What's with all the comicbook movies?

            In light of the recent news that Warner Bros. is planning to make a Justice League movie and to reboot the Batman franchise after Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises I have decided to do an article about the horde of comic inspired movies in recent years.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing I love the Marvel and DC superheroes but I don’t buy many comics so I think it’s really cool that there are movies that can introduce a wider audience to a lot of interesting and unique worlds.  This is good for Hollywood because they’ve been having a tough time coming up with good creative ideas recently.  The only problems I have with it are the times when they take something good like Fantastic 4 and screw it up, and that it may be discouraging creativity because it’s easier to take an existing idea that already has fans than to make your own and try to get people interested.  What I mean is making a script for a Spider-Man movie is easier than making an original one plus Spider-Man will make way more money because everyone already loves him.  So here is a list of live action comicbook movies I’ve personally seen sense the year 2000.

X-Men, X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins Wolverine,  Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Fantastic Four, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Hulk, The Incredible Hulk, Ironman, Ironman 2, The Punisher, The Punisher: War Zone, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Red, V for Vendetta, 300, The Spirit, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Kick-Ass, Watchmen, Superman Returns, Hellboy, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Losers, Men in Black 2 and Wanted.

           

            That’s 33 movies over the span of 11 years and that’s just the ones I’ve seen.  As you can see the genre isn’t that much better than any other one, there are bad ones, ok ones, good ones and a few great ones which shows that just because you take good source material doesn’t mean you’ll have a good movie or make all that much money.  I don’t mind comicbook movies if I did I wouldn’t watch so many but I don’t want it to discourage film makers from taking risks or doing original works like Inception which is better than just about every movie on that list.  Also if you’re doing a franchise like Superman and the movies aren’t working out its okay to reboot it but if you have something like the current Batman series or the now finished Spider-Man series don’t reboot it just to save money.  Keep it going and show us more characters and deeper storylines.  There’s no point in a bunch of movies following a superhero if he only fights the same villains and keeps going through the origin tale.

            

            Feel free to post comments on what you think about all the recent comicbook movies and reboots.  You don’t have to sign up just press the comment button under the article. 

Review: Tron Legacy

            Tron: Legacy is the long awaited sequel to Disney’s revolutionary film Tron and by long awaited I mean it has been twenty eight years since Tron came out in 1982.  The original Tron was the first feature film to use extensive amounts of computer-generated images in it.  Tron has amassed a massive cult following over the past twenty-eight years and now fans finally get a chance to revisit its high-tech world.

           

            Tron: Legacy takes place twenty-seven years after the original film.  Jeff Bridges character Kevin Flynn disappears seven years after he stops the master control program in the first movie.  Twenty years after that Flynn’s son Sam played by Garett Hedlund accidentally ends up in the Grid which is a world inside computers where programs and information are living beings.  Once in the Grid Sam’s father’s evil computer clone and ruler of the Grid Clu, played by a CGI of a younger Jeff Bridges tries to kill him.  After being saved by Olivia Wilde’s character Quorra and reuniting with his father Sam sets out to free himself and his father from the Grid and return home.

            Tron: Legacy’s story is solid but lacks a narrative push to keep you invested, I knew what the story was the whole time and it makes sense but it felt like it needed to be fleshed out more in order to keep it from being buried under all of the cool visuals and music.  That being said it’s hard to keep people focused on the story with so many cool things going on all the time.  The world of Tron: Legacy is all so bright, glossy and sleek it’s just stunning to see and does a great job immersing you into the experience.  The action sequences are all top notch; the crazy awesome battles combine laser disks and some incredible acrobatics that just blow you away.  The battles are all fast, fun, exciting and intense using the best CGI I’ve seen since Avatar.  Then there are the light-vehicles which are all so cool I mean wow if Disney just made their channel nothing but these light-cycle battles I would actually watch Family channel again.  Lets be honest no car or motorcycle, fiction or non-fiction competes with light-cycles it’s like they were made by harnessing the true power of pure awesomeness.  Speaking of pure awesomeness Daft Punk’s music in this movie works so well with the Tron universe, it flows perfectly with every scene it’s in and just adds that much more feeling and excitement to this unique and amazing world that you’re witnessing.

            All of the performances in Tron: Legacy are quite good. Jeff Bridges does a good job reprising his role as Kevin Flynn providing comic relief throughout some of the slower points in the movie, and a great job as the villain Clu.  Garett Hedlund does a good job as the protagonist Sam Flynn who is a strong and relatable character that reminds me of Bruce Wayne.  He is an orphan who is highly intelligent, owns a multi-billion dollar corporation and kicks all kinds of ass.  Olivia Wilde gives a solid performance as well, her character Quorra is from the Grid and is fascinated by the Flynns and their world.  She does a great job of conveying the wide-eyed innocence of someone who has only heard stories of a far away land and wishes to go there, like a big kid.  Also Olivia Wilde is the one of the only things on the planet that can distract you from all of the spectacular visual effects on screen. 

