***Contains spoilers***
Although it has to be said, this is one film that is pretty dark anyway.
Literally, about half of it is set off in Asgard again, much of which is just not terribly well lit. Last time I could blame this on the airline seat in front of me, but my local Odeon cinema has less excuse. When we get to gaze upon the famous rainbow bridge, we have to wonder just how the Asgardian sun managed to come out without the rest of that world noticing.
I'm afraid I found all these scenes to be, in every sense of the word, dull. Even the pseudo 3D barely noticed, although admittedly this made for a much more convincing effect than the exaggerated cardboard cutout look of other movies lately that have lazily been converted from 2D. If you're making a 3D film then please just use 3D cameras already.
As a result, I found myself switching off and tuning out so much of this that when it all suddenly went into slow motion I realised that I must have just missed something important. Hang on, wasn't Thor's mum in this a moment ago? Has she just died or something? Oh, right, she did die, and I missed it, even though I had apparently been looking straight at the screen throughout. I'm sorry for your loss Thor, I for one missed her immediately.
Erik: "Your brother isn't coming, is he?"
Thor: "Loki is dead."
Erik: "Thank God! [BEAT] I'm so sorry."
I have much better things to say about the other half of the film - that's the stuff set on Earth, in daylight!
Early on the story follows Jane Foster investigating a levitating automobile in London, and I admit that at this I was duped into erroneously believing two things:
1. That this film was about to tie into the recent floating phenomenon seen just two episodes earlier in the TV series Agents Of SHIELD, an effect which had even been caused by a virus from one of Loki's aliens in Avengers Assemble.
2. That Jane was turning into good character material.
Nah. On both counts. Jane spends most of the rest of this one in need of being rescued. :( Ah well.
These Earth scenes are realised and played much more for comedy though, and as a result they garnered quite a few laughs from the giggly yobs sitting just behind me annoyingly repeating lines. Being a Hollywood movie set in London, and also being screened in that city, one line that particularly meritted some chuckles was 'Greenwich'. We expect a film by Edgar Wright to set such major global events in such a mundane sounding suburb, but not Marvel. Excellent!
All the same, for all the enjoyment that this one place name caused around our theatre this evening, much funnier surely had to be that commuter informing Thor that he could somehow get to Greenwich by travelling a mere three tube stops from Charing Cross station.
Yes, the Hollywood rule that all references to journeys on the London Underground must be complete nonsense remains intact, as does casting American actors who cannot do British accents, and one rather US-looking apartment.
However lest you get the wrong idea about me, I found this film okay, and indeed amusing for all the right reasons as well. Having played similar comedic roles in The IT Crowd and Frequently Made Mistakes About Time Travel, guest actor Chris O'Dowd now seems happily typecast as a stressed single office worker. Again both his scenes here are funny simply because we are expecting him to be. The presence of the ITV newsreader is embracing for similar reasons.
Also nice cameos from Captain America (Chris Evans) and Himself (Stan Lee), the latter of whom appears to have had a rough year since Avengers Assemble. Is he in that mental ward for thinking that he was Hugh Heffner in Iron Man 1, Larry King in Iron Man 2, or himself in Rise Of The Silver Surfer? (bit of a shoe theme going on through this one too)
There were a few other bits of the story that I thought didn't work, however since I didn't bother following it much, perhaps I should keep those to myself. (But the convergence's occuring naturally every 5,000 years still sounds like too round a base-10 Earth number to be mere chance, and the same alignment by definition doesn't just happen on Earth but on all those other worlds too. Oh, look what I've just gone and done.)
Ultimately though, I'm glad to have got to a cinema in time to catch this, and also pleased that Nigel and I failed in our attempt to see it on its UK release night recently, simply because the preceding episodes of the TV series Agents Of SHIELD have since been broadcast. Yes, the one time British TV screened a US series in sync with America, we somehow got the tie-in film eight days before the States did. Thanks Marvel UK!
Thor 3? Oh all right then, if you must.
However if I'm honest, I'm only following the Thor movies because of the other cinematic worlds that they themselves converge with.
