TV show review - X-Men Evolution

    It was about time I looked at another animated superheroshow. A while back, I talked about the 90’s animated X-Men show. It was for the most part a very good show with only a few bad episodes. At its best, the show was amazing. At its worst, it was painful. Did you know that there are two more X-Men animated shows though (not including the anime series or the 90's pilot that featured an Australian Wolverine?)

I'm posting the rest of this on my other blog, here

My other blog

    I started another blog about a month ago, mostly because of my new found interest in comics. On it, I review comics from the perspective of a new fan for other new fans or people who are interested but have never tried them out. In every review, I try to explain the basic facts you'll need to know before jumping into the series. Every week I also check out a new title I've never read before without any previous research and judge it on both quality and how easy it is for a new reader to jump on. If you have any interest in comics, check it out. I will still update this blog whenever I have the time, and I have stuff in the works, but for now I'll be working on that one more. Also whenever I review a comic related movie, I'll be posting it on both blogs. Below are two sample reviews from my new blog.

X-Men The Age of Apocalypse

    This X-men crossover is fricken brilliant. It’s dark, intense and it’s probably the greatest crossover Marvel Comics has ever produced.

    Every now and then, Marvel will have an alternate universe story. For example, this past spring there was an Age of X crossover in an alternate timeline where mutant kind was fighting a losing war against the human race. In 2005, there was the House of M – a company-wide event that depowered the vast majority of mutants in the main Marvel universe.  These alternate universes offer glimpses at how differently every major character turned out. But I’m not talking about House of M or Age of X today. Heck, I haven’t even read Age of X. I’m going to talk about the Age of Apocalypse.

TV show review - X-Men animated series (90s)

    Ah growing up in the 90's. The decade where Yo-Yos were popular. The decade when every disagreement was settled by rock, paper, scissors. The decade of the Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. Ninja Turtles, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, and some of the worst rap music in history. Excessive sports movies, really slow internet and printers that took two minutes to print a single page. OK fine, maybe not everything in the 90's was awesome, but you get my point. One thing I missed out on in the 90's was all the Superhero animated shows though.

    I recently watched through the entire 90's x-men Animated Series for the first time. As this show doesn't have any nostalgic factor to me, I feel that I can give it a fair review.

    Overall, the show is actually really good. It was also revolutionary as it was one of the first animated TV shows to have a continuing storyline throughout the first few seasons.

X-Men movies vs comics

    Last week, I ranked all the X-men movies as movies, ignoring the comics as much as possible. Now it's time to get really nerdy as I compare them to the comics as much as possible. Rather than talking about the movies in order this time, I'll just talk about whatever comes to mind. Lots of it applies to all the movies anyway.

    I'll start by talking about the positives, because I don't feel like tearing the movies apart without giving them a chance first.

(Xavior and Magneto in X-Men: First Class)

    Xavier and Magneto have both been portrayed very close to their comic counterparts in the movies. If anything, the movies have portrayed Xavier as more of a saint than in the comics, and Magneto as a more realistic character. Either way, the difference is negligible and I have nothing but positive things to say about how these two characters have been portrayed.

(Xavior and Magneto in either X-Men or X2 - they play chess like this in both)

X-Men movies

    I'm taking a short break from reviewing movies this week to talk about the X-men movies. Why? Because since I started reading comics I've been thinking more about these movies. The more I think about them, the more I don't like them. I'm breaking this up into two different posts. For this post, I'll mostly ignore the comics and just talk about the movies themselves, in order of release. The second post will only compare them to the comics and will be nerd rage.

    Before I start tearing them apart, let's focus on the positive.

    It's easy to argue that the first X-men movie revived comic book movies back when it came out. To the average viewer, it wasn't all that bad. Hugh Jackman was great as Wolverine, Proffesor X and Magneto were perfectly cast, and the rest of the supporting cast was relatively strong, save for a few (I'll get to that later.) Another strong point for this movie is Wolverine's relationship with Rogue. In the comics, Wolverine often hangs out with teenage girls. He's not a pedophile; he acts more like a father to them, because being around teenage girls brings out his better side. He'd be a much more savage man if not for hanging around people like Jubilee and Shadowcat, and this movie does a good job at portraying that.

Movie Review - Catwoman

    I know it's a bit late, but I'm doing this review partly because Ann Hathaway is portraying Catwoman in the upcoming The Dark Knight Returns. Why not celebrate that by reviewing what might actually be the worst Batman related movie ever.

