Tag Archives: Comics

Comic movie roundup

March 3, 2007 – 5:38 pm

I saw Ghost Rider on Thursday night. No extended review, just a quick note that it was a fun take on the character, and Nicholas Cage’s usual Elvis impersonation acting method (and Elvis was no great actor either BTW - sorry Kristi) didn’t get in the way of enjoying it; it actually kind of fit in well.

That being said, I was almost happier to see the previews for FF 2 and Spider-man 3. I know both these trailers have been out for a while, but this was the first time I’d seen either of them, and I’m glad I waited and saw them in the theater. Here’s my updated take on both:

FF: Looks like they’re really doing the Silver Surfer well (from the little the preview revealed), and I just hope that his story is true to the original comic (in general, at least), and if so that the reveal of the big G is impressively huge, and not cheesy. This is one area where I’m nervous that it will be a difficult piece of CGI work to pull off. I also hope (assuming this happens) that they don’t leak anything at all about it in any previews, so the general audience can be surprised.

Spider-man 3: Contrary to the ongoing predictions, it looks very much like it’s going to be Sandman and the Goblin as the primary villains, despite all the black costume related Venom speculation. My best guess is that IF Venom shows up in this one, it will be at the very end (possibly even an after-credits deal, which are common in the Marvel movies). Peter will probably get rid of the costume towards the end, and there will be a short lead in segment to set up the next movie, which would have to have Venom as the villain. This would be fine with me, since I always thought it was too much to try and squeeze in to one movie, and Sandman and Harry have complex enough stories to fill up the movie on their own.

Also, 300 is coming up, which will join the ranks of comic book based movies that most people won’t know are based on comic books, among others like Constantine, Hellboy, History of Violence, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, Sin City, etc. (OK, I guess a lot of people probably know about Sin City, since it’s even presented in a very comic book -ish style).

BTW, if you’re in the mood for a funny British humor take on comic book movies in general, check out the recent Geek Syndicate podcast’s 3 part episode (#20), in which they review many comic book based movies past and present, including the Superman and Batman series. They give a good rip on the ones that deserve it, including touching on the Smallville TV series.

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Comic book movie suggestion

July 23, 2006 – 10:43 pm

Following on the conversation about Spider-man 3 over on Dan’s blog, I think I’ve stumbled onto a suggestion that I think would work for pretty much every super-hero comic book based movie that I can think of.

The basic idea is that the movie (or at least sequels) should always open with a fight scene during which the primary hero is fighting a second string villain that they would be unlikely to use as a “main” villain in future movies. Right off the bat, scene #1, should be this battle, after which the defeated villain is carted away and never seen again for the rest of the movie, and the primary plot gets kicked off from there. The example in this case would be how I described my opinion of the role Sandman should play in SM3 (see Dan’s post for more specifics on that).

This would give you the following benefits:

  1. More action, without needing to set it up. People going to see super hero movies for the most part probably want a healthy dose of good, CGI enhanced fight scenes. Of course, you usually have to have the final confrontation with the main baddy of the film, but it really sucks if that’s the only fight in the whole movie. (It’s even worse if the scene is not that good, but enough about Fantastic Four).
  2. Being able to use characters you otherwise wouldn’t. Most of the mainstream comic book characters that movies are being made around these days have a large cast of villains that have accumulated over the decades of storytelling. Many of them would not make good “primary villains” for a single movie, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t make the cut until the 20th or so movie in the series, which even the most popular lines will probably never get to.
  3. Not wasting “main plot time”. This one is critical. One only needs to watch the original Batman movie series to see the quality go downhill dramatically as the continued to cram more bad guys into each film. Now, that’s not to say that avoiding it in this case would have made those ones any better, but still, it’s fairly clear to see that when you’re adapting what was originally told as a long running story (often over a period of time measured in years rather than minutes), it’s best to keep the storylines focused and not try to include extraneous stuff that only takes away time from the real story.

Another acceptable way of including additional characters (other than the opening fight scene idea described above) is like they’ve done (well) with the goblin storyline throughout the Spider-man movies so far - Harry’s story is a subplot that continues to develop and tie the movies together while still allowing each one to be fairly self-contained.

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Most people can skip this post

December 4, 2005 – 11:57 pm

Hulk181… since I don’t know who else is interested to know that I just heard that Damon Lindelof (co-creator and exec. producer of Lost) is a long-time comic book fan and has recently been asked to do a “new” version of the first meeting between Wolverine and the Hulk.

