With Wolverine hitting this week, here’s my favorites from the House of M.
It looks like it’s finally here folks. With the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine this weekend, the Summer Movie Season has finally arrived and I couldn’t be happier. Four months of popcorn munching, ass-kicking good times nearly every weekend and I can’t wait to dive in. What surprises me though, is that while we’ve got a pretty decent lineup this year, Wolverine represents the only Superhero movie we’ll get for the rest of 2009.
While 2008 was permeated with the caped avenger set, giving us six comic book-related movies in the summer alone, 2009 has produced only Watchmen and the upcoming X-Men prequel/spinoff. You would think that Hollywood would have seen the boom coming and struck while the iron was hot, but we’ll have to see how this all pans out over the next couple of years when Marvel and DC finally get the rest of their projects going. Hopefully, the Superhero movie boom won’t have passed them by in the time it takes to actually get some movies out.
In the meantime, in honor of the new Wolverine, here’s my favorite movies from the Marvel camp so far. Now, I’m only counting the modern big budget releases, so no Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., no Captain America, no Dolph Lungdren as The Punisher, and no bootleg Roger Corman version of Fantastic Four which is pound for pound more entertaining than either of Tim Story’s super crappy Fantastic Four movies. Alright, so let’s get to it.
Rob’s Favorite Marvel Movies
5. Spider-Man – There were a lot of things that made me skeptical of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man when it came out. First off, this movie was in pre-production seemingly forever and had a LOT of misfires before it really got going, with script treatments going all the way back to the 1980’s, one script even turning Peter Parker into a giant werewolf-like spider creature before Stan Lee stepped in to put the kibosh on that concept. Most notably there was the soap opera-like courting of Spider-man by James Cameron, who had written treatments and had almost gone into production several times, one rumor even having Arnold Schwarzenegger being cast as Doctor Octopus.
Even with Raimi onboard, I was still skeptical due to the fact that the director had never really tackled a movie this big and that his star, Tobey Maguire, wasn’t exactly a household name at the time either. I shouldn’t have been worried. What I didn’t really take into account, is just how much you can tell that Raimi loves Spidey as a character. Raimi has been a fan since he was a child, and you can really tell with this picture, as the director brought his usual energy, but managed to focus it into a picture with heart and class. I can’t dismiss what an amazing impact this movie had, giving us hope when the entire country was in turmoil outside the movie theater, managing to inspire us to come together in a way that few movies have really been able to do before.
4. X2 – It’s really amazing how much good will that Bryan Singer had built up after the first X-Men film. Even with a bit of a critical drubbing, the movie was still a huge hit and gave 20th Century Fox enough reason to fully back the movie’s sequel, and in the end everybody ended up winning on X2. Fox ended up winning by getting a movie that brought in tons of box office and set them up for yet another sequel. Singer ended up winning by getting to produce a big enough movie that got much closer to living up to his vision than the first film was able to with so many budget constraints, and also gave him another critical hit. Finally, the fans ended up winning big, by getting the best possible X-Men movie they could get.
This movie rocks from start to finish, nimbly focusing on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine without really shortcutting anyone else in the picture, save for maybe James Marsden’s Cyclops. Nearly all of the characters presented in the original film get further development, with some characters, such as Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique or Brian Cox’s Stryker, even ending up better characters than they ever were in comic book form. As much as it’s a pretty terrific character study and metaphor for being ostracized, especially homosexuality, and also manages to give you an emotional punch that X-Men: the Last Stand doesn’t ever come anywhere close to, the movie is foremost a slick action picture with some terrific superhero battles, especially Wolverine’s claws-out showdown with a platoon full of bad guys and his final standoff with Kelly Hu’s Deathstrike. Any way you slice it, X2 is a winner.
3.Spider-Man 2 – I know for many, Spider-Man 2 is not only the best Marvel movie of all time, it’s the best Superhero movie period. While I don’t necessarily agree, I think the movie’s power is really undeniable at times, and in any case, you get what is absolutely one of the most epic of all superhero movies and deserves its place as one of the best sequels of all time. While I do think that wild tonal shifts and some goofy moments foreshadow some of the major problems that show up in Spider-Man 3, there’s still a gargantuan amount of material to love here.
