Tag: comic-book

Black Widow to get her own film

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blackwidowVariety reported recently that Marvel Studios “is developing a film that would revolve around Black Widow,” as previously played by Scarlet Johansson in the Iron Man and Avengers entries of the Marvel Universe. She is also a significant part of their upcoming release, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and will be part of the next Avengers film, subtitled Age of Ultron, which is slated for release in 2015. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said, “Widow’s part in that is very big. We learn more about her past and learn more about where she came from and how she became in that film. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that.”

Obviously, we’re looking at this being some time off – probably 2016 at the earliest, beyond even Ant-man [says something about the studio that such a trivial character gets his own movie before any female!]. Presumably, that’ll all help keep Ms. Johansson fully-employed for the foreseeable future. However, the track record of movies based on comic-book heroines is not a great one: it’s littered with the corpses of more or less dismal failures. Elektra was likely about the last effort, close to a decade ago. Before her? Catwoman. Barb Wire. Tank Girl. All the way back to 1984’s Supergirl, the sad fact is, there has never been a broadly successful film based on an American comic-book with a female lead. You could probably also add to that depressing list, the stillborn efforts to get Wonder Woman made into a TV series or movie, and she’s certainly a better-known character than Black Widow.

Not that there haven’t been flops on the other side of the gender coin e.g. Jonah Hex or R.I.P.D. But these have been counterbalanced by smash hits: three of the all-time, worldwide box-office top ten are based on comics. That’s enough of an incentive to make studios forget the failures; the struggle of Wonder Woman show they otherwise appear to have quite a long memory for such things. However, two words have perhaps changed the landscape: Catching Fire. The biggest movie at the North American box-office released last year, it demonstrated that a young woman can carry an action franchise, appealing across the traditional divide between men and women at the cinema. While its predecessor skewed heavily female (71% over the opening weekend), Fire saw a much more even split, at 59%-41%. That’s still about the reverse of The Avengers (40%-60%), and it will likely be a tough kinda sell to pitch Black Widow’s costume as any kind of post-feminist statement.

Still, there will be a lot riding on this. If it succeeds, it could open the doors for other (arguably, more deserving) comic-book heroines to follow onto the silver screen. But if it were to tank, I may well be collecting a pension before anyone dares give another entry a large-budget treatment. But if we get more stuff like the below, I’ll take that risk.

Wonder Woman (Unaired TV Pilot)

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★★★
“Nowhere near as bad as you might think.”

Allowing for the fact this was more or less a rough-cut – you can still see the wires as the heroine throws villains around – this actually is far from the atrocity you expect, going from the pre-production fan loathing. The story avoid the whole “origins” thing, hitting the ground running by having Wonder Woman/Diana Prince (Palicki) already fully-active, and busting crime around Los Angeles. Her extra-legal activities, with the local cops’ complicity, bring her to the attention of the federal authorities. Meanwhile, she’s tussling with the board of her company over the merchandise that funds her crime-fighting, objecting to the size of the tits on her action-figure – and, yes, they actually say “tits”, to my surprise. Finally, the villainess (Hurley) is performing illegal medical experiments with steroids and such, to create super-soldiers, and it’s up to Wonder Woman, her plane (wisely, no longer invisible), bullet-deflecting bracelets and lasso which may or may not be of truth (it’s unclear from this episode) to stop her.

Yeah, there’s probably too much going on, as it establishes that Prince is not just an action heroine, but also a business mogul, being the CEO of Themyscira Industries, and a woman: y’know, with needs. They each have their separate identities: it’s a nice touch, though not all of this needed to be put across in the pilot I think. They might have been better off bringing the other angles in down the line. What does work, surprisingly well, is Palicki, who both looks the part – a particular surprise, given the heat the costume took – and manages to hit most of the dramatic points necessary. However, I can see how fans of the comic books would probably still hate it, since there’s barely any acknowledgment of her ancestry as the princess of an all-female tribe from a remote island.

I particularly liked the hard-edged “neo-vigilante” approach of Wonder Woman, who has no aversion to violence and at one point, flat out kills someone by driving a pipe through his neck. Don’t recall Lynda Carter doing that: The Dark Knight has a lot to answer for. On the down side, the script does have its fair share of cliches, from the grieving mother through to the romantic interest. But, really: you can turn on the television any night of the week and see far less interesting or well-considered excuses for series, which somehow managed to get themselves green-lit. It has potential to be, if not great, at least half-decent: given the lack of action heroines on TV these days, it’s a pity this one received the televisual equivalent of a wire coat-hanger.

