Movies are...of quality?

There has been a lot of discussion in the media about Comic Book movies because there have been so many of them.  There will be five released this year alone.  Next year we will see ten.  The number grows as filmmakers grab up comic book properties of every style and sub-genre.  Who would have thought that there would ever have been a Jonah Hex movie?  Sure, it was terrible and no one was surprised, but the very idea of it existing at all is kind of crazy.  Spider-man was a forgone conclusion as soon as the tangle of legal proceedings er...detangled.  Fantastic Four crops up now and again.  X-men come to visit the big screen almost every year.  But these are properties that we’ve all actually heard of.  We’ve also seen Elektra, Catwoman, Deadpool, Antman, two Kick-asses and two Punishers as well as Ghost Rider and Green Lantern.  Some of those movies even made money...a lot of money...and didn’t suck.  Some of them.

The thrust of discussion has been about Comic Book overload and the cookie-cutter nature of these films.  Fair points worthy of consideration.  I’ll get to those.  But what I wanted to address in this piece is the question of quality.  Something I find sort of amazing is how much better the films are on almost every level than they were just ten years ago and how much better the studios handle the properties than they did ever in the history of ever (for the most part).  A lot of the improvement and care that is taken with these cherished characters and storylines has been hard fought. The studios and filmmakers had to fall on their faces quite a bit before people that really enjoy the properties could get control of them.

A short tangent (Spoiler:it turns out not to be short): In the mid-80’s the cousins who ran Canon Films, Menahem Golan and Yorum Globus, acquired the rights to Spider-man to be made into a major motion picture.  Fresh off the success of several low-budget but highly profitable films starring well known actors like Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone and Charles Bronson the cousins came up with a plan to make a big-budget version of Spider-man to hit the screen sometime before the rights ran out at the end of the decade. They tried to get Toby Hooper to direct.  Why ask the creator of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to direct a kids Comic Book film?  Because they didn’t know who Spider-man was.  They bought the rights to the flagship Marvel Comics property without any idea who Peter Parker was to say nothing of a costumed alter-ego with his own, at the time, nearly 30 year, history of stories and villains.  They thought he was some kind of monster-kid that transmogrified into a giant spider-creature.  The script they commissioned read like a modern telling of Frankenstein with Doc Ock creating the Spider-man out his unwilling lab assistant. It was a horror film that would have worked well had it been made by David Cronenberg.  In a way it was made by David Cronenberg in 1986 as The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum.

The point is the moneymen didn’t have a clue nor did they care about Spider-man.  They knew it could make money so they bought it. Might as well have been a Bentley or shares of Coca-cola.  In any event, they never made the film.  Canon ceased to be, the rights went with one of the cousins to 21st Century Films which also went under and was swallowed up by Carolco.  Then Carolco went out of business and the rights became disputed territory with Columbia (soon to be Sony Pictures), MGM, and several other studios claiming to own Spider-man.  It would be more than ten years before the rights were handed to Sony and we got a film with Peter Parker in the Red and Blues.

This is significant because this was the beginning of what we consider today to be a “golden age” of Comic Book films.  This was the turning point when at least some of the people bringing these characters to the screen actually A) Knew who the character was. and B) Liked the character.  It seems strange that anyone would want to make a movie about a character or from a story they don’t like or understand, but that is exactly what happened before now.  Tim Burton doesn’t like Comic Books and has publicly stated during his short feud with Kevin Smith that he would never read one.  I’m sure Joel Schumacher and Richard Lester feel much the same.

Some background on me as a fan (and I am a huge fan): My first exposure to anything Comic Book was a series of terrible “read along” comics that came with a short record that could be played on one’s home hi-fi system.  My Mom had a very nice stereo with turntable that she retained after my parents divorced.  She doesn’t like music at all, but it weighed upward of two hundred pounds because it was 100 dollars worth of equipment inside a sturdy oak armoire so it stayed in our living room for many years.

It was on this turntable that I listened to the adventures of Captain America as he fought against the dastardly Baron Zemo.  Zemo had a plan to defeat the allies using “Adhesive X” a glue so sticky that nothing could remove it from any surface.  I don’t know how sticky things might have halted the Allied war effort, but that was some really sticky stuff and Cap just had to throw his shield at it.  I don’t remember the story very well, but I do remember thinking the whole thing sounded like it had been recorded on a kazoo.

Later I picked up old issues of Batman and Superman that my brother had around.  There was a ROM: Spaceknight and I had a Spider-man Calendar for the year I was born with full color splash pages for each month.  Oh, and a metal Spider-man garbage can that I still have in my adult bedroom right this minute.  It is a little beat up.

For my birthday one year I got a collection of old Marvel comics in a big yellow omnibus that featured adventures from the 1960s mostly.  The art was crude compared to today’s standards and the stories were extremely simple.  No one but a child could read any of it and get much of a thrill.  I think that’s why the people in charge of film and television when I was growing up had no love for the characters.  They were adults when Spider-man first swung into action and established in the entertainment industry well after the X-men started fighting for mutant rights.  I’m sure they wouldn’t know what to do with a Spawn, of course neither did Todd McFarlane.

If you watch any of the shows featuring superheroes that were made in the 1970s they are all fairly silly.  Only The Incredible Hulk ever takes itself seriously as a show and it stars a body-builder in covered in green paint wearing a fright wig.  Wonder Woman, Spider-man, Shazam and others from that time just show somebody dressed like the hero you love on television and in those days I was ecstatic to see any live-action content at all.

Later still my older cousins showed me Dreadstar and Alien Legion.  I didn’t really understand them, but it opened my eyes to the idea of the Comics being more than just a guy in tights punching a bank robber.  Real, complex stories, grown-up stories, could be told.  Once I read Daredevil during Frank Miller’s run I realised the stories could be complex and there could still be tights and bank robbers too.  In highschool I would discover Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.  Some years prior to my collecting comics everybody started fighting ninjas, became ninjas or were tangentially associated with ninjas.  Oh, and mutants.  Everybody was a mutant.  In fact, when my friend Derek and I began playing our own open-ended version of the Marvel Role-playing Game all of our characters were ninjas too.  Also, they were all stronger than the Hulk and had razor-sharp claws that came out of their wrists and could shoot energy beams and were millionaires and had hot girlfriends.  We were like 12 or 13 at the time. Also there was a spaceship and one of the heroes owned his own planet the orbited on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth.

