2000s in review: superheroes

Continuing our look back at the first decade of the 2000s on screen, probably the biggest development for action movies was superheroes. After decades of trying to get their superheroes to the big screen the comic book giants Marvel Comics and D.C. Comics finally succeeded in sustainable box office franchises.

In 2006, director Bryan Singer left the X-Men franchise to do a big budget Superman reboot, while Brett Ratner, the director who had been tapped for Superman took his place and for X-Men 3. How did they fare?

X-Men: The Last Stand



I must admit I approached this one with some trepidation. After all, I think a lot of what makes a good film is a good director, and Bryan Singer has proven himself time and again, a great helmsman, while Singer's replacement this time out, Brett Ratner, has proven himself time and time again as... well, an adequate one.

I won't bother summarizing the plot, as you can find enough about that in the trailers and other published material inundating the web.

Though there are more characters than ever, there is less characterization this time out - which is not necessarily a bad thing - we already know about Rogue's angst over not being able to touch anyone, and Magneto's belief that humanity can never be trusted. We need little more than gentle reminders. While this leads to occasional ambiguities in the characters' behaviors, this is after all a climax for the series, so it's time for action. And action plays to Ratner's strengths.

While it is disappointing that some things had to fall by the wayside (Wolverine's search for his past for one) and other things are a little glossed over (I've always thought Storm should easily be able to go toe-to-toe with any of the mutants in the Marvel Universe - at least on Earth) for the most part what we have is a worthy sequel.

I do think that it is disappointing that in the interest of trying to keep the number of characters down to a few score, they plain omitted some (Nightcrawler is nowhere to be seen) and merged others; Callisto of the Morlocks becomes a combined version of Callisto, Quicksilver & Caliban(?!?) which allows the movie to bring her rivalry with Storm to the screen without having to engineer a way for them to fight sans powers, but also makes Callisto a far cry from her comic roots - especially since she is portrayed by bombshell Dania Ramirez instead of a wiry one-eyed street fighter (think Chrissie Hynde with an eye patch) like she should have been. I mean, come on, don't you think at least one adult female mutant would fail to be blessed with superpowers *and* supermodel looks?

But aside from that casting disappointment, overall the movie is well cast. Particularly Kelsey Grammer as new-old-X-Man "Beast".

So, with great writing, a good cast, and an adequate director, we have a pretty good movie. Maybe not one that soars to the heights of the first two, but certainly worth seeing, and indeed a satisfying final chapter.

I'm glad the X series is being put aside for awhile instead of being flogged to death as was done in the comics, but there is talk of spin-offs, so who knows we might still get the silver screen versions of a million other "X" books.

Superman Returns (spoilers)



I had high hopes for this one. The director, Bryan Singer has had a great track record up till now making great films full of excitement and depth. Since the Batman franchise, began with two good movies, was followed by two terrible ones, and was ultimately redeemed in the new millennium by a visionary young director, I hoped the same would be true of the Superman franchise.

Unfortunately this was not the case.

The movie was a mixed bag, and there's no way I can explain myself without going into the details - so spoiler alert - I am breaking my tradition of spoiler free reviews in order to make a post for those who have already seen the film.

As I mentioned, Bryan Singer has shown himself to be a great director, and my opinion of him has remained unchanged especially given that he stepped into a project which had a revolving door of directors attached to it, and was definitely suffering from "too many cooks" syndrome.

(Brainiac was going to be the villain who went to the Fortress of Solitude and learned Superman's secrets. If you haven't heard that story, rent An Evening With Kevin Smith, Smith was an early writer on the project - it is a hilarious look at how Hollywood still doesn't get the comics.)

No, it is not the direction that I found faulty here - it is the writing (which has also suffered at the hands of at least a half dozen writers). To begin with, there are several instances where the behavior of the principals is out of character. Lex Luthor, the evil super-genius attains his vast wealth by bilking a little old lady. Luthor is many things, evil certainly and cunning too, but one thing he has never been is a common con artist. Lex Luthor would find a grand scheme to make money, not some simple grift. Soon thereafter, we have Superman, the most moral and upright of all superheroes, spying on ex beau Lois Lane. With super hearing, it is inevitable that the big guy is going to accidentally catch a snippet of conversation here or there - and that I wouldn't mind - but here, in a creepy-voyeur stalker type scene, he plain listens in (and watches with X-Ray vision) for several minutes!