:)Labels: comics, films
There are two sides to this film about a mild-mannered kid who gains super powers but at the cost of his sight - what we do see, and what we don't.
The story, the characters and the acting are all satisfactory, as is the tough crime-ridden version of New York unpacked here. Ben Affleck in the title role of Matt Murdock / Daredevil is okay, but for me the film's real gems are the supporting cast.
Jon Favreau as Matt's partner-in-law is so bold in his abuse of his best friend's 'disability' that he sparkles in every scene he's in. Likewise Joe Pantoliano fleshes out the perpetually cameraless reporter Ben Urich as a man of depth, integrity and compassion. Even Colin Farrell as Bullseye turns his black-hearted deeds into opportunities to make us laugh, partly because he's such a lovable Oirish scoundrel, but mostly because of his proiceless facial expressions.
Oh, and Derrick O'Connor appears fleetingly as Father Everett, but even he refuses to dumb down his position into a stereotype. Everett is a priest with attitude. Well, in a way everyone here is. Apart from maybe the priest bit.
And yet the story that these characters enact is so simple and by-the-numbers that it does miss a certain sense of there being much else going on in these guys' heads, or indeed in New York. While writing of this simplicity, I'm intrigued to learn that an additional character played by Coolio had been completely cut from the final edit, perhaps contributing to this. I guess his scenes must still take place in this story, but leaving no evidence for us to pick up on.
Although I'm afraid that, for me, the character who suffers most from the realisation's baldness is Jennifer Garner's Elektra.
Even before she has appeared in the movie, just ahead of her in the coffee shop Matt is suddenly blessed with the additional power of either telepathy or foresight. Super hearing or not, he cannot possibly know that she is about to turn into this shop. Unless of course she's outside telling someone, but she enters alone.
A few minutes later, when she and Matt play-fight each other in a local playground, neither of them seems to realise that they are both somewhat blowing their secret identities. (actually I'm not sure whether she even has one of those) When it rains on her face, enabling Matt's super-hearing to construct a picture of her in his mind, well, it's not raining on her face. Just look at it. When Bullseye murders her dad using Daredevil's cane, it really isn't enough to implicate the man without fear, but she assumes his total motiveless guilt anyway.
Later, when she sets up all those timed bags of flour to descend in her apartment just so that she can stab them as part of training for her misplaced revenge, in so doing wrecking her apartment, you have to wonder just how sky-high her cleaning budget must be. To do this workout, has she in fact broken into a bad guy's flat?
When she then captures Daredevil and unmasks her pa's murderer, only to discover that underneath the pointy mask is the man she loves, her enormous turnaround over his guilt is instantaneous. No incredulity, no dawning of realisation, nothing. Hmmm, no.
Even when she dies, entirely because she has just thrown her weapon away by giving Bullseye so much time to dodge it, she gets pierced right through her body twice, and her heart is shown to explicitly stop. I hope when she was later revived for the spin-off Elektra, she duly had scars.
Not that I don't like Elektra or anything, but come on. Fictional characters have to behave in a way that makes sense. If they don't, then you literally don't have a story. I just find it ironic that a movie about a man who has to daily construct the a bigger picture from such subtle clues around him, paradoxically discourages this attitude in its audience.
By the end of the film, even Daredevil himself has lost something under the surface, as he is beaten to a pulp, before getting up and... presently just forgetting about it. Like I said, not much depth to the story here, but at least there is one, and one which for the main part works, when Matt isn't hearing things that he could not possibly hear. (eg. the three spinning combination locks on the roof of his apartment, or that no-one is watching him when he takes off his mask in front of a cityscape)
Good movie though, I thought they did a nice job with this one. Matt's sleeping in a sensory deprivation tank to 'turn off' his powers a nice touch.
In 2003, despite a few effects that haven't dated so well, Daredevil secured Marvel's successful fresh foray into the cinema. From today's perspective, it's actually a surprise that they never made any sequels to this.
But hey, Ben Affleck is still bankable. So maybe they will.
We'll just have to wait and
(available here)
Labels: comics, films
Q. Who is the comic relief in Iron Man Three?
A. Everyone!
For example...
