Category Archives: Property review

Property review: Dr. Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme

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Photo cour­tesy of the Mar­vel wikia

Dr. Strange: The Sor­cerer Supreme

Lion­s­gate, 2007

Dr. Strange DVD con­jures fine story

Dr. Strange is strange, indeed. He’s got the poten­tial to be a top-tier char­ac­ter, yet he’s not out there for Mar­vel that much. How­ever, he has received the ani­mated movie treat­ment like most of the periph­eral Avengers so he has some promi­nence. And his film isn’t that bad.

Dr. Strange takes some time get­ting into. Start­ing off slow, the film han­dles Strange’s back­story with care, mix­ing in dif­fer­ent parts from the main­stream and Ulti­mates incar­na­tions. We see how Strange is at the top of his game, loses every­thing and hits rock bot­tom and finally becomes Earth’s Sor­cerer Supreme. In his jour­ney, Strange learns to care about oth­ers and that money and posi­tion in life aren’t every­thing. Even though Strange has one of the most cliché tales, espe­cially involv­ing a friend-turned-foe, the story isn’t bad and it’s paced pretty well. The addi­tion of the back­story involv­ing his sister’s death is slightly weird, since it’s not in the actual comics. While it gives Strange some emo­tional depth and makes him more relat­able than his comic coun­ter­part, it’s not actu­ally necessary.

What really makes the film worth watch­ing is its voice act­ing cast. The voices cho­sen are per­fect. With Kevin Michael Richard­son among them, the cast is pitch per­fect and almost could have been con­sid­ered for the same roles in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 (ed’s note: Richard­son does make an appear­ance in MvC3, not as Baron Mordo but as Galac­tus). Bryce John­son, as the voice of Strange, is also excel­lent. There are a few more well-known names such as Phil LaMarr, Mar­vel stal­wart Fred Tatas­ciore and Tara Strong that round out the strong cast.

Also stand­out is the qual­ity of the ani­ma­tion. The char­ac­ters ani­mate beau­ti­fully and the lines and style are clean. It’s in the same vein as The Avengers movies, but look bet­ter than Hulk Versus.

Dr. Strange is an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter, and his ani­mated fea­ture pro­vides a decent-if-not-cliché look at his mem­o­rable back­ground and strug­gle to become some­thing greater than him­self. Give it a go if Strange’s tale of might and magic will intrigue you.

 

HOW WE GRADE

We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in cases of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Like the comics?: 6

Cast­ing: 9.5

Plot: 8

Over­all: 23.5/30 or 7.8

Property review: Ultimate Avengers (animated)

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of the Mar­vel Data­base Wikia

ULTIMATE AVENGERS

Lionsgate/Marvel Ani­mated Fea­tures, 2006

Ulti­mately awe­some: Avengers car­toon passes test

We should start out by say­ing that we’re long­time comic fans. We’ve fol­lowed Marvel’s heroes for years and we’ve read issues of the Ulti­mates when it debuted. There’s one word that describes the Ulti­mates per­fectly — cin­e­matic. From the dra­matic art to the epic sto­ry­telling, the comic had all the mak­ings of a great film. We always hoped they’d make a live-action ver­sion of it, but it’s easy to see why Mar­vel would choose it as the first of their adult-oriented animation.

So, how did it trans­late from the printed page to the small screen? Not too shabby in our opinion.

The first thing any fan of Mar­vel will note about this ani­mated movie is that the dark and vio­lent edge has been taken off of Mark Millar’s story. This is under­stand­able since they want to mar­ket this film to the widest audi­ence pos­si­ble, but it also removes some of the plot points that made it unique.

For exam­ple, Hank Pym doesn’t abuse his wife, Janet. They bicker, but there’s no domes­tic abuse any­where. Cap­tain Amer­ica doesn’t beat the crap out of Hank and break his jaw. The Hulk is also vio­lent, but he isn’t the embod­i­ment of the male psy­che run amok. (He doesn’t want to kill Fred­die Prinze Jr. for being on a date with Betty.) That being said, though, ele­ments of that edge are still present mainly in the action scenes. The Hulk breaks Giant Man’s knee. The Wasp flies into Hulk’s ear in a mem­o­rable moment. We also see Cap­tain Amer­ica fly a plane into a Ger­man base from the spec­tac­u­lar open­ing of the comic. So, though it has been watered down to a degree, there’s still a lit­tle bit of the edge left.