Then there’s the annoying characters: Luthor's girlfriend, Kitty though not as annoying as her predecessor, Ms. Teschmacher, is still sufficiently bimboish, and worse, Lois Lane's kid, who thankfully doesn't say much, but still takes the movie into more of an Annakin Skywalker direction than I'm comfortable with.

But my biggest problem with the movie is the plot itself. Once upon a time, Superman built the fortress of solitude, with the help of Supergirl. He built a giant door with an immense key that you had to be, well, Superman to lift and use. Then came 1978's Superman: The Movie - a pretty good film, all things considered, except one thing - the introduction of the Kryptonian crystal of Jor-El, which Superman takes to the NORTH pole, and throws, whereupon it grows a large doorless crystal cavern, complete with a super crystal TV set which allowed Superman to talk to his dead father. This opened the door (pun intended) for Lex Luthor to walk in, and learn how the Kryptonian technology works (more than the audience is told - we just have to be satisfied with an old Arthur C. Clark quote) and use it to create a vast new crystal continent where the Atlantic ocean and most of North America is. In the past, I was able to overlook the Kryptonian crystals/Fortress of Solitude stuff, as it played a relatively minor role in the films (except in II where it stripped him of his powers, a fairly major plot device, also annoying, but nevertheless, able to be mostly overlooked), however, here this pseudoscience is so integral to the storyline, that it just cannot be ignored.

This is not to say the movie is all bad. Far from it. The casting is mostly pretty good. Brandon Routh does an excellent job filling the enormous red boots of both Superman and Christoper Reeve. Kevin Spacey is also an excellent successor to Gene Hackman as Luthor. And, Frank Langella and Sam Huntington are great as Perry White and Jimmy Olsen, respectively. Luthor's thugs are all pretty forgettable, but that's O.K. they are in the comics too. Perhaps the only disappointment is Kate Bosworth who is too passive as Lois Lane - even the Lois Lane of the Max Fleischer cartoons in the 1940's was more proactive!

All in all, the movie is essentially a remake of Superman: The Movie with Luthor's plan to destroy even more of the U.S. to create his utopia. And as a remake, it ended up being O.K., even stunning at times, but ultimately, "nothing new here", much like Peter Jackson's King Kong. A fresh story would have gone a long way. If there is a bright side to all this, its that they now have the celluloid broth of all those cooks out of the kitchen, and the counter can be cleaned for a true reboot ala Batman Begins in the sequel to this. I'll be watching the skies, I'm looking forward to it.

Science Fiction Double Feature

Avatar (Real D 3-D)



The plot is ridiculously simple, almost to the point of campiness. There are some wonderful aliens that live in peace and harmony with nature on their home world. We want their natural resources. We send in crippled ex-soldier undercover in one of their alien bodies to try to convince them to leave peacefully or we will destroy them. Crippled ex-soldier likes new body, new alien girlfriend and goes over to the other side. There is a big Ewok style battle of primitives vs. army. The End.

Let’s face it, this whole thing is just a big special effects showcase. But, that said, wow are the special effects good. The alien forest looks kind of like it was ripped off of the night elves forest from World of Warcraft, complete with giant trees and bioluminescent flora.

But the real kick here is the 3-D technology. With the ‘Real D’ process, they’ve finally gotten this technology working really good. Because it (for the moment) can’t be replicated in the home (unless you’re Bill Gates), this could be the Great White Hope the ailing movie industry has been looking for. Only time will tell.

So, if you want mindless science fiction, check out Avatar. If you are willing to live with less revolutionary special effects, but want a better science fiction film, let’s turn the clock back a few years…

Serenity




One of the biggest coups Joss Whedon has ever pulled off, was getting FOX to put up the money for him to make a big budget film of his aborted TV series Firefly before the sets were scrapped and the cast scattered to the winds.

