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NOT OT: My Favorite Comic Book Movies of All Time PART TWO

posted a year ago by ecarle (14979)
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Again, the posts started to narrow down where they were unreadable, so again, I open a "PART TWO" to wind things down. I'll have less to say about the other comic book movies on my personal list but I will summarize what came before by noting:

ONE: Whatever the Marvel/DC saturated world we live in today, there have been some great comic book movies made over the past 50 years and they were launched with some pretty important stars: Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson for two.

TWO: Hitchcock in general -- and Psycho in particular -- have rather influenced all comic book movies - but the Batman series in particular. And I'll "jump ahead a bit" by noting that one other franchise -- Spider-Man -- has a heavy Psycho backdrop to it, as well.

The list so far is only two, both Batmans, both with Jokers:

ONE: Batman(1989)
TWO: The Dark Knight(2008-- 19 years later after the first movie Joker.)

Batman remains my favorite of the comic book franchises -- and I think that of a lot of the world as well. Batmans make the most money, Batmans with Jokers have made more money still. Billion dollar grosses. I think it took ALL of the Avengers to match that.

Slots three and four on my list go to Batmans too. But lest I seem too gaga over the Dark Knight, I will discard these Batman films as not so interesting:

Batman Forever(Robin arrives; Jim Carrey thrives.)
Batman and Robin(more Robin and massive career damage to Arnold, Uma Thurman, Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone. One movie helped kill four careers. Only George Clooney survived.)
All the Ben Affleck Batmans. (He's a good, tall, interesting actor but -- Batman is practically buried in the Justice Leagues and Suicide Squads and a "Versus Superman" that is just stupid on general principles. You can't BEAT Superman without kryptonite, and why would Batman want to?)
"The Batman" our most recent version, with leftover Alfreds and Gordons and an R-rated sickness...not for kids, at all.

Which leaves us with two Batmans 20 years apart for Number Three and Four on my list(not of Batmans, but of comic book movies):

Batman Returns: As I've noted, it must have been quite an ego booster for Jack Nicholson to learn that his solo villain Joker turn had to be followed up with THREE villains in his place: Danny DeVito's Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, and Oscar winner Christopher Walken's not-even-the-usual Batman villain, "Max Shreck." In some ways Walken's "standard issue bad guy"(with wacky hairstyle for SOME cartoonish aspects) outshone the more famous Penguin and Catwoman characters.

This was Tim Burton's second Batman feature and (as with all successful makers of originals) , Burton was given a lot of free reign and let his imagination run free on this one. He was thrown off the franchise because his film's "darker" tone didn't mix with MacDonalds Happy Meal promotions, but as Burton as said recently: compared to the Nolan films and The Batman, his movie wasn't very dark at all.

No matter, it DID have Danny DeVito looking pretty disgusting as the Penguin(with black drool running from his mouth) and the Penguin DID want to kill every first born male child in Gotham, and the Penguin DID bite deep into a man's nose and made it gush blood -- just an all around creepy man-creature.

(Dustin Hoffman was pitched for the Penguin, and one can see him in the part -- Ratso Rizzo was a template -- and he was pretty much as major a prestige star as Nicholson -- but he turned it down. Maybe he didn't want to try to have to match Jack. Instead, he played Captain Hook in Spielberg's pretty awful "Hook." Still, Hoffman got the title role and is the best thing in that misbegotten movie.)

Burton found the pathos in the Penguin -- a deformed baby abandoned by his rich parents and raised by penguins, a parentless child out to kill the children of successful parents. And Burton found the pathos in Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman (Selina Kyle) -- in which the sexy but somewhat untouchable Pfeiffer got THREE parts to play (1) Normal Selina(pre near-death fall and cat-transformation) (2) Weird Goth Selina(returning to work for the boss who tried to kill her) and (3) Catwoman Selina - a vampy, campy woman with a Mae West accent and great skil with a catwhip. Pffeiffer - stepping in for Young Annette Bening, who lost the role to pregnancy by Warren Beatty -- rather took over Batman Returns even as DeVito did his disgusting best to play his part and Walken rather underplayed to win.

And as noted before, Batman Returns IS the movie where Bruce Wayne actually compares himself to Norman Bates, thus establishing a "duality of personality theme" that would dog Bruce Wayne/Batman , Harvey Dent/Two Face and other comic characters through time.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Like too many successful movie artists, Tim Burton was celebrated for about ten years and then denigrated from then on. I liked him THEN (his two Batman movies felt a lot more flavorful and odd than Spielberg's work did around the same time -- I liked Batman better than Indy Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989 head to head.) His two Batmans stand the test of time ALONGSIDE the Nolans, as far as I'm concerned. Nolan's "realistic" approached backfired at times(his "Scarecrow") and both his scripting and his casting was off at times.

