Blog Archives
FTMN Poll: What’s your favorite type of Superhero?
So what’s your favorite type of Superhero? Do you enjoy the more sci-fi aspects of heroes like Superman, Green Lantern, and the Avengers? Or do you enjoy the more grounded in reality heroes like Batman? There’s also the attempts at more realism like in Unbreakable, Super, Chronicle, or the first half of Hancock. Or do you prefer fantasy heroes like Percy Jackson, or going farther back to Greek Mythology and Hercules or Jason and the Argonauts? Let me know.
I also wanted to take a moment to direct you to the site of the artist who originally created all of the minimalist posters I featured on Facebook this Monday thru Friday, you can find him at deviantArt, so be sure to check out some of his other stuff. He’s done a lot of minimalist posters for video games and some other movies I didn’t use.
Confessions of A Superhero
Confessions of a Superhero 2007
I was asked by Dusty of Dusty On Movies to write a guest review for his Quirky Documentary Series. I had heard a little bit about this film, Confessions of a Superhero, but when Dusty asked me to review it, I thought it was a good change of pace. It’s presented by Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, but he doesn’t really have anything to do with the documentary. The main focus is on four Hollywood street performers, although performers is kind of a strong word for what they do. They dress up as superheroes, pose for pictures, and take tips. The four heroes featured in this movie are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Hulk. Although Superman seems to get the most screen time out of the four. They all claim to be actors who just haven’t gotten a gig yet, and they’re all varying degrees of normal.
Superhero Shorts: Death of Spider-Man
Death of Spider-Man Motion Comic
Welcome to this week’s edition of Superhero Shorts where I take a look at a different superhero themed short film and get the creator of the film to answer a few interview questions. This week I’m talking with Andrew Bates and Drew Lawson who came up with their own motion comic for Ultimate Spider-Man #158-160 written by Brian Bendis where Peter Parker dies. It’s very high quality both in terms of the animation as well as the voice work, it’s on par if not better than the few professional motion comics I’ve seen before. It’s a bit longer than many of the shorts I feature here with a runtime of just over 20 minutes, but it’s worth the watch.
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Knight Rises 2012
I have to start off by mentioning that this is turning out to be one of the harder reviews I’ve had to write. I actually ended up seeing it by myself in the local theater at a late Saturday night showing, largely because I got the chance to participate in my first podcast for the Lamb which I believe will be posted this weekend. I jumped at the chance when the Dark Knight Rises episode went up for grabs, and even though it got filled before I got to put my name in the hat, a couple people dropped out so I snuck my way into the pod. And then I realized I would have to do something I have almost never done before: see the movie opening weekend, and see it by myself. I am a very shy person, and I dislike crowds of any kind. I was worried that the theater would be crowded, especially when I got to the theater at 9:25 and saw that the 9:30 show was flashing “sold out”. But luckily for me, the theater was only about two thirds full for the ten o’clock showing. I ended up having a good theater experience, sitting with empty chairs on either side of me, and near complete silence during the entire movie, the only crowd reaction was for the line “So that’s how it feels”. And since watching the movie, I’ve gone through and read many different reviews and takes on the movie, which has made it a little bit harder to sort out my own opinions from those of others. But I will say that Dark Knight Rises is an epic end to the best superhero trilogies of all time, even if it doesn’t have much competition in that category. I’ll even say that it’s one of the best movie trilogies of all time.
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight 2008
Or as it might more appropriately be called when compared to the recent movie, “The Dark Knight Falls”. Not because of the quality of the movie at all, but just because of what happens to Batman at the end of the movie, especially with where he starts the new movie. Ever since this movie came out in 2008, it has moved to the top of nearly everyone’s list of favorite superhero movies, and with good reason. The most memorable thing about the movie is definitely Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. He was able to create something different than we’ve ever seen before, something much darker, close to many of the comics, and yet still likable. But there’s more to the movie than just the Joker, the overall plot is extremely tight and engaging, and the level of realism is really bumped up from what we saw in Batman Begins. Not only all that, but even the relationships between the characters are all very strong, and the movie still manages to have a huge heart in it. It really is one of the best superhero movies of all time, if not the best.
