Film Review : "Justice League"

This Review may contain Spoilers- 

The tone of "Justice League"  matched the tone of D/C's comic output, though this is also the reason that I read Marvel not D/C. That is not to say there are not many D/C characters I like...my favorites being Super-man, Aqua-man, Swamp Thing,Hawk-man and Martian Man Hunter. The problem the comic books have is there is tons of senseless fight with page after page of people piling in with nothing to connect you to the humanity of the character. This is why Bat-man tends to work best on screen as he is just a human not so godlike you can not relate. This movie was not as abysmal as I though it might be going into it, the end befell the same problem Wonder -Woman face where it devolved into a mindless splash of CGI being vomited onto the screen.

The number one problem with the movie seemed to take place in post-production as the timing was off due to terrible editing the part that should have been condensed drug on and the films coolest moments were too short live. The chemistry of the characters forming this team was lacking because the only character who felt comfortable in the role was Henry's Super-man. He has now had three films to grow into it. Hands down the movies best moment was when he kicked the shit out Wonder-woman. The fights with Steppenwolfe who was an awful choice for a villain, all felt the same. You really didn't care about the outcome, they never felt like they were in peril aside from Super-man's outburst. Cy-borg as a character was as flat as it got. The actor who might have been hindered more than helped by the excessive CGI , did very little to compensate for this. Aqua-man might have been the most disappointing, as he was like a dumb bro rather than regal. The Flash was ok but felt like he was trying to hard, with both Bat-man and Wonder-Woman's characters feeling like the took a step backwards in their development. The big crawling Bat-mobile thing had to be one of the film's worst moments.

I am unsure where they added more Wonder-woman and could not really tell where they did the re-shoots, so maybe in doing so they lost the story they were trying to tell. The film might have been better served with the impostor Super-men showing up to take the throne, like Eradicator, though they would have been even more outclassed. I did like the little glimpse of a Green Lantern at the beginning, and wondered why was he omitted. Another female on the team like Hawk-Woman might have made sense . It's not like they were trying to really develop anyone aside from the big three and solo movies from Aqua-man and Cy-borg are bound to be huge flops. Mera's three seconds on screen was cool but pointless. It's clear unless it's Bat-man, Super-man or Wonder-woman, D/C can never touch Marvel on screen. 

Bat-Man vs Superman

Marvel continues to kick D/C's ass when it comes to the big screen. D/C often works better on Television because on a show like Gotham or Smallville, they break things down into smaller bit sized portions to focus on the character's rather than the big picture. When the scope gets too big it's hard for the often more mythic heroes of D/C to be anything more than card board cut outs. Bat-man has worked on screen time and time again because they are able to make a emotional connection with Bruce Wayne while the alien messiah is harder to make down to earth. When this is touched upon in Batman Vs Super-man the film is working best.  So lets look at what makes the movie and then see what breaks it.

Makes the Movie

Affleck is better at being Bat-man than we expected.

Breaks the movie

He is worse at being Bruce Wayne, this gives us more of an emotional connection with Super-man, who comes across as being the mis-understood under dog in all of this.

Makes the Movie

Wonder-man, despite being a little on the scrawny side compared to the iconic Linda Carter, Gadot's Woman is one of the best things this movie has going. Perhaps it's because if we don't count the Lego Movie,  we have been through six Super-Man movies, Smallville and Lois& Clark, along with seven Bat-man movies  and Gotham . So we are hungrier to see Diana on screen. Lets not get into the others as Cyborg might have gotten more screen time than Aqua-Man and the Flash got more than both. As Wonder-woman she does just as the trailer suggests, but we do get to see her bracelets and lasso in action.

Breaks the Movie

The best part was too condensed, they could have given us more and less Lois.

Makes the Movie

The action scenes with Super-man were much better than Man of Steel.  When he lets Bat-man dent his armored fist on him it was great.

Breaks the Movie

The big showdown. Super-man is not dumb. If this is his first encounter with kryptonite, then it's effect might be  a surprise, but after he see what happens when he breathes it in then would he not hold his breath when his super-hearing picks up Bat-man cocking the trigger of the gun? His reflexes make him not only faster than a speeding bullet but fast enough to have the gun up Bat-man's ass before he pulls the trigger. So that did not work for me.

Makes the movie-

I liked the messiah approach to Super-man and Lex Luthor's line about "if God is All-Powerful then he can't be all good, and if he is good than he can't be all-powerful" as well as the line where he says Clark Kent and mentions all the other names of gods .

