Other predictions for the team:
- A new Ronin
- Iron Fist
- Moon Knight
- Marvel Boy
- Songbird
- Mockingbird
I swear I'll post something not related to New Avengers soon!
Showing posts with label Wolverine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wolverine. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
No surprise: Wolverine is a New Avenger
Just as I predicted yesterday, it was announced today @ CBR that Wolverine will remain as part of the new New Avengers lineup.
Other predictions for the team:
- A new Ronin
- Iron Fist
- Moon Knight
- Marvel Boy
- Songbird
- Mockingbird
I swear I'll post something not related to New Avengers soon!
Other predictions for the team:
- A new Ronin
- Iron Fist
- Moon Knight
- Marvel Boy
- Songbird
- Mockingbird
I swear I'll post something not related to New Avengers soon!
Friday, May 1, 2009
Some Opinions on X-Men Origins: Wolverine
This seemed like such a shoe-in.
While the disappointment that was X-Men 3: The Last Stand suffered from an excessive amount of characters and plotlines, a brief timetable for filming, and the ill-suited director Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour fame), it really seemed like they would get their act together for the fourth installment in the movie franchise.
When it was announced that Gavin Hood, the director of the award-winning African film Tsotsi was going to be behind the helm, things looked promising. The fact that they were spending so much time on the film made it seem like things were going to be even better. At the time, it seemed that there was no weak link in the formula. A very focused and human look at the world's favorite mutant was potentially in the works, and there weren't any weak links that could be spotted.
Of course, I hadn't read the script at the time when I was forecasting. My mistake! While it seems like I had high hopes for the franchise, I knew that the law of superhero movie production was that unless Chris Nolan is behind the camera, there is no way to tell whether the project is going to be good. I walked in expecting nothing more than a decent film: some *snikt*ing here and there, some fun fights and some even cooler flashback sequences would have made my night.
Instead, we were given a real snoozer of a film. While the first two X-Men films did an excellent job (arguably an even better job than the comics at the time were doing) of developing the characters, showing anti-mutant tensions, and above all else, showing why the X-Men matter in their world, X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn't seem to have any heart at all. The severe lack of time they spent establishing the character and the conflicts in his world made for a plot structure without any foundation. Consequently, as the plot structure continues to build upon that vacuum, the pacing sputs and stalls, the dramatic moments are stale, and it builds to a conclusion that is almost laughable.
As if that wasn't enough, the cancer that infected the crux of the story seemed to have gone malignant through the scripting process, because various other aspects of the film seemed to be infected as well. Virtually all of the dialogue and plot structure are insultingly predictable, with a plot twist that is so transparent it makes you wonder why it was even there at all.
Like the other films, there are various unnamed references to the diverse array of mutants in the X-Men universe, and yet most of these references are completely contradictory to the canon of the comics. Silverfox, Wolverine's love interest of Native American descent, reveals toward the end of the film that she has a sister in captivity. That sister ends up being Emma Frost. Aside from the fact that there is no sibling relation of this kind in the comic book, tell me - How on Earth could a Native American woman be related directly to a blonde British woman? In this case, the writers consciously entered a lose-lose situation where the references pass over the mainstream audience's head and the devoted comic book fans who actually get the references are insulted by the lack of reverence for the source material. Why bother?
One of the primary functions of the movie was to cement the backstory of the character and lead into the continuity of the X-Men trilogy. However, this movie only seems to confuse and convolute the continuity of the story, not clarify it. One of the biggest, gaping plotholes of the whole construction is that the entire movie focuses on the relationship between Wolverine and big brother Sabretooth over the years, as Wolverine fights his animalistic nature and Sabretooth relishes it, teasing his brother over the denial of his true nature. Not only does Liev Schreiber's portrayal of a physically flexible, agile, short-haired, and conversant Sabretooth completely contradict the stiff in body and language take on the character in the first X-Men movie, but there is one very critical gap in the link between the two films: Wolverine loses his memory of his past at the end of the film, whereas Sabretooth does not.