The film was mostly made as a sort of series finale, but it was written in such a way that it could stand alone, even for those who had never seen the TV show. The story concerns a telepath named River who was a secret government weapon who, along with her surgeon brother, is hiding out with a bunch of outlaws aboard a spaceship. River knows many things the government wants to keep quiet, so they send their most ruthless killer to eliminate River and anyone who stands in his way.

Unlike Avatar (which has grossed more money than we can keep track of), Serenity didn't even make its money back. I guess that’s the price of making a movie that appeals to the brain more than the senses. Multi-award winning science fiction writer Orson Scott Card called it “the best science fiction movie ever made”. While that may be a bit of a stretch, it’s certainly a very good one, and very worth your time.

Military Science Fiction

Terminator: Salvation



The Terminator movies follow a basic formula – robot from the future is sent back to the past (our present) to murder a human to ensure robots will be victorious in the coming robot vs. human war.

This premise was fresh and exciting with the original film, The Terminator. It was as good or even better when it was done with a twist as the big budget sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. But it became completely a retread by the third film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

Fortunately Terminator: Salvation does away with the formula. No longer are we in the present, being visited by robots from the future, but we are actually transported to the future, where the war has already begun.

The story concerns Marcus, a man on death row who agrees to donate his body to Skynet’s medical research as a final act of contrition for his crimes. He wakes up years later, after the war with the machines has started, as the sole survivor of a human attack on the Skynet facility where he has been stored.

Marcus eventually meets up with John Connor and the resistance movement, but who is Marcus really working for, does he even know himself?

The film has a great cast, including Christian Bale as the adult John Connor, and Sam Worthington as Marcus, but it also some good supporting cast members like Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Ironside who thrives in these kinds of roles.

Terminator: Salvation is not a thriller like the first Terminator, not an action film like the second two; it’s a war film, plain and simple. A science fiction war film to be precise, but a war film nonetheless, and whether or not you like that genre, will probably determine whether or not you like this film.

But, it’s also more than that. The ‘Salvation’ in the title not only refers to Marcus’ efforts to save humanity, but also his own redemption. The heart (literally and figuratively) at the center of this story is what makes it a cut above the forgettable Terminator 3, and may just be the Salvation of this series.

Soldier




Military SF isn’t done very often. In fact it’s hard to think of many films that have made it to the big screen that can truly be said to fit in this subgenre – Aliens, and the much maligned Starship Troopers are the first (and perhaps only) examples that readily spring to mind. There are probably just as many reasons a serious film fan might want to avoid this genre as there are reasons to seek it out. But, if military SF is your bag, I’d like to draw your attention to a film you might have missed (or like me, deliberately avoided) in the past.

Soldier got very mixed reviews in its initial release, but like so many other Kurt Russell sci-fi films (Escape From New York, The Thing, Stargate, etc.) it slowly grew in popularity on DVD as word of mouth spread that it was a vastly underrated film.

The story concerns Todd 3465, a man trained since birth to be the ultimate soldier, who is eventually discarded when Caine 607 and a new crop of genetically engineered super soldiers are deployed.

Roaming the junkyard planet Arcadia, he befriends some lost colonists, and is thrust into the role as their protector when Arcadia becomes the testing ground of Caine 607’s unit. It’s admittedly a simple, campy plot, but it’s significantly more complex than say, James Cameron’s Avatar.

One of the big complaints critics had with this film was the lack of dialog, especially on the part of the hero (Russell speaks less than 80 lines in the whole film). But, this is actually one of the movie’s strengths. Todd 3465 was supposed to be a tool, not a man, and was raised apart from normal human interaction – the awkward lack of dialog actually reflects this well. Furthermore, laconic dialog is often an advantage with action stars who are rarely known for their acting (e.g. Mad Max, The Terminator, etc.)

Most people may find it typical, or mindless, but genre hounds who actually seek it out will be rewarded with the sci-fi equivalent of Shane.

Feel my pain.

