>SUPERVERBOSE

The last chapter of The House At Pooh Corner begins, "Christopher Robin was going away." In it, the animals in the Hundred Acre Wood throw Christopher Robin a going-away party, and when it's over, he and Pooh find an enchanted place in the forest, a circle of trees where "they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky." The boy, who is going away to boarding school, discusses all the things he's learning, and the bear dimly tries to keep up. The boy, who loves to do Nothing, wistfully says that he won't be doing Nothing as much anymore. "They don't let you," he says. He asks Pooh never to forget him, and hopes that whatever happens, Pooh will understand. But Pooh, of course, doesn't understand what he's supposed to understand. It ends:

So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

( I can't get through this chapter without crying. )

I've just seen Watchmen again, this time in IMAX, and now I think I'm ready to write about it. There are a number of people (say, for example, Adam) who found the Watchmen graphic novel to be one of the best things ever. I do not fall into this group. Don't get me wrong -- I love Alan Moore, and I liked the book very much, but I didn't find it overwhelmingly compelling and revelatory in the way that some people do. To me it felt like a good, well-written story that resisted superhero clichés in some interesting ways. A solid B or B+.

Now, I think there were a couple of things working against me at the time I read it. One was the fact that I read it in the mid-90s rather than the mid-80s. By that time, various aspects of it had been frequently imitated in various ways, and what was revolutionary and groundbreaking about it no longer seemed so.

Laura has a story about being assigned Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in a college class, and complaining to the professor, "These guys write in such a clichéd style, it's driving me crazy!" To which her professor of course replied, "No, no, see, these guys invented this style. It was their thousands of imitators who turned it into a cliché." Well, I had a bit of the Hammett/Chandler effect going when I read Watchmen, even though intellectually I understood that Moore was the originator. His ideas just couldn't have the same impact on me that they would have had if I'd read them first.

My other disadvantage is the fact that the book is so highly and universally praised. Reading something after hearing bunches of people call it The Most Awesome Thing Ever I Mean Ever can hardly help but be a slightly disappointing experience. It's the expectation theory.

Well, having read quite a bit of the press around the movie and how it compares to the book, I think it's safe to say that I missed entire layers of that book in my first reading. I'd really love to reread the graphic novel, perhaps with some kind of Annotated Watchmen alongside it. (Okay Watchmen book, go stand over there in the line marked "to read." Yes, I know there are 112 books in the line. Hey, I pick randomly from the group, so maybe you'll get lucky.) Like the book, I think the movie benefits from repeated viewings. I know I was catching things this time around that completely passed me by on the first viewing. However, my overall opinion remains the same, which is that it is a very enjoyable superhero movie, with a great story, some excellent writing, magnificent visuals, and a couple of sublime performances, but it is also significantly flawed in certain ways.

( From here, it gets a little spoilery )

( Possible spoilers for The Dark Knight, I guess. Very mild ones. )

The Hulk isn't a superhero. He exists in a world of superheroes, and he was created second (just after the Fantastic Four) during the most legendary superhero-creation-spree of all time, Stan Lee's run at re-envisioning costumed crusaders for the 1960s. But he's not a superhero, any more than Godzilla, Frankenstein's creature, or the Wolfman are superheroes. (Though they, too, were all adapted into comics form by Marvel.) He's a monster. He comes out of the tradition of monster comics that Lee was writing just before he invented the FF, and although the Green Goliath constantly encountering Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and so forth, as a character he has very little in common with any of them. He was one of the original Avengers, but there's a reason why his membership only lasted two issues.

Superheroes are people (or entities who might as well be people) with extraordinary abilities, trying to do good. The Hulk, at least in his most famous incarnation, lacks the mental capacity to form such an intention. Although superpowered (what with being the strongest individual in the world), he is no hero. He's a pure destructive force, extremely dangerous to anyone and anything he encounters. Sure, he's misunderstood, and he's constantly trying, unsuccessfully, to be left alone, but the Army is right to try to neutralize him. He's like an unstoppable, indestructible, infintely strong, emotionally abused toddler who lacks any sort of parental figure. The only control on him is his alter ego, who (understandably) is constantly trying to eliminate his greenish tendencies, but of course, if that happened, there would be no story. So it's never going to happen in any permanent way.

