Blog Archives
The Posthuman Project
The Posthuman Project 2015
Even though I try to keep myself up to date on superhero movies coming out, I rarely search out indie projects and obscure films anymore. Instead, I rely on my social networks and newsfeeds to point them out to me as they show up on other people’s radar, which is why I didn’t find out about this film until a few short months ago when it had its wide release through digital outlets. I’ve watched a fair number of low budget, indie superhero films and I do find myself coming at them from a different perspective. The acting won’t always be there, and neither will the special effects, but there’s usually something in the writing or direction that I can grasp onto and see what the filmmakers were going for. There is some of that here in the Posthuman project, but not quite enough for me to love this film in the way that I have with All Superheroes Must Die, or Squid Man. It’s got some good ideas, and a couple good characters, but it suffers in several places from trying to reach beyond its limitations.
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100 Essential Superhero Movies – Ranked
It’s been over a year since I posted my list of 100 Essential Superhero Movies, and I do want to keep this list updated every year, adding in new movies from the previous year, and taking out movies that only just barely made the cut. Another thing that I decided to do a little bit differently is to rank the films by their quality, so that it’s more obvious which films are the failures that are still important in the grand scheme of superhero movie history, but aren’t very high quality films. And while my personal preference will obviously come into play, I did make a decided effort to combine my opinion along with the general opinion. Also, I will be sharing my rankings every day for the next 100 days over on Facebook and Twitter and will be collecting them here afterwards. Enjoy!
Update: For the most current version of this list, here’s the 2016 Edition
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The Wild Wild World of Batwoman
The Wild Wild World of Batwoman 1966
This is one of the last couple films that I’ve put on my 100 Essential Superhero Movies list that I had yet to see. There are a couple reasons that I added this film instead of a more well known, or better film. One is that it was essentially one of the first fan films, or probably more accurately a mockbuster. It was made by Jerry Warren who didn’t have the rights to the Batman character, but wanted to capitalize on the TV show’s popularity and so he made this Batwoman movie. There were enough changes made to the characters that even though he was sued for copyright infringement, he actually won the case. It was also one of very few superhero movies that became popular as a cult film when it was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Watching it today, it is very obviously along the lines of an Asylum mockbuster where the characters seemingly know that they’re in a parody of a film even though it’s all supposedly being taken seriously.
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Captain America 2: Death Too Soon
Captain America 2: Death Too Soon 1979
I imagine the thought process at CBS or whatever studio financed the two Captain America films was that the first one would be so popular that people would be clamoring for a sequel and so it went into production before the first one aired. And however the ratings were for the first one, it was essentially either too late or the ratings had enough merit to continue the production. There’s even an unlikely chance that these films were produced back to back but the true details are a little bit too far buried than my ten minutes of internet research will allow. It is interesting to note that this film was aired as essentially a two part mini-series, airing the first hour – counting commercials one night, and the second hour the next. And similar to the first Captain America, that is honestly one of the most interesting things about the entire film next to the fact that the villain was played by none other than the late, great Christopher Lee.
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Book Nights: Overpowered
Overpowered by Mark Kruger
My track record with superhero novels has been hit or miss, but somehow I keep getting asked to review them. If only filmmakers or studio PR were this forthcoming. But after my very pleasant experience with The Heart Does Not Grow Back, I was offered another opportunity to review a superhero novel. Largely because it was the same people I happily accepted, and since the book was the second in a series they graciously included this one which was the start of this series. There have been a lot of films centered around young adult book series lately and I have seen very few of them, at first glance Overpowered with its young heroine Nica front and center seems like it might just be another blip in a sea of similar books. But I really enjoyed this story about a small town with a sinister secret, it had elements of Disturbing Behavior (in a good way) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and after I finished, I’m glad I’ve already got the second book ready to go.