Today's movie review comes by request of Joseph Kirschbaum of Cincinnati who writes, "I would love to hear your take on Casshern."



Casshern

Casshern was a 2004 adaptation of a 1993 direct-to-video anime, Casshan: Robot Hunter. It takes place in the future. But this future is a retro future where many things actually resemble past eras like in Brazil. Unlike Brazil, however, there’s no obvious reason for it, apart from perhaps choosing things that looked cool, and maybe because Steampunk is trendy. O.K., I could live with that… if it was the only thing there was no reason for, but…

In 2004, due to breakthroughs in technology, there were a few films that were long on effects and short on everything else - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and The Chronicles of Riddick both immediately spring to mind – and Casshern shares a lot of things in common with those films. In fact, the robot army scene is almost an exact replica of the robot army sequence in Sky Captain – although since both films came out the same year, it’s hard to say who ripped off whom.

The plot of Casshern is so convoluted as to defy synopsizing. It’s like the Matrix movies that way (see previous post about The Matrix). Also like the Matrix films, we have an unstoppable superhero protagonist – he’s even made up of “Neo” cells (perhaps a direct Matrix reference), and a villain who is a “Neo-Sapien” who vows to eliminate homo sapiens (ala Magneto in X-Men). The majority of the film involves these two super powered guys with hazy, unspecified godlike powers beating on each other Mighty Morphin Power Ranger style for most of the film, breaking off and resuming their battle at random times (oh yeah, another thing the film is guilty of – in the middle of a fight the fight will just end – no one wins loses or gets knocked out, they just start doing other stuff and forget about the fight).

Worse, again like the Matrix films, it thinks it’s philosophical, and much “deeper” than it really is, with characters spouting cheesy platitudes rather than engaging in any kind of meaningful dialogue. I generally give the dialogue of a foreign film a pass because I never know how much of it can be blamed on the translators, but there’s just too much of it in Casshern to let it slip by without mention. Don't believe me? See for yourself.

I’ve mentioned a lot of other films in this review, and I’m not done yet because Casshern also borrows heavily from Akira, and just about every other SF anime of the past 25 years.

But, cinematically speaking, perhaps the most apt comparison here is to The Crow: City of Angels – a film that is incredibly beautiful to look at, but makes no damn sense. It’s painfully obvious when watching that even if it were a perfect translation of the Japanese (which it probably isn’t) it still wouldn’t make any sense. Like a cut scene from a videogame taken out of context - a two hour long cut scene.

In fact, on that count it’s down there with some of the worst offenders of the genre, and deserves to share a cell with the likes The Crow: City of Angels and Highlander 2: The Quickening.

On the bright side, it is visually a treat (I was not surprised to learn that the first time director who is also the writer & cinematographer, much like with the aforementioned Highlander was primarily a music video director). But, as gorgeous as it is, I had a hard time sitting through the whole thing.

My recommendation - turn the volume down and the METAL up, and enjoy it for the 2 hour music video it is!

The 2000s in Review

Continuing our look back at the movies of the past decade.

Reboots - we'll be talking a lot about this trend.
Let's begin with a look at how to do reboots right - the most successful reboot of a series in the 2000s:



Batman Begins

I grew up on Detective Comics.

It's where DC gets its name.

The company invented the superhero - and has been making quality stories almost twice as long as their biggest competitor (Marvel Comics Group). Today they are owned by one of the world's largest conglomarates - Time Warner AOL - which also owns one of the oldest movie studios (Warner Bros.). Unfortunately, they have had a terrible track record of getting their superheroes faithfully adapted to the large and small screen.

Until now.

I love the work of Tim Burton - he was an interesting choice to helm the Batman project. He certainly put the Goth in Gotham. But his penchant for cartoony weirdness grew thin the second the master criminal was no longer The Joker.

Joel Schumacher grew up loving the 60s TV adaptation of the comic. Which, though campy fun perhaps, was not Batman, the dark knight detective. Using that as the basis for his run on the Batman franchise yielded... well, let's just paraphrase my physics teacher, "garbage in equals garbage out".

