Salute! (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Marvel Comics Movie Bombs)

Well, my sister and my father have come back from Italy, and that can only mean one thing. Three weeks have passed us by.

And what have I done in those three weeks?

I only finished one book, and I am about 1/4 of the way through another book, which is a little bit of a slowdown, but seeing as I only read at work or on the bus, I guess this is acceptable.

I've also started digging onto my vast collection of DVDs. I had a Marvel movie fest. Monday through Wednesday nights are usually pretty quiet T.V. wise, and I don't seem to watch any more "scripted" shows, with most of my T.V. time going to the Food Network and HGTV. Well, I can only watch Rachel Ray for so long with out thinking I'm a little insane (sorry Rachel), so I whip out my backlog of DVDs and break out the popcorn. (Just a warning, there are a lot of spoilers in the following reviews).

The Punisher, with Thomas Jane and John Travolta was pretty decent. I think Thomas Jane captured Frank Castle very well, and he pulled off acting and action very well. John Travolta was a little over the top as the main villain, Howard Saint, but then again, he usually is. The story line was decent, though some of the other villains (like The Russian, portrayed by wrestler Kevin Nash), seemed to be dispatched too easily after an excellent and lengthy fight scene. My only other minor gripe is that there were a few questionable plot elements (spoiler: even though Howard Saint finds out that the recently thought dead Frank Castle is still alive, he doesn't do much to actually want to seek him out and hunt him down again until Frank both runs to the press to tell everyone that he's alive (???), and dispatches a few more of his henchmen). That and the couple of moments of cheese (I giggled when Frank happened to make the Punisher skull logo out of burning cars. That's a little too much thinking on the "hero's" part). All in all, very good, nicely acted, and somehow managed to make South Florida still seem dark and gritty at times. I hope there's a sequel someday, if Thomas Jane ever gets his awesome physique form the movie back (have you seen him recently pre-wedding to Patricia Arquette? Poor guy needs to stay away from whatever food is making him bloat into a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon).

I then moved on to Daredevil (Director's Cut). Now I may not like Ben Affleck very much, but he did a fairly decent job portraying the blind avenger/lawyer. But the two most interesting characters in this movie, Colin Farrell's psychotic Bullseye, and Michael Clark Duncan's imposing Kingpin, both seemed to not have enough screen time. I wish there was more of them in the movie. I liked this movie's dark feel, and the atmosphere captured the desolation and near hopelessness of Hell's Kitchen very well. Again, the plot could have been stronger, but I guess since I read comics a lot and know everyone's origin stories already, I would naturally feel like too much time is in setting up the characters, which is why I like the way that Marvel handles sequels, by assuming that you have seen the first movie, and thus not wasting as much time on back stories on everyone. My only gripe with this movie is that there are a little too many things that are off that distract me from the movie. How does Matt Murdock (a.k.a. Daredevil) afford his apartment, and all the cool stuff that is in there (he appears to sleep in a stasis tank that cuts off all outside stressors), when he's just a small time lawyer that also does a lot of "pro bono" cases? Also, when he is completely stabbed through the shoulder, how is he able to climb around in the church to fight Bullseye?

After finishing Daredevil, I naturally had to move on to it's spin-off, Elektra, with Jennifer Garner as the Greek (???) assassin come back to life (apparently she has the Jean Gray Phoenix complex, since she ends up coming back to life twice in total so far). Again, the villains do not seem to get enough screen time, when they all have really cool powers (I loved Tattoo, with his tattoos that came to life, and Typhoid (a variation of the Typhoid Mary character in the Daredevil comics), with her death touch). And they are dispatched with way too easily. These are supposed to be the Hand ninjas, and in the comics, they were utterly ruthless, and not to be taken lightly. A whole team of Avengers (Captain America, Iron Man, et al) have a hard time disposing of them, so Elektra doing it mostly solo makes them not quite as menacing as I hoped. Also, the film does not seem dark enough (though beautifully filmed in the Vancouver, B.C. area of Canada, it seemed much too light and airy a place). And the scenes that touched on Elektra's psyche and mental states were confusing, and never seemed to justify why Elektra went from a socialite (as shown in Daredevil), to assassin (as she was in the beginning of the movie). According to her character in the movie, she says she does it because it is the only thing she does well. Seems kinda weak to me. I thought this movie was disappointing, and might have had a chance with a better script, better explanation into Elektra's character, and stronger acting.