The cover to the right was from the first story where these two characters met, way back in November of 1974. The new story will be “another” first meeting, due to the magic of multiple “universes” or separate realities that are often prevalent in comics. This new story will occur in Marvel’s “ultimate” universe, which from what I’ve heard (from Nathan and others) is a lot more like the recent movies. I think it was designed to make a fresh start for new readers who wanted to get into the characters they saw in the movies, but didn’t want to jump into a long history of pre-existing storylines that have been going on for decades.

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Comic book trivia/knowledge

October 30, 2005 – 2:39 pm

Judging by the surprising number of comments I’ve gotten this morning on my Green Lantern t-shirt (people recognizing it just be the logo, since there’s no words), I’m going to reconsider a conversation I had a while back with some of you.

I remember saying something about how I always thought that it was common knowledge that Superman’s “real” (Kryptonian) name was Kal-El (even before the Nicholas Cage baby thing). Several people said that I only knew that because I was a comic geek, but I was thinking that most people knew this (even if they didn’t read comics, since it was in the movies).

So, now for a completely unscientific poll: How many of you knew Superman’s Kryptonian name was Kal-El?

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Podcast recommendation for Nathan

September 20, 2005 – 9:30 pm

I remember Nathan recently asking for recommendations for podcasts in a blog comment, but I can’t find it right now, so I’ll make my suggestion here.

Nathan, I think you may like Alpha Rant, which is put together by the two brothers that produce the Alpha Shade web comic. I don’t actually read the comic, but I enjoy their commentary, and since you’re into the web comic scene I thought you might get a kick out of it. Then again, you may get offended too, because they have some pretty harsh opinions about the general web comic culture and most of the people involved.

They usually split the cast into two parts, one in which they talk about just their comic and the process of what went into creating it for that week, and feedback they’ve gotten, etc. Part two is more general conversation about whatever, but it’s usually also about the web comics scene, or other pop culture stuff. They attend a lot of the cons, and some of their reflections on the presentations (and presenters) are some of the best episodes.

As a side note, their site is the single site that I’ve seen that uses Flash well (it’s pretty much an all-Flash site), and makes me reconsider my strict anti-Flash opinion. Now I’m strictly anti-Flash-unless-you-do-it-this-good. One cool thing is that they do their comic in Flash as well, so all the art is vector and the pages will resize with the browser, etc.

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Batman Begins

June 23, 2005 – 12:24 pm

I just realized I never posted my review on this movie (see Nathan’s and Dan’s for more info).

Short summary: by far the best Batman adaptation ever (TV or movie). The original Tim Burton one was OK, but it should have been called “the Joker” as that was really the main good thing about it.

The casting in this one was perfect. I don’t think there’s ever been a better Bruce Wayne or Batman characterization. The rest of the cast (Kane, Freeman, Liam Neeson, the Scarecrow guy, and even Katie Holmes) were excellent as well. This movie I think is on par with Spider-man in terms of great casting.

Technical details (such as costumes, sets, etc.) were all excellent, although it isn’t hard to improve over the bat-nipple costumes in the recent films. (Although this movie was not without nipples itself, but I digress). I did think they could have zoomed out a little bit on a lot of the fight scenes; I think they tried to give you the feeling of confusion with all the close-up fight coverage, but I’d rather just actually see what’s going on.

There were, of course, both logical flaws and minor inconsistencies from the original comic plots, but, as I’ve said before, I don’t mind those at all in a good movie. The only time the differences between the movie and the comic really bothered me in a comic movie was the first X-Men movie. Certainly nothing to prevent the movie from being enjoyed, however.

I will however, stop short of saying that it was the best comic adaptation movie that I have seen. Although it is certainly my favorite, I would have to say the best would still be Spider-man 1, in terms of general audience appeal. (Also, I’m not counting some like Sin City or Constantine, since I haven’t seen them, but I think my general audience point would still apply there).

Anyway, go see it, if only to get the memory of the other Bat-movies out of your head.

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That’s commercialism for you

June 16, 2005 – 11:56 am

Been seeing a lot of this lately - here’s a comic adaptation of a movie which is itself a comic adaptation - full circle!

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For all you Mac lovers out there…

February 28, 2005 – 7:32 pm

Large version (~50 MB on a slooow server)

Small version (This one is a lot faster. Can’t see the video that well, but the humor is in the audio anyway.)

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Catwoman - “worst movie” honors & general comments on “comic book” movies

February 26, 2005 – 4:17 pm

This started out as a reply to Dan’s article about this movie winning the “worst movie” awards, but it got a little long, so I decided to post it here for everyone to read.
Read More »

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