I’m back! In the time that I’ve been gone a lot has happened, I shot a part of my webseries pilot, I finished a feature-length post apocalyptic screenplay, I watched Flashpoint, and last but not least…I got my computer fixed! (duh)
All of that other stuff you will see in time but today let me tell you about the DCAU adaptation of “FLASHPOINT”
PLOT
So it all starts off with Flash as a kid talking with his mother. Later he comes home to find his mother dead. “Flash Forward” (see what I did there?) Flash is fighting basically the main characters in his rogue gallery. These guys…they’re pretty weak… I never really liked his rogue gallery but I digress. Flash barely wins after anti-flash shows up, and then only with the help of the Justice League. Afterwards he’s so upset he just starts running, right into a lot of craziness. The next thing we know the DC Universe has been turned upside down, there is no FLASH, villains are heroes, heroes are villains, Superman is nowhere to be found and Cyborg takes his place as the boy scout.
Flash has basically stumbled into a “what if” universe for DC. Things have changed and it is very interesting to say the least. The world is in the middle of a war that threatens to destroy life as we know it. The only one who knows what is really going on, is Flash but at the moment he has no powers. So we get to watch Flash figure this whole thing out.
RATING
Get ready!
3 stars. Bear with me because I know this movie has been talked about for forever. It stayed very close to the source material that’s not my gripe. There were certain aspects that weren’t developed enough. It was too short for one. All of those different elements converging deserved more time to have the story told. The batman storyline for one, the superman storyline was woefully underwritten to the point of ludicrousness. I wish I had more quality time with the Joker and all of the villains. The story was nice I just needed more. So for that it gets 3 out of 5. I would watch it again but only if i didn’t have anything to do. Its interesting but it leaves me wanting to find out more about the characters that could have been shown easily (especially since they resorted to flashbacks anyway).
Thanks for reading! I’ll be making a video for the Spoiler FILLED review! Stay tuned!
If you’ve been living under the largest rock in the world for the past 20 years, or with one of those tribes that don’t allow other humans to get close enough to give them cable television.
We don’t care how many channels you have! There’s still nothing good on!
Then you know that comic book movies have really exploded, there are several of them that come out every year. Whether they are based on a comic book or a graphic novel or a combination of both (Dark knight rises), the comic book genre and Hollywood are now inextricably linked. Which is very interesting as the comic book movies made in the 80s and 90s sucked, I mean completely sucked. For evidence I give you the 90s captain america, dr strange, the punisher, Justice League, Nick Fury: Agent of shield and the little known and never released but somehow on youtube 90s Fantastic Four.
However in 1998 they decided to give David S Goyer another shot at this comic book live action gig(he wrote Nick Fury: agent of shield), and he penned the script for Blade. Blade starred Wesley Snipes at the height of his marketability and fame and did so well that it completely kicked off a new wave of movies. The dark comic book movie brought to the screen. It was the perfect set up for it actually, vampires, action, those things really transcend comics and can reach over to the regular movie goers. With Goyer’s amazing script this movie became the blueprint for all future comic book movies to follow including X-men, Iron man, superman returns etc. It also ushered in an age of acceptance and respect for comic book movies.
Mr. Goyer went on to write the rest of the Blade trilogy and then famously penned the script for Batman Begins. Teaming up with Christopher Nolan they completely reinvented the origin story and gritty reboot. This movie is beloved by casual movie goers and hardcore batman fans alike. There may be someone who doesn’t like it, but I haven’t found him.
WHERE IS HE???
This lead to the Dark Knight which IS the greatest Batman film of all time and I will not hear a WORD against it. Just the opening scene alone was enough to make me pass out from geek overload. THAT is how you introduce a villain. It also led to the best comic book video game ever created with the Arkham series. You may begin to see a pattern and that is what I am discussing today.
