New Joker PIcture From "The Dark Knight"

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First Look at the Iron Man Prototype Suit

Not bad.

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Superman Returns...To Star In A Chick Flick

I wish I knew how ta quit you

What if Jesus was a superhero? What if the devil was...um, bald? What if you combined Superman with The Notebook?

Ok, there was a lot of things to love. The special effects were great. The reverence for Richard Donner's Superman and Superman II was appreciated. But there was just something...missing.

After I got over the feeling of a watching a new Superman movie in 2006 that didn't involve Richard Pryor (R.I.P.) or Nuclear Man, I felt very detached from the movie.

I enjoyed all the scenes of Superman being...well Superman. Saving people, cheering crowds. The plane crash scene was amazing and I can't wait to see that in IMAX 3D but then it lost it's way and became a chick flick.

• Brandon Routh was great...as Clark Kent. His Superman was okay. He wasn't bad but he lacked the earnest humor than Christopher Reeve brought to the role. Don't feel bad, Brandon. Reeve is an impossible act to follow - we're talking the best comic character brought to life ever. When there are enough comic book movies around that there are comic book movie awards and there is a lifetime achievement award, it will be called The Christopher Reeve Award of Excellence (or something like that). You know who would have made a great Superman...
• So there's the scene where Clark is back at the Daily Planet and Lois introduces him to her boyfriend, Richard, who was played by James Marsden (For the guys, Cyclops from the X-Men films; for the women, the guy Rachel McAdams wrongfully cheats on in The Notebook). As the camera turns to him, I was like "Wow, he should have been Superman." The right build, he's tall, he looks like Christopher Reeve so it wouldn't have been a weird transition, and he's pretty good at playing morally uptight square guys. Major blunder to cast a guy who would be better suited to play Superman, Mr. Singer.
• This is probably the best acting job I've ever seen Kate Bosworth do...but she still wasn't right as Lois Lane. I mean, she got the reporter thing down but she lacked Lois' spunk. If this is a direct sequel to the Richard Donner films, Lois was a "I don't take shit from anyone" woman and Margot Kidder played it perfectly. This is the same woman who hit the gun when her and Clark were being mugged, snuck into the Eiffel Tower to spy on terrorists by hanging on the bottom of a elevator and jumped into a river because she was so convinced that Clark was Superman. I didn't feel like Kate Bosworth's Lois would have done any of that.
• Welcome back, Kevin Spacey. How I've missed you. These are the kind of roles that we fell in love with Kevin Spacey for. Not that The Shipping News/Pay It Forward crap. I want Spacey the mean funny sardonic asshole that blew my mind in Swimming With Sharks. I hope this is a good sign for the future and not a blip in the current spiraling of your career.
• Frank Langella sucked as Perry White. He had some great lines but lacked the energy and fire an editor of the number one paper in Metropolis should have.
  
• Why cast Kal Penn (Kumar from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle) and give him one line and just have him be a nameless henchman? What a waste. Maybe he's friends with Bryan Singer.
  
• The movie was way too long. I'm almost getting tired of saying this about movies. It was King Kong too long. It dragged like a busted muffler. Why is Hollywood afraid to make a 90-105 minute movie? Seriously. Is there some sort of research I missed that said America likes it's movies dragged out and as long as possible?
  
• I don't like this Superman as Jesus shit that seemed to be implied in the movie. The term 'savior' got thrown around too much. Superman is not Jesus. Superman, at least in my opinion, is a alien who was raised as a human with a good moral code who is just doing "the right thing" because he has the ability to. He's not here to "save us", just here to help.
• I don't think they can (or should) do a sequel. It's hard doing Superman stories (which is why the comic has sucked for quite some time). There's three types of successful Superman stories (all of which have been used in the movies): 1) Superman faces off against someone equal in strength to him (II, III, IV), 2) Superman faces off against Lex Luthor or a villain with Kryptonite (I, III, Returns) or 3) Superman is put to the limits of his power by trying to be in two places at once (I, Returns).
• I find it hard to believe that Superman would just up and leave for five years. Sorry, someone with THAT strong a moral code would not do that. Of course, he also wouldn't make a move (however slight) on a woman with a boyfriend so what do I know?
• Before I talk about the spoiler stuff, the whole Clark Kent works with a bunch of reporters and is in love with the best reporter in the city and no one can put together that Clark Kent and Superman returned on the exact same day (only Lois's kid kinda caught on). It would have been one thing if Clark came back and a couple of days later, Superman showed up or vice versa. But THE SAME DAY! C'mon.
  

