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Spawn
Spawn 1997
It’s Monday night and my latest batch of movies are due back the next day with Spawn still left to watch, it’s the second movie fitting my theme for February. Even though this movie is rated PG-13 just like Catwoman and Captain America, I figured it was a bit too far out there for my daughter so Jena sat this one out. I’d seen this movie before a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly where, probably on TV or home video. The one thing I do remember about the campaign around this movie is an interview with John Leguizamo talking about playing the clown who seemed pretty passionate about the comic and the fact that even though he was pretty short, he was still five foot something, where the clown was supposed to be around three foot something, so he played it hunched down as much as he could to make it closer to the comic. I remember thinking it was pretty impressive that he showed that much enthusiasm for the comic book.
Spawn comes from Image comics and creator Todd McFarlane, whose name I recognize as one of the few writer/artists in the comic book world that I know for the simple fact that he has gone to great lengths to make his name known. Next to Stan Lee, I would guess that Todd McFarlane’s name is one of the best known names in comics to non-comic fans or casual comic fans. I had never read, and have still never read a Spawn comic book but I am familiar with his image. He has a great look, and I don’t feel that it copied over to the screen very well. My impression based on comic book covers is that Spawn’s costume is sleek and smooth, but in the movie it’s very heavily texture and it ends up looking like molded rubber which is probably what it is. The only part that the movie got right was the cape, and even though it’s used infrequenly, I thought it looked fantastic as did all the moving parts of the costume like the chains, the spikes, and whatnot, but when he’s just walking around it looks like he’s in a rubber suit.
Anyway, this movie tells the origin of Spawn and has a ton of boring exposition especially at the beginning with what felt like the longest credit sequence ever. Something about hell’s armies, chosen one, blah blah blah, I kind of tuned out during that part. They introduce the man who would be Spawn as a government looking non-government military agent who specializes in assassinations. He’s killed by his boss played by Martin Sheen because he wanted out, and I think the clown told Martin Sheen to do it also, but you find that out later. They also exploded a chemical plant that somehow created an ultravirus that he was then able to weaponize and create a cure for himself and his would-be allies. Cut to Spawn waking up in a bum city slash alleyway with his face scarred from burns and occasionally glowing green, met by an out of time looking guy who also glowed green earlier who tries to reason with Spawn, help him, and teach him. Basically this movie’s attempt at an Obi-Wan type character.
You find out that Spawn agreed to lead the army of the worst looking CGI Satan beast I’ve ever seen because… you know, they never really explained why CGI Satan needed to have him specifically lead his army in the first place. And the battle begins between Cogli…whatever, the old guy and the Clown battling over Spawn’s conscience. The Clown is doing his best to get him to kill Martin Sheen and release the virus all over the world, while the old guy is trying to reach Spawn’s humanity and have him fight for good. Of course, being sent back from Hell comes with benefits in the form of necroplasm. At least I think that’s what they called it. It pretty much does whatever you want it to, like an evil Green Lantern ring, though it tends to be used for a lot cooler things than a giant fist or a giant flyswatter. At the same time I guess it’s also used for some weird lame things like suction cup hands and making him look like a wall for a few seconds only to be seen as soon as he stops hiding. There’s also a couple mentions of how you can die as a Hellspawn, you either have your head cut off or you use up all your necroplasm power.
There’s also the requisite loves story where Spawn loved Wanda, but since Spawn was left in Hell for five years, she has since married Spawn’s old partner and has what looks like a six year old kid. Was this written by the same person that wrote Superman Returns? It seemed like they used the same math. They also never explicitly said whether or not the kid is Spawn’s kid or Spawn’s partner’s kid, though it seems like she was Spawn’s kid. Of course good wins out at the end with Spawn escaping Hell and taking over for the old guy in the fight for good or whatever.
I wanted to like this movie. I remembered liking it when I saw it the first time, but it wasn’t all that great at all. There’s so much of it that just doesn’t make sense. Why was Spawn chosen? Why is he needed specifically to lead Satan’s army? Why do they need him specifically to kill Martin Sheen, why not just have the Clown do it? Why send him back to Earth in an old alleyway right next to the guy that escaped Hell 500 years ago and has been fighting them ever since? Why does Spawn have an entire body of necroplasm for him to use while the old guy just has the one arm? And what the heck did Spawn do to all those other Spawn-looking demons when he was back in Hell the second time? Was he stealing their necroplasm? Just shooting out weird green electricity? And most of the CGI in this movie is horribly dated. The only good parts were Spawn’s cape, some of his armor powers, and some of the scenes with the Violator. Although I get the feeling that the better scenes of the Violator were done with models or animatronics rather than CGI. Either that or just better CGI.
The best part of the movie surprisingly is the Clown. Funnily enough I remembered not liking the Clown very much when I first saw the movie. But somehow his constant string of bad jokes, farts, and just plain being disgusting was pretty funny when paired with the ultraseriousness of Spawn’s origin. But what made this even more enjoyable to me was how much my wife reacted to his disgustingness. She has a very weak stomach for things like nasty food, farts, and especially the stained underwear scene, and the more uncomfortable she became, the funnier the scene became. That probably makes me a horrible person. For the Clown and the cape alone, I thought this movie was worth seeing. But for anyone else, it just doesn’t hold up that well anymore. I’m hoping to watch and review Chronicle before Tuesday’s post, but if not then Hancock will be up Tuesday instead of Thursday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Catwoman
Catwoman 2004
I’m ready for the first movie of February. I do have a theme for this month and I’ve got 9 movies picked out ready to go for it. Plus three extras movies because they’re new. So to start things off I’m watching the movie which may or may not be the worst movie of the month, you’ll just have to wait to find that part out for sure. It’s the 2004 comedy Catwoman. I’m sorry it’s not technically labelled as a comedy but there were a lot more laugh out loud moments in this movie than there were in Super or Kick-Ass. The only problem is that the moments in this movie were meant to be taken seriously.