Dir: Jeffrey Reiner
Star: Adrianne Palicki, Elizabeth Hurley, Carey Elwes, Tracie Thoms

La Mujer Murcielago (The Batwoman)

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★★½
“If Batman was a woman. And a Mexican wrestler. Who swam. A lot.”

Someone is abducting wrestlers, extracting serum from their pineal glands and dumping the bodies in the ocean, at various locations around the world. Most recently, Acapulco. Investigating the crime is Batwoman (Monti), a rich socialite who has a masked alter-ego that fight crime. Oh, and is also a pro wrestler. Which makes her ideal for this case, since she can hang around the gym and check out suspicious characters, while working on moves with her fellow luchadorettes [Not a real word, but I like it]. Who is involved? The blind lottery ticket salesman? The chief of police? Or Dr. Williams (Cañedo), who won’t let anyone on to his ship, which is called Reptilicus, by tha way, and who possesses a sidekick called Igor? Go on, take a wild stab in the dark…

Turn out Williams is attempting to create a race of man-fish hybrids. When sneaking around his ship. Batwoman is caught, and only escapes by flinging a flask of something noxious into his face. Now a disfigured mad scientist, naturally, he vows vengeance on our heroine, sending his scaly creation off to bring her back, so that she can become the first literal fish-wife. The sight of which immediately turns her into a screaming, fainting kind of girlie, and it is a kinda creepy creation, even it’s obviously a man in a rubber-suit. Though as we see at the end, if you want to turn Batwoman into real terror, you need a staple from sit-coms of the era.

This 1968 film came only three years after Thunderball, and shows much the same amazed fascination with underwater photography, which has not aged well. Sure it was amazing at the time: now, not at all. Indeed, that could be the theme of the entire movie: I’m sure it was pretty daring, especially in sixties Hispanic culture, which wasn’t exactly at the forefront of women’s liberation. Now, the main thought it provokes, is wonder at how they managed to avoid someone from DC Comics driving down to slap the makers with a massive law-suit, purely on the basis of the poster.

In the film’s defense, it’s probably not its fault that I came down with a nasty spot of indigestion while watching, which doesn’t exactly leave me with fond memories of it. Monti certainly looks the part, an Italian-born actress and model stepping up from supporting roles in Santo films, as part of a ferocious blitz where she appeared in 30 films over five years, before becoming a TV host. She spends most of the time running about in her blue bikini and mask, which certainly beats George Clooney’s nippled Batsuit. If falling some way short of the promise of the very cool poster, it’s not entirely unwatchable as B-movies go, especially given its age.

Dir: René Cardona
Star: Maura Monti, Roberto Cañedo, Héctor Godoy, David Silva

Wanted

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★★★★
“Girls just wanna have guns.”

This is probably a borderline Girls With Guns flick, but Angelina Jolie is the nearest thing we have to a legitimated action-heroine superstar: Lara Croft, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and now this, where her character, the uber-assassin Fox, is certainly the most interesting in the film. Office drone Wesley (McAvoy) discovers his true heritage is in The Fraternity, a group of killers who surgically remove bad elements from society, as their names come up encoded in a cloth woven by a mystical loom. However, one of their number has gone rogue, and Cross (Kretschmann) is now taking out his former colleagues, one by one. Recruiting, training and using Wesley, is the only hope they have to stop the renegade.

Based on a comic-book. That phrase covers a whole spectrum of results, good and bad. Here, this means hyperkinetic action scenes with only a tenuous connection to reality. If you’ve seen the director’s previous work – such as Night Watch and its sequel Day Watch – you’ll know what to expect, and he gets to crank it up here, with a significantly-bigger budget, and a better cast. There are some brilliant set-pieces, not least the sequence where Fox rescues Wesley, and also a fabulous sequence on a high-speed train. It plays like a high-octane remix of Office Space and The Matrix: not, perhaps, up to the brilliant levels of either, yet an interesting hybrid that is still a great deal of fun, in a highly-caffeinated way.

Less well known, this is not Tikmanbetov’s first piece of Girls With Guns cinema, as before coming to Hollywood’s attention with Night Watch, he also did The Arena, a remake of a Roger Corman movie. The original had Pam Grier – the remake, didn’t, and let’s leave it at that. Fox is rather different from the incarnation in the comic [closer there to Halle Berry than anything], yet still has more backstory than Wesley, on her tattooed arms alone; while a sequel seems likely, it looks unlikely to involve her, and that’s a shame. Still, when you see Jolie climbing out on the bonnet of her high-performance sports-car, and blazing away like a heavily-armed hood ornament, you’ll understand exactly why it qualifies here.