All of that is to say that I am a lifelong fan of comics.  I see their shortcomings but I tend to judge any piece based on what it contains and not on what I wish it contained.  It is not always the case, but I tend to.  There’s a reason that the medium tells largely the same stories in various ways over and over.  We see Bruce Wayne’s parents killed from a thousand different perspectives drawn by as many artists.  Peter Parker loses his Uncle Ben.  I’m put in mind of Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s All Star Superman.  The opening pages simply read “Doomed Planet. Desperate Scientists. Last Hope. Kindly Couple.” and then the story begins.  When you think about it that opening could apply to a lot of stories.  Not literally.  Not every story has a doomed planet or any scientists, but there are many with a kingdom on the very edge of collapse or an empire crushing its enemies.  How many of our heroes secretly come from greatness.  They’ve been hidden away with the kindly (or not-so-kindly) couple all these years with their very birthright a mystery to them.  The Power of Myth is real, folks.

"Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it. He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father did."

“In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.”

“You’re a wizard, Harry.”

I’m not excusing bad storytelling by suggesting that Comic Books can’t rise above the traditions that we embrace.  But it is important to note that these types of stories do come from somewhere very primal, from a place that we all relate to instantly.  Creators can be forgiven for leaning on that goodwill in the beginning.  And we should allow ourselves to enjoy that part of the journey too, even if we’ve been there before with a different guy or gal.  I’m worn down by the origin story myself and I do relish when a new character, in Comic Books or otherwise, just hits the ground running and then circles back later to catch me up on how he or she came to be.  When people ask why they should have to sit through another re-hash of Kal El coming to Earth I say “You shouldn’t.  We know that one already.”  But when Marvel brings Daredevil out of retirement for a new run on Netflix I dig in and watch every second of his becoming because it is just so damned good.  Yes, it is a well-worn path in Comic Book world with a freak accident and inexplicable powers that lead someone to fight crime.  The Flash has the exact same origin story and so do many many others.  But if well told I don’t mind to have it trotted out again.  Bear in mind that I’ve seen every James Bond movie ever made and they are, to date, the exact same film over 20 times.  I know he’s not going to die at the end and I know he’s never really in any peril, but just going along for the ride is fun.  Rollercoasters serve much the same purpose.

Now, to my main point which I had to go back and read to remember what it was.  Quality.  With few exceptions the quality of Comic Book properties produced by Hollywood has been poor.  Even when the financial budget was very high the creative budget was often very low.  

In 1978 we got Richard Donner’s Superman: The Motion Picture which is still one of my favorite movies today.  It has not aged well, but the earnest performance by Christopher Reeve still plays very well and much of the dialog is very quotable.  When my son was quite small I would sometimes say to him while he slept “You will make my strength your own, and see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father, and the father the son.”  Was that creepy?  Maybe.  But it was good enough for Superman’s father so it was good enough for me.

The special effects for the time were groundbreaking and the performances were excellent even when the story goes sideways in the final act.  Luthor’s plan never makes sense and Superman’s efforts to stop him make even less sense.  And if Superman can reverse time, why not just go back to before the Nukes launched in the first place?  Silly but fun.  It is a very genuine film that loves and respects the characters and the audience.  When I watch it I’m transported to the living room of the old house.  I’m sitting on the floor in front of the floor-model Zenith television with wood paneling.  My mother has tuned to ABC so we can watch the Sunday Night Movie.  It is a special extended edition of Superman done only for ABC television.  I have school the next day, but Mom lets me stay up late to watch the whole thing.  You could argue that I only like the movie so much because of that memory.  That could be true, but I think the memory is so precious because the viewing experience was so good.

Several sequels followed but they were never as good as the original and eventually they beat that poor dead horse into a paste.  In 1989 we got Batman.  I have fond memories of that movie as well.  Saw it in the cinema when it came out opening weekend.  Loved it at the time.  It too does not hold up, but I must say that while I am not a Tim Burton fan there is something about the design of that movie that really gets Batman right.  There are all kinds of nits to pick with 1989’s Batman, but overall it looks great and Batman is super cool.  He kills a bunch of people, which will be a repeating theme, but otherwise it is very true to the source material and it does respect the characters enough to tell a good story.  Once again things fall apart at the end.  Mostly it is good stuff for its time.  And once again several sequels followed that were never as good as the original and there was more horse paste.

I won’t go into the many and varied Marvel comics properties that either never saw the big screen or were slated to be release and never were.  They are prime examples of a studio not having any idea what to do with a character and just putting a guy in a costume.  Sometimes they didn’t even do that.  The Punisher never wears his costume in his late 80’s outing.  Captain America went straight to home video in an age when that was almost the same thing as going straight into the garbage.  That guy is wearing a Captain America costume no doubt about it and that’s about it.  There are other factors at play beyond not respecting the material.  The lack of financial savvy at Marvel comics is somewhat breathtaking.  They just assumed that they could license their characters to whomever and that a runaway blockbuster hit would magically appear.  It turns out that just because you are the editor-in-chief of a major Comic Book company doesn’t mean you know how to negotiate a Hollywood deal.  Who knew?

Overall we got either overproduced tripe or criminally underproduced tripe.  One great Superman, one good Batman and whole lot of expensive garbage over the course of about 25 years.  That didn’t begin to change until Marvel accidentally struck paydirt with Blade.  Three films were made starring the titular Vampire-hybrid character, the first two are pretty good with the second film featuring some truly fun action sequences.  The third one was directed by the writer of the first two and featured almost no Blade at all.  Wesley Snipes was feuding with the production company and couldn’t be bothered.  I don’t think it would have made a difference.  But it put Marvel on the map at the cinema.  Later we got X-men from Bryan Singer.  Operating with half the promised budget and headlining a completely unknown Australian actor named, get this, Hugh Jackman X-men made big bank at the box office.  Alliteratively.  The story was not genius but held together and, along with Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, the whole cast turned in a good performance.  Special effects were mostly special and the audience got to see all their favorites do fun things on the big screen.  Now, there are purists that only wanted to see literal interpretations of their heroes in the movie playing out exact plotlines from the comics, but that would almost certainly have sucked.  Enough of the material was there to clearly be the X-men without choking on decades of criss-crossing stories.

That was the turning point.  At least for Marvel comics the first two decades of the 21st century began an evolution as far as corporate structure and success at translating their characters from pen and ink to flesh and blood.  Spider-man 1,2, and 3 all made massive amounts of money.  This allowed at least one of those films to be very well made.  It’s the second one.  The second one is good.  And emboldened by that success other studios put together major motion pictures featuring whatever they could get Marvel to sell them.  The results look something like this: Universal made Hulk which sucked.  It had some interesting ideas and asked some serious questions about the nature of self, of identity and what makes us who we really are.  But it was also really boring the Hulk didn’t look good most of the time.  At the end he fights a cloud.  20th Century Fox put out two Fantastic Four movies which were both ironically named.  They also put out Daredevil starring Ben Affleck and directed by the man that made Simon Birch.  I’ll let that sink in. After that they made an Elektra movie about the Greek assassin starring Jennifer Garner.  Yeah.  Full disclosure: I owned the Director’s Cut of Daredevil on DVD.  I was just convinced that there was a good version of that movie that had been left on the cutting room floor.  It could be there, man.  And Dad’s gonna be right back from the store with those cigarettes.  Just you wait.  He’s probably just stopped by the store to buy us some ice cream.  He’ll be home any year now.  Fine, you go inside and watch Rockford Files.  I’m sitting right here and he’s gonna see me first and I’ll get to have ice cream with Dad.  What?