Sidebar on Danny DeVito: to move from Jack Nicholson as the Joker to Danny De Vito as the Penguin(instead of Dustin Hoffman) seemed a bit of a drop-off: wasn't DeVito really just a supporting actor? Well, yes and no. The diminuitive DeVito carved himself out a STAR career almost under the radar from the 80's into the 90s. He was a great sarcastic foil to Big Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins(just the idea of those two AS twins drove the comedy.) He actually got to play a ROMANTIC lead opposite pretty Penelope Ann Miller in Other People's Money (1991.) And he ably supported Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in several movies, reaching both co-star and director status in "War of the Roses." He directed pal Jack Nicholson as Hoffa the same year as appearing in Batman Returns. Back in the 80s's he was the hilariously hateful husband of Bette Midler in "Ruthless People" -- with the classic gag of shrewish wife Midler being kidnapped for Ransom and DeVito not believing his luck(shades of the Ransom of Red Chief.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

But I think the really big surprise that Danny DeVito sprang on all of us was in LA Confidential in 1997. Appearing in an Oscar winning screenplay from a great novel -- and with great dialogue -- DeVito gave the film its nasty, sarcastic opening narration, and revealed himself, as the film went along, to be a human being of bottomless depravity and cruelty -- even as he stayed Danny DeVito funny. With these great lines:

(About a dead character): "All I can tell you is that the Big V is on the night train to the Big Adios!

(Dialogue exchange):

Kevin Spacey: I need an extra fifty(bribe money.) Two patrolmen at twenty apiece and a dime for the Watch Commander at Hollywood Station.
DeVito: Jack! Its Christmas!
Spacey: No, its felony possession of marijuana.
DeVito: Actually, its circulation thirty-six thousand and climbing...no tellin' where its gonna go, Jackie Boy. Radio, television. You whet the public's appetite for the truth and the sky's the limit.

(DeVito is a gossip magazine maven and gossip monger who is predicting the truth in 1953: gossip of any truth or lack thereof will eventually rule the world.)

So Batman Returns gets THAT power from Danny DeVito, Michelle Pffeffer in her best ever three-way-split performance, Chris Walken doing his Chris Walken thing(trying to pay off Catwoman, he pleads: "What can I give you? A big ball of string?") and a newly dominant and relaxed Michael Keaton playing Batman as Norman Bates. (Bulletin: Michael Keaton is coming back as HIS Batman next summer in The Flash movie, and the excitement is palpable. Too bad the kid playing The Flash seems all messed up.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

NUMBER ONE: Batman
NUMBER TWO: The Dark Knight
NUMBER THREE: Batman Returns
NUMBER FOUR: The Dark Knight Rises

Some favor Nolan's "realism" over Tim Burton's childlike Goth, not me. I prefer Burton as a visionary, but respect Noland for indeed putting an adult, solid action movie profundity on HIS trilogy.

Still, Batman Begins did little for me. Too much origin story(we've HEARD IT), too colorless in the villain department. Christian Bale not quite there as Bruce or as Batman.

The Dark Knight solved all that -- Ledger's Joker(and his writing) was so good that the rest of the movie fell into place as "big and meaningful." Miscasting (looks wise) of the leading lady proved of minimal damage to the whole.

Four years after The Dark Knight, Nolan came back to "wrap things up"(trilogies always work best) and The Dark Knight Rises managed to survive its Joker-loss with a couple of "new"(recycled) villains -- one of whom, neither here nor in Batman Returns quite qualified as a true villain at all.

Catwoman of course. Except in Nolan's realistic world, I don't think Selina Kyle is ever called Catwoman at all. She's well written and well played by Anne Hathaway as an agile cat burglar with the requisite Kung Fu skills and a great penchant for hiding her street smart brutality under a guise of "sweet poor innocent defenseless girlhood." Its a nice touch.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Following Maggie Gyllenhaal's unattractive visage in The Dark Knight, we have in Anne Hathaway a woman who has always managed to sexualize a slightly cartoonish face -- she's pretty even when she's not, and she has a great body(she's done her share of nude scenes.) Indeed, my FEMALE companion said out loud in the theater "nice ass" on a particular rear view of Hathaway on her cat-cycle or whatever it was. (I know there are posters who travel about insulting those of us who insult the looks of rich and famous actresses who are much more important than the rest of us but -- that's what going to the movies is about in one way: we fall in love with the faces and bodies on the screen...or we don't. I'm sure somebody just went gaga over Maggie Gyellenhaal.

Meanwhile, The Dark Knight Rises has an even more powerful(literally) villain in Tom Hardy's Bane -- a great big muscleman of a criminal mastermind whose muscles match his smarts. A silly, bit part version of Bane had cluttered up Batman and Robin without being used much at all -- in this movie, Bane is front and center and(evidently based on the comic lore) quite capable not only of beating Batman up but of actually BREAKING BATMAN's BACK. In the fight scene where Bane does this damage to Batman, one actually yearns for a Robin for once -- why does Batman have to fight everybody ALONE? Of course, usually Batman beats up other men four at a time but -- Bane is superstrong, different, ALMOST undefeatable.

Hathaway's crook led Batman to Bane and his back breaking; she witnesses the assault and one can see the doubt and guilt forming on her face: she may be against the forces of law and order that Batman represents, but even her hardscrabble beginnings and commitment to crime aren't enough to align her with Bane. She will change.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Which leads to a pretty big twist with regard to The Dark Knight Rises and the critics and Hollywood press. In the trailer for Dark Knight Rises, critics praised how Hathaway warns Bruce Wayne(while dancing with him, masked, at a charity ball) how basically the masses are going to rise up against the 1% who don't share their wealth with others. "A storm is coming, Mr. Wayne." Yes, a lot of cheers in the press for how this new Batman movie would take on the rich and put them in their place.

