The Captain is Real IN

It should be no surprise to anyone that I like comic books. I've also spent a good chunk of real estate on this here blog detailing my thoughts on films based on comic books (usually picking over things like the costume and changes to the story), but one film in specific has been absent (and one person actually asked me why). And that movie is: Captain America: The First Avenger. Since the film has been out for a couple of weeks and most people who are going to see it have seen it, I'm not going to write a review (I liked it. A lot), but rather go through a partial history of the development and my reaction to said...developments.

So let's start at the beginning, shall we? (or pretty close for our purposes...)

An interesting thing happened with Captain America: The First Avenger. As more details about the movie trickled in, the less enthusiastic I was for the final product. And no, it wasn't just, "Oh, this director sucks" or "Chris Evans isn't right for Cap." Ok, maybe I said that about the last one, but once leaked set footage appeared I was quickly silenced by just how much Evans looked like the character.

But I had the opposite comment about Joe Johnston, the director of Captain America: The First Avenger. About the only work I recalled of Johnston's was The Rocketeer, an enjoyable WWII-era superhero-esque fantasy film from the 90's. So he already had a pedigree for this type of work (this type of work being Nazis and superheroes).

It wasn't until comments from Johnston about production and the film that I really started getting worried. This was one of his first comments about Cap:
"It's not going to be a Captain America that you expect. It's something different. It is influenced by the comic book, but it goes off in a completely different direction."
Hearing that the director thinks it's a good idea to go off completely on his own is not something you want to hear about a comic book movie (or any film that's based on a literary work, really). It shows a lack of understanding and respect for the history of the character. It's like the director (or writer or producer) is saying, "this character has existed and endured for 70 years, but now I'm going to make him good!"

It was also a hint that maybe the studio was giving the directors more freedom in how they handled the characters (something that I point to as one of the reasons why Spider-Man 2 and 3 were disappointments). With movies like Spider-Man and Iron Man, I could picture someone in a black suit and sunglasses kicking over a chair, pulling a switchblade up to Raimi's and Favreau's necks and saying, "You won't screw this up if you know what's good for you..." and disappeared into the night. When the time to make Cap rolled around, Marvel Studios had a string of major and minor hits on their hands (Iron Man and Iron Man 2 being the major, Incredible Hulk being the minor), so maybe they felt the director could have more freedom in how he made the movie. Or maybe the guy from Swingers just "got" Iron Man a lot more than Joe Johnston seemed to "get" Captain America.

The concept art for the costume didn't help much, either. While the finished product looked a lot more like cloth than the initial picture, the concept looked like futuristic body armor. I won't go any further into it than that (already spent at least one entry doing that, anyway).

And then something happened. The aforementioned footage of a buff Chris Evans as Steve Rogers surfaced, leaving whether he could be the physically imposing super-soldier in little doubt. This was the still-in-excellent physical condition, but much thinner kid who had, only a couple of years ago, been the Human Torch in the Fox-licensed Fantastic Four movie. That, of course, was the second biggest hurdle (or perhaps even larger than if he could pull off the role unaided by CGI) with Evans. He, in my mind and in many others, was still remembered for his role as Johnny Storm (many articles about him even said Chris Evans, best known for his role as the Human Torch).

It's like (though maybe not to this extreme) if Christian Bale were to play Superman, or if Ryan Reynolds would be the Flash. Yes, Fantastic Four is licensed to Fox Studios (same as X-Men and DareDevil, though Spider-Man is licensed to Sony, which is why Kingpin probably won't show up in a Spidey flick) and Captain America is a Marvel Studios film, but many don't see a distinction. Seriously. People continue to ask and wish for a Spider-Man/Avengers/X-Men crossover film. So, it wasn't that far of a stretch for people to look at Chris as Steve Rogers and ask, "what the crap is that guy from FF doing in WWII?" Part of what helped IS the amount of muscle Chris Evans put on to play the role. The other, and we had to wait for the finished product to really determine this, was could he act differently than the sarcastic jerk from the FF movies.

The trailers began filtering in and I just about wrote the film off as the first real failure for Marvel. One that could spell disaster for Joss Whedon's The Avengers (though Whedon just couldn't have that. I'll get to that in a bit). A lot of the earlier trailers were mostly one liners and generic looking action shots (maybe that's all that the studio had finished, I don't know) and I thought to myself (and anyone who would listen, really) "If these are the best parts of the film, this is what is supposed to sell me on this movie, then this is going to suck)

So. The big question is now,after I've rambled on for paragraphs about my personal history with the development of Captain America (no, I didn't work on the film, I'm saying my reaction to the film's development) is did Chris Evans deliver?

