Bulbous also tapered!

[matthew]

Oddly enough, I believe the most surreal moment in Spider-man 3 is when the cop pulls the tarp off the back of the dump truck. No, it was not the implausibility of a large truck full of sand being parked on a major artery of NYC mere feet from where Sandman is first recognized by beat cops, but that the police officer is able to lift the entire sixteen-wheeler length tarp off the truck with a single, one-arm tug. It just lifts up and cascades off to the side as if by magic (or, more likely, cables). It was the most bizarre revealing error I can think of.




Oh, and the way they just alter Peter Parker's motivation from the first film was pretty dirty. "Oh, you know the entire basis of the character for the first two films, the guy who shot and killed Uncle Ben, the petty thug for whose death Peter ultimately feels responsible, well...apparently all that pathos was misdirected, as, lacking the ability to conjure up motivation for this film we decided to announce that there was a second man with the other guy, and this is the guy who actually shot Parker's uncle.

But oh, those movies will still stand up.

Oh, and we will completely suck the air out of Sandman's criminality by the end of the film and we will almost apologetically render the entire matter of motivation and the brutal murder of Uncle Ben an unfortunate accident.

 

[Tripp]

exactly.

[bebopbalogna]

Oddly enough, I believe the most surreal moment in Spider-man 3 is when the cop pulls the tarp off the back of the dump truck. No, it was not the implausibility of a large truck full of sand being parked on a major artery of NYC mere feet from where Sandman is first recognized by beat cops, but that the police officer is able to lift the entire sixteen-wheeler length tarp off the truck with a single, one-arm tug. It just lifts up and cascades off to the side as if by magic (or, more likely, cables). It was the most bizarre revealing error I can think of.




Oh, and the way they just alter Peter Parker's motivation from the first film was pretty dirty. "Oh, you know the entire basis of the character for the first two films, the guy who shot and killed Uncle Ben, the petty thug for whose death Peter ultimately feels responsible, well...apparently all that pathos was misdirected, as, lacking the ability to conjure up motivation for this film we decided to announce that there was a second man with the other guy, and this is the guy who actually shot Parker's uncle.

But oh, those movies will still stand up.

Oh, and we will completely suck the air out of Sandman's criminality by the end of the film and we will almost apologetically render the entire matter of motivation and the brutal murder of Uncle Ben an unfortunate accident.

 

while i do think it's retarded to change the whole "who shot uncle ben" thing to justify some new plot scenario and to further villify the sandman guy (i don't know how accurate this storyline is to the comics, but not having read them, that kind of thing usually doesn't matter to me)  i will disagree with this statement..."we will completely suck the air out of Sandman's criminality by the end of the film".  upon introduction of the character, when he broke into the house to see his little girl,  his "criminality" was already gone.  he was portrayed as a good guy who made some bad choices while trying to help out his sick daughter whose wife was the antagonist who was judging him unfairly.  at that point we were already set up to be sympathetic to the character, before they ever revealed that he was the u.b.k.(uncle ben killer).   also i like the fact that they used it as an argument against capital punishment, which i am not a fan of.  i wholeheartedly support a movie that teaches kids that the whole "eye for an eye" logic that this country embraces is total bullshit.  that's all.

[matthew]

while i do think it's retarded to change the whole "who shot uncle ben" thing to justify some new plot scenario and to further villify the sandman guy (i don't know how accurate this storyline is to the comics, but not having read them, that kind of thing usually doesn't matter to me)  i will disagree with this statement..."we will completely suck the air out of Sandman's criminality by the end of the film".  upon introduction of the character, when he broke into the house to see his little girl,  his "criminality" was already gone.  he was portrayed as a good guy who made some bad choices while trying to help out his sick daughter whose wife was the antagonist who was judging him unfairly.  at that point we were already set up to be sympathetic to the character, before they ever revealed that he was the u.b.k.(uncle ben killer).   also i like the fact that they used it as an argument against capital punishment, which i am not a fan of.  i wholeheartedly support a movie that teaches kids that the whole "eye for an eye" logic that this country embraces is total bullshit.  that's all.

Oh, I appreciate where the writer was coming from, but I do believe it was grotesquely simplistic in its depiction of the unfortunate guy who becomes a career criminal. Such depictions are as mindlessly artificial as those which depict every B&E artist a vicious, sadistic lowlife who deserves to be gunned down (see: Joe Horn). The authors went so far out of the way to depict Sandman as misunderstood I could not help thinking that the almost apologetic scene at the end must have been singled out in conservative media as an example of the bleeding heart liberal media entirely out of touch with reality.

