Tintin (Jamie Bell from UNDERTOW) is a boy reporter from Belgium. I think. But I don’t remember them specifying where it was or having Belgian accents, and I didn’t notice any cameos by famous Belgians like Jean-Claude Van Damme and other famous Belgians. But I’ve read it’s based on a Belgian comic strip.
You know, I should say “boyish reporter,” because it’s not clear how old he is either, and he sort of lives the lifestyle of an adult. He seems to live by himself and be able to travel the world without a parent’s permission. And is a dog owner.

I guess I don’t have much concrete information for you about who this Tintin is, but I can definitely tell you that he is a reporter. We know this not because we’ve ever seen him write a damn word in his life but because there are a bunch of framed newspaper articles on his wall. No, they’re not by him, but they’re about him and the headlines refer to him as a “reporter.” So it’s been verified.

The one adventure of Tintin begins one day when Tintin is just unwinding the way he probly always does on his day off: having his caricature drawn and then randomly deciding to buy a model boat from a dude on the street. Luckily for journalism and adventure it just so happens that the boat has a clue to a hidden treasure hidden inside it and that a couple other people are hot on its trail and get there right after Tintin does and also he stubbornly refuses to take a whole bunch of money for the boat even though a minute ago he only wanted it on a passing whim.

Before long, bad guys are coming after him and he’s tracing the origins of the boat, trying to find out what’s going on and then chasing the treasure that turns out to be what’s going on. He befriends an alcoholic captain guy (Andy Serkis in a rare human role) whose past turns out to be intertwined with the bad guy’s due to reincarnation and curses and that sort of bullshit. There are boats, planes, camels, clues, etc.

I was excited for this one ’cause it’s directed by Steven Spielberg, who in my opinion is almost like the Steven Spielberg of Hollywood. He’s to movies what Steven Spielberg is to movies. This is the first time so far that ol’ Spielberg’s said “fuck all this bullshit with using cameras” and made a sort of animated style movie using the motion capture style of computer acti-mation like Robert Zemeckis used for his Christmas or Vikings trilogy. When I first heard about this I thought it was weird they didn’t just do it in live action, and I read that they did tests and decided that Tintin’s dog Snowy had to be animated and therefore they couldn’t do it in live action. I wondered if Spielberg knew that some of the dinosaurs in his JURASSIC PARK movies were animated but Jeff Goldblum was still able to stand next to them in live action. Seems like you could do that with a dog, but maybe the technology isn’t there yet.

Anyway now that I’ve seen it I get why this was a good choice, this way he was able to do it so it looks live-actiony but with lots of slapstick craziness that would’ve seemed corny and Leslie-Nielsenish with real people doing it. Also it has a very painterly look to all the colors and lighting and everything that makes it look all pretty, and you gotta do that shit pixel by pixel.

I know some people still got a problem with these unnatural human-cartoon hybrid people, like I did when I saw FINAL FANTASY, but I guess I’ve adjusted to them. It’s just like how if you haven’t been exposed to alot of people from other cultures you might be intimidated by them but after you start getting out of the house more it’s nothing. Ever since A CHRISTMAS CAROL and AVATAR I think they’ve improved the eyes enough that the animation isn’t creepy to me. I didn’t have a problem with these particular abominations against God. In fact it’s impressive how well they captured the round, naive-looking face of that simple drawing. And now they can make them forever without having to worry about covering up Jamie Bell’s wrinkles as he gets old.

Like in A CHRISTMAS CAROL they made the characters have a certain amount of “realism” to their textures and everything but also have exaggerated cartoon features like bulbous noses and round bodies. They don’t follow the “make it look like the voice actor” rule that I requested after FINAL FANTASY and received with POLAR EXPRESS, but it works. Forget wrinkles, they can also keep making them if Jamie Bell goes to jail or quits acting to become a monk. Anyway I couldn’t recognize the voices, so it didn’t distract me. For example I wouldn’t have known the bad guy  was Daniel Craig (MUNICH) if I didn’t see his name on the credits. It seemed to me like his character was designed as a combination of Spielberg and Peter Jackson (who produced the movie and is supposed to direct the sequel if they make one. I think it will – it probly did well overseas, although it’s been crushed by ALVIN IN THE CHIPMUNKS IN: CHIPWRECKED in the United States. Great, American parents. You embarrassed us in front of the world.)

It’s funny – I’ve seen quotes where Zemeckis talks about making those movies just because somebody had to break the ground on those tools and figure out how to use them. In this interview with Harry he said “I really want to make sure that we get this out there so that younger filmmakers have these absolutely breathtaking tools that they can use.”

I like that he did that, but I don’t think I ever really believed it would be influential. Now here’s no less than Steven Spielberg following in his footsteps, and not just in technology but I think in style. The undisputable highlight of TINTIN is an elaborate chase sequence that’s rendered as a single shot. It uses Spielberg’s unbeatable knack for action, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t at least partly inspired by the show-offy tracking shots Zemeckis always puts in his mot-capt films, like the one in POLAR EXPRESS where the non-existent camera follows a train ticket that falls out a window, rides a gust of wind, is carried by birds and wolves and different things and falls down the mountain before landing back in the train.

I wouldn’t say the 3D is as good as in the Zemeckis movies, but it’s used well. It adds a kind of diorama quality to it, makes it more submersive, like you’re riding through the story in a little boat or buggy. It does have a couple of parts with things reaching out of the screen too. I appreciate that. I don’t think this 3D will convert people like HUGO did, but if you enjoyed its use in that you’ll probly like it here too. It’s not like the Pixars or HAPPY FEET TWO where it looked kinda cool at the beginning and then after a while I forgot and when I remembered I couldn’t really tell if it was 3D or not. No, this is the preferred way to see the movie. But it’ll hold up on blu-ray too I’m sure.

As a non-professional I’m allowed to admit that I feel like I gotta see this one again, ’cause after looking forward to it for months I went to see it exhausted from work and was having trouble staying awake. So I might not be trustworthy when I say that the story isn’t as involving as I expected. By all accounts it’s a frenzied, non-stop movie… except mine, ’cause to me it seemed kinda slow and uneventful at times.

It’s possible I was put off by the minimalism of the character. I didn’t completely understand why this dude cared so much about following all these clues, he didn’t seem to really have a stake in it. I think it’s just one of those things you gotta go with, though. And I like that, it makes the movie different, but I don’t know, maybe it kept me from fully investing in what happened? It’s hard to say. I was asleep.

Anyway it doesn’t matter. He likes going on adventures, it’s his thing, that’s all. He’s compelled to do it, there doesn’t gotta be a fuckin mission statement about it. It’s just like Indiana Jones likes going after treasure. He’s not in it for the money. He gets off on it. Dr. Jones wants the glory of discovery and Tintin wants the framed article on his wall. The one he couldn’t write himself ’cause it would be a conflict of interest.

Everybody’s been comparing this to RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. It’s a nice thought, but I think a little superficial. Yeah, it’s some time in the past and involves international travel (including in deserts) to find treasure. And in a couple parts the John Williams music sounds Indiana Jonesy. But I mean, the tone is so different. Indiana Jones is a tough-talking, cynical, asshole type of guy. Tintin is the opposite of all of that. Indiana Jones has a new girl in almost every movie, he has a girl in his class writing “I love you” on her eyelids for him, while Tintin lives in a world where there barely are any females. This is the rare movie where the hero doesn’t fall in love or already have a girlfriend. I liked that.

Also the stakes are lower. Indiana Jones was fighting against Nazis who were trying to use the power of God in their quest for world domination. Tintin is just trying to get some coins and rubies and shit before an asshole guy gets them. The raiders have their faces literally melted off because they try to see something God doesn’t want them to. This guy gets thrown off a boat because he tried to smoosh them with construction equipment.

You guys are in luck though. Spielberg actually did make a movie just a couple summers ago that had alot in common with RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, it was called KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Look that one up, guys, I think you’ll all dig it alot.

What I like though is the unfashionable simplicity of it all. I like that they don’t pander to me by explaining who this Tintin guy is. He’s a likable cypher. You’d think they’d feel the need to shoehorn in some backstory about where he came from and his parents died in a journalism accident and the Daniel Craig guy was secretly responsible and that’s why this is so very very important to Tintin’s sweet little heart. Thank you Spielberg for knowing that it’s allowed for one out of every 250 movies to not have that stuff.

Spielberg recently said that he now sees it was a mistake to take the guns out of E.T. and all that. That’s why he could make this movie. Tintin has a gun, he gets into gun fights. It’s supposed to be funny and charming that the captain can’t stop drinking, and there’s a surprising number of liquor bottles broken over people’s heads, which has more weight in this than in a more stylized cartoon. I’m not saying any of this is “edgy,” it’s just kinda refreshing to see it done un-self-consciously like in the old days. (Glad they didn’t throw in any retro racial stereotypes though. That would be less refreshing.)

That’s the other thing, Tintin is defiantly square. In situations where you or I would say “Holy shit!” or “Motherfucker!” Tintin would say “Great snakes!” And he’d make it work. He doesn’t have to have some kind of “edge” or anything modern about him. I mean, as a point of comparison, look at these smug fuckin CGI characters:

I mean, there is obviously something to be said for a young man or animal having self confidence and all that but jesus, these fuckos look a little too proud of themselves, don’t they? Especially considering their cinematic output. If anything they oughta all look apologetic on their movie posters.

Now look at Tintin:

See? He’s a nice young man. I can’t even picture him standing arrogantly with his arms crossed, smirking like one of those fuckin jerks. He doesn’t have to be some sunglasses-wearing little shitstain or a modern cynical wiseass or somebody who you can picture ever even talking to any of those fuckin guys. He’s famous without having a drop of rock star in him. He’s kind of a dork and it’s not to be funny or ironic. He’s 100% sincere. It’s just what he is. I like that.

