Comments on: Secret Wars

By: swanstep

swanstep — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 07:04:10 +0000

Joss Whedon also rather good on the Romney zombie apocalypse.

By: swanstep

swanstep — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:16:49 +0000

@Mark M, 7. Maybe I was a bit harsh about IM2 and I certainly sloughed right over Captain America (which I haven’t seen)! Moreover, about The Avengers: my only problem with it was with the slightly dull/routine final act. Beyond that I thought it was pretty great. Most strikingly, we’d had two Hulks before, but Joss Whedon’s/Ruffalo’s Hulk just crushed them (although maybe the key is that Hulk just works better when he doesn’t have to carry the whole movie), and we’d also had two superhero team franchises before – X-men and Fantastic 4 – but Whedon’s take on ‘a combustible team of supers’ felt instantly superior/much more fun. Very simple core achievements in a way, but very impressive too, and it meant that The Avengers retroactively slightly elevated/justified all the other films – Thor/CA/IM etc., the whole latter-day Marvel Films project really – that had led up to it. Whedon’s a very talented guy and The Avengers’ mega-success means that he’ll be able to do *exactly* what he wants from here on. Yay.

By: Mark M

Mark M — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:43:23 +0000

Re 6: Exactly, 1978's Superman established that there was a market for superhero films made at a non-B movie level, but none of the Hollywood studios – Superman was made by the Salkinds, eccentric Russian-Mexicans who operated in Europe – seemed willing to take the leap. Likewise, the Burton/Schumacher Batmans… So I think the arrival of CGI helped, but that's not the whole story. I feel Swanstep is a bit harsh on the recent Marvel films – I liked Iron Man 2, and I really liked (and everyone I knew who saw it really liked) Captain America (it's funny, Hugo Weaving does an awesome Werner Herzog impression), Avengers Assemble/The Avengers is terrific. I thought nu-Spiderman is unnecessary but passingly interesting in some of its choices, but I didn't even like the first Sam Raimi one anyway. I have big problems with Christopher Nolan but enjoyed Batman Begins. The Dark Knight Rises is a film with a whole load of fairly obvious flaws. I can't imagine there being a better superhero film than The Incredibles.

By: Taj

Taj — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 22:42:16 +0000

Ha, sure enough, I have no recollection what happened to the Joker at the end of TDK. I adored Avengers – almost Ellis/Hitch’s Authority brought to life. Hence needs to be seen on widescreen!

Thinking about my simplistic theory a bit more, it seems amazing that the appallingly successful 1978 Superman didn’t prompt anything from Marvel – is this where the book’s “Marvel constantly fucks up Hollywood deals” theme starts? I see that the 1989 Batman was followed swiftly by desperate-looking Punisher and Captain America movies.

By: swanstep

swanstep — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:43:30 +0000

@Taj. You’re setting your standards fairly low though. Iron Man was indeed pretty good….until the third act when it turned into lots of very dull suited-up fighting (indeed that’s the model to have: all the best bits of even the best superhero movies are at the beginning, after which they degenerate into numbing cgi and fighting; walk out 2/3s of the way through and you haven’t missed anything). Iron Man 2 was unbelievably boring (who even remembers it?). Dark Knight has lots of third act problems (the film’s only really saved by Ledger in my view and not even he can help much in the third act – the final Batman-Joker confrontation is desultory and just kind of peters out (who even remembers what happened to the Joker at the end of TDK?)). TDKR is one absurdity after another and again has a decaying/desultory quality to it (Who even remembers what happened to Bain?). Haven’t seen Green Lantern, but by all accounts it’s pants, and surely nobody’s that thrilled by Thor or Captain America (I watched the former on a laptop at some point but can barely remember it). Spiderman 3 was completely unwatchable (gave up in disgust on tv), and I haven’t seen the recent reboot (but who really was that enthusiastic about that?). That leaves The Avengers which I suppose does kind of deliver the goods: all the pulling the team together stuff is great fun and hilarious, and then there’s only the slightly generic (another f-ing cube MacGuffin, more not-especially-threatening, target practice aliens) quality of the big battle at the end to hold it back.

I guess if you’re prepared to write off third act problems then there is a sense in which ‘largely competent’ is a fair assessment of the post-Iron Man crop. But that’s a lot of missed chances for someone to make a completely successful superhero film (although The Avengers comes closest). I’d rate The Incredibles a lot higher than any of them (and probably give the edge to the first two Spider-man films over The Avengers too). Relative to the movie-making resources they’ve hogged, post-Iron Man comic-book movies look to me to be quite unsuccessful (i.e., we’d almost certainly have more completely successful movies by now if those same budgets had been spread over other genres), except strictly financially.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:13:25 +0000

You’re probably right about the CGI! Though the costumes still look pretty crap IMO.

As for quality, I’ve barely seen any of them all through – the Avengers on a plane (it was OK), Batman Begins inattentively whenever it was on TV (it was OK). “Largely competent” seems about right :)

(When was Green Lantern? I saw 20 minutes of that. Ugh.)

By: Taj

Taj — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:37:43 +0000

Surely the answer to “whuh?” is basically “CGI”. Once it became possible to make large-scale superhero films that didn’t look embarrassingly bad, all it took was a single hit (X-Men, as it happened, but it could have been a DC film or Thpawn or whatever) and away they went.

What this doesn’t explain is the wildly uncharacteristic run of largely competent film-making we’ve been enjoying since Iron Man and Dark Knight.

By: DV

DV — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:35:38 +0000

An interesting review. But I fear actually reading the book could be a bit soul destroying.

By: Linkblogging For 17/10/12 « Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

Linkblogging For 17/10/12 « Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:24:37 +0000

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