Acquiring and watching the Ghostrider duology got me in a mood to revisit more 2000's Marvel.
So, I re-watched all the movies for all the guest-appearance characters in "Deadpool & Wolverine".
Spoilers ahead.
D&W poster as a FB spoiler shield.
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-Blade trilogy DVD acquisition review.
Okay!!
First, the Blades...
I'm pretty decently sure Blade did the first "superhero landing".
I gotta see D&W again, but I think they actually riffed on this.
If this is so, they need to call it "the Blade landing".
He does it in all 3 flicks too. Sometimes multiple.
Speaking of Deadpool; Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King in "Blade Trinity" is totally a sneak preview to his Deadpool. Totally.
Fun fact I learned this go through; Hannibal King originated "cock-juggling thundercunt".
Tamar Garish used this on Margaret/Garamet, and it became a board meme with accompanying emoji, and Tamar totally stole it from proto-Deadpool.
Interesting, Tamar....
Now, I'm not surprised Marvel had RL wrestlers for baddies, I'm just surprised they didn't use them more.
Triple-H in "Blade Trinity". Kevin Nash in "Punisher" and that's it.
An outsider to the genre would assume one for every flick, but no.
Hot take: Parker Posey's evil female vampire performance kind of plants seeds for Heath Ledger Joker.
Fight me!
Jumping back to "Blade II" for a sec. Damn, what a cast.
Cat from "Red Dwarf".
Daryl from "Walking Dead".
Proto-Hellboy.
Chirrut from "Rogue One".
Jamie's dad from the upcoming "Outlander" prequel.
It's a franchise swiss army knife!
X-Men Origins: Wolverine-
I proceeded directly to this one for the Ryan Reynolds connection.
If Hannibal King is proto-Deadpool this Deadpool is Deadpool 1.5.
Revised prototype.
Aaaand....we don't get much of him being Deadpool.
He cracks all his jokes as Wade Wilson.
Everyone in the flick hates his jokes.
Then he disappears, they fake his death, then he comes back as a Frankenstein monster, and he's ruined.
Necessitating real-Deadpool coming back in time in "Deadpool 2" to kill this blasphemous pretender.
They also made it a thing in "Blade Trinity" of everyone hating Hannibal's jokes.
WTF was with superheroes hating comedians in the 00's?
Deadpool was a thing in the comics, and he was popular.
Nerds have a sense of humor. We welcome funny into our precious genre.
I know it may not seem like it from the fucking Star Wars fandom lately, but damn.
Well, I think the billion dollar box-office of D&W has sent the message.
In the 00's there was a weird stick up Hollywood's butt.
I think they thought if you made a hero movie funny, it would end up like "Batman & Robin".
That gave Hollywood PTSD for some reason. It scared them shitless like it killed their pets in front of them or something.
It was really weird.
Oh!! Spoiler-y tidbit I noticed!
In this one, Sabretooth is like "you don't know how to kill me".
Wolverine tells Sabretooth "I'll cut your damned head off; see if that works".
Wolverine in D&W finally cuts his damned head off.
I gotta see D&W again to see if there's a payoff line. Bet there is.
Daredevil & Elektra-
Okay, so here's how you know how badly "Daredevil" must have been at leaving an impression.
"Batman Forever" didn't do great, and critics shredded it, but it's still forever linked to "Kiss From A Rose" by Seal.
"Batman & Robin" gave fans and studio bosses PTSD as previously mentioned.
And yet!!
It's still forever linked with "The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning" by The Smashing Pumpkins
And not in a bad way!!
Daredevil has "Bring Me To Life" by Evanescence.
Their premiere hit!
The one everyone knows!
Does anyone think of Elektra's training sequence when it pops up on classic hits radio?
I mean, I do now, cuz I'm a geeky weirdo for this shit, but do normies think of it?
Nah. Never comes up.
Odd how these things work out.
As far as I know, from the mid-2010's on, superhero movies don't have signature pop hits anymore.
You either get jukebox classics like "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and "Deadpool" or you get straight orchestra scores.
Last one I remember was "Live To Rise" from Soundgarden for "The Avengers".
Oh!! Wait!
Celine Dion did "Out Of Ashes" for "Deadpool 2".
