Tell me, do you bleed? You will.

So I recorded something off-the-cuff for this, but it ended up being an incoherent, rambling, overly-long thing that would have been unpleasant for an audience to sit through.

Much like Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. ZING!

I'm partially kidding. Batman V Superman is Warner Brothers and DC's attempt at jump-starting a Justice League Movie Universe so that they can chase that Avengers movie cash cow, which is something that's been tried before with Green Lantern (and failed).

Actually, I saw the almost universal panning of the film by the media as a curious thing, especially when a couple people I respect on film/story opinions recommended it. This made me curious enough to see it myself to form my own opinion. Well, I have, and its complicated, and that's why I spent my Sunday night hammering this out.

Short and spoiler-free take? Its a disjointed mess with flashes of goodness but loaded with bloat and inconsistencies that ultimately frustrate the viewer with wasted potential.

From here on out, we're going into spoiler territory.

No, seriously. HEAVY SPOILERS AHEAD.

Bats V Supes is a direct sequel to 2013's Man of Steel, which was directed by Zach Snyder and starred Henry Cavill as Superman. That was a deeply divisive movie that garnered tremendous amounts of criticism, but did well enough to warrant a sequel, and with Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy wrapping up, meant that the time was ripe to open up the DC vaults and get a good ol' fashioned crossover going. Two superheroes are led by misunderstanding to fight each other, resolve that conflict, and team up to take down the REAL villain. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme.

Except Bats V Supes is something of a bloated mess of a movie that has multiple ideas, plotlines, and even tones jockeying for the limelight.

The plot of the movie, such as it is, follows Superman trying to find his place in a world that is now in awe of his godlike power, and sometimes fears him. Rightfully so, as the opening sequence features Bruce Wayne rushing to Metropolis during the climactic battle of the last movie and trying to save people's lives while building an understandable resentment for the carnage caused in Superman's wake.

We skip ahead to where Bruce Wayne's hatred of Superman festers into a two-year obsession with finding a way to stop or even kill the Kryptonian while Superman struggles with trying to do Superman stuff like saving Lois Lane from bad guys and being inspirational in a movie that wants to punish him for doing Superman stuff. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is trying to get the U.S. Government to fund his attempts to experiment on Kryptonian technology so that he can find a way to kill Superman. And Wonder Woman shows up occasionally to justify her being in the climactic fight scene with Doomsday.

Is it a total mess worth 29% on Rotten Tomatoes? No. Zach Snyder continues to have a flair for shot composition, and that's something I think people miss. Hell, during Man of Steel, the movie goes from a washed out and gray color palette that increases in colorfulness as Superman begins doing more and more Hero stuff, so that by the end of the movie, its bright and colorful. Which is not something I ever saw mentioned in Man of Steel reviews.

Action sequences are generally well put together. When Batman fights goons, there's a visceral speed to how he takes people down. When you get to the Main Event between Batman and Superman, its a brutal slugging match as Batman has to keep finding ways to hamstring Superman in order to be able to hurt him.

Ben Affleck is great as an older, more jaded Bruce Wayne who's been doing the Batman thing for two decades. There are hints at the cost of being Batman, such as the dead Robin costume with Joker graffitti and the burned out husk of Stately Wayne Manor. This is an older, wiser, but deeply flawed Batman who, refreshingly, makes mistakes and gets outwitted occasionally. No Batgod here.

Instead of Batgod, we get Bat of Murder. This is terrible, because in just about every Batman story out there that isn't a movie version (*cough* Tim Burton *cough*), Batman has two simple rules: No killing. No guns. What does he do here? Kill people with guns. Quite a lot. Even in his dream sequences. Which makes him a hypocrite when he criticizes the destruction that follows Superman. It makes them both hypocrites. Its a horrible mis-characterization that mars an otherwise fantastic Batman.

Wonder Woman is played by the Fast & Furious' Gal Gadot. The whole “she's too skinny to play Wonder Woman” thing before the movie came out was dumb. She looks fine enough and there are worse problems with the movie anyway. Acting-wise, there's not much to evaluate her on. She shows up to be mysterious in the first half, and then shows up for the big team up. The biggest problem with Wonder Woman in this is that she's unnecessary. The movie could've happened without her with minimal changes. “Wonder Woman: International Woman of Mystery” isn't a bad hook for the character, but I doubt the movie in the works will take that direction.