All this presents quite a problem when you're making a Hulk movie. You're stuck with a monster movie that you have to somehow sell as a superhero movie, because in the mistaken public mind, the Hulk is a superhero. So what do you do? You make him sympathetic (not hard given his misunderstood quality.) You make Banner really likeable and tie the two together so that it's clear that the Hulk, dangerous as he is, is a cage that's wrongfully imprisoning a good person. You taint the intentions of the Army, who really ought to be the heroes of this story, so that they turn from protectors of humanity to destroyers of it. Finally, you provide a villain who's as powerful as the Hulk but is genuinely evil rather than just rampant, so that we must root for the Hulk to emerge, becuase he's the only thing that has a chance of stopping this other force.

Louis Leterrier does all these things successfully in The Incredible Hulk, but he does one more thing too: he stuffs the movie with so many sly references to comic and TV lore that it firmly establishes itself, especially in the wake of Iron Man, as a clear attempt at putting the Marvel Universe on screen. For me, at least, that was where the fun really came alive.

( HULK SPOIL!!! )

Overall, The Incredible Hulk was a whole lot of fun, especially considering the lukewarm buzz behind it, and it got me very excited indeed to see what's next from Marvel Studios.

I've never been a fan of Robert Downey, Jr. Not because of all his personal struggles (though his judgement has certainly been less than impressive many times), but because I felt like he was a one-note actor who could only play smarmy jerks. Also, Iron Man himself has always been a character I could take or leave. I never had much against him, but never sought out his adventures either. Consequently, I wondered if seeing Iron Man would be an unpleasant repeat of the Ghost Rider experience -- an actor who annoys me playing a superhero I don't care about.

Well Robert, all is forgiven. You were fantastic. And Shellhead, you're more interesting to me than you've ever been, thanks to this movie, a note-perfect film distillation of Iron Man comics. The movie does an absolutely stellar job of making Iron Man an emblematic hero for our current historical moment, and makes Stan Lee's concepts seem smarter and more prescient than they ever were (not that they were dumb!)

( They say the best movie is one you never have to spoil. I prefer the movie you only have to spoil once. )

Highly recommended.

I wasn't a fan of the first Fantastic Four movie, so I went into this one with trepidation. I suppose a more rational person just wouldn't go at all, but I am not that person. I'm a big fan of the FF, and the last movie did provide some things I liked, so I'm not going to just stay home. I went hoping to find some enjoyable moments, and I did. I found some enjoyable moments, surrounded by a sea of suck.

( The spoilery breakdown )

Here's the thing about Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies: they never let me down. Yes, there are always a few pieces I would have done differently if it were up to me. (HA! Yeah, easy to say.) Yes, they pick, choose, and rearrange bits of the mythos, and they leave out some important character pieces (like Spidey being funny). However, I think it would be a huge mistake to try to be stickler-faithful to the comics, and the translations that these movies do are full of great choices. Mainly, what they do is choose excellent actors, give the characters emotional depth, and allow them to move through arcs that aren't just about who punches the hardest, but who can summon the most inner strength, and what it costs to do so. By focusing on emotion, they faithfully render the spirit of the best Spider-Man comics. I hoped that Spider-Man 3 would continue this trend. It didn't let me down.

( From here, it gets spoilery. )

I have never been much of a fan of Nicolas Cage, nor of Ghost Rider. The former always struck me as immensely overrated -- capable of only a tiny range of emotions, generally unappealing in what he could convey, and ridiculous even when he means to be serious. As for the Ghost Rider, he's from that period in the 1970s when Marvel was cranking out superheroes who started not as character concepts but rather as attempts to cash in on the popular trends of the day. I can almost hear the pitches for these guys. "Let's have a kung fu superhero!" (Iron Fist.) "How about a blaxploitation superhero, like Shaft but with superpowers?" (Luke Cage, Power Man, from whom Nicolas took his last name.) "Hey, maybe a superhero who's powered by disco music! She could roller-skate around and her superpower could be creating a big light show!" (The Disco Dazzler, and no I'm not kidding.) Then there's Ghost Rider: "We should have an occult-type superhero who rides a badass motorcycle! His alter ego could do big jumps like Evel Knievel!"

So a Ghost Rider movie with Nicolas Cage in the title role was not exactly calculated to please me, but I went ahead and bought a ticket anyway, because I'm interested in superhero movies. Also, while I don't care for Cage, I like several of the other principals -- Peter Fonda, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott -- and I've got nothing against Eva Mendes. Besides, sometimes the low expectation theory works out really well. However, that was not the case with Ghost Rider. People, this movie was so dumb. It was so, so, so, so dumb.

( Some spoilery reasons why )
What was good? Well, one thing Ghost Rider has going for him is a cool character design, and the movie does a creditable job of bringing this design to the screen. Peter Fonda is brilliantly cast as the devil, bringing both cycle-movie cred and genuine acting ability to his scenery-chewing role. Wes Bentley also does a fine job in his role -- I always thought he had the perfect look for a really creepy villain. Finally, there are a number of funny moments, some of them even intentional.