But it was a bait and switch. Bane indeed attacks Wall Street and kills some brokers and hedge fund guys while capturing the rest but -- he turns out to be a full-on Communist tyrant who takes over Gotham City and has none other than the lowly Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) from Batman Begins preside over show trials and executions of "the rich" that will nonetheless lead to enslavement -- or nuclear annihilation -- of everyone else, of every social strata, in Gotham.

Some critics were nonplussed. "Well, this is certainly disappointing. We didn't anticipate this Batman movie taking THIS side of the story." Or of Catwoman switching sides. Or the 1 percent becoming victims(but so does everyone else. Totalitarianism works that way.)

It is said that Hollywood won't allow "conservative movies" to be made anymore. If so, Chris Nolan snuck one in under cover of a Batman movie with the clout of The Dark Knight. Still an anti-Communist, Totaltitarian bent wasn't so much conservative as "rarely shown." We've had so many movies with Nazi villains, so few with Communists(Doctor Zhivago, for one.) But even Zhivago -- as with The Dark Knight Rises here -- made the case that tyranny arises with the help of the genuinely oppressed.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

This made The Dark Knight Rises a very intelligent final chapter for Nolan, and there were other benefits. Bane's great VOICE -- which was a LITTLE BIT like Sean Connery, and a LITTLE BIT like Robert Shaw in Jaws, but overall, NOT those at all. Its a very unique voice, evidently a mix of Tom Hardy's own vocal talents and some sound lab distortion. A "tasty" voice to listen to, sing-song in cadence -- and introduced in the movie's truly thrilling opening stunt scene, in which a "captured" Bane elects to crash the plane he is on, kill his captors, move a new hostage to another plane -- and escape. (In a nice tyrant's touch, Bane convinces one of his henchmen to voluntarily die in the crashing plane as part of the plan.)

Meanwhile Tom Hardy not only uses a non-recognizable voice as Bane, he himself hides his face(behind a big breathing mask) for the whole movie, less one 30 second glimpse of his (quite handsome) face in a surprise flashback giveaway about 'what's really going on here."

And "what's really going on here" allows Nolan to FINALLY pay off some of the rather boring "League of Shadows" stuff from Batman Begins, recasting it in a better movie informed by The Dark Knight in between.

And as if to DOUBLY make up for Gylllenhaal from The Dark Knight, Marion Cottilard(one of the most beautiful women in movies) shows up to give Bruce Wayne some romantic competish for Hathaway, and all is right in the world. (Plus some plot stuff.)

One drawback to The Dark Knight Rises: Michael Caine, decades long star(and honorary superstar) of scores of movies and quite a few tough guy roles(Get Carter chief among them) spends almost the whole movie crying and blubbering and sniveling and..it gets embarrassing. But he wants the best for his charge, Bruce Wayne, and.....well, I guess I won't spoil it.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

So that's it for the First Four on the list: they are all Batmans, and all from either Burton or Nolan, no favorites played. The two best have Jokers, the other two have other charms(and some interesting villains of their own in Penguin and Bane -- Bane being the "crime boss who is boss because he can beat everybody else up.")

Nolan got with his "Dark Knight series" what was not allowed to Burton: a full trilogy with full closure. (Burton got fired after two episodes.) But alas, Nolan also got a bit of infamy: the invasion of the violent horrors of real life into the fictional battles of the comic book world: one of those psychos with a gun came into a Denver movie theater for The Dark Knight Rises opening night and killed people, right there in their movie seats (there but for the Grace of God would go a lot of us.) Its an outrage and a tragedy but also...a sobering historic collision of the real and the fantastical.

Batman couldn't stop it.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

On topic: Psycho's influence on a particular franchise and my "next favorite comic book movie" after the four Batmans above:

The next favorite is: Spiderman 2. The FIRST Spiderman 2 -- not "The AMAZING Spiderman 2." (A clever way to re-start the franchise.) Spiderman is a Marvel franchise -- but not of the same ilk as the rest.

Its funny how these comic book franchises rather "waited awhile" before coming out.

Superman came out in 1978.
Batman came out 11 years later in 1989.
Spiderman came out 13 years after Batman, in 2002.

Interesting: like Batman, Spiderman got a Danny Elfman score -- I guess John Williams wasn't available. So Spiderman SOUNDS(musically) like Batman -- but with a humming theme all its own(meant to emuate the hum of a spider's web as prey hits it.)

Spiderman also got a "hip indie director" in Sam Raimi, whose "Evil Dead" and "Army of Darkness" films are cult classics (I recently attended the wedding of a young man who wooed his young wife by taking her to a "live stage" Evil Dead play -- they were drenched in stage blood. True love. Marriage ensued. Aw.)

The first Spiderman also established something very important: no longer did a studio need to hire a superstar villain(Nicholson, Arnold, Jim Carrey) to take 25% of the gross. No, there were plenty of good, cheaper character guys out there. Like Willem Dafoe(who was rejected for Jack's Joker) and Alfred Molina, and Thomas Hayden Church.