I like these characters, and this world. I’ll have to take another look at the actual adventure.

Seattle’s own Phoenix Jones is not represented. I’m not sure if this was filmed before his time or if he was too mysterious to be caught on camera. They do have a couple guys from Seattle, but one is just a fat guy in a t-shirt that says “Sky Man” on it. Another one carries a bow and arrow – what the fuck are you gonna do with that, shoot an arrow at some drunk guys fighting outside a club? Phoenix Jones got in trouble just using pepper spray. I don’t know about other cities, but I feel that Seattle is not bow-appropriate.

The main subject of SUPER HEROES is a guy in San Diego called Mr. Xtreme. He’s a tubby guy with a helmet, vest and goggles covered in stickers, like the word “evil” crossed out and stuff like that. He kind of has the appearance of a mall security guard and sounds like a rejected COPS narrator as he talks about his mission to stop what he variously calls “thugs,” “bad apples,” “slime buckets,” “sleaze balls,” “villains” or “evildoers.” We see him passing out flyers for “The Xtreme Justice League” (actual slogan: “it’s not the NFL, it’s the XJL”). He talks about “what we’re doing out here today” but when pressed admits that “we” is currently only him. We later see him with a younger sidekick called Vigilante Spider, whose mouthless mask gets a wet spot from his breath or his spit or something. They don’t tell you about that in the comic books.

I will say this about Mr. Xtreme – they follow him to a Brazilian Jiujitsu competition where he’s trying to earn his blue belt. And okay, he does lose, but he does put up a fight against an opponent that looks more intimidating than him. It’s not a completely one-sided fight. So give him that at least. But if he’s scary to criminals it’s because “holy shit, who is this weirdo?” He’s not exactly the Punisher, more like a local weirdo that decides to be a crossing guard or something.

A little bit more credible is The New York Initiative, a group who live together in Brooklyn. They actually moved to New York for the crime fighting possibilities. There’s a masked woman, an angry skateboard punk and an openly gay parkour guy named Zimmer. Inside their scrappy apartment they train in martial arts and have strategy meetings, taking notes and holding clipboards.

Zimmer sort of seems to be their leader, but he’s near the back on the movie poster (second from left) because his costume looks more like a bike messenger than a batman. He says he doesn’t wear a mask because it’s important to him to be out of the closet. He talks about his first patrol on the anniversary of the death of Kitty Genovese in 1964. An animated scene shows how 38 witnesses in an apartment building failed to intervene as she was raped and killed in plain view. This seems to be a touchstone or a rallying cry for the Real Life Super Hero community – Mr. Xtreme has a picture of Genovese on his armor.

But wait a minute, we’re supposed to believe these people had had enough and had to start doing something… because of an incident that happened 15 or 20 years before they were born? And you know, from what I’ve read the legend of the 38 witnesses wasn’t true at all. That was claimed in a New York Times article but a study in 2007 found it to be false. Apparently there were really only about a dozen people who heard any part of the attack, and almost all of them didn’t realize it was an attack. I can believe this because I hear indiscernible yelling and loud noises outside of my apartment pretty much every night, and I only live in Seattle. There was also a guy who yelled out the window at the killer and scared him away, although unfortunately he later came back and attacked her in another location that was out of view.

I mean I’m not denying that there is some callousness and cowardice in the world. You see something going down maybe you just hope somebody else is gonna get involved, not you. But what they’re repeating is basically an urban legend, so it makes their super hero origin stories kinda weak. It’s like if Batman’s parents weren’t ever killed but he trained to fight crime because of a story he read in The Enquirer. Or if Harvey Dent decided to quit law because he heard about that lady who sued McDonalds just because she spilled some hot coffee on herself. He never heard the part about how it was a 79 year old woman and the coffee was served so hot she suffered third degree burns on her groin, was in the hospital for 8 days getting skin grafts and had to be treated for 2 years afterwards. Silly old gal.

Oh shit, I just got to the “In popular culture” part of the Wikipedia entry and it says that the Genovese murder was what inspired Rorschach to fight crime in Watchmen. Okay, so that explains it. Apparently it’s also mentioned in THE BOONDOCK SAINTS.

Zimmer seems very sincere about his desire to make the world a better place, but no matter how sincere they are you can’t deny there is an element of nerd play time in this. I mean they show him leaping across roof tops and doing hand stand pushups and shit, but of course none of that is ever relevant to what he does in the field. What, is he gonna chase a mugger up a fire escape and have to do a flip to catch him? No, when Zimmer actually goes on patrol all he does is dress “flamboyant” and hang out by a pay phone for hours hoping homophobes well do something to him. They don’t, but he does get to use his EMT training when an old (drunk?) dude gets clipped by a passing minivan.

That’s why I gotta respect this guy with the unimaginative name “Super Hero,” because he’s the only guy that admits he just likes to do it because it’s fun. He wears a tight uniform to showoff his giant pecs, and does the interview in front of his Corvette “The Supermobile.”

There’s another team that operates out of a tattoo parlor, those guys definitely seem more above creating elaborate masks than anything else. The leader also has a fake dreadlock wig. It’s weird, he looks way more threatening without all that shit on. I don’t know what he thinks it’s helping.

Maybe the most convincing guy is Dark Guardian. He’s a martial arts instructor with the balls to chase a much-larger-than-him drug dealer out of a park. But he only wears a motorcycle jacket, I don’t think anybody knows he’s supposed to be a super hero. Calling himself “The Dark Guardian” is clearly a detriment to his work. He even looks kind of ashamed when he says it to some beat cops, who just laugh at him.

The biggest clown in the movie is Orlando’s Master Legend, a crazy long-haired ex-hippie or rock no roller type in armor and helmet. He hits on “pretty ladies,” can’t stop pulling beers out of his “Justice Van” and stops in a bar for more alcohol and more hitting on girls. He likes to dramatically kick doors open, and on the DVD extras he punches a bunch of holes through a door while acting out some kind of cartoonish hostage rescue. It’s not clear if he was trying to pass it off as a real incident or not.

But even that nutball does serve a purpose, because he goes around giving protein bars to homeless people. This seems to be what all the “RLSH”s have figured out is a good use of their time, especially Portland’s Zeta Man and his wife/sidkick Apocalypse Meow, who spend alot of money putting together “Zeta Packs” of toiletries, socks and other useful items for the homeless. It seems to me like it’s more of a justification for their weird hobby of dress-up than it is an actual mission in life (Jesus didn’t need to dress up to do shit like that) but it doesn’t matter because the ultimate result is positive and it’s more than most of us are doing.

In one scene, Mr. Xtreme and some friends pass out food and water, supposedly while Comic-Con is going on not far away. “Are you guys from Comic-con?” a homeless woman asks. “No ma’am, we’re the real deal.”

I like this type of documentary. I have to admit it’s a freak show type appeal, I am mystified by these people and want to see them be crazy. But the filmatists are obviously sympathetic and trying to show where they’re coming from, and I do feel like I understand them more as people now even if it’s still their wackiness that I find interesting about them.

There are some sad and uncomfortable moments. In one scene Xtreme Man’s parents are helping him move out of his apartment. He tells the cameras that it’s to avoid retaliation from drug dealers and because living in his van is a better crime fighting strategy. In an easier-to-laugh-at moment Vigilante Spider talks about the life of a super hero, saying goodbye to your girlfriend before going out on patrol, etc. Asked if he really has a girlfriend, he says he meant it “metaphorically.” But that’s a rare moment where it seems like you’re supposed to be laughing at them for being nerds. Mostly it tries to give them a dignity that they sure aren’t giving themselves.

This is a well put together documentary, nicely shot, without narration. It does have shots that turn into comic book panels, a cliche I was just complaining about in my BUNRAKU review, but here the drawings are better so it works pretty well. The opening uses animation to illustrate a story that Mr. Xtreme tells about stopping a guy attacking a woman in an alley. He claims the guy got 34 years. Especially later in the movie after you’ve learned more about Mr. Xtreme it seems like the story can’t possibly be true, but he doesn’t make up any other blatant tall tales. I kinda wish they pressed him more on that story, or tried to find documentation of the alleged criminal case, but I guess that might tip this into too-uncomfortable, sweaty James Frey territory.

I feel like it gets a little repetitious in the middle section, but not too bad, and it’s a good pretty-short length for the subject. I like that it doesn’t really tell you what to think about all this. Obviously the people try to explain where they’re coming from (and you hear from a polite but not-on-board-with-this police officer too), but I felt like the filmatists left it at an appropriate question mark. Like The Riddler, from the comic books.

I was joking about this being the new DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, but I think the comparison almost works. In a world where the punk rock of old has been popularized, commodified and turned into a Broadway musical; where you don’t even have to not know how to play instruments, because many kids can create and distribute professional sounding music using their parents’ computers; where athletes and movie stars can wear mohawks, candy-colored hair, facial piercings and tattoos without anybody blinking an eye; where the director of HATED: GG ALLIN AND THE MURDER JUNKIES’s most recent movie grossed $581,464,305 worldwide according to Box Office Mojo – none of that punk rock shit is gonna shock anybody ever. But dressing up like a cartoon and trying to put your body in front of criminals is  kind of shocking. It’s crazy in both a he’s gonna get himself killed and a that lady is wearing a Star Trek uniform to jury duty on the Whitewater trial type of way, a combination of self delusion, selflessness, extreme nerdiness and probly in some cases mental imbalance. But in all cases they either don’t care about or don’t understand what the larger society thinks about them. And that’s how they’re like the punk rockers. They live with people staring or laughing at them and it doesn’t stop them from doing it, because their way of life is more important them than other people’s opinions of them. They find self-worth in the attention they get, or family in the people they meet who do the same things as them.