See the resemblance?
Now tell me, why does a character who says "You will always be my brother" as he departs at the end of this film suddenly become quiet and demure during their subsequent encounters later in the timeline? Wouldn't he make some passing reference to their relation? It makes you wonder why they bothered at...
Wait a second, did I already say that about something else in the movie? Maybe I'm getting it wrong by breaking the movie down and talking about how each component not needing to exist and missing the big picture: the whole movie doesn't need to exist. See it and your 90 minutes of boredom at the viewing experience will incline you to agree.
While the disappointment that was X-Men 3: The Last Stand suffered from an excessive amount of characters and plotlines, a brief timetable for filming, and the ill-suited director Brett Ratner (of Rush Hour fame), it really seemed like they would get their act together for the fourth installment in the movie franchise.
When it was announced that Gavin Hood, the director of the award-winning African film Tsotsi was going to be behind the helm, things looked promising. The fact that they were spending so much time on the film made it seem like things were going to be even better. At the time, it seemed that there was no weak link in the formula. A very focused and human look at the world's favorite mutant was potentially in the works, and there weren't any weak links that could be spotted.
Of course, I hadn't read the script at the time when I was forecasting. My mistake! While it seems like I had high hopes for the franchise, I knew that the law of superhero movie production was that unless Chris Nolan is behind the camera, there is no way to tell whether the project is going to be good. I walked in expecting nothing more than a decent film: some *snikt*ing here and there, some fun fights and some even cooler flashback sequences would have made my night.
Instead, we were given a real snoozer of a film. While the first two X-Men films did an excellent job (arguably an even better job than the comics at the time were doing) of developing the characters, showing anti-mutant tensions, and above all else, showing why the X-Men matter in their world, X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn't seem to have any heart at all. The severe lack of time they spent establishing the character and the conflicts in his world made for a plot structure without any foundation. Consequently, as the plot structure continues to build upon that vacuum, the pacing sputs and stalls, the dramatic moments are stale, and it builds to a conclusion that is almost laughable.
As if that wasn't enough, the cancer that infected the crux of the story seemed to have gone malignant through the scripting process, because various other aspects of the film seemed to be infected as well. Virtually all of the dialogue and plot structure are insultingly predictable, with a plot twist that is so transparent it makes you wonder why it was even there at all.
Like the other films, there are various unnamed references to the diverse array of mutants in the X-Men universe, and yet most of these references are completely contradictory to the canon of the comics. Silverfox, Wolverine's love interest of Native American descent, reveals toward the end of the film that she has a sister in captivity. That sister ends up being Emma Frost. Aside from the fact that there is no sibling relation of this kind in the comic book, tell me - How on Earth could a Native American woman be related directly to a blonde British woman? In this case, the writers consciously entered a lose-lose situation where the references pass over the mainstream audience's head and the devoted comic book fans who actually get the references are insulted by the lack of reverence for the source material. Why bother?
One of the primary functions of the movie was to cement the backstory of the character and lead into the continuity of the X-Men trilogy. However, this movie only seems to confuse and convolute the continuity of the story, not clarify it. One of the biggest, gaping plotholes of the whole construction is that the entire movie focuses on the relationship between Wolverine and big brother Sabretooth over the years, as Wolverine fights his animalistic nature and Sabretooth relishes it, teasing his brother over the denial of his true nature. Not only does Liev Schreiber's portrayal of a physically flexible, agile, short-haired, and conversant Sabretooth completely contradict the stiff in body and language take on the character in the first X-Men movie, but there is one very critical gap in the link between the two films: Wolverine loses his memory of his past at the end of the film, whereas Sabretooth does not.
See the resemblance?Now tell me, why does a character who says "You will always be my brother" as he departs at the end of this film suddenly become quiet and demure during their subsequent encounters later in the timeline? Wouldn't he make some passing reference to their relation? It makes you wonder why they bothered at...