I vaguely remember the advertising and buzz for this movie when it was first coming out. I believe they were building on the buzz of Halle Berry’s role as Jinx in the Pierce Brosnan Bond movie which to this day is still the only Bond movie that I’ve ever seen. Not sure what that says about my movie preferences. Instead of doing a spinoff movie of the Jinx character the powers that be in Hollywood decided to create this movie which was supposed to create a new franchise. Apologies if this entire paragraph is a load of crap, it’s all stemming from my flawed memories instead of doing a little bit of typing and actually looking it up. I find it to make things more interesting that way.
Anyway, this movie was a chance for Halle Berry to have a starring role and to spin off Catwoman into her own movie franchise if it was successful. Long story short, it was not successful. They reworked the origin, outfit, and pretty much everything that made Catwoman Catwoman. Instead of being a slightly more criminal foil to Batman, in this movie she was chosen to be another in a long line of Catwomen by an Egyptian cat that tests her by seeing if she’ll climb out onto a ledge from a high rise apartment building to “rescue” the cat. And of course during that she is saved by a conveniently passing cop who thinks she is a jumper and of course they immediately like each other. She also conveniently overhears a diabolical secret of the cosmetics company that the new line of beauty cream they are getting ready to launch makes people sick, addicted, and ruins their face if they stop using it. She is then killed and conveniently resurrected by the same Egyptian cat and all of his cat friends. This gives her cat powers like being able to see and hear better, and she gets all the catlike traits of batting at quick moving objects, sleeping on high ledges, loving catnip, hissing at dogs, the list goes on and on. Pretty much every cat trait you can think of, Halle Berry does at some point during this movie. And it’s funny less than half of the time.
What’s more funny is the even worse cliched one-liners that she spouts during any of the so called action sequences. They usually amount to her running around the walls like a cat using the early CGI actor replacement which turns her into a shiny videogame-esque character that they try to hide with fast moving cameras and quick cuts. There’s even the bad bait and switch plot which is ruined because they show Sharon Stone talking about the harmful effects of the cream at the beginning, then set up the whole fact that she is playing Catwoman into her own plans which feels like it’s supposed to be a surprise for the audience, but the audience already knows that Sharon Stone is in on it the entire time. And because Catwoman wouldn’t be a real hero unless she was facing off against someone else who is superhuman in some way, they throw in the fact that Sharon Stone has been using the cream so much that her skin is as strong as marble and she feels no pain anymore… yes really. So it’s a magic cream that gets rid of wrinkles, gives people headaches, makes them addicted, destroys their skin if they stop using it, but makes their skin rock hard yet still beautiful if used over the course of years. Riiiiight.
There’s also the whole split personality that is explained as a side effect of the whole Catwoman origin process. Instead of being a shy, mousy, frumpy woman, she becomes a confident, independent, sexy woman. In the early part of the movie she seems not in control of this, mouthing off to her boss then immediately wanting to take back what she said. And later she seems to be more in control of it by embracing it fully while she’s wearing her Catwoman outfit yet still using it sparingly during the rest of her life. The costume is equal parts ridiculous as well, with a cat-eared mask that makes it look like she has a giant head, to the S&M inspired leather bra, shredded pants, and a whip. They even use an early moment to “explain” the whip where she rips off a beer tap and uses it for a whip then has the “aha” moment. You can almost see the lightbulb going off above her head during this scene. I skipped over this, but there’s plenty of these lightbulb moments early on like when she discovers her newfound agility by… being good at basketball.
There’s just not enough words to go through how many places this movie just fails to hit the mark. It’s cliche after cliche, from the bad costume to the bad villain, to the bad love story, to the bad dialog, to the bad funny sidekick in Alex Borstein. I enjoyed watching this movie only because I found it hilariously bad. Pretty much any time Halle Berry opened her mouth during a fight scene, it made me laugh. And I knew it was going to happen from the beginning, but Jena loved this movie. She loved all the cats in the movie and constantly asked if Halle Berry was turning into a cat. Although I suspect that on some level she liked the movie’s awfulness the same way we did. There were several moments when she started laughing at scenes that were just bad instead of funny . Stay tuned for Sunday when I watch Spawn as my second movie for the easiest “can you guess the theme” for February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Kick-Ass
Kick-Ass 2010
I’m ready to watch my last movie of January, I picked Kick-Ass up with one of my Christmas giftcards to finish out the card after getting the Simpsons fourteenth season, both on Bluray. It was my second sight unseen purchase for this blog after Super. I was about to get the DVD for $5, but saw that the bluray + DVD was only $10 so I just couldn’t pass it up. In all the reviews of Super that I read after watching the movie, it was compared to Kick-Ass, and there is definitely a very strong connection to the two movies.
Even though the movie is called Kick-Ass, it should almost be called Big Daddy and Hit Girl, as they are the actual Batman-like heroes of the movie. In fact, Big Daddy’s costume looks like a simplified version of Batman’s costume. A funny sidenote, I read a funny blog somewhere that talked about the eyeliner used wearing the batman mask that mysteriously disappears when the mask comes off. This movie actually has a brief scene where you see Big Daddy put the black paint around his eyes that shadow the area not covered by the mask. They are both martial arts and gunplay masters even though Hit Girl is only around 12 years old. They also have the money and the arsenal to back themselves up, since they fund themselves from the coffers of the drug dealers they take out. Kick-Ass is just a high school kid that has dreams of being a superhero and the guts to actually get a costume and a couple batons and make it happen, with varying degrees of success.
There feels like quite a bit of realism to the scenes with Kick-Ass. He gets hurt pretty bad during his first real encounter with a couple small time thugs and acts pretty scared during his early brushes with real criminals. But whenever you get to the fight scenes with Hit Girl and Big Daddy and the final fight scene, things get pretty fantastic and John Woo-esque. And even though this is technically an independent film, this looks a lot less like an independent film than Super does. Where Super uses a lot of muted colors outside of the costumes of The Crimson Bolt and Boltie, Kick-Ass has vibrant colors everywhere, from all of the costumed heroes, and even in the backgrounds of the mob boss’s family moments. Kick-Ass also uses a lot more fantasy martial arts choreography and fancy camera moves while Super tends to have a lot more straightforward action scenes.