The film takes a few key scenes and the over­all alien inva­sion plot and reshuf­fles it around to fit the needs of peo­ple with atten­tion deficit dis­or­der. For exam­ple, you have mem­o­rable scenes like the Hulk’s ram­page (now at the end of the story), Cap­tain America’s open­ing bat­tle and Steve Rogers’ revival. How­ever, you also have some changes like a new action scene involv­ing a bat­tle at a SHIELD base, a plane res­cue scene by Iron Man and the alien inva­sion set in New York. There are also some changes to the char­ac­ters. In the comic, Iron Man had a huge staff help­ing him main­tain the suit while in this film Tony Stark works solo and anony­mously. Thor is also a lit­tle dif­fer­ent: He’s still an activist, but this time, the Norse god is sav­ing the whales, which is ironic since Nor­way is one of two coun­tries still hunt­ing whales. You’d think Vikings would like whale burgers.

The ani­ma­tion in the film is a bit dif­fer­ent. The char­ac­ter designs and back­grounds look pretty good, and the char­ac­ters are highly detailed and full of color. There are times when the ani­ma­tion is spec­tac­u­lar, mainly dur­ing the fight scenes, how­ever, the qual­ity seems to waver between a Sat­ur­day morn­ing ani­ma­tion and big-screen ani­ma­tion. It never quite achieves the level of excel­lence that most adult audi­ences have come to expect. They seem to be aim­ing for anime level of qual­ity, but it never quite reaches it. The end result seems to be just what Mar­vel intends — ani­ma­tion that is just good enough to tell the story and cheap enough that they can crank it out quickly cash in, then move to the next film.

The voice actors of this movie did a great job. Each voice seemed to fit with each char­ac­ter. There is some heavy star power for this project. And you feel that expe­ri­ence in every line and scene. Fred Tatas­ciore, who voices Hulk on many projects is here. He makes you think that he has always been the Hulk with every roar, scream and refer­ring to him­self in third per­son. Justin Gross (Cap­tain Amer­ica) is Ryu Hayabusa in Ninja Gaiden series and the Dead or Alive series. Nolan North has made his name known all over the place, notably as Dead­pool in “Hulk VS.” The voice act­ing works great and noth­ing seems dry or out of place. And if you think you can make a bet­ter Thor, you should watch some of the other peo­ple try out for those parts and see if you add up to these expe­ri­enced actors.

The Ulti­mate Avengers is a great movie for super­heroes fans of all ages. There is some­thing for every­one here: There’s a love story, some­one try­ing to find their place in this world, a guy who wants to pro­tect the world from the peo­ple in it, and a story of friends from dif­fer­ent world. This is what the kids of all ages look for in a super­hero story.

HOW WE GRADE

We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in cases of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 9/10

Plot: 9/10

Like the comics?: 8/10

Over­all rat­ing: 8.6

Property review: Watchmen (film)

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WATCHMEN

Warner Bros., 2009

Who watched the Watch­men? Sadly, not many

When you have a suc­cess­ful and highly regarded graphic novel as a basis for a movie, there shouldn’t be prob­lems with the result­ing prod­uct. And yet, Watch­men didn’t exactly set the world on fire. Maybe the movie-going pub­lic is or was tired of super­hero flicks at the time, but “Watch­men” should have done bet­ter at the box office because it’s a fan­tas­ti­cally made film.

The color choice and set pieces are amaz­ing, and the atmos­phere of slowed vio­lence in motion will make your jaw drop. It’s visu­ally strik­ing in just about every take and cou­pled with smart, tight writ­ing, the movie moves along at a decent clip. It is slightly too long but at least the story told within will more than keep your inter­est. This is a film that needed to be expe­ri­enced on the big screen, and thank­fully, that’s how we learned about it.

