Super Hero Movies pt. 1: The Fatal Flaws

I would just like to take this time to say that I have never been as excited about a movie release as I am about Iron Man 2.  I mean, I wasn't even this excited about The Dark Knight.  I think it's safe to say that I measure all comic movies against Iron Man, which, I feel, is the best comic book movie of all time.  Now, I still measure all comic movie VILLAINS against Willem DeFoe's Green Goblin in Spider Man, even The Iron Monger from Iron Man (which was nowhere near as epicly awesome --- or is it awesomely epic --- as The Green Goblin), but that's beside the point.  The point is, Iron Man was a great movie.

Why was it such a great movie?  Because it was as close to perfect as it could have been; The acting was great, the story was smooth and coherent, the villain was neither pathetic nor insanely cheesy (see Bane and Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin, respectively), and it didn't try to hard. Completely and totally disregard the fact that it did not follow the comics perfectly (a supposed flaw that turns off a lot of comic book fans), ok?  That doesn't matter because the movie kicked proverbial ass and therefor is not deserving of such pointless complaints.  Other than the reasons I already listed for the movie being so awesome, there is one other reason: It did not break what I call the Law of Two.

The Law of Two states that no comic book movie may have more than two villains without sucking.  The Law works like this: If a movie only has one or two villains in a comic book movie, then the movie will, in theory, be able to focus on those villains while still being able to focus on the story; however, if a comic book movie has three or more villains, not only does the movie become incredibly cluttered with characters (see X-Men: Last Stand), but the movie also is not able to tell the story it is intended to tell.  Granted, the story may not have been that great in the first place, but even bad stories need to be told --- to somebody, I guess --- and they should be told the best they can be told... sometimes.

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Batman and Robin, Spiderman 3, and X-Men: Last Stand all have two things in common.  The first and most obvious thing is that they were just bad movies.  The second is that they broke the Law of Two.  B&R had three villains (though Bane's pathetic portrayal may qualify for little more than a guy with a shirt that says "Henchman" on the front), and Spiderman 3 had two villains (Venom and Sandman), and a villain who couldn't decide whether or not he was a villain, a home-wrecker, or just comic relief (Harry Osborne).  X3...wow...X3 is probably the worse criminal of all time when it comes the the Law of Two.  X-Men had one villain, Magneto, and THREE henchmen (Mystique, Sabertooth, and Toad) and X-Men 2 had just Magneto (w/ Mystique) and that mutant-hating jerk, Stryker, along with his own mutant, Lady Deathstrike (?).  Last Stand, however, had way too many bad guys for any movie in any genre.  There was that guy who was trying to "cure" all the mutants, there was Magneto, and then there was enough evil mutants to fill the Grand Canyon. 

Now, while there is no limit, in my opinion, to the number of heroes in a comic book movie, there can be too many.  The first two X-Men movies just barely walked the line between the right amount of heroes --- there has to be more than one because it's a team... X-mEn, instead of X-mAn --- and too many.  The crazy thing is, the team underwent slight changes in every movie, having characters randomly appear and vanish between movies as if they were Nightcrawler.  However, those movies didn't get so crowded that they were mentally claustrophobic, like Last Stand was. 

Now, I know that comic books tend to have tons of villains.  The thing is, though, comic books also tend to go on for extended periods of time.  You just don't have enough time in a feature-length motion picture to include every single character that is involved in a comic book.

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Another fatal flaw that tends to be thrown onto comic book movies is the phenomenon of trying to hard.  Whether it is the director, the writers, or the producers who are to blame, trying too hard to make a movie can really ruin it.  One of the most obvious examples of this was Ang Lee's Hulk from 2003.  Ang Lee tried way too hard to make Hulk a moving, dramatic, emotional story about inner anguish an conflict with one's self.  Granted, The Incredible Hulk (the character, not the awesome movie with Edward Norton as Bruce Banner) is about those things, but when you lay it on too thick, it gets annoying.  Trust me, I fully understand where Ang Lee was going with that movie, but it just didn't work out the way he wanted it to.  I don't know, maybe it was too much haiku and not enough chaos.

It's also possible that Joel Shumacher also tried way too hard with Batman Forever (which, in my opinion, was a pretty decent movie) and Batman and Robin (NOT a decent movie).  Well, he either tried too hard or he is just easily distracted by bright, shiny lights, because those movies were nothing but neon.  I know he was probably going for a comic book feel for those movies (much like Ang Lee did with Hulk), but if people want to experience comic books, they will read comic books.  Most comic books, regardless of art style, take place in the real world, and that is how they should be depicted in movies.  Film makers should keep this in mind before they decide to take someone else' art and try to make it into their own art --- at least that's my opinion.

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 I really have no way to end this other than saying that I am really excited and hopeful about all the marvel movies that are coming out this and in coming years.  I just hope the Avengers don't wind up having to face a "Legion of Doom" sort of team of super villains from each of the individual Avengers' respective movies.  Why?  The Law of Two, of course.