The litany of false-starts goes on like this for a while from a whole host of studios and Comic Book publishers.  There are Ninja Turtle movies for a while, there are Punisher movies, John Constantine shows up played by Keanu Reeves in a film that I actually like but must admit bears no resemblance to Hellblazer.  A whole host of films are made and distributed during the last fifteen years or so, but the only two factions that make good money and tell compelling stories are the X-men films from Fox and the Avengers series of films from Marvel Studios/Disney.  So what happened to make those two movie universes so damned popular and good?  In the case of Fox, I think they just had a really good director most of the time who cared about the characters and had a vision for the stories he wanted told.  He was going somewhere with it.  But, when Bryan Singer left to do Superman Returns for another studio things went off the rails.  However, Fox held onto the rights for long enough to sight back in on what made the stories great.  They hired a wonderful new director to right the ship and he did with X-men First Class.  They just had control for so long and it had made them so much money that they didn’t give up on the property.  That is rare in Hollywood.  But once again there was another factor that made the real difference.  In the past the people making the money decisions didn’t care about these stories because they didn’t grow up with them.  Now directors, writers and producers were mostly comic fans.  It is almost impossible that each and every person involved in the production of the modern versions of these films never read a comic or had a favorite hero.  These characters are now so much a part of modern life for children in a way that they were not decades before.

In the case of Marvel Studios they had a show runner.  In television you have a position called “Show Runner”. That’s very likely an informal title.  I really don’t know what each individual is named on each show, but a large show like The Walking Dead or The Newsroom has someone who is the final word on how things get done.  This person keeps everybody on task regarding the overall story that is to be told, the development of the characters and so on.  They just generally make sure the wheels don’t come off.  They don’t write every show or direct the episodes.  The Show Runner makes sure that the writers get to write good television but only within the confines of what the Show Runner wants done.  No story can stray too far and no director can change the tone.  For Marvel the Show Runner is Kevin Feige.  He’s been the producer on almost every Marvel property no matter the studio and he has been THE producer of all of the Marvel Studios films.  Because he has so much control the stories have been able to weave a larger tale connecting disparate characters and storylines.  To be sure there is a big financial advantage to putting all your heroes into films together, but Kevin Feige is one of the main reasons that they all fit together so well.  Now, anybody could be named Show Runner and you would not get the same results.  Kevin Feige loves Marvel comics and their characters and he has made sure that the people involved in all the projects love them too or at least pretend to.  It makes a big difference. Ang Lee loved the Hulk, but he didn’t understand what made the Hulk compelling.  Sam Raimi loves Spider-man, but the studio loved action figures more than storytelling.  The results speak for themselves.  Imagine if Universal or Sony Pictures had relied on someone like Kevin Feige to shepherd their characters to screen.  He was around, but it was only on X-men that anybody realised how much he loved the properties and it was Disney/Marvel that locked him down.  Of course, he didn’t write these films and tv shows, he just hired the people that did.  People like himself.  People that love the stories.  As a result we have seen some very exciting and well made films and some tremendous television.  They aren’t all winners.  But the majority are at worst extremely fun and at best thought-provoking.  Avengers is just popcorn cinema.  Really, really good popcorn cinema.  But Guardians of the Galaxy made me weep in the opening ten minutes.  When Steve Rogers visits the elderly Peggy Carter who is slipping into dementia during Winter Soldier it is just a heartbreaker.  Civil War asks real questions about the nature of justice and who do we trust to keep us safe?  Both sides make excellent points and the question is not answered by the film just as it is never answered in the real world.  Strong storytelling, compelling action and thoughtful dialog are the hallmarks of these films.  There’s humor too and the entire enterprise is ridiculous and yet somehow I just don’t care.  Some films are intended to present you with the stark reality of daily life and those films cut you to the quick and make you question what makes you who you are.  Some films feature cars that turn into robots and then they pee on people while buildings explode in the background.  These films, Comic Book films, are somewhere in the middle.  It is an exceptionally wide spectrum.

I haven’t even touched on the television properties.  Both DC and Marvel have TV Shows in abundance.  

Agents of Shield pretty much sucks.  I don’t know why.  They have the biggest budget, direct backing by Disney which owns ABC and well-known actors in the primary roles.  The show is a trainwreck.  Season one took forever to get going and was largely a let down.  Season two seemed like it was really going to shake things up and then put them all right back where they were before.  Season three has a dead guy as the host for a monster or something and the Inhumans are there but not the ones from the comics that folks might actually like to see.  It hurts us.  We paid for it on Amazon so we could watch the whole season, but I just don’t think I can do it.  I mean, money is money, but the sunk-cost fallacy kicks in after a while and I just don’t know.

Daredevil on netflix is the best thing Marvel has ever done.  End of story.

Jessica Jones...just watch it.  It overstays its welcome by about three episodes, but the story it tells about violation and about choice...damn.  I hope this entire generation of young women gets to watch that story.  It is not about empowerment.  It is about how to deal with loss.  Loss of self.  Loss of control to another.  Loss of worth and how you come back from it.  This is daring television from a company that has entire series of comics about a talking duck from space.

I mentioned The Walking Dead earlier.  This is a wonderful example of gripping stories, relatable characters and just wonderful production values from a Comic Book property.  The Walking Dead was and is a long-running comic from creator Robert Kirkman.  Started in 2003 from Image Comics it is a richly realized post-apocalyptic tale the has been enthralling readers since the beginning.  The AMC television show is in its sixth year and is by far their most watched show.  I personally work with many clean-living, bible-believing, good, Christian people who call in sick when this show drops on Netflix so they can binge the whole season.

DC has Arrow and The Flash.  Supergirl on CBS.  The first season of Arrow is quite good.  Several episode of The Flash were really great.  I haven’t watched Supergirl, but what I have read about it suggests that it too is fun television.  I hear they are doing a Vixen TV show.  It would be the first Comic Book television series featuring an African heroine.  Could be good.