Wait a second, did I already say that about something else in the movie? Maybe I'm getting it wrong by breaking the movie down and talking about how each component not needing to exist and missing the big picture: the whole movie doesn't need to exist. See it and your 90 minutes of boredom at the viewing experience will incline you to agree.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Marvel Book I'm Most Looking Forward To
Marvel has had a lot of great books lately. There's Fraction and Larroca's INVINCIBLE IRON MAN, Straczynski and Coipel's THOR, Garth Ennis's PUNISHER MAX, Ed Brubaker's work on both CAPTAIN AMERICA and DAREDEVIL, and Mark Millar's work on Wolverine: Old Man Logan.
What's the commonality between these? Critically acclaimed talent exercising their creative muscle telling relatively continuity free stories with their characters of choice. Judging by the fact that Marvel now has over 52% of the market share as well as the fact that of the seven total recipients for the Eisner award for Best Writer, two of them are current Marvel exclusives (Ed Brubaker won in '07 and '08 and Bendis won in '02 and '03) and all of them with the exception of Alan Moore have done work at Marvel in the last five years.
In short - Marvel is kicking ass. And they have yet another book that's going to be added to the aforementioned roster with WOLVERINE: WEAPON X by Jason Aaron and Ron Garney.
If you're not familiar with Jason Aaron, he's the writer of SCALPED, which is a crime comic that takes place on an Indian reservation and is quite possibly the single best Vertigo book right now, one that might possibly end up in the same ranks as Y: THE LAST MAN, PREACHER, and THE SANDMAN. It seemed like before I had the chance to even pick up the trades and see what everybody was talking about, Marvel had already picked up the guy in an exclusive deal, having Aaron pick up scripting duties on GHOST RIDER and WOLVERINE.
The WOLVERINE storyline he was hired to write was a 4 part storyline following the Messiah Complex storyline entitled Get Mystique. During the Messiah Complex storyline, several forces struggled for the life of the newest mutant baby to be born since the catastrophic House of M event where the mutant count was limited to only 198 and mutantkind was rendered essentially infertile. With mutant extinction just on the edge of the horizon, it doesn't take Professor X to tell you that this mutant baby is pretty damn important. In the midst of the chaos, Mystique steals the baby and nearly kills it in an act of selfishness.
What is Cyclops' response to this? Find Mystique, wherever the hell she is, and kill her. No questions asked. Just Wolverine and nobody else.
The whole storyline was Wolverine tracing her steps through the Middle East. As he gets closer and closer to her whereabouts, we're treated to flashbacks of Wolverine and Mystique's relationship through the ages as bank robbers in the 1920's and the long history of blood, betrayal, and sex that has happened since. To further complicate matters, Mystique has been using her shapeshifting powers to impersonate Wolverine as she savages her way through the countryside, so Wolverine isn't exactly greeted with friendly cooperation in his search.
What resulted was a really fun and imaginitive story that has actually reinvigorated my interest in the character. Previously I had always thought that Wolverine was a big cliche, another Clint Eastwood persona: a strong silent tragic hero with a rough and tumble attitude, a guilty conscience, and a heart of gold underneath that's visible underneath the layer of piss and vinegar.
Aaron brought out a new angle on the character by understanding that a character that has lived for 200+ years has a rich and complex history, any of which you can draw from in flashback sequences or have other figures from his past come back to bite him, something which seems so obvious in retrospect. He didn't change the character, but he figured out new situations to elicit what makes him resonate. Quite simply, he seemed like a very reasonable pick to write the book after Millar's completion of the Old Man Logan storyline.
Imagine my surprise when Marvel had not only taken my suggestion, but they'd taken it one step further and created a whole new book for him. WOLVERINE: WEAPON X will be a long running series done exclusively by Jason Aaron and artist Ron Garney. In a CBR X-position interview, Aaron gave some hints about what to expect that got me really pumped.