Tony Stark: After the slow wallowing of the second film, it's great to see him returning to his stand-up comedy persona from the first one again. In this outing he has to balance it with panic attacks following the events of The Avengers, but even here his defensive quips never let up. I like the way in which he avoids the subject, so that the film doesn't have to.
'Kid': It's not that often that a child character comes across as anything other than baggage, but Ty Simpkins had us all (the rest of the cinema and myself) chuckling out loud throughout his scenes.
Mandarin: Ben Kingsley's finest hour. What's that? He once played Gandhi? No I think you'll find that was Trevor Slattery. Hollywood often portrays British people badly. Again all the laughter here in this London cinema tonight proved otherwise. Or maybe those lines were extra ones just for us, like they got in China...
Happy Hogan: With a name like that, we're expecting jokes, and this security guard who never misses Downton Abbey doesn't disappoint. Again with the British jokes.
The Iron Patriot: Yes, it's the US government's rebranding of Iron Man, including changing the outfit's colours. Priceless.
Pageant Judge:
Need. I. Say. More. (true believer™)
Even the opening credits are a parody of the 1970s action genre, and as such might make more sense where they belong at the start of the film to set the scene for the flashback opening. A coupla' decades too retro I grant you, but still more sense than at the end.
I could go on and on here, but while this movie kept us guffawing right through to the brilliant final post-credits scene with Bruce Banner, that's about as laugh-out-loud as it got. We didn't scream in hysterics, we merely chuckled, but we did keep on chuckling.
There is a little drama in here, such as when Pepper appears to fall to her death, because Stark clean forgets he can change into Iron Man to save her, but most of this sitcom is padded out with action. The sequence when Iron Man has to save a dozen people falling from an exploding aeroplane is absolutely breathtaking, and all the more so in 3D.
Also most of the technology on show here is a thing to behold too. Is this story really set today in 2013? Surely that should be more like 2113?!? Ah, well, that's the quasi-futuristic Marvel Universe for you, which here even still retains organisations like the evil Roxxon conglomerate.
Best of all, this threequel returns to the first movie's outlook of being principally a Tony Stark film. It should always be about the guy inside the suit. Guy Pearce finally gets to make a good movie too, rather than merely a popular one.
Overall, I'm glad to have seen this on the big screen (with the big speakers), although disappointed that there are further scenes we missed due to being in the wrong country, and 4DX elements with the same notation. Also I clean forgot to pick up the audio description headphones from reception, which I'm sure would have clarified the plot for me, and further enhanced the 3D.
All the same, nitpicks aside, this is one threequel that succeeds throughout, while at the same time making it all look so effortless.
For a film so packed with gags, it's impressive that Iron Man Three doesn't really drop any clangers.
'Tony Stark will return'? He'd better.
(available here)Labels: comics, films
Captain Haddock: "Since I inherited Paparanic's ship - the Golden Fleece - we've been living in a shooting gallery, and we're the pigeons!"
I seem to be developing a habit of taping films that I think are cartoons, only to discover after they've started that they are in fact live-action. Two years ago it was Racing Stripes, last year it was Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, and now this morning lo and behold I find my inept tradition continuing with Tintin and the Golden Fleece.
Y'know, I'm actually quite encouraged that BBC2 even showed this at 10:50am this bank holiday morning. It's over fifty years old, dubbed, and features alcohol consumption (Tintin may not drink but Snowy does), a knife fight, and Haddock smoking a substance from which he almost passes out, aye-aye.
Not to mention, though probably just on this airing, much of the time this dubbed movie is almost a second out of sync. Well that happens to movies a lot in this modern digital age. (eg. The Aristocats here and Bicycle Thieves here) Hey, remember analogue - back when sync issues were such a rarity? Boy, I'm so glad those careless days are over…
Yes, mostly speaking, I found this to be a truly enchanting and charmingly bonkers trip back in time. Back to when the currency of Turkey was something called the "Turkish Pound", all dogs were super-intelligent, and the whole world looked like Eastmacolor. Really, all this perpetually bright July sunshine makes for location work that is absolutely stunning. As if they need to showcase the stock even further, in one scene they even manage to fit in a big colourful parrot:
Even the lounge music here is as fluffy and soft as the sofa you used to watch (Inigo) Pipkin(s) on as a kid.