In the first Spiderman, Dafoe took on the villain role of The Green Goblin, and that's where Psycho comes in(the first time in Spiderman, there would be a second.) Dafoe literally takes on a split personality, with the bad one dominating the good one and sometimes mixing the two.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Its funny: seeing how Spiderman pretty much establishes Dafoe's split personality early on and keeps showing him talking to himself(or being "directed" by the Green Goblin mask much as Mother's corpse directed Norman)....its amazing that Hitchcock PULLED OFF tricking his 1960 audiences about Norman's split personality. Hitchcock (following Bloch's novel but with the challenges of having to SHOW scenes) got audiences to think that Mother was a separate, evil being and that Norman was a comparatively nice guy(for a murder accomplice.)

By the time we reached Spiderman and the Green Goblin, there could be no room for mystery, a twist ending, or trickery. Ol' Willem was nuts from the start.

And yet, it was the NEXT Spiderman that truly caught my imagination:

For Spiderman 2 gave us "Doctor Octupus" aka "Doc Ock," aka "Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius," who, for my money, is the best "CGI-driven" villain in all of comic book history.

Oh, I suppose Doc Ock could have been done as early as 1963 -- that's when stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen gave us the many headed dragon in Jason and the Argonauts. Doc Ock first appeared in comics in July of 1963, so ol' Ray could have filmed him the next year.

But better to wait decades for CGI to perfect itself(almost) and to show us how Doc Ock's steel-and-rubber robotic arms could sweep and crawl and twist like a portable nest of snakes on his back.

Even before Doc Ock starts doing his villain thing, there are two great scenes establishing him:

ONE: When his public demonstration goes awry, killing the doc's beloved wife in the process and fusing a "temporary" set of robo tentacles into his back permanently.

TWO: When the tentacles -- with minds clearly their own -- elect to grab, trap, and slaughter every single surgeon and nurse in the operating room trying to cut them off the doc's back. The scene plays like a horror movie slaughter but there is not a drop of blood in the scene.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Dafoe's Green Goblin was a direct Norman/Mother Bates descendant, but Doc Ock rather continues the tradition in a different way: his murderous "back tentacles" seem to drive him to his worst urges and he fights to find "the good man within." The good man ultimately wins, as I recall, but its been a long time since I saw Spiderman 2.

As amazing as the tentacle effects were, in some long shots, Doc Ock was rather a poorly animated cartoon figure - -and a scene in which he fights Spiderman on a skyscraper while tossing Old Aunt May around like a tea bag is unbelievable.

Still...most of the time Doc Ock and his tentacles are very cool -- when Spiderman No Way Home came out last year, and all the villains came back, Doc Ock ran the table (Jamie Foxx's electric man finished last.)

By 2002, I had to confront the fact that I MIGHT be "too old for this shl--" and I noticed that Spiderman was clearly really a spiderTEEN and that the tortured romance was high school stuff(hey, that didn't stop me with Licorice Pizza, but then it was set when I WAS a teenager.)

Still, the villains made a difference, and Sam Raimi's direction kept things "prestige radical" and the first two Spidermans were generally cool. The third one was a mess, and I've only seen the new ones sometimes(like the one with Michael Keaton as a villain.)

This; Spiderman 2 in the summer of 2004 had a climax on an elevated train downtown. Batman Begins of the sumemr of 2005 had a climax on an elevated train downtown.

They should have read each other's scripts.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Next: Iron Man (2008)

The posts above are connected enough to Hitchcock in general and Psycho in particular to be "not OT," but I am about to reach some OT stuff in which Hitchcock isn't really that relevant(except perhaps for the general action suspense thriller format in which he worked so often.)

I'm also reminded here that New Republic critic and Hitchcock hater Stanley Kauffman wrote of the great crop duster sequence in North by Northwest(with disgust): "This is comic book stuff!" Little did he know what was coming.

Spider-Man 2002 was kind of the "first Marvel movie," but Iron Man 2008 was REALLY the first Marvel movie, because (as we found out to something that was delightful for some and daunting for others) it was "only the beginning" of a SERIES of movies which would INVIDUALLY showcase one avenger per movie (Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor, Captain America, et al) and then group them all together in a couple of "superteam movies." Whatever one thinks of these movies, to watch them slowly aggregate over a decade plus was one of the interesting "movie experiences of my life." I actually lived long enough to see The Avengers cycle through from Iron Man to Avengers: Endgame.

Oh: between Spider-Man 2002 and Iron Man 2008, there WAS a Hulk movie, directed like an art movie by Ang Lee, but it stands as a stand alone oddity. Marvel would go through THREE Hulks (flash in the pan star Eric Bana, pain in the ass Edward Norton, amiable good guy Mark Ruffalo) to get it right.

But still: Iron Man set the pace, launched the franchise for real and...turned out to be a damn good movie, less one predictable weakness.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The trade press had Tom Cruise circling Iron Man for awhile. I suppose he regrets turning it down, but he ended up with his own franchise intact(Mission Impossible) and one big callback to Top Gun and -- Cruise would have thrown the whole balance of the Avengers off. Better to cast another star of interesting value and Robert Downey Jr ("RDJ") fit the bill. Everybody who took acting parts in Marvel movies got rich, but evidently Downey's "starter deal" made him the richest of all.

RDJ had one of those long, difficult, checkered careers for over two decades before Iron Man.
He started as a very cute but kind of off-putting teen star. He was in a bad season of SNL -- I believe Rolling Stone ranked him at the bottom of its list of SNL players -- and SNL player Tim Meadows read that aloud on the SNL 45th Anniversary special!

