Blog Archives
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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Weird Science
Weird Science 1985
As things continue to slow down here despite my repeated assurances of getting back on track I have managed to watch another comic book film. I had seen this film when I was younger alongside several of John Hughes’ 80’s classics, I also became a fan of the Tales From the Crypt series several years later, and I also realized that there were several different variations of the Tales From the Crypt comic book including “Weird Science”, but I never made the connection that this was inspired by one of those EC comics until recently. I even remember watching the spin-off TV series for a while with Vanessa Angel replacing Kelly LeBrock. I do remember it being one of those early 80’s movies where computers can basically do anything even though 30 years later they’re still mostly just used for looking at cat pictures and writing about movies. While it was a fun nostalgia trip, I can say that it didn’t really hold up as being that impressive of a movie outside of Kelly LeBrock’s 80’s hotness.
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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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The Death of the Incredible Hulk
The Death of the Incredible Hulk 1990
As is usually the case, life tends to get in the way of plans. And while I was planning on moving on into some comic book adaptations that weren’t superhero movies, I have yet to watch any of those. And instead, I ended up watching this made for TV pseudo series finale for the old Incredible Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno for the return of Filmwhys here in a week or two. This film falls in a really weird space in time. It came out the year after Tim Burton’s Batman, but since it was still tied into the television series it retained all of the 70’s and 80’s style of special effects which make it look a lot more dated than a 1990 movie should look. And even though I haven’t watched the original episodes of the show, it really felt like just an extended episode with a tacked on ending to give it some finality.
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Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts
Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts 2015
While I had initially only planned to do animation through April, May is almost over and I’m still sticking to the animated fare. And while I’ve just gone though catching up on a few Marvel animated films I hadn’t gotten around to yet, DC is still cranking them out on a regular basis. I hadn’t heard much lead up to this title so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect at all. I’m not familiar with any sort of Batman Unlimited universe whether in the comics or on TV. From what I can tell from this film it’s set in the future, kind of like Batman Beyond, but instead of it being a future generation, it’s just Batman and several of the less extraterrestrial Justice League set in the future. It also reminded me a little bit of last year’s JLA Adventures where this was a very kid friendly adventure as opposed to the increasingly darker PG-13 stories typical of recent DC Animated films. It’s also worth noting that this film is intended to help launch a new toy line of DC Unlimited characters which will also continue in shorts and future home video films which actually makes me think of the Monster High style of marketing. As an actual film it was a fun little adventure without too much real depth to it, but there’s nothing wrong with that.
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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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Avengers: Age of Ultron
Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015
It was alright. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
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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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 