Movies, movies, movies, movies, movies, movies

[trinityvixen]

-Iron Man is the first movie of 2008 to make it to $300M domestically. So, no matter how huge the take for the first weekend of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...well, SUCK IT STUPID MOVIE. (Sorry, this is directed at my dad, who liked the latter and said the former was "stupid." And who...doesn't read my LJ. MY RAGE! IT IS MISDIRECTED!)

-Is it a poster for the live action G.I. Joe movie or the movie version of Mass Effect? Duke or Commander Shepard? I swear that the scar on "Duke's" face is one you can select in the damn game. (The facial hair definitely is.) I don't love the old character design, or anything, but sheesh. Who is this guy?

-Pixar is awesome, and Wall-E is going to be awesome, and shut it anyone who says otherwise. I wish I had any talent in the areas in which Pixar excels. Then I could work there.

-Spider-Man 4 release date!?!! Right on top of the proposed Avengers movie and the second of two movie installments of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Most notable is the fact that although absolutely no one has been hired to do anything for the movie, Sony has decided the release date. I smell success, don't you?

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Iron Man: Rocks! Nuff said.
G.I.Joe/Mass Effect: Snarf!
Wall*E: Definitely! And me too, on the Pixar job wish.
Spidey4: Oh yeah, that's a good way to do it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

-Apparently, the highlight of my brother-in-law's trip to Vegas (wherein he was not burdened with baby) was getting to see (finally) Iron Man. Yeah, that's how it compares with Indiana Jones and the "Did the kid just swing through the trees with monkeys please Christ tell me that didn't just happen" Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

-I will support Commander Duke Shepard like the good little Alliance slave that I am!

-Waaaaaaaalllllll-eeeeeeee EEE! SO CUTE!

-Spider-Man can continue. It just has to do something that hasn't really been successfully done before which is trade hands without retelling the story that's already happened. This didn't work when Schumaker took over for Burton on the Batman films. It was a good film, but Superman Returns didn't make it work either. The Incredible Hulk sort of tried to do it, but not really so it both didn't work and didn't happen.

Whatever. The point I'm not making at all is this: Sony has to accept that the story that came before with Raimi and Maguire is done and move on. Even if that means the Venom thing did happen. (Sigh.) They just need to recast and keep going as if nothing is amiss. As if Michael Gambon was always Dumbledore. As if Maggie Gyllenhaal was always Rachel Dawes. The more attention you pay to Bigger! Flashier! Star-ier! Reboots of franchises where the dust hasn't settled, the worse it gets.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Wait. Maggie Gyllenhaal is playing the Katie Holmes role in the new Batman movie? I did not realize that. I assumed she was the new girl of the week, since none of the Batman films have ever kept the same woman around.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

In this case, they created this character out of nowhere to give insight into younger Bruce Wayne and she was useful, so she's been kept. Katie Holmes declined to come back, they didn't want to just throw the childhood friend character away after they went through the trouble of fitting her into the universe, so they hired someone else to play her. And we all wish they'd hired her from the beginning because Maggie Gyllenhaal is about thirty billion times better an actress than Katie Holmes.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree completely about Spidey, and about retreads in general. James Bond is probably the best example of this--not counting the first Casino Royale he's been played by six different actors now and they simply ignore that and keep going.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The need here is to recognize the Platonic ideal--the Bondness of Bond--and have people step into it. Now, don't get me wrong--there needs to be something that the individual actors bring to the role--Connery had the charm, Daniel Craig had the brute intensity--but the character should be tantamount.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

There's a Spider-Man 4??? WTFFFF, I thought 3 had pretty much exhausted the possibilities.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

They've pretty much exhausted any of the good villains.

please don't encourage me

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

No, there are plenty of good villains left in the series. It's just I REALLY don't want to think about how they could screw them up. First thought though: The Lizard with a british accent and reading Shakespeare (yes in reptile form).

Re: please don't encourage me

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Of the pop-culturally famous, only the Lizard is really left. The constrictions of film don't allow for the villains like Carnage or the Hobgoblin because they are too similar to Venom and the Green Goblin, respectively, to make an impact. While their stories are interesting in print because they have legacy, on screen they would just be also-ran copycats.

And who else would have that same kind of splash as Doc Ock, Green Goblins 1 or 2, or Venom? Rhino? The electro-dude? Mysterio? The Vulture guy? Hydro? Man, the gimmick of the [blank] Man was buried under the morass of the Sandman.

Re: please don't encourage me

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Actually I'd be more worried that they might tap Kraven the Hunter (I have no faith in them getting him right), Scorpion, Morbius (please for all that is holy let the name Morbius never even cross their minds), or Kingpin (because we all know they might want a Daredevil crossover). Their is no shortage of interesting villains they could tap for spiderman 4. The thing is, do we really want them to?

Re: please don't encourage me

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Kingpin...maybe. The problem there is that the Spider-Man films have not set up any sort of organized crime. They haven't even acknowledged sophisticated crime. The Spider-Man movies consist of busting burglars who wear black knit caps and tote crowbars and steal sacks of money with dollar signs on them. It would be a hard sell to inject into this world any sort of organization. Unless, of course, they had the Kingpin show up and go "You've got to be kidding me: THIS is how you've been doing crime in New York fucking City?!?" Acknowledge the ridiculousness and it makes it better. Still not great, though.

Morbius...just...no. Not unless we want to do like a Blade crossover. And since Wesley Snipes is going to jail, that's not happening, is it?