So why did this never happen much before? Comic book super heroes and masked vigilantes have existed in drawing form for, what, about 80 years? And I’m sure some people have tried to “patrol” before, but why did it take this long before it was widespread enough to do a documentary like this? Did it take postmodernism? Did there have to be a generation growing up on the movies based on the comic books commenting on the older comic books those comic book makers grew up on? Or was it just the internet? Was it just that people who did this knew they could show their costumes on the internet, and when they did it inspired other people and there were enough people doing it that it became a thing you can do instead of just a common fantasy?

Or was it the related phenomenon of The Nerdening of America (and the world)? The Harry Knowleses took back the word “geek,” younger kids grew up with it as something you want to be, super heroes became more mainstream entertainment as they took over as the primary source of big summer movies, “geeks” started to run parts of the media and Hollywood, other parts of the media and Hollywood started thinking they had to cater to “geeks,” big movie stars started thinking it was important to appear at the comic books convention… did it take that world existing for people to start “fighting crime” wearing crazy masks and shit? What would’ve happened if Death Wish ripoffs were as big as Spider-man?

I don’t really know what it is that caused this, but it’s an interesting phenomenon. I can’t wait until one of these nutballs catches a serious criminal. Hopefully that happens before one of them catches a bullet.

So I probly shouldn’t say Luc Besson is back. I guess it would be more fair to say that I’m back to Luc Besson. Point is he has this one now, based on a Belgian comic book. It came out April 2010 in Belgium and France and has rolled out everywhere from Argentina to United Arab Emirates since then, just not here so I had to get an import. It’s fine, I’ll watch it again if it comes out dubbed by Nicki Minaj or somebody.

The tone is very light, a family friendly adventure movie, but not too stupid for adults, and with brief sideboob I believe. Besson’s broad humor sometimes turns me off (example: Bruce’s mom on the phone in FIFTH ELEMENT), but here he seems kinda witty, with lots of quick, funny quips. Yes, there is an uptight character who keeps seeing crazy things that make him faint, but that seems appropriate in this live action cartoon type of world where physical features are exaggerated to look like drawings. Lots of elaborate makeup jobs and fake ears. Everyone is big and round or horribly ugly or impossibly gorgeous. It’s maybe kinda what that TIN TIN movie would be like if they did it with cameras and live humans.

At one point I was wondering if the ridiculously gnarled faces and crooked teeth of the Egyptians were a little racist. Then suddenly a villainous French character walked in that made the Egyptians look like Cary Grant by comparison, and I was able to go back to appreciating them in the drawing-come-to-life spirit they were intended.

It was this guy:

and I only now figured out that’s who Mathieu Amalric from MUNICH and QUANTUM OF SOLACE plays.

Adèle Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin) is a famous author. Her editor sends her on trips to exotic locales where she has crazy adventures, then comes home and makes up a bunch of unrelated shit for her books. As the movie begins she’s being sent to Peru, but sneaks off to the Great Pyramids instead.

Adèle is kind of like a cross between Indiana Jones and Mary Poppins. She’s a good lookin lady with fancy dresses and giant hats who refuses to have her world limited by the idiots around her or even by the laws of science. Her twin sister Agathe (Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre) is in a coma from having her brain impaled on a hat pin, so she needs to steal a particular Egyptian mummy that she thinks is a doctor to Ramses II and might be able to help. I mean, she’ll have to figure out how to resurrect him from the dead first, but she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.

Unfortunately the one guy that might be able to help her with that, a withered old mystic called Professseur Ménard (Jacky Nercessian), is on death row when she gets back from her trip. Ain’t that how it is? You go out of town for a little bit, you come back and find out the buddy you’re really counting on used his telepathic powers to hatch a pterodactyl egg from the museum and then control the beast remotely and the cops found him harboring a dinosaur and decided he was a maniac.

I love the special effects in this movie. They don’t look as “real” as top-of-the-line Hollywood effects, but that’s part of their charm. They have lots of personality. The pterodactyl and later a group of mummies are animated in a slightly herky-jerky style that reminds me of old stop motion animation. I guess the closest Industrial Light and Magic comparison would be the Martians from MARS ATTACKS!

The mummies are great because they’re not based on the usual wrapped-in-bandages type of look, they actually look like mummified human remains come back to life. And they’re animated with very human personalities. In one of the movie’s best scenes Adèle sits and has tea with an animated mummy and tells him the traumatic story of her sister’s accident and why she blames herself for it. And he sits and listens very supportively and comforts her. And he’s a mummy. That asshole from the MUMMY movies could learn a thing or two about manners from this guy.

Another way that Adele is like Mary Poppins is that she pretends to not know her effect on men. There’s a dude so in love with her he delivers poems to her every day, and she just kind of brushes him off but casually tells him that she reads all her mail in the bath tub. I mean maybe that’s an act of charity, a generous donation of masturbation imagery, but it seems more cruel to me.

On the other hand, feigned obliviousness is one of her best qualities. The bowler hat wearing, mustache sporting authority figures all around her are constantly tripping over themselves failing to stop her from doing what she wants to do, and she doesn’t waste time noticing or complaining. One exception is in Egypt when the Egyptians won’t let her into the tomb. She just tells them to come get her when it’s no longer a boy’s club, and waits maybe a minute while they find out how badly they need her expertise.

There’s definitely some AMELIE in here too. If you hate whimsy, there could be a problem. But people who think AMELIE is too cute are comparing it to real life and relationships, so this is kinda different. Even if you’ve had experience with real pterodactyls and this doesn’t match up I’m sure you can enjoy the mummy part as an escapist fantasy, and vice versa.

It’s a fun movie. I’m not sure why it’s been banned in the U.S. The people have a right to know the truth.

nerd note: Her guide or assistant in Egypt is named Aziz – I kept waiting for her to say “Aziz, light!” But I guess there’s not much reward for in-jokes about the Luke Perry part at the beginning of THE FIFTH ELEMENT. (Also I looked it up and this takes place about 2 years before that scene did, so age-wise it can’t be intended as the same character.)

okay I would like to apologize for this trivia. Move along

But this is the story of this particular Priest finding out his daughter got kidnapped by vampires. He tries to get the Vatican (Christopher Plummer) to put together a team or call James Woods or somebody, but they refuse to authorize it because their official stance is that there are no vampires left to worry about. Priest goes by himself, even though he’s told “To go against the church is to go against God.”

“Then I go against God,” he says.

On his rescue mission he takes the young sheriff who told him about the kidnapping (Cam Gigandet, bad guy from NEVER BACK DOWN 1) and is later joined by Maggie Q (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD) as another Priest who gets sent to stop him, but chooses not to. I like how they have what would be a love type relationship in most movies, but they’re priests so there’s no scene of them surrounded by candles making gentle no-boobs-showing love. Instead they consummate their love with motorcycle action.

There’s alot of cool shots of these long, futuristic motorcycles hauling ass through the desert, that’s probly my favorite imagery in this one. And the best action involves Maggie Q on her motorcycle chasing a train or off her motorcycle fighting some guys who are still on theirs. There’s a little part I dug where Gigandet jumps from his motorcycle onto a train, and before he continues with his mission he takes a second to look over his shoulder and watch his motorcycle crash and flip around.

At its best it’s a western, a story about a quiet killer in a lawless land trying to do the right thing. And it’s got all the western trappings besides horses. Little gas-powered towns with sheriffs trying to stop outlaws. I wonder how long it has to be after a nuclear apocalypse or vampire plague before everybody agrees hey guys, let’s live old west style again. We’ll wear cowboy hats and other old timey clothes, we’ll have a train, we’ll have Brad Dourif as a snake oil salesman. It’ll be awesome.

Most of the vampires are naked digital bugaboos, but the main villain gets to be live action and wear a black hat. Karl Urban plays a Daywalker responsible for the kidnapping, a new step in the evolution of vampires (like they always have in these things). The vampires also have Marilyn Mansony “familiars” to do their work. (It’s illegal to be a familiar, but the law goes unenforced. Probly unconstitutional anyway.) Having these humans around is useful to the movie, but whenever they’re fighting the vampires proper it has that old CGI problem – they look pretty good, but they don’t feel right. They constantly jump and flip, they do everything fast, agile and light, while roaring into the camera. Eventually CGI characters gotta be about what’s best for them to do, not what’s possible. Listen to Jeff Goldblum, whatever that was he said about you shouldn’t make dinosaurs.

I don’t know, maybe that extra weight and grit of fighting actual on screen humans is what this movie is missing. I feel like it’s almost there. We’ve seen similar ideas in other movies, but I like this configuration. It’s simple enough in plot and dialogue, it has pretty good iconic characters, a very dramatic score by Christopher HELLRAISER Young, a serious tone, a short and sweet running time. And yet it mostly doesn’t work. It feels too dull and lifeless at the center.

The director is named Scott Stewart, an effects guy (not surprising) who previously directed LEGION. Here’s everything I remember about that movie: creepy crawly CGI demons, Lucas Black, a diner, Paul Bettany was a heavily armed angel, I think God might’ve been the bad guy. My overall impression was a muddled and stupid movie with occasional bits of “that was kinda cool.” If I had to guess I would say this one is probly closer to working because it’s more focused and streamlined. And Bettany’s character looks cooler, maybe. But that one might’ve been a little more original, I don’t know.

I’ll say this for PRIEST: the last time I tried to watch a movie because Maggie Q was in it it was just a couple weeks ago and it was called KING OF FIGHTERS. It had Ray Park as the bad guy and it was about some kind of fighting tournament where they put in ear pieces that bring them to another dimension to compete in battle. And somebody’s trying to steal a magic sword or something. As soon as it started I realized it must’ve been based on a video game, and soon after I realized it was the exact same premise as MORTAL KOMBAT except with every single entertaining or somewhat entertaining aspect removed entirely. It was just too boring. I didn’t even make it halfway through.

