Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Comic Book Movies

I think a lot of people don't "get it" when it comes to movies that are based on comic books.  Maybe I just hold them a little too close because I used to read them a lot.  But either way, the last few years have been really exciting.  I should back up a little bit to explain why. 

I first started reading comic books right around JR High.  I was never really into the Superman and Batman type DC stuff.  I was into Marvel from the get go.  I gravitated towards the X-Men and Wolverine, Spiderman and once the Image company started I followed most of the first characters(Spawn, Wild Cats).  Seams weird to say but these types of characters felt more "real", a lot of the problems they faced were real life, mixed in with the super villains of course.  There was a time when the supposed villains had heroic traits, creating a few characters that became known as "anti-heros".  Or heroes that had major flaws in their character. 

I don't think anyone would have known the type of reaction the first few movies would have brought.  There have been a couple of hits on the radar a few years ago, like, Blade, but once the big boys hit with X-Men and Spiderman, the flood gates opened up.  Many of them following a predictable formula of the first movie starting with the origin and a "classic" villain before moving into a lot of action with the second movie.  There have been a lot of really good movies and a lot of almost as good movies, but nothing has really failed until recently with the release of DC's Green Lantern.  But with so many characters and stories, there would have to be a few bombs sooner or later.  Hopefully the filmmakers will focus more on story and characters rather then trying to sell the latest CGI graphics and 3-D gimmicks. 

There is a weird line drawn when it comes to certain characters and movie studios that not a lot of people know about.  Marvel Comics created characters like Spiderman, X-Men and The Fantastic Four but they do not own the movie rights to these characters.  Once Marvel started making their own movies, there was a sense of really bringing the comic books to life rather then just having a story very loosely based on it.  Compare The Fantastic Four movie with Ironman.  Most people like Ironman better and mostly because it was the better made movie.  This was Marvel taking care of their character and their story.  Not a movie studio not caring what they cut of change to get a movie made. 

Don't get me wrong, some of those movies created by other movie studios have been great.  But I feel Marvel would have done a better job over all, especially when the sequels started adding up.  Can you imagine Spiderman 3 and X-Men 3 being as bland if Marvel was doing them?  Those were OK movies, but they had potential to be great.  Tell a bigger story and flesh out the characters more, rather then putting together a pale clone with often very little in common with their comic book counterpart.  Take the last scene in X-men origins Wolverine.  Why create a whole new and different character instead of bringing to life the character that everyone knows should have been there?  Was it money?  Was it the costume? Was it they thought we needed to be amazed at something new and different but went against what we all knew? 

Spiderman 1 and 2, along with the first 2 X-Men movies were some of the best, but when number 3 hit, they both took a step backwards.  I can totally understand taking liberties with certain characters and story lines so to an extent I'm OK with it.  What I don't understand is when they take a well known character and totally change them so they are almost unrecognizable.  Do they so this just so they can say, "Hey look, I've put So and So in my new movie, come see it." 

One of the best characters to come along in the last 20 years or so got treated like a second rate cameo.  Granted, in order to do the character justice they would have had to make the story a whole separate movie, which they should have done, instead they quickly put together a story with totally different origins, gave him about 7 minutes total screen time in a 2 and a half hour movie and they (spoiler alert) killed him at the end.  Just like that, in this movie universe, that character is done with.  Of course, we all know that most characters never stay dead, but still, it makes it harder to come up with a reason why he came back from the dead later on. 

I'll have to come back to this subject later.  There is a lot that can be said.  I would like some input from readers if there are any!  What do you feel about all these movies coming out?

MikeTheTripp

2 comments:

  1. I can't think of a bigger f-up of potential than what they did to Deadpool

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  2. That one bugged me but it comes in second (for me) to what they did to Venom.

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