First off, Tobey Maguire is simply phenomenal as Peter Parker, eclipsing what was some pretty decent work in his first major blockbuster in the series opener. Maguire has to do some heavy lifting, and does work worthy of Christopher Reeve’s turn in Superman II, where the Man of Steel had to face a similar crisis of whether to give up being a hero for the sake of his only true love, or sacrifice his own happiness for the fate of the world. Everyone is pretty much going on all cylinders here too, with Kirsten Dunst coming up big as Mary Jane, absolutely deserving the worship she gets from Peter, and Alfred Molina giving us one of the best and most human of all supervillains in Dr. Otto Octavius. Raimi still had a winner here and set us up for maybe the best superhero trilogy of all time. Just like Superman and Batman before it though, the third movie ends up way short compared to this near masterpiece.
2.Iron Man – Now right off the bat, did any of us really expect Iron Man to be as good as it ended up being? I mean sure, the cast looked great and the trailer looked cool, but really, none of us really expected the movie to rock as hard as it ended up doing. Much like Zack Snyder was able to do with 300, I think Jon Favreau pretty much has an open ticket to do whatever he wants for a while, and hopefully that means we as an audience get some pretty awesome Iron Man sequels and Avengers movies.
Thank God, someone also finally found the perfect Tony Stark. Robert Downey, Jr. is astounding and brings pitch perfect wit to this movie that I don’t think we’ve really seen since the original Superman. Downey is hysterical and his onscreen relationship with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts reminds me of onscreen couples of yesteryear like Nick and Nora Charles of the Thin Man movies. Their onscreen chemistry is infectious and drives the movie onward, all the while Iron Man the superhero manages to thrill us with some pretty awesome heroics. Somehow mixing the upbeat nostalgia of a movie like The Rocketeer with the cybernetic punch of a more kid friendly version of Robocop, Iron Man is a wonderfully engaging picture that’s one giant fight away from being perfect. If it weren’t for the final showdown of the movie being a bit of a letdown, this one would end up at the top of this list.
1.Blade II – Now, some may have a problem with this pick. Blade II isn’t a giant superhero blockbuster the likes of the rest of this list. It’s not very touchy feely, although it does have a pretty subtly constructed romantic element to the movie, but in the end, the movie isn’t going for some epic emotional payoff. The movie’s not feel good, or patriotic, and in some ways its not even that heroic. What this movie is, is bad ass. To its very core, this is one of the most kickass, consistently entertaining, viciously creative, and horrifying visceral Action movies of the decade. The movie has more in commons with Aliens than it does Superman, and you know what? That’s ok by me.
This movie was made before Guillermo del Toro was geek royalty, but here before he won awards, the director shows he’s got the goods. Del Toro took a lot of different elements from a lot of different movies, like the “cool” and S&M aesthetics of The Matrix, the “swarm” portions of Aliens, Hong Kong action, 80’s style action, professional wrestling and Universal Monster movies and threw them all together into one huge awesomely horrific pot. The first Blade was terrific in its own way, but this one completely outmatches it on nearly every level.
On one of those levels is Wesley Snipes as Blade, this time completely unbound. While the first and third movies of this trilogy chose to really focus on the brooding antihero, del Toro instead just lets Snipes be as cool and intimidating as possible. Having to match up as the alpha male amongst the like of Ron Pearlman and Donnie Yen, Snipes gets every opportunity to show them how he rolls and show them up whenever possible. Culminating in Blade and The Bloodpack teaming up and walking into a nightclub with Mos Def and Massive Attack’s “I Against I” playing on the soundtrack, your head almost explodes with the sheer wave of awesomeness onscreen.
Another level belongs to the director’s use of vampires in this movie. I’m not a huge fan of the pretty “heroin chic” style vampire, used in the other Blade movies, and instead del Toro does another way and makes the vampires in this movie actual monsters again. These new reaper vampires take queues from the original Nosferatu and some from H.R. Giger, and the result makes one of the most imposing movie monsters in decades.
I could go on about how grizzled Kris Kristofferson is, how bad ass the Bloodpack is, the awesome look at vampire hierarchy and how this movie has some of the best fight scenes in any Superhero movie, and hell, maybe in any movie ever, but I’ll stop here. Blade II is the real deal, and barring some shaky CGI in places, the movie is nearly perfect in what its trying to accomplish, which is give you the most kickass time possible while watching a movie. Hopefully, this one hits Blu-ray soon.
So that’s all this week, lets go get some popcorn.
