Official superhero movie thread

Lots of comic book movies coming out and we can talk about all of them here.

The new Batman is in the works and I'm excited about Christian Bale in the lead but I still would have prefered a faithful adaptation of Frank Miller's Year One storyline.

Superman is back in production with Bryan Singer at the helm (this means X-Men 3 has either been put on hold or will continue with a different creative team). They say this will not be another Superman origin story but a brand new film set in the same world of the old Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve films. Maybe it'll work.

The Green Lantern will be a screwball comedy starring Jack Black(!). I don't even need to be familiar with the comic to know this is a bad idea.

The Fantastic Four. This one has disaster written all over it. Some comics just aren't begging for an adaptation. This is one of them. Jessica Alba as Sue Storm? Yeah she's nice to look at but come on. And Victor Van Damme instead of Von Doom? Who made that decision? I'd scrap this one while it's still in the development stage.

Blade 3. Can lightning strike three times? Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see.

Aeon Flux starring Charlize Theron. This has potential to be good as long as the plot makes more sense than the cartoon. Can't wait to see Theron in the Aeon Flux get-up.

So, go ahead and post your news, rumors, theories, ideas and musings. You can even talk about Catwoman if you like.

Y'know, I'm personally wondering what the WB is gonna do with "Smallville." The kid playing Clark is getting a little old to be believed as a high schooler and his days of fighting crime in the big city should be beginning soon.

Will WB fork out the money to take Clark out of the cornfield?

Marxist said:

Y'know, I'm personally wondering what the WB is gonna do with "Smallville." The kid playing Clark is getting a little old to be believed as a high schooler and his days of fighting crime in the big city should be beginning soon.

Will WB fork out the money to take Clark out of the cornfield?

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I can honestly say I've never seen one minute of that show.

I have high hopes for Blade Trinity, I really liked the first two. Batman I worry about, nobody has ever really gotten it right, although I did like Jack as the Joker. Superman is a pussy, never have liked the comics or the movies, so whatever they do will probably suck along the lines of Superman III with Richard Pryor.

medjay said:

I can honestly say I've never seen one minute of that show.

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I didn't either for a long time, but at one time it was on after The Gilmore Girls and I was just too lazy to change the channel.

I only know the basics of the "Superman" mythology but as a television show it's got incredible production values and some of the best actors on TV. If the new "Superman" movie isn't as well done as the lower budget TV show, it's gonna have problems.

And let's not forget that the cast of women is delicious.

*edited cuz that first pic was the size of a billboard*



http://www.thewb.com/THEWB/Images/Dynamic/i7/SM-AMack-C_2x3_240.jpg Allison Mack

http://www.happytechfreak.com/pictures/KristenKreuk.jpg

http://paper.cloudyday.org/024/kristin-800x600.jpg Kristen Kreuk

I'm tempted to go see "Catwoman."

Could it really be that bad?

Marxist said:

I'm tempted to go see "Catwoman."

Could it really be that bad?

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One review I heard says it stinks worse than a catbox that hasn't been cleaned since last July.

Some other projects in the works:

Darren Aronofsky is directing Watchmen

Neil Gaiman is helming Death: The High Cost of Living. Though I would have liked a Sandman movie, Death is actually a more interesting character.

Shooting has wrapped on Sin City. The first promo poster looks pretty good. . .

http://69.26.135.131/images/comicart/1647/zsincity.gif

its all about Harley Quinn....they NEED to have her in there somewhere!

(if you can't read my mind....I was refering to the batman movies)

but only if the joker somehow isn't really dead...I mean maybe he faked his death? o.0;; (its a supervillan thing!)

I'm kinda excited about "Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow."

But they did delay the release into turkey season for some reason.

Hmmm....

just watched spiderman2 on DVD yesterday....and i heard Spiderman3 is already done?

ZyMo said:

....and i heard Spiderman3 is already done?

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No. They don't even have a script yet. Spiderman 3 isn't scheduled for release until 2007.

medjay said:

No. They don't even have a script yet. Spiderman 3 isn't scheduled for release until 2007.

