I didn't care for it. Norton is great. But Liv Tyler was distractingly bad. I laughed everytime she opened her mouth from the midpoint of the picture on up.
All things considered (story, cast, FX)...Iron Man.
Tie for 2nd place: Spider-Man 2 and Superman 2. Spidey had a good story, by far the better FX (I still get chills watching him swing through the city), but loses with Mcquire and Dunst; Superman 2 had a great story, much better cast, but poor FX by today's standards (Superman Returns, on the other hand, gives me the chills with the whole plane scene, but the story, Roth and Bosworth didn't do it for me).
Solid 3rd place: Batman Begins, mainly because I'm not a Batman fan and CGI FX were minimal, but it was very, very realistic. I mean, this was the first Batman film where I could really accept Batman happening.
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Where's The Dark Knight or Watchmen? TDK eclipses 'Begins in my book. Iron Man was cool but the story wasn't anything special. Just a great potrayal by Downey and great FX(preferred it over the first Transformers). Overall Iron Man is let down by the weak climax and the lack of action. There are only really 4 action scenes: Break-Out, Mark II, Gulmira, and Climax.
The Dark Knight had a better story, far superior cast, and better action. It was actually an intense experience. And instead of one great performance in Downey Jr., there were 2 great performances in TDK in Ledger and Eckhart. Not to mention everyone else was truly solid. All of the action scenes in TDK are well done by Nolan: Bank Heist, Hong Kong, Police Chase, Hospital/Lambo, Climax.
Watchmen is the same as TDK just to a lesser degree. I agree with you on Spiderman 2. Great action, loved Molina as Ock but Dunst and Toby suck. If the actor in the lead role sucks then the film most likely will be bad. I enjoyed Spiderman 2 however. 1 and 3 just weren't good for me.
The Incredibles, V for Vendetta, and Blade II are all personal favorites of mine.
H'm. I can't really disagree with you about Iron Man, ie, there were no scenes which gave me the chills (eg, like with SpdrMan 2); I just thought it had the best mix of all the important elements. Plus: no man in tights. As well as it might work in the comic book medium, on screen men in tights/spandex, well, starts to look silly if one looks too closely. The armor, however, was quite kickass.
Watchmen: the film was too long given the relative lack of high-intensity CGI FX (though Dr. Manhattan was superb). Not that I like Transformer 2 intensity (my eyeballs are still vibrating from that one); more like kind of what you were saying with Iron Man is why I'm not ranking Watchmen higher.
TDK: also a bit long for my tastes, and Heath Ledger...he gave a great performance, but I miss the high-intensity CGI. TDK did bypass the man-in-tights thing, which was good. But also, as I mentioned before, I'm not a Batman fan, so no doubt that's skewing my appraisal of the film.
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Agreed, the armor was cool and original. On the contrare I thought the scene in Gulmira was jawdropping b/c we had not seen that before. More jawdropping than anything in Spiderman 2.
I don't mind a long film if it's entertaining. There wasn't a single moment in TDK or Watchmen where I felt "they should have cut this". Transformers 2 on the other hand..............that movie had NO business whatsoever being how long it was. High intensity CHI is Transformers by Michael Bay. TDK's lack of CGI was what made the film somewhat realistic atleast compared to other films of it's genre. The film transcended it's genre.
KMC Community Forums
Jul 2nd, 2009 07:08 PM
