Comics to Movies

You know what I realized recently? My life revolves around entertainment media. Video games, movies, music... And you know what? I'm comfortable with that.

Moving on, over the last couple of weeks, I've watched a lot of comic book based movies. Hulk, LXG, X2. These movies ranged in quality, but surprisingly, I enjoyed them all based upon their own merits, even though two of them were critically panned.

For instance, the Hulk. I know more than a few people, as well as reviewers, that called this movie horrible. And while I will admit that the acting was a little below average sometimes, on the whole I was sucked in and enjoyed a superhero/monster flick. I think in part this was due to my knowing very little of the backstory of the Hulk.

Yeah, okay so I don't live comic books the way most geeks do. I can't tell you the various things the Hulk has done. What little I knew was that he was hit by Gamma radiation and from that point on would "Hulk out," as the case may be, whenever angry. Thus, I found little in the presentation of the Hulk in the movie to offend my fanboy sensibilities (which were, of course, none).

On a tangent, yes I have fanboy sensibilities. I hated Dracula 200 with a passion for the way they distorted the Dracula character by the end of the flick. You go watch it and see what I mean. I am in a minority about that, as most people just hate the entire flick, while I hate the ending, but would have enjoyed the corniness of the movie otherwise.

But, for the subject at hand, I did enjoy the Hulk. It did drag a little in places, I will admit, but on the whole it ended on a decent action note, and the monumentdenouement (if I spelled that right) left the possibility of a rather interesting sequel, if they decide to make one.

Sadly, LXG did not fare nearly as well. The League suffers on multiple fronts, yet even here I was able to at least enjoy the flick enough that i didn't wish for the 110 minutes of my life back (actual running time).

I think the part of LXG that hurt it the most was the CGI. Man this movie suffers from horrible on screen graphics that just pull you so far out of the movie it's not even funny. And there is a whole lot of CGI in the movie. I think they had very little budget, less once they got Connery, and what little they had after sets and other actors was what they had to spend on CGI.

The writing was a bit weak in spots, with odd jumps of logic and bad lines every few minutes. Although, what's odd is that some of the characters are so well developed, it seems more like cutting floor mishaps than bad writing (pre-edit) that caused the faults with the script. Whatever the case, LXG was the weakest of the recent flicks I saw.

I'm not gonna say there is a movie released in this genre without a couple of flaws. in Burton's Batman, they really shouldn't have killed the Joker. X-Men had a couple of dragging sections, and Cyclops was so pathetically useless. Spider-Man (Raimi) suffered some atrocious acting that was perked up primarily by Willem Dafoe.

What I'm leading up to is X2, in my opinion the best of the comic movies released in quite some time. The film exhibited more polish than the original, this being in part due to a bigger budget and the studios understanding the viability of the product being made. Cyclops is still useless, and they still spend a lot of time on Wolverine (admittedly a fan-fave character). But the movie is fast paced, a fun ride, and well crafted. Traits I like in a flick. I just hope in part three that give more time to Colossus, cause damn, he was pimp.

I've run out of ideas to talk about though, so yeah. As I tend to end it, there ya go. Now begone.