Dir: Timur Bekmambetov
Star: James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie, Thomas Kretschmann, Morgan Freeman

Dangerous Acquaintances

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★★★★

It’s been at least a decade since I read this – probably more – but it is still a thoroughly-enjoyable read, and a major improvement in just about every way (plotting, art, pacing, imagination and characterization) over the first stab. Of particular note is the solid way in which the two separate threads of the story are woven together. While on holiday, Kei and Yuri bump into Shasti, a former colleague of theirs in the WWWA. She was actually an android, who went rogue after a criminal’s personality was implanted into her, part of a (failed) experiment to see if it would help with his capture to have her think like him. She’s now apparently leading a group of “freedom fighters” who are planning to hijack a luxurious space-liner, crammed with VIPs and new technology. Has Shasti gone all political? Or, if not, what is she up to?

She’s certainly a formidable opponent, even when outnumbered 2-to-1: she’s stronger, faster and more resilient than both Kei and Yuri, thanks to her cybernetic upgrades. However, it’s her attitude which really rubs our heroines the wrong way from the beginning, her multiple artificial personalities making her capable of kicking your ass brutally one second, then apologizing humbly for doing so, the very next. And that’s before she gets the “upgrade” to the character of an amoral, psychopathic career criminal. The body-count thereafter is large, and messy to the point that it’s a good thing this is a black-and-white comic. However, this lends a real sense of threat to proceedings, giving a sense that Kei and Yuri are themselves in danger – rather than just the local civilian population, as is usually the case.

There’s not as much reliance on the original comics – no Mughia, Lovely Angel ship or Bloody Card – with the Toren and Smith developing their own world instead. I’d really love to see this turned into a movie, and with the advent of CGI, it would no longer be prohibitively-expensive as it was when the story originally came out. It has some lovely twists, plenty of action and a great antagonist for our heroines to take on. An adaptation worthy of the name.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren

Biohazards

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★★★

If you thought the novel was a quick read, I got through Biohazards during lunch, and that’s only with 30 minutes. Still, being a comic-book, we must cut it some slack, though I can’t say I find action (and there’s a lot of it here) is something that works very well in panel form, lacking the true sense of motion you get in cinema. That said, I still didn’t hate this first entry in the trans-Pacific entry, in which Kei and Yuri are sent to investigate the kidnapping of an industrialist’s mind by his rival [literally: it’s on a chip]. Adding a little spice, both companies are knee-deep in dubious bioweapons, so who is the real villain here?

It’s another different style, in some ways perhaps more Japanese than classic DP, though still with something alien to it, as if the artist had learned from one of those “Draw Manga” books. Which is less a knock on Warren than it probably sounds, being more an acknowledgement of how influential the Dirty Pair comics are [there was a time when manga was not to be found in Borders, y’know]. The in-jokes are actually more restrained than I remembered – and expected, after the very first page has a security guard singing the theme to Magnum of Love’s Destiny, a movie from the City Hunter series. But that was about it, unless “Power up the synthesizer, Neil” is a Rush reference? Hard to be sure…

There are some interesting nods to the original novels, such as Mughi’s ability to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum, and Yuri’s Bloody Card weapon is almost exactly as described in Great Adventures. That may be the weakness here, in that Warren and Smith seem less intent on bringing anything new to the characters, than being faithful to the original texts. As the series progresses, however, that would become less of an issue, but while the first, this is certainly not the best, or most representative, of the US comics.

Story: Toren Smith and Adam Warren
Art: Adam Warren

Model Operandi: Affair of the Heart

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★★★★

Back in the day, I was a big comics fan, but have largely ignored the medium since coming to America in 2000 [there are still two large, unopened boxes in the hallway closet!] I think it’s perhaps the Scot in me coming out: graphic novels are an expensive way to pass an hour or so. Props first, therefore, to Caramagna and Budd, for keeping the cost of their first issue to an extremely reasonable price The story therein centers on the theft in France of a priceless diamond, the Heart of Josephine, and the quest of supermodel Legsy Diamond and Ann Lezbee, the implausibly-bosomed Special Ops Presidential Intern, to retrieve it.

Perhaps the biggest weakness is this storyline tries to cram too much in. As well as the search for the diamond, we also have Legsy’s family background, inter-model agency rivalry, her boss’s previous intrigues, a relationship with an investigating cop, and so on. While this sets up many potential storylines for future issues, it does feel somewhat heavily laid-on, and I tend to feel that less would be more. They’re going for an almost-Alias level of complexity, but twenty-plus hour-long episodes gives you much more scope for exposition than 88 pages, especially in an action-oriented title like this.