(Hathaway's promo shot as Catwoman)

    Before I get started, let me say that I know little about Catwoman. All my information on Catwoman comes from the Adam West Batman movie, Batman Returns, Lego Batman, and the little information I've gained from Linkara's comic reviews. As you would imagine, I don't exactly trust sources like Lego Batman and the Adam West series for what the characters are like in the comics. Anyway, let's get this over with.

X-23

    Wolverine with boobs and a chemical trigger; that’s one way to sum up my favorite Mavel comic character. It’s very misleading though. I briefly mentioned her in my previous review, but I feel like talking more about her just cause.

    X-23 is a child soldier character in the X-men franchise. For the first 13 years of her life, she was raised in a laboratory, trained as a killer, and used to kill all sorts of people for money. Eventually she escaped, and killed everyone that worked in the lab, and has since joined the X-men and is trying to overcome her upbringing and find her place in the world. Despite the fact that she was discouraged from any kind of attachment to anyone (the lab even forced her to kill her sensei and her mother,) she is learning compassion for others, even her enemies as of late, and is fiercely protective of her fellow X-men. Oh, and she happens to be a clone of Wolverine. Wait, what?

Game Review - X-Men: The Official Game (GBA version)

    X-Men: The official Game is a tie-in to X-Men 3: The Last Stand. As we all know, games based on movies are always amazing, right?

    To be fair, most movie-based games have a very limited development schedule, and are released at the same time as the movie. As a result, it's not usually the developers fault when the end result is lackluster at best. Most good movie-based games didn't even release with the movie, like Super Star Wars for example.

    So why would I seek out this game, knowing full well that it would likely suck? Curiosity. As I said in my somewhat crappy Deadpool post, I recently got into comics. Part of what pushed me into comics was Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, a recently released fighting game that pits Marvel comic characters against Capcom characters in one of the most anticipated games in the last decade (it's been eleven years since Marvel vs. Capcom 2 first released.) More specifically one character, introduced to me in MVC3, got me into comics - X-23. I'll likely talk more about her in the future, but to make long story short she's a child soldier character who was forced to kill people at a very young age. She eventually escaped the facility, and she's since joined the X-men...and she happens to be a clone of Wolverine. I couldn't really tell you why, but child soldier-type characters interest me, to the point that I've actually written fictional stories about my own characters like that in the past. Anyway, I was curious about X-men: The Official Game for the Game Boy Advance because it's actually X-23's first appearance in a video game.

    I've been babbling on enough though, it's time to start the review.

Deadpool

    The last few weeks have been really busy, so I don't really have time to write a movie review this week. Instead, I'm just going to talk about one of the most awesome comic book characters in existence, Deadpool.

    Deadpool is a Marvel Comics character. Originally portrayed as a villain, he is now more of a comedic character than anything else. Often breaking the fourth wall for laughs, acting insane, or just talking other superheroes' ears off. He's so popular that he currently has 3 or 4 ongoing series to himself, as well as regular appearances in the Uncanny X-Force. Wait, why am I talking about Deadpool in a movie/games blog? Simple, they're working on a movie. Not sure how long it'll take, but here's hoping they do it right - unlike the Wolverine Origins version.

    So what made Deadpool as crazy as he is. Well, he had terminal cancer, so the Weapon X program, the same program that laced Wolverine's skeleton with metal, injected his cancer with some healing factor. It's kind of confusing, but he's pretty much immortal, his body is cancer, he's insane, and how quickly he heals from injuries depends on his mental state or something like that.

    That's about all I got for now. Hopefully I can post my next movie review next week, but it's already looking pretty busy again.

Movie Review - Superman, the 1975 Musical

    Remember Superman 4? It holds nothing to the 1975 Superman musical in terms of pure, concentrated suckitude.

    “It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman” was a broadway musical first produced in 1966. The show was generally well received but failed to catch on to audiences. Heck, it received several Tony Award nominations. It’s had several revivals since – most recently last year in Dallas. Easily the most notorious was this piece of crap, which seriously cut the piece down in length and removed much of the energy from the original production. But is it really that bad? Does it deserve all those scathing reviews it received over the years?

Game Review - Superman 64

    Holy Crap! Those are the first words that come to my mouth after playing this…thing. Superman for the N64 is an abomination to the gaming world in every sense if the word. The rest of this will be more of an angry rant than a review, but that’s cause there really is no other way to review this.

    OK, maybe I’m getting a-little ahead of myself; I haven’t even talked about the game yet. For those of you who are fans of the Angry Videogame Nerd you've probably seen his video review already (warning - language) - don’t worry, I’ll be covering plenty of new ground here. For those who aren’t familiar, let me explain this game. It’s often referred to as Superman 64 even though it’s just called Superman, probably because the Nintendo 64 has a reputation of putting “64” at the end of its titles, just like the Super Nintendo had the reputation of putting Super at the start of its titles. The game doesn’t use the John William’s theme, as the developers Titus (what kind of stupid developer name is that anyway?) would rather use some generic, unmemorable background music.