Batman Begins
Batman Begins 2005
I am equal parts overjoyed and annoyed by all of the Batman reviews that have been popping up these past couple weeks. I especially enjoy it when some of the lesser reviewed gems come out of the woodwork, like a review of the first season of Batman: The Animated Series, or some of the DC Animated films. But I’m also annoyed because one of the reasons that I started this blog as a niche review site instead of a general movie review site was to stand out, and yet now I’ll be blending in as I take another look at Christopher Nolan’s already legendary Batman Trilogy. Today I start with the beginning, as that’s typically the best place. This is yet another origin story, but it’s unique in the fact that Batman is one of the few superheroes that kind of skipped over the whole origin story. Yes, Tim Burton’s Batman movie has that pivotal moment in Crime Alley where his parents are murdered, but when the flashback is over, he’s Batman in full force. This is the first time that audiences actually got to see how Bruce Wayne turned tragedy into vigilante.
New look, & Top 5 Most Original Superhero Movies
As you can probably tell, at least if you’ve ever been here before, I’ve gone and given this place a little bit of a makeover. I recently took part in a Brutally Blog Blustering over at the LAMB where you submit your blog, and people give constructive criticism anonymously. One thing that many people mentioned was the disjointed URL, so while it is a bit long, I couldn’t think of anything else more appropriate than FlightsTightsAndMovieNights.com. I will continue to renew Bubbawheat.com because I’ve had that name for more than half of my life at this point, and I doubt I’ll be changing it any time soon. I also went and made a more comics appropriate background that is hopefully not too distracting and looks good on most screen dimensions. I even adjusted my header image a bit to give it a more consistent and comics related font, as well as adding a few randomly changing taglines. If you’re wondering, there’s four. Which one do you like the best? I will be making a couple more tweaks to how my sidebars and pages are set up over the next week or so, but nothing too major. While several people complained about my lack of a blogroll, oftentimes even while praising my Follow Friday, I will be making a page collecting all of my Follow Fridays into a blogroll page of sorts. But enough about that, this week’s topic is a list of the five most original superhero movies. There’s tons of superhero movies out there, but so many of them are basically different takes on the same formula, or one of a select few formulas. But every once in a while, a movie comes out and does something completely different. It may not always work 100%, but I respect their efforts for trying.
Mystery Men
Mystery Men 1999
I more or less just picked a random movie to watch today, I guess it does share a lot of similarities to both Dr. Horrible and Scott Pilgrim, especially to the latter as it was a box office bomb, grossing about half of its sixty million dollar budget. I think it’s considered somewhat of a cult classic, though I think it’s mostly just forgotten. One of the few things it has going for it is its unique cast, mixing offbeat comic actors like Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, and Paul Reubens with Geoffrey Rush and William H. Macy. There are all sorts of big, or at least moderate budget effects combined with a large number of fart jokes. It’s hard to tell exactly what audience this movie was aiming for, but I generally enjoyed it.
FTMN Poll: What series should be rebooted?
The superhero/comic book/sci-fi landscape right now is filled with reboots, from Spider-Man, to Judge Dredd, to Robocop, to Total Recall, to Superman, to Green Arrow, and even Beauty and the Beast. Some may be good, some may be crap. And on top of that, some of the original’s are hard to live up to. I have no doubt that the new Dredd will be better than the original Judge Dredd, but Robocop is going to be a tougher sell for me. So far, I’ve liked everything I’ve seen from the reboots I’ve listed, although Beauty and the Beast feels like the weakest one for my tastes, they’re just moving too far away from the original Linda Hamilton/ Ron Perlman version and making it for the pretty faces of the CW audience.
But what I’m asking today is what series would you actually want to see a reboot of? I’ve listed several choices from the misguided take on Spawn, to ones that haven’t seen action outside of TV like Wonder Woman. Is there a comic actor today who could bring new life to the Mask or the Tick? The Ninja Turtles may have been squashed for now, but do they deserve a true to their origins style reboot? What about the Punisher, they’ve tried a few times and haven’t quite gotten him right yet? There’s also reboots of Fantastic Four, The Crow, and Daredevil in the works, though they’re all still pretty early in their productions and may still fall through, do any of them deserve a chance? Is there any others that I’ve failed to mention? Let your voice be heard, tell me what you think.
Unbreakable
Unbreakable 2000
I’ve been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan a lot longer than most. He snuck onto the scene in the nineties with a pair of low budget independent movies (Praying with Anger and Wide Awake). But in 1999 he made The Sixth Sense and was instantly hailed as the next Hitchcock. Instead of another psychological thriller, as everyone anticipated, Shyamalan followed with Unbreakable, an understated, ultra-realistic, and altogether atypical take on the superhero origin movie. Although it went on to earn more than $100 million at the box office, many still considered it failure since it didn’t live up to the $300 million take of The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable shatters the mold created by previous comic book adaptations: there are no big budget effects or action sequences, no costumes or masks, and no secret identities. Nevertheless, it is every ounce a superhero movie, and easily claims a spot in my personal top ten.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 