The tale of an alter­nate time­line of cos­tumed super­heroes, the con­tin­ued Cold War and Richard Nixon man­ag­ing the White House through the ‘80s is a fan­tas­tic one, and we couldn’t help go in curi­ous as to how it would all work. Hav­ing never read the orig­i­nal Watch­men graphic novel, we reserved judg­ment until after read­ing it and see­ing the movie. It’s eas­ily become one of our favorite comics since and with good rea­son: It’s smart, it’s gor­geous and it’s believ­able. The movie con­tin­ues in the same vein and had most of the tools to suc­ceed such as rec­og­niz­able names attached to the project and estab­lished story.

The act­ing and cast­ing isn’t nec­es­sar­ily the draw here but it’s ser­vice­able. Every­one gives the same vibe off: They know their char­ac­ter and how that per­son or being fits into the larger scheme of sto­ry­telling. In par­tic­u­lar, we salute the act­ing chops of Jef­frey Dean Mor­gan, who played The Come­dian, for his abil­ity to steal the scene in all of his appear­ances. He is one of the true draws here, and he gives you your money’s worth and then some.

There’s sev­eral minute changes over­all that mostly the diehard fans will imme­di­ately notice, but to the stan­dard movie­goer, it’s noth­ing that will make you stop watch­ing. If you know noth­ing about the graphic novel, the movie will, if any­thing, cre­ate some curios­ity for the orig­i­nal. Much like it’s earlier-reviewed brethren “300,” “Watch­men” lifts nearly every scene directly from its source material.

Some peo­ple have an issue with that, as it doesn’t exactly inspire cre­ativ­ity on the part of the direc­tor, but we dis­agree. This is one of the few instances where we’d rather have the graphic novel told directly with lit­tle to no changes than the trans­la­tion screwed up (see: most video game movies).

If you’re look­ing for some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than the Dark Knight or mutants solv­ing world crises, we sug­gest look­ing at the tale of non super-powered heroes who are just fight­ing for the right to exist. This one’s a gem.

How we grade

We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in cases of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 8/10

Plot: 9.5/10

Like the comics?: 9.5/10

Over­all rat­ing: 27/30 or 9.0

 

Animated property review: X-Men The Animated Series

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X-Men the Ani­mated Series Vol. 1  |  Buena Vista Home Enter­tain­ment, 2009

X-Men ori­gins told correctly

If there ever was a quin­tes­sen­tial prop­erty in the 1990s of comic book ori­gin, it’s X-Men the Ani­mated Series. The Fox sta­ple in the early part of the decade was a great excuse to get up on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing to watch car­toons. It also was a great learn­ing tool for those who didn’t know much about the X-Men and wanted an intro­duc­tory course to the famous mutants.

What we love about the series is the fact that it takes itself seri­ously. It told sto­ries just as the comic book ver­sion told them 10 years before, and it’s pretty close to the ori­gin sto­ries with only minor changes. Our only gripe with some of the episodes in the first vol­ume is the brevity of the story arcs. Sagas such as Days of Future Past and The Cure are told in one or two episodes, some­thing that isn’t nor­mally be done in the comics. How­ever, some are revis­ited in later sea­sons of the show, so that can be forgiven.

The pro­duc­tion val­ues of the Ani­mated Series, for its time, were top-notch. The writ­ing was superb, and the col­or­ing and draw­ing were extra­or­di­nary for a car­toon pro­duc­tion. Few series, with the excep­tion of fel­low Fox pro­duc­tion Spider-Man, could match what the Ani­mated Series brought to the table in terms of visu­als and sto­ry­telling. The first vol­ume sets the pace with Night of the Sen­tinels, and it’s obvi­ous that care is taken with char­ac­ters and their back­grounds. Most char­ac­ters are true to their his­tory and those who have been re-established for the Ani­mated Series are well done and not out of place (i.e. Morph).

The voice act­ing is another stand­out estab­lished within the first vol­ume. The char­ac­ters all sound like they should, and it is this first set of episodes that estab­lished the stan­dard for future X-Men voice act­ing projects for the next 17 years. The best exam­ple: All X-Men char­ac­ters used in Capcom’s ver­sus series through Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 were voiced by their Ani­mated Series actors.

