Tag: superhero Page 5 of 6

The Hulk isn’t a superhero. He exists in a world of superheroes, and he was created second (just after the Fantastic Four) during the most legendary superhero-creation-spree of all time, Stan Lee’s run at re-envisioning costumed crusaders for the 1960s. But he’s not a superhero, any more than Godzilla, Frankenstein’s creature, or the Wolfman are superheroes. (Though they, too, were all adapted into comics form by Marvel.) He’s a monster. He comes out of the tradition of monster comics that Lee was writing just before he invented the FF, and although the Green Goliath was constantly encountering Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and so forth, as a character he has very little in common with any of them. He was one of the original Avengers, but there’s a reason why his membership only lasted two issues.

Superheroes are people (or entities who might as well be people) with extraordinary abilities, trying to do good. The Hulk, at least in his most famous incarnation, lacks the mental capacity to form such an intention. Although superpowered (what with being the strongest individual in the world), he is no hero. He’s a pure destructive force, extremely dangerous to anyone and anything he encounters. Sure, he’s misunderstood, and he’s constantly trying, unsuccessfully, to be left alone, but the Army is right to try to neutralize him. He’s like an unstoppable, indestructible, infinitely strong, emotionally abused toddler who lacks any sort of parental figure. The only control on him is his alter ego, who (understandably) is constantly trying to eliminate his greenish tendencies, but of course, if that happened, there would be no story. So it’s never going to happen in any permanent way.

All this presents quite a problem when you’re making a Hulk movie. You’re stuck with a monster movie that you have to somehow sell as a superhero movie, because in the mistaken public mind, the Hulk is a superhero. So what do you do? You make him sympathetic (not hard given his misunderstood quality.) You make Banner really likeable and tie the two together so that it’s clear that the Hulk, dangerous as he is, is a cage that’s wrongfully imprisoning a good person. You taint the intentions of the Army, who really ought to be the heroes of this story, so that they turn from protectors of humanity to destroyers of it. Finally, you provide a villain who’s as powerful as the Hulk but is genuinely evil rather than just rampant, so that we must root for the Hulk to emerge, because he’s the only thing that has a chance of stopping this other force.

Louis Leterrier does all these things successfully in The Incredible Hulk, but he does one more thing too: he stuffs the movie with so many sly references to comic and TV lore that it firmly establishes itself, especially in the wake of Iron Man, as a clear attempt at putting the Marvel Universe on screen. For me, at least, that was where the fun really came alive.

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I’ve never been a fan of Robert Downey, Jr. Not because of all his personal struggles (though his judgement has certainly been less than impressive many times), but because I felt like he was a one-note actor who could only play smarmy jerks. Also, Iron Man himself has always been a character I could take or leave. I never had much against him, but never sought out his adventures either. Consequently, I wondered if seeing Iron Man would be an unpleasant repeat of the Ghost Rider experience — an actor who annoys me playing a superhero I don’t care about.

Well Robert, all is forgiven. You were fantastic. And Shellhead, you’re more interesting to me than you’ve ever been, thanks to this movie, a note-perfect film distillation of Iron Man comics. The movie does an absolutely stellar job of making Iron Man an emblematic hero for our current historical moment, and makes Stan Lee’s concepts seem smarter and more prescient than they ever were (not that they were dumb!)

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I wasn’t a fan of the first Fantastic Four movie, so I went into this one with trepidation. I suppose a more rational person just wouldn’t go at all, but I am not that person. I’m a big fan of the FF, and the last movie did provide some things I liked, so I’m not going to just stay home. I went hoping to find some enjoyable moments, and I did. I found some enjoyable moments, surrounded by a sea of suck.

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Here’s the thing about Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies: they never let me down. Yes, there are always a few pieces I would have done differently if it were up to me. (HA! Yeah, easy to say.) Yes, they pick, choose, and rearrange bits of the mythos, and they leave out some important character pieces (like Spidey being funny). However, I think it would be a huge mistake to try to be stickler-faithful to the comics, and the translations that these movies do are full of great choices.

Mainly, what they do is choose excellent actors, give the characters emotional depth, and allow them to move through arcs that aren’t just about who punches the hardest, but who can summon the most inner strength, and what it costs to do so. By focusing on emotion, they faithfully render the spirit of the best Spider-Man comics. I hoped that Spider-Man 3 would continue this trend. It didn’t let me down.