That said, the artwork rocks. Bright, crisp, colours mesh perfectly with bold lines, and capture the pop aesthetic delightfully. Every page is the kind of work which deserves to be framed and hung on the wall – though occasionally is perhaps a little too breast-fixated for me to really appreciate it! [I read it in the canteen at work, and felt a little uncomfortable doing so now and again 8-)] Style-wise, I was reminded a bit of the Adam Warren Dirty Pair comics, and that’s pretty high praise since I do have a page of art from that hanging on the wall here. I’m certainly looking forward to future editions, and this first issue is something any action heroine fan should check out.

Available now from AHP Comics, 88 pages, $5.99
Words and Ink: Joe Caramagna
Pencils and Colors: Dennis Budd

Painkiller Jane (pilot)

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★★
“It’ll probably be the audience who need the painkillers to get through this tedious tale.”

This SciFi Channel original movie is based on a comic-book series, but makes some radical changes to the storyline, though the basic idea is intact: a woman becomes immune to injury after the usual mysterious something happens to her [radioactive spider bite, barrel of toxic waste – the usual graphic novel contrivances, in other words]. In the comic, she was an undercover cop; here, she is a Special Forces soldier in Chechnya who is exposed to an experimental biological agent. Naturally, she subsequently finds herself much sought after, by both good and bad factions, since she’s the first to survive the treatment.

And initially, this isn’t so bad, as she escapes from the military, encounters a gentlemen thief and his posse of sidekicks, and tries to get all her mental ducks in a row, so she knows who to trust. As a set-up, it’s fine, with its share of paranoia. However, the longer this goes on, the less interesting it gets: you’d think having a heroine who is virtually immortal, would lead to almost non-stop mayhem. Not here. The action here is very limited and when it does appear, is simply boring – unfortunately, there’s no other word for it.

Now, I know this was intended as much as a pilot for a project TV series as anything, and they have to keep their powder dry for future episodes. But unlike, say, Chameleon, there’s precious little here to make me want to watch, should they decide to bring it back. Indeed, I fell asleep as the “gripping” scene at a shopping mall unfolded. For any action film, that’s about the kiss of death, and while the performances aren’t bad – Vaugier as our heroine has a nice attitude that reminded me of Yancy Butler in Witchblade – there wasn’t nearly enough meat on these bones to satisfy me…

Dir: Sanford Bookstaver
Star: Emmanuelle Vaugier, Tate Donovan, Richard Roundtree, Eric Dane

Cutie Honey

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★★★★
“She giggles! She plays with her cat! She kicks ass!”

The picture on the right probably does a better job of explaining what Cutey Honey is about than I ever could; part-girl, part nano-technology, rebuilt post-car crash with superpowers and some interesting costumes, which require fuelling through junk food. After her uncle is kidnapped by the evil Sister Jill (Sakai) and his/her/its minions – Jill is part tree, and has also been kidnapping women en masse, in order to drain their lifeforce – only Cutie (Sato) can save the day, assisted by a no-nonsense policewoman (Ichikawa) and a journalist who, basically, acts as “Exposition-San” (Murakami).

Director Anno is best known for the (over-rated) anime series, Evangelion, so who better to convert a manga/anime heroine to the big screen? Certainly, the first ten minutes are utterly fabulous, capturing the comic-book essence perfectly, thanks in part to magnificent design work. The sets, costumes and even hair (particularly of the villains) are first-class, even in a movie that is clearly tongue-in-cheek; the clues include villains who break into song, and really big explosions which cause no damage at all.

While the film doesn’t quite live up to its opening and, frankly, occasionally drags in the middle, it’s largely entertaining, especially in the action sequences. Sato does a good job in both “uber-perky” and “intense” modes, while Ichikawa benefits from little touches like her glasses, which turn out to be total affectation. Much as in Evangelion, the end is some kind of deep, philosophical mess, rather than the knockdown battle we all want to see; however, it annoyed me much less here, arguably fitting the heroine’s sunny disposition. Hollywood, with a lot to learn about making comic to cinema adaptations, could do much worse than taking Cutie 1.0.1.

Dir: Hideaki Anno
Star: Eriko Sato, Mikako Ichikawa, Jun Murakami, Eisuke Sakai

Elektra

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★★½
“Sai It Ain’t So…”

True story. A friend of ours has a job as an intern in Los Angeles, and coming round the corner at work one day, he literally bumped into Jennifer Garner. He immediately started apologising profusely (he’s an uber-nice kid, who wouldn’t say “Boo!” to a fly) but she wouldn’t have any of it and began cursing him out in the nastiest of ways. Garner finally stalked off, while he continued to apologise – just before vanishing, she turned round and gave him the finger. So now we know: Jennifer Garner = bitch.