The first vol­ume of the Ani­mated Series hit DVD in 2009, a wel­come addi­tion to any X-Men fan’s col­lec­tion. The first 16 episodes encom­pass the two-disc set and were only $20 at the time of pur­chase. That’s a bar­gain for well-crafted X-Men sto­ries in a series known for its tech­ni­cal prowess that seemed to take for­ever to come to DVD.

How we grade

We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in cases of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Voice act­ing: 10/10

Plots: 8/10

Like the comics?: 8/10

Over­all rat­ing: 26/30 or 8.6

Comic property review: “The Spirit”

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Photo cour­tesy of ComicBookMovie.com

‘The Spirit’ lack­ing in focus, execution

“The Spirit”
Lion­s­gate, 2008

Despite reviews to the con­trary, “The Spirit” isn’t a bad movie. It is a mess in some spots and it requires mul­ti­ple view­ings to fully under­stand what’s going on but, over­all, it’s not bad; it’s just that its atten­tion span is all over the place and could ben­e­fit from a pac­ing specialist’s undi­vided time.

Visu­ally, it’s gor­geous. If you fell in love with the look of “Sin City,” you will love “The Spirit.” It sings for its sup­per in its lush graph­ics, and the mix of comic style and com­puter gen­er­ated work does it a world of good. The cos­tume direc­tion is also a win­ner, and most of the char­ac­ters look awe­some with a soft­ened glow about them against a gritty back­drop of crime, death and res­ur­rec­tion. Of par­tic­u­lar note are the cos­tume changes of Samuel L. Jack­son and Scar­lett Johans­son, both who steal the show with their chem­istry and impec­ca­ble tim­ing. Gabriel Macht and Eva Mendes do a fine job in their lead roles and inspire feel­ings of sym­pa­thy and under­stand­ing for their predicaments.

“The Spirit” isn’t with­out its flaws, how­ever. First of all, it’s not par­tic­u­larly true to the comics. The Octo­pus never shows his face in the orig­i­nal prop­erty. How­ever, we can let it slide because it’s Samuel L. Jack­son. He’s allowed to ham it up, and he’s a mar­quee name. Another change is the fact that the Spirit didn’t orig­i­nally have the heal­ing fac­tor power he’s given. Again, the addi­tion is jar­ring but it’s needed to pull the movie closer to the sen­sa­tional to lure audi­ences in. How­ever, it didn’t work as the film has only grossed nearly $39 million.

Thirdly, the story jumps around quite a bit. It’s not told nearly as well as “Sin City” and it’s not paced par­tic­u­larly well, either. In some parts — mostly those fea­tur­ing Jack­son — it’s hilar­i­ous and dark. In oth­ers, it’s slow and tedious, and you wish it’d pick up the pace and stop drag­ging its heels toward the inevitable Octopus-Spirit show­down cli­max. And finally, the cli­max, while it seems to take for­ever to get to, isn’t all that great. It’s really anti­cli­mac­tic. What we really wanted was more of an emo­tional pay­off for the Spirit’s roman­tic entan­gle­ments. Oth­er­wise, it’s got a twitch fac­tor that either you’ll get or you won’t. Despite its weird­ness, we got a decent comic book movie fleshed out with inter­est­ing char­ac­ters. Color us happy.

How we grade
We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in case of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 9.5/10
Plot: 6/10
Like the comics?: 4/10
Over­all rat­ing: 19.5/30 or 6.5


Comic property reviews: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movies

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In the first quar­ter 2011 of Gam­ing Insurrection’s The Strip, we took a look at all three Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles movies. Read on to see how we feel about Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles II: The Secret of the Ooze and Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles III.

Before we start, a lit­tle bit of explaining:

How we grade
We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in case of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

A screenshot from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Tur­tles make an inter­est­ing dis­cov­ery in their lair in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles./Photo cour­tesy of TMNT.com

TMNT movie ori­gins great way to start franchise

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”

New Line Cin­ema, 1990

Pulling from the comics to tell its ori­gin story, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles does the fran­chise proud in its first stab at the movie busi­ness. With a few changes to some key ele­ments, the movie Tur­tles still man­age to con­vey the never-say-die atti­tude of the teen amphib­ians. Cru­cial fights and sub­tle humor are thrown in with great char­ac­ter development.