As far as Warner Bros. are concerned they have had some missteps like Green Lantern.  The Dark Knight series from Christopher Nolan was good for two movies and was a big moneymaker for the studio.  The Dark Knight is one of the best Comic Book movies ever done and one of my favorite movies full stop.  The man just cared about the characters and wanted to tell the story well.  The death of a major actor derailed future plans and, I believe, resulted in a final film that was not what anybody wanted.  Man of Steel has its supporters.  It is a visually appealing film with a strong style.  In my opinion it strays from the spirit of the character.  I am very biased because I grew up with Christopher Reeve catching that helicopter.  Also, when he fought Zod and his minions, the Superman I remember stopped the fight rather than put people in harm’s way.  The new Superman personally destroyed buildings full of people and caused the deaths of thousands so that he could continue to punch a guy that he knew for a fact he could not hurt by punching.  There are people who love that movie and I concede that they have every right to think it is great.  It is a very high-quality film from a production standpoint and on that alone I think it helps prove my point about the overall quality of modern Comic Book films and it helps to illustrate that they are not a pre manufactured, vacuum-sealed product.  As far as Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice goes...we will just have to take a breath and address some things.  Okay.  This is not a well made film.  It strays from the core concepts of the characters in a big way, sidelines Wonder Woman except for the final few minutes during which she is easily the coolest thing on screen (as she should be), looks ugly, features sub-par effects for a movie that must have cost more than the GDP of Corto Maltese and just makes no damned sense.  I will happily write a proper screed against this angry, hateful film.  Just not today.  

I wish I had more to say about the current quality of modern Comic Book films with regards to DC/Warner Bros. but there just isn’t much content to work with and what has been produced has not been indicative of the trend.  Surely there will be more and better from DC in the future.  Ben Affleck, who does an admirable job as Bruce Wayne and Batman in Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice has been brought in as executive producer on both the Batman solo project and Justice League.  He will write and possibly direct the Batman project.  I reserve judgement on that entire enterprise until the Academy Award winning writer/director has time to make his mark.

They’ve been making Comic Book movies since the 1940’s in some form.  Pretty much all of it was terrible until 1978 and things didn’t really pick up until the late 1990’s.  But I’m confident the evidence is clear that the past decade has served as a sort of crucible for good storytelling when it comes to Comic Book properties.  The audience has responded to a better product and they won’t stand for anything less.  The hardcore fans will always be more forgiving.  I’ve been one of them.  Oh, how I tried to like Hulk!  I argued the merits of the good parts.  I glossed over the bad parts.  In the end there just wasn’t any justifying it.  But we’re beyond that now.  The creators of the content from the editors to the key grips like what they are working on.  The big money people grew up with these stories.  And the audience has finally been shown their heroes and villains in a way that has not been done this well and on this scale.  It can’t last.  Nothing ever does.  But right now I can’t imagine the good stuff being any better.

Movies, on occasion, are not stupid...sometimes.

Note: I wrote this years ago and meant to post it to my blog, but I forgot.
It sat here unpublished.
I have now published it.
That is all.

We're walking home along a major, four-lane road when we see the crazy man shouting at some trash. A discarded bag of chips has offended him in some way. He's arguing his point in a language known only to himself and gesticulating wildly. My wife pushes the stroller past the crazy man and gives a short nod and a smile. He stops shouting. I place myself between him and my family and meet his eye. There is nobody home. Empty, black eyes look back at me seeing something I cannot imagine. I hold his gaze just long enough to let him know that I see him as a threat. He's short, but burly. Years of living on the street have made him strong. He will likely hurt me quite badly if things become physical. I have resolved to push him into traffic if need be. He looks down and walks on. "STOP LOOKING AT ME!" he shouts after walking a few steps. We do not look back and he does not follow us.

There's a reason we need heroes. Most of us are not brave, not fit nor formidable. We're a doughy mass of television watchers, texters and fast food eaters. I sit at a desk all day and watch network traffic. That's the human condition circa 2011. So, it should come as no surprise that we are surrounded not just by heroes in our fiction, but super-natural heroes. Regular heroism just doesn't cut it anymore.

A hundred years ago a Sherlock Holmes or a Tin Tin captured the imaginations of the young and old alike simply by traveling around and talking to people. Very little action, lots of explanation. Characters visited foreign lands or lived in big cities when the average person worked a farm. If I lived with my family of eight brothers and sisters slopping hogs, I'd find the adventures of a quiet, solitary man who never had to pay for anything to be quite attractive.

After the first World War, adventure stories, and the films that followed, became bigger. Airplane dogfights, car chases and far-flung locations became more ubiquitous. Doc Savage braved the jungles of Central America and fought evil scientists in major American cities. The Shadow could use his eerie mental powers learned from Asian ascetics to cloud men's minds. It is at this time that we see the emergence of the "Super Hero". No longer content to fight evil with his mind or even using the powers given to mortal men, the Super Hero kicks butt with heat-vision, flight, indestructibility and...like...a shield that he can whip at your head. Over the next sixty years or so the Super Hero has largely supplanted the regular Joe hero. Cop shows are still popular, but they're are, on average, pretty over-the-top. Shows or books about someone who uses their brain to save the day are few and far between. Those that exist, like the cop shows, are far-fetched and ridiculous in their own ways. House comes to mind. If the hero doesn't travel to far off places, he travels inside your body and outwits cancer. Even doctors have had the bar raised for excellence. Sometimes it really is just lupus.

Now, I haven't seen any of the upcoming summer blockbusters because they are, at this point, upcoming. However, I have some thoughts on bravery and our ideals regarding heroes that I'd like to share. One of my all-time favorite movies is A Man for All Seasons. The fictionalized version of Thomas More presented in that film (and stage play upon which it was based) is my kind of hero. I still dig Batman, Superman, Spider-man (all the 'Mans), but the solemn dignity and adherence to a strict moral code that Paul Scofield presents is the type of person I would like to be. He doesn't travel to distant lands or fight robots, although he totally could. Thomas More stands up for what he believes is right despite the threat of torture and death. Some people feel like Thomas More is making a stand for Catholicism, and he is, but mostly he just cannot allow people to lie to or about him. He will not participate in a falsehood regardless of the station of those who perpetrate it. Consider this exchange between Scofield's Thomas More and the Duke of Norfolk:

The Duke of Norfolk: Oh confound all this. I'm not a scholar, I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not but dammit, Thomas, look at these names! Why can't you do as I did and come with us, for fellowship!

Sir Thomas More: And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?

He's a badass! No shield, no cape (well, maybe a cape considering the time and place), no laser beams or cool sports car; just the coolest dialog and the strongest will. Indulge me one last quote, it is my favorite.

Sir Thomas More: You threaten like a dockside bully

Cromwell: How should I threaten?

Sir Thomas More: Like a minister of state. With justice.

Cromwell: Oh, justice is what you're threatened with.
Sir Thomas More: Then I am not threatened.