The years passed. RDJ kept getting roles like on Ally McBeal, but tended another persona: hapless drug addict, brief prison tenant. He became both controversial and tragic -- but Hollywood can and WILL support drug addicts who "pull it together" enough to work. (There are so MANY drug addicts in Hollywood --they try to help the ones who falter.)

The tide started turning. RDJ's facial features aged and matured into those of a handsome, capable man, not a spoiled pretty boy. His thin physique skewed away from Marvel muscleman -- his Iron Man suit would cover that.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

It was in a movie right before Iron Man that RDJ perfected the star persona that Iron Man would solidify.

The movie was Zodiac(2007) about the hunt for the San Franciso Zodiac Killer of the 70s. The movie split its young stars three ways -- colorless Jake Gyllenhaal, amibable Mark Ruffalo(hello, Hulk) ...and RDJ... who stole the film from everybody with his stylish, deadpan, manic veteran newspaper reporter. He now had his line readings down: arch, screwball comedy fast, crashing his own sentences against each other ("So you're the cartoonist they've been telling me about WHY are you sorting through private items on my desk?") The character went from being the most powerful in the movie to being the most broken down(the Zodiac personally targets RDJ for terror and he can't take it). RDJ also added the goatee here that gave him a stylish look and a trademark Tony Stark persona (he'd go clean shaven for his two-movie "franchise," Sherlock Holmes.)

"Iron Man" came out in the summer of 2008 just ahead of "The Dark Knight" with Ledger's magnificent Joker. The two movies together suggested a "renaissance of the comic book movie," with proof that good movies with good scripts with good actors could come from the genre.

Casting wise, RDJ was dealt good cards for both his villain and his heroine.

The villain was Jeff Bridges -- a bigger star than RDJ and perhaps the "Jack Nicholson" of the Marvel Movies...an iconic, well-liked star who put his brand on the movie as worthy of him. This was the start of a "roll" for the Dude: Iron Man in 2008, an Oscar for Crazy Heart in 2009, a sequel to Tron and a fine reworking of John Wayne in True Grit in 2010 (PLUS, says Imdb, about four other movies during this time.)

Bridges surprised us by doing his Iron Man villain with a shaved head, for if there is one actor whose great hair helped his star look, it was Jeff Bridges(including his modified Jesus long hair as the Dude.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The heroine was Gwyneth Paltrow. Ms. Paltrow seems to be spending her time lately being mocked and/or demonized on the internet gossip sheets for her "GOOP" trademark publications and products, and occasionally as a symbol of the spoiled Hollywood elite (she's a "nepobaby" of Blythe Danner and TV producer Bruce Paltrow.)

All true -- BUT -- in Iron Man playing the rather sexily named Pepper Potts, Paltrow demonstrates her mix of girl next door and sexy lady (which won her an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love.) I think its her overbite and resulting voice that turn the trick. Also at times she looks like the Mod Squad TV star Peggy Lipton, whose pretty actress daughter Rashida Jone actually doesn't look much like Lipton at all.

RDJ's superrich inventor Tony Stark and his faithful aide Pepper Potts have one of those great old screwball relationships -- they SHOULD be together, they unconsciously WANT to be together, but they seem to know that they CAN'T be together -- so Pepper must suffer watching RDJ go through a bunch of sexy girlfriends while being consigned to loyal girl Friday. And both must also suffer through knowledge of Stark's weak heart.

With RDJ, Bridges,and Paltrow in the leads (and kinda sort Terrence Howard), Iron Man was in good shape to start with. But the script proved really good too and RDJ's "flying Iron Man set pieces" were fun to watch, along with the slow building of the Iron Man suit.

Iron Man took on matters of the arms trade world; the Middle East, an d corporate villiainy. It moved right along until it reached that point -- its weakness -- which would repeat and repeat in Marvel World: a showdown between the hero in HIS Iron Man suit and the villain in HIS Iron Man suit -- and the villain's suit is bigger, better, MEANER than the heros'

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

This worked well enough in Iron Man, but when the Hulk had to fight a Bigger Hulk, a pattern started to emerge -- only to be replaced by ANOTHER pattern in which the entire world would be at stake at the end of Marvel movies(with an emphasis on "floating cities" for some reason.)

At the end of Iron Man, RDJ meets Nick Fury(Samuel L. Jackson about to cash HIS big paychecks) and is told there are others out there. The Avengers saga begins, and I must admit, as a regular watcher of these films, the requisite "post credits cookie" scene helped whet the appetite for the next episode(like when they found Thor's big hammer in the ground.)

I suppose it is a little ON topic to note that , with his TV show, his books, and his forays into the pop horror of Psycho and The Birds, Hitchcock was also a maker of "trademark films" -- the Marvel Movies of today are SOMEWHAT inspired by the Hitchcock Movies of back then...as an adult as much as when I was a kid, I'm entertained by gimmicks(Thor's hammer in the sand.)

As the Avengers movies grew like topsy and brought stardom to a small cadre of new young actors (Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Pratt)....it does seem like RDJ's appearances as Tony Stark invariably established him as the King Star of the whole franchise -- NOT a muscleman, NOT with the boyish looks of the two Chris's -- and with the charisma and brittle charm of , say, Cary Grant in HIS Hitchcock mode.

