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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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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: 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
Hellboy 2004
Before watching this movie, I went through and did a full count of how many movies I’ve actually reviewed so far this year. My original goal was 100 superhero movies, and by my current count I’m up to 95. Plus, I’ve reviewed 7 “Almost Super” movies. So that means I’ve got five more movies to watch and review over the next few weeks to hit my goal. I’d like to pick something good for #100, I’ll likely put a poll up tomorrow. But for #96-99 I’ll be watching all the movies in the Hellboy franchise, both live action and both animated. I’ve enjoyed these movies ever since I first watched them, Ron Perlman was and still is the perfect casting choice for the big red guy. There’s so much in this movie to enjoy, from the practical effects to the amazing designs on everything, to Hellboy’s attitude, this movie is one of my favorites and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to watch it. In fact, the poster I’m using to headline this post was actually one of my first movie posters, and hung on my wall for years. Such a great looking poster.
Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange 2007
I find it interesting to see where my mood takes me. Several months ago I thought I would have watched almost all of the animated Marvel and/or DC movies by now and yet I’m still less than halfway through. This has been sitting in my binder after picking it up from a clearance bin since then and I’m only now getting around to watching it. And it’s a shame, because without realizing it, it’s got so much stuff in it that I enjoy. Doctor Strange has never really piqued my interest, maybe because of the too-obvious name, maybe because I was expecting some combination of stage magic and real monsters, who knows. I wasn’t familiar with Doctor Strange at all, but I was looking for something short and stand alone to watch while I was sick, and I ended up watching this one twice I enjoyed it so much. Once by myself, and once with my wife, who also really enjoyed it. It has one of the best origin stories I’ve seen in quite a while, and I loved all the Asian influences in it. It’s got some great characters, great action, and some great storytelling. A great feature from Marvel animation.
Batman Returns
Batman Returns 1992
This is a movie that like Batman, I hadn’t seen in years and years. But whether it was because I had gotten acclimated to Tim Burton’s style by watching Batman shortly before it, or because it was just a closer fit to my own personal tastes, but I enjoyed Batman Returns a whole lot more than Batman. I think one of the biggest complaints about the movie is that it felt more like “Penguin and Catwoman” rather than “Batman”. And while I agree with the idea, I disagree that it is a complaint. I said in my review of Batman that the rogues gallery is more interesting that Batman himself and that holds just as true here. This movie also plays on the Batman/Catwoman romance in a great way. As much as I enjoyed Anne Hathaway in the Dark Knight Rises, I thought Pfeiffer and Keaton had much better chemistry.
Words without pictures: A Superhero novel
Infinite Crisis by Greg Cox
As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve moved to the Chicago area and am now facing an hour’s train ride each way to work. To my surprise, my sister is a moderate fan of superheroes as well and she lent me her copy of Infinite Crisis: A Novel to read. I was familiar with the storyline and the previous event Crisis on Infinite Earths in name only. This is the first superhero novel I’ve ever read. When I was in my teens/early twenties I read a ton of fantasy books, mainly all of the Forgotten Realms series that was published at the time, as well as the Weis/Hickman written Dragonlance novels and Robert Jordan’s massive Wheel of Time series. One of the things I noticed fairly early on is how much is lost without visuals. Comic books and superheroes are very much a visual medium. And I understand that fantasy can be very visual as well, but for some reason reading about superheroes without the visuals to back it up felt a lot more silly to me. Especially when you get to the fact that this novel covers a huge crossover comics event that features literally hundreds of heroes and villains and has about a dozen main characters. And on top of that, seeing Batman survive being strangled by some superhuman villain is one thing, but reading several times how he’s only surviving because of his armored neckpiece just sits the wrong way with me. But aside from a few qualms, I generally enjoyed it.
Batman
Batman 1989
It has been ages since I’ve seen the original Batman. Tim Burton’s vision of Gotham has long been one of the most iconic and especially known for being one of the first movies to bring a darker side to superhero movies and help bring them more into the mainstream, even if the big superhero movies were pretty much limited to Batman until X-Men comes along over 10 years later. It really helped turn Batman into a household name, and Jack Nicholson’s performance as the Joker is one of his most iconic, as well as one of the best performances in a Batman movie period. But watching this movie after seeing what Batman has become in the years since, it’s almost like looking at a shadow of his former self. Now, the Tim Burton movie is almost like a bridge between the pure camp of the Adam West Batman TV series and the extremely dark and realistic Batman of the Nolan trilogy and the DC Animation movies. And as much as I loved both extremes of Batman for very different reasons, this movie is kind of stuck in the middle and falls behind. But Batman is still Batman, and I enjoyed almost every minute of this movie. It’s still a great movie even if it’s lost some of its luster.
The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1
The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1 2012
No, this isn’t a typo of some shortened cut of the Dark Knight Rises, instead it’s a brand new DC animation. There are a few similarities, but in this version Batman retired for 10 years, not 8. He was in his sixties, not his forties. He’s fighting the Mutant leader and the Mutants, not Bane and the League of Shadows. I believe this also in some way follows Under the Red Hood, as they refer to Jason’s death, who was the second Robin. I’ve been a fan of DC animation for a while now, and they haven’t personally let me down yet. I know there are some people who have issues with the way they don’t entirely follow the comics in some of the features, but since I don’t follow the comics, they’re all fresh to me and just plain amazing storytelling. The movies just keep getting better and better and this one is no exception. I especially like the fact that while this movie is labelled with the sometimes accursed “part 1”, it doesn’t feel like only half of the story. There is a full fledged story told entirely within this one movie, but it also does a great job at laying the groundwork to make you excited for the upcoming part 2 next year.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 