I found it heavy handed and overwrought and still likely to be entirely lost upon children who are mostly there to see Spidey kick the shit out of villains while destroying as much glass and steel as possible in the process. The message was far stronger when Parker was bound by a guilty conscience for the death of the Thug #1.


Also:

What exactly was Sandman was doing that might be in any way construed as even mildly constructive re: his daughter?

[bebopbalogna]

I found it heavy handed and overwrought and still likely to be entirely lost upon children who are mostly there to see Spidey kick the shit out of villains while destroying as much glass and steel as possible in the process. The message was far stronger when Parker was bound by a guilty conscience for the death of the Thug #1.

true true.  but i bet when peter's aunt said "peter, it's not for us to decide who should live or who should die" will ring in few adolescent minds for years to come.  at least those adolescents who choose to contemplate such things...

and again, it's a movie for kids and adults who want to feel nostalgic.  no need to get too deep.  just scratch the surface a little bit.

[Moetown]

(yawn)

[Tripp]

For the crappity record; in the comics  Sandman (Flint Marko)  had nothing to do with Ben Parker's death.  The way he's portrayed in the movie otherwise is pretty accurate. Marko wasn't evil, just misguided.  Eventually Spidey did help to reform him and for a brief time Sandman was a hero,  even a member of the Avengers.  Though i think recently he went back to being a villain.

[matthew]

exactly.

The undermining of The Punisher's motivation (in the Thomas Jane version) was quite similar. Instead of Frank Castle being a simple family man whose family was gunned down mercilessly after they stumbled upon a gangland hit in the woods of Central Park, they made Castle an FBI agent on the eve of his retirement (Jane was 35 when the film was made, making this even more hilarious on screen than it sounds in print) actively engaged in pursuing the criminal empire of Howard Saint (the stand-in for Kingpin, because 20th C. Fox has the rights to the character, I believe). In the opening scene the undercover Castle takes actions which lead to the death of Howard Saint's son. Saint vows revenge on Castle and has his entire family tree wiped out at a family reunion at some beachside resort - an interminable scene that would fit nicely in a Lethal Weapon sequel or a future adaptation of Miami Vice or CSI.

The effect is that, however wronged Castle is, the killing of his family is no longer arbitrary, sudden or unexpected. Gone is the revelation that the American Dream is but a myth, gone is the outrage at the failed system, gone is the entire subtext of innocence which was the bread and butter of the better Punisher writers over the years. 

I will not waste any more time on this, as even if they had filmed it exactly as it first appeared in the early to mid-70s (along with Dirty Harry and the Death Wish adaptations - as Vietnam was abandoned as too costly and the US burned and Nixon resigned and the twinkle in the eye of Lady Liberty turned to a flicker ), the movie would have remained an atrocious turd featuring the talent-free performance of John Wideface Travolta.

[Tripp]

right.  I meant to say that it undermines Peter's motivation to fight crime (somewhat) if he is able to forgive Uncle Ben's killer. He has to be denied closure.

[Jeff]

I agree that the Punisher's original backstory fit him much better than the laughable one cooked up for the most recent movie, but... I wouldn't want to be the screenwriter who had to try and find a new take on "They killed his family and now he wants VENGEANCE!"

[matthew]

Re: Iron Man...

To compare it to Transformers is baffling to me. You might not approve of the glossy comic book way Iron Man tried to portray a conflicted man dealing with his own culpability in arms escalation and world violence (though I found it perfect for the source material and intended audience), but surely you noticed that it made the effort. Transformers farted out a shit Macguffin story about one dimensional robots who were either good or bad simply because the movie said so.

I mean, you may not like cheeseburgers, even if they're gourmet-made. But that wouldn't exactly make an Angus beef burger on Ciabatta with bleu cheese and carmelized onions indistinguishable from a burnt-black 50% soy patty on soggy Wonder Bread from a homeless shelter.

Surely making an effort to do something more substantial differentiates from not giving a shit, even if the effort doesn;t meet your liking?

Transformers had no source material whatsoever to work with - the toy that the television show served to advertise, was not even fun to play with. That a movie was even considered DEPRESSES me; that it was made HORRIFIES me; that I was so deprived of human contact that I acquiesced and went to see that with Jer and his brother, angers me to no end.