The other thing that this movie and Super have in common is the death of one of the main characters. I won’t say which one, but in this movie it feels like the death was more earned. It felt a lot less like it was done for mere shock value and somehow felt like it was the natural progression of what had to happen for the characters to grow. I can’t put my finger on what the difference is, but I didn’t feel as cheated by the death as I did in Super.
I also find it interesting that this is often labelled as a comedy movie. Yes there are some comic relief moments, and a lot of the situations are so bizarre that they end up being comical by nature, but this really feels like a great superhero action movie. It doesn’t feel like the comedy moments are played to the detriment of the action scenes. All of the fights are well paced, visually intense, and straight up balls to the wall. The violence is bloody and it typically feels action movie real rather than comedy real. There were plenty of moments that made me laugh out loud, but that happened in Superman the Movie as well, yet that’s not considered a comedy. There were just as many moments in this movie that had me on the edge of my seat watching the scene play out.
The only bit of a downside was the relationship between Dave and Katie. It was played up a little too much in several scenes when she thought he was gay, and when he came out to her she seemed to come over to his side a little too quickly. I don’t disagree with the fact that they got together, I just didn’t quite agree with the way the actually got there. Overall I find I don’t have a whole lot to say about this movie just like most of the other good movies because there’s not much to pick at. I enjoyed the comedy, especially the parts with his two high school friends and pretty much anything Hit Girl, I enjoyed the action, even with the violence it was very comic book stylized violence with action movie choreography and editing, and I enjoyed the characters. My only other problem with the movie is a problem with how quickly things on the internet can change. Even though this was probably filmed only two years ago, all the references to MySpace instead of Facebook make it feel a little dated already.
And with this movie comes the end of my first full month of this project. I’m already well into the movies for February so look out for my review of Catwoman on Thursday and several Tuesday bonus reviews as I have 9 movies planned to watch for next month which has an easy “can you guess the theme” plus two extra movies after I realized that the new Ghost Rider movie comes out in February. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Super
Super 2010
This was actually the first movie that I bought sight unseen specifically for the purposes of this blog. It helped a lot that it was only three dollars at the rental store, technically two for six along with our other choice, Black Swan. I grabbed it at the same time as I rented the first four Superman movies and I held off on watching it until I found a good place to schedule it into this blog. It’s labelled a comedy, but it’s really a pitch black comedy with a lot of violence, gore, and drama. It’s also one of a recent trend in mimicking the real life superhero movement that’s been happening in a few places around the country. At the same time, it’s kind of a deconstruction of the typical superhero movie, there’s several places where a typical hero would make one choice, yet this movie makes a completely different choice, sometimes for comedic effect, other times for a more serious tone. There’s also a subtle difference that I only just realized after watching Kick-Ass, in most movies you root for the superhero, but often in this movie you worry about the superhero. Not always just for his safety, but often for his mental well-being.
The first act is by far the funniest, it starts off with oddball nice guy Frank played by Rainn Wilson who’s married to recovering (and lapsing) drug and alcohol addict Sarah played by Liv Tyler. She leaves him for a cool drug dealer Jacques played wonderfully by Kevin Bacon. After getting his ass kicked trying to convince Sarah to come back to him, Frank has a vision of God which was obviously an amalgam of the random TV shows he was watching, including a tentacle Hentai and a cheesy Christian channel superhero sendup of Bibleman called the Holy Avenger played by Nathan Fillion. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was also watching a little bit of Hannibal in there too. Although what the heck kind of cable or satellite service does he have that has tentacle porn only a few channels away from a cable access Christian station? The Holy Avenger bits were some of the funniest, especially the devil character that constantly flicked his tongue. Anyway, in his vision he sees a drawing of a mask with a starburst behind it. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that he should become a superhero.
The comedy continues into the second act as Frank becomes the Crimson Bolt, weilding a pipe wrench and accosting crime wherever he sees it, including drug dealers, pedophiles, and the worst of them all, line butters. While they do play up the blood in these scenes for comedy, especially in the line butting scene, I think a pipe wrench to the head would have killed most of those people rather than just seriously injuring them. I mean, it worked for Colonel Mustard, right? In these scenes there’s often a lot of blood, but usually along with comedic overreactions. He eventually ends up staying with comic book shopgirl Libby played by Ellen Page after he gets shot in his first attempt to retrieve his wife Sarah from Kevin Bacon’s drug mansion. She’s a great character who’s hyper, loves comics, loves the idea of being a hero, and loves the idea of Frank being a hero.
The third act is where things started getting real and uncomfortable. Libby’s infatuation with Frank’s Crimson Bolt caused her to become his kid sidekick Boltie who is way too much in love with the violent aspect of the job. Her first initiative was to go after a guy who she thinks maybe probably keyed her friend’s car. She broke a glass vase over his head which embedded shards of glass into his face and she almost smashed his head in with a large sculpture. When seeing a couple of Kevin Bacon’s thugs at a gas station, Frank gets chased down the street only to be saved by Boltie running Frank’s car into one of the thugs and Frank uses one thug’s gun to shoot the other thug. Both of them were left to most likely die while the crowd of onlookers around them actually cheer for the victory, before this point the news was reporting him as a violent pscyopath. The two heroes then go to the discount gun store to buy an arsenal of weapons to storm the drug lord’s palace and rescue Sarah once and for all. Boltie’s infatuation finally comes to a head when she comes into the living room and tries to seduce The Crimson Bolt while she is wearing her costume. Even though he shuns her advances, she forces herself on him in a very uncomfortable scene. Frank then goes to throw up and sees a vision of Sarah in the toilet which leads them to the final bloody confrontation at the mansion. And when I say bloody, I mean pipe bomb, limbs missing, smashing a guy’s head on a sharp tile bloody, as Frank essentially descends into madness, but succeeds in rescuing Sarah. Who leaves him again after a few months, but finds a great guy and starts a large family. But Frank’s ok with it because the guy is good for her and he’s still in the picture as their friend. And instead of helping people as The Crimson Bolt, you see that he spends his time helping people as Frank by doing little things like holding the door or saying “thank you”.
