Super Hero Reviewapalooza

I've been creeping along on this post since the end of July, so I figured I might squeeze it out today as a Summer Movie Wrap-up thingie.

JPX made a good point several weeks ago (no, really!) when he asked if any of us still watch movies anymore. I do, of course, and I suspect the rest of us do, too. I think we should get into the habit of sounding off more often about what we watch -- not a full-blown review every time, but just a head's up. What follows is perhaps slightly more ambitious, as I'm going to two-centsify the big four superhero movies of the summer.

THOR ***1/2



My favorite thing about Thor is the writers all took deep breaths and said "Yup, this comic is about fucking Thor from fucking Asgard and therefore (deeep breath) we are going to make a movie about fucking Thor from fucking Asgard." You would think this story would be easy pickings for those intrusive Hollywood revisions, which would see Thor dressed in Matrix leathers and his faithful hammer glittering with circuitry. But he's the real deal, along with Loki, Odin, Frost Giants, rainbow bridges, the whole bit. It's not just in the beginning of the movie, either, it keeps whipping between Asgard the Land of Solid Gold Acid Trip and an obviously fake podunk town in New Mexico. The effect is both jarring and enjoyable.

I bitch a lot about origin stories. In truth there's only a few specific kinds that I dislike. Superman's, because it always seems to take so long. Spiderman's (not the spider part, the Uncle Ben part) as I recently got into at some length. The rest of my displeasure is aimed at origin stories not in film but in comic books, in which they happen so often it becomes easy to see the problem: an origin story loses me when it's more of an add-on and not an actual story. For each mindblowing origin story out there (say that of Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen or the Swamp Thing's retconned origin in The Anatomy Lesson), there are dozens of guys who find a meteorite in the woods or fall in a vat of something, get powers, and then fall into heroics so fast it's like slipping on a roller skate that was sitting on a banana peel.

The origin story in Thor may fall short of mindblowing, but it is refreshing. He doesn't luck into his powers, he's had them for centuries. His struggle, his story, happens when he loses them and is exiled to Earth. As cinema superhero stories go, it's actually pretty original (and no, it's not the same as the second Superman or the second Spider-Man in which they lose their powers, so shut up).

At first I found Chris Hemsworth's Thor passable but kind of funny looking; his blue-eyed, pink, yellow-bearded face actually looked kind of clownish close up. But he won me over when he goes out drinking with Stellan Skarsgård and brings the poor Swede home plastered. I thought "Yeah, I guess Thor would be a good drinking buddy."

On the downside, the both the Asgard and New Mexico settings feel stagey, although it's not a dealbreaker. And I was disappointed with the precise moment of killing blow in Thor's climactic battle with the (rather awesome) Destroyer, because I couldn't tell what happened. Annoying. Possibly an effect of the 3D. Also (and this is a minor point), the traditional Marvel movie post-credits stinger is the worst one yet.

In conclusion: Thor, better than you probably thought it would be and admirably proud of its own silliness.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS ****



Somebody might remind me of a better one, but this movie might actually be the best prequel made yet. I can't remember another "how they all got started" yarn that was more fun. The axis of the movie is the blooming friendship between young Charles "Professor X" Xavier and Eric "Magneto" Lensherr. Their relationship is engaging on a personal and philosophical level, not afraid to seem pretty darn gay, and hung on the charming armature of the two them hitting the road to contact lone mutants and make them into a team.

The action is worth it, the bad guys are great, and the 60's spy vibe is uncanny. It's very fun to see Kevin Bacon live it up as a Bond-esque supervillain with his own shag-carpeted submarine, or CIA agent Moria McTaggert (played by Rose Byrne, who is suddenly in everything) strip down to the fancy lingerie she happened to be wearing so she can infiltrate a Hellfire Club party disguised as an expensive hooker. And there's a combat application of being a teleporter that is both brutal and hilarious.

On the downside, while some of the scenes with the X-kids were decent, there were others I just couldn't wait to end, usually when they were kickin' it in the rec room. My minor quibble for this flick is the way Professor X would put his finger to his head sometimes while performing rather low-grade telepathic feats.

In conclusion: X-Men: First Class, a groovy slice of Austin Powers cool with impressive mutant powers.

GREEN LANTERN **1/2



Sorry, Green Lantern, but I just can't give you three whole stars. I want to, because I want DC to find its niche on the big screen with stuff besides Batman... but they just can't seem to do it. Pretty much everything I said about the writers of Thor is true about the writers of Green Lantern. They looked the premise square in the eye and made a movie about a guy who is given a magic ring by an alien (which is, by the way, the core version of the "guy who finds a meteor in the woods" origin story). I don't fault this movie for having a lot of origin story, because the character's origin is kind of complicated. Turns out there are thousands of superheroes with rings just like his and suits to match, but they're all weird aliens, and the rings aren't magic but science that operates on will power, and what they do is make instant glowing green versions of whatever the wearer is thinking of. A giant fist, a huge soup ladle to scoop the innocent out of danger, whatever.