I'm sure it was as a parody of the signature hit era.
It ironically ends up being the retroactive last signature hit.
Anyway!! To the movie itself!
Like "Blade II" another stacked cast!
Future-Batman as Daredevil.
Future-Penguin as Bullseye.
Future-Happy-Hogan as Foggy Nelson.
John Coffey as Kingpin.
Joey Pants as the reporter guy.
Kevin Smith as the morgue guy.
Little weird guy from "Very Bad Things" as Kingpin's assistant.
Jason Voorhees as a mob enforcer.
Coolio (only in the director's cut).
That's right, Coolio is canon!
Anyway! This has been observed in a million memes, but I'll re-observe it.
Daredevil is the real Batman.
Batman just wears a costume. Daredevil actually has radar sense like a bat.
Daredevil only isn't Batman because DC is sitting on the name like jerks.
Yay, capitalism.
It's a shame this faded into relative obscurity.
The writing isn't Oscar worthy, but it's sure as Hell better than the whole Burton-Batman quadrilogy.
I think the Marvel brand just hadn't grown enough for people to give these early flicks a chance.
Daredevil wasn't a household name the way Batman is.
Anyway!! Now Elektra!
Without Elektra's spinoff, she really gets screwed.
As soon as she shows up full costume in "Daredevil", Bullseye fucking offs her.
"Elektra" was an attempt at an apology.
Nice try, but her D&W cameo is better than this whole movie.
Neat thing I noticed; Elektra has Daredevil's bruise-purple costume color in D&W.
Aww, she's honoring him!
Most famous person this time?
Zod. Zod is Stick.
That's it.
"Elektra" is still boring, but I followed the plot a little better this go around.
The boredom stretches were weirdly meditative, and I finally realized what it reminded me of.
Okay, rough summary for non-anime fans.
Tenchi is a Japanese kid, and the main character.
Gradually, super-powered humanoid alien girls show up, and end up having to crash at his house, cuz their spaceship is broken, or whatever. Romantic triangle hi-jinks ensue.
Until a standard villain shows up; then Tenchi and the girls become a de-facto superhero team.
That's the main plot of Tenchi. The larger episode formula is, buildup to bad guy, calm down from bad guy, build up to next bad guy, and so on.
"Elektra" reminds me of the "calm down from bad guy" episodes of Tenchi.
Hanging out, eating, slapstick mishaps, normal life shit.
It's soothing when you're binging a show, and need a breather, but for a goddamned movie?
Yeah, I dunno.
Weird choice.
But!! When you're bingeing a shitload of these movies like they're a show?
"Elektra" kind of accidentally retroactively becomes a "calm down" Tenchi episode of the MCU.
It's odd.
Oh, we get fight parts too, sure.
Not enough for my tastes.
But, they're in there.
The message of the flick seems to want to be "your heart can be pure....even if you run around murdering people".
Which is...philosophically....odd.
But, what do you want? It's a Frank Miller character, and he's fucking cuckoo.
Anyway, yeah, this is about my third or fourth viewing now, and I liked it a teensy bit better, but I still like "Madame Web" better for its unintentional oblivious fucking weirdness.
I stand by that.
And finally!
The Fantastic Fours-
Okay, WTF is the deal with Sue dating Dr. Doom at the beginning?
I mean, true love finally does conquer all, and Reed gets Sue back, but it's an odd choice.
True, Reed and Sue have had a tumultuous on-and-off thing going through the history of the comics, but she never went for Doom.
Well, I mean, FF is inspired by soaps, and partner switching is totally a soap thing, and I sound just like a soap fan going "why is ____ with ____?? It drives me so crazy!!".
So, I guess, mission accomplished, writers.
Trivia:
Now that FF is MCU canon, Lawrence Fishburne is a triple-decker Marvel/DC crossover guy.
Perry White, Silver Surfer, and Goliath.
Yep.
And part 2 has the only Stan Lee cameo where he's actually Stan Lee.
Well, with it explicitly spoken onscreen, anyway.
Speaking of cameos; with all of these canon now, we get the geek-celeb triumvirate.
Patton Oswalt (Blade Trinity), Kevin Smith (Daredevil), and Brian Posehn (Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer).