Breaks the Movie

The worst depiction of Lex Luthor ever, he comes across more like the Joker than it seems Jared Leto's version will. Luthor is a megalomaniac not a maniac. He should come across more like Kevin Spacey's character in "House of Cards" at his most human and be more cold and calculating, but wait in this movie that would blur the lines between Luthor and Bruce Wayne.

I think I fell asleep for a couple minutes building up to the big show down but caught the rest of the movie, was a little confused why Super-man didn't use his hearing to find this mother if he didn't want to fight Bat-man. Bruce Wayne was a jerk so he did need the beating he got. Could have stood for less Bruce Wayne, the scene with Bat-man taking out the Russians was good enough for my Bat-man fix. Once the big throw down with the troll from Lord of the Rings that they decided to make Doomsday took place I thought was funny that Bat-man just got out of the way since there was little he could do. The end was no surprise because you know what is going to happen to Super-man when Doomsday shows up, you can paint him as a messiah figure with out him becoming a martyr.

I didn't like Nolan's too realistic take on the D/C Universe in the movies that followed Bat-man Begins, but this tried to hard to rub a coat of grit on everything and missed what makes the Avengers/ Marvel movies fun as it took itself too seriously. Even though Civil War and Dr. Strange are more than likely going to be the last of the great Marvel movies and bring the curve of the comic genre back down in it's wake, much like the fate of the Universal Monster trend met it's end with the Abott  and Costello films until Hammer breathed new life into the undead, D/C is pretty much still born at this point.

Movie Review: Man of Steel

If you read this blog, it is no secret that Super-man is my favorite D/C comics character,  so the anticipation and the expectations are raised pretty high, though after the Rotten Tomatoes reviews started coming in and the social media reaction was not negative but just not knowing how to take the film, I tried to lessen my expectations. Now after seeing it myself I can understand the odd reactions as it was not what people expected and I am still a little unsure how I feel about it.

It was entertaining and did not suck. Part of this was due to the fact it was incredibly well made. Some of the mega-galatic qualities made elements of the Avengers look like cheap video game cgi.  So from a production and cinematic level it was a better movie than Avengers as it had more of a Ridley Scott feel than the more comic like elements Snyder normally employs.

From the get go liberties began to be taken with the mythos. Krypton resembled something that was a cross between "City of Lost Children" and "Dune". Truth be told I am so tired of this origin story being told I guess the visual element was needed to keep from losing me. The last adventures of Jor-el, while fun to watch could have been trimmed to have put more screen time with Clark in the suit before he turned him self over to the military. Zod shows up and outs Clark via a broadcast threat, so the fact the military decided to just take Zod's word or everything seemed a little off to me.

The Fortress of Solitude being a space ship instead of an ice castle , made sense i selling it with as much realism they attempted with this and I think overall the film succeeded in what it intended to do in making Super-man more feasible to modern audiences when he was so grounded in World War 2 values. The Smallville elements were handled better than previous films , I feel even more than the Donner films. Reeves had more charisma on screen and made you feel like Super-man was your friend, this movie he was much more clearly alien and there was an sense of isolation and being on the outside looking in that almost took from the Bill Bixby Hulk television show.

As with Smallville or any of the movies there is this sense of joy that wells up inside of me when ever I see him first appear in the suit. Its such an iconic image that somehow manages to almost hold more weight for me than when I see Banner transform on screen. I think this is because the Hulk is more about release where Super-man is the actualization of our higher selves. It was in these moments the movie excelled, but when it threw a lot of hard sci-fi at you in the big battle scene in the movies second half that it lost something for me.

After Clark saves Lois when she is crashing to Earth and becomes embroiled in stopping all these various terra forming plots and devices Zod has set in place it gets scattered and then turns into a disaster film combined with the third  Matrix film. Snyder dialed back his trademark slow-mo fight scenes but went just as over  the top but in a much more Micheal Bay manner and lost me because then I couldn't see the character. The character came back in the final fight scene with Zod. I find it hard to believe Super-man would have allowed for that much destruction of Metropolis to take place, but this is a different Super-man who will kill, when he has to.

Overall I will have to see the middle section again to make a final judgement, it quality film making but feels weird seeing this as the portrayal of his world be it on Earth or on Krypton, it was gritty and often serious , though I don't think that was necessarily problematic, it was an intangible element in the tone, but maybe I just need to see it again to get use to the stylistic difference. It was one of the more well made Super-hero films to date and raises the bar on Marvel when they think about the quality in which they wish to bring the cosmic elements to life.    