*** From here, it gets spoilery. ***

I have never been much of a fan of Nicolas Cage, nor of Ghost Rider. The former always struck me as immensely overrated — capable of only a tiny range of emotions, generally unappealing in what he could convey, and ridiculous even when he means to be serious. As for the Ghost Rider, he’s from that period in the 1970s when Marvel was cranking out superheroes who started not as character concepts but rather as attempts to cash in on the popular trends of the day. I can almost hear the pitches for these guys. “Let’s have a kung fu superhero!” (Iron Fist.) “How about a blaxploitation superhero, like Shaft but with superpowers?” (Luke Cage, Power Man, from whom Nicolas took his last name.) “Hey, maybe a superhero who’s powered by disco music! She could roller-skate around and her superpower could be creating a big light show!” (The Disco Dazzler, and no I’m not kidding.) Then there’s Ghost Rider: “We should have an occult-type superhero who rides a badass motorcycle! His alter ego could do big jumps like Evel Knievel!”

So a Ghost Rider movie with Nicolas Cage in the title role was not exactly calculated to please me, but I went ahead and bought a ticket anyway, because I’m interested in superhero movies. Also, while I don’t care for Cage, I like several of the other principals — Peter Fonda, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott — and I’ve got nothing against Eva Mendes. Besides, sometimes the low expectation theory works out really well. However, that was not the case with Ghost Rider. People, this movie was so dumb. It was so, so, so, so dumb.

It could be fun to underline all the reasons why I felt this way, but who has that kind of time? Instead, let me just give you a few of my favorites:

• The Caretaker (Elliott), who lives in a graveyard and is the Basil Exposition of the movie, tells Johnny Blaze (Cage) all about how Johnny has become the Devil’s bounty hunter, he has to hunt the Devil’s son Blackheart (Bentley), etc., and says to Johnny, “You’d better stick around here. They can’t come on hallowed ground.” Five minutes later, we see Blackheart hanging out in a BIG ASS CHURCH.
• When Blaze first becomes Ghost Rider, he leaves a massive trail of destruction, and when he comes back to himself, he sees that the scene is crawling with tons of cops, rescue workers, repair crews, and reporters. One of these reporters is his love interest, Roxanne Simpson (Mendes). They proceed from the scene of destruction up to his apartment, where he explains to her that he suffered this transformation. She says that he’s making up ridiculous stories. He FAILS TO MENTION that his story is the explanation for the otherwise inexplicable damage scene outside, and that the woman Simpson just interviewed gave the exact description of his transformed self.
• The CGI Ghost Rider is given to making the corniest action-hero remarks this side of a Simpsons episode. Example: grabbing an earth elemental demon and saying “Hey, dirtbag!”
• Blaze reads an occult book that says something like, “The possessing demon may be controlled by harnessing the fire element within man.” So then he sets down the book, looks at his hand, and says, “I am speaking to the fire element within me. Give me control of the possessing spirit!” At which point his hand catches on fire and he lights some candles on his wall. Self-control in one easy lesson! This guy could write the shortest diet book ever.
• Before the climactic scene, the Caretaker transforms into Old West Ghost Rider guy and goes on a long dramatic ride with Motorcycle Ghost Rider, only to stop short of the destination and… give him a shotgun. First of all, couldn’t you have just given him the shotgun in the graveyard? Was there any point to the long ride, besides the cool visual? Secondly, a SHOTGUN? This is a really effective weapon against Supernatural Uber-Demon Blackheart? Actually, yes, it turns out to be. Amazing how the cops riddle Ghost Rider with like 8,000 rounds that have absolutely no effect, but damned if some shotgun rounds don’t cause Blackheart a serious problem.
• One more. When telling GR’s origin story, the movie can’t quite bear to have Blaze actually decide to make the Faustian bargain to save his dad. Instead, he accidentally cuts his finger on the contract frame, and when a drop of blood falls on the contract, the devil says, “Oh, that’ll do just fine.” So basically, Blaze spends the whole movie from that point forward angsting and atoning for GETTING A PAPER CUT. This is weak, gutless storytelling, and it makes Blaze ludicrous rather than tragic.

What was good? Well, one thing Ghost Rider has going for him is a cool character design, and the movie does a creditable job of bringing this design to the screen. Peter Fonda is brilliantly cast as the devil, bringing both cycle-movie cred and genuine acting ability to his scenery-chewing role. Wes Bentley also does a fine job in his role — I always thought he had the perfect look for a really creepy villain. Finally, there are a number of funny moments, some of them even intentional.

Overall, though, man what a stinker. All the pieces clicked into place when I saw that the film was both written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson, the guy who inflicted the Daredevil movie on us. Please, somebody stop this guy before he directs another Marvel film!