The book will be relatively continuity free ("This is a Wolverine series for people who've never read the character's adventures, who don't know anything about his long and complicated history"), will jump from genre to genre ("The first arc is a gritty, black-ops espionage tale. Future arcs will range from horror to even sci-fi"), and will be pretty high in the violence factor ("If I'm writing it, chances are it'll be bloody. I'm disturbed like that").
My hypothesis? This run has "seminal" written all over it.
What's the commonality between these? Critically acclaimed talent exercising their creative muscle telling relatively continuity free stories with their characters of choice. Judging by the fact that Marvel now has over 52% of the market share as well as the fact that of the seven total recipients for the Eisner award for Best Writer, two of them are current Marvel exclusives (Ed Brubaker won in '07 and '08 and Bendis won in '02 and '03) and all of them with the exception of Alan Moore have done work at Marvel in the last five years.
In short - Marvel is kicking ass. And they have yet another book that's going to be added to the aforementioned roster with WOLVERINE: WEAPON X by Jason Aaron and Ron Garney.
If you're not familiar with Jason Aaron, he's the writer of SCALPED, which is a crime comic that takes place on an Indian reservation and is quite possibly the single best Vertigo book right now, one that might possibly end up in the same ranks as Y: THE LAST MAN, PREACHER, and THE SANDMAN. It seemed like before I had the chance to even pick up the trades and see what everybody was talking about, Marvel had already picked up the guy in an exclusive deal, having Aaron pick up scripting duties on GHOST RIDER and WOLVERINE.
The WOLVERINE storyline he was hired to write was a 4 part storyline following the Messiah Complex storyline entitled Get Mystique. During the Messiah Complex storyline, several forces struggled for the life of the newest mutant baby to be born since the catastrophic House of M event where the mutant count was limited to only 198 and mutantkind was rendered essentially infertile. With mutant extinction just on the edge of the horizon, it doesn't take Professor X to tell you that this mutant baby is pretty damn important. In the midst of the chaos, Mystique steals the baby and nearly kills it in an act of selfishness.
What is Cyclops' response to this? Find Mystique, wherever the hell she is, and kill her. No questions asked. Just Wolverine and nobody else.
The whole storyline was Wolverine tracing her steps through the Middle East. As he gets closer and closer to her whereabouts, we're treated to flashbacks of Wolverine and Mystique's relationship through the ages as bank robbers in the 1920's and the long history of blood, betrayal, and sex that has happened since. To further complicate matters, Mystique has been using her shapeshifting powers to impersonate Wolverine as she savages her way through the countryside, so Wolverine isn't exactly greeted with friendly cooperation in his search.
What resulted was a really fun and imaginitive story that has actually reinvigorated my interest in the character. Previously I had always thought that Wolverine was a big cliche, another Clint Eastwood persona: a strong silent tragic hero with a rough and tumble attitude, a guilty conscience, and a heart of gold underneath that's visible underneath the layer of piss and vinegar.
Aaron brought out a new angle on the character by understanding that a character that has lived for 200+ years has a rich and complex history, any of which you can draw from in flashback sequences or have other figures from his past come back to bite him, something which seems so obvious in retrospect. He didn't change the character, but he figured out new situations to elicit what makes him resonate. Quite simply, he seemed like a very reasonable pick to write the book after Millar's completion of the Old Man Logan storyline.
Imagine my surprise when Marvel had not only taken my suggestion, but they'd taken it one step further and created a whole new book for him. WOLVERINE: WEAPON X will be a long running series done exclusively by Jason Aaron and artist Ron Garney. In a CBR X-position interview, Aaron gave some hints about what to expect that got me really pumped.
The book will be relatively continuity free ("This is a Wolverine series for people who've never read the character's adventures, who don't know anything about his long and complicated history"), will jump from genre to genre ("The first arc is a gritty, black-ops espionage tale. Future arcs will range from horror to even sci-fi"), and will be pretty high in the violence factor ("If I'm writing it, chances are it'll be bloody. I'm disturbed like that").
My hypothesis? This run has "seminal" written all over it.
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