Kraven is a possibility, but only if they brought in the Man-Spider storyline. Which...hey! That's actually a decent idea. If it could be realized at all realistically. (It also would have been better if everyone didn't already know Pete was Spidey in his immediate life.)

Re: please don't encourage me

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Morbius was a spiderman villain long before they pawned him off on Blade so he's still in play potentially. Plus the introduction of vampires (even genetically created vampires) could be considered a draw in some dumb exec's mind.

Kingpin, not too hard to work into the plot. You just need one bit where spidy breaks up a major hist that kingpin organized. Throw in a grudge and you got you kingpin plot.

Kraven sadly is the easiest to pull in since he is pretty much a big game hunter. Hell Jonah would pay for him to come over to hunt spidy. But likewise Kraven is also the easiest to screw up since they would try to get his change of heart to occur on screen in a relatively short timespan.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Someone said in a review on AICN that everything in the trailers for Wall-E is only from the first third of the movie. I don't know if it's true, but the possibility has my mind boggled with the wonder of Pixar.

I don't know if you've heard, but Marvel is lowballing Favreau on the Iron Man sequel. I figured you'd know, but you didn't mention it so I figured I should. I guess the guy in charge there says Iron Man II will be a hit with or without Jon so a raise in pay is not necessary, which is what Jon asked for. Sounds like rocky territory. Favreau has also been vocally skeptical of the 2010 release date, saying it's less time than they had to make the first one and he's not sure they can deliver, given that they have no script. If Marvel wants not to fuck up their fantastic $550m-worldwide-plus-another-$20-probably-plus-$200m-on-DVD franchise they've got going (made all the more profitable by hiring less expensive underdogs like Favreau in the first place) then they should take less notes from Sony on how to rush a product to the market.

As far as it goes in and of itself, Sony's slotting of SM4 works out with Sam and Tobey's current schedules, so clearly Sony is not done trying to woo them. I care so little about the franchise at the moment that I'd be more disappointed to see Raimi and Maguire treading tired ground than that Sony won't give up on them.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I did hear about the low-balling for Favreau. Honestly, it sounded like one big gay love-in on the set of Iron Man, I'm hoping that Robert Downey Jr. pulls for him. (Because RDJ is the non-negotiable draw for that movie that they can't afford to fuck over.)

And, yeah, I saw the AICN report that was like "Fuckers, do you want to keep your talent happy so they make better shit, or do you want to have a schedule!?" One more year, fuck, half a year wouldn't kill them. Delay the goddamned Avengers movie. (No one is going to go if Iron Man 2 doesn't soar.)

As for Spidey, the burnout is palpable. I'm not saying that they shouldn't go with new people, only that I see that it will be hard to do so. I'd prefer fresh perspectives on this. Maguire was old for the part six years ago, and there are other candidates I've seen mentioned who would just fine to step in for a re-direct. As long as they work on getting substance versus (AGAIN) scheduling, I don't care who's behind the mask. It just needs to be Peter Parker; what he looks like is irrelevant.

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, RDJ is already signed. So it doesn't really matter what RDJ pulls for, which sucks, because I'm sure he'd like to pull for Favreau, but he's locked in either way, so he can't afford to fuck over the movie for the sake of getting his director back.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Right, like RDJ hasn't had a long and legendary habit of fucking things up. At least this time, he'd be using his reputation for good!

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

True, but I think he'd be in kind of a rock-and-a-hard-place here. He clearly loves the character and the franchise, and I'd bet he wouldn't want to let the audience who loves the comic and the characters down just because Favreau got the short end of the stick.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Also! The wonder of Pixar! It's the man who gave me Finding Nemo! I trust! I already love!

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that HP7 had been confirmed as a 2-parter, but it's so much more action-heavy a book than it's predecessors, I'm not surprised.

I've heard excellent things about the first third of Wall-E...and that it goes a bit downhill afterwards. The robots seem awesome, the human part seems contrived and preachy.

Get Smart was wonderful despite its writing, because Steve Carrell is just that good. I was a huge fan of Dan in Real Life--one of the most underrated romantic comedies of the decade. He even made the hackneyed Evan Almighty into something watchable. There is no better comedic actor in Hollywood today.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Re: Harry Potter: It's funny because they're struggling to tell a movie's worth of story with what they have to work from in Book 6. (It's not only not a whole lot of action, but it's immensely complicated and lengthy flashback narrative.) And then they have too much story to fit Book 7 into one movie. Well and a day...

As for Wall-E, once I found out that the guy who did this did Finding Nemo, I was pretty much even more sold. Even if I don't end up loving it, I'll defend it. Because Finding Nemo is the greatest-est Pixar movie ever and I ::heart:: it. And I think that the human grotesque is to be expected when the little garbage robot is the hero. I don't necessarily have a problem with people being made out to be the bags of useless for the film. They did it in Idiocracy and were, sadly, very accurate.

And Steve Carell is just...watchable. He's a guy's comic, but he's a woman's sense of humor, if that makes sense. He can be a dude, but he is almost never stereotypically masculine and frequently (and believably, which is amazing) vulnerable. Dan in Real Life was one of few romantic comedies (though, it's not, actually, all that laugh-out-loud or set-piece funny) that felt natural--the give and take and the romance seemed entirely right and and genuine. Now, part of that is Juliette Binoche, but, because of the way these things are written, it's mostly Carell who carries it.