Jab, jab, haymaker...and it's over. Of course, Thomas More does not go free. The hero loses the battle and his life. All the best heroes lose something precious as part of their fight with evil. We expect it. It's how we separate the true men and women of conscience from the grand-standers. The message is always the same: sacrifice and win. Without that one little sentiment there would never have been one running shoe sold or one ounce of gatorade consumed. It's so much a part of our culture that we don't even consider it a real win anytime someone defeats all opponents without breaking a sweat. We recognize the skill, but it really is hollow somehow. We need a commitment from the winner to truly cap the victory. Blood will often do. Sometimes we'll accept a nice wounding. But we like effort and loss as much as we adore the champion. Make no mistake, we want our champion, but we also want the up-hill fight. Without it we feel cheated.

This summer we'll watch Thor battle Asgardian monsters and government goons. Eventually he'll do that while wearing his trademarked Marvel comics costume. But first he'll have to be cast down and whooped up on a little before we'll accept him. He has to start out as an outsider, humiliated, beaten, alone...then we'll like him enough to cheer his victory that is the forgone conclusion of the Super Hero film.

Later we'll watch the Green Lantern earn his place with an intergalactic police force. He, too, will start out alone and confused. Then he'll show his metal and crush evil with a huge, glowing, green jackhammer made of imagination and justice. That will be fun, I'm sure. Somehow I'll find myself wishing for a battle of wits between two well-matched adversaries. But, as I stated before, we've moved beyond all that. One's daily life is full of technology that has become common-place but would have passed for magic only a few years ago. Supersonic aircraft are everywhere, you can talk to anyone anywhere at anytime with a device that weighs less than a pack of gum and fits in your shirt pocket. Our heroes must be more that we are. An eight-year-old has access to more and better technology that was shown on the original Star Trek. James Kirk and crew had to get a makeover a few years ago just to keep up. Superman is bullet-proof, but so is your average Police Officer to a degree. We've got autonomous stealth drones that fly along the Pakistani border shooting bad guys. These things make Schwarzenegger's Terminator look like a punk. The bar is raised again.

The summer is going to wow us with high technology splendor.  Trucks will turn into robots to fight planes that turn into also robots. Costumed criminals will make life difficult for costumed supermen. Things will explode and the stakes will always be higher than they have ever been. But something will be missing, for me at least. The true power of the human spirit and the vast, awe-inspiring might of the human mind will be on display nowhere. I'll enjoy the explosions and the costumes and the robo-trucks and I'll write about them here, but I'll be looking for something deeper in every story. One day I will find it again and that movie will not be stupid, not at all.

Movies are Stupid Round Eight: Legend The Super Mega Ultra Director's Cut for Real this time, we swear.

I honestly don't know where to start. There are films that beg to be made that go unmade. There are films are should never have been made that get six sequels and a remake twenty years on. Occasionally there are films that beg to be made, get made and then everyone realizes what a bad idea it was to begin with. Legend, at least the super mega cut recently released on DVD, is such a film.

As I understand it, and I clearly understand very little, the early 1980's were a hotbed of fantasy film making. After John Milus (director of Red Dawn) helmed Conan the Barbarian to box office success every sword and sandal property that could be had for cheap was optioned by Hollywood underdogs like Canon films, Roger Corman and the like. Where Conan the Barbarian was based on a much beloved character with 50 years of history behind him, the copycat films were based on hastily written scripts churned out by Dungeons and Dragons fanboys hoping to get their big break. Within a very few years the video store was full of classics like Deathstalker, Ator, Blademaster, Yor: Hunter from the future (who was from the distant past) and so on. Terrible films all and because they were terrible the American viewing public shunned them en masse. They also shunned them after masse but before Sunday night football which is as it should be.

This put many an un-kissed basement dweller in a tough position. For once they were seeing reasonable facsimiles of their favorite stories, but the stories were badly told and laughably constructed. What could have been a golden age of fantasy story telling on the big screen was turning into an exasperating exercise in VHS fastforwarding to get to the best parts of movies starring that guy that was in the remake of Tarzan with Bo Derek. But soft, a champion was rising to give us a new story with a real budget and known actors. Ridley Scott, director of Alien, Bladerunner and, one day, G.I. Jane was making a film called Legend. It had swords. It had sandals. It had Mia Sara. What more could one ask for? For what more could one ask?

Here's the problem with Legend: It doesn't make a whole lot of sense even for a fantasy film. The plot, regardless of which version you watch, is basically this: There is a mean guy/goat named Darkness who lives in a big scary tree with goblins and fat guys and living furniture. He's really evil and he'd like to be evil full time, but that pesky sun keeps him from getting out and about to spread ruin and strife as is his wont. You see, the sun is his destroyer. We know this because he keeps telling everyone who will listen. This is like Superman telling every villain that his weakness is kryptonite (or Richard Lester - BA-ZING!).

So, Darkness has a plan to get rid of the sun. He's going to kill himself the only two unicorns in the world. This act, apparently, will keep the sun from rising and allow him to walk the Earth unfettered. No fettering for him, not after his plan is enacted. To this end he hires a goblin named Blix to go kill him some unicorns and bring back the horns as proof. I guess the complete lack of sunlight would not be proof enough, gotta have those horns.

Off Blix goes to slay the magical beasts and he takes two half-wits with him because that is just what you do with the lord of evil asks you to fundamentally change the course of the entire world for him. When it comes to important tasks Idiots = Success. But where to find a unicorn? The fabled beasts don't like goblins. If only there was someone pure of heart and intact of hymen who could approach these majestic critters and hold them still long enough to allow the goblins to slaughter them. If only...

Enter Mia Sara. Mia plays Lilly, a princess. We know she's a princess because she sneaks into the home of a local couple and steals their food. If that wasn't enough to communicate her pedigree the peasant wife keeps calling her Princess Lilly, so there. When she's not stealing eats from poor people she's running around the woods with Tom Cruise who is dressed like a homeless Robin Hood. He can talk to the animals and climb trees and swim. This qualifies him as a forest boy and Lilly loves her some forest boy.

In order to impress his lady fair, Forest boy take her to see the unicorns who are so special and so sacred that they are never to be touched. This being the case, it is only reasonable that Forest boy should take his under-aged girlfriend with boundary issues to see them. And what is the first thing she does? Touches the unicorn. It's a good thing too because Blix has been following her. I don't know why he follows her. He's got no reason to follow her, but he was so he's ready when it's time for the unicorn killing. With a quick shot of poisoned dart the beast goes down.