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Thanks.

medjay said:

Lots of comic book movies coming out and we can talk about all of them here.

The new Batman is in the works and I'm excited about Christian Bale in the lead but I still would have prefered a faithful adaptation of Frank Miller's Year One storyline.

Superman is back in production with Bryan Singer at the helm (this means X-Men 3 has either been put on hold or will continue with a different creative team). They say this will not be another Superman origin story but a brand new film set in the same world of the old Richard Donner/Christopher Reeve films. Maybe it'll work.

The Green Lantern will be a screwball comedy starring Jack Black(!). I don't even need to be familiar with the comic to know this is a bad idea.

The Fantastic Four. This one has disaster written all over it. Some comics just aren't begging for an adaptation. This is one of them. Jessica Alba as Sue Storm? Yeah she's nice to look at but come on. And Victor Van Damme instead of Von Doom? Who made that decision? I'd scrap this one while it's still in the development stage.

Blade 3. Can lightning strike three times? Maybe. Maybe not. We'll see.

Aeon Flux starring Charlize Theron. This has potential to be good as long as the plot makes more sense than the cartoon. Can't wait to see Theron in the Aeon Flux get-up.

So, go ahead and post your news, rumors, theories, ideas and musings. You can even talk about Catwoman if you like.

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Batman is a hard one to sell on the big screen. It is such a dark caractor that it doesnt apeal to mainstream audiances who want happy go luck endings and warm fuzzies from there movies. The Dark Knight is named such due to his dark nature. He purposly twisted himself to become a borderline good guy. He is one of my favorite comic caractors.

Jack Black as the Green Lantern? That one needs a small peice of lead to the back of the head.

The previews I have seen of Blade 3 look very good.

Xmen on the back burner? Bummer, I would love to see more of Wolverine. Cant remember the name of who they have playing him, but he got the carractor down very well. Now they just need Jubilie instead of a kid Rouge as his friend.

Oh and Catwoman? Not even to see Hally in about enough leather to make a small holster would I see that movie in the theaters.

The new Batman promises to be a darker origin story. But it's not the Frank Miller story so I'm not 100% sold on it.

CATWOMAN / * (PG-13)
July 23, 2004
BY ROGER EBERT

"Catwoman" is a movie about Halle Berry's beauty, sex appeal, figure, eyes, lips and costume design. It gets those right. Everything else is secondary, except for the plot, which is tertiary. What a letdown. The filmmakers have given great thought to photographing Berry, who looks fabulous, and little thought to providing her with a strong character, story, supporting characters or action sequences. In a summer when "Spider-Man 2" represents the state of the art, "Catwoman" is tired and dated.

Although the movie's faults are many, the crucial one is that we never get any sense of what it feels like to turn into a catwoman. The strength of "Spider-Man 2" is in the ambivalence that Peter Parker has about being part nerdy student, part superhero. In "Catwoman," where are the scenes where a woman comes to grip with the fact that her entire nature and even her species seems to have changed?

Berry plays Patience Phillips, a designer for an ad agency, who dies and is reborn after Midnight, a cat with ties to ancient Egypt, breathes new life into her. She becomes Catwoman, but what is a catwoman? She can leap like a cat, strut around on top of her furniture, survive great falls and hiss. Berry looks great doing these things, and spends a lot of time on all fours, inspiring our almost unseemly gratitude for her cleavage.

She gobbles down tuna and sushi. Her eyes have vertical pupils instead of horizontal ones. She sleeps on a shelf. The movie doesn't get into the litter box situation. What does she think about all of this? Why isn't she more astonished that it has happened to her? How does it affect her relationship with that cute cop, Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt)?

The movie makes it clear that they make love at least once, but we don't see that happening because "Catwoman," a film that was born to be rated R, has been squeezed into the PG-13 category to rake in every last teenage dollar. From what we know about Catwoman, her style in bed has probably changed along with everything else, and sure enough, the next day he notices a claw mark on his shoulder. Given the MPAA's preference for violence over sex, this might have been one sex scene that could have sneaked in under the PG-13.

