META: Notes on a Genre I Love

Andrew Perron pwerdna at gmail.com
Sun Mar 8 16:50:41 PDT 2009


On Sun, 8 Mar 2009 19:56:11 +0000 (UTC), Tom Russell
<milos_parker at yahoo.com> wrote:

>I personally think the second movie was the best-- deeper
>characterization, better action sequences, better humour, and a much
>better villain.  The Green Goblin was never Spidey's arch-nemesis
>until Gwen Stacy died.  Without the death-- which wouldn't have worked
>in a film without the proper build-- he's really nothing special.  Dr.
>Octopus, on the other hand, has a great visual look/powerset and the
>movie's revamp lent him a certain tragic air.

Fair enough.  I always thought the original Goblin worked better, at
least on an acting level.  Plus, the second just didn't leaven the
angst as much with lightness.

>> Have you actually been reading comics lately?  And by "lately" I mean
>> "since 1973"?
>
>Or, actually, since 1940. :- )

Well, yeah, but to be fair, you didn't see a lot of killing villains
between 1945-ish and 1973. ``

>The thing about the Incredibles is that it did take the ridiculousness
>seriously without losing its sense of humour.  It totally buys into
>and loves the mystique of the superhero-- consider the sleek coolness
>of the retro-intro, the great jazzy score: it's just a cool fun silver-
>agey type of film.  

Yes.  Incredibles is deeply pro-superhero, *especially* oldschool
heroic-type heroes (as opposed to the kind of pragmatic type that
Syndrome represented).

>Until the two new Batman movies, in fact, I
>considered it the Best Superhero Movie I Have Ever Seen, better even
>than the original Richard Donner Superman (another film that respects
>the concept without losing its sense of humour yet avoiding the
>pitfalls of camp that plagued the second and third films).

I might actually put The Incredibles over The Dark Knight, but they're
very difficult to compare.

>And as for Andrew's earlier comment about it being the best of the
>Pixar movies-- well, it's certainly miles above the stuff that came
>before it.  But Ratatouille and WALL-E seem to me to be even greater
>films than The Incredibles-- Ratatouille thanks in no small part to
>Brad Bird, the writer-director animator-auteur who was also
>responsible for The Incredibles.  So when I say that those last two
>Pixar films are greater than The Incredibles, it's not meant in any
>way to denigrate The Incredibles but to say that they surpassed the
>seemingly insurpassable bar that that film set.

Good point.  I haven't seen Ratatouille yet, but WALL-E was
fantastically superawesome.  It's hard to say which I prefer...

>Costumes, sidekicks, and talking apes forever!!!

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, excelsior!



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