I’m not sure what to really say about this movie, I loved parts of it, I was shocked by parts of it, and parts of it were genuinely touching. I laughed out loud many times during this movie, like the line butting scene I mentioned earlier where he goes across the street to change into his costume in his parked car, where everyone can still clearly see him changing, comes back and smacks the guy in the head who starts profusely bleeding and writhing on the ground in agony, then also smacks the girl he was with for good measure, then runs off yelling “Don’t butt!” Rainn Wilson does a great job of making you really care about Frank even when he gets pushed off the deep end. He does what superheroes aren’t supposed to do aside from maybe the Punisher, but at the end of the movie, you still like him. And it bothered me a little bit that at the end of it all, there’s absolutely no consequences of his little killing spree.
The changes in pacing and tone throughout the movie might be a little jarring and there’s definitely a few places where the movie might shock you. There’s one spoilerific scene near the end of the movie. While I was watching it I guessed what had happened a few moments before the reveal, but it was still a pretty stunning moment. This movie is absolutely not for everyone, and it bears a lot of similarities to Kick-Ass, but in Kick-Ass things turn out more or less the way a Superhero comic should. In this movie, the results are more or less the same, but it just takes a different route to get there. So if you liked that movie it might be worth a watch. And my full thoughts on Kick-Ass will be up on Sunday. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths 2010
I’m writing this bonus review because my daughter picked out this movie when we were at the rental store through no provoking from myself, I was in a completely different section of the store at the time. It’s one of the DC Universe straight to DVD animated movies from producer Bruce Timm who was the big driving force behind pretty much all of the DC animated stuff since Batman: The Animated series. I’ve seen a lot of the movies and they’ve all been pretty fantastic and if I continue this blog into next year, I will definitely be adding them to the list. But like I said, she picked it out, I watched it and wanted to write about it so here it is.
This movie mostly takes place on an alternate Earth where the typical supervillains became the heroes while the typical superheroes became the villains, and once again the same people win. Lex Luthor and The Jester are the last of the alternate Justice League to still be alive and the Jester sacrifices himself so Lex can escape with a special power source. He escapes to our Earth to recruit the Justice League to help his Earth. In this point in the timeline Batman is just in the final stages of creating their space station base of operations. They agree to help but Batman stays behind to watch over Earth in the meantime.
One of the first things I noticed about this movie is I didn’t recognize hardly any of the voice actors, no Kevin Conroy, no Mark Hammil though that’s not a big deal since the Jester had a small part. After a while it wasn’t quite a big deal, but for most of the movie they just sounded a little off. Without going to too much more detail on the plot, when there’s a story like this you just know there’s going to at some point be a big fight between everyone and their double. And there is. And it’s pretty good. Superman’s double is Ultraman who’s more of a mob boss to the crime family. The Flash’s double is some british guy named Johnny and I don’t think I ever caught his superhero name. Wonder Woman’s double is some lesser character who she fights earlier but ends up being matched with Super Woman who seems pretty much on par with Superman, though she never uses any heat vision. Martian Manhunter’s double looks fairly similar in design, but has four arms, four eyes, and is taken out by the Jester in the beginning. Green Lantern’s double is also pretty similar and I never remember catching his name either. And Batman’s double is more or less the main villain even though he’s not the leader of the villains as Owl Man voiced pretty well by James Woods.
There’s also a lot of talk about the infinite Earths in this movie. I’m familiar with the comic book storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths, in fact my initial choice for the name of this blog was “Movie Night on Infinite Earths” before I settled on the current name. I’m familiar that the story exists, but that’s about it. This movie explains the concept pretty well including the concept of “Earth Prime”, the original Earth where all existences originated from, which thankfully is not the same as our Earth. And if Earth Prime is destroyed, then all other Earths are destroyed as well. My only problem with that theory is that Earth is in no way the center of the universe. It’s just a single planet. But aside from that quibble as well as one other, since when can Wonder Woman fly? It was kind of cute how they introduced this movie’s origin of her invisible jet. It was actually Owl Man’s jet which had a cloaking device that they used to escape the villains on the second Earth. While they were escaping, the villains created a lightning storm around them which fried the controls for the cloaking device, but the jet remained cloaked. And at the end, the Flash hits his head on it and Wonder Woman merely comments “Spoils of War”.
The animation was great as usual for these movies, and it was fun playing the guessing game when they were going around fighting the various lesser villains on the alternate Earth. Since almost all of the villains had anywhere from minor to major design changes, but there was still enough similarity that you could recognize them. I think my favorite was a huge bulked up Jimmy Olsen who was still good friends with Ultraman. That, and when Lex Luthor proves that he’s not a threat to the Justice League during their first introduction by being naked in the police station. It’s a fun romp if you enjoy these kind of parallel universe type stories. I hope you enjoyed this bonus review, Thursday’s review will be Super with Rainn Wilson and Ellen Page. Until then, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
The Incredibles
The Incredibles 2004
It’s Friday evening and I’ve been looking forward to watching The Incredibles again. This has got to be one of the best superhero movies that I’ve ever seen, and next to Batman this is one of Jena’s favorite superheroes as well and she loved the movie from start to finish. While the Incredibles aren’t based on any existing comic books, they epitomize the classic Superhero types and of course they are very strongly inspired by the Fantastic Four. Some people even go so far as to say they almost directly copied them. Instead of Mr. Fantastic Reed Richards, there is Elastigirl Helen Parr. The Invisible Woman Sue Storm is replaced by the daughter Violet. Those two are pretty much direct copies, especially Violet since I’ve never heard of any other superhero that pairs invisibility with forcefields. The baby Jack Jack has a brief touch of the Human Torch’s powers and Dash has a little bit of the Torch’s personality. And Mr. Incredible is the brawn of the team as is The Thing, but those connections are a bit more of a stretch. And it’s not like one can’t count dozens of superheroes from different publishers that are essentially the same. I personally don’t think it’s a big detraction of the movie and I’m not even sure many people other than a few fanboys on message boards. In fact I think it’s kind of funny when I read that parts of the Fantastic Four script was changed because it was too close to this movie.
