I was discussing this Summer's movies with a friend yesterday. In general, outside of what I'll call kids movies (Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me, ect...) I think this was one of the dullest movie Summers in a long time. While I enjoyed Iron Man 2 a good bit, other movies I was looking forward to (The Last Airbender, Clash of the Titans) sort of fell a bit flat for me. Not sure what I was really looking for in Clash of the Titans, but for some reason, that movie seemed a bit too by the numbers to really recapture the feel of the old Harryhausen movies. Maybe it was because the actors kept repeating the theme of the movie over and over again. I'll put up with that nonsense in a kids movie, but do we really need to carry that convention over into *grown up* movies?
Also, I wonder if just trying to recaputure the magic of those old stop motion monster movies is a lost cause in this day of plentiful CGI? If every movie can feature amazing special effects, perhaps those effects are less special.
I know damn sure I'm tired of all this 3D hoopla - mark me down as unimpressed with the new wave of 3D movies.
It may be just me - maybe I'm just tired of big, booming movies. It may be telling that my favorite movie from last Summer was NOT Star Trek, Watchmen or Dark Knight but Inglorious Basterds. Both Star Trek and Dark Knight were fun and exciting, but I find myself thinking more about IG as time goes on.
Anyway, talking about stop motion monsters leads me to the star of today's free comic - Reptisaurus!
Reptisaurus was a giant monster comic based on a Danish monster movie Reptilicus. It was published by Dell in the 60's. As far as I know, only 8 issues of the title were published. I suspect the first issue was a movie tie-in which got a name change to Reptisaurus when Dell didn't liscense the character out right.
[ Reptilicus ]
[ Reptisaurus ]
Enjoy!
- Jim
While I agree with your sentiment on them, as I one of those present when you saw Clash and Airbender, your reactions were a bit more positive at the time, so its this "upon further reflection?"
ReplyDeleteAlso, I would say you haven't seen Inception which I would say is the best movie I've seen this year (so far), or Scott Pilgrim which is pretty fun.
Anyway, I guess Reptisaurus has the virtue of making Reptillicus sound like a good name. How about digging up that old Grasshopperus comic? The one about the giant, radioactive grasshopper? Or maybe I just imagined that...
I really love the animated series of Airbender so when I heard about a lot of the changes they made for the movie it really put me off of it. Clash just looked like a Spike TV/300/UFC version. I'll gladly take the Harryhausen movie.
ReplyDeleteWith Batman I liked Begins and hated Dark Knight. DK was everything I was afraid Begins was going to be. Also, Two-Face is supposed to be scarred not skinless. A classic case of total overthought because the concept has to be laid on the alter of "realism".
@Trey Funny you mention Scott Pilgrim. My wife and I saw that last night and even though I've never been a big gamer I thought it was fun. My wife grew up on a lot of the games they reference so she got a kick out of it on a whole other level than I did. No pun intended.
Actually, Reptilicus/Reptisaurus was published by Charlton, not Dell.
ReplyDeleteThey also did comics based on Gorgo and Konga.
And the Giant Grasshopper movie Trey refers to is Beginning of the End featuring a whole colony of giant radioactively-mutated grasshoppers!
@BrittReid - Argh! I think I had Dell on my brain from looking up stuff on Wild Wild West for Friday's post...
ReplyDeleteThe Titans remake bothered me because it tried to ape Star Wars.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I recognize that Star Wars is a bunch of myths in a blender, and to a certain extent so was CotT, but when you get to lightsabers, redeeming the deformed father, and Pegasus is a stand-in for the X-Wing while Perseus does a trench run...
I can't say I was at all surprised when I heard they're going to try to milk a trilogy out of it. I'm hoping for an incomplete but fully operational new Kraken in the third part.
@Lukeblast - A trilogy? I don't see them having much luck with that, but who knows...
ReplyDelete