The cast­ing is superb mostly. Judith Hoag was excel­lent as the plucky April O’Neil, and her pair­ing with Elias Koteas’ Casey Jones was enjoy­able and believ­able. Shred­der was men­ac­ing and impos­ing as well as his body­guard, Tatsu (a movie only addi­tion). The cos­tum­ing looked great and so did the Tur­tles. Jim Henson’s Crea­ture Fac­tory pulled out the stops to make the suits for the Tur­tles, and it shows. Our only quib­ble with the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion was the inclu­sion and cre­ation of April’s boss and his son. They weren’t wholly nec­es­sary to the story, and while they set up inter­est­ing sub­plots for the core group, they didn’t really add to the movie. In fact, it seems they dragged it down in parts.

We par­tic­u­larly enjoyed the fact that by the time the first movie was released, the car­toon was in full swing, thus mak­ing the movie pos­si­ble. While the movie works to dis­tance itself from the car­toon quite a bit, it still retains ele­ments from it to draw in the younger crowd. Sub­tle nods to the franchise’s two ori­gins (comics and car­toon) are fea­tured through­out, help­ing the movie firmly ground itself as a sci-fi kung-fu flick. This is a must-own for the chil­dren of the ‘80s crowd who remem­bers the days when Tur­tles fought with honor.

Like the comics: 7/10

Cast­ing: 9.5/10

Plot: 9/10

Over­all rat­ing: 8.5

New char­ac­ter Keno joins the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles in their quest to take on Shred­der again in Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles II: Secret of the Ooze./Photo cour­tesy of TMNT.com

One lin­ers’ add hilar­ity to Tur­tles’ movie sequel

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles II: Secret of the Ooze”

New Line Cin­ema, 1991

What’s not to like about the sequel to one of the most suc­cess­ful inde­pen­dent movies of all time? Not much. Every­thing that made the first film a year ear­lier suc­cess­ful is back, though with a few changes. First, there’s no Casey Jones. And the actress play­ing April was changed. And there’s the addi­tion of Ernie Reyes Jr. as the Tur­tles’ friend Keno and vil­lains Tokka and Razhar. But other than that, the Tur­tles are still the Turtles.

There’s more action and more one-liners. And the return of Shred­der makes it a lit­tle bit more believ­able that he’s a major vil­lain for the Tur­tles than the comics would have you believe. It’s not very plau­si­ble that Shred­der would be a one-note vil­lain who only appears in a movie to try to kill the heroes, so it’s obvi­ous that his role was increased here, tying in the var­i­ous games AND cartoon.

Char­ac­ter devel­op­ment was han­dled in the first movie and not too much is dwelled on here. We wish more was writ­ten about Keno and why he was so pro­fi­cient in mar­tial arts and insis­tent upon help­ing the Tur­tles. His lack of expla­na­tion sticks out like a sore thumb in an oth­er­wise excel­lent tale for the Tur­tles. Also, is it too much to ask that Vanilla Ice should have been toned down? True, he doesn’t show up until the end, but really, Ninja Rap? It was odd and dis­con­cert­ing as a child see­ing him and that hasn’t changed in the 20 years since movie’s release. He does absolutely noth­ing for the film, and his cameo is beyond stu­pid. But, at least the Tur­tles got to dance.

Over­all, watch the sequel if not for a laugh at the now-ancient fash­ions of the day, but for the ramped up humor that comes from cre­at­ing a sequel for a TMNT movie.

Like the comics?: 5/10

Cast­ing: 8/10

Plot: 7/10

Over­all rat­ing: 6.5

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles try to return home to their time in Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles III./Photo cour­tesy of TMNT.com

Boldly go where no Tur­tle should really ever go

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles III”

New Line Cin­ema, 1992

A hack­neyed plot and poor spe­cial effects make the third TMNT film the worst in the bunch. There isn’t much that could save the fran­chise from going down­hill with the third movie. The plot of the Tur­tles time trav­el­ing lit­er­ally doesn’t make much sense, and the first time that Lyn­d­sey saw it in the the­aters, she claims to have spent 20 min­utes try­ing to make sure she was in the right movie.