The characters are each introduced… well, no they're not. They first come into frame with all the presence of a preceding movie that I haven't seen, which is quite impressive given how this is not a sequel. I guess we're expected to already know who everyone is from the famous comic strips that inspired this at the time brand-new adventure. Not being familiar with the source material, I decided to just view this as some sort of sequel to the recent 2011 movie, however given how I had almost completely forgotten that, I quickly gave up and just accepted this on its own merits.
While I found the style gorgeous, and the pace of the travelogue refreshing, the story did leave me increasingly mixed up. Professor Calculus' pendulum (which like his Super-Cuthbertoleum somewhat jars with the script's promotion of Tintin's use of his brain) would surely have given away the gold's location a lot earlier in their voyage. Why do the bad guys try to shoot Tintin instead of drowning him with Captain Haddock and his ship? And as for Tintin himself surviving the shooting, getting all the way back to the 'copter before his enemies, remaining unseen and taking over as its pilot all off camera… well, okay then. He can do that I suppose. After all, he is Tintin.
Apparently this adventure has a sequel - Tintin and the Blue Oranges.
I certainly look forward to seeing that in Eastmacolor.
(available, if you have enough Turkish Pounds, here)
Labels: comics, films
*Contains spoilers*
Writer: Mark Gruenwald
Penciler: Mike Manley
Inker: Danny Bulanadi
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Paul Becton
Editor: Howard Mackie
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco
Well I guess that depends upon your definition of the word 'last'. And 'tie-in'.
Anyway, while out searching for aliens, Quasar looks in on his old employers Project: Pegasus, and quickly finds himself fighting a giant metallic monster that has evolved from spare parts that Iron Man found on Battleworld. (during the above-mentioned Secret Wars) Quasar then successfully engineers it into a nearby bottomless pit, which isn't really bottomless, but short of going right through the Earth is about as close as you can get.
Along the way he helps out his job's successor there in the form of the new Security Chief - the Blue Shield. The rescue enables Quasar to pay some penance for his own failing in the role, and turns his regrets into a more positive force by reassuring the new guy afterwards, to avoid letting the cycle of self-blame repeat.
I gotta be honest and admit that I found this issue to be dull throughout, but that final page was so worth it. It shows the choice that our own failure confronts each of us with, in greater clarity than I think I've seen anywhere else.
Will the Blue Shield let his own psychological insecurity get the better of him, or will he overcome it? Will he choose to become a victim of the monster, or a survivor? Will he choose spiritual death, or life???
Click away now if you don't want to know the answer...
Tut. Temps.Labels: comics
Alistair and David watched me taking my shoes off in the cinema, and reaching into my rucksack. Alistair cheekily asked if I was getting out a pair of slippers. I retorted that he shouldn't have such a low opinion of me, before getting out my pair of slippers.
I intended to enjoy this film.
I'd found the two preceding movies in this trilogy to consecutively be fantastic, and, well, below average. Which was I going to opt for regarding The Dark Knight Rises? It could have gone either way.
In the event, there were a number of similarities with the second film, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. It again began with the principle villains having their faces covered for several minutes. The bad guy also kept killing his helpers on a whim, which again made a mockery of the survivors' ongoing loyalty to him. And the perceived inability of the public to cope with hearing the truth? Well, actually Commissioner Gordon seems to have slowly realised what an lousy end that made to the last movie.
At the outset here he's trying to come clean and make a speech admitting to Harvey Dent's succumber to corruption in the preceding film, but in the event he just can't go through with it. What happens instead is that the black-hearted Bane steals the script from him, and proceeds to deliver it himself. Oh, and launch an enormous terrorist attack on Gotham. Well, I can sort of see his point there - I was rather offended by the end of the second movie too.
Goading Bane on is the police department's decision to gather en masse and form an enormous inviting target for him, which disturbingly reminded me of the way I witnessed them lining up at the Olympics this past summer.