You see talent is hard to come across in Hollywood, not to say that there is a LACK of it there, but I’m saying its hard to come across, I’ll explain. It’s not an agent’s/producer’s job to find NEW talent, it’s his job to make the company money. So new people aren’t really what they are looking for, they are looking for a track record of making money. Much like how job searching today goes, you look and see they want someone with 3 years experience for a job but you can never get the job because…well you can’t get hired without three years of experience. It’s a whirlwind of aggravation to be sure and Hollywood you can see the result right there on the screen. The same people are making everything, the same people are acting in everything, they have their stable of actors and writers and now everything looks the same. Nobody new is getting in which means everything’s a remake or at the least a cheap rip-off of something that someone who is actually creative made in the first place. So they found a creative person in Goyer, he somehow slipped through the cracks and now he’s their go to guy for every single superhero, video game movie, as is Nolan. This is what I call the Goyer/Nolan effect, when you create something good in Hollywood they will leach your brain until they get every penny it can produce.
C’mon I know you’ve got something for Dr strange in there…
So now that the audiences have shown they want superheroes and they want dark. Hollywood says they want Goyer/Nolan! (nothing wrong with that they are very talented). Now everything looks dark, now everything is just a little different, and now we see the problem, they start trying to do things like them without them. Now the movies are FLOODED with dark, dingy, wannabe movies like Green lantern that just don’t work because that’s not really the character. This is pushing more and more people to independent films and outlets. The film festivals have been exploding lately, as have other outlets that promote indie films such as Netflix. Apparently the big movie studios are going to keep throwing more money into remakes and being safe until the movie going populace wises up and stops going to them. When that happens I believe what Spielberg said is true. They won’t try to make better movies, they’ll just up the prices and keep the movies they do make in theaters for a year.
That’s fine with me, gives me more chances for my films to be seen by greater audiences. However the Goyer/Nolan effect is taking great effect on DC. DC has long been known for their unwillingness to flinch when it comes to certain things about their characters. They even released a Mortal Kombat game with no real fatalities.
All he did was drill him into the ground? But where was the BLOOOD
Now clearly they are willing to change origin stories and things about the characters they never would have before. Which could lead to a better DC but they walk a thin line of treading into Marvel territory. DC and Marvel have always been two different entities when it comes to characters. DC has had the more “SUPERhero” the over powered, high morals, and huge stars. Marvel has always been darker and more real. Both takes on the superhero have their merits but fans of DC and Marvel love them for these differences. DC is getting darker but I believe that they will be able to pull it off because they have gotten Guillarmo Del Torro to write and direct a film starring the lesser known but darker DC characters.
All in all the next few years in Hollywood should be interesting, but as much as I love comics…can I please get something a little different?
So today I got up early and went uptown to see the new superman movie “Man of Steel.” Now a little history has to be said first when it comes to this review. I am not the biggest superman fan, I feel he’s overpowered to the point of ridiculousness and I know how hard it is to make a movie with a character like that. That being said DC has done a great job humanizing him through his character and his relationship with the most human of all the superheroes, Batman.
That being said with all the hype surrounding this movie and the fact that Snyder and Nolan helmed it made me pretty excited to see where they would go with it. I wondered how much they’d pull from the dark knight trilogy. The answer obviously was quite a bit. From the official name “Man of Steel” to the darker tone of the entire movie, we are treated to a superman tale that was never before told.
The movie begins on Krypton that is falling apart. (That’s not a spoiler you can see that from the trailers!) Russel Crowe plays Jor-El father of Kal-El (superman) and he plays him quite well. The Krypton they show is not the one you grew up with with golden cities and bright skies. This Krypton is dangerous, the type of place that would have people with a tougher physique such as Superman. They introduced the social climate and political structure of Krypton more than I had ever seen before and the action sequences right from the beginning are intense and quite on point.
They went sci-fi with this movie. In fact the entire movie, not just on Krypton but on Earth as well, I felt was a sci-fi flick. Aliens invading searching for another alien, sometimes I felt I wasn’t even watching Superman which could be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. On one hand superman fans love their boy scout on the other where we come in at in this movie he’s not quite there yet.
The fight scenes in this movie are a little over the top, which kinda works the first time you see it until you think about what’s actually going on. Without giving too much away I’ll just say think of the animated series fights and you’ll get the idea.