Anyway, the mutant horse is dead, the mate is captured and taken to Darkness even though he totally told them to kill both the unicorns. Lilly is captured as well and it is up to Forest boy, a couple of dwarves and a half-naked 12 year old to save the day. The long and short of it is that they infiltrate the giant tree by walking up to it, finding a entrance, and going inside. They meet up with one of the half-wits from Blix's party who tried to cross Darkness and was presumably destroyed but it turns out not to be so. Then they do the only thing they can do, they split up. Forest boy and 12-year-old nudist find Lilly just as she is being seduced by Darkness into being all evil and wearing a black dress (the harlot) and they hatch a plan. Darkness keeps telling folks about the sun being his arch-nemesis so they decide to use plates as mirrors to reflect sunlight throughout the tree, direct it down all the corridors with perfect precision and blast Darkness with a big old laser beam of sunny goodness. This is exactly what they do and it works exactly as described. Darkness is destroyed and Lilly was just pretending to be evil and is soon back in her white dress again. The band returns to the forest where the unicorns are restored, somehow, and all is right with the world. Except everyone is still stupid.

Obviously this script could have used some work. Questions are raised at every turn and then never answered. Why doesn't Darkness just kill the unicorns himself? Is he trapped in the tree? Clearly the unicorns vex him but just not enough to actually do anything about it himself. Why does Blix need Mia Sara to touch the unicorn before he shoots it. Those horses are on screen for a good five minutes only yards away from the goblins before they interact with anyone. Blix holds his shot for no reason. Also, why does Forest boy take Lilly to see the unicorns if they aren't to be disturbed? What did he expect his 15 year old girlfriend to do when she saw fantasy creatures at play in the forest? I could go on asking questions about practically every scene, but I won't. What would be the point? See, another question.

When the film was released in the US it was cut by about 30 minutes and the original soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith was replaced by a New Wave soundtrack courtesy of Tangerine Dream. That's a weird choice to make for a fantasy film right up there with Lady Hawk's rock and roll incidental music. However, I submit that the Tangerine Dream score, once you get used to it, is the superior score. In the Director's cut, and European release, the Goldsmith score was intact but it's very blah as soundtracks go. For all the action and strange imagery the Goldsmith tracks just sort of hang in the air doing nothing. They don't give you an auditory description of the scene, they don't punctuate the action or stir feelings in you the way a great soundtrack should. The music isn't poorly written or produced, it just doesn't seem to fit what's on screen.

Not only does the US release of Legend get the better music, it gets a trim job that cuts out most of the long listless shots of nothing. There are pieces and parts missing from the plot because of these cuts, but that doesn't matter as the intact plot doesn't make sense either. The result is a tighter more quickly paced film that doesn't make you feel like you're watching a fantasy version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

That's the major problem with the Director's cut: it drags. We don't need extra shots of Forest boy and under-age girl sitting around the forest. We don't need another iteration of Darkness telling people about his weakness. We don't need extra shots of empty corridors inside the big evil tree. What would have been nice is some sort of backstory telling us who in the hell these people are. Now, LOTR was way too long. All three movies could have been trimmed down considerably and so could the novels for that matter, but part of that length was taken up explaining where folks were, why they were there and what they hoped to achieve. Legend doesn't do that. We are never told anything about any of the characters besides their names. We know from inference that Gumps, Dwarves and fairies are commonplace because nobody freaks out when they see them. We know that goblins are evil because of the dialog that says "I'm so evil because I'm a goblin!" We also know that unicorns control the rotation of the Earth and the weather. And there are great opportunities to tell a better story, give it some meat, some foundation. When Forest boy goes to get his armor and weapons he is led into a cave under the forest where several suits of bejeweled armor lay untouched. No reason is given for this. He accepts the armor without question and carries on to the evil tree to fetch his woman...well...little girl friend. Oh, and about that tree. Clearly there is a ginormous evil tree full of evil not too far from Lilly's kingdom. It appears to be right down the road from the forest but it is never mentioned or named specifically, so we assume folks just don't mind it very much. Maybe it's invisible unless someone steals your under-aged girlfriend. In the same way that killing a unicorn arrests the Earth's movement in the heavens so too does kidnapping a child bride enable your enemies to see your secret hideout. You'd think that Darkness would think of this eventuality and post some guards, but he doesn't. And how did he become Lord Darkness to begin with? Is it a hereditary title? Was he duly elected by his peer man/goats? Do they maybe take turns? This week Lord Darkness is Tim Curry, next week: the guy that played Riff Raff, the week after: Susan Sarandon. Barry Bostwick could maybe be an evil maintenance guy that never gets things as clean as he could given the time and resources at his disposal. But, such is the nature of evil.

Digression being the better part of...something, I find myself at the summation. Neither the Director's cut or the US cut of the film are particularly good. But, the Director's cut is too long, has an uninteresting musical score and adds nothing to the story despite 30 extra minutes to work with. I had always heard from fans of Legend that a Director's cut would be a Holy Grail of moviedom. More story, more FX, better music; but it was not to be. What those fans fail to realize is that Legend is a cult classic in this country because of the goofy score, because of the shorter runtime. Sit through the director's cut just once and you'll understand. Just as Robert Wise cut extraneous footage from Star Trek: The Motion Picture and improved the final product, Ridley Scott has infused his already nonsensical story with more nonsense and removed the parts that made it bearable. Ergo, to wit, therefor, Legend: the Director's cut is stupid.

Movies are Stupid Round Seven: Wolver-what?

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" makes my head hurt in new and strange ways. I'm not talking about the liberties that the writers took with established comic book canon, whatever that is. Comic books are notorious the world over for having no real continuity at all. People die, are reborn, die again and then just show up for dinner like nothing ever happened. Worlds are destroyed only to be referenced later when they are needed and major characters can get a new history overnight only to have it pulled back when it is expedient for the publisher. So all that crap is right out for me. Let's explore some of that "canon" for just a moment before I get started on how bad this movie is and let me make something clear about my intentions.

For the record: I don't want this movie to fail. In fact, it is doing gang-buster business everywhere. At a production cost of 150 million dollars it has already passed the 200 million dollar mark worldwide. Its success is assured and I'm gratified because, even though this movie is crappy, I want the brand to survive long enough for some good films to be made in the future. That's what I hope for and nothing that I write here is meant to discourage movie ticket purchases, which is fine since no one ever reads this blog anyway and there is absolutely no chance that anything on this site could impact a major blockbuster film. Still, it's my blog and I can feel self important if I like...and I like.

Okay, Comic book canon regarding the characters in this movie.

Wolverine: Originally Wolverine was just some Canadian agent with some gloves that had sharp bits glued on. There was no indication that he was even a mutant. The claws were never retracted, nor was there any dialogue or panel which revealed that they were anything more than pig-stickers that he slipped on before a fight. He wore a goofy-looking yellow and blue costume (which he still wears, by the way, because that makes total sense) that had little cat whiskers on the mask. Yes, he wears a mask even though his identity is of no consequence. He's not protecting those he loves. He's not scared the government will learn his true alter-ego. He works for the government and they know exactly who he is...up to a point and, frankly, nobody cares who he is because he just showed up for one issue of Hulk. That's Wolverine's intro. No real name, no back story, no significance of any kind.

