Noel...I'm curious: what superhero movies do you think are better than Spiderman 2? I've been pretty disappointed by, well, most all of them, including Tim Burton's take on Batman. The had the look right, but poor storylines and the characters were off...
I thought Batman Returns is the best of the lot, followed by Altman's Popeye. Not conventional choices, but Superman, while dear, is kind of dull. I don't like straightforward adaptations.
As for the characters being off--hell, no, I didn't think so, or if they were off, I thought they were wildly and imaginatively off. Batman is the worldweary ringmaster, but the glory of movie are the villains: The Penguin as a Charles Dickens grotesque writ large, The Catwoman as embodiment of the pathos/danger of the cat/woman (both are subject to the most amazing acts of sadism, both retaliate with feline ferocity). I haven't found a comic book film in recent years--or ever--to compare to villains like these, and Daniel Waters' witty dialogue just rounds it up for me (you should read the original script though, it has an extra twist or two). With all this, who cares about storylines (or you might say the storyline is how all these twisted sickos distort each other even further...)?
As for Popeye--ah, well, I love the lopsided poetry, is all.
No comments:
Post a Comment