I then moved on to Ang Lee's Hulk. Talk about disappointing. I heard that this movie was a stinker, but I still went into it with an open mind, giving it the benefit of the doubt, as Ang Lee has whipped out some excellent movies from he's sleeves (The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Brokeback Mountain come to mind). Starting right off the bat, he uses this annoying split screen, picture-in-picture thing to tell the story. I get the point that he's trying to make the screen look like a page off of the comic books, with the panels and all, but I just found it too distracting. Second, the Hulk's power levels were all over the place. How strong is he? They never really set the limits well, and many times his show of power during the battle sequences were over the top. The CGI effects were not quite seamless enough, so Hulk stuck out like a sore thumb against most of the backdrops in the movie. The fight scenes were a little underwhelming (though the though of a "Hulk"ed poodle both disturbs me and makes me laugh. And the dispatching of Bruce Banner's dad, David (a nod of quite a few to the old Hulk T.V. series) at the end totally lost me. However, the movie was well acted for the most part, thanks to both a pretty decent cast and direction from Mr. Lee. I think this was one of Marvel's most disappointing movies.

Then came the Fantastic Four. While all the other movies were either dark, psychological, or both, Fantastic Four was none of that. It aimed to be summertime fluff, and it succeeded well in that respect. It was well casted (though something still bothers me about Jessica Alba's Invisible Woman), with Chris Evan's Johnny Storm/Human Torch and Michael Chiklis's Ben Grimm/Thing being dead on. I know that this movie got a lot of critical bashing when it came out, but I can see why it was one of the top grossing films of last summer. Since it could appeal to a wider audience, it was less dark, less serious, and a lot more fun. I don't even mind the liberties they took with Dr. Doom's character (giving him some weird electrical based powers). But I think it actually does make sense. In the comic book Fantastic Four/X-Men that came out not too long ago (if you haven't read this mini-series, don't bother because it's pretty bad), they related all the Fantastic Four's powers to the elements. Mr. Fantastic is water (being stretchy and "fluid"), Invisible Woman is air, Thing being rocks and earth, and Human Torch being (duh) fire, so of course Doom should be electricity and metal. The story was a little weak, and Johnny Storm's X-games snowboarding and motorcross biking sequences were a little tedious, overall I liked the movie, cheesey one liners and all. I wonder how the sequel will do, and how they'll handle the new character, the Silver Surfer (maybe he and Johnny will "ride some wicked waves" together in the movie).

I started to watch the Blade Trilogy, but I haven't gotten around to them yet because I was distracted by one of my recent Netflix arrivals, Catwoman. I didn't have the heart (and courage) to buy this movie, but I just had to see it since everyone declared this the worst turkey of a movie since Madonna in Body of Evidence (I still love you though, Madonna!). And let me say, I didn't think much of Halle Berry before (yes, she's a very lovely woman, but I just don't like her that much in movies), and this movie just put the nail in the coffin. Badly scripted, acted, and directed (the trifecta of a camp classic in the making), this movie sure perplexed me. Throwing out everything about Catwoman's past before, both in the comics and the movies, apparently Catwoman is a mystical empowerment that allows women to walk on walls like panthers while wearing odd halter bras with ripped leather pants and open toed heels. What??? There's a definite line between sexy and slutty, and both the Catwoman outfit, Mariah Carey, and Janet Jackson have long jumped their way past this line and into Olympic gold territory. Michelle Pfeiffer was covered nearly head to toe in rubber, and she was still far sexier than Halle in her getup. The only redeeming thing in this films is Sharon Stone as Laurel Hedare. No one plays sexy, vampy over the top as good as Sharon Stone. If she wasn't in the movie, this thing would have been collecting dust in the vault somewhere. Poor DC comics should stick with their "Batman Begins" franchise, and not look back, as their worst movies are ten times worse than any of Marvel's worst movies.

So now it's the wait for X-Men 3: The Last Stand to come out on DVD (I missed it in the theaters), and for Ghost Rider, Spider-Man 3, and Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer to come out (though, I hear that an Iron Man movie is in the works).