So I'm gonna do it 'Top 10 Countdown' style, so that the suspense will keep building and building, and you will all be on the edges of your seats, and about ready to burst when I reveal my number one. And you will all sing songs about how glorious of a Top Ten-erer that I am. Also, I'd like a pony.
So to start with, I'm gonna first list the movies that didn't make the cut, and a (hopefully but not likely since it's me and I'm extremely long-winded) brief synopsis of why the movie didn't make the cut. Like in Project Runway, I wished each failing movie 'Auf wiedersehen' like Heidi Klum, and kissed them twice, once on each cheek, except for Batman & Robin, which I did NOT kiss, and in fact slapped across the face with an open hand.
First, the Terrible-As-All-Get-Out movies:
Superman Returns- Okay, I was absolutely stoked about a new Superman when I heard about it. Superman is so iconic, and the thought of watching him fly around and destroy evil with new CGI technology really made me excited. And there was that awesome airplane scene, which by itself might be almost enough to make this movie an owner. But here is the thing- the movie was just a nicely packaged rehash of the original 'Superman' movie- but without Christopher Reeves as Superman. Same plot...no thank you.
Batman & Robin- Um, wow, just terrible. George Clooney was made for ER. Alicia Silverstone was made for clueless. In fact, the redeeming trait of this movie is the brief cameo of Michael Reid MacKay (the guy who got turned into Bane), who played Jason 143 in X-Men 2, and who was blessed by God with an extremely ugly and creepy face. It was terribly sad to see Joel Schumacher ruin the proud Batman franchise 1.0, although Tim Burton started the downhill descent with a God-awful Batman Returns.
Batman, seriously. How are you going to strike fear in your enemies when all they can think about is the nipples?
Batman returns- God-awful. Christopher Walken, who is in my top five list of 'Fathers that I would not want to date their daughters (along with Hulk Hogan) looked so creepy that he was silly- you know how if you sit in front of a fire for too long, it starts to feel cold? That's what happened with Christopher Walken. Danny DeVito was not a very good Penguin (that, and the Penguin has never been a fav villain of mine...think about a fat bird that wabbles and can't fly. Where is the danger in that?). Some think that Michelle Pfieffer is sexy, but I'm not buying...so she had no redeeming qualities to me as Catwoman (although Halle Berry, who is sexy, didn't exactly fit my view of Catwoman. Maybe they should have taken someone from the show 'Cats'.
Now THAT is a Catwoman
Fantastic Four 1 and 2- Here's my two main beefs with the FF franchise- 1) No way if the Invisible Woman of comicdom was Jessica Albaesque does she choose Reed Richards over Victor Von Doom, especially if Mr. Fantastic has the same handsome deficit to Doctor Doom that he did in the movies. 2)How does Doctor Doom, an evil genius on par with Mr. Fantastic, lose to the FF TWICE while basically being an all-powerful being- especially when he was in possession of the Power Cosmic in the second movie. NO WAY! These movies did have some redeeming qualities- Ioan Gruffud, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis were very well cast as members of the Fantastic Four, so they got 75% of the casting right. And the special effects of the Silver Surfer were amazing! Oh, I just remembered beef #3- the botching of Galactus. Yeah, that would have been a huge undertaking, but I would have rather they just skipped a Galactus cameo and then did him awesomely in Fantastic Four 3 than doing a sucky 10 second stint. This to me rivaled the exclusion of Shelob from 'The Two Towers' in terms of Things That I Expected That Didn't Happen In A Movie That Made Me Mad And Almost Inspired To Write My Congressperson.
Ghost Rider- Nicholas Cage as Ghost Rider. Seriously, you try to put the softest actor in Hollywood as an avenging spirit? That, and Mephisto/Blackheart in human form wasn't really doing it for me. If I'm watching a comic book movie, I expect to see characters like they would be in the comics. Ghost Rider, you disappointed me one too many times.
I'm not really seeing it either.
Daredevil- Ben Affleck made a wonderful Matt Murdock. But as Daredevil? How about no? Plus, Kingpin was NOT black in the comics...I realize that might not be a politically correct thing to say, but it's also not comic accurate, and in this case, comic accuracy trumps civil rights. And Jennifer Garner a good Elektra did not make. How she scored a solo movie out of this terribly portrayed movie has to go down as one of the biggest coups of movie history.