The movie starts off in the past, with an interview of all the heroes talking about what they would like out of life, and it turns out later on that later in life they all end up wanting the opposite of what they want at that moment in time. Like Mr. Incredible says that he’d like to take a break from heroing, and yet fifteen years later, all he wants to do is to be a hero again. It also shows the heroes in their prime with a great action setpiece filled with a lot of funny bits like the obligatory cat in the tree and of course there’s the standard superhero rescues like a bank robbery, a train disaster, and the kid sidekick. And yet there’s enough of a twist for all of these to make them feel fresh, even the kid fan that goes on to screw things up. I noticed this especially with the train scene and there’s that quick moment where Mr. Incredible braces himself for the train impact. It’s not the typical steeling himself that usually accompanies these moments where the hero grits his teeth and prepares for impact, but instead he turns his head and closes his eyes. He’s prepared for it, but in a much more realistic way. I also really like the subtle nod to one of my favorite films when Mr. Incredible is trying to remember Incrediboy’s real name and starts off by calling him Brody, which was the name of Jason Lee’s character in Mallrats, he also happens to voice Incrediboy and later Syndrome. And it ends with the wedding of Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl.
It then goes on to touch upon the public’s distrust of superheroes and their love for litigation, which causes the government to discontinue their superhero program and place all of the current heroes into basically the superhero protection program. Jump fifteen years into the future and Mr. Incredible is a pencil pusher who’s gained a lot of weight and Elastigirl is now a happy homemaker with three children. Violet who is the shy, unsure of herself teenager who can become invisible, Dash is the hyper troublemaker with superspeed. The powers feel in this context feel a lot more symbolic than just being copies of the Fantastic Four. The introduction of both of the kid’s powers feel pretty organic, interesting, and funny.
Throughout this movie, there is what feels like a great blend of drama, humor, and action. The emotional scenes feel earned, and the action scenes are all exciting. My favorite of the action scenes are the two infiltration scenes with Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl alternately breaking into Syndrome’s inner lair. It’s not too often that someone with Mr. Incredible’s power sneaks in through the back rather than going into a frontal assault through the front doors. It’s also rare to see a hero get to where it feels like he’s truly been defeated. It’s a very subtle, yet fantastic moment after Mr. Incredible thinks that his family is dead and you can just hear him quietly sobbing in the background.
I can go on and on about what this movie does right, from the hilarious Edna Mode, to the great voicework of the kid actor playing Dash. I especially love the amount of joy and enthusiasm he has when he first gets to let loose with his superpowers on the volcanic island. Even the subplot of Mirage turning against Syndrome to help Mr. Incredible. And I’ve been thinking about it for a while, there’s just not much that this movie does wrong. My only question is that the interim fifteen years are rather glossed over. There seemed to be an awful lot of superheroes out there, and once they all go away, things just carry on as normal? Were there any supervillain uprisings, or did the supervillains pretty much go away too with no superheroes to pit themselves against? And if things were perfectly calm during those times, then does the world really need the superheroes to return? And even though I’ve heard a lot of people clamoring for a sequel, especially more than a sequel to Cars or Monsters Inc., but I’m honestly not sure what kind of story they could tell in a sequel and have it come out as complete as this movie. I get the feeling if they tried to create a sequel, it would end up just being much more of an action setpiece. Maybe if they set the movie several years in the future again and have the children ready to set out on their own, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen anytime soon, if ever. Regardless, this is a fantastic movie and will be one of my favorites for a long time. This was a movie that I devoured when I got it on DVD. In fact, I believe several of my favorite moments talked about in the film’s commentary or special features. Which is something I don’t explore as much as I used to. I was even able to get Jena to talk about this movie for a little while, check it out right below. This Tuesday has a special bonus review of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths instead of my usual blog, keep an eye out for it. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America 2011
Ahh, my first chance to watch one of the recent crop of Marvel Studios movies and I kick it off with Captain America: The First Avenger, having just watched the 1990 Captain America movie a few days earlier. I was actually a little surprised at how many similarities the two movies had, although I suppose it’s very possible that the similarities are the ones taken directly from the comic book origins. As I mentioned in the last post I’m not very familiar with Captain America, I’ve only seen him in now a couple movies. But the origin is pretty much the same, the only difference is in this movie they used special effects to make the jump between scrawny Steve Rogers to buff Captain America that much more effective. I’m reminded of the scene in the first Spiderman movie with Tobey Maguire, except I believe they didn’t use special effects for that scene, they just shot skinny Tobey at the beginning of the shoot before he started his training and buff Tobey at the end of the shoot where he bulked up naturally. In this movie they have Chris Evans’ face on a short 90 pound wimpy looking kid. My wife was horribly distracted by this, in her words “they put his face on a midget”. I wasn’t put off by it and I thought the special effects for this were excellent and didn’t fall into the uncanny valley.