It's here that the film really gets teeth though. Again as with the last one, director Christopher Nolan wisely saves up his budget of IMAX shots, and then splurges a lot of them on this mammoth sequence of destruction. Up until this point the many overhead shots of the city in this ratio have been stunningly beautiful. Now however, everywhere you look, the world is going to hell, in galling detail. It's compelling to watch, yet in an appalling way.
In fact, the IMAX has got to be my main praise point of the whole movie. To put it simply, there is no other moving picture format in the world that can better 70mm, and on the biggest screen in Britain too! (20m x 26m) Spectacular.
However the on-off nature of IMAX's 1.43:1 aspect ratio once again makes the whole thing feel unfinished, and is a hard shortcoming to understand when the budget is approaching $2million per minute. One IMAX action sequence towards the end features a single shot in the middle in mere widescreen, which I'm sure the editor must have debated long and hard over whether to use.
But no matter how upfront this movie is in showing us the sheer enormity of the odds that Batman is up against this time, the soundtrack doesn't keep up, and in so doing subtracts from its authenticity.
There is such a thing as recording dialogue too clearly, and while that may sound like a harsh criticism, the fact remains that crowds of people just do not stand there in complete silence while someone else is speaking. In several scenes, there is no footsteps track, which when you can see a character using a flight of stairs really notices. I have a theory that maybe the steps were visible in IMAX, while the sound may have been mixed for the widescreen version which cropped off the characters' feet, but without forking out another twenty quid I now have no way of checking. How great was Alfred's resignation scene, but for how unnaturally isolated his and Bruce's dialogue was?
Overall, I found this a challenging story to follow, although I reckon that I got about 75% of it, which for me tends to be the going rate for movies by the brainy Chris Nolan.
Still, lead actor Christian Bale claims back the series as his own in this one (last time he got mugged of it by Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart), not least because it returns to being a movie about Bruce Wayne. For most of this film he is crippled, often limping around with a stick, as he slowly overcomes his increasing age, battle scars and depression to fight the good fight as Batman one last time.
Oversight-wise, there are some common action-movie clichés sprinkled throughout the production (eg. the beeping countdown that can predict to the second when a bomb will detonate due to instability) but none of this damages the film's tone. It's an awesome depiction of what can happen when simple worldviews fail to respect others, and a reminder that everyone's worldview is a similarly simple one.
Including mine and yours.
(available here)
(review of Batman Begins here)
(review of Batman: Gotham Knight here)
(review of The Dark Knight here)Labels: comics, films
As you can tell from the title above, in the UK this movie has two names.
In the opening title-card, it's Marvel's Avengers Assemble. In the end credits, it's Marvel's The Avengers.
Apparently some accountant got afraid that British viewers might confuse the original name The Avengers with the slightly later 1960s ITC series starring Patrick MacNee. Really, I think that ship sailed fifty years ago now.
Mind you, Avengers Assemble is clearly the better title, even if it does appear to have been spliced in a bit harshly.
Quibbling over, I can't remember the last time that I saw a film which I enjoyed so much right from start to finish. My expectations had been set high over the past few years, and blow me if when this multi-crossover-sequel finally showed up, it didn't go and meet all of them.
Sorry, double negative - it met my high expectations!
With so many leads already established, very little time gets invested in introductions. Even Nick Fury - who's only really appeared before now in little-seen cameos - shows up in scene one and immediately carries the film.
Despite a huge returning cast, everyone gets plenty of screen time to themselves. Even the individual films' styles are paid attention to. Bruce Banner's appearance in South America comes with a similar sweeping tracking shot to in The Incredible Hulk. Tony Stark and Peppa continue to get plenty of wordy banter as they had in Iron Man and Iron Man 2. When Thor shows up, it's initially to battle in a dark bleak landscape not unlike Asgard in Thor. Even Captain America, who really should look out of place after his movie was set during wartime, admits that he fits right into another military setting.
However this movie isn't a disjointed jigsaw of different films. All the connections that I wanted to see made were. Thor has a fight with Iron Man. Then… well heck, at some point everyone has a fight with everyone else. It's sort of the comic book way.