Oh, and Patton wears a Fantastic Four logo shirt in "Blade Trinity" for extra meta weirdness.
Dammit, Patton, as if things weren't absurd enough!!
Aaaand, that's the end!
4 comments:
Smashing Pumpkins' "The End Is The Beginning Is The End" was on the soundtrack for "Batman & Robin" in 1997 (though I don't remember where it is in the movie...the credits? I'm not going to rewatch that pile of shit to find out!), and Smashing Pumpkins' "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning" was the song in the trailer for "Watchmen" twelve years later. Draw your connections if you like.
I also recall two things about the "Batman Forever" soundtrack. One is that it had a big U2 song "Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me" that didn't end up being one of their big hits at all, and Bono was supposed to appear as his "Macphisto" 90s devil rock star character at the party scene, but they mercifully decided to keep him out.
Also, I had no idea who the Flaming Lips were when I was 13 (and neither did most of the world) so imagine my joy when I bought their album "Clouds Taste Metallic" to find that it had "Bad Days" on it as the album closer, which is the song that plays while Jim Carrey is devising all those silly puzzles ("and you hate your boss at your job, but in your dreams, you can blooowwww his head off") when he's still Edward Nygma.
I didn't think movies were considered big vehicles for hit songs anymore in general, but I could be wrong about that because I don't see that many mainstream films anymore.
The recent thrillers "Resurrection" and "Blood For Dust" aren't very good, I don't recommend either.
Also, just so you know about this...
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/caligula-the-ultimate-cut-film-review-2024
Some guy went back to the 96 hours of film shot for "Caligula" and made a new three hour version of it that doesn't have ANYTHING from either the original film or the version that had all the hardcore pornography in it! Zuh?!?!?!?
They finally finished it!! Damn, I talked about this 6 years ago. I thought it would be out in 2 years, tops. Boy, do I not know how Hollywood works. https://dickynoo.blogspot.com/2018/07/pop-culture-updates-7.html
"Alien: Romulus"...ehhh...welll....it's watchable enough, I s'pose, but nothing I'd be returning to much in the future.
It's not a terribly pretentious film, since it's sui generis now for new entries in an aging franchise to piggyback off of superior earlier entries. You're probably already aware that it takes place mostly on the Nostromo. (If you didn't know this, the last act of the 2022 "Scream" took place in the Matthew Lillard character's exact same house.) There's little to no attempt to work some new mythology in there like the last two Ridley entries. Good.
The black synthetic-android guy is the only remotely interesting new character in the entire movie, and he's no Michael Fassbender. Everyone else is completely generic both in terms of characterization and dialogue. Since the plot is amusingly copped from the director's earlier film ("Don't Breathe"--this time it's about a bunch of space scruffs trying to break onto the Nostromo because they're trying to steal expensive Weyland Yutani equipment "before somebody else does!") there's hardly any real reason to root for any of them aside from the idea that dying at the hands of a facehugger would be really really bad.
None of the actors did a *bad* job, but even if I've never heard of any of them before it's not a *good* sign when what is easily the best performance in the film is being given by an actor who died a few years ago. Hint, hint!
On the other hand, there's only one or two instances of someone doing something really really retarded like the two recent Ridley films were plagued with.
A couple of nice visual ideas break through, which is good since the film is mostly just piggybacking off of a film from 1979. There's an avalanche of facehuggers speeding around at one point, which I liked, and a scene where a character has to gun down a bunch of aliens, but then the gravity goes away, so they have to manuever through big splotches of alien acid blood in zero-g. Acccccccccccccccccid!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, and you know that planet with the rings that we saw in the opening credits of the original "Alien"? Both the planet AND THE RINGS end up playing a crucial role! That led to a reasonably decent climactic scene.
Also in the climactic scene is a body horror bit meant to rival the Noomi Rapace surgery bit from "Prometheus," but it's mostly just grosser and more requiring of suspension of disbelief. I thought it was a bit silly.
The sound design and music are pretty overbearing in the film. I often couldn't hear what people were saying (not that it mattered much) because of the loud boom booms and jump scares all over the place.
Better than the two Ridley films but that's not saying much. You'll probably like it a bit more than I did.
This is reminding me that I never watched "Halloween Kills" or "Halloween Ends."
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