Sometime later the character is introduced again in X-men, written by Chris Claremont. Suddenly he's a shadowy man without a past named Logan. He's got a healing ability that allows him to...heal. Come to think of it, I have that ability. Just the other day I cut myself shaving and within a few minutes the bleeding had stopped and a few hours after that the wound was virtually gone. A few days later it was as though I had never sliced my face open at all. I guess what I'm getting at is that Logan's power is to do what any other human can do...only somewhat faster.

In addition Wolverine has had metal grafted to his bones and metal claws pop out of either forearm. It is never suggested that this is part of his mutation. No one knows where he got these upgrades and no one really seems interested in finding out, least of all Logan. I'll have to say that if I woke up with unbreakable metal bones and blades popping out of my body I wouldn't give it a second thought. So, Logan is a freak and he doesn't care. Later, his metal bones are given an origin story of their own called Weapon X. This one off series explained that he was experimented on by a person or persons unknown to make him into a killing machine. They are surprised when he starts killing everyone. Mental Note: If I ever design a device or process that has a specific application, I will make sure that I don't just leave it lying around to be used by whomever whenever. I'm careful that way.

Later still Wolverine got retconned into a Canadian from the 1800's with bone claws that he did not have in the Weapon X story. Suddenly his half-brother is Sabertooth, who also has claws of a sort. This unmakes established Marvel comics stories from the 1980's and 1990's that showed Logan in ancient Japan or running with the Indian tribes pre-colonization. But, as we have established, I don't really care about that.

Sabertooth: Sabertooth first shows up in the pages of the Amazing Spider-man as a part-time bank robber/full-time dork. He is literally just a big guy in a lion costume who robs people and gets his butt kicked by Spider-man. That's it. No mutation, no powers, no interesting history.

After a fashion he shows up as a mutant with healing powers who menaces Wolverine now and again. Later there seems to be a father/son relationship there. Then there's not. Then there is again. Then they get a house in the village together and open a tea shop. Then they break up vowing to see other people but still be friends because, after all, life is about relationships and connections that can last forever. That last part is made up...I think.

General Stryker: This guy doesn't exist in the comic world. There is a collection of X-Men stories called God Loves Man Kills that feature a Reverend Stryker who hates mutants, but otherwise this guy is a total movie construct created for the plot of X-men 2. There is no back story to alter because he never existed before Bryan Singer's brilliant sequel.

All of the above is to show that I both know my comic book history and that I do not care. That's an important element of comic book movie viewing. The average comic has about 40 years of history behind it. There have been so many contradictory stories and wackadoo plot lines that no modern screenwriter could be expected to take them all into account nor would we want them to. At one point Batman was turned into a half-man half-fish creature. I don't want to see that. Superman once had a "Power Suit" and was made of electricity for some reason. That movie would suck.

It is the job of a screen writer to take the best parts of a character from another medium and place them into a new configuration that makes sense for the big screen. Honor the work that has come before, certainly, but don't feel constrained by it. Most of it really does suck. Now then, to the movie review.

Wolverine is a stupid movie because it simply refuses to make sense or follow a logical progression of events. Going into such a movie one is asked to accept certain truths in order for the story to be told at all. If you've given your 8 bucks for a movie called Wolverine it can only be because you already understand that he is a mutant that can heal, has metal claws and wild hair that is never explained. That is a given. As a fan of comics and a movie goer, I don't ask much of such a film, only that it have some kind of story that I can understand. I want them to show me the character of my choice in a new tale that unfolds in an entertaining way. As weird as the concept is for the Wolverine movie, the same basic rules of storytelling apply. If things happen for no reason: that is bad. If characters say things out of context and never explain them: that is bad. If the plot involves completely unlikely scenarios that are never commented on by the characters: that, too, is bad. To-wit, therefore, Wolverine is bad.

We start with a young James Logan (James Howlett for you comic book nerds) who is sick in bed. It is the 1800's in Canada, James' father is killed by the groundskeeper which causes James to fly into a rage despite his sickly condition. He sprouts bone claws from each hand and promptly runs the groundskeeper through. His mother is horrified, the groundskeeper is eviscerated, and James' friend Victor (Dog, for those of you who read Origin by Joe Quesada, Paul Jenkins, and Bill Jemas) seems indifferent. Turns out that the groundskeeper was James' real father and that Victor is his half-brother. Both Victor and James run off into the night swearing to stick together as brothers should. And stick together they do through the entire opening credit sequence. They fight in the revolutionary war, the American Civil War, World War 1, World War 2, Korea, and end up in Vietnam where they are executed by firing squad...only it doesn't take.

This brings us to our first storytelling hiccup. Two men are taken before a firing squad. They are shot many times and do not die. The result? The two men are put in the brig. Apparently the U.S. Government doesn't know what to do with two unkillable soldiers in the middle of a war that is going badly. So, General Stryker shows up and offers them work as secret agents with special privileges. Given their situation, they accept the offer and immediately find themselves on an airplane with several other strange agents who possess various powers. There's a guy who can run really fast and shoot things while flipping through the air. We'll call him John Woo. Then there's a guy in a cowboy hat who we will call Cowboy Hat. Then there's Wade Wilson, played by that guy who was in Van Wilder and is currently in Scarlett Johansson (HEY-O!), who is some kind of sword master. We can tell this because he has a sword.

Their first mission is to go to an African nation and attack an office building. There's armed guards and such outside so it must be full of bad guys. I mean, they are Black and they do have guns. If I've learned nothing else from Hollywood it is that Black guys with guns are bad. Now, Cowboy Hat is Black and he has a gun, but he's with a group of White guys and an Asian guy so he must be okay. Anyway, they lay siege to the building fighting their way to the top floor where they ask some guy about a paper weight he has on his desk. Why they couldn't make an appointment, I don't know. But Stryker must know about the paper weight, so everybody has to die right now.
Soon they find themselves torturing villagers in the jungle. James doesn't like this and tries to put a stop to it, but the others are bound and determined to shoot unarmed people. James cares about them so much that he just leaves them all to die. Later he gets a job as a lumberjack. We flash forward seven years and James has a girlfriend, a house on a mountain impossibly far from town and good, honest work cutting down trees. Also, he enjoys buttered scones for tea and pressing wild flowers. Whether or not he wishes he'd been a girlie like his dear Mama is unconfirmed at this time.

So, James and girlfriend live in sin on a mountain happily until General Stryker shows up to warn James about Victor. Seems Victor has gone crazy...er and is on the hunt for former group members. Imagine if David Lee Roth was hunting down former members of that band he was in during the 80's. Not Van Halen, but the other one that had that song that was on that album. You know, he wore goofy tribal face paint in the video. Anyway, it's like that, but with mutants.

