season 1
like a lot of star trek fans, i was pretty skeptical about this show going into it. the animation style screamed “family guy,” and there is quite a bit of rick and morty in the show’s dna. like, for instance, series creator and showrunner mike mcmahan was one of the first writers hired for rick and morty and served as its showrunner for a season.
the wolf man (movie 1941)
i reviewed this one super recently, so i don’t have anything all that interesting to add tbh! while we were watching it my boyfriend mentioned he super wished the movie had been from the point of view of all the drastically smarter romani people (seriously, even in this racist-ass movie they are blatantly smarter & more helpful than any of the white people), and yeah that would’ve been a much better movie. i mean, not the way it would’ve been made by white people in 1941, but you know.
the first men in black movie was in theaters as a fathom event for its 25th anniversary, so that felt like a good excuse to spend some time exploring the franchise!
writer: lowell cunningham
artist: sandy carruthers
now that i’ve read these, i think it’s even more impressive that they made such a good movie out of them.
teenage mutant ninja turtles, book i (comic 1984-85)
written & illustrated by kevin eastman & peter laird
well, here it is. the comic that started it all. this graphic novel collects colorized versions of the first three issues of kevin eastman and peter laird’s original comics that conquered the world with a merchandising empire that no one saw coming, least of all them.
these comics did include some of the differences i’d always been told to expect from the turtles i’ve known and loved since the cartoons, movies, and video games of my early childhood, but not as many as i expected! true, it is a bit more violent, with the turtles being willing to kill some of their adversaries, but by the second issue leonardo is already telling his more hotheaded brother raphael that the turtles kill only as a last resort.
oh, that’s the other thing. i was primed to expect the turtles themselves to be nearly interchangeable, but they actually have much more fully-formed personalities than that even in these earliest days of the comics! leo was always the honorable leader and raph was always the hotheaded angy boy, all the way back in issue 1! and donnie has been the tech guy since at least issue 2, when he tries to hack baxter stockman’s computers to solve the mouser problem.
batman: the killing joke (comic 1988)
writer: alan moore
artist: brian bolland
batman: the killing joke (movie 2016)
“hello. i came to talk. i’ve been thinking lately. about you and me. about what’s going to happen to us, in the end. we’re going to kill each other, aren’t we? perhaps you’ll kill me. perhaps i’ll kill you. perhaps sooner. perhaps later. i just wanted to know that i’d made a genuine attempt to talk things over and avert that outcome. just once.”
was it morally reprehensible?
yes.
but was it a bad movie?
… also yes.
so, obviously i have my problems with the graphic novel. and obviously a lot of those problems are going to be baked into any adaptation of it. i’ll grant you that. i mean, those seem like great reasons to not adapt that particular comic, but i suppose that’s asking for too much.
but to recognize that one of the biggest complaints about the source material is that it treats barbara like a prop rather than a character, and to say “don’t worry, we got this” and add an extended prologue where batman and batgirl are fucking and think you fixed it is … yeah. that’s… a thing you can do, i guess?
you guys understand that the reason we have a problem with fridging is that it sacrifices female characters for the sake of male characters’ angst, right? and giving batman an additional reason to be upset about the attack on barbara … is not an improvement in that regard … right…?
right…??? guys…???? c-rank
justice league dark (film 2017)
more like justice league DORK amirite?
the second era of the dc universe original movies was introduced by flashpoint paradox, an adaptation of the flashpoint arc. this led to a continuity known as the dc animated movie universe, which was basically a series of fairly faithful adaptations of the new 52 line of comics.
i actually like most of these, but it was admittedly a little disappointing to see these direct-to-video animated features go from kind of all over the board to frequently being very predictable.
there were a few movies that didn’t follow the dcamu continuity here and there, but the bulk of the team’s resources was clearly devoted to this new continuity.
it’s not difficult to understand why. from a business standpoint, it’s probably easier to get people to come back over and over when they more or less know what they’re getting, and also harder for them to skip individual entries that might not otherwise capture their interest if it’s all part of an interconnected series. i mean, that’s basically the mcu’s entire business model, right? that’s just how franchises work these days. this is just that on a much smaller scale.
what was pretty frustrating for me as a fan, and probably a big part of why i got disenchanted back when i was watching these as they came out, is that this was also when they decided that almost every movie needed to be either a batman or justice league movie. there was even a non-batman movie that had “batman” cynically slapped on the title just because he appeared in that movie for like… probably a grand total of five minutes if you add all his scenes up.