    The game’s story is that Lex Luthor has brought Superman’s friends into some virtual world. How? Why? Also, if he made this virtual world, why not make it so that Superman loses his abilities when he enters it, because nothing else in this world is consistent with the laws of physics. This game mostly comprises of flying through rings. Yup, for some reason Superman has to fly through rings to get where he needs to go.  If he misses too many rings, he fails and has to try again. Why is it so important that Superman flies through these rings? Also, if Lex can make Superman fly through these rings, then again - why doesn’t he just disable Superman’s powers? Everything about the game’s premise makes absolutely no sense.

Movie Review - Steel

    Steel is about a superhero named, well, Steel. In this 1997 movie, the hero Steel is played by basketball star Shaquille O'Neal. The hero Steel was originally a sidekick of sorts of Superman's, so making a movie starring a sidekick superhero is a recipe for success, especially when it stars one of the biggest NBA stars ever. Don't believe me, then read on as I describe this incredible picture.

    We start off with the opening credits, as we watch the excitement of molten metal pouring. Yup, that's all we see during the opening credits, and life is good. The actual movie starts with a scene where some laser takes down a tank. The suspense is burning, who did this? Where did these lasers come from? Then it's revealed that it's just a military demonstration for weapons research. We then see that Shaq (his character's name is Irons, but I'll just call him Shaq for this review) whose one of the research leaders. He and his female partner, sparky, are fairly close as you can see with their secret handshake where they touch fingers. There's also Burk, another member of the research team. You can tell right away that he's the evil guy, which is good because suspense is boring.

Movie Review - Superman 2: Richard Donner cut

Just saw the Richard Donner cut of Superman 2 for the first time.

    For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I'll explain. Richard Donner was the director behind the first Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve. During the filming of Superman 1, around 70% of Superman 2 was filmed as well. However, before Donner could finish the movie, they handed the series over to Richard Lester, who re-shot many of Donner's scenes and changed the movie overall. In 2006, Donner was allowed to restore his version as best he could, and this is the result. If you haven't seen either version of the movie, you probably won't get much out of this post. Plus...Spoilers!

    Overall, I liked the Donner cut, in fact I liked it better than the original...for the most part. His version was overall more compelling and darker. While much of the movie features the same scenes regardless of the versions you watch, Donner's camera angles are almost always better. But as much as both versions contain the same story and many of the same scenes, they are completely different movies.

Top 11 Superhero Movies

Superhero movies are all the rage these days. We're getting more comic book adaptations  than we are pretty much anything else. We've got several reboots in the works (Superman, Spider-Man exec), many sequels (untitled Batman 3, Iron Man 2, exec), and...just too many to count. So I'm going to list off my 11 favorite Superhero movies ever.

11. Superman Returns - While no where nearly as good as the original two starring Christopher Reeves, this is a strong enough movie in it's own right. The special effects are amazing, especially in the airplane scene. This movie wisely ignores the existence of Superman 3 and 4, and instead says that Superman left Earth for a while and has returned. He finds that the world has moved on without him. What follows is a rather dramatic movie, although perhaps too dramatic at times. Kevin Spacey is awesome as Lex Luthor, however Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth look too young as Superman and Lois Lane. Overall, a strong movie, even if it's not the strongest Superman movie ever.

Movie Review - Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

    Superman is one of the most famous superheroes in existence. And why shouldn't he be? He's a representation of everything a superhero should be. He's kind, he's very smart, he's insanely powerful, and he can fly. Despite this, he has his weaknesses to Kryptonite, a radioactive substance from his now destroyed home world, as well as  magic (we never see this in the movie series however.) The first two Superman movies were awesome, and despite their age I'd argue they're among the best superhero movies I've ever seen. Superman 3 sucked, that's all you need to know about it, but Superman 4 is a great movie and returned the franchise to it's roots. It also has an engaging anti-nuclear story that will keep you at the edge of your seats the whole time.

    It starts out in space, where an astronaut is working outside on his ship. Out of no where, a piece of a spaceship nails him in the face. Owned! He's knocked away from the ship, but luckily Superman comes and saves him. He guides the spaceman back into the airlock and then speaks in space. It's here when we learn about the first of his new superpowers in this movie, cause flying, virtual invincibility, laser eyes, X-ray vision, super speed, and ice breath wasn't enough. The rest of the movie has many different sub-plots, so I'll be focusing on one at a time rather than jumping all over.