Not to suggest that comic books are all about fighting. If you ask me, a lot of Marvel's success has been down to the amount of talking the characters are apt to do, and again, much of this movie is dialogue based. I dare say there are reviews out there that accuse the film of dragging during these scenes, but I found this a huge opportunity for the characters to breathe. When our arguing heroes begin to speculate that SHIELD is keeping stuff from them, the volatile politics of Thor begin to emerge again. Yes the plot is simple, and all the exploration of these scenes is the benefit.
Yet the comic book way is also about working together, and here the movie excels too. They partly form The Avengers because they have to, but also because they are unknowingly manipulated into it, both by Fury, and by Colson from beyond the grave. Tragic to see him die by the way - Colson's multiple appearances have made SHIELD more synonymous with him than with Fury. Still, a literally compelling loss.
The enormous battle across downtown New York just goes on for ages, and had my attention throughout. Five years ago at Trans Formers (another Marvel title!), when CGI robot battled CGI robot, I admit that I turned my brain off and carelessly drank it in. Not so here. There is tons going on, ingeniously led by Captain America, who as in the comic book knows everyone's strengths and how to maximise them.
Captain America: "Hulk? Smash."
The 3D throughout is awesome, but never more so than in this sequence. The Avengers whizz around the war-zone on various flying ships and pieces of debris, and we fly with them. What else is an action movie for?
Nitpicks, why sure I have a few, but again that's arguably part of the comics. Why didn't Iron Man let go of the nuclear missile earlier? Didn't Nick Fury get shot at the start? How did Loki know that that board was going to fly past at that exact moment for him to land on? And how are they supposed to have unwittingly captured a hologram?
Well, this film has a heck of a lot more answers than questions, which is a good ratio.
Hawkeye's good too, and Black Widow? She gets some great manipulative scenes, but in an otherwise male line-up, never overcomes looking like the token female. I don't know what to suggest there. Still, at least the writers don't seem to have noticed, and have written her as just another task-oriented bloke. I fully expect prequels for these two presently.
Alas, the New York location does make a few other recent Marvel movie characters conspicuous by their absence. The Fantastic Four, and Marvel's other more-famous-than-the-Avengers hero Spider-Man. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't Spidey's three movies the most popular Marvel film series ever? They so should not be rebooting that.
There were ten of us in that cinema. Yep, just ten. Three-tenths of our number saw the post-credits tag scene, for some reason moved up to between the 'opening' titles and the start of the end credits. (as is often the case these days, both shown at the end of the film) That scene was nothing to write home about, but nonetheless a reward for those of us who stayed.
Wonderful stuff.
And Stan Lee, still in Spider-Man 3 mode, shamelessly playing himself.
He's still the Avengers' biggest hero.
10/10.
(available here - Assembly may be required)Labels: comics, films
One of the most simplistic Marvel movies that I’ve seen, and all the better for it.
Breaking continuity with The Fantastic Four, Chris Evans this time becomes the hero in the red, white and blue fancy dress, but ironically no actual cap. For decades now superhero movies have sought to rationalise the plainly ridiculous costumes that the comics have drawn their main characters wearing, but this explanation soars over them all. Cap’s costume design is a costume – inherited from his initial career as the US military’s poster-boy. Genius. Was that in the original comic? I’ve no idea.
Not quite breaking continuity with Iron Man 2, Dominic Cooper becomes a younger version of Tony Stark’s dad. In a movie where all the characters are so easy to get a handle on, this can only make things even easier.
Embracing continuity with Iron Man, Samuel L Jackson returns briefly as Nick Fury, not just to close the film, but also in the final post-credits tag. In fact, hang on, thanks to the fantastic trailer for the following year’s Avengers movie, we also get Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark Jr, AND Chris Hemsworth as Thor!
How’s that for making me leave my local Auckland cinema on a high?!?
I’m well impressed with the way that Marvel have strung this build-up out. For all their millions of dollars, films have always been the poor relative of TV when it comes to a (cough) bigger picture. Stories in real life always take place in a much broader, more complex context, and Marvel Comics have done so well to reflect this with their shared universe down the decades. How wondrous that someone has finally seen fit to attempt to transfer this rare quality across media.
Oh. But, hang on second. Wasn’t superrich security guard Larry King poisoned in The Incredible Hulk?