I don't mean that to be harsh - Mr. Schumacher is quite a film craftsman, it's just that his point of reference - like that of much of America's is skewed. When I was a kid, comics were dismissed as trivial children's fare, yet they were tackling things far more mature than the downright juvenile prime time TV hits that were adapted from them (Wonder Woman and The Hulk immediately spring to mind).

Mass audiences were totally ignorant of the very cornerstones of the Batman, grim avenger of the night, mythos. They could never imagine a Batman that picked up a gun, They had no idea who Joe Chill or Ras Al Ghul were. They couldn't tell you a thing about Arkham Asylum. But all of those things are cornerstones of the Batman background, and essential to understanding the character.

The creators of Batman Begins remember though. All of those elements come into play in this film. Is it perfect ? No. Does it take liberties with the source material? Yes, but not to the extent of any of the past efforts. Does it defy the laws of physics? At times, yes, but no moreso than comics generally do. You'll find no Batmobiles driving straight up the sides of buildings for example. Comic book physics are at lest preserved.

And that all adds up to the best Batman movie yet. One that is actually true to the spirit of the comics for the first time. And that, is something to be praised. And seen.

The Matrix vs. The X-Men

A look back at the two big sci-fi superhero action series of the past decade.

The Matrix vs. The X-Men

I know I'm a minority on this, but I thought The Matrix was all FX. In fact that is all I can watch it for. The idea of harvesting humans for their body heat is just too ridiculous for words. There's an advanced society.

I also can't stand the way so many people take Fishburn's fortune cookie "wisdom" way too seriously...What was the only good line from Mystery Men?..."You must master your anger..." "Or what? Anger-will-be-my-Master?" That dog came out the same summer, but it was like they were making fun of the Matrix with that line.

But what gets me more than even the bad science and bad philosophy of what is supposed to be a "Philosophical Science Fiction" story, is how it is not even internally consistent. I will forgive a lot, IF you play by the rules YOU set up.

At one point in the film Neo is trying to escape a building. In order to block his escape, the baddies that control reality just throw up a brick wall.

What the Hell?

If they can do that, why not just seal him in by walls. Make a little Neo sardine tin. You wouldn't even have to suffocate him, just keep him imprisoned forever.

Don't get me wrong, I like it for the action and effects. I think it is head and shoulders above most of its ilk in that department. That is what I watch it for. That's why it is still a good movie. But to me its all martial arts and gunfire, if I look past that it annoys me.

It is possible to make an intelligent science fiction/action movie – I thought that X2, for example, had a lot to say about humanity. A friend of mine even saw some parallels to the Iraq War in the movie – now that is a human action movie with a story, to me. When it comes to The Matrix though, overall the story is very black and white. The bad people are bad, the good people are good.

X2, on the other hand, raises a lot of ethical issues. Right now, in the real world, there are governments that require particularly skilled martial artists to be registered the same way a gun is. Assuming people were born with potentially lethal powers, why shouldn't they be registered, or marked so that you could see them (not a concealed weapon). As a matter of fact, if they as a group threatened the world as a whole - regardless of their intent - if their bodies were actual weapons of mass destruction, why shouldn't people be interned or killed? If your people are being oppressed, what is wrong with fighting back by any means necessary?

When I was a kid in the 1970s, before Star Wars, SF movies were not taken seriously by mass audiences because the special effects were so cheesy. But to me, I always just used my imagination - the effects weren't what made the movie. It was the philosophical issues they brought up. I'll take a good SF story with bad effects over a bad story with good effects. For example, I think the original Planet of the Apes is superior to the remake. (And I refused to even see the remake of The Time Machine). I think most people are the other way around. They want the effects, not the story.

With X2, this movie has effects that are not nearly as cool as The Matrix - but that is counterbalanced by a stronger, character driven story. A good strong skeleton on which to hang the effects. This is probably because X2 is basically an adaptation of the excellent graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills.

The Matrix is fun to watch, I enjoy a lot of films that don't stand up to critical thinking, but they rarely stick with me even 5 minutes after the credits roll.