The act­ing is garbage, the story is utter non­sense and has noth­ing to do with the TMNT uni­verse, and there’s no men­tion of pre­vi­ous vil­lains or char­ac­ters that made an impact on the Tur­tles’ adven­tures. The bright spot in it all is the cast­ing and return of Elias Koteas as Casey Jones. He, despite some ham-fisted act­ing, is a bea­con of hope in a movie that is far from shimmering.

There is noth­ing here that really resem­bles the TMNT uni­verse save the aban­doned train sys­tem home that the Tur­tles found in Secret of the Ooze and Jones. We had trou­ble under­stand­ing the point of adding the scepter and why even some of the strange plots from the car­toon uni­verse weren’t expanded on, such as the Utroms or Rock­steady and Bebop. If the movie can intro­duce samu­rai that we’ve never heard of, the least the writ­ers could do is include mutants that we have heard of. This is one sewer tale that should have stayed underground.

Like the comics?: 0/10

Cast­ing: 2/10

Plot: 2/10

Over­all rat­ing: 1.5

Comic property review: “Punisher War Zone”

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Photo cour­tesy of ComicBookResource.com

Third time’s a charm for Punisher

“Pun­isher War Zone“
Mar­vel Knights, 2008

If you can ignore the fact that this is the third attempt at bring­ing Frank Castle’s tale to big screen, you will love Pun­isher: War Zone. This is really what every Pun­isher film so far should have been: Gory, over-the-top action punc­tu­ated by the loss that Cas­tle suffers.

With his fam­ily and human­ity lost to sense­less gang vio­lence, Cas­tle has to go the route of the Pun­isher. There is no other way and Lexi Alexan­der does an excel­lent job dig­ging into the motif of Castle’s desire to lose him­self in death. Using quick action shots, detailed cos­tumes and a pen­chant for show­ing the worst ways to kill a man, War Zone achieves the effect that should have already been achieved by two pre­vi­ous actors: Death by Punisher.

War Zone’s Cas­tle, Ray Steven­son, has the look of a man con­sumed with rage and revenge. He wears Castle’s raw emo­tions on his face well, and he makes an excel­lent dark anti-hero mired in a cesspool of a city.

Dominic West (who was also in last quarter’s review sub­ject 300) is also excel­lent. Vil­lains have become his strong suit and Jig­saw is a tes­ta­ment to his abil­ity to take a char­ac­ter, immerse and make him­self unrec­og­niz­able. Doug Hutchin­son is a sur­prise stand­out as well. Hav­ing impressed us in his pre­vi­ous soap opera roles, he plays men­tally insane well here. The other char­ac­ters are rather stereo­typ­i­cal but they don’t nec­es­sar­ily get in the way of the story.

Over­all Pun­isher: War Zone should have had a bet­ter draw in the movie indus­try. It received a bad rap because of its late-to-the-party sta­tus and drama sur­round­ing pro­duc­tion, but it really is a good adap­ta­tion of a comic book fran­chise and deserves to put ahead of the other attempts to bring the Pun­isher to the big screen.

How we grade
We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in case of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of the max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 9/10
Plot: 8/10
Like the comics?: 10/10
Over­all rat­ing: 9

Comic property review: ‘300’

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Photo cour­tesy of Warner Bros.

Hot, sweaty, loud: ‘300’ gets it right

‘300’

Warner Bros., 2007

You don’t have to know much about the ancient Greek Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae to enjoy what Frank Miller’s 300 has to offer. You also don’t have to have a lot of testos­terone or Y chro­mo­somes to enjoy the slick visu­als, fight scenes or lack of cloth­ing that the Spar­tan faith­ful wear. This isn’t a par­tic­u­larly deep film but it doesn’t aim to be. It aims to be loud, cool and sweaty. And that’s exactly what you get in the comic book adap­ta­tion directed by Zack Snyder.