In PRIEST Maggie Q has a smaller role, but I watched the whole thing. Congratulations to PRIEST and Maggie Q. You earned it.

Rainn Wilson (HOUSE OF THE ONE THOUSAND CORPSES) plays Frank, a cook at a diner who somehow got married to Liv Tyler, but she got hooked on heroin and left him for a strip club owner/drug dealer named Jock (Kevin Bacon). Frank is kind of a nut and has visions inspired by a “Bibleman” type show on the Christian channel, so he decides to make a super hero costume and “fight crime.” His routine mostly involves sitting behind a dumpster for hours and eventually crushing somebody’s skull with a big wrench.

It’s more grounded than KICK ASS, there are no jetpacks or super villains. It’s also nice that they talk about actually existing comic books like Batman, instead of the usual routine of making up a fake comic book that the hero is obsessed with. And for most of the movie they do a good job of showing that although in his mind he’s a super hero in everybody else’s he’s a fuckin psycho who’s going around bashing people over the head. Then they kind of blow it later on when they do the same phony “I think he’s a hero!” / “Well I think he’s a menace!” man-on-the-street-interview montage that’s in 99% of all “real super hero” or DEATH WISH type movies. And by having him fight against actual bad guys who might deserve it.

He goes way overboard in the crime fighting, and the gore is pretty over the top. I think either we as a society or me as a dude are desensitized beyond the point of this “you think it’s gonna be fun, but then it’s so fucked up you feel bad that you wanted to enjoy it” type business being as effective as the filmatists always seem to think it’s gonna be. What are they supposed to be subverting here? Is there anything left in super heroes to subvert? Does it get reverted in between all the subverting in order for it to be resubverted each time?

Although they shoot it handheld on real locations and have very few CGI effects they don’t really give it a naturalistic enough feel to seem all that real. It might pass for a while but then there will be some Troma-esque reaction (a little girl enjoying a gorey attack) or completely forced behavior. I mean I like the idea of him overreacting to line-cutting at the movie theater and hospitalizing two people, but couldn’t they have made them cut the way people actually cut? Nobody just shoves their way into the middle of a neat single file line and tells everybody to fuck off. You’re taking me out of the movie. The little things are important.

And the costume he makes. It’s actually very functional with its hockey-style armor approach, and not too bulky. But then they gotta put a cartoonish wrong-colored patch on the side of his head so you know he did a bad job of sewing it. I feel like the excessiveness of his vigilante justice would be both funnier and more disturbing if there was more subtlety in the other areas.

Which brings me to my biggest problem with the movie. Most people probly wouldn’t agree with me on this, but I think Wilson was the wrong guy for this role. He’s funny as Dwight on The Office and everything, but that type of wild eyed, exaggerated character is not as funny or creepy in this role as it would’ve been if it was a guy who seems reasonable at first glance. From the beginning Wilson is making crazy faces and talking crazy. When he’s running around in the costume he has to do a “funny” run, instead of just doing it how somebody would really do it and letting the foolishness come out naturally. So it’s “look at this lunatic!” when it could’ve been “he seemed like a nice guy, why is he doing this?”

But he kinda looks like Frankenstein’s monster the way he frowns with that mask on. That’s kinda cool.

DEFENDOR is to me probly the most effective of this subgenre of movie, and that’s partly because it plays it straighter. It’s actually a less comedic take on the idea but alot of humor and discomfort comes out of Woody Harrelson seeming like a fairly normal guy doing something absurd. He doesn’t bug his eyes out and say corny things like a parody of a parody of Superman.

On the other hand my favorite part of SUPER is Ellen Page, and she’s not subtle at all. She plays a loopy acquaintance who finds out Frank’s secret and pushes her way into being his sidekick. Her fetish for costumes and her crazed giggling and cursing when she commits or sees violence is a weird combination of hilarious, adorable and unsettling.

Bacon is also good, as always, as the twitchy, sleazy villain. You don’t want to be in your kitchen making eggs and suddenly see that guy at the back door asking if your wife lives there, but that’s what happens. I like that he’s an evil asshole but seems to see Frank as more of an annoyance than a nemesis. Sometimes I get the feeling that he’d rather just convince Frank to leave than actually kill him. In fact, one of my favorite scenes is the first big showdown between Frank and Jock, when Jock threatens to kill Frank if he touches his car one more time. So Frank dramatically pokes the hood with his fingertip, but Jock says “That’s not the kind of touching I meant,” and tries to drive away.

Gregg Henry (of PAYBACK, many Brian De Palma movies, and SLITHER) is also in there, as a police detective who doesn’t want to investigate Frank’s wife’s alleged disappearance. And Michael Rooker as one of Jock’s henchmen. There’s a great moment where, after witnessing a dramatic confrontation between Frank and his boss, he stupidly offers Frank some of his Good ‘n Plenties. So it’s a really good cast, that definitely elevates the material.

And despite my misgivings I’d have to say this is one of the best of this type of movie. MIRAGEMAN has the best action and starts out the best, but gets goofy fast. KICK ASS had some good parts and the great performance by Nic Cage, but annoyed me with its less-real-than-the-serious-super-hero-movies approach to the what-would-really-happen-if-there-were-super-heroes concept. SUPER has plenty of weaknesses as well but keeps a fairly consistent tone and did make me laugh quite a few times. For the most part it doesn’t hammer on its jokes too hard, for example they never really nudge you in the ribs about how ridiculous it is that the masked hero’s symbol is a picture of a mask. Why would you wear that on your chest?

Most importantly, by the end it had me caring enough that it was upsetting to see bad shit happen. I guess that’s kind of an implied spoiler, but just let it hang over you like a dark cloud. This guy is not a charmer, it’s not gonna end with him admitting he’s Iron Man, most likely. Maybe it’s a subversion of the subversion of super heroes? I don’t know.

Brandon Routh plays the title character (well, the “Dylan Dog” part of the title; the “Dead of Night” part is played by various undead creatures). I’m not really clear if “Dog” is his last name or if it’s just a cool nick name. Nobody ever calls him “Dylan Doggy Dogg,” but it might be short for that. Anyway he’s a private eye who is in on the secret information that there are vampires, zombies and other monsters living among us.

Dylan actually used to be the chosen liaison between the living and the dead, but then some tragic shit happened with his wife or fiancee or something and he said “fuck this” and switched to regular old taking photos of people having affairs. But, like most independent business owners in this economy, he’s struggling. He needs money bad but he still tries to turn down a big case because it has that nasty wet werewolf smell all over it. He left all that behind for a reason, and not just racism against werewolves.

But of course he gets dragged in and as he reveals to his client what really goes on in the world we get to learn it too. It’s like that scene in the first BLADE where he says the world we live in is a sugar coated topping and explains all the secret vampire symbols and shit. Also it’s like BLADE because the vampires like to hang out at a dance club. If I was a vampire I’d be concerned about that stereotype.

Part of it also reminded me of BEETLEJUICE. It gets pretty cartoony. So yeah, picture a movie somewhere in between BLADE, CONSTANTINE and BEETLEJUICE, but with Superman in it, wearing a red shirt. And not as good as that. But not terrible.

There are some amusing ideas here and there: a vampire drug that uses a crack pipe filled with blood, an underground network of undead people that work in food service, a part where Dylan insults a werewolf by saying “You hit like a vampire!”

I thought Routh was pretty good as a Christopher Reeve lookalike in SUPERMAN RETURNS, but of course that turned out to be a one time deal, like George Lazenby as James Bond or the kid that played Harry Potter in part 5 while Daniel Radcliffe was in Afghanistan. It would be kind of sad to just be known as the actor who came out of nowhere to be in this huge movie playing Superman and then it didn’t really catch on. 20 years later he’s playing a stepdad in some shitty TV movie and people are still coming up to him on the street saying “Hey, Superman! I totally forgot about you! You were Superman, that’s hilarious! Do a Superman pose next to me! Oh, come on, please? Fuck you then. Why do you think you’re so great? That movie sucked! I preferred STEEL!” So I’m happy for him that he’s getting at least halfway decent roles where he can show his range. Here he seems more like Tom Cruise than Christopher Reeve, actually. He’s a fast-talking, sarcastic knowitall kind of guy. He has some range.

Dylan has a sidekick played by Sam Huntington, who according to my detailed research is the same dude who played Jimmy Olsen in the SUPERMAN picture. So that’s weird. Also weird is that he wears the same type of hat that Shia LaBeouf wore as the sidekick in CONSTANTINE and I, ROBOT. He is this generation’s Shia LaBeouf, now that the original Shia LaBeouf is too old and washed up. He works for Dylan and wants to be his partner but Dylan shuts him down and is cold to him. In fact, he doesn’t even tell him about monsters existing and all that shit. But it’s really because he’s trying to protect him. Once he becomes a zombie their relationship gets much better.

Peter Stormare and Taye Diggs both have pretty good but not very memorable roles as prominent figures in the monstro-american community. My favorite supporting character is Wolfgang played by the wrestler Kurt Angle. He’s just kind of a working class type dude who happens to turn into a hairy monster guy. I didn’t actually know him from WWE but I liked him in this. He also got the most full-fledged fight scene.

The writers, Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer, previously did SAHARA (heard it was pretty good), A SOUND OF THUNDER (heard it was hilariously terrible), and about a hundred and fifty upcoming adaptations and remakes and shit including CONAN THE BARBARIAN, UNCHARTED, DOCTOR STRANGE, VOLTRON and probly RIPTIDE or 60 MINUTES and maybe MARBLES and its spin-off CHINESE CHECKERS. This one they adapted from an ’80s Italian comic book, but from the pictures they got in this here internet it looks like the comic book would’ve worked better done by some giallo director in the ’70s. I’m guessing the tone is a little dryer and less goofy. Then again they got a guy who looks like Groucho Marx as the sidekick.