As far as the similarities to the Cap origin I just watched, there’s the same “It’s Alive” chamber moment of transformation along with sparks going everywhere and the Nazi spy killing the German doctor who created the procedure. The Red Skull was once again the initial recipient of the super soldier serum with some pretty harsh side effects, although in this version he was already a megalomaniac who wanted the procedure done on his own terms and damn the consequences. And of course there’s also the being frozen for a few dozen years, but in this movie it’s only barely touched upon in the beginning of the movie and used at the end as basically a trailer for the Avengers movie coming out later this year. Nearly this entire movie takes place during WWII instead of during the present. I was looking forward to seeing how this Captain America adjusted to the present day, but instead that will have to wait until the Avengers. And I just recently read a news story that confirms this theory that Captain America will be the main focus of the new Avengers movie.
The one subplot in this movie that was new to me was the fact that the Captain America image was created as war propaganda to help sell war bonds. I thought this was a fun sidestory, but I also thought it could have been cut down a bit. It doesn’t make as much sense to me that they would waste someone with his abilities in the publicity racket instead of immediately putting him on the front lines. I know that his picture was in the paper, but I felt that at that period in time he could have done a few events, then they could have easily switched to a look-a-like while sending the real Cap to do some actual fighting.
The Red Skull was the villain in this movie and he’s essentially super-Hitler with no face. He was the leader of his own sub-organization called Hydra, with their own super-goofy salute which they thankfully only used once maybe twice, and his goal was to take over the entire world. The other main thing that bugged me a little about this movie was the high-tech excuse for PG-13. That is, instead of using real guns, The Red Skull found this magic cube that let him create magic guns that disintegrated people instead of putting bloody holes in them. I know why this was done: it let them get away with killing a bunch of people by disintegration because that’s sci-fi violence instead of bloody violence. I would have rather seen non-blood violence using real guns rather than blue-flashy exploding guns. It also let them not use Nazi paraphernalia and instead have high-tech faceless soldiers that the audience can then dehumanize so it’s ok if they die by the dozens.
There is one other thing that I knew about Captain America that wasn’t covered in any of the movies that I’ve watched: Captain America’s sidekick Bucky is one of the few comic book deaths that haven’t been resurrected in some way… at least for a very very long time. So when they revealed that Steve’s friend’s name was Bucky I knew that he was going to die in this movie. And that scene as an action scene was pretty good. As a death scene, it was pretty cliche. There were a couple other cliche comic book movie moments but they were thankfully few and brief. There was the slow motion jumping over an explosion shot, and the girl who wistfully looks up into the sky as the Hero flies away to great peril.
I really liked the costume design in this movie as well. Both the propaganda ready original costume and the combat ready revamped costume worked well for what their purposes were and the shield looked and was used pretty well and fairly convincingly. My side character of this movie was Mr. Stark. He didn’t have a lot of screen presence but he was used enough and his name was used just enough to really catch my interest in him and made me wish there was more of him. Not enough there for his own spin-off movie, but I would love it if they used another Marvel hero from this era that featured him as a side character again. He’s obviously similar to Iron Man‘s Tony Stark, but different enough to be an interesting character. I’m curious how popular he is to other fans of the movie, as I haven’t read hardly anything about this movie outside of Twitter comments and other similar comments from people who liked the movie. And I really liked the movie, my complaints that I’ve mentioned in this blog are all pretty minor. While I was watching the movie I was hooked through and through, it’s not flawless, but it’s an excellent movie for sure. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Captain America
Captain America 1990
It’s Monday night, and even though I’m already headlong into this project it’s January 2nd and I’m ready to get started on the first movie of the year. I had someone suggest to me to watch the old Captain America movie so I looked it up. It was on my list, but I didn’t really know anything about it and honestly, I don’t even know that much about Captain America. I know the basics, he was created in World War II through America’s Super Soldier program to fight Nazis and he was frozen for a while somehow. I’ve seen him in the Marvel Animated DVD Ultimate Avengers, but that’s about it. And of course I know about the new movie that came out last year with Chris Evans but I haven’t gotten around to watching it. That’s another reason why I agreed with the suggestion to watch the old Cap, this gives me a chance to finally watch the new Cap in a few days or so. But this isn’t the new Cap, it’s the old Cap. And it’s not the old cheesy motorcycle helmet Cap that I originally thought it was. Those DVDs came out recently to cash in on the new movie and I’ve seen them in Wal-Mart, but this movie hasn’t seemed to have made a comeback. If you’ve checked out my list for this year, you might know that I’m limiting the movies I’m watching for the moment to theatrically released movies, and those Motorcycle helmet ones were either direct to video or made for TV. This one was actually released in theaters.
Mostly because I had never heard of it, and it’s one of those barely spoken of things, I was expecting a train wreck of a movie. And this just plain isn’t it. Yes the costume looks pretty bad, the action scenes are extremely low budget and badly edited to try and cope with that fact, and there are some implausibilities. But honestly that’s a minor part of the movie and the rest of it was pretty interesting and kept me hooked. That is until it throws me a hunk of major cheese, I have a great laugh at it, but then I’m back in the movie. It starts off confusing enough in Nazi Germany where some soldiers come in, take a smart kid, and kill his entire family while making him watch. They show off a smart, strong, stop motion or animatronic rat that doesn’t have any skin for some reason and appear to do the same thing to the kid. One of the German scientists is horrified by some part of it and runs off. 7 years later, that same scientist is working for the Americans to use the same process to some unsuspecting American schlub, though somehow she worked the whole creepy skinless kink out of the process.
They really skim over the whole Steve Rogers part of the origin, he’s in love with some girl named Bernie of all things, has an “it’s alive” moment and immediately saves the day from a Nazi spy trying to take down the whole operation, killing the ex-nazi scientist and wounding Steve. But the super serum works quickly and Steve is ready to go after the one behind it all or something like that. There’s a quick exposition explaining the fire-proof tacky suit and shield. Sorry, they don’t explain the shield, they just ask Steve if he got enough practice with it. Why would anyone practice with a shield? That doesn’t make any sense… unless you already know about Captain America, and if you do then they shouldn’t need to explain the suit either. He didn’t even spend a whole lot of time in the suit. He wears it in the first fight scene with the Red Skull, and then not really until the final fight scene. Which I didn’t have a problem with since the costume didn’t look all that great. I couldn’t believe they got straight to the fight between the main villain and the hero so soon. I mean, it was badly edited and Cap ends up strapped to a rocket and makes the Red Skull cut his own hand off with a little switchblade by moving slightly to the left. But the Red Skull did look pretty wicked. Even Bernie later on had some pretty passable old age makeup.
