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Comic and Rant for Saturday, October 18, 2003
Sketch Book Day 12 |
I think before I do anything else, even apologize for the ridiculously long hiatus, I’d like to discuss my opinions of the so- called “Sucker Edition” of The Two Towers. I didn’t buy the General Release (is that the term? Ah, good enough!) version of Fellowship when it came out, because, of course, I knew that the Special Edition would be out soon, so why buy something twice, especially after my experience with T2 and Bug’s Life, A (get the feeling I’m a bit annoyed at stores that don’t understand the concept of “definite articles?”)? Then I actually bought the Special Edition and discovered that, while it had a whole smegload of extras, it lacked trailers, TV specials, webisodes ... in other words, all the extras that were on the General Release. I soon found out that, aside from the film itself, neither DVD has anything in common, and even then they’re different cuts of the film. I view the General Release editions as the “Promo Collection with the Theatrical Cut Thrown in as an Extra” edition (actually, I’m a big enough fan that the latter alone might almost be enough). With that in mind, I bought the “Sucker Edition” of Two Towers immediately, and of course I’ll buy the Deluxe Edition with the Gollum statue on November 18. I don’t know if I’ll buy the Super-Tiger-Dragon Edition, or whatever they’re going to call it. It’ll have to have some amazing extras to get me to buy a third version of the films, good though they be and fanboy though I am. Time for some no longer relevant movie reviews! Let’s start with the easy one: Bruce Almighty. It was, as I expected, very funny with plenty of opportunity for Jim Carrey to indulge in physical comedy, but surprisingly it also had a good message about people blaming everything that goes wrong with their lives on God. The closest I have to a complaint is that they didn’t go further into the consequences of Bruce automatically answering everyone’s prayers. In a nutshell, while I don’t plan to buy the DVD, I recommend the film and wouldn’t mind seeing it again. Next up, Finding Nemo. Now this is the film that The Road to El Dorado and Dinosaur should have been. Both had promised to be epic quests, and instead were these rather small scale stories (the dinosaurs were big, the story wasn’t) with little in the way of plot complexity. Nemo, on the other hand, was, if not as big an epic as the ocean itself, still pretty darn epic. Ellen DeGeneres was hilarious, which surprised me. It shouldn’t have, since I’ve seen at least one of her stand up cable specials and found her very funny, but I’d forgotten, probably because my only recent exposure to her was her sitcom, or more specifically, episodes from the final season after she came out, which tended to be serious in tone (at least the ones I saw), and provided her little opportunity to exhibit her free-form style of comedy. Anyway, film=good. Despite what most others think, I actually liked The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or LXG, if you must). My only real complaint was (highlight for spoiler) that despite having a different story than the comic, the “surprise villain” turned out to be the same person. I have some other gripes - Nemo’s automobile looked too modern, Mina did most of the recruiting and went by her maiden name and divorced her husband in the book, but did no recruiting, used her married name and was widowed in the movie, disempowering her quite a bit, we meet “M” early on, precluding the interesting speculation that he might be Mycroft Holmes, and though it probably wasn’t possible, with the different story and all, I missed the way the comic only hinted at Mina being a vampire, while the movie blatantly showed it. Actually, after reading this, I’m beginning to like it a lot less ... Still, even with a producer who’s a real smeghead, LXG couldn’t plumb the depths of badness that is this piece of lime-green crap. As Hulk might say, Hulk Suck! Quite aside from the fact that the CGI Hulk often looked fake (notable exceptions being scenes with low lighting and that great scene [and I actually mean that - sarcasm mode is switched off for the moment] where he’s fighting the tanks), Ang Lee or the scriptwriters, or whoever made the decision forgot that, in any film adaptation, you need to compress the story. This is especially important when adapting long-running comic books. Daredevil did it well, starting off with action, telling the origin in flashback, and removing the backstory with Matt and Elektra, thus allowing the film to get right into the story. Spider-Man took longer before getting to any superpowered action, but it worked because Peter Parker started fighting crime shortly after getting his powers, while Matt Murdock spent years training (not only was he younger, but his only physical superpower is his sense of balance), not to mention college and law school. It was also important to establish Peter’s background and his motivations, actually not unlike the comic. Despite this, the movie was careful not to spend too much time on backstory. In the comic, Peter becomes Spidey in either his Sophomore or Junior year, starts to earn a living by taking pictures of himself, dates Betty Brant for a while (though at first he moons a bit over Flash Thompson’s girlfriend, Liz Allen, who also has a bit of a crush on him and defends him from Flash), fights the Green Goblin (along with several other supervillains, of course) numerous times, and narrowly avoids Aunt May’s attempts to set him up with Anna Watson’s niece, Mary Jane. He eventually graduates from High School, goes to college, meets Harry Osborn, with whom he does not initially get along, finally meets MJ and dates her on and off, although his heart belongs to the lo vely Gwen Stacy. Pete and Harry eventually become friends, and even become roommates (Norman won’t let Harry get a place on his own, but will foot the bill if he has a responsible roommate), the Goblin unmasks Spider-Man, reveals himself to be Norman Osborn, then loses his memory of being the Goblin. Peter and Gwen get more serious, Gwen’s father, police Captain Stacy, dies while saving a child during a battle with Spidey and Doc Ock (causing Gwen to believe Spider-Man responsible for his death), and eventually Norman regains his memory, the Goblin kills Gwen by knocking her off a bridge before getting impaled on his own glider, and Peter’s attempts to protect Harry from the knowledge that his father was a criminal result in Harry (and the police) thinking Spider-Man murdered him. In the movie, Peter is near the end of his senior year in high school and already interested in photography when the spider bites him, he and Harry are already best friends, MJ is a composite of herself, Gwen, and Liz, and Betty is reduced to a cameo. The Goblin’s origin is told as it happens, parallel with Spider-Man’s, and his multiple meetings with the webslinger are reduced in number, not to mention altered to make a more flowing story. I’m sure truncating the origin is also part of the reason why they went with the controversial organic webshooters. Hulk, however, expanded on the backstory to a ludicrous degree, severely delaying the entrance of the Hulk, not to mention the fact that the changes, quite frankly, sucked, and while they included Betty Ross, her father, and Ned Talbot, the pivotal character of Rick Jones was left out completely. If you need to cut something important because you added too much unnecessary stuff, you’re doing something wrong. Suffice to say, I’m not getting the DVD unless maybe they cut everything but the tank fighting sequence and Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno’s cameo, and it included extensive exclusive previews of Spider-Man 2, Daredevil 2, and X-Men 3. Okay, I guess I’d better review Terminator 3 too ... uh ... also. Inadvertent puns aside, I liked it. While I don’t think it was as good as T2, it was the movie I’d hoped T2 would be - a movie showing how the machines take over. Sure it had its flaws, but all in all it was entertaining and hung together well. I only hope T4 isn’t delayed too much by Arnold’s new hobby, and that it ends the storyline rather than trying to extend the life of the franchise indefinitely. Everything else I want to rant about can wait until next time (which should be sooner rather than later), except to bemoan Takeshis’s Castle “adapted” for American TV and point out this rather amusing parody of “Mary Sue” stories. |
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