(By the way there’s some connection with this and CEMETERY MAN. The comic strip character was modeled after Rupert Everett and then in that movie Rupert Everett was dressed as Dylan Dog but he was playing a character from a book by the same writer that appeared sometimes in the comic book but was actually a separate character than Dylan Dog or something… I don’t know, but you guys can explain it to me in the comments before you start talking about Batman again.)

The director’s name is Kevin Munroe and his previous directing credits are TMNT (computer animated turtle movie) and some video game. Funny, JONAH HEX was directed by a guy who had only done HORTON HEARS A WHO. I guess so much for the “computer animation director + first live action movie + cult comic book character” formula. We’ll see what happens when it’s Pixar guys adapting pulp stories or sequelizing TV show adaptations.

Anyway the director’s lack of track record explains the somewhat cheesy feel, but actually with that in mind he did a surprisingly good job. It’s a pretty low budget movie at $20 million, but I might’ve guessed lower. I don’t know. It definitely feels like a b-minus movie, and has some especially dumb looking werewolves. But it moves at a good pace, it doesn’t meander. He looks out the window to a tree, cut to him up a ladder in the tree finding evidence. It has some momentum to it which is sadly rare in these type of movies these days.

And most of all I like that it doesn’t all come down to a good vs. evil type deal. Yeah, there’s a magic cross that they’re trying to get to, I don’t remember, take over the world or New Orleans or something. But it’s all about how there’s a truce between men and monsters, and Dylan is trying to keep the different monster clans from fighting each other too much, and some of the characters sort of make up with him. I’m a sucker for that type of shit, I guess.

I can’t really recommend expending effort to see this movie, but in my opinion if you are laying there and it’s on cable and it’s too much of a pain in the ass to find the remote, or if it’s on a plane or in a jail or something it might amuse you. I thought it was okay. If I was on Rotten Tomatoes I would totally bring that 3% rating up to, like, 3.04% or something.

To be clear, he is not a dog, that is just his last name. Not sure if I got that across or not. It’s not like Marmaduke or something, it is a human movie.

If your answer is “he was frozen in Antarctica or whatever” you’re wrong. Actually him and his Mexican wrestling associate El Santo went to Turkey to try to stop Spider-man and his girlfriend’s string of murders, counterfeiting and antiquities fraud – an out of control “doing whatever a spider can” spree. It’s a little known chapter in Marvel Comics history that fuckin Nick Fury and all those guys don’t want you to know about. But you deserve to know the truth, and that’s why I’m telling you about the 1973 Turkish film 3 DEV ADAM (or THREE MIGHTY MEN).

The Spider-man of the ’70s is very different from the one you remember from the other movies. I don’t know if this is the Tobey Maguire Spider-man when he’s older, or the Andrew Garfield. I don’t know if this is the after effects of the evil jazz dance from part 3, or if he just gets bitter as he gets older and spends more time overseas. All I know is that in the opening scene he’s on a beach and he has his henchmen stick a woman’s face into a boat motor like that guy at the end of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. He’s skinnier than we’ve ever seen him and he wears normal pants with a belt to hold them up (skull belt buckle) and his eyebrows have gotten so long they stick out of the eyeholes on his mask like a cat’s whiskers. He does not use webs anymore and he does climb up the side of a house once and in some rafters another time, but not in ways that only a man bitten by a radioactive spider could. He’s in bad shape mentally, physically and super-powerly, but people must still like him, because they just call him “Spider” for short. Like he’s their bud.

He’s not their bud.

That’s why the Turkish authorities gotta call in Captain America, El Santo and some lady to put a stop to it. He meets them at the airport to make sure they’re able to get through customs, but they don’t have as much trouble as I assumed they would because they show up unmasked. This is bullshit, because El Santo would never take off his mask in public. Everybody knows that he wears a suit, tie and mask even when he goes grocery shopping or walking his dog. I don’t know how they think they can get away with calling this guy El Santo. I mean I can accept every other aspect of this movie but having El Santo show his face is just too much, this is ridiculous.

They’re out of costume for alot of the movie, which kind of makes it harder to keep track of who’s who. But they wear the costumes whenever they chase after Spider-man.

“Why are you putting on masks and outfits during duty?” the Turkish guy asks.

“Spider is a child minded lunatic,” Captain America explains. “He always wears a mask. When he sees someone else wearing a mask he wants to destroy them. My special outfit is bullet proof.”

“I see.”

Yeah, sure Cap. You don’t normally like wearing that costume. You’re only doing it because Spider-man is so immature. Real strong argument there, pal.

Their Turkish contact explains that “the Spider” is in town supposedly for a fashion show (a bunch of models in a living room together taking turns walking in the middle and turning around) but really it’s a cover for a plot where he’s selling antiques to rich people and then buying them back using counterfeit money. I don’t think he mentions the more important fact that he’s going around spying on women or couples in the shower and then strangling them. That seems like the more significant crime in my opinion.

Spider-man is actually a real pervert and psychopath. He has one consensual sex scene and even that one cuts away to random reaction shots of creepy puppets. He tortures one of his own men by sticking his face up to a pipe and sending starved mice through. At least he calls them mice in the subtitles, but they’re portrayed by guinea pigs. Deadly, face-eating guinea pigs.

So Spidey’s not really relying on his powers anymore, but neither is Captain America. It takes both him and El Santo to lift up the back of a car in one part, that doesn’t sound like a super soldier to me. On the other hand there’s a part where he pulls a classic Jason Voorhees move, busting his hands through a wall to strangle a guy. That part did make me proud to be an American.

Like Spidey, Cap looks awfully skinny these days, but he’s pretty energetic. The fight scenes are goofy but actually kind of impressive with the amount of scrambling around they do in continuous shots – punching, wrestling, flipping each other over, jumping onto tables, breaking furniture on people’s heads, swinging from things above. Cap chases Spidey through a graveyard and surprises one of those winos that’s always sitting around when something crazy goes by. Santo fights a studio full of what he accurately refers to as “karate guys.”

The two of them also get in a big burlesque club brawl as part of a plan which is described as “We’ll fight till Julia sees it. Then we pretend to have fainted.” (If they do end up pretending to faint I didn’t catch it.)

Despite the incorrect mask etiquette, the guy playing El Santo looks credible in the costume. Out of the mask he’s a long-haired hunky guy who wears a weird shoulder shawl thing, not like I ever imagined El Santo. This guy seems fond of himself except when he does a shower scene still wearing his underwear. Not a high school gym flashback, just alone where he’s staying. It’s weird.

My favorite part is a big fight scene in a small house. Captain America will be really going at it with Spider-man for a long continuous shot, then there’s an edit and all the sudden it’s El Santo fighting Spider-man. It keeps jumping around in kind of a confusing way that I thought was just poor editing, but then it turns out it’s cutting between two different rooms and there are two Spider-mans. Very clever.

I’m kind of interested in the concept of copyright. I feel like there’s some grey area in there that isn’t always acknowledged. Especially after the era of pop art and the modern age of remixing, sampling, mashing and referencing and all that shit. I think there’s a cultural value to being able to use iconography and references as the raw material for new works of art that is sometimes squashed by companies zealously protecting their “intellectual property.” These are ideas and creations made by artists, sometimes long dead, who no longer benefit from the selling of their works, it’s just “property” of some corporation now. Like I always like to say, the masterpieces of late ’80s, early ’90s hip hop like It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, Paul’s Boutique and 3 Feet High and Rising could never have been released if today’s copyright law had been in place at the time. There’s an artistic debate about what constitutes music or art, but the winner of the argument is not necessarily gonna be the artists that need protection, it’s gonna be the companies with money that want more money. And you end up in a situation where George Clinton finds out he’s suing friends of his who sampled his recordings that somebody else controls. It can be ridiculous.

But I don’t know a solution to that and I’m not a copyright anarchist. In my opinion I’m some kind of artist myself, and if I can ever pay the rent doing what I love (writing down words in a specific order that communicates shit out of my brain into yours) then I’ll do it. I don’t want some motherfucker giving away my books for free without my permission because I like this system we got in place where I can get money by selling them. For that reason I generally avoid the illegal downloads and shit like that, as a matter of honor.

Turkish copyright law I think has changed since the days of 3 DEV ADAM, but it’s kind of crazy that back then they could just use these famous icons as they pleased, counterfeiting them like Spider-man does money. In the U.S. there were decades of legal battles, through development of a Cannon version and a James Cameron version before we finally got Sam Raimi doing the first official movie version of Spider-man. In Turkey they just sewed a costume and did it.

I wonder if they even knew what they were doing to Spider-man? I thought that was a character that was known throughout the world, but it seems like they must’ve just seen a picture of him and assumed that since he was a spider he must be a bad guy and pervert. (or maybe this is based on a famous graphics novel, that’s probly what it was)

It would be weird if this type of thing was allowed in the modern U.S. Remember when Tarantino wanted to adapt the James Bond book Casino Royale? He couldn’t because the Broccoli family, who inherited the rights, insist on controlling the James Bond “franchise.” That could’ve been something if he could’ve just ignored them and made it. Or I’m sure there are plenty of people who could’ve made a more interesting FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel than some of the official ones. And maybe the studios with all the money wouldn’t be so obsessed with remaking all the titles they own, because they wouldn’t own them. Maybe they’d be looking for people to create new things instead of just taking temporary control of a brand name.

Also we could get a big budget remake of this with Chris Evans, Tobey Maguire and Rey Mysterio Jr. It might be a new renaissance.