300 has been faith­fully recre­ated frame by frame by Sny­der, the illus­tri­ous comic book screen mas­ter who has brought forth visions such as The Spirit and Watch­men. 300 was one of his first attempts to bring a comic to life and it’s well done. Because Sny­der doesn’t stray too far from the source mate­r­ial, every­thing has a grimy comic sheen draped all over it. The comic book goop the film is mired in doesn’t betray the direct lift of mate­r­ial; it actu­ally enhances the beauty of the visu­als. This film is unde­ni­ably gor­geous and it knows it. Even the green screen mate­r­ial doesn’t detract from the beauty of the film. Usu­ally it’s obvi­ous that folks are employ­ing it in a scene but 300 more than cov­ers its tracks and has a grand time doing it.

Also gor­geous are the var­i­ous actors that make up the prin­ci­pal cast. The abs are fab­u­lous, hair is per­fectly coiffed and no one is out of shape or unable to fight. The beau­ti­ful peo­ple of the world appar­ently all fought in the Spar­tan army against the god king Xerxes and only one lived to tell the tale. That pre­vi­ous comic book sheen comes full cir­cle in many of the visual ele­ments, and the folks who kill the Per­sian army in styl­ized sequences fea­tur­ing no less than six grue­some deaths are no excep­tion. The His­tory Chan­nel was actu­ally heav­ily involved in the cos­tum­ing phase of the pro­duc­tion and that atten­tion to detail is evi­dent throughout.

The actors them­selves aren’t bad. While I’d not believe them as Greeks, the enthu­si­asm that comes across on the screen is infec­tious. No one phoned it in here and the dra­matic por­tions are appro­pri­ately heartbreaking.

There isn’t much to dis­like about 300. A small quib­ble is that the pac­ing makes it drags near the end. While the end bat­tle is appro­pri­ately melo­dra­matic and wrought with ten­sion, it was a lit­tle too drawn out. As Elvis once rec­om­mended, a lit­tle less con­ver­sa­tion would have been nice.

We’re action buffs and 300 def­i­nitely sat­is­fied that need. Besides, the many quotable scenes such as “This is Sparta!” more than make up for the drag­ging of feet at the con­clu­sion. 300 has earned its rank among great comic adap­ta­tions and action movies alike.

How we grade
We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in the case of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory, and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 8/10
Plot: 8/10
Like the comics?: 10/10
Over­all rat­ing: 8.6

Comic property review: ‘Superman Returns’

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Photo cour­tesy of Warner Bros. | Bran­don Routh stars as Clark Kent/Superman in “Super­man Returns.”

Attempted reboot of Super­man fran­chise an admirable effort

Super­man Returns
Warner Bros., 2006

The reboot of the Super­man movie fran­chise was long in com­ing. Let’s face facts: Super­man IV was a dis­grace to the franchise’s name, Christo­pher Reeve was rolling over in his grave at the last­ing legacy, and the movie had spent at least a decade in devel­op­ment hell with var­i­ous direc­tors and actors attached to the project. Super­man, him­self, needed a hero.

Set after the events of Super­man II, Returns brings a mea­sure of cred­i­bil­ity back to the DC stal­wart. Firstly, Kevin Spacey was a prime choice for Lex Luthor. That’s not to say that Gene Hack­man wasn’t a good choice, but Spacey is Lex. Sec­ond, Bran­don Routh had the look of Reeve as Super­man and he han­dled the role well despite the inevitable com­par­isons. Kate Bosworth was rather throw­away as Lois Lane but she didn’t nec­es­sar­ily detract from the film; she just doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily add anything.

Plot-wise, it’s the same old fare from the comics: Lex throws his acquired money around, tries to kill Super­man, Lois needs res­cu­ing, wash, rinse, repeat. It’s noth­ing you haven’t already seen but at least no one stands around chew­ing scenery. And the addi­tion of Lois’ son is an inter­est­ing twist even if you can see it com­ing from a mile away.

Spacey is appro­pri­ately melo­dra­matic as Luthor should be and Routh does an excel­lent job with emot­ing Superman’s dis­like of the for­mer multi-billionaire. One of the bet­ter aspects of the movie is the cos­tume design. Char­ac­ters really look like they would have existed in the 1950s and the décor matches well. Who­ever designed the movie should have won some acco­lades for their work.