Okay on to more spoiler-ish stuff.

• Ok, at the end of the movie, Superman lifts the humogous crystal city that Lex Luthor created and threw it into space. Not into the sun but into space. Um, I'm not scientist but won't that huge landmass become a meteorite that will destroy one of our neighboring planets. Way to think it through, Kal-El.
• Also, won't those remaining crystals be a problem?
  
• By giving a Superman a kid, Bryan Singer has taken the mythology of Superman and Da Vinci Code-d it.
• I'm not mad about the whole kid thing. It was a cool twist. I wish DC had the balls to do something like this in the comics. The Superman story is legendary. You have to create some twists and turns to keep it fresh. But still, Superman has x-ray vision & super hearing, he didn't know she was pregnant before he left.
• How do you end a Superman movie without him bringing Lex Luthor to justice? That was just lame.

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X-Men: The Last Stand (a second opinion)

Sigh...

I'll be honest, after I left the theater, I wanted to give the movie but after telling my friend about the movie I had to admit that there were some cool parts.

I don't know what to say about this movie. This wasn't Brett Ratner's fault. He did a competent job. There were some scenes that were better than anything in the first two X-Men movies. The Phoenix scenes were handled particularly well.

Whoever decided that this movie should only be 107 minutes not only ruined this movie but ruined this franchise.

It was clear that the writers of the movie had been given a list of things to address:

• Jean/Phoenix
• The cure storyline
• Give Storm a bigger role
• Solve the Cyclops-doesn't-really-do-anything problem
• Iceman vs. Pyro
• Introduce a bunch of new mutants (Angel, Beast, Callisto, Madrox)
• Give Colossus something to do
  
• Iceman/Rogue/Kitty Pryde love triangle
• Jean/Cyclops/Logan love triangle

And they were told to do all this in 107 minutes or less because even with the short running time, there managed to be filler.

There was a lot of potential. The cure story could have been cool. The Phoenix story could have been cool. The use of the next generation of X-Men stepping up could have been cool. But instead of there being a main plot and some subplots, there were ONLY subplots, some being resolved, some being forgotten and some rushed to an unsatisfying conclusion. And because of that, I felt detached from the whole movie.

It's sad. Given an extra 45-60 minutes and a better writer, this could have been the best of the X-Men movies.

Click here for more spoiler-filled comments.

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The X-Men 3 Review To End All Reviews

It is no secret to anyone on this site or OKP that I am a fan of the X-Men. I have followed them for some time, and when I first heard about an X-Men movie, I was stoked. I remember seeing the first movie and really enjoying it. Yea, I wanted to see more characters, and Sabretooth was done really, really bad, but I respected it for what it was. It was enough to have me panting for a sequel.

Then came X2. This is by far the greatest comic movie of all time, hands down. You want to argue? Fine, but you better have a good argument lined up and on tap. Unfortunately, this movie also made the first movie look not so good comparatively. The scene where Wolverine unleashes and Colossus metals up still gives me goosebumps to this day when I watch. The story was fantastic, Stryker was a great villain (although I find Brian Cox to be a bit annoying), and the intro to Nightcrawler was great. This movie did promise bigger roles for the other X-Men characters besides Wolverine, but they didn't really go into Jean, Cyclops, and Storm especially. This film simply had me waiting for the next movie to drop immediately. I was very hyped for the next one, and when I finally heard about it and saw pix and trailers, I was pumped.

May 26th. Me and some friends go down at about 11:00 or so, tickets in hand, to get good seats and what not. The movie was set to start at 12:01, in five theatres, all of which were sold out. It was already pretty crowded, and they were filling up theatres as people came in. We saw our share of Wolverines, Rogues, Nightcrawlers (although I don't know why), one Jedi (the saddest motherfucer you would of ever seen... this guy had a blue lightsaber in Jedi garb, running around pretending he was a badass... it was like watching a sequel to that Triumph at the Star Wars premiere), and Batman(apparently, no one told him that he was a year or 2 late). We waited and waited, past 12:01, until someone came in to finally announce that the movie would be starting. Guess what time it was? 12:45. Yea, it sucked big time, but I was still excited nonetheless.