Catwoman dresses like a dominatrix, with the high heels and the leather skirt, brassiere, mask and whip. But why? Because the costume sketches looked great, is my opinion. The film gives her a plot that could have been phoned in from the 1960s: She works for a corporation that's introducing a new beauty product that gives women eternal youth, unless they stop taking it, in which case they look like burn victims. When Patience stumbles over this unfortunate side effect, she is attacked by security guards, flushed out of a waste pipe and is dead when Midnight finds her.

Soon she has a dual identity: Patience by day, Catwoman by night. She already knows Tom Lone. They met when she crawled out of her window and balanced on an air conditioner to rescue Midnight, and Tom thought she was committing suicide and saved her after she slipped. Uh, huh. That meeting begins a romance between Patience and Tom that is remarkable for its complete lack of energy, passion and chemistry. If the movie had been 10 minutes longer, it would have needed a scene where they sigh and sadly agree their relationship is just not working out. One of those things. Not meant to be.

The villains are Laurel and Georges Hedare (Sharon Stone and Lambert Wilson). He runs the cosmetics company and fires his wife as its model when she turns 40. She is not to be trifled with, especially not in a movie where the big fight scene is a real catfight, so to speak, between the two women. Stone's character is laughably one-dimensional, but then that's a good fit for this movie, in which none of the characters suggest any human dimensions and seem to be posing more than relating. Take Georges, for example, whose obnoxious mannerisms are so grotesque he's like the "Saturday Night Live" version of Vincent Price.

Among many silly scenes, the silliest has to be the Ferris wheel sequence, which isn't even as thrilling as the one in "The Notebook." Wouldn't you just know that after the wheel stalls, the operator would recklessly strip the gears, and the little boy riding alone would be in a chair where the guard rail falls off, and then the seat comes loose, and then the wheel tries to shake him loose and no doubt would try to electrocute him if it could.

The score by Klaus Badelt and Timothy Andrew Edwards is particularly annoying; it faithfully mirrors every action, with what occasionally sounds like a karaoke rhythm section. The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project.

Dixon Carter Lee said:

The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project.

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Has there ever been a time when one of these pretentious one-name directors didn't make a tedious, horrible picture?

I mean, doesn't the whole one-name shtick just reek of pomposity?

Seriously, if you're not a rapper you need to go by your regular handle.

What do you think of this fan made movie, Grayson.

http://theforce.net/theater/nonsw/grayson/

medjay said:

One review I heard says it stinks worse than a catbox that hasn't been cleaned since last July.

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I keep missing Entertainment tonight when the review is on. I hear it sucks too though. It was filmed here in Vancouver. I would like to see the previews because its odd that it would suck that bad.

medjay said:

Some other projects in the works:

Neil Gaiman is helming Death: The High Cost of Living. Though I would have liked a Sandman movie, Death is actually a more interesting character.

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Aw fuck. I was hoping some day I could make that

Spinaroonie said:

Aw fuck. I was hoping some day I could make that

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I'm curious as to what made them decide to trust the directing of this movie to a writer who has no background in filmmaking. We all saw what happened when they allowed Stephen King in the director's chair.

Hopefully Gaiman's has been taking some classes. Either that or he's surrounding himself with a whole bunch of people who know what they're doing.

I'll rent Catwoman because Hally Berry is hot and I like leather and spiked heels.

As for Blade 3, well I never liked 1 or 2 but Hubby loves them so we'll go see it. I preferred the comic books myself.

It's good to see Nicolas Cage is no longer in the running to play Superman though. I couldn't get over that. I kind of felt bad for Cage. I would, however have loved to see Kevin Smith's script make the screen.

medjay said:

The new Batman promises to be a darker origin story. But it's not the Frank Miller story so I'm not 100% sold on it.

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That's the only one I can muster any real sort of interest in. I don't know much about the others except a vague recollection of watching bits of the Fantastic Four cartoon when I was a kiddie.

medjay said:

Some other projects in the works:

Darren Aronofsky is directing Watchmen

]

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I thought that one was dead in the water after Gilliam bowed out. It'll be damn tough to make it decent at all, much less fit within a 2 hour movie (or even 3).