Despite this, it gives me no real pleasure to report on the failings of Elektra. It was a pleasant surprise, and says a fair bit about Daredevil, that the studio chose to pursue her character as a spinoff, rather than following up with a sequel. I hoped that they’d do a good job, capturing the dark passions and conflicts of the character, whose incarnation in works like Frank Miller’s Elektra: Assassin is truly memorable. [Interestingly, the screening was preceded by a trailer for another Miller adaptation, Sin City, which looks at least stylistically accurate] Unfortunately, what we have here is another shallow dumbing-down, offering little more than another straightforward good vs. evil battle.

The first issue is, of course, that Elektra died in Daredevil. No problem: we have a Yoda-like character, Stick (Terence Stamp), who can bring characters back from the grave. Yet this causes more problems than it solves: sure, Elektra’s back, but now, death, where is thy sting? Any threat to life is now no more inconvenient than in a video game: press X to continue. Anyway, after getting booted from Stick’s training camp in her second life, Elektra becomes a freelance assassin. However, when assigned to target a father (Visnjic, who remains miraculously just stubbly throughout) and his 13-year old daughter, Abigail (Prout), she suddenly has second thoughts.

This is kinda fortunate, since the pair turn out to be lynchpins in a battle between good (Stick and his allies) and evil. The latter are a group called The Hand, led by villain Roshi (veteran Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, from Mortal Kombat), who sends his son Kirigi (Lee) and his interesting-ability acolytes after Elektra and her wards. They can do stuff like make their tattooes come to life, kill things with a touch, or withstand shotgun blasts. Poor Elektra is just very, very good with weapons, which comes across as rather weak in comparison.

The aim is clearly to put Elektra across as an emotionally-scarred individual, who connects with Abigail, seeing herself in the teenager, and has enough baggage for an entire convention of shrinks. However, all we get in terms of her psychology are some clumsy flashbacks and a touch of pointless OCD which feels like it strayed in from Monk. Even after her agent (Colin Cunningham) both offers the trio shelter, then bravely stays behind to give them time to escape, his sacrifices don’t merit the slightest subsequent mention. Superheroes: they’re just so damn ungrateful.

There is entertainment, mostly lurking in the background. A moment with impact sees Typhoid (Natassia Malthe), the girl with the poison touch, kiss Elektra; the pair fall to the ground surrounded by a shower of dying leaves. It feels almost like it could have been inspired by the work of Zhang Yimou (House of Flying Daggers), and is at least less obviously stolen than the “House of Flying Bed-Sheets” battle later on. It’s also interesting to see Mark Houghton as a chief bodyguard in the opening scene: he made his debut against Yukari Oshima in The Outlaw Brothers, back in 1987.

The fight scenes are actually pretty good too, though the editing occasionally borders on the incoherent, and there just aren’t enough of them. What about Roshi? After sending out his son, he vanishes entirely from the picture, leaving the result disappointingly like a Bond film where 007 never gets to meet Blofeld, and is left dispatching minions instead. I guess they were perhaps hoping to save that confrontation for a sequel, but having just seen the first week’s box-office returns (Elektra took in several million dollars less than Catwoman), doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.

 In terms of quality, this is probably about the same as the recent version of The Punisher, and that started from a lower point, the comics adapted there being basically a hyperviolent revenge fantasy for teenage boys. Frank Miller’s work on Elektra was truly for mature readers – in both the sense that its intricacies require a sophisticated mind to unpick, and the intense nature of its images. Instead, we get this PG-13 rated Elektra, that simply rolls out the usual comic-book cliches without sufficient enthusiasm or invention. It’s polished until the surface positively gleams, but is just a thin layer of precious gold, over a heart of basest metal.

We should have guessed: January is a bad time to release an action movie, and Garner’s absence from publicity (allegedly due to a viral infection or “nerve damage” – though that’s actually what our intern friend suffered at her hands) was another warning-sign. So was the fact Daredevil wasn’t that good. Regardless, it doesn’t bode well for a year where adaptations of comic-books come thick and fast, with February’s Constantine next. And after the failure of Catwoman, it unfortunately seems to be strike two for big-budget action heroines.

Dir: Rob Bowman
Stars: Jennifer Garner, Will Yun Lee, Kirsten Prout, Goran Visnjic