The answer, as anyone who saw the film, was yes. Yes, he can. He has that that root-for-me-because-I'm-the-underdog charm that makes the character so likable. Yes, he also has the badass part down pat. But it's his, "I just want to do something good" attitude that really won me over.

Without knowing how much of the script Joss Whedon changed (he was brought in to rewrite the script to make it fit into his plan for The Avengers as well as to punch up a couple of scenes to add more character development), I can't say the film would've been worse without his involvement.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is: congratulations Joe Johnston and Chris Evans, you won me over. Now bring on the Avengers!

Even the Spider-logo Looks Sad...

A while back I wrote an entry detailing my feelings on changes being made to comic book costumes both in books. And in film.



In the second post (about Cap's movie costume), I said that I wouldn't talk about costume changes again unless someone decided to really screw with the design. It's like both DC and Marvel read that and took it as a challenge. It wasn't, guys who designed the movie costumes for comic book films. It really wasn't. The offenders this time are Green Lantern and *sob* Spider-Man.



I've already said how I feel about the CG-costume for GL, so I won't wax on about that. Instead, I'll focus on the recently revealed picture of Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man. The one thing that I thought the Sam Raimi-directed Spidey films got right was the costume. Sure, the thing was latex instead of spandex and they added the web & texture design, but overall, it was the red and blue costume that Spidey was famous for.

While the picture isn't 100% clear and the mask isn't present, there are some changes that are notable. The spider logo on the chest has been change so that the lower four legs are stretched and the two outer legs bleed into the border of the red section. Which brings me to the red section. It appears to taper off and does not have what many call "the belt" of the Spidey suit. There is a section of red on the back right (his left, our right) that just...ends, so it could be that because the picture is of a battle-damaged suit, the belt has been torn off. That we'll have to wait for the final product to verify. It is clear that the gloves are no longer a solid piece of red, but are broken up by the blue, and it just doesn't look good.. Someone else pointed that there appears to be metallic material on the inside of the wrists, which Emma Stone has confirmed to be web-shooters.

So, yeah, somehow the makers of the reboot managed to make even the costume Emo. Congratulations. First, you cast another ugly 30-year old (yes, I know Garfield is 27, it was an exaggeration) to play a teen Peter Parker (Petey was 18 in the first film), but then you make him something straight out of Twilight (check here to see him with Robert Patterson-quaffed hair).

That was something that bugged me about the first film. Apparently, Peter Parker is smart enough to be able to fashion that latex thing with its ornate raised webbing and scaly material, but can't create webshooters. So, really, in Raimi's trilogy, Parker wasn't a genius, he was a seamstress. A master seamstress.

The argument for the new suit is that if the studio made the film exactly like the comic, then that would alienate non-comic book fans as an audience. Yeah, that argument would be valid...if the year was 1999 (when the only popular comic book film at the time was the first Blade. No, Spawn doesn't count and the Batfilms were in the toilet). But, now we have comic faithful films like the Iron Man and Batman (current franchise) films. So, yeah, that argument doesn't really fly anymore. IM blended together several storylines and Batman borrowed heavily from stories like "Year One."

The reason behind the reboot was to wipe the bad taste of Spider-Man 3 away. And what was it replaced with? Something worse. The best we could've hoped for was that Marvel made a deal to co-finance the film and allow Sony to ditribute like it did with Universal (or was that Paramount) and the Incredible Hulk and maybe, just maybe see Spidey in the Marvel-produced films. At worst, we could get something to pander to the teen Twilight crowd. I think we all know which one it's shaping up to be...

Uncharted The Movie: Fillion's Bane

When I downloaded the demo for the first Uncharted game, booted it up, and watched the intro sequence, I was stunned when the main character, Nathan Drake, opened his mouth and was not voiced by Nathan Fillion (who some of you know as Capt. Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly). That's because it appeared someone at Naughty Dog really had a hard-on for the self-described "ruggedly handsome" actor. Nathan Drake bears a striking resemblence to Fillion and yes, they share the same first name.

Recently, talks have been underway of a movie based on the video game franchise. They have a director and writer who decided that the best idea would be to make the film a family affair. So...instead of getting something akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark, we'll get National Treasure. Fantastic. When it came to selecting an actor to portray Drake, Nathan Fillion himself started a Twitter campaign to get the lead role. So, much to dismay of his and the game's fans, it was announced a few weeks ago that Mark Wahlberg would be portraying the wise-cracking, loner, asshole.