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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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The Glaring Reality of Women Superhero Movies
While I was beginning to write my latest review for a superhero movie I watched that was recently released on home video, it made me think about Women-led superhero movies and how it’s been so long since anyone has dared to make one, either on home video or in theaters. That movie happens to be the first movie that has been released in the US that’s led by a female superhero since 2009’s DC Animated Wonder Woman. If you’re curious, the movie is Barbie in Princess Power. Yes, it took a Barbie movie to break this streak. By my count there have been 80 superhero movies released in the US between 2010 and April 2015. This is the only one led by a female superhero. If I expand my search just a little, there is at least one other that I am aware of from a couple years ago in Japan called Nuigulumar Z but that’s it. When you look at theatrical features the prospects are even more grim considering the last female-led superhero movie was all the way back in 2005 with Elektra and the next one isn’t due until 2017 with Wonder Woman, that’s twelve years. Think about this: if a girl was born in 1999, she would not have been able to see a superhero movie led by a woman in the theaters until her 18th birthday.
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Book Nights: The Heart Does Not Grow Back
The Heart Does Not Grow Back
by Fred Venturini
It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a book on here, mainly because I don’t seek out what I perceive to be a very small subgenre of fiction outside of comic books. It doesn’t help that my past experiences have been bad to mediocre, but I’m never one to turn down something for free so I accepted the offer to review another piece of superhero fiction. The brief description had me interested, it seemed like there were some horror elements and it wouldn’t be a straightforward superhero origin story. What I ended up with was a superhero story that was one of the most original takes on a superhero that I have ever seen, on screen or off. It’s got coming of age elements to it, and the main character is someone who I could relate to probably more than I should care to admit to. It also has some well written moments of tension during some horrifying and gruesome moments that feel all too real. It’s a fairly short novel, and while I expected to take a couple weeks to read through it, I managed to finish it in less than a week.
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Justice League: Throne of Atlantis
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis 2015
And right onto the first new release of the year. This seems like it’s one of the first follow ups in the DC Animation home video releases as it almost directly follows last year’s Justice League: War. Even though Son of Batman was also part of DC’s New 52 continuity, that movie felt much more self-contained where this really felt like a sequel, especially when I did revisit War shortly before watching Throne of Atlantis. While Aquaman is often the butt of many jokes, he is actually a popular and powerful member of the Justice League and long since deserving of his own movie. There are a few jokes tossed at the king of the sea’s expense, but for the most part it’s a typical origin story with a very similar tone and feel to War, with a few of the same voice cast returning along with some new and familiar voices like Rosario Dawson who got upgraded from Artemis in the Wonder Woman movie to Wonder Woman herself, and Nathan Fillion returning to voice Green Lantern. I thought it was a decent sequel to War, but if there’s one aspect of superhero movies I have had my fill of, it’s origin stories and this didn’t really do anything different or interesting to set it apart from any of the dozens of other origin stories I’ve seen already.
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Top Superhero & Comic Book Films of 2014
It’s the beginning of a new year and time to look back on the year that was, and in most movie communities that also means awards season. I tend to be a bit of a completest when it comes to lists so I’m really glad that this year I was able to accomplish my goal to watch all 29 superhero and comic book films that came out in 2014. There are a few in here that have questionable release dates where some people got to see them early in festivals and small screenings, there are also a couple questionable inclusions and a couple questionable exclusions. But it is my list and I do have my reasons for not including some of them, like Transformers which has been a comic book, but it was a toy line and cartoon before then, and Noah which was adapted into both a comic and feature film simultaneously. And on the other side of things Birdman has a questionable connection to superheroes, but it does capture superhero culture within Hollywood, Edge of Tomorrow was originally a novel but was adapted into a Manga before the film adaptation came about, and the Lego Movie isn’t exactly a superhero movie though it does have superheroes in it. But whatever, I just want to celebrate the films that I enjoyed this year and forget about the ones that I excluded for now. In fact, I had such a great year in general, that I couldn’t narrow down my list of favorites to 10 so I have a couple lists for you so I can feature just over half of the films that I saw this year, excluding the brilliant documentary Legends of the Knight because it made my list last year.
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Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 