But that’s a fantasy. More likely we’d just get alot of amateurish movies like this, released in theaters instead of on Youtube and at comic strip conventions. Asylum would be less clever in their naming, pornos would be able to remove “This Ain’t” and “Official Parody” from their titles, and Uwe Bolle and that guy that does the serial killer movies would make sequels to whatever hit movies they wanted. It wouldn’t be that great.
I’m not really a huge fan of laughing at these crappy old movies where the appeal is mostly just the strangeness and the befuddling cultural differences. It’s hard for a person from my culture and time to wrap their head around what they were trying to do with this movie, and that makes it interesting. But for the most part it’s more fun to just know about them, see some clips and look at the poster, than to actually sit down and watch them. But I did for this one and I don’t regret it. So if you come across the DVD somewhere maybe give it a shot.

CAPTAIN AMERICA, EL SANTO AND SPIDER-MAN WILL RETURN IN ULI LOMMEL’S BOURNE ARMAGEDDON.

p.s.

Information that’s really more for me than for you: There’s a scene at a burlesque club where a girl is doing a sexy dance silhouetted behind a screen, along with a guy pretending to play drums as if performing live music. It was a song I’d heard a million times but I couldn’t remember where. It’s been bugging me and going through my head for days. But just now I figured it out, it’s “Source No. 3 (Caffe Reggio),” from the original SHAFT. So the loose copyright law helped them have good soundtracks too. None of that “I couldn’t get the rights to the song on the temp score” shit.


This movie is designed as the ultimate nerd fantasy, like one of those Charles Atlas guy-kicking-sand-in-your-face ads adapted into a movie. In the first chunk, state of the art special effects are used to turn musclebound actor Chris Evans into a skeletal, 5-foot tall weenie. He also has asthma and other ailments glimpsed listed on a form, I didn’t catch if he was allergic to peanuts or not. He doesn’t know how to talk to girls or dance. But he fuckin believes, man. And he wants to join the military not to kill Nazis but because “I hate bullies.” Every time he tries to sign up they reject him on the grounds that it would be wiser to mail a bunch of potato chips in an envelope than to send this fragile little snowflake of a man into a war zone. So he keeps going back and re-applying under fake names. Fortunately Stanley Tucci as a scientist (and therefore a member or affiliate of the nerd community) sees what a good person he is and chooses him for a secret government program where they inject him with comic book shit that turns him into non-digitally-altered, musclebound Chris Evans, super soldier. Also he can jump high.

Because of his new body he’s able to talk to and get it on with a super hot and cool human female (Hayley Atwell). But don’t worry, Steve Rogers deserves some credit here, we can’t give it all to performance enhancing science. You gotta be a good person for this super soldier treatment to make you Captain America. This guy Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) is the leader of Hydra, he had an early version of the treatment but he was just such a dick that it made him into a monster instead of a super hero. I’m not sure what he’s supposed to be exactly, he’s not a skull. He has no nose but he has ears, and when they show him in extreme closeup you can see the black painted on cheekbones like Halloween makeup.

Fortunately the fantasy goes beyond the nerd wish fulfillment, so it ends up feeling pretty universal in its appeal. It’s also an idealized version of war heroism, where he gets to go prove himself fighting against guys who are even worse than Nazis. He gets to rescue his best friend, work with his girlfriend, not only does he win over the hard-bitten colonel (Tommy Lee Jones, a nice addition to the movie), but inspires him to come into battle himself and personally rescue the Captain while driving an awesome car. While Captain America is wearing his American pride on his sleeve (not to mention his pants, his chest, his head and his shield) he also represents diversity and world unity by putting together and leading an elite platoon that includes a Japanese-American, an African-American, a British guy, a French guy, and Neal McDonough.

Captain America’s powers work good for an action movie. No flying, morphing or shooting magic beams, just exaggerated strength, which most guys have in action movies anyway. That combined with Mr. Rogers’s never-give-up, can-do attitude means lots of punching, motorcycle jumping, jet plane commandeering, even a barefoot foot chase through New York City.

I was impressed by the wide variety of forms of transportation that the Captain ejects Hydra soldiers from. Off the top of my head I remember a truck, some motorcycles, a car I think, a train, two different types of aircraft and even a submarine (my favorite). That’s a good way to keep the action interesting when you got land, sea and air. Hopefully THE AVENGERS will allow him to throw people off a subway, a Segway, maybe a space ship.

There’s alot of fun action with Captain America and his team, the Captain Americans. Some of it is kind of rushed through in montages to show that time is passing. I wish they took the care to have a more elaborate sort of WHERE EAGLES DARE type of attack on a Nazi compound or something, but oh well. It’s pretty good stuff, and there’s one thing that’s unique about how he fights.

Because America at its best likes to think of itself as a defender and not an imperialist, Captain America’s primary weapon isn’t a gun, it’s a shield. It’s a really good one made out of “the rarest metal on Earth.” He uses it to deflect but also to bash things open. He throws it like a boomerang or a Frisbee. I’m sure it would work well as a sled, an umbrella, a water bowl for bald eagles to drink out of. In one great moment he tosses it down a hallway to jam some closing metal doors open, but immediately wishes he had it because a motherfucker comes after him with a blowtorch. I got kinda nervous actually when he had to leave his shield behind during one fight. I didn’t want him to lose that thing.

What is it about these Old Timey Throwback Adventure Movies, like this and THE PHANTOM? I guess if they were coming out a couple a year we’d hate them but they’re infrequent enough that they always seem refreshing. Do you remember the old pulp magazines and radio plays? No, we remember people remembering them. Instead of nostalgia for the actual time period we have nostalgia for the nostalgia of the time period. It’s made to remind us of the movies and things we’ve seen before about that time. This one is a little different because on the surface it pretends to be about war and patriotism. But it’s not so much filling an American’s heart with pride about what it means to be an American as reminding us of the kitschy fun of the progaganda they used to have, remember how we read that they used to have that? What a fun time! USA! USA!

Luckily you can get away with that because Nazis are the ultimate bad guys. I mean, who doesn’t hate Nazis? Only Nazis don’t, and fuck those guys. So you can watch a fun WWII movie and not have to feel bad about the bad guy soldiers getting shot or tossed off planes or whatever. It worked for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, obviously, but after SCHINDLER’S LIST Spielberg allegedly decided he wouldn’t do Nazis in a “fun” movie anymore because it’s too serious of a subject. Tarantino and Verhoeven have since made fun WWII movies, but not light like this. Those were hard-R movies that dealt specifically with the horrors of the war. Obviously neither Captain America or director Joe Johnston are ever gonna go that route, so they kind of go in between – it’s still WWII, it’s still Hitler, but swastikas are replaced by this Hydra symbol, and the bad guys actually separate from Hitler. So you can be content that the Red Skull is a fun bad guy that we gotta stop from ruling the world and hopefully not think too much about genocide or concentration camps. (Not that either of those things ever came up in an Indiana Jones movie. Or should’ve.)

In fact, Johnston shows us specifically where to locate Captain America on the Indiana Jones map. There’s a line about Hitler’s people being out in the desert looking for artifacts – but while those chumps are out digging up arks and getting their faces melted Hydra are the guys who have actually had success acquiring occult mcmuffins like The Glowing Cube of Whatever It Does. Johnston was the art director for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK as well as the second and third STAR WARSes, and he’s definitely going for some of that “Remember Good Old Fashioned Fun?” type nostalgia, with some success. There’s a motorcycle chase reminiscent of the speedy bike chase, there’s a mid-air battle that reminds me of tie fighters, the Hydra soldiers even wear masks kinda like the tie fighter pilots. (Yeah, I know about Star Wars stuff. I’m an American.)

I think they do fine skirting any potential WWII tackiness issues, but I’m a little iffy on the (ENDING SPOILER) climactic scene where Captain America chooses to sacrifice himself by forcing down a jet that’s headed to New York City on a kamikaze mission. Maybe nobody else was thinking United 93, but I was, and that took me out of it. But I can see how you could defend that. It’s sampling heroism instead of just tragedy, like TRANSFORMERS 3 did with its visual allusions to the Challenger explosion and people jumping out of the WTC towers.

Despite that somewhat ballsy move I think Johnston is about as bland of a director as has ever been created. He’s made few terrible movies and no great ones. People always like to dig out THE ROCKETEER – yeah, I remember that being pretty good too. But it was twenty years ago and it wasn’t exactly MAD MAX. Other than that his best movie is, what, HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS? I’d probly guess HIDALGO was pretty good, except I can’t because I saw it. He had old west Viggo Mortensen in a cross country horse race to unite the countries in the middle east, how the fuck did he make such a snoozer of a movie out of that? Nothing about it is real bad, but nothing about it is real good either. It has everything and nothing that a great movie needs. That’s also how we got JURASSIC PARK III and THE WOLFMAN. It’s the Joe Johnston touch.

He was a good art director, but the ones he actually directs don’t tend to look so hot. I guess WOLFMAN had some nice shots. This one is gloomy and colorless, with settings surprisingly similar to those of the widely hated low budget CAPTAIN AMERICA made by Friend of Outlawvern.com Albert Pyun. For the thumbnail at the top of the review I really tried but couldn’t find a still that I thought made Captain America look cool. It’s a director with an art background adapting drawings into a movie and somehow it’s not all that visual.

And there are little beats that aren’t quite there. Like there’s a funny part where Captain America is chasing a Nazi through New York and the guy throws a kid in the water. The Captain looks over the edge and the kid says “Go get him! I can swim!” Great joke, good timing and everything but why doesn’t the Captain look like he’s about to dive in to save him, don’t you need that to set up the joke? Johnston’s got the words but doesn’t know how to deliver it quite right.

Oh well. It works. It’s not as beautifully directed as BLADE or IRON MAN. It doesn’t look as stylish, it doesn’t feel as new. But it does follow the Marvel pattern of having a strong cast centered around a charismatic lead. Maybe not quite on the level of Thor, but I thought the story and action were better. There are lots of two-dimensional but fun characters, some funny lines and moments, a good pace. Red Skull is only an okay villain, but at least Weaving uses an accent partially based on Werner Herzog’s (that’s what it sounded like to me and then I read that really was his intent).