Another Week in Comics

Ok we are going to hit Marvel First, and lets start with Amazing Spider 681... this is the prelude to the ends of the earth arc with Dr Octopus, and closes the story of Torch and Spidey rescuing the Jamerson boy from a space station invested with Octo-bots, fun read, space adventures normally aren't my thing , save that for the Fantastic Four but for what it was entertaining, While we are are web-shooter how about Venom 14...
This arc wore thin for me ...which is a problem as the Red Hulk was in it, the art did not wow me at all, and the action seemed scatter brained. It leads into Venom's induction into the secret Avengers .
the segue into Avengers Academy...I like this book it has the feel of West Coast Avengers, another gay hero comes out though it seems mainly for publicity, gay is the new black in comics, how large of a demographic is gay readership? My guess is not very.Issue 27 here features a guest spot by the Runaways, I know it's supposed to be a big deal but they have stayed off my radar seemed like a cross between the Power Pack and the New Mutants, even though they left a decent first impression I'm not off base on that assessment.
X-men 26 raises the bar pretty high for a comic book to kick ass, the art and action are both perfect if i was giving stars on something like Comic Book Resources this one would get 5 of 5, this is how to write them kids just like the good ole days.
Wolverine 302 was a mixed bag and it was a stylistic choice with the varied art, and shift in reality perspective, Sabertooth, Mystique and Sliver Samurai all back no wonder it feels like i have read this book before
Now moving on to D/C and starting it off with a book I went from loving to hating Swamp Thing, I hate it because they have taken 7 issues to turn Alec Holland into the Swamp-Thing, ... he turns here but then you never really get the full reveal as they are being so artsy ... give him wings ...uh come on
Detective Comics 7 is a well done Bat-man book, all the way around , great artwork and the Penguin is not one of my favorite Bat-man villians but oh well they worked with the choices they made
Action Comics...by getting the suit back on, and out of his every-man attire I think the book is symbolically taking off, Brainiac makes an appearance will be interested in seeing the rest of Super-man's rogues gallery introduced

So far this year

Ok catching up a little after picking up a few books last night , lets start with Marvel , who is planting the seeds early for this year's Avengers vs X-men book,... mean do you really think the Avengers can lose considering Marvel Entertainment owns the rights to the Avengers films and fox entertainment owns the X-films? Not to mention if you line up all the big guns the X-men are out classed even adding Phoenix to the mix and how divided loyalties are going to be considering Wolverine, Beast , Namor Quicksliver and now Storm have Avenger ties.
Ok before i go fan-boy on this Avenger's Annual comes up and after all the re-launches are we bothering to number them at this point ? Good art , what could have been an epic throw down turns into the Avengers using a bunch of clever tricks to school Wonder-man's team in minutes after they had clobbered Luke Cages guys , so Cage is just leading a bunch of b-listers even though they have Spider-man and Wolverine ?
Next up Hulk # 47, has the Red Hulk really carried this many issues ? The book trade places as for every issue Parker surpassed The Incredible Hulk he digresses into something like this father daughter non-sense which is the only reason i can see Ross-Hulk not punching Red-hulk back. I am kinda over Machine-man tagging along , why do Hulks need side kicks?
Avengers... I love the concept of the Dark Avengers , though this version is not really doing it for me aside from Skaar, which is the main draw for me , the new avengers art is waaaay better than that of the avengers book , i think this needs to change switch the artists or something. Osborn is more thoughtful in his approach to baiting the teams , though the main team hasn't really assembled in my opinion and would like to see how Norman does when Thor comes back , i'm guessing he is out of the picture because of what is transpiring in his own book? Thor wasn't pulled for me so not sure if i am behind on that one or not.
In other marvel stuff , Thunderbolts has stalled for me in their time travelling , which the X-men are following suit in this department. Need to catch up on Defenders and Alpha Flight. Spider-man is so-so and Venom seems promising as X-23 and Red Hulk are showing up.

OK dC ...going hit up some of the other books, Action Comics jumped the shark on some time travel but it is Grant Morrison so maybe he will pull it together, like he did with the return of Bruce Wayne, have like Jla , will see where Aqua-man is heading this weekend , Hawk-man was a mess and I ma giving Swamp thing another issue to bring in the actual Swamp- thing and spar me of the further adventures of Alec Holland. Yes i have a bit of dc catching up to do , i think the books i am most interested in like Cat-woman, and Dark Knight haven't come out , the last Bat-man and robin was meh, looked like different art to me .