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The Invincible Iron Man
The Invincible Iron Man 2007
Over a year before Iron Man hit theaters welcoming our Marvel Studios overlords they released another origin movie for ol’ Shellhead direct to DVD. There are honestly very few similarities to the two movies, and this is only the third animated Marvel movie after the Ultimate Avengers 1 & 2 and honestly it shows. After seeing what Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau did with the character in the years that followed, it feels so weird to go back to the totally selfish, uncaring playboy shown here. The other characters also feel much more shallow than they have become with Rhodey being the only character to come off as good or better than he’s seen in the movies so far, though he disappears halfway through the movie. It’s interesting to see a different take on the origin story, and they do even introduce the Mandarin, though I highly doubt there will be any connecting thread between this Mandarin and the one in Iron Man 3, but there are so many better versions of Iron Man to watch out there.
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Iron Man Rise of Technovore
Iron Man Rise of Technovore
This is a home video animation produced by a collaboration between Sony Pictures Entertainment and anime studio Madhouse. It’s a follow up to the 12 episode Iron Man anime series, though it’s a stand alone story that I was able to follow without having seen any of the previous episodes. There were four different Marvel properties that were turned into anime series, though I think Iron Man seems like it would be the easiest transition from Western Animation to Japanese Animation considering anime has a prevalence of mecha similar to Iron Man and some of his enemies. It ended up being an interesting mix of the two mediums with the obvious Japanese style combined with some of the more American personalities. I loved it for the most part, although I thought some of the philosophizing was a little slow and overly cerebral.
Comic Strip Double Dip Blogathon: Halle Berry
Halle Berry Double Dip
Catwoman / Storm
I’d like to thank everyone for their support so far in my first blogathon, it’s going at a nice steady pace and I hope it keeps up through the next four weeks through to the end. We’ve got two new entries this past week so be sure to check out the blogathon main page to go see them, and there’s still plenty of room and time to sign up for the blogathon yourself. But as for my own entry this week, I went with one on the lower end of the spectrum, considering one of the roles is in what’s often considered the worst comic book movie of all time, I’m talking about Halle Berry who starred in the pseudo-Batman spinoff Catwoman, and also played a small-yet-ever-growing role as Storm in the X-Men series.
UHF
UHF 1989
This is one of my favorite movies from when I was younger. I grew up listening to Weird Al’s parodies and when I saw that he had made a movie, I just had to see it. I was expecting a movie parodying movies just like his songs parodied songs. What I wasn’t expecting was a superhero movie. Weird Al plays George Newman, someone who can alter reality to suit his own means, and he uses his powers to defeat the evil head of the C8 corporation, R. J. Fletcher, a mastermind enemy with his cadre of henchmen trying to eliminate George’s base of operations, his UHF headquarters.
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The Adventures of the American Rabbit
The Adventures of the American Rabbit 1986
On this Easter Sunday, after my daughter’s romp through the house finding all of her Angry Bird eggs I decided to kill two birds with one stone by putting on a somewhat Easter themed superhero movie. It’s got to be Easter themed since it has rabbits in it, right? Anyway I actually vaguely remember watching this movie when I was a kid but man does it totally not hold up in any way shape or form. Even Jena herself got bored with the movie when it was about halfway through and it’s only 80 minutes long. I thought it was great because I recognized a few voices from my childhood viewing, like the voice of The American Rabbit was Barry Gordon who also voiced Donatello in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a smaller part, the gorilla Ping Pong was played by Lorenzo Music who voiced Garfield for a long time, though his voice here reminded me a lot more of Tummy Gummy from the Adventures of the Gummi Bears. But even viewing this movie through a soft haze of nostalgia wasn’t able to save it from the ludicrous plots of villainy and barely there presence of the hero himself.
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All Star Superman
All Star Superman 2011
One thing that I enjoy about this site is when I go into a movie completely blind. I’ve done a bit of research and have had help to create a very inclusive list of comic book and superhero movies, and yet when I actually choose one of the movies I’ve never seen before, I don’t seek out synopses, or watch trailers, I like to go into the movies completely blind, and this was the case with All Star Superman. Many of the Superman stories I enjoy the most are the ones that try to get to the heart of his humanity, and yet All Star Superman really embraces his alien nature more than just about anything I’ve seen before. I have to admit that at first it was quite offputting, but by the end of the movie there was enough heart in it to win me over.
Comic Strip Double Dip Blogathon: Nathan Fillion
Nathan Fillion Double Dip
Captain Hammer / Steve Trevor
Welcome to my first blogathon! In case you haven’t heard, I’m hosting my first blogathon, called the Comic Strip Double Dip Blogathon. There’s still plenty of spots left so feel free to check out the full list and sign up! So here I am today with my first entry into my own Blogathon, my Comic Strip Double Dip offender today is Nathan Fillion who played both the clueless hero Captain Hammer in Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog as well as the voice of the womanizing Steve Trevor in DC Animation’s Wonder Woman. I’ll be taking a look at both of these movies and both of the roles and see how they compare to each other, and which one is worth seeing.
Superman and the Mole Men
Superman and the Mole Men 1951
Whenever I see lists of superhero or comic book movies, typically the first movie on that list is this one. Superman and the Mole Men is generally considered the first full length superhero movie even though there were serials for both Batman and Superman before this one. I knew practically nothing about this movie before I watched it other than it was in black and white, it starred George Reeves as Superman as it was essentially the pilot for the television series, and it had Mole Men in it. I was expecting a cheesy, old timey movie with bad fight scenes between Superman and some Mole Men. What I got instead was something a little closer to the Twilight Zone where the Mole Men aren’t actually the antagonists and there is a lot more morality issues going on than I would have first expected. It did have some goofy old timey qualities to it considering that I rarely watch a black and white movie. In fact I can count them on one hand. But it was a lot better movie than I expected it to be. It’s worth a watch if you’re a fan of Superman and you enjoy the occasional classic movie.
Jonah Hex
Jonah Hex 2010
I hadn’t heard anything very good about this movie, it pretty much tanked at the box office, even my wife didn’t really like it very much. I don’t watch too many westerns, but I do occasionally enjoy them, especially westerns with a slight sci-fi twist, something along the lines of the rarely duplicated Brisco County Jr. So my expectations were fairly low coming into this movie and I was not let down. I was surprised that it wasn’t a horrible movie by any means, it was just mediocre. There weren’t any laughably bad scenes with cheesy acting nor were there any edge of your seat action setpieces. The concepts were far-fetched, the humor was uneven, and the action was nothing special. I didn’t hate it, but I won’t be eager to watch it again anytime soon.
Wanted
Wanted 2008
I actually got this movie as a Christmas present probably three years ago and never got around to watch it, I can’t believe it took me this long to get around to it. You may not think it’s a superhero movie at first, but there’s definitely some super powers and it was based on a comic book series written by Mark Millar so that’s good enough for me. This movie has some serious action in it, and a lot of humor. It feels a kinda like a mix between Kick-Ass, Fight Club, and Fast and the Furious and I mean that as a good thing. This may not go on my list of top superhero movies just because it doesn’t have quite enough of a superhero vibe to it, but I will likely be making a list of my favorite comic book movies and this will definitely be on that one.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 