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Green Lantern: First Flight
Green Lantern: First Flight 2009
After watching the mediocre live action origin story, it made me want to revisit an earlier Green Lantern origin movie, only this one was animated and straight to home video. It was also a whole lot better. As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, I really love all of the DC Animation that I’ve seen so far which ranges from pretty good to excellent. They’ve covered a lot of ground on some of the better comic book stories out there without worrying too much about being a blockbuster. They’re generally all under the supervision and occasional direction of legendary Bruce Timm. The only downside I really have with them which isn’t a major downside is that they all tend to be rather short, most of them clocking in at a little over an hour. I’m still waiting for when they have the guts to make one of these animated movies for the theaters. I imagine it’s because of the decline of 2D animation. But whatever, First Flight is still a great movie.
Green Lantern
Green Lantern 2011
After watching so many Marvel movies, I thought it was only fair to come back with a DC movie. I’ve been wanting to watch Green Lantern for a while now, I’ve heard there’s a lot of hate out there for it, but from what I’ve seen of the movie so far, I thought I would generally like it. And I was right, I did like it, but at the same time, I didn’t love it. I enjoyed the animated Green Lantern movie First Flight much better, which is a shame because Green Lantern as a character has a lot of potential and this movie took several steps in the right direction, it just didn’t get all the way there yet.
Man-Thing
Man-Thing 2005
For a while, I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not to file this movie under my new “Almost Super” category. It’s pretty much a straight up horror movie, but the fact that it’s based on a Marvel comics character and the fact that it’s similar to Swamp Thing which is more easily a superhero movie, I decided to stick with my first instinct. This was one of Marvel’s early jumps into the independent film-making waters, but apparently the testing was so poor on it that it got relegated to a home video release and later came out as a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. It appears at first glance to be Marvel’s version of Swamp Thing, but it’s handled in a very different way. Man-Thing is much more like a villain, or at least a force of nature that’s been unleashed and destroys anything that gets in its way. And so it would seem to make a great horror movie villain, but they decide to stick with almost every horror movie cliche in the book to make this movie completely boring and unoriginal in the end.
Superhero Shorts: City of Heroes: Infinite Dark
Superhero Shorts: Infinite Dark
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 glad to feature another machinima short from the MMO City of Heroes called Infinite Dark which was the winner of a City of Heroes held contest where among other things, he won a car! Here’s a link to the contest writeup where you can see the other entries and you can of course watch Infinite Dark right below. For his other projects you can also visit his own website at ToddWorld.com.
X-Men: The Last Stand
X-Men: The Last Stand 2006
It feels like I’ve been watching X-Men movies for a long time now, there’s been some pretty great movies, and some fairly mediocre movies, but I’m glad I’m done with them and am ready to move onto something different. It makes me glad that I’m not going to try to cram all eight Batman movies back to back to back. After two great X-Men movies by Bryan Singer, he dropped out for the chance to make Superman Returns while the helm was passed on to Brett Ratner. The movie promised a lot of things, some popular X-Men that hadn’t made it to the movies yet, and it centered around the mutant “cure” which could have brought in all sorts of layers of meaning to this movie. But instead, it’s a lot of empty action with little real depth to it all. It’s still a fun watch, but compared to the previous two X-Men movies and even First Class, it felt fairly empty.
X2: X-Men United
X2: X-Men United 2003
I’ve almost finished revisiting all of the X-Men movies and tonight I watched what many consider the strongest out of all of them. It has more characters, a bigger conflict, and the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend plotline. And not only are there more characters, most of the characters are stronger than in the first X-Men and there are fewer weak characters. Where X-Men was the movie that made everyone take notice of the superhero movie again, X2 was the movie that made everyone take superhero movies seriously. At least for a little while. I do have to mention that for whatever reason, the movie didn’t fully hold my interest for the duration. I felt the need to pause it a couple times to check on other things. It’s not a huge negative against the movie because I can be easily distracted, but it is a slight negative. There is still a lot of great things in this movie.
X-Men
X-Men 2000
While it seemed like a good idea at the time to watch all five of the X-Men movies back to back, coming around to watching the first one made me realize that they’re better suited as being treated as separate entities. When you watch them close together, the continuity changes are quite glaring. Aside from that, this movie generally holds up and I can totally see how this one movie really paved the way for the previous generation of superhero movies. I say previous in the hope that the recent Avengers movie, prequels and sequels, as well as Nolan’s Batman movies, lead into the current generation of superhero movies. But X-Men still stands as a landmark in superhero movies.
FTMN Poll: Who’s your favorite X-Men villain?
Last week I asked what your favorite X-Men was, this time around I’m asking who your favorite villain is? One great thing about the X-Men is that the villains are often just as interesting and complex as the X-Men themselves. Many times even becoming allies during different periods of time. Rather than just being evil for evil’s sake, though there are a few of those in there too, it’s their different ideologies that put them at odds with the X-Men. I pulled this list together mostly from my memory of the 90’s cartoon and the movies, if I left any biggies out please leave a comment telling me about them. Which one is your favorite? The all-powerful Apocalypse? The mysterious Mystique? Or one of the many government officials working to pass laws and public favor against mutants in general? Vote! Leave a comment! You know the drill. Until next time, this has been Bubbawheat for Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2009
I continue on my trek through the X-Men movies in a possibly unorthodox manner moving on to what I believe would actually be the next chronological movie. Even though it starts well before First Class, the main portion of the movie takes place sometime before the X-Men trilogy but after First Class, the intention was probably to have it be around 1979 due to the finale being set in Three Mile Island, though it’s fairly vague in its time period, without any obvious 80’s or 90’s fashions. I have had it on bluray for a while now, though I haven’t watched it since I bought it over a couple years ago. I think this is generally the least liked X-Men film alongside the Last Stand. And while I could see a few general annoyances, I still enjoyed the movie a lot.
Superhero Shorts: How It Should Have Ended
Superhero Shorts: How it Should Have Ended
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 get the chance to feature my first animated short rather than a live action one, and since I’ve just started watching the X-Men movies, I thought it would be perfect to feature How X-Men: First Class Should Have Ended, which you can watch right below, or on their website, along with tons of other parodies of recent and classic movies.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 