There are the really visionary, interesting comic book movies like BLADE 1-2, the Nolan BATMANs and HULK, and there are the also rans. This is for sure in the lower category, but as far as those go it’s one of the more entertaining ones. Like a pretty solid western as opposed to a great one.

It’s a nice fairy tale of a naive human stickbug who, through will power, science and jumping, saves lives and inspires his entire country. Like most super heroes you get a scene of kids running around dressed as him, to show that he has inspired them. It’s nice to see the kids of all races playing together like Captain America and his team. Although it sucks that the white kid has to be in front carrying the garbage can lid.

EVEN MORE ALL-AMERICAN END SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

If it wasn’t a setup for THE AVENGERS I’m sure it would’ve ended on that sweet but obvious note. It would’ve stayed in WWII which would be nice because I’d like to see those characters like Peggy, the Colonel and Neal McDonough again. But they wanted to get him to 2012 in his own movie so it wouldn’t seem silly when they do it in THE AVENGERS. So they worked it into the structure, a wraparound story about him becoming The First Avenger.

I like that they don’t overexplain it. We learned earlierr that his metabolism works so fast it’s impossible for him to get drunk. We can assume this is why he crashed in Antarctica and woke up 70 years later, no need for Nick Fury or somebody to give him a speech about it.

The reason the wraparound works for me is it turns Captain Nerd’s Greatest Fantasy into a uniquely tragic figure. Not even like Batman, because there’s nothing to avenge. The movie ends with this poor bastard realizing that in the blink of an eye he skipped 70 years, so he lost the girl he (in his mind) just fell in love with. In fact everybody he knows has disappeared. We never heard about a family, but we saw all the friends and allies he made, all gone. Now some guy in an eyepatch is yelling at him and he’s gonna have to work with the smartass son of the guy who used to build his weapons. Music has gotten terrible, he missed the V-Day celebration, and also free love and all that shit. And the Rambo and Rocky movies. He was just in WW2, now they’ll probly ship him off to Afghanistan with no peace time in between. Damn, he’s probly still getting used to his new body, now this shit. He’s Ripped Van Winkle.

And the weirdest part – maybe the ingenious part – is that he responds with one line that plays like a cute little joke, and then it slams into the credits. It pretends it’s saying “HOORAY!” but really it’s horribly sad. I say maybe it’s ingenious because I love the weird contradictory feeling it gives me, but I suspect that wasn’t what Johnston was going for. I’m not really sure. And it doesn’t really matter.

X-MEN FIRST CLASS is the new X-MEN prequel that I guess they made to save money on the cast and to appeal to today’s young audiences, who despise baldies and cripples. So Professor Xavier, Magneto, Mystique and Beast return played by younger, hair-sporting, wheelchair-free actors to tell the story of what went down with the mutants during the Cuban Missile Crisis and before the founding of Professor Xavier’s Fancy School For Tots Who Shoot Beams.

This time around it’s directed by friend of the internet Matthew Vaughn (KICK-ASS, LAYER CAKE, almost did X3 but quit at the last minute) with parts 1-2 director Bryan Singer as producer. It has a very similar tone and feel to the previous X-Pictures, but the early ’60s setting is a nice change. They use it as an excuse to use some of the silly outfits from the comics and to have alot of beautiful women walking around in skimpy clothes and handsome men in nice suits. Stylistically there are some mild retro touches – a little dash on the score (they shoulda done it up full-on James Bond, in my opinion), some lounge tunes here and there, some goofy split-screens and wipes, alot of really crappy looking effects. Actually that last one was probly not on purpose, a phony looking diamond-skin digital effect is not something you’d see in the old 007 pictures, but I thought it sort of fit in somehow.

We see how Xavier met Magneto, who gave them their nicknames, how they tracked down other mutants and turned them into a team, and why they became enemies (spoiler: for the reasons already explained in the other movies).

They stay away from some of the mutants from the other movies (including ones that were already there at the start of part 1, like Storm, Dead Blind Guy and Xenia Onnatopp) but introduce a bunch of other ones: girl with bug wings, guy with powerful screams, etc. (I was trying to figure out why I recognized that kid, turned out he was the creepy brother who was the best part of THE LAST EXORCIST). There are some training sequences, some adventures and what not. Michael Ironside shows up as a general, no not much dialogue, and credited as “M. Ironside.”

One of the best scenes is the one where the young mutants all meet for the first time. They show each other their powers, make up super hero names and laugh. None of them have been able to show off their mutant abilities before, so it’s kind of sweet to watch them open up, and you can understand why they seem to get along pretty quick. It’s nice to see them having a good time, and when Mystique reminds everybody to refer to Alex as “Havok” it really does seem like a dumb thing some friends made up for fun.

Then the damn plot starts going again.

Hank “The Beast” McCoy, not yet furry and blue but with useful thumbs on his feet, invents a serum that’s supposed to make mutants look “normal” but not affect their abilities. I’m not sure how he expects to use that since his ability is to jump upside down and grab onto things with his weird-looking feet. Not gonna do him much good with “normal” feet. But through this plotline we’re able to re-deal with some of the same moral issues as in part 3 but not as severe since it will only change your looks and is not used as a weapon.

Since it takes place in the ’60s they have a couple references to the sexism of the time and one unspoken acknowledgment of the history of slavery to address the racism. The one black guy dies right away (heroically though, don’t worry) and Lenny Kravitz’s daughter switches back to the Nazi’s team without needing much encouraging. So that was kind of a bummer. They’re all about racial equality as a metaphor but not as a reality. I don’t know if they know this movie only takes place in 1962, it wasn’t actually filmed in that era, so they’re allowed to have different races it. Oh well, you live and you learn.

There’s a commercial I kept seeing on tv with a quote from somebody saying “Matthew Vaughn does for X-Men what Christopher Nolan did for Batman.” That’s absolutely right in the sense that both of them did a movie about a comic book that took place in an earlier period than the previous movie somebody else made. But if they meant it in any sense that the commercial wants you to think then I gotta call bullshit on that. Nothing against First Class, and I’m sure some of you will like it better than Mr. Nolan’s Bat-pictures, especially if you’re against greatness. But I think First Class is a movie that does pretty well what a comic book movie is supposed to do, Dark Knight is one that transcends and goes beyond what a comic book movie is supposed to do.

This is not a complete re-invention of the X-Men series. It has what’s fun about the other ones: an ensemble of colorful characters using their different goofy powers against each other, a world where society has to deal with the existence of mutants, disagreements between the more compliant mutants and the more militant ones. That’s what’s good about it.

The one area I think it could’ve been way better is unfortunately an important one: I think it’s kind of hollow. It deals with relationships and conflicts that we’ve already seen in three other X-Men movies, and I don’t think it adds much, if any, depth to them. We’ve heard for three movies that Professor X and Magneto used to be friends, now they make a movie where they get to go back and show the time when they had fun together. In a montage. Mostly they’re kind of uncertain allies.

If you ever read my review of X-Men Part 2: X2 then you know that Mystique is my favorite X-Man. But you also have documentaiton there that everything about her attitude and motivations in this movie were already evident in the old ones when she was the bad guy’s henchwoman instead of one of the lead protagonists. They basically take what was there between the lines and then spell it out in shitty dialogue, like the awkwardly forced scene where she and Beast are having a conversation and accidentally say at the same time that they want to look “normal”. And then act like that’s some huge surprise.

I do still like Mystique alot in this incarnation (she’s played by Jennifer Lawrence from WINTER’S BONE), but it’s kind of lame that they made her characterization less subtle and no deeper. They switched from a swimsuit model to an Academy Award nominated actress and didn’t getting anything good out of it. Come on, fellas. Respect for the blue, scaled cleavage in the X-suit, though.

In fact (OUTRAGE ALERT) the universally hated BRETT RATNER’S X-MEN 3 was, for me, a more emotional movie, the way it dealt with the different characters’ feelings about being “cured,” the morality of using the cure as a weapon against mutants, the tragic betrayal of Magneto ditching Mystique as soon as she got forcibly un-mutated, and even the minimalistic development of the character I think was called Angel that was not the same character as in this one that was called Angel. Without as much screen time or dialogue they said more about that character’s struggles with being different than they did with Beast and Mystique’s conversations in this one.

The coolest character in this movie, and the one they do the most with, is definitely Magneto. Michael Fassbender (who’s also managed to work with Tarantino, Cronenberg, Soderbergh, Jarmusch and Ridley Scott in a period of three years) gives him the dignity and seriousness Ian Mackellen did, but while still young and badass. It was pointed out to me that he’s an exception to my previously stated rule that Steve McQueen was the only white man that looked good in a turtleneck.

The emotional underpinnings again are the same as in the previous movies – in fact, they straight up just reshot the first scene of the first movie where he uses his powers to tear open the gate at the concentration camp – but we get to see some scenes where he’s grown up and tracking escaped Nazis in South America to get revenge for what happened to his family. I wonder if that’s what David S. Goyer’s Magneto movie would’ve been about? It seems worthy of its own movie.

While Magneto’s travelling the world hunting war criminals, that douche Xavier’s going to Oxford and using his knowledge of mutants to hit on girls. The fuckin X-Mansion is his! That’s where he grew up, and when the CIA won’t play with him anymore he just starts his own gig there, apparently with his own money. The guy was born telepathic and smart, he became a professor when he was still in his twenties it looks like, never seemed to have to work for a living. To be fair though we learn that his mom never made him cocoa, so that’s pretty harsh.

Even more than in the previous movies it’s easier to root for Magneto than for the X-Men. The movie makes you relate to him and his mission of revenge, and then assumes you’ll understand silver spoon Xavier when he says “No, don’t kill the Nazi-collaborator who executed your mother in front of you as part of a long series of torturous experiments he did on you to gain powers he is now using to start a nuclear holocaust – you’d only be stooping to his level!” I mean, I agree with non-violence and pacifism (more than Xavier does; I’m not the one with the heavily armed private militia) but I don’t think any of us blame Magneto or even have any regrets about him killing the guy. It almost seems like Xavier is being a dick by spoiling the moment with his platitudes.

