I feel like this has been a terrible terrible month for fans of superhero films. First we had the huge disappointment of X-Men: The Last Stand (I thought I'd be over it but it's lazy mediocrity continues to grate), than that hideous Ghost Rider trailer. Seriously who WHO while watching Daredevil and Elektra thought that this man should ever get near another comic book franchise again? And when did Marvel lose their smarts about how to manage their lucrative properties? They were so handily beating DC at the superhero movie game and then they just started getting sloppy. Any old director, any old comic will do. Just slap it up there on the screen, make another 100 million. Don't they realize that these things have a cumulative effect and the money will be shortlived. Did they not notice that this is how the very successful Superman and Batman franchise died for DC? Didn't they notice that it took 10 years and a director as talented as Chris Nolan to get the Bat franchise out of the dank laughable cave it had carved for itself? And didn't they notice it took millions upon millions of false starts and decades to restore Superman's luster? If in fact that's what has happened. We are assuming that this new one is good. Don't they realize that a sequel to Fantastic Four will be like when they made a sequel to Charlies Angels? If the public thought the first was kinda dumb, they aren't going to get all excited for a second...
So what put this huge stick up my ass? you may be asking, curious about this sudden rant. It was this little tidbit at 'Coming Soon' about the new Spider-Man film. If we learned anything from Batman sequels and X-Men sequels it's this: The more villians and characters you add, the crappier the movies get. These are not Robert Altman movies. Trust me when I tell you that if Robert Altman's characters had superpowers and were required to go through three or four action setpieces in the course of the running time, he'd have the smarts to whittle down the ensemble. Movies are 90 to 120ish minutes long. They are not television series. Nor are they monthly comic books. These truths ought to be self evident. There's only so much story you can tell. And why waste an audiences first impression of a great comic book character by making it a cameo? Why don't they just get in the pay cable series business instead?
Now, I trust Sam Raimi. He's made two of the best superhero movies ever. I expect the third will be good too. But four villains in Spider-Man 3??? really? The one villian plan worked pretty darn well in the first two movies, didn't it? You got time for all that backstory? Or will this third film be released in installments like Lord of the Rings?tags: movies, XMen, Comic Books, X-Men, Marvel, film, DC, Box Office, Spiderman, Batman