Hulk- Let's just say this about Hulk. Hulk released in 2003, and they completely severed ties with it in the movie that released in 2008. I mean, it's one thing if like, say with Batman, they're like 'okay, we've let this thing run it's course, 4 movies is plenty'- and then waited like 15 years to redo it. But this is just ONE movie and only 5 years later- the fact that Hollywood did not thing it would be worth their wasteful spending to do a sequel speaks volumes about 'Hulk Smash'. More like, 'Hulk Suck'.
Judge Dredd- Here's the difference between high school sophomore Jason and Jason now. Back then, high school sophomore Jason thought that Sylvester Stallone was a great actor. He thought Rob Schneider was funny. He thought that Judge Dredd was an awesome movie. Whereas Jason now realizes that high school sophomore was an uncultured idiot and wishes he could go back in time and beat that Jason up.
These ones JUST missed the cut:
Punisher (with Thomas Jane, not Dolph Lundgren)- Disclaimer- I saw it on FX, so I saw the edited version. If I would have seen that guy get his piercings ripped out, this would not have been as high on my list. I liked Thomas Jane as the Punisher, and that part of me that cries out for justice was tickled pink at seeing the Punisher cut down the swarms of bad guys on his mission of revenge. 'Via con dios, Go with God'. The Punisher says, 'God's gonna sit this one out', very funny line.
Why it missed the cut: I'm not a big fan of violent films. That and John Travolta. I mean, seriously? You expect me to watch this and not think he's going to break out into Saturday Night Fever or the hand jive every time he's trying to be 'evil'? Maybe he does the evil hand jive, which looks a lot like the hand jive, but without that stupid Grease song.
Spider-man 3- Spider-man movies rate very highly on my list in terms of casting- greatness fo' shizzle. I love Venom, the Sandman special effects were off the hook, I loved the music (especially the film score when the Sandman first becomes the Sandman), and seeing Tobey MacGuire play a 'bad' Peter Parker was funny stuff. Oh, and the scene in the cathedral was one of the best in the entire Spider-man trilogy. It started off with Eddie Brock praying for God to humiliate Spider-man (which was really funny) and ended exactly the way I always pictured the symbiote binding to Eddie Brock. So what gives?
Why it missed the cut: Obviously they didn't learn anything from Batman & Robin. You really can't do any more than 2 villains in a movie and expect coherent plot development. They just tried to fit WAY too much into that movie. And let's be honest- they totally butchered Venom. I mean, I was stoked to find out that he was going to be in the movie, and in tears of disappointment at how they slaughtered it. He should have been WAY larger than Spider-man, he should have talked monsterish, he should have been the bad guy for the whole movie, he SHOULD NOT HAVE DIED- I stayed through the credits at the end, expecting symbiote residue to crawl across the cement. That's 5:17 of my life that I can't get back. The mishandling of Venom alone almost made this movie fall off the map, and only the redeeming qualities listed above allowed this movie to save face in the 'just made the cut list', saving it from being lumped in with really sucky movies like the Hulk and Batman & Robin.
X-men 3- Congrats, Brian Singer. You left X-Men for Superman- and in the process ruined not one movie, but 2 movies!
Why it missed the cut: Look, X-Men 3 was executed techincally well as a movie, but it totally lacked the magic of the first two. If you watch them back to back to back, you'd think that someone tried to slip Judge Dredd in there at the end. I mean, seriously, this movie did not fit with the first two. Plus, I have a significant list of complaints against X-3. 1)They mishandled the Phoenix. 2)They mishandled Juggernaut. 3) They killed Cyclops. 4) They killed Professor X. 5)Mystique looked different. 6)No Nightcrawler. Wow, why did this movie just miss the cut? Maybe I'm not qualified to rate movies. Maybe you're not qualified to read my blog. Let's just agree to disagree...
Well, that's it for the failures. Tune in next time when I actually GET to the top movies...you'll love it, unless you hate it.
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