I have nothing against Marky Mark, but I would've loved to have seen Fillion in a role that seemed like such a perfect fit. A lot of people said that the man best known for his role on a super short-lived Sci-Fi Western could not carry a blockbuster action movie, and three years ago, when there was a lot of fan support for Fillion to play Hal Jordan in Green Lantern, I would've agreed. The director has also said that he has never heard of Nathan, and the guy was kind of an ass about it.

And what has Wahlberg done that makes him a box office draw? The Happening? Planet of the Apes? The only film I recall seeing because of Wahlberg was Shooter, and I'll admit he was pretty badass in that.

However, he (Fillion) is now the star of his own prime time drama on ABC. Now in its third season, Castle has managed to survive far past his other shows. Now, I'll admit, I have always been immersed in nerd culture, so I knew of the Fillion long before most ever heard the name, but why can't he star in a bigger movie? Espeically now that he has a lot more exposure with Castle?

And why does it seem like all of the high profile projects that fans want to see (like Uncharted or Transformers) go to people who really don't know anthing about or care about the property? The argument there is that filmmakers make movies to appeal to the general audience, not us nerds who made the property popular in the first place. My counter to that is look at Iron Man. That took a comic book character that a surprisingly large number of people claimed to have never heard of, and made him a household name. And how did they do it? By sticking to the source material.

So here's my advice Hollywood: If you insist on adapting a popular franchise on the silver screen, try to get someone who understands why its popular and make a faithful movie.

Avengers: Assembled

After much buildup and a series of twenty micro-episodes (think the cel-animated Clones Wars cartoon from a couple years back), the new Marvel cartoon Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes premiered last month. Airing on Disney XD, this is the first project released after Marvel was bought by Disney late last year.

The series incorporates the "classic" Avengers team, meaning those who were on the team when it was founded back in the 60's and those who are often thought of when the name Avengers is spoken. So we're given Captain America (starting with episode "The Living Legend," though he has his own series of micro-eps), Hulk (though he quickly leaves the team because of Enchantress), Ant-Man, The Wasp, Thor, and Iron Man (who for some reason is the team leader). Black Panther joins the team a couple of episodes in and it's hinted that Hawkeye will join up at some point (he was last scene when one of the super-villain prisons exploded). Nick Fury shows up now and again to argue with the team and/or Iron Man.

I have nothing against the core lineup of heroes. No, my main concern is that Iron Man was put in charge of the Avengers. Really? I get that the character has had two successful movies in the last two and half years and because of that is immensely popular with the casual audience. But to put him in charge of the team when they have Captain America, who is a far more capable tactician and leader, is mind boggling. And it's been demonstrated that ol' Shellhead doesn't have what it takes to lead a group as, ahem, mighty as this. So maybe there'll be some resolution to this sometime in the future.

The animation is ok, if not overly "kid-friendly," meaning there are a lot of goofy and cartoony facial expressions (mostly from The Wasp and Ant-Man), but I still think Wolverine and the X-Men had better animation overall. The voice-acting is spotty with most of the characters being at least decent enough to not want to claw my ears off. The stand-outs here are the villains, with each being appropriately nasty, dramatic, and gravely. Again, my biggest problem here is Iron Man. It's clear that the producers went for someone who could pull of the same type of character as RDJ's Stark, but what we get instead is a bad Jack Black impersonator impersonating Robert Downey Jr. playing Tony Stark (which immediately conjurs up images of RDJ yelling at Ben Stiller in Tropic Thunder).

The plot actually follows the basic premise of New Avengers (which appropriately enough, the initial episodes of A:EMH are called Breakout!), in that the Avengers have assembled to collect various super-villains that are on the loose thanks to a massive breakout at the four largest prisons for super-powered beings.

My favorite episode so far was "Everything is Wonderful" due to the fact that it actually showcased not only some of the best character development of the series (Iron Man accidently pisses off Simon Williams when he was actually trying to help him), but also has Thor fighting MODOC. Hilarity ensued. No, seriously.

I'm still peeved that Wolverine and the X-Men was cancelled (though there is a reference to the show in the oft-referred to micro-episodes), but at least we get to see some Marvel characters on screen. Until, y'know, part way through making the second season when the funding mysteriously runs out...