Rated D for Doom: A Look at Superhero Movies in ’08
Last year was a pretty rough year for comic book superhero movies. Things varied from the laughably pathetic without the laughs Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer to the perhaps worst comic book movie of all time, Ghost Rider. And let’s not forget the franchise killing Spider–Man 3. All in all, I can’t say there was a single superhero movie released in the past year that I walked away from having fully enjoyed.
I had high expectations around this time last year for 300, but those expectations turned out to be a bit too high, and I was mostly disappointed with the final product. Still, though, I must give credit where it’s due, and 300 cut probably the greatest trailer of all time. Way better than the actual movie.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how much I hated Transformers. I’m no Transformers purist, far from it, but that movie hurt my head to watch, it was so full-on stupid. Hey, look, Shia Lepoof is exchanging witty banter with the guy from the Coens Brothers movies. Great, where’re the robots?
Luckily, this coming year, we have what promises to be a couple really great looking movies, along with a couple of hopeful franchise reboots. Time will tell who the winners and the losers will be, but let’s take a look at what’s on the docket for 2008. It surely has to be a little bit better than what we got this year. And, if not, I promise I won’t write a blog where I fake interview Jack Kirby about how god-awful Hellboy 2 turns out to be. Old comics creators say the darndest things!
Remember when I said that we had a couple really great looking superhero movies coming out this year? If not, you should really lay off the sauce. I seriously just said it in the last paragraph. One of those really great looking movies, though, is Iron Man, which will come to theatres on May 2nd.
It looks like they’re showing the source material a great deal of respect when it comes to this movie, which is something that was sorely lacking in a lot of Marvel’s recent “franchise” movies. The fact that the leaked footage from ComicCon or the first theatrical trailer made use of the Black Sabbath was also a nice little touch that shows that the guys in charge of making this have a definite grasp of what makes superheroes cool.
It’s a dude in a giant suit made of armor, flame-throwing bad guys, and in the background, there’s a kick-ass heavy metal song reinforcing the idea that this rocks out. It just frickin’ fits, and I have super high hopes for this movie.
Plus, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. is the most brilliant casting for a comic book movie I’ve seen yet. Unless they cast Stephen Hawking as Captain America, I can’t see that changing. (more…)