Now this is something I should have predicted lol

because of that one entry about drinking and stuff, Google has saw it fit to put nothing but alcohol addiction ads in the ad spaces.  Maybe I'll become popular with AA?  maybe I should start talking about cars so I can become popular with AAA... More A's is better, right?

Drink Responsibly... because people WILL see the things you do lol

No, this is not a PSA and I will NOT be saying not to drink because I drink and I'm not a hypocrite.  I will, however, say that you should be VERY careful when you drink, what you drink, how you drink, and who you drink... with.  Alcohol makes it reeeeeally easy to relax and have fun, but have you ever noticed that time tends to slip right past you when you're having fun?  Ever notice how alcohol helps you have a LOT of fun?  But I bet you never realized that those two facts can be put together in a kind of mathematical equation.

Let's say yooooooou're...uh... bowling.  This may sound dorky, but I enjoy bowling.  And, unfortunately for me, 3-5 games of bowling actually go by kind of fast... when I'm sober.  When I'm drinking, though, at the end of it all, I'm ready to fork out money on another couple of games.  Sadly, that's usually at closing time... and I'm usually in my underwear humping a 25 cent toy machine.  But that's neither here nor there.  I like to think I made my point about how alcohol tends to make time go by faster than usual.

Ok, so alcohol is a time machine in a bottle.  Sweet.  But there is a major drawback to the time machine thing, and that is in how it works, how it teleports you forward into time.  Alcohol is a depressant, which means that it is a drug (yes, alcohol is a drug... a drug I will rarely say NO to lol.) that slows down your mind and the rest of your body... except for your urinary system, but whatever.  Point is, alcohol slows down your mind, while the world continues moving at normal speed.  The crazy thing is, the more you drink, the slower your mind works, until you start losing control of certain brain functions.  First, you lose your equilibrium, then your ability to accurately form complete and coherent sentences, then your ability to SEE clearly, then your ability to... be awake. Ok, there's one step before that last one, and that is when you lose your ability to KNOW you're awake.  You know, that wonderful period of time in which you are awake, but you think you're asleep?  Yeah, that's when the Time Machine Effect (©) REALLY kicks in.  When you got to sleep and sleep for, let's say, 8 hours and wake up in the morning, are you aware that you just slept that long?  No, instead, you feel like you fell asleep and woke right back up.  There ya go.  The Time Machine Effect (©):  You drink too much, rip open a tear in the space-time continuum, go into a kind of stasis, and wake up in the future.  BOOM!

Stay tuned for some drunk stories.... I got some funny ones

A random thought

Watching Friday the Thirteenth Part 2 has suddenly made me very glad that my soft-top convertible volkswagon is out of commission...

what started it all

Ok, like I said before, I got inspired to act and get into film after watching Clerks. Clerks is also what inspired me to become a huge Kevin Smith fan, but that's a topic for another blog post for another day.

What I'm trying to get to is that while I was in Jr. College studying Criminal Justice (waaaaaaaaaaaaaste), I suddenly and randomly got the idea that I wanted to act. Unfortunately, though, there weren't --- and probably still isn't --- any acting opportunities in Beeville, Texas. So, since my family and I already had a little camcorder, I got a video capture card for my PC and randomly shot a retarded, possibly drug-fueled rant about how classic video games are the cause of the...well... drug problem our country is facing. But, that stupid, incoherent, way-too-long, barely-edited video gave me a hunger... a craving to do that stuff more and more and more. And I did.... sort of... but once again, that's for another post.

So, without further ado, I give you "Inside The Dale's Bunker", an editorial (question maaaaaark?) given by a paranoid conspiracy theorist that I named after one of my nicknames --- don't ask why, because I don't know. And that thing that I/he holds up is something that I actually made in a ceramics class that I took at jr. college. And just for the record, I was not on anything at the time I filmed this. The fact of the matter is, I couldn't improv to save my life, so all the spastic movements and mannerisms were used to compensate for that fact and to give me time to think of something to say.... CRAP! That was further ado! I apologize.... uh, enjoy

In honor of Earth Day...

In honor of Earth day, I present to you the Pinnacle/zenith/paramount/best of my video editing abilities in the form of a movie trailer for a fictitious movie --- meaning a movie that doesn't exist --- I made last year.

Enjoy this wonderful tribute to our loving Mother Earth

oh, and since my blog doesn't want to show this in wide screen like it was uploaded as, just click on it and it will take you to the youtube page.

Where to begin...? uh.... here, I guess

Almost everybody has had dreams of being an actor, or movie star, or whatever at some point in their life. Normally, those dreams occur in the minds of children and young teens... at an age when it can easily be nourished and cultivated and all that, allowing the dreamer to become a veteran actor by their early-mid 20's.

However, I did not decide that I wanted to be an actor until I was 20 years old, when I watched Clerks for the first time and thought, "Hey, if these guys can do it, so can I!", which kind of puts me a bit behind on the whole nourishing and cultivating thing. But you know, some people like to say, "better late than never," and I'm gonna try to live by that.

This blog is about the continuing (mis)adventures of a 25-year old, out-of-work actor --- who just happens to be out of work, period --- as he attempts to claw his way to the top... or, at least, as close to the top as he can get.