While the Green Lantern idea can be cool, it's also pretty damn silly. One of the best Obi-Wan-style lines comes from fellow Lantern Sinestro, above (played by Mark Strong), when he says "If your will is weak, your constructs will fail" or something like that. It gives some respectability to the idea of the ring, and grounds the whole will power idea that is a genuine part of the comic book character's origin. (I prefer the most recent Lantern in the comics, graphic artist Kyle Rayner, whose proficiency with the ring is based in his imagination.)

Unfortunately the whole theme of will power segues into the blunt instrument of character struggle that is my main beef with this movie, Can Hal Really Be A Hero? It's an ongoing litany of "You? You got a power ring? You, Hal Jordan? You're supposed to be a hero? You're not that guy. I mean, YOU?" and from Hal "Me? I'm don't think I'm the guy. I mean, ME?" Whiny whiny whinerton.

My big beef number two (of three) is with the same stagey feeling I got from Thor, but this time the charm doesn't overcome it. My favorite scenes in Green Lantern were those on the planet Oa, which were visually entertaining if not inspirational. The settings on Earth were particularly drab. Long shots of GL flying away from the city looked like a postcard of San Diego or Houston or somewhere. And they really overused the bland company headquarters of Ferris Aircraft, which hosted the scene of Green Lantern's first heroic act, the would-be big romantic scene afterwards, AND his final triumphant takeoff at the end of the movie. It's a damn two-story building with black tarmac in front of it, people! It's boring!

And perhaps because of this overall blandness, my third big beef is that Green Lantern never quite makes you want to believe that amazing stuff is happening. His big debut happens in front of a bunch of media, he saves a helicopter and the girl, and when he takes off I looked at Ryan Reynolds's skintight glowing outfit fly away and I thought "nah." And there's no public reaction! No spinning newspapers or anything. They should have established that Superman exists elsewhere on the planet, that superheroics, while rare, are at least known to happen. Because nobody says "OH MY GOD HE CAN FLY," let alone notice the giant glowing green things appear and save people. Since the world of the movie doesn't seem to care, it's hard to bother caring myself.

On the plus side, the alien planet is fun to see, and the villain is decently frightening. If you were disappointed by The Fifth Element's bad guy Big Ball of Evil or Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer's bad guy Galactus the Big Ball of Rocks, you might dig Green Lantern's bad guy Parallax the Big Smoky Octopus Ball of Angry Monster Faces.

There's also a notably cute, fresh joke about secret identities, which is pretty hard to come by when we live in a time that has seen several deconstructions of the superhero myth.

In Conclusion: "You? You're not the guy. I don't think you're the guy. Clearly, a mistake has been made! You're not the guy! I'm the guy? I don't think I'm the guy. Am I the guy?" Jebus on a pogo stick!

I was bitching to a friend about this a few days later and I said "I just want to see a movie where the hero's like 'Yup, I got powers, and I'm a good guy, so I'm just gonna help people and I'm not goddamn conflicted about it."'

And my friend said "Yeah, that's Captain America."


CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER ****3/4



I can't quite give this movie five stars and say it's perfect, but it's so damn huggable I want to. Marvel was very smart to make this; you just can't beat World War Two as a setting for any story, and you get caught up in the Can Do America! vibe that infuses every scene. At one point a bad guy throws a kid off a dock to slow Cap down, and when Cap peers over the edge the kid's down there saying "Go get him! I can swim!" Awesome.

Against this nostalgiac setting, the writers do a great job fleshing out Marvel as an interconnected universe. Tony Stark's dad plays a big part, we find out what that stupid cube from Thor's post-credit stinger is, the original Human Torch is in the background, several characters from Marvel's military comics show up, etc.

Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers just right: the exact "I'm a good guy because I'm a good guy" I was looking for, cursed with a scrawny body but then picked out of a row of jocks as the one person who can be trusted with super powers. Everybody is great in this. Stanley Tucci does a great fatherly spin on Dr. Erskine, Tommy Lee Jones fits in the role of a no-nonsense army colonel like a comfortable, familiar chair, Hugo Weaving kills as The Red Skull (of course), and Hayley Atwell is perfect as the restrained military attache Peggy Carter who can obviously barely keep her hands off post-powered Steve.

The only reason I'm not slapping the full five stars on it are niggly little gripes about obvious greenscreen shots that should have been better, mostly the shots on the streets of old New York. JPX mentioned that the movie may seem a bit short, as many of the action scenes in the trailer come from a brief montage of Cap and his commandos giving the Nazis a hard time.

In conclusion: Captain America: Definitely among the top ten superhero movies ever, maybe even the top five. Great fun.

You can probably still catch Cap in theaters, but my sluggishness in getting this written means it's mostly useful as a dvd pick list. But let's discuss! Shout out if you saw any of this stuff, or any other summer offerings. We need to get this lazy blog rolling for Horrorthon.