            Tron: Legacy is a fast fun and exhilarating ride through an incredible world.  It definitely lives up to its predecessor, and in my mind surpasses it.  While its story isn’t the deepest it has a great cast, interesting characters and a universe full of incredible action, tech, and sound.  Do yourself a favor and check this one out.

Score: 3/5

Weekly Wrap Up

Batman reboot announced.

            Warner Bros. announced their plans to reboot the Batman franchise once again after the release of The Dark Knight Rises.  I love superheroes and Batman is one of my favourites but his movies usually aren’t very good.  Christopher Nolan has done such a fantastic job I don’t see how anyone can even hope to compete with what he has done.  I also don’t understand why there should be a reboot, I would like a superhero franchise to continue I was upset when I heard that Spider-Man was being rebooted and now it’s happening to Batman.  What is the point of introducing these worlds and getting the audience to care if you don’t keep going and introduce all of the characters, like if Batman restarts he will face the Joker and I get that the Joker is awesome but no one can touch Heath Ledger’s performance or Christian Bale’s as Batman for that matter.  Christopher Nolan should continue doing the Batman movies I mean anyone who does such a fantastic job has to love what he’s doing plus it wouldn’t confine him to just the one series he was able to do Inception between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises so if he wants to do other projects in between he obviously can. 

Justice league movie announced.

            Warner Bros. also announced this week that they were planning a Justice League movie.  This raises a few questions. First of which is whether or not they will try to introduce all the members in their own movies prior to the Justice League one or if they will introduce people in the movie?  The second is which characters will make up the Justice League and who will portray them?  They have already done two Batman movies and are currently working on a third, the Superman movie is on its way, Green Lantern is almost out and the Flash is currently being worked.  However there are no plans for any other heroes to get big screen adaptations.  Also Wonder Woman has a new TV show coming out so will the TV show’s star Adrianne Palicki who I think is a talented actress reprise her role for the movie or will they hire someone else like how they didn’t hire Tom Welling from Smallville to be Superman.  Finally I want to know if Christian Bale will be Batman or if it will be the new actor from the planed reboot.  I really hope that they keep Bale and Palicki but you never know.

Video game death match on G4tv.com

            G4tv.com is my favourite gaming site (not counting this of course because quite frankly I think I’m a little biased) and they have brought back their Video Game Deathmatch.  This is the second one they have had; the first was to decide the fans choice for Game of the Year 2010.  This time the steaks are a little different because this time it’s for best franchise of all time.  Unfortunately is hasn’t been going the way I would hope because Final Fantasy and Halo were knocked out in the first round and it looks like Gears of War and Mario will be knocked out in round two.  Currently I’m routing for Mass Effect which seems safe until the semi-finals but after that I don’t know what will happen because Warcraft is a juggernaut and that is most likely who Mass Effect will face.  So you might want to check it out and try to help your favourite win.

Source Code was released

            This is a new movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal in which he must use a sort of VR machine in order to relive the last 8 minutes of a man’s life.  You might be wondering why he would do that well it’s because that man died on a train after a bomb went off and Jake Gyllenhaal must find out who planted the bomb in order to stop another terrorist attack.  This movie looks cool and from what I’ve heard it really draws you in and keeps you guessing as to who did it.  However I’ll probably just wait for it to come out on DVD.

Spider-Man: Edge of time announced.

            The teaser trailer for this game was just released and it looks really good it’s from the makers of Shattered Dimensions which gives me hope that we will have another good Spider-Man game.  This time you only play as two different Spider-Men rather than four which should allow for better storytelling and gameplay because they can focus on refining it rather than making different stories and gameplay types.  The two characters are Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 who must work together to keep the Amazing Spider-Man alive and change the future.  You can assist your ally in real time even though he is in another time period using a telepathic link and a picture and picture like view that shows what they are doing while you’re playing.  This allows you do destroy stuff in the past so that your partner in the future doesn’t have to deal with them. The game looks great and I can’t wait to see more!   

Gamers Heart Japan

            This is a wonderful tribute video from countless people in the game industry including designers and critics like Peter Molyneux, Tim Shaffer, Adam Sessler and many, many more.  It was made by Victor Lucas who we all know from EP and Reviews on the Run, he wanted to try and give back to Japan for everything they have done for gaming and help them through this tough time.  It is a really noble cause and I encourage you all to donate (I’ll put a link at the bottom of the paragraph).  The video is also really good and gives you a much greater sense of all that Japanese games have done for the industry especially sense a lot of people have started to ignore Japanese games and go with the more familiar American games.  They have raised over $12,000 already but Japan needs a lot more than that so please donate.

www.redcross.ca/gamersheartjapan