Oh that's right, this is set in the 1940s. So this guy must be his dad:
(available here)
(with thanks to Herschel)Labels: comics, films
A couple of years ago, with nothing else to do on February 14th, I decided to start celebrating Valentine's Day alone, by treating myself to a private movie night in.
(I do this most Sunday nights anyway)
The past two years, my entirely arbitrary selections have been The Graduate and Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which have unintentionally turned the event into something of an 'alternative' Valentine's movie night.
This year I've been so busy that I've had to put it off for about six weeks, but tonight I finally got around to sitting down with this year's skewiff love story - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
Scott (Michael Cera who reminds me of a young Zach Braff) starts dating Ramona, but to continue to do so, he has to fight and defeat her seven evil exes. (Sesame Street have probably done a skit on this) They all have quite brilliant super-powers, however that's not much of a problem for Scott, because it turns out that he also has super powers. While this makes for dazzling effects, it also has the knock on consequence of making Scott's fear difficult to empathise with. Had he defeated them all using his wits, as he did with the vegan, well then…
As love stories go, it's hardly anyone's typical romcom. The titular Scott gets through relationships with four significant others during the course of the film's narrative, while Ramona, as you may have heard, has double that.
For a film with such a high number of liaisons going on, it's impressive that the film is really much more about fighting. And jokes.
Director Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz) eases a little off of the spoken witticisms in this one, preferring to focus more on spectacular visuals meshed with an awesome soundtrack. If the characters don't appeal, then it's really no matter. You can turn your brain off fairly early on and just enjoy the spell-bindingly retro ride for all it's worth.
Definitely one for the cinema. If only they had made it in 3D.
It's like watching Tron 2, but with gags.
(available here)
(with thanks to Herschel)Labels: comics, films
Ahh, the curse of Jim Carrey.
I mean there's no-one quite like Mr C. Literally, there isn't.
Combine this uniqueness with his refusal to make any sequels now that he's a superstar, and the result is two-fold:
1. A heap of awesome, original Jim Carrey movies.
2. A heap of spin-offs that cryingly miss him.
This one doesn't even try.
In fact, this has to be the worst non-Carrey sequel I've seen. It's as if they just gave up before even starting, which for the reason outlined above I can hardly blame them for. Of the two actors donning the eponymous mask this time, neither has anything like the extremity of insanity that the original lead had.
The other two of the four mask-wearers here fare better, but mainly because they're both CGI, which works wonders for the number of facial expressions that are pulled. The baby is still a baby though, an identity which is always the death knell of any possibly of humour in any movie ever. (babies kill comedy, just as certainly as a harp on the soundtrack will) On the other hand, or paw, the dog is awesome, and really should have been given more screen time.
The generic mother never gets to wear the mask, and for this we can be grateful. The thought of the maternal one employing extreme cartoon violence to self-righteously punish Loki for stealing her baby just doesn't bear zzzing about.
Speaking of whom, I've never read a Dark Horse comic (I consider them to be an unknown competitor), but given the presence of Loki and Odin here - and indeed their name-checking of Thor - I decided to assume that this tied-into the current Marvel movie shared-universe.
After all, any film can be improved by adding a bit of Stan Lee.
(available here)Labels: comics, films
Script: Stan Lee™
Plot and pencils: John Byrne
Inking and coloring: Tom Palmer
Lettering: Rick Parker
Chief: Jim Shooter
The insane scripting of the spectacular Stan Lee™ retells the titanic tragedy of the Silver Surfer's awe-inspiring origin, true believer™!
And tragedy is the word. Mild-mannered Norrin Radd gambles his homeworld Zenn-La, his freedom, Earth, and the woman he loves Shalla Bal, only to repeatedly lose, regain, and then relose each of them.
It's not as if it's even his fault, as the poor victim finds himself effectively playing piggy-in-the-middle for everything that he cherishes. And the two other players who are so much taller than he is? Well, one is Galactus (his new space-boss and devourer of worlds), while the other is…
One stunning secret of Stan's spectacular successes in creating such compelling heroes is their innate morality. Norrin is portrayed here as a paragon of virtue - fearlessly loving his soul mate and people to endless extremes, no matter how outrageous their ill-informed betrayals of him.