Since RDJ made the first deal and was necessary for so many of the later Marvel movies, he got superrich. Well, good for him. He jumped the hurdles and cleaned up and one can hope that he hangs in there personally for the rest of his days, drugs wise.

As I post this, RDJ is announced to possibly get into the shoes of ANOTHER Hitchcock hero. Not Cary Grant, but James Stewart. A Vertigo remake. Hoo boy.

Well, RDJ IS a risk taker. And it HAS paid off.

CONT

[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

Well, RDJ IS a risk taker. And it HAS paid off.

Yeah, overall Downey righting his personal ship in the early 2000s then becoming a truly beloved star (not to mention probably the richest star) in middle age (I think his successful star persona starts falling into place place a bit before Zodiac - really it goes back to Wonder Boys and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - illustrating the first rule of stardom: just be in good movies!) is a real feel-good story.

Since you haven't mentioned it, I shall: RDJ put out a documentary about his father RD Senior (writer/director of Putney Swope and various other provocations) called "Sr." or "Senior" last year (it's on Netflix where I am and I assume everywhere else too). It includes lots of home movies of young RDJ on set and also playing roles in Sr's films. I think it's worth watching and I enjoyed it.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Well, RDJ IS a risk taker. And it HAS paid off.

Yeah, overall Downey righting his personal ship in the early 2000s then becoming a truly beloved star (not to mention probably the richest star) in middle age

---

It all seemed to happen for him "really slow and then real fast." Granted, his wealth even as a "minor" star allowed him some breaks with his addiction that others don't get, but he publically cleaned up and flew right and gave touching interviews(including on Howard Stern, where honesty is the best policy) and what no one could forsee, I think, was how his Iron Man gig would be a ZILLION dollar gig...just for him. The others are well paid, but nothing like he got.

---

(I think his successful star persona starts falling into place place a bit before Zodiac - really it goes back to Wonder Boys and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - illustrating the first rule of stardom: just be in good movies!)

--

Oh, I agree. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was from buddy cop movie writer Shane Black -- who ruled the 80's with "Lethal Weapon," came rather a cropper with "The Last Boy Scout"(which is really pretty fun) and found his career sunk as all those Joel Silver action movies went out of favor. (Those buddy cop movies crash and burn is what some have HOPED will happen with Marvel Movies...but not yet.)

The buddies weren't cops in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang...Val Kilmer was a gay private eye and RDJ an amateur investigator.

RDJ got Shane Black a job directing Iron Man 3 and later Shane Black brought back his "buddy cop" mode(but with private eyes again) with The Nice Guys -- a great nostalgia piece with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as the buddies. Recommended with a bonus: LA Confidential lovers Crowe and Kim Basinger are reunited here, as foes with wrinkles and in his case, pounds on in the intervening years.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Also notable: in 2008, the same year as Iron Man, but later, RDJ took a BIG risk(and got an Oscar nom) for playing the "overly committed white actor as a black character" in "Tropic Thunder."

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Since you haven't mentioned it, I shall: RDJ put out a documentary about his father RD Senior (writer/director of Putney Swope and various other provocations) called "Sr." or "Senior" last year (it's on Netflix where I am and I assume everywhere else too).

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I've heard of it, I think I watched some of it some time ago, but I can always watch it again!

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It includes lots of home movies of young RDJ on set and also playing roles in Sr's films. I think it's worth watching and I enjoyed it.

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As I recall, Senior took some criticism for bringing Jr up on lower level drugs(like pot) from an early age, possibly triggering Jr.'s addiction. It seems possible to me, and once addiction set in, Jr. had to overcome his own childhood, to some extent.

And yet I think Jr was always loyal to Sr -- whose career faded -- and Jr. understood(I guess) that some people who grow up on drugs are going to have problems.

RDJ was on Saturday Night Live for awhile, and the Evil Chevy Chase came back to host(insulting everybody) and reportedly said to RDJ "Oh, your dad is Robert Downey Sr. He's pretty much a failure now, right?"

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

A few more.

I'd say that connecting Psycho directly to these comic movies drifts away as an option once the Batman films and some of the "split personality" villains of the Spider Man films go away, so this will shift a bit "OT."

It occurs to me that once I had a sense of the first Marvel movies and how they were going to assemble "The Avengers" one by one, I dutifully showed up for the introduction of each avenger(usually "teased" by a post credit scene at the end of the previous movie -- like when they found Thor's giant hammer imbedded in the desert floor at the end of one of them.)

Captain America: The First Avenger pleased me for its period setting and its "all-American" take on WWII America before crossing over to Europe.

The memory of the movie is fading fast for me, but I recall Stanley Tucci giving a touching performance as the scientist who gently creates Captain America and dies in the effort(Tucci has a sweet face; he can play villains but it works better when he is nice.) I recall Tommy Lee Jones turning up as a US General (Jones told the press "In this movie, you will see me playing the guy I usually play and doing the things I usually do." Ha.) I recall Hayley Atwill as a particularly pretty female lead -- with the ability to punch out mouthy men, of course(Atwill and Captain America were being set up to be the Ultimate Romance in the Marvel universe that time -- a love held apart by decades of time.)