It’s pretty easy to talk about the silly things in this movie: kicking the rocket to avoid the white house at the last moment and ending up in Alaska instead? The boy taking photos of the white house at night capturing said rocket and then growing up to be the President? The President joining in at the end and taking out hired thugs with one punch? But aside from all that, the characters were very well played and I was really interested in them. Steve Rogers was a great character, he was pretty smart, cared about the people who were helping him, and resourceful. I loved the joke where he said he felt sick and used it as an excuse to steal the car, twice. I thought the relationship between him and Bernie’s daughter was well done and she played a pretty good role as well. And the Red Skull just had some major presence. I can’t speak for his accent but he chewed major scenery in every scene he was in, and I mean that in a good way.
I haven’t mentioned Jena much in this review because once again, she was MIA for a lot of it and talking up a storm about random things while she was there. She was there for the beginning and she reacted to the first bit of movie violence that we’ve seen so far and I briefly commented on in an earlier blog. Captain America gets shot up during his first moments as a super soldier and Jena asks “did his shirt die?” since it had a lot of movie blood on it. And of course he was pretty much better in the next scene so she was ok with it. Shortly afterward she went off and started playing with her toys instead. If you can find this movie anywhere and can overlook a little cheese/low budget effects I would recommend checking this movie out. Until next time this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Superman Returns
Superman Returns 2006
I started watching this movie with a preconceived notion in my head. I originally watched this movie when it came out in an IMAX theater and I enjoyed it, even though I wasn’t too impressed with the few 3D scenes. I later bought it on DVD, but it wasn’t an immediate buy, I bought it because it was on a super-discounted sale and I don’t think I ever watched it after I bought it, maybe once, and I think I watched some of the special features. But instead I became influenced by the opinion of the internet which dubbed this a mediocre and boring sequel with a lot of dumb ideas. So when I started watching this movie again, I was expecting a certain level of mediocrity. I was wrong. Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t blown away by this movie, but I was interested and invested in it through most of the almost two and a half hours of it. I say most because it did go on a bit too long. I also noticed the starting of a dichotomy in the way I watched this movie since writing these review blogs. In some parts of the movie I caught myself watching with an extra critical eye, and yet other places I still got carried away in the movie. Jena in the meantime had to practically be dragged downstairs to watch it, wouldn’t stop talking, and really just wanted to go back upstairs and play. The only time she was mostly quiet during that 45 minutes or so was during the shuttle sequence.
One of the biggest things going for this movie is the fact that Bryan Singer knows his Superman. There are tons of references to all sorts of previous incarnations of Superman, some are nice and smooth like the fact that Lois doesn’t know how to spell, while others are a bit of “look at that, Superman is posing just like he did in Action Comics #1”. You could almost play a drinking game – take a drink anytime an older Superman is referenced. It helps a lot that I just watched the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies not too long ago, as the director himself has said that this movie is kind of a spiritual sequel to Richard Donner’s Superman II. There also seems to be a lot of the Christ metaphor that Richard Donner has said to have used in the original Superman movies, especially the scene where Superman is falling to Earth from space in the shape of a crucifix and more or less is resurrected shortly afterwards.
I almost disagree with the thought that this is a spiritual sequel to Superman II though, because in my mind it feels like it tries to cover a lot of the same ground as the first Superman movie. Superman’s been gone for 5 years so the world is more or less at a point where it’s like there’s never been a Superman. When he returns it’s just like when he first arrived, the only difference is that people are asking “where has he been?” instead of “where did he come from?”. Not only that, but Lex’s entire scheme is more or less the same as it was before, only bigger. Instead of buying up cheap land in the desert and knocking the rest of California into the sea, he’s creating new land and forcing most of the USA into the sea. There’s also no real fight scene, the biggest action setpieces are Superman saving people from disasters, not supervillains. He even reintroduces himself to Lois with a flight around town and an exclusive interview. But instead of falling for a single Lois, he’s trying to break up Lois’s steady relationship even though she’s practically dating a surrogate Superman/Clark Kent hybrid. He flies, he’s a reporter, and he’s there when she needs him. Not only that, but in her time of most dire need, Richard chooses her while Superman chooses Metropolis.
The relationship was almost the biggest part of this movie and when you look at it from that perspective, I thought it did a good job of portraying such a complicated relationship. Lois loved Superman, they got together in the second movie but her memory was erased of it. In fact I just realized that she supposedly had no memory of their night together as per Superman II, that leads the question of how quickly did Superman leave after that night, and how quickly did she get into a new relationship? Anyway she loved Superman but he left her without saying goodbye and she rightly moved on.
Aside from the relationships, there was some action in this movie. There were a couple disasters like the shuttle sequence near the beginning of the movie and the Metropolis destruction from the crystal’s EMP. Both of these scenes were well done with big budget special effects and kept me hooked. But the climax of the movie, where Superman gets beaten up on the Kryptonite crystal island, stabbed with Kryptonite and yet all it takes is a little sun and he’s got enough power to lift the entire Kryptonite island into space when in the first movie he couldn’t even get out of a pool with a little Kryptonite necklace around his neck.
