, but it gives many of the characters extra depth, there aren’t really any bad guys, there’s a lot more moral ambiguity and really explores the grey areas of what Hellboy and the BPRD does. And mixed in through all of that are some amazing action setpieces.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 