I liked the sidebar into forcing Captain America to "peform" in a USO show with a catchy number. I liked the overall sense of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at times(albeit in the 40s). I liked the creation of a "mini Dirty Dozen" of interesting actors for an action scene.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

The movie devolved down (as all Marvel movies do) into a massive mess of CGI action at the end, but pulled up at the end for a great final scene: the frozen and thawed Captain America waking up in a room he THINKS is still in the forties, only to run outside to be confronted by NYC Times Square circa 2011 -- total computerized digital modern technology and flash.

Which leads to:

Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

I don't always see the second or third Marvel movies, but I liked Captain America enough to check out the next one, and I was heartened to see Robert Redford in it, and I was AMAZED to see Redford turn into a smiling but murderous villain, turning his now-aged "Redford charm" to the dark side.

Sad: in the poster for "Captain America: The Winter Solder," Redford is much smaller in the poster than the other, newer, hotter actors. There was a time when Redford DOMINATED his movie posters(the 70s) and when he was a true superstar with acting chops.

Anyway, Redford is in Captain America 2, and quite evil(he shoots his nice Mexican-American maid when she overhears him plotting) and the movie is very exciting -- there's a car chase shootout involving Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury that should go on the list with Bullitt and The French Connection.

I can't say that I much liked Captain America abandoning its "period roots" -- he would stay modern day from now on(until, as I recall, Endgame, but I can't honestly remember the end of that movie) but this "sequel" had plenty of action(the elevator fight was good too) and Redford, and "special guest star" Scarlett Johannessen as Black Widow(I do believe Marvel started "pairing up" its characters, movie to movie) and...a really overdone CGI finale that was practically required by that point.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

A special choice for my list of favorite comic book movies, is something that isn't REALLY a movie:

The end credits sequence from "Avengers: Endgame."

I saw that movie(somewhat dutifully) when it came out in the summer of 2019 -- another one of those lucky ones that made it just before COVID shut everything down and left us, even today, feeling like the movie theater experience has been downgraded. In 2019, The Avengers ended, but BECAUSE it was pre-COVID, it REALLY feels like The Avengers ended. (It didn't of course, there will be more of these, with new actors.)

The end credits sequence is on Youtube, and the comments from a younger generation are truly heartening: "I was watching the curtain come down on my childhood," wrote one. Others wrote of how the theater audience cheered and applauded every cast member but REALLY went nuts when the long list of stars(old and new, young and old --a HISTORY of movie stars flying by as almost every actor in the Marvel series to that point took a bow) reached the Avengers themselves(with their own famous theme music coming on the screen and the actors signatures coming across the screen -- a borrow from the final Shatner/Nimoy Star Trek movie.)

Its been nice to live my life long enough to watch that "first set" of Marvel movies play itself out -- from Iron Man 2008 to Avengers 2019, with Spiderman scooped up along the way and legally added to the team.

I don't particularly feel that "Phase Three" or whatever it is matters much, but a next generation will think so.

Anyway, those end credits -- count the "oldsters": Robert Redford and Michael Douglas and Michelle Pffeffer and William Hurt and...Marisa Tomei --my crush continues, when she smiles here the entire end credits sequence gets happier -- Roger Ebert used to have exactly the same crush on her in his reviews, he once wrote "when Marisa Tomei enters a movie and smiles, I feel I should stand up and wave as to the Queen."

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

When they reach The Avengers themselves, it remains interesting to me that Jeremy Renner doesn't seem to REALLY belong( but now he is recuperating from a near death injury and he earned his way in, the hard way) but the rest certainly fit: Black Widow and Thor and Captain America and The Hulk..right up to the Biggest Star Who Launched the Entire Thing: Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark -- Iron Man. He's the final face on screen, the most applauded and -- within this "never die" Marvel universe -- ostensibly dead at the end of the series. We'll see.

So big is the Marvel universe that a bunch of big stars who WERE in OTHER Marvel movies ARE NOT in the end credits sequence(because they aren't in Avengers Endgame): no Stanley Tucci, no Tommy Lee Jones, no Anthony Hopkins(Thor), no Jeff Bridges(Iron Man), no Mickey Rourke(Iron Man 2.), no Guy Pearce(Iron Man 3 -- well, maybe not a big star, but from LA Confidential, so he ranks with me.)

Anyway, you want a "boost" from the Marvel movies and a sense of their value on their own: watch the end credits sequence from Endgame. And read the comments of a young generation who adopted these characters as their own. Maybe we need more variety in our blockbusters, but you can't say the Marvel movies did not play their own role.

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[–] swanstep (2616) a year ago

When they reach The Avengers themselves, it remains interesting to me that Jeremy Renner doesn't seem to REALLY belong

It didn't help that Renner's signature is an utterly illegible collection of swirls.

Endgame hasn't stuck with *me* at all: Fat Thor, Time Travel thanks to Quantum nonsense undid everything in the previous film leading to a big battle that, as always, comes down to punches.

It was an adequate film (A.O. Scott at the Times called it a 'monument to adequacy'), not close to being one of the ten best films of the year. It was nominated for only a single Oscar (Visual FX), which it lost to 1917, and I don't remember there being much Nerd Rage about any of that. Rather, everyone kind of realized that Endgame was just OK and that it had mainly been a social and financial event about a studio and the audience it had cultivated over an unprecedented stretch of 15 or so films congratulating each other and themselves for their endurance and perseverance.