Magneto is also the clear winner in the more superficial departments of coolness and charisma. Wise veteran Patrick Stewart can get away with preachiness and corny inspirational talk to his students, but when it’s a young guy he just seems like a nerd. And it would be fine if he was a nerd who was great at inspiring other mutants and making them feel good about themselves, but he completely blows it with his own best friend since childhood, who he considers a sister. He promises Mystique that he won’t read her mind, but then without it he’s completely insensitive to her feelings. This is intentional on the part of the filmatists, to show Xavier’s flaws, but I just don’t see as much of his strengths as I’m sure I’m supposed to.

Unfortunately at the end Magneto just starts acting like he’s the bad guy, since he’s supposed to be the bad guy. The switch from hero-of-the-movie to man-who-has-gone-too-far-and-now-wants-to-wear-a-purple-helmet-with-horns just seems to happen because it’s time. In the end we know that Mystique used to be friends with Xavier, we know more specifics about the torment Magneto went through during the Holocaust, and we know what they looked like in yellow suits. But do we know anything important? I don’t think so. I guess alot of classes are like that.

Fun movie though. I liked it about as much as the other ones. I’m just saying let’s not get carried away.

THOR (directed by Kenneth Branagh, no joke) follows IRON MAN 2 as the latest in the Marvel Comics “setting things up for a movie we’re gonna do later” series. This one introduces the Norse god Thor (hairy blond muscleman with a magic sledge) who will later team with Iron Man when the world faces a threat that requires both a robot suit and a magic hammer, and specifically a case where they have to be used by two separate people. If I understand correctly Iron Man would not be able to use the magic hammer because only Thor has the power to lift it, but I see no reason why Thor couldn’t wear the robot suit. He might not need it because he has armor and can fly. But I guess if he wants to use missiles.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. The movie begins in a desert in New Mexico, where Jane (Natalie Portman) and her assistant (Kat Dennings) and an old guy (Stellan Skarsgard) are driving recklessly in a van, using computers, etc. You know, one of those science-adventure teams like in TWISTER. They see a flash in the sky and they run over a bearded muscleman and ask “Where did he come from?” Then Anthony Hopkins tells us.

You see, hundreds of years ago in viking times, legendary magic, battles, kings, swords, etc.

Hopkins plays the king of Asgard. He’s definitely not the same king from BEOWULF, because he has oversized armor and a metal eye patch. Asgard is a magical kingdom made mostly of castles and bridges. He has two sons, Thor and Loki, who are very different:

THOR is the son who is a brash warrior, loves to fight, loves adventure, etc.

LOKI is the son who is jealous because the movie’s about Thor

And by the way it’s pronounce Azz-guard. Don’t you dare pronounce it Ass-guard, smart guy. That’s an important part of an Asgardian’s clothing, obviously, but it’s not the name of the kingdom.

So you can see where this would lead. There is CGI monsters called “frost giants,” etc. Thor is not ready to become king (he started a war, he knocked over a big table) and instead gets banished to that shithole New Mexico, Earth where he loses his powers and is merely a mortal. Except also has super strength and can beat up like 50 armed soldiers and I think can control weather to interfere with electronics. But otherwise is mortal and powerless, so he hangs out with Natalie Portman. Her computers get confiscated by the government, so he helps her in lieu of a lawyer.

The script is ambitious in terms of scale, but weak at basic things like establishing characters. Because Thor has to learn a lesson and grow throughout the movie he’s introduced as an obnoxious asshole who wants to start a war out of machismo and yells at his dad all the time. He’s got four warrior pals (including Punisher #3 Ray Stevenson sporting a dwarf-from-Lord-of-the-Rings beard) that I assumed just worked for him and didn’t like him until Thor made reference to all their adventures together, quickly implying that he’s supposed to be charismatic and fun leader. Later it turns out that he is, but it would be nice to see in the beginning that he’s a likable dude even if immature. Instead it seems like he’s an arrogant dick who turns humble and polite as soon as he lands on Earth.

(It doesn’t help that the movie has what would’ve been considered a blatant Bush parallel a couple years ago. He’s the spoiled, party-loving son of the king who uses an attack by a small group of invaders as an excuse to start a dangerous war against his father’s wishes. If he’s Bush then how am I supposed to root for him later?)

Other times they do make the things they want you to know about the characters clear, but not in the most subtle ways. For example in the opening scene they want to make sure we understand that Portman’s character Jane is a master physicist, not some storm chaser, so her colleague Dr. Guyplayedbystellanskarsgard says, “You’re a master physicist, not some storm chaser!”

Thor’s brother Loki pretends to have the kingdom’s interests in mind but is secretly plotting a major betrayal. He seems calculating and evil but we know he’s mischievous because one of the warriors says that he’s done “his share of mischief.”

The contrast between Asgard and Earth is a little weird. Asgard is an epic digital land with huge sets and armies, Earth is a ghost town. The Earth scenes are mostly confined two locations: the crater from after the credits on IRON MAN 2, and a little speck of a desert town where there aren’t many people and there are even less buildings. Then Thor’s superpals show up and walk down the dirt roads in their crazy armor, it’s just like SUPERMAN 2. And MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE. I guess it’s nice that they had the freedom to choose a small town as a deliberate artistic choice and not because they’re making MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE and have no money.

I couldn't find many clear pictures of the Frost Giants online, but this one's pretty good I guess

Luckily they mostly stay away from the “what is this strange mechanical beast you ride?” type fish-out-of-water humor. There’s one line that implies Thor might’ve been to Earth before. If not maybe he’s just smart enough to figure other “realms” have their own magical shit that they do, no big deal. But there’s definitely some BEASTMASTER II type corny jokes in there (”is there a renaissance fair in town?”) and even a drop of racism (a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent calls the Asian-Asgardian “Jackie Chan”).

For a high-tech, super-secret, super-powered intelligence organization S.H.I.E.L.D. sure has some huge holes in their security. They can seal off an area, confiscate property, reroute commercial flights from their laptops, but they can’t notice Natalie Portman hiding under a coat outside their fence, or Thor swiping an important book off of a table as they escort him out. Hopefully Scarlett Johanson or the Incredible Hulk or somebody will get them to work on those blindspots.

Also I could swear Thor is wearing Earthling pants and t-shirt when he lands. Maybe you get those inside the portal.

Of the supporting characters the standout is definitely Gold Armored Magic Guy Who Controls the Portal Thing, played by Idris Elba from that TV show you guys all watch and talk about all the time, The Office. He mostly just stands still and talks in a processed voice, but he makes a good eternal being and gets the biggest laugh in the movie. I really like Idris Elba. Hopefully his face is hidden enough that he can come back as another Marvel hero. Him and Punisher #3.

By the way, there was a story a while back that supposedly conservatives or purists were upset about a black actor playing a Norse god, and I still see people repeating that. To be fair to conservatives and comic book literalists, though, it should be pointed out that while the word “conservative” is in the name of the group that started that nonsense they’re actually a white supremacist group whose websight describes them as “the only serious nationwide activist group that sticks up for white rights!” Yeah, they’re purists all right, but they don’t read comic books. Not enough pictures. So we can stop mentioning that as an actual controversy, unless we’re gonna get quotes from the Flat Earth Society in articles about upcoming space movies.

Speaking of racists, Natalie Portman is not one as far as I know, but also is not that great in this movie. That was not a very good segue in my opinion but there’s very little I can do about that other than write something better, like they could’ve done with her part in this movie.

You better believe I can dig Portman as an actress. I thought she earned the shit out of that BLACK SWAN Oscar and I’d think that even if the entire role was done with her head superimposed onto the angry dance double. And seeing her in YOUR HIGHNESS definitely got me past any lingering “she was the little girl in LEON” barriers to perviness. But I have to say that this is not one of her top roles. She’s a smart and charming young lady but they did not quite give her the tools to make us believe she’s a “master physicist” in instant love with a warrior god from another dimension. One part where she was really natural though was a funny voicemail she has to leave while outside of the S.H.I.E.L.D. security area. (Come to think of it even she thought they’d be able to spot her there.)

So it’s not exactly a captivating love story. I wonder if Thor’s lesson in humility was supposed to be learned from Jane? If so maybe it was just because she told him not to smash mugs, like he does in a diner to celebrate enjoying coffee. A little later he not only serves breakfast to Skarsgard but politely tells him he’s “very welcome.” So it’s a stunning transformation of character.

Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor, is definitely the best thing about the movie. He was the guy who played Captain Kirk’s dad in the opening of STAR TREK: NOT THE MOTION PICTURE, JUST STAR TREK. Now he’s got He-Man muscles, but he can act. Despite the weaknesses in the script he’s very likable and will be a good addition to the real story they tell whenever they decide to make the actual movie and not a bunch of set ups and cameos.

Also I gotta give the movie props for at least being different from all the other comic book movies. The combination of super hero and swords-’n-magic fantasy is novel enough that it doesn’t feel like a rehash of any of the other ones.

I enjoyed watching this movie the one time, wasn’t bored and didn’t think it sucked at all. But it’s definitely a mid-level comic book movie. Somebody asked me if it was closer to IRON MAN or IRON MAN 2. I gotta say it’s below both, but way above, say, any of the FANTASTIC FOUR movies, or GHOST RIDER. And I don’t think there’s any dancing in there, so you “Never forget SPIDER-MAN 3” guys can sleep peacefully.

I guess I’d put it at about Hulk movie #2 level of quality, but a little better because I don’t have to compare it to an earlier more interesting Thor movie.