Comic Book Movies

Last weekend I caught up on comic book movies.  Thanks to Netflix and Instant Amazon, I binge watched The Rocketeer (1991), Thor (2011), Thor: The Dark World (2013), The Avengers (2012), and Captain America: The First Avenger (2011). 

THE ROCKETEER

When this came out in 1991, I was too busy graduating from law school, getting a job and getting married to go see it or to pay any attention to it.  Not being a big comic book aficionado, I was unaware of the immensely popular graphic novel which the film is based on.   

This movie by Disney studios changes a number of the plot points of the original graphic novel by Dave Stevens.  In the comic, the rocket pack which pilot Cliff Secord (Billy Campbell) finds has been built by an un-named character inspired by Doc Savage.  In the movie, the rocket pack has been built by Howard Hughes.  The biggest change from the comic book is with regard to Cliff’s girlfriend.  In the comic book, Cliff’s girlfriend, Bettie, was inspired by 1950s pin up queen Bettie Page.  In fact, Stephens’ drawings of Bettie inspired a Bettie page frenzy by comics fans which directly led up to Page being “re-discovered” in retirement after having dropped out of sight for decades.  The entire Bettie Page motif is dropped and Cliff’s girlfriend is played by Jennifer Connelly who, in the film, is an aspiring actress instead of a pin-up model.

 

The faux 1930s setting is played to the hilt.  The art deco sets and costumes are gorgeous.  The actor Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton), who turns out to be a German spy, is inspired by Errol Flynn.  Of course, the bad guys in the movie are the Nazis who are the coolest villians around for a film set in the Depression era.  Comic creator Dan Stephens said he was 70% satisfied with the movie.  The Bad Catholic is too.  Three out of five rocket ships.

THOR & THOR: THE DARK WORLD

Ever since I was first exposed to Wagner’s operas, I’ve thought that the Norse gods were cool.  They wear cool armor, they carry swords and hammer and stuff and they kick some serious ass.  What could be better than a comic book about Norse gods?  A movie based on a comic book about Norse gods.  Of course, in this movie they’re not really gods, they’re extraterrestrials who came to earth and were mistaken for gods by the locals.  But in the comic books they really are gods and some Joe Shmo finds a magical staff which becomes Thor’s hammer and then becomes Thor.  All of that got jettisoned for this movie, but it’s still a great ride.  Thor still has the hots for a motal chick but his daddy, Odin, the King of the Gods, sorry they ain’t really gods, don’t want Thor to marry a mortal.   Thor’s brother turns out to not really be his brother but a frost giant (you know them guys that in Wagner’s mythology built Valhalla for Wodin, but that’s a whole other story).  So, Thor’s adopted brother, Loki, is really pretty pissed when he finds out that he’s really a frost giant and wants to get revenge on Odin and Asgard.

Thor is banished to earth and loses all his powers, except that Odin allows him to possess his hammer and get all his powers back.  Finally, Thor kicks ass and returns to Asgard after defeating Loki.  Unfortunately, he has to sever the rainbow bridge and can’t get back to his earthling girlfriend.  The movie was directed by veteran Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh.

In Thor: The Dark World, the Dark Elves attack Asgard to get their dark crap back so they can plunge the world into darkness.  Thor’s earthling girlfriend, Jane Foster, is made the carrier for the dark materials which the Dark Elves are after.  Thor’s mother, Frigga, dies fighting the Dark Elves to protect Jane.  At the end, it appears that everything is brought right.  Odin (played in high Shakespearean form by Anthony Hopkins) offers Thor the throne and he refuses it, it is revealed that Odin has been replaced by Loki who is not dead after all. 

After starting to watch Thor: The Dark World, I realized that there must be another movie in between which I didn’t see yet, because they kept talking about Loki tearing up New York City.  So then I discovered, that the adventures of Thor and Loki part 2 was in The Avengers.

THE AVENGERS

The Avengers are all of Marvel’s superheroes together as a team.  All of Marvel’s superheros that Marvel still owns the movie rights too, that is.  Conspicuously absent is Spiderman, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, who with the world in such great danger, you would think would show up.  You would certainly expect Spiderman to show up when his beloved New York City is getting torn to shreds by Loki and a bunch of aliens who aren’t Frost Giants or Dark Elves but look kinda and act kinda like em.   I guess Spidy was on vacation that week.  Probably touring the Sony headquarters in Tokyo.  But I digress.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), head of a super secret government spy service, summons the Avengers to save the earth.  We get some great CGI of an aircraft carrier taking off and flying and Samuel L. Jackson could look and sound cool reading the telephone book, which really helps his nothing part.  Anyway, the B-Team Marvel superheros, I mean the Avengers, kick alien ass and save the earth setting up the imprisonment of Loki in Thor: The Dark World.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

This must be the longest advertisement for another movie in history.  This movie gives us the backstory for Captain America and explains how he got frozen in at the North Pole so he could be thawed out and fight with the modern day Avengers.