[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

When they reach The Avengers themselves, it remains interesting to me that Jeremy Renner doesn't seem to REALLY belong

It didn't help that Renner's signature is an utterly illegible collection of swirls.

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Ha. I didn't notice that. Signatures -- especially for showbiz figures -- can be flamboyant representations of one's personality(or stardom)....squiggles don't help. But then Jeremy Renner was rather the "squiggle" among the comic book actors.

Which is why his recent and very horrendous(and very painful) near-death accident changes the equation on Renner. Criticism is neutered. Still, all of this commentary is PRE accident.

And I'm not sure if Black Widow was an "original Avenger." I seem to recall a TV cartoon in the 60's with these Avengers: Thor, Captain America, The Hulik, Iron Man. Seems that the Marvel Universe keeps adding 'em in.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Sidebar: MY "Avengers" was the twee British spy series of the 60s(imported to America on ABC) with tweedy John Steed(Patrick MacNee) paired with the eternal sexpot Mrs. Emma Peel(Diana Rigg). The mix of Steed's bowler hat and killer umbrella with Mrs. Peel's black catsuit and light S/M vibe -- THOSE were my avengers.

The series was made into a 1998 Warners movie with Ralph Fiennes and especially Uma Thurman failing to measure up to "mere TV stars" MacNee and Rigg(this same thing happened with the movie version of Miami Vice -- the TV stars were MUCH more charismatic than their movie counterparts)

The 1998 Avengers movie tried to make up for its Steed/Peel flatness by hiring Sean Connery(a bankable superstar) as the VILLAIN, which was pretty cool to me but...the movie flopped, bigtime, and now we have only those other Avengers.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

Endgame hasn't stuck with *me* at all: Fat Thor,

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...and bookish, mild-mannered Hulk!

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Time Travel thanks to Quantum nonsense undid everything in the previous film

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Yep..half the world died and we were invited to cry over the Marvel half dying and then...they all came back. Never mind.

Two major characters "die" in Endgame, and the movie has a funeral service for one of them at the end but -- I didn't believe it at all. Dead ain't dead in that universe.

ON topic: hey, I certainly felt that Marion Crane and Arbogast ended up REAL dead in Psycho. They had been brought to life as such real, intelligent people that their horrific murders had the sting of what murder means: your life is ended decades too soon, violently. You are DEAD. Never coming back.

Marvel don't play that way.

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leading to a big battle that, as always, comes down to punches.

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By the time I got to Endgame, I had purposely missed about 50% of the Marvel movies(I didn't see Captain America: Civil War, even though I liked the first two) and I barely knew what was going on except for a bunch of CGI marvel people all running at each other. The climaxes of the later Marvel movies that I saw seemed to end the same way: the world at stake, CGI overload, confusion.

The funeral that concludes Endgame was interesting in putting all those stars "together" --its an end credits scene BEFORE the ends credit scene -- but it was clear that the were NOT really together -- rather all "digitalized in" in groups of two, three -- or one -- until they formed a "funeral watchers group." Sheesh.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

It was an adequate film (A.O. Scott at the Times called it a 'monument to adequacy'),

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Eh, most of the Marvel films are ...adequate. I go to them for the reason I went to Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson films in the 70's and Joel Silver cop movies in the 80s...a coupla hours of action. My beef with the Marvel movies is they are often incoherent.

BUT: the Marvel films broke through for me with Iron Man, Spiderman 2, and the first two Captain Americas. I found those to be above-par entertainments, well cast.

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not close to being one of the ten best films of the year.

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No...by then Marvel had rather gone beyond being competitive that way.

I'd say only The Dark Knight and perhaps The Dark Knight Rises have the gravitas of a "Ten Best" nominee -- and even if it was a bit more "pop" I am very supportive of the original Burton/Nicholson/Keaton Batman as a work of popular art, seen by multi-millions who REALLY WANTED to see it(we lined up) and who REALLY ENJOYED it. A true event movie.

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It was nominated for only a single Oscar (Visual FX), which it lost to 1917, and I don't remember there being much Nerd Rage about any of that.

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Endgame was what -- the 38th Marvel movie or some such? Oscar just wasn't interested.

--- Rather, everyone kind of realized that Endgame was just OK and that it had mainly been a social and financial event about a studio and the audience it had cultivated over an unprecedented stretch of 15 or so films congratulating each other and themselves for their endurance and perseverance.

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Yes, and I think that's why I am awarding ONLY the end credits sequence of Endgame as an acheivement worth saluting. They said they were going to make all those movies, and they did. And their payola lured a LOT of Oscar winning prestige movie stars into the casts. Plus: Marisa Tomei, aging wonderfully with a little CGI de-aging to help. She's famously a "very hot" "Aunt May" in the new Spiderman films.

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[–] ecarle (14979) a year ago

I've lost track of Marvel's plans for a "Phase Three" with some new characters and/or new actors in old roles(we will have an African-American Captain America.)

Word is that box office is finally starting to fall on some of the new Marvel movies -- could they disappear like Joel Silver cop movies did in the 90s?

Doubtful. Marvel movies can be shovelled into the zillion screens of worldwide distribution forever and keep making SOME money.

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