Super hero movies make life worth living...

At least when they don't suck anyway.

Making a live-action super hero movie is a delicate procedure. If you love comic books, you get an image of how they would sound and act in real life. Because that makes up so much of the characters allure, if the director dreams up something different it can ruin the experience.



Every now and then the director will nail the character dead on. Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark. I can't imagine getting the casting any better on that one. I wouldn't rank Iron man as the best super hero movie ever, but it is certainly in the top three for me.

Unfortunately, when it comes to sequels they are rarely as good as the original. One of my favorite characters of all time is from the Iron Man comics. They allude to him being included in the next movie when Terrence Howard looks at the MK II Iron Man armor and says "next time, baby".



The character I am talking about is a guy named "War Machine". It is basically the same thing as Iron Man's Mk III armor painted black, with a Gatling gun and rocket launcher in the back. Its funny because I never liked Iron man or Tony Stark until the movie, I always read the comics in hopes that War Machine would show up and blow everything up.



I worry about how they are going to include him because sometimes it is better to leave a character out completely then to put a crappy version in. E.G. Spiderman 3.



How do you screw Venom up? It is not the worlds most difficult equation to get right.
BIG DUMB WEIGHT LIFTER GUY+
BLACK SUIT THAT LOOKS LIKE SPIDERMAN=
VENOM

The problem was that the director of the Spiderman Movies didn't like the Venom Character. He even says so on the special features of the blu-ray disc. Now don't get me wrong, I loved the first two movies. In fact, I would call the 2nd Spiderman movie the best superhero movie ever. I like Sam Raimi, and I don't mind Topher Grace. It just happens that they together made the perfect mess out of the character.

WORST IDEA EVER

I would rather not get to see the character than see a "re-envisioned" version.
(sometimes you have to change some things to make a more interesting movie. In venom's case he was changed because Sam Raimi just didn't like him at all)



Comic book fans can be a brutal group to make movies for. They will always critique the way things appear in the film. I don't think that it is just fanboys being jerks though. Some times film makers get material that should be an easy home run (commercially and critically) and they drop the ball something fierce.



The first two X-Men movies were great. Good cross section of characters, pretty darn good casting, good story, entertaining action.

Then they made the third one.

I could probably write two or three weeks worth of blog entries about what was wrong with that movie. Killing Xavier? What was that? The only redeeming guy in the whole movie and you kill him? And Cyclops? I was almost glad when they off'd him. I felt like buying his whiny ass a "cheer up emo kid" t-shirt. They got mad lazy with that one. Now they are making a "wolverine" spin off. Rumor has it that it is just going to be made up of stock footage of Hugh Jackman singing at the tony awards with facial hair superimposed onto him. SWEET. Even if that was true, it would still be better than the third movie.



Sometimes the opposite of what I am saying happens. V for Vendetta was (I think) a 5 part comic book that they serialized into a graphic novel. I can honestly say that the movie was much better than the graphic novel. I absolutely loved the move. One of my all time favorite films. The book, I was pretty "meh" about.



(if you are thinking of adding this one to your netflix queue, be aware that it is the only one that I am talking about today that is rated R. It is very violent, and has some profanity.)

Marvel has made a few movies that weren't received very well by anyone.


Hulk was great. Ramsey and I saw it when we were first dating, and we almost got kicked out of the theater for laughing out loud at all the serious parts. The Toyota leap when the bad guy is getting blown up does not build suspense very effectively.
I have played original PlayStation games with higher resolution than the special effects in this movie.

They are about to release a new one with Edward Norton as the lead. It didn't look too promising to me at first, but the newest trailer has me at least wondering. We will see.



I don't really know why people hated daredevil so much. He is a dumb character, but I didn't really mind the movie. In fact, I liked it quite a bit. Maybe Ben Affleck is too pretty of a man or something. You couldn't very well have a real blind guy do that sword fight in the park with Jennifer Garner could you? Maybe mixing Ben Affleck with Colin Farrell caused a man-beauty explosion that made everyone talk crap about it.



Batman Begins: now this is how you do a comic movie.

I liked the first two Tim Burton Batman movies, but the third and forth ones killed the franchise. DC knew that they would need to start from scratch to make the property profitable again. My only problem with the first movie is that Christian Bale's "batman" deep voice sounds really funny. Small issue to nitpick.

One of my favorite things about that movie was the tumbler.



When I saw spy footage of this new Batmobile, I thought it looked ridiculous. It only took 30 seconds into the chase scene in Batman Begins to change my mind. Very inventive way of introducing the vehicle, and a great use of it as a plot device.

I read part of the plot synopsis for "The Dark Knight" tonight, and I have to admit that it doesn't sound as good as the first one. I will reserve judgement though, because Batman Begins surprised me just about every way that it could have.



I have never been too keen on the Superman movies. I loved (and still love) Christopher Reeve as Superman. I also really liked the new guy. I think the problem is that you can only be concerned about Lex Luthor's kryptonite stash so many times. You would figure that he would run out at some point.
As a little kid I had a Superman costume that my aunt made me for Halloween. I wore it until it disintegrated at the seems. Watching Superman might be boring, but running around the house as him will never get old.

I found an old picture of myself in the costume. There is Majesty in this picture.



Man I can't believe how far picture technology has come since we took that picture. thats like negative megapixels! Brings back the memories...