Review: The Amazing Spider-Man (Film)

Before we get into this review I want to share with you guys a cool webseries called “Malice”. It’s a horror themed show starring a cute girl who wears a rabbit hat a lot of the time. It’s doing a Kickstarter campaign for a second season. I urge you to check it out here. You’ll find all the info you need and if you like what you see please donate. I’d really like this thing to pull through and right now it ain’t doing so great.

Anyway, let’s move on to the actual blog.

The Amazing Spider-Man is one part movie executive spite and one part morally ambiguous cash cow. It is a reboot to the Spider-Man film franchise despite the film series only being ten years old and the most recent film being five years ago. As I understand it Sam Raimi, director of all three original Spider-Man films, was contracted to make Spider-Man 4 (and possibly also Spider-Man 5, depending on what website you heard it from). However Sony apparently demanded the unreasonable release date of Summer 2011, something that Raimi was simply not able to do. Somewhere in pre-production this issue caused both parties to part ways. Rather than hire a new director to make the planned movie they decided to cut their losses and hired Marc Webb to do a reboot…that would have to come out Summer of 2012 (pretty much rendering the entire damn argument moot).

It does sound pretty bad but to be honest we may have dodged a bullet. What little details we know about Spider-Man 4 make it sounds a bit annoying. The villain was supposed to be The Vulture played by John Malkovich and that would have been awesome except that the logical villain would have been The Lizard since his human identity, Curt Connors (played Dylan Baker), had been a supporting character for the last two movies. Also Anna Hathaway was tagged to play The Black Cat Felicia Hardy, but instead being the more familiar version of the character she would instead be the Vultures’ daughter and become a new character called The Vulturess! Yeah. That’s stupid as hell. (Though I do appreciate the irony that with this film cancellation Hathaway was free to play the extremely similar character of Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises) So in the really days of the reboot’s pre-production I repeatedly told people we were better off because Raimi’s movie were clearly going down a weird path.

That is until the trailers started coming out. Pretty much every preview of this film made it look like a poorly produced joyless melodrama. It didn’t help that rumors were floating around that Sony hated the final product and were hiring a new writing team to do the sequel. The Amazing Spider-Man had an extremely uphill battle. Does it succeed as a proper reboot or does it fail to recapture the magic of its predecessor?

Full review after the jump.

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #5

As promised here’s the next issue of Avengers vs. X-Men. Yes, it’s later than what I said but if it’s any consolation I learned how to make fried catfish. Thus I’m a better person.

Anyway this issue promises that something of substance must happen because, finally, the damn Phoenix has arrived to Earth. In any event let’s talk a little bit about the covers. The main covers I’ve been using on this blog have been fine for the most part. But there have been a lot of variant covers being shipped out and they’re not as good. I’ve mentioned this before but some of these covers feature character fighting who don’t fight each other at all and in some cases aren’t even in the comic. But they take it a step further by having variant of the variant cover with the gimmick of picking sides. What I mean is that they have these “I’m With the X-Men/Avengers” versions where only one character is colored in, depending on which side you picked. I think it makes the already annoying cover look worse but the only reason I care is because by the time I was able to actually buy this comic that variant of the variant was the only one left. So I’ve spent the last few weeks grumpy about it, mainly because I’m such a sensitive young man.

Matt Fraction tackles writing duties in this issue and the art team consists to consist of John Romita, Jr. (Pencils), by Scott Hanna (Inks) and colors by Laura Martin (Colors).

Full review after the jump.

Review: Avengers vs. X-Men #4

I am really sorry that I’ve gotten so far behind on the Avengers vs. X-Men reviews. Hopefully no one has been realigning on this blog for information about that series. I’m going to attempt to knock the rest of the issues I’ve missed this week/weekend (And because I need to push back my review on Brave and as of this writing I still haven’t seen Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter I don’t have a giant amount of things to post right now anyway). Make you sure you check out issues 1, 2, and 3.

Last time we saw Captain America do what I’ve been waiting for him to do to Wolverine for what feels like forever, in what was almost certainly the high point of the comic. Jonathan Hickman takes over writing duties while the art team, John Romita, Jr. (Pencils), by Scott Hanna (Inks) and colors by Laura Martin (Colors) remains the same.

More silliness from the “House of Ideas” after the jump.

[WARNING: There are spoilers in this review]

Review: Twilight (2008 Film)

I did not want to watch this movie. It was forced on me. When it came out I didn’t want to go see it in theaters, when it came on video I still didn’t want to watch it, and now, four years after the fact, it doesn’t even seem relevant enough to devote any time to this blog. However a misguided person in my life literally forced me to watch this flick, supposedly with the sole purpose of me writing a negative review on this blog. I am not happy with this arrangement. But sadly for me I do have an opinion on this film so I might as well write something.

Twilight is a 2008 film based on the young adult novel of the same name by Stephanie Meyer. The book series, and the film series, are pretty much known for three things: 1) the dubious re-imagining of the vampire myth, 2) the incredibly strong fan base which of percentage of possesses some of the most ignorant human beings in the world and 3) an equally strong base of haters who think that Meyer is one of the worst writers to ever become popular (Although lately this group of people have tended to move their anger towards 50 Shades of Grey, but that’s another story). Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who has directed quite a few films I’ve never seen, this movie received pretty poor reviews, though it wasn’t like it was universally despised. So here I am reviewing it long after the iron has cooled down. I’m late to the party here, guys.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: Some spoilers ahead, but really; everyone who was interested in seeing this flick has already seen it by now, right?]