So what’s there not to love about the reboot? While direc­tor Bryan Singer does excel­lent work (as he does with most of his prop­er­ties), it’s a lit­tle too long for some of us in the GI crew. While its fans point out that all Super­man movies are around this length, it’s a lit­tle too dry in some areas. The begin­ning starts slowly and there are some odd plot points such Lois try­ing to quit smok­ing. Where did that come from, we ask.

Over­all, the movie isn’t bad. It’s got great cast­ing, the plot works and it’s Super­man. You can’t go wrong there, well, unless you’re Super­man III or IV. We believe that, con­trary to pop­u­lar crit­i­cism of the film, Routh was not act­ing as Reeve act­ing as Super­man. We’ve read that bit of infor­ma­tion in mul­ti­ple places, and we really don’t get that. He worked with what he had and he chan­neled his pre­de­ces­sor pretty well, in our opin­ion. It’s a shame that there hasn’t been another movie since 2006 because the world really does need Superman.

How we grade
We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in the case of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory, and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 9/10
Plot: 9/10
Like the comics?: 7/10
Over­all rat­ing: 8

Comic property review: ‘X-Men’

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Photo courtesy of XMenFilms.net | From left, Patrick Stewart, Famke Jensen, Halle Berry, James Marsden and Hugh Jackman star in “X-Men.”

Photo cour­tesy of XMenFilms.net | From left, Patrick Stew­art, Famke Jensen, Halle Berry, James Mars­den and Hugh Jack­man star in “X-Men.”

X-Men

Twen­ti­eth Cen­tury Fox, 2000

Mutant peace­seek­ers find suc­cess in first of trilogy

If you get around some of the changes to the sil­ver screen adap­ta­tion of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s merry band of mutants, you’re bound to find enjoy­ment in this film. If you can’t, expect to be frustrated.

The first film in the tril­ogy of films about Marvel’s homo sapien supe­ri­ors deals with their fight for equal­ity and peace. Thrown into the mael­strom is Charles Xavier and his self-named X-Men: Wolver­ine, Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, Rogue and Ice­man. Hop­ing to thwart their cause is the other side of the mutant coin: The Broth­er­hood of Evil Mutants. Where Xavier and his merry band hope to instill peace and order, Mag­neto, Mys­tique, Sabre­tooth and Toad hope to bring chaos.

Now, all of this fight­ing between groups makes for excel­lent cin­ema and sto­ry­telling. Direc­tor Bryan Singer does a great job work­ing with the source mate­r­ial and intro­duc­ing the var­i­ous pow­ers of the mutants. With such a large cast, how­ever, not every­one got their fair share of screen time. Halle Berry’s well-known quib­ble about Storm not hav­ing enough promi­nence (she is Gold Team leader after all, or was) car­ries weight when it boils down to it.

While we enjoyed the movie greatly, we do have a bone to pick with it. Ice­man is the same age as Rogue? That’s really unbe­liev­able. Nei­ther were teenagers when they encoun­tered each other in their stints with the X-Men, nor were they roman­ti­cally involved at any time. Because there’s no Gam­bit, Rogue would be left dan­gling but it is more than a lit­tle weird try­ing to imag­ine that they would be in a rela­tion­ship. Also, while Ice­man was a teenager when he joined the crew, he was also one of the orig­i­nal X-Men. Tech­ni­cally, that would make him the same age as Jean and Scott, who are clearly adults in charge at Xavier’s Insti­tute for Gifted Youngsters.

Aside from the head-scratching changes, the film is paced well and tells its story really well. The cast­ing is superb and the act­ing is believ­able. We can pic­ture these folks as X-Men from the comic if we had to go that far. And as a side note, Rebecca Romijn man­aged to make Mys­tique hot.

How we grade

We score the prop­er­ties in three cat­e­gories: Cast­ing (or voice act­ing in the case of ani­mated), plot and sim­i­lar­i­ties to its source mate­r­ial. Each cat­e­gory receives points out of max­i­mum of 10 per cat­e­gory, and 30 over­all. The per­cent­age is the final score.

Cast­ing: 9

Plot: 8

Like the comics?: 7

Final score: 8