The only gripe I had was with the cutting back and forth between ages, it was done a little choppily and left me feeling out of sorts in some places.
Overall this was a fun movie and the best they could have done with a Superman movie. There were great glimpses of Krypton, great performances, huge shocks, and great direction. The fight scenes were huge and over the top and the villain was well written. The rumor is that they’ll be putting out another movie in 2014 which is shockingly fast. Jasmyne suggested a Lex Luthor/Brainiac crossover which I completely agree with.
This gets 4.5 out of 5 stars great movie only thing holding it back was the telling of the story in the beginning. Its a summer blockbuster, sci fi, action movie to the core and It’s a lot of fun. I would definitely recommend going to see it.
So for quite awhile now I’ve been hearing about Warner Brothers attempting to make a Justice league movie. Lest we forget –
Yeah if you’ve never seen that it’s a still collage from the Justice League of America made for tv film. A fun game is to try and watch all 82 minutes of it without throwing your television into the street in anger, (did i say fun game? I meant “substitute for being in a saw movie”).
This little mistake may be why the WB has focused so much on their animated films, (awesome) instead of expanding smaller characters into feature length live action films. They are scared. To be sure they’re characters were never as…realistically character driven as Marvel’s characters. The reason Marvel became so popular in the first place is because Stan Lee’s focus was on showing normal people who attain SUPER powers and that’s why they show up so well on screen. I mean sure the 90s marvel films all sucked but that’s because they ignored what made the characters great in the first place.
So now that Marvel has found its mark with the Avengers, DC is licking its chops ‘cuz boy do they smell money. I’m sure those executives at WB and DC sat in the tallest building just drooling all over the table.
“THINK OF IT OH THE MONEY!”
“YES WE’LL MAKE MILLIONS,BILLIONS!”
(and then the one guy who makes sense)
Uh guys, wouldn’t we just be copying Marvel? And don’t people usually respond negatively to cheap knockoffs clearly made for nothing more than the money?
Then this happens…
Yeah they are making it, so lets just talk about what they SHOULD do.
WHAT THEY SHOULD DO
They SHOULD have a lead in to it entitled “World’s Finest” Starring Batman and Superman. If you aren’t familiar with the animated “movie” (it was really a two part on Batman the animated series later released as a feature length film). It has The Joker going to metropolis with a lot of Kryptonite, he’s somehow found out that it’s superman’s weakness and he knows the one guy who will pay for him to be gone (if you’re good at something never do it for free).
This ends up being the first true meeting of Batman and Superman as Batman finds out what Joker’s up to and takes a trip to save Superman. This perfectly sets up the relationship between the two and as I think their relationship is one of, if not the, best friendship in superhero history, I would really like to see this on the big screen.
Them teaming up at the end to defeat the two could lead to a further idea in Batman’s head to set up an entire team in case of a giant event. Thus the Justice league could be born without having to do several other movies like Marvel did. One new superman movie, one new batman movie, world’s finest, Justice League. Bad-A-Boom Bad-A-Bing like magic.
WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN
I’m not a pessimist, I’m not an optimist, though I try to be. In truth I’m a realist and I’ve seen this go bad before and in my darkest nightmares I see the worst that could, and probably will happen. No they won’t get Schumer to direct it, that would incite a full fledged nerd war. But they will make several bad decisions. Such as poor casting in all venues including director. They were talking about Ben affleck but after Daredevil people just aren’t as warm to him in the superhero genre. I’ve also seen the name Michael Bay floated around, he can stick to the Daredevil’s spawn of TMNT and racist robots thank you. Preferably they’d get JJ Abrams to direct it but he’ll be doing star wars AND star trek (lucky). So who does that leave? uh a bunch of people actually that will be spitballed around a room and then thrown away for whoever they think has the big enough name to bring in the money.
They won’t develop the characters properly.
There would be WAY too much CGI. It’d be to the point where they couldn’t even have certain key characters because of all the powers the Justice league utilizes.
Basically this is just a big flaming ball of turd waiting to happen. However maybe they’ll listen to the fans for once and pull of a spectacular film. Or maybe they’ll just pull it completely.
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