still, this series got so dang reliably good at this point, pretty much every new entry is a must-watch when it comes out. i don’t think many other direct-to-video series can truthfully claim that.
also due to the sheer number of entries in this era of the series, i’ve decided to divide my reviews of it into two parts.
flashpoint (comic 2011)
writer: geoff johns
artists: andy kubert & sandra hope & jesse delperdang
justice league: the flashpoint paradox (movie 2013)
“there’s only one thing i know about life. i know some things happen by chance, and some things happen because we make them happen.”
you probably got used to hearing me say this in my review of the first batch of dc universe original movies, so it’s only fitting that i start my first review by offering for context that i saw the movie long before i read the comic it’s based on. i’m pretty impressed, as i often am by these, by how closely this actually follows the comic it’s based on.
the story in both versions goes to some pretty grimdark places i’m not wild about but am a lot more forgiving about given that it’s an alternate future a la x-men’s days of future past. and the action was pretty great and it was a very satisfyingly pulpy storyline.
the movie followed the basic storyline of the comic, but it streamlined a few things, eliminated some minor characters, and expanded on the core scenes it kept. in the end i think the movie is, for the most part, actually noticeably better than the comic.
this replaces & abridges an earlier review i did of these movies. i decided to read all the comics these movies are based on to give me more context for understanding the movies. some of these movies weren’t based on any comics, so in those cases i just lightly edited my original reviews. oh, and i didn’t read the death of superman for superman: doomsday because i’ll save that for the more faithful recent adaptation.
the dc universe original movies are a series of high-quality direct-to-video (with a few exceptions that received limited theatrical releases) animated features. i first discovered them when i was working at target in the (probably-defunct) music, movies and books department. i was basically the person in charge of putting all the new releases on the shelf every tuesday. there were these tvs all over the department playing this endless loop of commercials for movies and albums and even books. i know, right? commercials for books?
anyway, they barely ever updated it, and it was so repetitive you usually ended up tuning it out if you had to spend much time in that department, but every now and then a new trailer would be added to the loop. that’s exactly what happened about a week before batman: under the red hood was released. the first time i heard it playing, it snapped my attention away from my boring work routine and i was immediately transfixed. i resolved to pick the movie up as soon as it came out, and my excitement was rewarded with a frankly pretty great animated superhero flick.
as soon as i found out that there was a whole series of one-shot movies of similar quality, i started watching them. i didn’t always like them as much as under the red hood. in fact, it’s still at or near the top of my list for best movies from this series, but the overall model of releasing high-quality animated features two or three times a year is still a pretty exciting one, and i wish more franchises would follow suit.
welcome back! if you missed part 1, as a reminder we’re here because i had to watch terminator 2 for my childhood movies list so i figured that was a good excuse to watch all of those including the two most recent ones which i hadn’t seen yet. and i remembered there being a robocop vs. terminator video game, turns out it was based on a comic book, kinda sad we never got a movie about that! but yeah, figured we might as well do all the robocop movies too given that tenuous, barely-there connection.
look, it works for alien and predator, leave me alone.
robocop: alpha commando (tv series 1998)
i watched the three-part pilot and then just sorta skimmed for episodes that sounded fun, and they mostly were. this was a lot more harmless fun and less overt copaganda than the other cartoon. it has basically nothing to do with the movies and other shows. so all you really have to contend with is the usual awful writing and loud dumbness of your average kids cartoon that doesn’t even slightly respect its audience. oh, and some rather cartoonish racism against a nonexistent country in the pilot.
(but the pilot also had an femdommy lady who captured robocop and said stuff like “once your defenses are broken down your delicious powers will be reprogrammed to serve me” and “stop fighting your reprogramming” and “how dare you touch my robocop” and planted a post-hypnotic suggestion in him, so who can say if it’s bad or good.)
we had to watch terminator 2 for my childhood movies list so i figured that was a good excuse to watch all of these including the two most recent ones which i haven’t seen yet. and i remembered there being a robocop vs. terminator video game, turns out it was based on a comic book, kinda sad we never got a movie about that! but yeah, figured we might as well do all the robocop movies too given that tenuous, barely-there connection.
my thirst for morebius led to us marathoning all the animated episodes with him in them prior to seeing the movie, and i also picked up the two morbius: epic collection graphic novels, which are super long and full of great content, so it took me until quite a while after seeing the movie to finish them.
yeah, i was unironically excited for the morbius movie. no, i’m not sorry. bite me! (especially if you’re a vampire.)