Overall, though, man what a stinker. All the pieces clicked into place when I saw that the film was both written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the guy who inflicted the Daredevil movie on us. Please, somebody stop this guy before he directs another Marvel film!

I don't have the time or inclination right now to do a full review of this movie, but I will say two things:

1) I highly recommend it, even if you're not particularly interested in the British monarchy or in Princess Diana and her death. I'm not very into those things, but I found the film very compelling nevertheless.

2) If Helen Mirren doesn't get nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, I shall be shocked and scandalized.

I utterly adored this film, for so many reasons. ( And here they are. Nothing too spoilery. )

Expectations really do lie beneath both pleasure and disappointment. A few weeks ago, I saw X-Men 3, worried that because Bryan Singer was no longer directing, it might suck. Partly because of that worry, I ended up having a pretty good time. This weekend I saw Superman Returns, the project for which Singer left X3, and was very excited to watch his take on the Man Of Steel. Perhaps for that reason (among others), I found Superman Returns a little disappointing.

( Spoilerman Returns )

I had a few trepidations going into this movie. I loved the first two X-Men movies, especially X2, but the director of those two movies (Bryan Singer) was gone, replaced (after some turmoil and a late resignation) by the guy who did Rush Hour (Brett Ratner). Also, I'm told Halle Berry was granted more creative control, which I think we can all agree is not a good thing. So sure, I was excited to see the mutant world brought to life on screen again, but I was a little worried that this one might really suck.

Maybe that's what helped me enjoy it so much.

( They wish to spoil us, but I say we are the spoilers! )

( Responses behind here. Spoilers, such as they are )

V For Vendetta is the best ever film adaptation of an Alan Moore work, though I concede that this is a dismally easy target to hit. Actually, I shouldn't be so quick with the categorical statements, because I never saw From Hell. Still, even if it was three times as good as Swamp Thing, or especially the utterly wretched League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I think I'm on safe ground. I read the graphic novel several years ago, and I'm not terribly gifted with a strong memory for things I've read, so I went into the movie with only faint remaining impressions of the plot and characters. I think this circumstance served me well -- looking back at the book, I'm reminded that it's much tougher and edgier than the movie, though I suppose the movie is fairly edgy for a mainstream studio picture. Also, the movie is a radical rearrangement of the book, with characters altered, subplots added and removed. I didn't remember this when I watched the film -- I just recalled pieces of the book as they cropped up in the movie's plot. I'm glad the graphic novel wasn't fresh in my mind, because my sketchy memory allowed me to enjoy the movie on its own terms.

( Varied and voluminous [insert 'V' word for spoilers here] )

I never saw the original King Kong, nor the 1976 remake, so all I knew of the big monkey was from parodies and film clips. Still, I liked Peter Jackson's work on Lord Of The Rings, and I'm a fan of the principal actors involved in his version of King Kong, so I thought I'd give it a try. ( Verdict: mixed )

First, understand this: I love the Fantastic Four. I love superhero comics, and the FF is my overall favorite superhero team. Aside from being a tremendous innovation in the history of costumed crimefighters, they're also just good characters, each with intriguing nuances that have been well-developed over the years. Tons of great stories have been told about them, stories that are lodged deep in my psyche. There was no way I was going to miss a Fantastic Four movie. I even arranged it special with Laura to do the baby care and everything so that I could see it on opening day. Nevertheless, I approached the movie with dread.

See, I love superhero movies, but there are some I approach with eagerness, and some I approach with dread. The ones with well-established, highly-regarded directors and actors, I'm eager for, and the ones with no-name directors and B-list/TV actors, I dread. Bryan Singer, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen? Eagerness. Mark Steven Johnson, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Garner? Dread. Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst? Eagerness. Tim Story, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis? Dread. I mean really, whose dumb idea was it to entrust my beloved FF to the guy who brought us TAXI and BARBERSHOP? My presentiments are almost always right, too. The ones I can't wait for turn out to be great, and the ones I dread turn out to suck. Sadly, that was once again the case here.

( And now, six more spoiler-laden paragraphs belaboring the point. )

So I'm thinking I'll start using this LJ account to occasionally post my thoughts on some of the stuff I'm reading and seeing -- not full-fledged reviews or anything, but just a way of both prompting me to do a little thinking about the art I'm consuming and also helping me codify those thoughts. I saw Elektra last night, so now seems like a fine time to start.

( Major Elektra spoilers behind here, and some for the Daredevil movie too. )