The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - 2

Here's the second installment in the new "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" Series. This time we're going to do a focus on comic and graphic novel based movies. Let's get it rolling!

THE GOOD: Watchmen is in its final Post-Production phases, and if you saw The Dark Knight then you got a most tantalizing view of this upcoming comic great from the director of 300, Zack Snyder. The trailer showcased many of Snyder's (now) trademark styles of slow motion sweeping camera movements and over-the-top visual feasts of color and effects. For 300 it was a perfect fit. I'm currently in the process of reading the graphic novel (rated in the Top 100 greatest NOVELS of all time by Time Magazine) and I can see (having read 300 before the movie) that Snyder's style will fit the dark themes and morbid happenings of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic masterpiece. David Hayter (the infamous voice of Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series) penned the script and Hayter's past works have included the original X-Men and X-2, so he knows his way around a comic interpretation. All and all this looks to be great adaptation and interpretation of a great work of art. Watchmen is slated for release on March 6th, 2009.


THE BAD: Spider-Man 4 is currently in script format. Now I was considering using this for The Ugly, but I figured considering all the other things it could be, this wasn't the worst case scenario. It's still in script form, so no word yet on who the main villains will be, or whether Tobey Maguire will even come back as the titular role. Rumors on the street are pointing at characters like Scorpion and The Vulture coming into play, but again, these are just rumors. While on the subject of speculation, let's dive into a little ourselves. This could be a chance for the Spider-Man franchise to jump onto the bandwagon of merging the Marvel Universe into one cohesive structure. After Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk's strong allusions to other Marvel characters and even an Avengers Movie, maybe the creator's of Spider-Man realized there was a lot of missed opportunities to be had with mixing and matching. If that's the case, could the next Fantastic Four be laden with references to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers? Maybe the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man team up? Who knows, I'm just rambling now. But at any rate, know that Spider-Man 4 does exist, and Sony has paid Marvel to renew their rights to the cinematic Spider-Man franchise. The tentative release date is May 2011. More details as they come, valued readers!

THE UGLY: Justice League: Mortal. While I'm a fan of Batman and the likes and would want to see a Justice League movie as much as the Avengers one Marvel is spouting around, this project in and of itself is tripping all over itself like it has two left feet at a dance marathon. The project is tabled right now, Warner Bros. wanted to rewrite the script and then the Writer's Strike occured and so the development has been inevitably and indeterminably delayed. Casting had started, and part of why this earned an "Ugly" is because none of the cast of the super-hero super-squad are related to the other movies going around with the same names. The Avengers and Marvel have managed to keep the big name actors onboard and with the Avengers movie we can definitely look forward to seeing Robert Downey, Jr's Iron Man mixing it up with some of the other big name super-lads. But there's no Christian Bale behind the Bat mask here, and not even that even that guy from Superman Returns. Hopefully if they get the script rewritten and everything works out, this will be a great movie. I don't wish any movie to be shitty, but sometimes life just works out like that. In this case, in its current state: No Good. But given some time and real effort, and it could be awesome.