No reason is ever given for this hunt, which only seems to effect two of the former team members, but James doesn't seem too worried about things. And why would he be? It's only his psychotic brother who has grown into a murder factory with the same powers James has. What's to fear? Certainly not his own bloody murder or that of his woman at the hands of Victor. Let that be a warning, ladies. If your man is unconcerned about the serial killer at work in your town...you are doomed. Don't take a shower, don't go for a jog alone, don't even go into the basement. You're done like dinner.

Victor kills James' girlfriend. Surprise, surprise. In his rage, James goes after Victor who is helpfully waiting in a bar for him. They fight, Victor stomps James and leaves him for...mildly injured. That's another problem with the film. They keep showing Wolverine in peril that is by no means peril. The guy can literally heal any wound, so what could be scary about a gun shot or a good old fashioned ass-whoopin'?

Now James wants revenge...even more...so he seeks out Stryker who offers to put him into the Weapon X program that will make him indestructible and give him metal claws instead of gooney old bone claws. He accepts, is taken to a secret lab and made into a killing machine. All of that is fine, I guess, but the set isn't anything like the one they showed in three other X-men movies nor is it located in the same underground base. This one is at the top of a mountain and seems quite small. The other was a sprawling compound underneath a giant dam at Alkali lake. The whole second half of X-men 2 takes place there. Suddenly that's all out the window.

Long story already too long, Wolverine escapes the lab, leaps to freedom down a huge water fall and stumbles naked onto a farm where he befriends an old couple, destroys their bathroom and hides out in the barn. Then there is some more fighting with government agents who want Weapon X back, a helicopter explodes and then later Wolverine is in Las Vegas or Reno or something. He jumps around a lot. Cowboy Hat and another team member from the old days, we'll call him Fat Guy, run a boxing school. Wolverine shows up and demands to know where Victor is. You see, he can't find Victor, who wants to be found, but he can track down obscure people from his past just fine.

Fat Guy turns him on to a mutant from New Orleans who escaped from Victor previously, oh and Victor and Stryker were working together to entire time in an attempt to make James mad so that he would undergo the Weapon X process thereby becoming a walking abattoir who could then go forth and kill Victor. It's the perfect plan, really.

So it's off to New Orleans where this mutant named Gambit has adopted the philosophy of "Hide in Plain Sight" because Wolverine just walks into the first bar he comes to and there the guy is playing cards. Clearly Victor and Stryker don't want him back because all they would have to do is go pick him up at their leisure. Why they never look for him in the exact place they caught him the first time is anybody's guess.

Wolverine questions Gambit about the secret location where mutants are being held. Oh yeah, did I mention that mutants from all over the world are being held hostage...because they are. And it's up to our man/animal Wolverine to stop it. Victor appears and Wolverine and he fight it out, but just before Wolverine can serve up the Coup De Gras, Gambit leaps into the fray long enough for Victor to vanish in a puff of plot contrivance. Then Gambit runs up a fire escape but not before Wolverine can start chopping it apart with this claws. I guess Gambit is a slow runner because it takes Wolverine a while to get that thing chopped up.

After all that, Gambit agrees to fly Wolverine to "The Island" to save the mutants. Not only is Gambit a certified pilot, but he has his own plane standing by. What luck! And they fly across the country in a little Cesna until they arrive at...Three Mile Island. Dun Dun DUN! Soylent Green is People!

Wolverine enters the base to confront Stryker and Sabertooth only to find that his girlfriend was never dead. Apparently those heightened senses that make him such a good tracker can't tell a dead person from a living one. Anywho, she's in a on the plot that we explored before. Seems Stryker has her sister and the only way to get her free from this mutant prison was to go and live with Wolverine for seven years and make him fall in love with her only to later pretend to die. That's some plan. Stryker is obviously the most patient man in the known universe. He knew all those years ago that he would want to use Wolverine for the Weapon X project and that the only way he could get Wolverine to agree to it would be to break his little mutant heart and have his older brother beat him up. But wait, there's more. Turns out that he didn't even really care about the Weapon X project, he just wanted Wolverine's DNA so that he could make Weapon XI. Dun Dun DUN again!

Now you and I both know that you can get DNA from a coffee cup or a hair brush. There is no need to dunk a man in a mineral bath and fill him with metal in order to replicate his cells. DNA is everywhere. For some reason, unknown to the audience and unknown to the screenwriter, Stryker felt the need to make things far more complicated. And there may be good reason for that. Maybe in comic book world DNA works differently than I think it does. In fact, I'll say that it must because Stryker is later seen injecting tissue from Cyclops into Weapon XI's eyes in an effort to give him laser vision and it works. The final act of the film involves Wolverine fighting Weapon XI, who has been given the powers of all the other mutants via osmosis, on top of one of the cooling towers at Three Mile Island. Turns out that the partial meltdown that happened in 1979 was actually the result of mutant combat and not a faulty steam valve. Not only that, but the combat destroyed the entire cooling tower and wasted a large portion of the power plant itself. You and I don't remember that happening because the mutants must have used their psycho powers on us.

"Wolverine" ends with a defeated Weapon XI plunging into the cooling tower as it crumbles and Stryker resigning to shoot Wolverine in the head with a special Adamantium bullet. You see, if you have a very hard armor it can only be penetrated by something of equal density. For example if you shot a steel bullet at steel plate it would easily puncture it. That's how matter works. Need to break through a wooden door? Why, just grab yourself a little piece of wood and smash that door down. Yes sir, when you thought this movie couldn't make less sense, it finds a way. It is persistent in its quest to suck, like a Terminator or a virus.

Stryker shoots our hero in the head, thus destroying his memories or something. Gambit flies away. The trapped mutants are saved by Professor X at the last minute and Wolverine wanders off to find out who he is.

You see, it is a terrible movie...a stupid movie. It establishes rules and then doesn't play by them. Like a toddler it wants its own way even if that way is unreasonable or foolish. Characters appear, do something and then are gone again without explanation. The schemes of our villain don't make sense to anyone not confined to a state mental institution. The resolution isn't even a resolution because everyone just sort of wanders off. Characters that were established as not knowing each other in previous films spend time together in this one. Sabertooth, a seven foot tall monster with wild hair and a mouth full of sharp teeth in the first film, is around 6 foot 2 with a buzz cut in this one. While I feel you can change things between media, comics to film, you can't change established scenarios and characters in the same film series. Imagine if the Godfather Part 2 had all new actors with different personalities but the same character names as the first film. All the action happens in Chicago and nobody seems to notice. Later Don Vito Corleone shows up after having died, but nobody freaks out. That's how Wolverine is. It violates comic book canon...so what? The problem is it violates itself and not in a sexy way like the internet ladies do, but in a way that costs you eight dollars and two hours of your time.