While there's not much about the Surfer to make you want to imagine being in his, uh, shoes I suppose, the sheer heroism that he displays is awesomely inspiring.
Just what other qualities is any 'super hero' supposed to have?
(with thanks to Herschel)Labels: comics
Writer: Chris Claremont
Penciler: June Brigman
Inker: Terry Austin
Letterer: Rick Parker
Colorist: Glynis Oliver
Editors: Bob Budiansky and Al Milgrom
Editor In Chief: Jim Shooter
Chapter 4 of the epic 12-part multi-crossover Questprobe series!
This time Durgan is after copying the X-Men's powers in the continued hopes of defeating the approaching Black Army from wiping out his pacifist planet.
As the inanimate bio-gem escapes from its captor the natter enenergy-egg (sic) to, via the Chief Examiner, take-over Magneto's powers, the master of magnetism's alter ego becomes a replication of his corporeal body as a pattern of energy within an alien computer. There he discusses philosophy with Durgan's energy pattern. Meanwhile back on Earth, Rogue must use the combined powers of Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four to defeat 'Magneto' without seriously harming his body.
Yes, author Chris Claremont packs a lot into these 24 pages, although there are two things that he misses:
1. Some motivation for Rogue's relinquishment of all her new superpowers. Okay she's hulk-green, but who in the Marvel Universe wouldn't take that on in order to hang onto all the cool new abilities that come with it? Those are the combined powers of the Human Torch, Spider-Man and the Hulk she has there!
2. Not that it's Claremont's fault, a proper conclusion. Although eventually printed here in Marvel Fanfare #33, these pages were originally intended to be issue #4 of the 12-part Questprobe series, which was sadly discontinued after issue #3. At time of writing, the outstanding 8 chapters remain unrealised, and with them Durgan's planet is still sadly doomed.
If any industry has the brand-loyalty to successfully run an 8-part, or even a one-part, conclusion to a 25-year-old failed comic series, then it surely has to be Marvel.
Finally, here's Magneto nicely pondering the pros and cons of standing up to pacifism:
"Has the capacity for violence really done humanity that much good?
Mahatma Ghandi spoke of a better way -- resistance to evil, to oppression, without resort to violence. The courage to take blows, but never return them. Christ's message, too.
Durgan's race embodies that noble ideal. Yet Durgan, in his zeal to save them, may in the process cost them what they hold most dear.
I wish him luck -- but I wonder if his people will thank him for what he's done on their behalf. And may yet do.
Will his victory be worth the price?"
Questprobe #1 featuring the Hulk reviewed here.
Questprobe #2 featuring Spider-Man reviewed here.
Questprobe #3 featuring the Human Torch and the Thing reviewed here.
With thanks to Herschel.
Labels: comics
"That's not a bad thing, finding out that you don't have all the answers. You start asking the right questions."
Q. Who goes to see a film called Thor?
A. Comic fans. Probably fans of Norse mythology too. Certainly not the general public.
The makers of Thor know this, and from the opening credits embrace their work like enthusiasts.
The bleak melodramatic world of Asgard might be quite hard to make accessible to newcomers, but for this audience it doesn't matter. It's set in the same shared universe as the Iron Man films, and embraces this to the point of making SHIELD's Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) the principal human opponent. (not to mention also tagging a teaser scene onto the end of Iron Man 2)
In fact the more I look, the more stuff emerges that only genre fans would appreciate. Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), J Michael Straczynski, and did I really fail to spot Hawkeye, also from next year's big Avengers movie? He was the marksman with the bow and arrow, right?
And as for that guy driving the pick-up truck…
Wait a minute… his character was called "Stan the Man"?! So… he's playing the same character as in Fantastic Four 2? So that film ties into the upcoming Avengers movie as well??? Gee, well, I sure hope that Captain America (Chris Evans) and the Human Torch (Chris Evans) meet.
In fact, given how I was watching an airline edit of Thor, I have to wonder just how much else I may have missed out on here…
(available in a slightly different version here)Labels: comics, films
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