Blog Archives
X-Men: First Class
X-Men: First Class 2011
X-Men: First Class is an interesting idea for a movie. It’s not exactly a prequel since it eschews several elements of the sequels that came before it, but it’s not exactly an entire reboot either because it pulls several parts of its history and future directly from the other movies. It was another late movie for me, something I need to stop doing so much. It’s also one of the rare instances that I actually rented the movie on bluray. I love getting the chance to bust out the bluray player, but I tend to watch most movies either streaming or on the computer’s DVD player, it’s all hooked up to the same monitor though. First Class looked fantastic, even though it did have a few slight hiccoughs due to it being a rental. I guess blurays are scratch resistant, but not completely scratch-proof. It’s a great place to jump into the current continuity of X-Men.
My top 5 X-Men
I’m getting ready to watch X-Men: First Class for the first time, went out and rented it on bluray today. I was never big into the X-Men comic books, but right at the same time as I started watching Batman: The Animated series, there was the X-Men animated series. I watched both of them every time they came on. They were very different from each other, but they both treated subject matter in a very adult manner. It made complicated issues understandable without being too childish. It’s where I learned about all of these mutants before I ever thought of someone playing a mutant on the big screen. But I haven’t actually gone back and re-watched any of the cartoons so the live action movies are much clearer in my memory. While many of the characters are very different from each other, there are a lot of great characters to choose from. I’ve said before that I’m not very keen on making lists, but I thought this was a list I could handle.
Generation X
Generation X 1996
I was all set to watch X-Men First Class to kick off my X-Men reviews, but as I was expanding my big list of movies to include home video and TV movie releases I realize that I had forgotten all about a 90’s made for TV movie called Generation X. And on top of that, what better movie to bridge the gap between old cheesy movies and the much better modern movies? So with that in mind, as well as coming off of Fantastic Four, I looked up Generation X and watched what is easily the worst X-Men movie even considering some people’s dislike of The Last Stand and Wolverine. The other thing that is pretty funny is that someone who looks back on it now makes it look like just a cheap rip off of the X-Men, although Emma Frost is a little more high profile nowadays.
Fantastic Four
Fantastic Four 1994
It’s time for yet another classic cheesy movie goodness, and while this is the newest of these movies that I’ve seen, being from the 90’s, the fact that the budget was so low that it looks and feels at least five years older than what it actually is. If there’s one piece of trivia that any superhero movie fan knows it’s this Fantastic Four movie directed by Roger Corman. It was never intended to be released in theaters or even on home video, the studio decided that it was worth the small budget that they gave the movie in order to retain the rights to the Fantastic Four so they could make a better version of the movie in the near future. This is the exact same reason why all of the recent non-Marvel studio movies are being rebooted and churned out so quickly. If they didn’t make these movies then Fox, Sony, and whatever other studio would lose the rights to make another movie using those characters. But while it was never intended to be released, no one that actually worked on the movie knew that fact so they all put their full effort into it, just at a dirt cheap salary.
Superhero Shorts: Uncanny X-Men
Superhero Shorts: Uncanny X-Men
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 getting ready to start watching the X-Men movies by watching a fan made series based on the Phoenix Saga. Below you can watch the first episode “Birth”, or you can visit their YouTube channel at ThrowbackStudioz.
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon 1980
As I continue my venture into the great chasm of cheesy superhero movies I decided to seek out the 1980 movie of Flash Gordon. There was very little about this movie that I knew of going into it. I knew the hero was named Flash Gordon, the villain was named Ming the Merciless, Queen did the theme song which I had heard, and of all people my older sister actually gave it her endorsement. I do have a Facebook account, but I only use it for old friends and family. I posted about the poll I had on what to watch, mentioning the cheesy movies like Flash Gordon was tied with X-Men and my sister wrote “Flash Gordon isn’t cheesy, it’s awesome!” After watching it, I agree. It’s awesome, horribly horribly awesome. This movie made me laugh harder and more often than the Avengers. There was so much wrong with this movie, but it played it all so earnestly I just had to buy into it.
Superhero Shorts: Shamelessly She-Hulk
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 is an unique edition about an unfinished feature length fan-film from filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist and his fan-film in-progress: Shamelessly She-Hulk. Below you can check out the directors reel, or you can visit their YouTube channel at OCPmovie, or you can visit the Orange Cow Productions website.
Masters of the Universe
Masters of the Universe 1987
First off, I’d like to thank everyone who voted in my poll, it was a very close race but in the end most of you wanted to see me review some classic cheesy superhero movies. I’m not sure if some of you wanted to torture me with bad movies, or if you are more like myself and actually enjoy watching these low budget (or in some cases high budget) over the top cheesy superhero flicks. I have a lot to choose from but I went with a movie that was actually on the list of 33 of the worst superhero movies ever made. Of course, it wasn’t one of the movies that I chose because I enjoyed it a lot when I was younger, and ever since it was mentioned, I’ve been dying to watch it again. It’s got Dolph Lundgren as a guy who never wears a shirt, playing a character who usually only wields a sword, and yet he manages to grab as many huge laser guns as he can get a hold of. It’s got the great Billy Barty playing comic relief, and it’s Courtney Cox’s feature film debut. And yet it takes itself so seriously that you just have to get wrapped up in it all, and for the first time in quite a while, Jena actually sat with us and was invested during the entire movie. She cheered for He-Man and booed Skeletor, saying she hated “the stupid skeleton guy” and that she would “break his bones”. It was great seeing her get so worked up.
My history with comic books
It may seem odd for someone to start up a site about superhero movies without having a strong connection to comic books. The two things go hand in hand as the superhero genre started with comic books, almost all superhero films are adapted from comic books, and those that aren’t often become comic books after the fact. But I’ve said from the beginning that I’m not a huge comic book fan, I haven’t read dozens of X-men or Superman comics. In fact I can count the number of comics of either of those two that I’ve read on one hand. But that’s not to say I’ve never read any comic books. I’ve read a few, I own a few, and here is where you can get pretty much my entire experience with comics.
The Avengers
The Avengers 2012
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably seen and read a dozen reviews of The Avengers already. This is one of them. I probably won’t say anything you haven’t already heard before but at least I’ve watched over 40 superhero movies already this year so while I may not be an expert, I may see things at a slightly different angle having seen so many similar movies. But let me just cut to the point here, it was awesome. It was better than any of the Marvel lead ups and while it may not have taken the top spot for my favorite superhero movie of all time, it’s definitely made it into the top 10. But first let me do a quick rundown in case you haven’t actually seen the Avengers yet and would rather pick one or two out of the five lead-in movies to watch first to prepare. If you want more information about the Tesseract, the big blue macguffin that everyone is after then watch Captain America to see what it’s capable of. If you want to learn more about the main villain of the movie, watch Thor to learn why he’s doing what he’s doing, and you also get a hint of the aliens in the universe even if it’s not the exact same ones. If you want to see more from S.H.I.E.L.D., watch Iron Man 2 to see how they began preparing for the Avengers Initiative and a hint of what Black Widow is capable of.
Flights, Tights, and Movie Nights 