Before I go into the movie, I thought that Ghost Rider looked pretty cool. But of course, Marvel did make Daredevil.

X-Men 3 falls somewhere in the paradox land of movies to me. I liked it. Better than 2? That is the paradox.

The opening scene were just like the other movies, and it seemed like it began very soon after the 2nd movie ended. The Angel scene at the beginning was disturbing, but it worked. Unfortunately, Angel didn't. For all the complaints I have heard about underused characters, Angel should not of been in the movie for what he was there for. One scene, which was one of the only scenes that his father was in, even though he was the basis for the large plot of the movie. That, I did not understand. Beast on the other hand was handled very well. I have not seen a Beast that I have liked since he stopped being the ape-like version until seeing this movie. Kelsey Grammer fit this part great, fitting the size and the intellect it would take for the character. It was strange to see him working so close in the government though. The idea of the cure was good, at least to begin with.



Mystique was criminally underused, especially since she was the most badass she has been in any of the three movies, with the exception being the fight with Wolverine in 1. I like seeing Multiple Man, and the forest scene was pretty clever, if predictable. Juggernaut, visually, was great. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they pulled him off, because I don't think anyone thought that someone that big could work with someone playing him. The voice did not work for me at first, but I got used to it. 'I'm the Juggernaut, BITCH!' and the fight with Wolverine put him on the good side of the fence though. Pyro became the Mystique of this installment, and Callisto and the remaining members worked decently well as glorified cameos. The stars of the show were of course Magneto and Jean/Phoenix. This can be expected from Ian. He was ice cold towards Mystique, and the death of Xavier did not seem to phase him as much as you would of thought. I felt that Phoenix was a little too powerful though.

The X-Men, well, I could go both ways on. Wolverine was great, and so was Beast, even Kitty was done well, and the scene with Iceman icing up was pure fanboy enjoyment. The problem was the idea that Marvel seemed to forget that Cyclops was even in the movie until the very end, when someone probably said 'Hey, do you guys know what happened to Scott?' I don't think they did. I though Storm was the best in this movie, and I didn't have a huge problem with her. Rogue got shafted as well, but the big suprise was how they also seemed to leave Colossus out as well. Yea we got to see the 'Fastball Special' and him fight a little bit, but I was expecting a lot more from his character.

The effects were where this movie shined. This fight scenes in the Grey neighborhood and Alcatraz were awesome, were easily the best fights of any of the three movies. Juggernaut chasing Kitty, Beast and Wolverine cutting loose, finally getting a glimpse of the Danger Room and a tease of a Sentinel, and Jean going crazy, for lack of a better word, were all visually stunning, but the best scene goes to Magneto, when he popped Mystique out of prison on the highway. The only dissapoint was the bridge scene, which was way to long and drawn out for its own good.

The character underdevelopment was the weak point. First off, how the fuck are they going to kill off 3 of the major X-Men characters? I was expecting Jean, and I heard Cyclops was going to take a dirt nap as well. I actually thought that killing Professor X was fresh and quite shocking. Also, the underusement of other characters, like Mystique and Rogue was just wrong. I know why they always seem to focus on Wolverine, but the movie is called X-Men, not Wolverine.

The final scene with Magneto in the park was cool too (even if we all knew that he would still have his powers). The hidden scene at the end of the credits was cool, because I remember them talking about that earlier in the movie. There will probably be another one, and I will not complain if there is. Let's just hope that the Sentinels (true to form) and Gambit can make appearances.

All in all I felt that this was a pretty damn enjoyable movie. I liked the action sequences, loved the fights, and the fanboy moments were plentiful and cool. Was it better than X2? Action wise, yes. Story and all together, no. Both of the sequels were better than the original (and I did like the first one), so I am not dissapointed at all. If the 1st movie was good (B) and the 2nd was close to perfect (A-A+), this movie falls in between them. To the people who didn't like the movie, you really were not entertained? Yea, I thought so.

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