Steve Rogers was a proverbial 90 pound weakling who couldn’t get into the army but is chosen for an experiment to use some kind of scientific rig-a-ma-roll to enhance soldiers and make them super-soldiers.  Unfortunately, the machinery breaks down after the one use, but Steve is transformed into a muscled, lean, mean American fighting machine.

Originally only allowed to sell war bonds, Steve puts on his war bond show outfit and goes out and kicks Nazi ass.  Of course, they’re not exactly the Nazis their the guys that Red Skull is leading in a war against the entire world.    Red Skull, who literally has a red head, is a failed early experiment by the same scientist that enhanced Rogers.  Tying this into the whole Thor thing, Red Skull has captured Tesseract, powerful stuff which fell from the gods. 

Captian America has to crash land Red Skull’s plane, which is about to use weapons of mass destruction on the United States, in the Arctic where he is frozen until he is revived so he can fight with The Avengers.

These were all kick ass movies and I enjoyed watching them a whole lot.  Nuff said.

Pan Am

A couple of weekends ago, I binge watched all 14 episodes of Pan Am.  It's a real shame that this got cancelled or didn't get picked up by somebody else.  Reportedly, there were talks with Amazon.com to pick it up and make it an original to web show like Orange is the New Black or House of Cards but the talks fell through, so we are apparently left with only one season of Pan Am.  I am still going through withdrawal.

Pan Am is a soap opera about the life and loves of a group of stewardesses and pilots for Pan American Airlines in the early 1960s.  Like the hugely popular Mad Men, Pan Am is full of pop culture references.  A stylized and sanitized Disneyland version of the early sixties, the sets, costumes and props are visually stunning.  The real sixties never looked this great.  With Sinatra crooning "Come Fly With Me" in the background Pan Am soars.

The series ended with a bunch of open story threads for a second season which we will, alas, never be able to see.  We'll never find out if Maggie (Christina Ricci) is ever going to be caught in her life of crime or will be fired for lying about her background.  We'll never find out if Laura (Margot Robbie) is going to get in trouble with the airline for those nude pictures of her which have been published or if she and Ted are going to be able to get together after he's found out that his former fiancee, who is really a lesbian, is pregnant with his baby.  We'll never find out if Kate (Kelli Garner) becomes a full fledged CIA agent or if her cover as a Pan Am stewardess will be blown.  We'll never find out if Colette (Karine Vanasse) can find her brother who was lost during the Holocaust.  We'll never find out if Dean (Mike Vogel) and Bridget (Annabelle Wallis) can patch things up.  And we'll never find out if Ted (Michael Mosley) can shake himself loose from his pregnant frigid lesbian fiancee, Amanda (Ashley Greene), and get together with the love of his life, Laura.

Guess I'll just have to go take a cold shower and try to get over it.

The Mothman Prophecies

I picked up a copy of the DVD of The Mothman Prophecies (2002) on the bargain bin at a local video store.  The only thing I knew about the Mothman was what I had seen on a documentary on The Travel Channel about how some kids in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the late sixties kept seeing a man with moth like wings right before a bridge over the Ohio River collapsed and killed a bunch of people.

Richard Geer and Laura Linney ponder reports of Mothman

Unfortunately, the only sighting of Mothman in this movie is the shadowy images which come to people’s minds.  Richard Geer’s wife (Debra Messing), who is dying of a brain tumor, saw the shadowy image of Mothman just before having a car crash.  While lying in the hospital dying, she keeps drawing pictures of the demon looking Mothman.

This movie is mostly a psychological drama.  The stuff that you don’t see is a lot scarier than what you do see.  Richard Geer plays John Klein, a Washington Post reporter who’s beloved wife has just died.  Strangely drawn to the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, Klein is drawn into the mysterious goings on.  People in Point Pleasant hear and see weird stuff just before something bad happens.  Klein talks to people who have seen and heard the entity and talks to the entity himself.  In fact the entity calls him on the phone and keeps calling after the phone has been unplugged.  A local eccentric (Will Patton) hears the entity talking to him and telling him what will happen in the future.  It eventually drives him crazy and he goes out in the cold and dies from exposure. Klein seeks out a para-normal expert (Alan Bates) who tells him that he is dealing with beings who live on another plane of existence who can see the future.  The expert tells Klein that he can’t change the future and the entities will drive him to his death and to quit talking to them. 

Klein becomes involved with a police woman Connie Mills (Laura Linney) who sees and talks to Klein’s dead wife and has a recurring dream in which she is drowning and told “don’t worry number 67.”  Later, it becomes apparent that this was a reference to the fact 66 people died in the bridge collapse and she was supposed to be number 67 but is saved when Klein decides to stop talking to the entities, who are taking the form of his dead wife, and return to Point Pleasant to be with Connie.

The Mothman Prophecies is a creepy movie.  The thing that makes it the most creepy is the eerie musical score.  Geer and Linney put in good performances and are convincing in their roles as people who are caught up by the weird and supernatural and don’t know what to do. 

All in all, The Mothman Prophecies was worth the dollar that I paid for it.  Three out of Five Vampire Bats.