Iron Man had rich source material to work with yet did not land far from the realm of Transformers and its ilk. Ignoring the fact that I am almost entirely burnt out on action film cliches, I believe that the qualitative differences of the films are being grossly exaggerated here. Using your hamburger model, Iron Man falls at neither extreme, but is clearly a Big Mac or, more accurately, a Whopper.

I no longer receive the immediate gratification offered by movies that are not as horrible as I expect them to be, as had been the case when I first saw X-Men or the Hulk. It was only when I thought back that I realized how malnourished the meal left me - it was empty and devoid of genuine feelings of excitement or moments of interest, but my mind had been temporarily muted while in the theater actually processing all of the flashy fluff on the screen. I realized how unfulfilling these movies were when months later I realized I could barely recall who starred in them, let alone what took place or what the plot was.

I stand by my original assessment: the only notable aspect of Iron Man was a better than average cast.  The story of "a conflicted man dealing with his own culpability in arms escalation and world violence" was rendered mere satire when placed in the context of a film which serves, yet again, to showcase Hollywood's effusive praise for the military apparatus it counts on to keep action film costs low. Iron Man limits "criticism" of militarism to the myth of "bad apples" such as the comically absurd Jeff Bridges character. Outside of flaccid condemnation of artificial and arbitrarily sinister corporate demons as Bridges, there is nothing but applause for the military and even "the war on terror". This form of consciously restrained jingoism is likely even more pernicious as it passes itself off as thoughtful and measured. 
This is no surprise seeing as the U.S. Air Force backed the making of Iron Man, just as the U.S. military supported the making of Transformers.

Jon Favreau sprouts a woody for the military industrial complex: "We were at Edwards Air Force Base. We had the great C17s and the Raptors and all the stuff. Rhodi, we made him an Air Force Lt. Colonel, took a little bit of a leap there, but the logistics of that were very hard because there's a lot of things you can't point a camera at there. There's a flight line and they're testing the state of the art experimental aircraft there. We're thinking we've got the best stuff. I mean, there are hangars there that you cannot go near that I'm sure they have stuff that they're flying around now."

I don't know...it just wasn't that good.

[Tripp]

So you didn't like Iron Man...?

[matthew]

Nope. More than anything I was disappointed by the dearth of criticism of the military apparatus, which I had been lead to believe was the crux of the film's message. Tony Stark's epiphany centers around his weapons falling into the "wrong hands", not by the far greater consequences of them being held by the hands for which they were designed.

Also, what happened to his alcoholism? 

[bebopbalogna]

while it seems true enough that comic books do often serve as vehicles to propagate some political/social agenda (such as the evils of the military industrial complex or the adversity and injustices faced by awkward/socially insignificant loners) i think it is asking a bit much (and financial suicide to the studios) to make those agendas a major part of the plot in a movie being sold primarily to adolescent boys.  a 9 year old kid could give 2 shits about the dearth of criticism of the military apparatus, and most parents would be upset if they felt some hollywood studio was trying to feed their children conspiracy-type theories anyway, not to mention tones of alcoholism. just look at all the hullabaloo over wall-e.  if anything, the movies will inspire the kids to go read the comics where they can soak up all the propaganda their little brains can hold. the main point of the entire comic book movie genre, and really the only reason i can see to go see em is as tripp put it, "good ole brainless movie fun". 

[matthew]

If you review what I wrote my complaint was that the film did not follow through on what was promised by those who had already seen it. Originally I expected only the "good brainless fun" (and exceedingly stupid) variety of film, but I was informed by everyone who had seen it that it was a cut above and that it would surely exceed my expectations. This is why I found myself so disappointed (it is unlikely I would have watched it at all had there not been so much praise heaped upon it). You have the sequence of events entirely reversed. Never in a million years would I have expected any Marvel film, not even Iron Man, to be even mildly critical of the military industrial complex -  I really never would have anticipated this had it not been suggested that it was a feature of the film. I never "asked ("I think it is asking a bit much") for Iron Man to be anything but a smash-'em-up. I was very much surprised to read such enthusiastic support for Iron Man here, in reviews, and on political message boards that I frequent. At the heart of my complaint is that the film was misrepresented by most who relayed glowing reviews of it.

Also, that making something good would have been financial suicide is no excuse for poor art: poor art is poor art. If it is a brainless smash em up, it is a brainless smash em up, no matter what tier it ostensibly aspired to. I am not going to credit Favreau would hypothetically produced had he not been limited to the marketplace and the ends of maximal embrace at the box office. What film aimed at adolescent boys could not claim that it would have been more challenging if not for the vapid atmosphere of consumer culture?