ROFL!
Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.
Posted on 12/17/2009 8:33:32 AM PST by Reaganesque
Click here for the new trailer!
I think you mean “War Machine”...
Oops. My bad.
I liked the original but often found myself thinking “quit yacking and blow something up!”
I’m shallow that way.
Whiplash, Black Widow, War Machine .... this is looking pretty cool!
I enjoyed the first Iron Man movie because it stuck fairly closely to the intent of the creators, except for the guffaw-inducing appearance of black Samuel L. Jackson as caucasian Nick Fury after the closing credits rolled.
I’m actually dreading Iron Man 2 because Samuel L. Jackson is supposed to reprise the aforementioned role, and even if he decided to wear pancake makeup, I don’t think he could pull that off. While I like SLJ in most of his roles, he’s simply a terrible choice to play Nick Fury; even worse than David Hasselhorse in the Nick Fury movie a few years ago.
On a related note, I can hardly wait for the big screen remake of Roots, featuring David Spade as Kunta Kinte and Lucy Liu as his owner.
ROFL!
On a lighter note: Stan Lee plays Larry King.
On the other hand, not sure why they chose Whiplash who IMHO was always a second rater as a villain. If they’re going to have the Black Widow, they could have had the Crimson Dynamo, the Titanium Man, the Mandarin or even Firebrand for the commies in government.
yeah it looks cool
I heard the same argument when Michael Duncan Clark was chosen to play “The Kingpin” in the horrid “Daredevil” movie.
Neither “Kingpin” or “Nick Fury” are racially-based characters. There’s nothing in their background or “literary” history to indicate that race is important. MDC was a great Kingpin, physically and in the role.
Now, if he were a klansman or a white supremist, or if the plot called for a white man to undergo a uniquely “white” experience, I’d agree.
Other than that, he’s just a one-eyed, badass secret agent.
With an eye-patch, Jackson would appear to fill the role.
How effective remains to be seen.
Peronally, the whole “Avengers” thing is a waste of time.
ugh.
Check out the director’s cut of “Daredevil.” Unless you have a fundamental issue with the casting of Ben Affleck, it’s so much better than the theatrical release, it makes you want to seriously slap the studio suits who decided to trim the movie down. It fills in major holes and fleshes the story out very nicely. In my opinion, it’s almost “Spider-Man” good.
But the big question is can SLJ make it through the entire movie without saying MFer and his head not explode?
That's a good one.
I found Daredevil to be forgettable, so maybe I should try again with the Director's Cut.
I thought Elektra was okay (in its case, I didn’t feel any differently about the director’s cut than the original), but mediocre. If you liked it, then all the more reason to check out the Daredevil DC.
You’d have to ply me with a lot of scotch to take another look at “Daredevil”. There’s so much bad acting and character formation all around, particularly the male and female lead, that I would think the director’s cut would trim it more.
And, yes, the Affleck issue is foremost.
Very bad choice.
I was thinking of Aaron Eckhart for the role.
Finally saw “Gone Baby Gone”, and Affleck should stay BEHIND the camera.
Kinky.
Well, in your case, the DC might not help much, although I think you’d have to concede an improvement in the story structure, as well as the final confrontation with Kingpin, which is actually a full fight in the DC. Also, in terms of character, the DC does more to establish him early on as someone to be afraid of.
By the way, I agree with your earlier comments on the racial element. What a lot of first-generation Marvel readers (like me) aren’t aware of is that when the recent Ultimates reboots were developed, Nick Fury was designed as not only being black, but actually being modeled after Jackson himself.
The one instance where I think making a character black was a poor idea was the movie “The Wild Wild West” (or, as I call it, “The Wild Wild Waste”). A black Secret Service field agent in reconstruction-era America was not only historically inaccurate, but not credible in terms of story, as his ability to investigate, infiltrate and move about discreetly would have been non-existent.
It is not like they made him a chick.
Not to mention the whole racial aspect of “WWW”.
It’s as if they were trying to make a point with a movie based on a series that had no point. It was just a fun anachronism.
I do think the Daredevil character was poorly fleshed out. Much as I hated the mid 1980s Batman comics, where he walked down the street in broad daylight, waving to kids and parking the Batmobile on the corner. Daredevil didn’t appear to inspire the level of fear that the comics did. Shame about 15 years of Daredevil books were stolen when I moved ten years ago. DD vs Punisher, first appearance. Gone. As a huge DD fan, Afflect was a major disapppointment.
NOBODY has the background to play millionaire playboy and alcoholic Tony Stark like millionaire playboy and addict Robert Downey. Fantastic work (again).
Batman: The Dark Knight is probably the best, based mostly on Heath Ledger's Joker and the fantastic supporting work by Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman. How come Batman always comes off as an empty suit and the burden of carrying the movie falls on the peripheral characters?
Spider-man 1, 2, and 3 are good. They rewrote a LOT of the comic book stuff, but remained true to the spirit of the comic. J. K. Simmons, as J. Jonah Jameson is probably the best movie interpretation of any comic book character. Dr. Octopus is great. In the third movie, the rewriting of Uncle Ben's death stunk, and they tried to write too many characters into the script. Kirsten Dunst needs to slow down. She was pretty in the first one, but looks more haggard each movie. Tobey MaGuire was an inspired choice, conveying the immaturity of Spider-man well.
Fantastic Four is sorta okay, but they make the same mistakes in it that they make in the comic. They write around themselves to make Reed Richards the central character, when Ben Grimm is far more compelling. The Thing would have worked better as CGI instead of the costume/suit. Unfortunately, they had to rewrite Dr. Doom, as George Lucas stole 75% of his personality to create Darth Vader. Over all, the FF seem like the least heroic super heroes out there.
