Post 2: The Revenge

Thanks for coming back for Day #2. It should be an interesting day as I recieved a few ideas on what to comment on next. Today I'm going to be sharing my thoughts on upcoming comic book movies. (Adam your suggestion of upcoming comedy movies will probably be next so stay tuned).

The bar for comic book movies has been raised significantly over the past few years. Not only are the special effects getting more and more realistic but the storylines are gettting deeper and there is a lot more attention to character development. Hollywood has a lot of big ideas in the works and I am hopeful that the current trend will continue, however there is also a lot of room to screw it all up.


X-Men: First Class

Speaking of screwing things up the 3rd X-men movie was terrible. They threw a lot of random characters together, barely had a storyline, and hoped everyone would watch it just to see the amazing powers they could showcase. If it wasn't an X-men movie and they said come watch a movie where people have awesome powers and blow stuff up, I would have liked it and it would have entertained me. However it was an X-men movie and they should have respected the source material enough to at least have a story that didn't suck.

This is why I have high hopes for X-Men first class. I am hoping that they learned their lesson from X3 and developed something that X-Men fans can come back to. The cast is pretty good and from the previews there does appear to be some awesome special effects. I am almost certain the storyline diverges from the comics since several of the characters did not meet until much later in the comic books but as long as they come up with a great story I will not be picky.


Captain America: The First Avenger

Other Marvel projects have fared much better in my eyes. While Ironman 2 wasn't as good as the first one, I believe that it is probably the best comic book movie that has come out in quite some time. Before Ironman 1 and 2 it was Spiderman 1 and 2 (that third one was awful, what is it with Marvel and 3s?). I am very excited about the prospect of an Avengers movie. Having Ironman, Thor, and Captain America team up to fight an unidentified enemy (probably the Hulk) is going to be awesome.

Well only awesome if Thor and Captain America don't suck in their individual movies. Thor comes out this weekend so we shall see and Captain America doesn't excite me the way I think it should. The expectations are still high but I definitely worry that Hollywood will get too greedy and push this stuff out too quickly with very little substance.

Speaking of getting too greedy why wouldn't they pursue getting Edward Norton back for the second Hulk movie? He did an awesome job there and they seemed to not even try to get him back. It seemed like they just wanted to find someone to replace him since he can command a much higher salary than most of the people they have playing in these films. Personally I think he would have been worth it. But Mark Ruffalo is a good actor as well and I will give him the benefit of the doubt as long as they make a movie worth watching.


The Green Lantern

Finally today we have a trailer for the Green Lantern. Now I've never been a huge Green Lantern fan but Ryan Reynolds is a solid actor and the special effects have potential to not suck judging from the preview anyway. I've always been partial to Marvel comics anyway but I'm sure I will be checking this movie out when it debuts.

DC hasn't had as much luck as Marvel in terms of awesome comic book movies, except for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. They supposedly are working towards doing a similar thing with the Justice League as Marvel is with the Avengers but I personally don't think this will ever happen unless they can make a modern superman movie that isn't a sorry remake of the original starring Christopher Reeves. Don't get me wrong, Brandon Routh was pretty good as Superman and Kevin Spacey made an awesome Lex Luthor but the story line was pretty bad, especially the growing kryptonite and the whole Superman's son thing. The getting shot in the eye scene was BAD ASS however.

Well I hope this has whetted your appetite for the upcoming summer movie season. Comic book movies aren't going away any time soon and there is a huge amount of potential for some awesome entertainment. I am hopeful and look forward to the next batch of comic book movies but I remain wary as I have seen the crap that has been peddled in the past. Let me know what you think in the comments.