And finally there’s the biggest all around complaint I’ve seen about this movie – Superman’s son. From the beginning it’s really clear to the audience that it’s Superman’s son even though all the characters are doing their best to deny it, claiming it’s Richard’s son. He’s also presented as an extremely fragile and sickly boy with various allergies, asthma, and whatever else he has. And yet after exposure to Kryptonite – my theory anyway – he begins to show signs of being Superman’s son, like violently crushing a man to death with a piano. Thatta boy! As well as hints of superhuman sight finding Superman in the ocean. I’m not mad that the kid is Superman’s son, but there’s just so much stuff that could have been handled differently. Like the fact that Superman’s been gone 5 years which would make him 4 years old, yet he looks and acts much older. He had no knowledge of the boy so he had to have taken off very soon after Superman II, and Lois had to have quickly hooked up with Richard for everyone to think it’s Richard’s kid. But in the grand scheme of things, most of those problems could have just been explained better without changing the movie.
Finally, how did I think this compares with the original Superman? I thought Christopher Reeve played a much better Clark Kent. Brandon Routh does an ok job, but I thought it was ridiculous when the jokes were made comparing the two and all the other characters laughed it off, when for me Routh’s Clark had a little too much confidence to be all that separate from Superman. I also thought the original flight with Superman and Lois had more wonder to it than this one, other than the whole “can you read my mind” voiceover. But the action scenes in this one were much better, the improvement in special effects really does a lot in this respect. And Kevin Spacey‘s Lex Luthor is a lot more cold and calculating, yet he still retains a bit of the old humor even if it’s a lot darker this time around, which I do like. And continuing my trend in finding interest in the side characters, I really enjoyed Kitty in this movie. I thought Parker Posey had a lot of fun with the role. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on Superman Returns, next week I’ll be taking a look at the old and new Captain America movies for the first time. Until next time this is Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Supergirl
Supergirl 1984
So it’s Christmas afternoon, the presents have been opened and we’re just spending a relaxing Sunday Afternoon together as a family. And I decided to ruin it by looking up Supergirl for us all to watch together this holiday afternoon. Ok, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration but the movie was not that enjoyable aside from the ability to laugh at it when it got so bad it was just plain funny. Of course, since it was Christmas afternoon, and Jena got quite a few presents for herself, she paid almost no attention to the movie, preferring to play with her newfound Angry Bird plushies, Monster High doll, and a Rainbow Brite and Sprite doll.
This was made shortly after Superman III and it’s really in the same vein as that movie, but it didn’t have a well known comedian making funny on the screen, it just had Faye Dunaway hamming it up as Selena with a spotlight shining on her face in every single closeup. It reminded me of Morticia Addams in the Addams Family movies. I always thought in those movies it was done for some comedic effect, at least I thought it was funny. Anyway, she played a witch who seemed to have only recently converted because of her warlock boyfriend, although she felt she had already outgrown him and wanted to strike out on her own for more power.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, while she does take up an ample amount of screentime for her character development as a villain, and by development I mean that she wants power, she gets power, and she gets destroyed by a stronger power. The movie however starts out on Krypton. Well technically it’s not Krypton since that got destroyed, but it’s a city full of Kryptonians that somehow survived the destruction of Krypton and are now living using the power of the spinning globotron. That’s not what it’s actually called, but that’s how I remember it as. Zaltar “borrows” it and lets Kara play with it until she loses control of it, it gets sucked through the wall, into space off to Earth, and straight into Selena’s lap. Zaltar exiles himself to the Phantom Zone while everyone else worries that they will die in a few days without power so Kara takes it upon herself to follow the globotron to Earth and retrieve it.
Did I forget to mention that Kara is Kal-El’s cousin? So when she arrives at Earth she comes fully dressed as Supergirl even though no one was dressed like that on Krypton, I mean Argo City. She shows off some of her powers, including fighting off a couple drunk horny truckers before stumbling upon an all girl’s school and revealing her power to create clothes and change haircolor out of nothing. She cons her way into the girl’s school with a fake reference letter from her cousin Clark Kent and sets up a fake identity as Linda Lee. Because obviously if she would have used her real name Kara then everyone would know who she really was… um… yeah. And to tie her even more into Superman, she ends up rooming with Lois Lane’s little sister Lucy.
Now I’m only familiar with Supergirl from Smallville and from what I remember she’s not too far off from her Smallville counterpart. She’s rather naive but she’s a quick thinker and can take care of herself. Lucy Lane also has some familiar traits, like being headstrong enough to try and stop the runaway construction equipment herself. And Jimmy Olsen makes a return appearance as Lucy’s boyfriend and the only real tie in to the Superman movies aside from a poster in Lucy’s room and the quick radio announcement explanation why Superman isn’t around.
They tried to shoehorn a love interest into this movie by way of a personality-less prettyboy gardener for the girl’s school who Selina falls for and tries to concoct a love potion which of course goes awry and makes him fall for Linda Lee instead. I’m sure no one saw that coming. He supposedly snaps out of it halfway through the movie yet continues to have “real” feelings for both Linda and Supergirl making the connection between them through a kiss. The action scenes were all a joke as well, the first action piece is when Selina sends her shadow demon after Linda which has some pretty decent set up as a giant invisible monster. And yet Supergirl defeats it by charging a lamppost with lightning and shooting it at the beast. I wish I was kidding. The next action scene is when the boytoy gets captured by a giant piece of construction equipment that starts running loose around town. Supergirl stares at the destruction it’s causing for what feels like several minutes before finally jumping in and riding along with it for a bit and ripping the claw off, saving the guy. And the final action scene is mostly a bunch of wobbly glowing floor tiles and a big demon.
If I had to pick something about this movie that I liked, I thought Helen Slater’s performance as Supergirl was pretty good considering all the crap acting around her. There were a few of the flying sequences that were well done and I really loved Selina’s sidekick. I think she was about the best part of the movie. She reminded me a lot of Karen Walker since she always seemed to have either a cigarette or a drink in her hand. It was a shame that she got caught up with Faye in the Supergirl twister thingy that defeated them. And at least Supergirl didn’t have to give everyone amnesia kisses at the end, she just got them agree to not tell anyone about her before heading back to Argo City hopefully in time before everyone died. But of course we never know since it just happens during the credits. We do see the lights go on, but we don’t know if anyone besides Kara was still alive. Oh well. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 