The Watchmen is well done. Rorschach, who was a homage to Steve Ditko, is one of the best comic characters ever made. Watchmen is very dark, and not a kid's show. It's also far left wing and nihilistic.
X-Men was pretty good in the first movie, but in the second, the "gay rights" metaphor became painfully obvious. I lost interest after the "coming out of the closet" scene with the firestarter kid. Personally, I thought Rogue was hotter than Jean Gray or Storm. Patrick Stewart once again takes his victorian voice and creates a character that's a total wuss.
Daredevil was somewhat true to the later comics, particularly in the fact that the lead character gets his butt kicked in every fight. I found it boring.
The Hulk was one of those movies that could have been great. The special effects were superb, but they seriously needed a film editor to cut out about half the dialog. Sam Elliot was terrific. Nick Nolte as the primary protagonist sucked eggs, creating a particularly bad final fight scene because his powers were so esoteric. The Hulk is a difficult character, because he's not a hero, and isn't in control of his powers. It's kind of like coming up with different plots for Godzilla.
Superman Returns: Didn't see it. One look at the uber-gay costume was all I needed.
Iron Man. Good plot, again they should have spent more time busting stuff up and left out 3/4s of the angst.
I'm not sure. How many African-American NCO's commanded an elite, mostly caucasian squad of Army Rangers during WWII? Wasn't the army integrated in '48 or '49?
If the movie were referencing something that far back, then I’d say it was something revisionist.
The movie does none of that.
I’m pretty sure Punisher’s first appearance was in Spider-Man.
As for the issue of Nick Fury's skin color -- I could care less. Best of luck to SL Jackson in the role.
A couple you left out.
The Rocketeer was, I thought, an outstanding adaptation, and as good as I’d hoped. Too bad rights issues prevented them from incorporating the Doc Savage elements. Also a shame that Disney, gun-shy from the Dick Tracy debacle, didn’t promote the movie as well as they should have.
I also thought The Phantom was entertaining, though it played as somewhat of a poor man’s Indiana Jones story.
I meant the first DD vs Punisher appearance.
Sorry.
Doesn’t matter now.
That issue is long gone. :(
You’re correct.
I wasn’t referring to any specific background, just the fact that his character, or almost any other, isn’t necessarily limited to race.
Hell, if they can make Jesus Christ a lilly white long-hair ...
I thought I heard Family Guy disparage “The Rocketeer” earlier this season or last.
I liked that movie A LOT.
Brought back the memories of pre-WWII Hollywood.
And Jennifer Connelly ...
Thank God I was stationed in Germany when “Dick Tracy” came out.
I dunno. There are limits. If the make a new movie version of _Alan Quatermain_ with Johnny Depp as Umslopogaas, I’m stayin’ home!
I'm with you.
Call me old schoool but Nick Fury was created as a caucasian, as were characters like BatMan, Superman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, etc. Having a black actor portray a white character is akin to having Bruce Willis portray Luke Cage, Black Lightning, Spawn or the Black Panther. I’m just saying.
Yeah, I had high hopes for Daredevil too, and it turned out to be a major flop. Producers deciding to “re-invent” characters to be able to sell them to a younger, hipper audience usually destroys the creators’ vision of their characters and alienates the fans who made them popular. That’s apparently what they’ve decided to do with Nick Fury, who was created as a caucasian war hero and later super agent. I wonder why they didn’t offer Pee Wee Herman the role of Black Widow?
Although the Watchmen was dark and nihilistic, it took a look at the types of individuals that would be drawn to trying to be super heros, and most of them would have some mental issues.
BTW, the current prevailing theme of most comics was laid out by the original Frank Miller "Dark Knight Returns" and the Watchmen. They came out within a year of each other, so I don't know how much one affected the other, but these were the first comics where someone said, "Wait a minute! In real life, super heros would be controversial. There'd be senate sub committees investigating them and a lot of people calling for them to be arrested for breaking the law." Even light fare like "The Incredibles" picked up on it.
With the Phantom, I thought they had the problem of trying to update a forties viewpoint of Africa. Indiana Jones generally kept the location so indistinct that nobody really thought about who was running around in goofy forties movie native outfits.
I don’t know that he was created as a “caucasian war hero”.
He was a war hero that happened to be caucasian.
It wasn’t integral to the character as, say, Power Fist was as a black man.
My objection is that SLJ is a bit over-exposed at the moment. Sorta of like a 1980s Gene Hackman.
Probably my wild side, but there’s something exciting about a chick that can put you into a coma by kissing you.
And they couldn’t use Miller’s insane Daredevil of 1986/87?
That would’ve been awsome, instead of the white bread portrayal by Affleck.
How many platoons were led by black men in WWII? Nick Fury was Sgt. Fury before he became a super agent and has always been portrayed as caucasian if one discounts the convoluted multiple ultraverses, and I do. I guess I’m just a purist who, if I were a Hollywood producer, director or screenwriter, would try my best to keep the creators’ vision of their characters as true to form as possible.
Part of the problem with Daredevil was they introduced everything, but didn’t explore anything. Daredevil has the same problem as most of the Batman features. At the center, the hero is totally lifeless.
Affleck can’t act. He’s not as bad as Jonathan Frakes, who couldn’t act dead if someone shot him, but the core problem of Daredevil is that at the end, there’s not any “there” there.
Very true.
They introduced DD, then Elektra, then the Kingpin, along with almost all the standard cast (Bullseye, Ben, etc.) in one fell swoop, and out of order.
They left nothing for a multi-part series with more depth in each installment. It’s as if they knew it would suck, so they figured they’d get everything done and over with in two hours.
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