I’ve got to
admit, I disagree with the majority on this one, but we’ll get to that, Spy
Game was released in 2001 and starred Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. It made
some money, not much, only $143m on a colossal (for this kind of movie) $115m
budget. Bearing in mind that theatres take a cut of that and any promotional
expenditure, I’d be surprised if this wasn’t a loss for the production
companies.
The movie
met with reasonably positive reception, a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 7/10
on IMDb and 63% on MetaCritic but as my first statement told you, I’m not going
to be one of those people. Why not, well, let’s take a look?
You may
recall my 4th rage of this blog was Son of Batman. In it Damian
Wayne was forced into Batman’s hands and got the role as Robin. You might want
to check out that review, because the plot is ongoing. I also did a review last
year of Batman vs Robin, the slightly better sequel. Today we look at the third
in the series, and it’s bad, really really bad. This is Batman: Bad Blood. Insert obvious Taylor Swift Joke here.
What we’re looking at is a mish-mash of various bits of Batman history (so what else is knew?). But the
biggest influence I can see is Batman Incorporated where Batman assembled a
team of not Justice Leaguers to combat a sinister threat. It’s classic Grant
Morrison being equal parts awesome, stupid and confusing, especially when
Fraser Irving did the art for one issue (rule of thumb, if Frazer Irving did
the artwork, it’ll be cr*p) but I suppose I should mention our 2 breakout characters in
this.
First we
have Kathy Kane aka Batwoman – she was a breakout character from the awesome
miniseries 52. In the New 52 continuity, there were plans that she and her
long-time girlfriend would get married but the rug was pulled out from under
the creative team at the last minute (because, apparently Bat-family characters
can’t have happy lives) which lead to the resignation of the creative and the
book’s eventual cancellation. She’s currently getting a starring role in
Detective comics, I’ll let you know how that turns out in September.
Secondly we
have Luke Fox aka Batwing II, the original guy was from Africa, I really have
nothing more to say about him because I was not reading Batwing.
With that
said, let’s take a look at this piece of trite and see what went wrong.
So… I’ve just finished
watched a show where giant robots were fighting off an alien invasion. Voltron:
Legendary Defender the new Netflix Dreamworks series that tries to be Avatar:
The Last Airbender in Space. I’ll save my thoughts on the show for another
review but what am I watching today.
A movie where giant robots
are fighting off an alien invasion. I was going to reference how both of these
shows seem to have a very Power Rangers feel to them but then I found that
Voltron actually pre-dates Power Rangers. But then Super Sentai, the Japanese
show that Power Rangers uses stock footage from predates GoLion which Voltron
used stock footage from so… I’m going off topic here.
Pacific Rim was released in
2013 making $411m off it’s $190m budget being successful enough for a sequel to
be on its way, it’s been in development hell for some time. It’s received
reasonable reviews with a 64 on MetaCritic and 71% on Rotten Tomatoes.
OK, before
we start time for some house-cleaning. It’s become apparent that this meme
Is massively
overused so I’m starting a coin jar. Every time I’m tempted to use the clip, I
put a coin in the jar, this will last until the end of the year and any money
in it will be donated to charity. (I’m all heart, I know)
That’s for
the time I used it just now. So with that out of the way, Batman and Robin
I think I
might need more change
Oh good
grief, this is when Schumacher went too far. I have my issues with Batman
Forever but ultimately, I enjoyed it more than I did the Burton movies. Sure,
it was over the top but it did have quieter moments and focus was where it
should be, on Batman!
In terms of
success, being more kid-friendly than the Burton movies helped as it made it
more marketable. I doubt they lost any fast food tie ins with this movie. But,
this movie’s success was questioned from the start. The movie was fast-tracked
into production by the studio after the success of Batman Forever, meaning
there was a rushed feel to it, even from the beginning. Making it worse is toy
companies coming in during pre-production, adding a commercial feel to
proceedings. Chris O’Donnell has said that filming Batman and Robin felt like a
toy commercial
Because of
scheduling conflicts, largely relating to the fast tracking of the movie, Val
Kilmer couldn’t return for a second shot as Batman and so George Clooney was
hired instead. Also, with some insistence from Schumacher himself, Arnold
Schwarzenegger was cast as Mr Freeze, one of the main villains of the movie,
and they were planning to base his origin on the vastly popular episode of
Batman: The Animated Series, Heart of Ice. So, yes, I’m doing yet another
terrible attempt to replicate it (you might remember the awful attempt to
retell Mr Freeze’s origins in Batman Annual #1)
A lot of people in production don’t have nice things to save about this movie,
I’ve mentioned Chris O’Donnell’s thoughts. George Clooney said he’d offer
refunds to anyone who saw it in theatres (I did not, being the ripe old age of
5 when this came out) and Joel Schumacher himself apologised for it.
Produced on
a $140m budget, the movie made back its money with a strong overseas
performance but it was lambasted critically, holding a mere 11% on rotten
tomatoes, 28% on metacritic and a 3.7 on IMDb.
So, now
we’re past the longest intro ever, let’s dive into the sea of sh*t that is,
Batman and Robin.
We finish
X-men month with a look at the most recent of the X-men animated series:
Wolverine and the X-men
Released in
2009, this series was a kind of bridge between the X-men movies and the comics
universe. There isn’t a lot of shared continuity between the movies and this
comics, it’s more about design choices (Wolverine particularly looks like his
Hugh Jackman counterpart and considerably taller than his comic counterpart)
Heralding
this is a focus on Wolverine because of his popularity from 3 x-men movies and
a solo movie coming out the same year. So, is it any good? Let’s take a look
We’ve reached the conclusion
of Hugh Jackm… I mean X-men month with the most recent X-men movie on DVD, it’s
X-men: Days of Future Past. And helping things along is the return of Bryan
Singer as director, his last X-men film was the best of the ones so far, being
X-men 2.
I must admit, like the other
X-men movies, I didn’t see this in the cinema, seeing a teaser for it as a
mid-credits scene in the Amazing Spider-man 2 (Mark Webb was under contract
with Fox at the time, but was allowed to work on this film in exchange for
that) kinda rubbed me the wrong way at the time, instead I waited until it was
out on DVD.
In terms of audience
reaction, it’s probably got the best up there with 91% on Rotten Tomatoes (at
time of writing matching Captain America: Civil war and up there with the Dark
Knight and the Avengers, 2 of my absolute favourite movies. Oh and also Iron
Man, which was good… I need to do a Marvel theme month, I mean actual Marvel,
not Fox or Sony Marvel.
Anyway, it’s also the most
successful of the X-men movies, earning $750m at the box office on a $200m
budget.
But let’s take a look at the
movie itself and see how it holds up. For the record I’m not using the extended
version because I don’t have that DVD.
The
Wolverine was the 2013 entry and the x-men franchise and served as a kind of
filler event between first class and 2014’s X-men: Days of Future Past (we’ll
get to that next week) production began immediately after the release of X-men
origins wolverine and it went through several drafts and directors as is not
unusual for the X-men movies to do.
Produced on
$120m budget, this movie had a decent run with around $420m at the box office
and was better received critically than its predecessor with a 70% rating on
rotten tomatoes and a 6.7 on IMDb.