Review: Prometheus

Before we get into this review should point out an important truth about myself: I’ve never seen Alien, Aliens (except for the last ten minutes for some reason), Alien 3, or Alien Resurrection (Nor have I seen the Alien vs. Predator series, but I suspect that doesn’t matter as much). Because of that I guess a lot of details from this movie that went over my head. For example I saw a video review of this film after I watched it that kept using the words “Space Jockey” like it was supposed to mean something. I had to look it up because I had no idea what the hell it was. So while you’re reading this review just take in mind that I can’t really compare this film to any of the Alien movies like so many people have been doing. My review will just be based on whether or not this movie was any good.

Anyway Prometheus is a film by Ridley Scott who for some time now had been making vague statements about whether or not this flick is a prequel to the original Alien, which he is of course famous for directing. This film, or at least some sort of Alien prequel, has been in development for years and has finally come to fruition in 2012. There was a huge amount of hype going into this film, probably too much for this film to live up too but on the other hand it has a really badass cast. It features Noomi Rapace from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (The version, not the American one), Michael Fassbender from X-Men: First Class, Idris Elba from Thor, and Charlize Theron, who between this movie and Snow White and the Huntsman, is probably feeling kind of smug right now.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are some spoilers in this review but it shouldn't be anything too bad. Just be aware.]

SMCS Companion Piece #21: Captain Planet and the Planeteers

It’s been a while since I’ve done a Saturday Morning Cartoon Show Companion Piece. Last weekend we did Captain Planet and the Planeteers. Based on an idea from Billionaire Ted Turner this cartoon was about a superhero that battled eco-villains for the sake of the environment. In theory the show’s purpose was to teach kids to help the environment and there’s nothing terribly wrong with that at all. In fact this show isn’t technically bad, but I think it’s the lowest end of watchable shows from the 90s. It’s a series that isn’t so awful it’s can’t be watched but it’s also not quite on the list of Best Cartoon of that decade.

It began airing on TBS (Of course) in 1990 and ran until 1993. Due to various cast members leaving the series it was retooled as The New Adventures of Captain Planet which continued on from 1993 to 1996. The show had a total of six seasons. It's also what Lavar Burton and Whoopi Goldberg did during their downtime from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

More on the Captain after the jump.

Review: Doctor Who - Series Two (2005 Revival)

Today we’ll continue looking that revived Doctor Who series. Because the first episode of series one was so well received the BBC commissioned a second season of the new show. Russell T. Davies’ plan to bring back Doctor Who was a rousing success. This series was extremely important to the revived TV show because it introduced the 10th Doctor who, even today, is pretty much the most popular version of the character in the new series and can make an argument for being one of the most popular version of the character in the entire metaseries. I’ve heard somewhere that David Tennant, the actor who takes over the role from Christopher Eccleston, was actually cast when the first series was in pre-production and was always tagged to come in at the end of the first series but I’ve also heard that Eccleston just wanted leave the show and Tennant was simply his replacement. I have no idea what the real story was but regardless after just one season a new actor has taken over the title role (Tennant actually first appeared in the previous season’s finale).

Anyway this season picks up right where the last one left off and, aside from the addition of Tennant, there’s not much in the way of cast changes.

Full review after the jump.

[WARNING: There are a lot of spoilers incoming, especially concerning Rose Tyler. Read at your own risk!]

Anime Review: Sengoku Basara - Samurai Kings

It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed an anime. It’s not that I haven’t been watching any, it’s that the anime I have been watching took me forever to finish despite the fact it was only thirteen episodes. I’ve finally, finally, watched the last episode of what was easily the most exhausting series I’ve watched to date.

  

Sengoku Basara is a series of action video games developed by Capcom that is widely considered a “rip-off” of Samurai Warriors, which has an identical setting (Feudal Japan’s Warring States Period) and is itself a spin-off of the popular Dynasty Warriors games. Now I’m a pretty big Dynasty Warriors fan but I haven’t played much Samurai Warriors. What little I’ve played leads me to believe that Capcom saw the game and said “That’s not nearly insane enough. I say we remake the game and make at least 50 times crazier and 50 times less historically accurate.” And thus Sengoku Basara was born. And wouldn’t you know it; it turns out Capcom was on to something because the game became very popular, beating out its rival. Like many popular properties in Japan it was just a matter of time before it was turned into an anime, which brings us to today.

Tilted Sengoku Basara: Samurai Kings in the translation the show was produced by Production I.G (Who also did Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and Eden of the East) in 2009 and licensed by FUNimation Entertainment. Interestingly this show kind of bumped itself to the top of my list; originally I was supposed to be watching Princess Tutu (Which actually might have an English dub so bad that I may be unable to watch it on Netflix) but the first episode of this show got me so excited that I decided to go through this instead. That was a mistake.

Full review after the jump.