I maintain that Henry Cavill is a good Superman. He's got the face and can sell the earnestness of the character, but both Man of Steel and this seem hell bent on not letting Superman feel good about helping people. Yes he saves people, but its in a slow motion montage that shoots for profundity and misses. Part of the appeal of Superman is that he is always going out of his way to help people, even if its for fairly mundane stuff, like stopping car accidents, foiling amateur bank robberies, or talking a suicidal person off a ledge. Showing Superman fix a spare tire or save a cat from a tree would have gone miles to helping his character in this. They mention this this kind of behavior, when Bruce Wayne accuses Clark Kent of writing puff pieces for Superman, but this is a direct reversal of the SHOW, DON'T TELL rule of storytelling.

Instead we get a sort of dream sequence where the ghost of Pa Kent tells a depressing story about how he helped his farm in a flood but in doing so caused the neighbors' horses to drown and some offhand lines about how he's trying fly Doomsday away from a populated area to minimize damage. Instead of Superman going to Congress and giving an inspiring speech about the infinite potential for human goodness, we have an explosion go off before he can say anything at all in his defense. Hell, the speech he gives to the UN in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a more effective moment, and that movie is all kinds of dumb.

Its enormously frustrating because the movie is hell-bent on turning Superman into a Christ-figure instead of turning him into Superman.

Amy Adams' Lois Lane is fine. She snoops around doing reporter stuff, gets in trouble, Superman rescues her. Classic Lois stuff. I still feel that she would make a better Lana Lang, but oh well.

Jeremy Irons is amazing as Alfred. He's got the right mix of paternal admonishment and encouragement for Batman. Its great. More Alfred, please.

Holly Hunter plays Senator Finch, a character who doesn't really bring much to the table outside of being part of a SHOCKING PLOT TWIST that lands with a thud. It involves a jar of piss labeled peach juice because of a comment made to Lex Luthor. Because scatological humor, am I right folks? 

Speaking of Lex, Jesse Eisenberg's version is just...bizarre. He's very young, very clearly Lex Luthor Jr., and has a mop of unruly hair and twitchy mannerisms that jump all over the place. Sort of like those insufferable millennial hipsters that infest San Francisco. An SJW hipster is a neat concept for a villain, except at that point he's no longer Lex Luthor. Part of Lex's character through his various incarnations has been the projection of strength and control, even when its just a front. This Lex can't even make a speech to a charity event without losing track of what he's saying. He's a creepy weirdo, but unlike Gene Hackman's clownish sociopath or Kevin Spacy's charismatic megalomaniac, this Lex doesn't have that edge of brilliance lurking underneath that justifies his arrogance. Instead, he's pretty much the Joker without the greasepaint.

“But its a false front! He's a master manipulator and he's just fooling everyone into thinking he's a wuss!”

Again, that's not Lex Luthor. Part of the reason he hates Superman is because Lex wants to be strong while Clark Kent IS strong. Lex will never be that kind of strong because Superman's strength comes from his selflessness and Luthor is deeply selfish.

Its a pity, because Eisenberg gives flashes of the real Lex here and there, but again, the movie doesn't let the character be the character.

Adding to the bloat of the film are all the teases for the Justice League. Batman has a dream sequence where he's in a post-Apocalyptic world with a giant Omega symbol and he gets attacked by evil army people, and he starts murdering the hell out of them until he gets overwhelmed by goons and full-blown Parademons. As a tease for Darkseid, its kind of interesting, but it grinds the movie to a halt and doesn't add anything other than a blatant “WE'LL GIVE YOU DARKSEID PLEASE KEEP WATCHING THESE MOVIES.” In that same vein, we get a "thrilling" scene as Wonder Woman receives an email from Batman with data on other metahumans and she opens up video clips of the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg. Its hokey, especially Aquaman spending thirty seconds going Grrrrrr at the camera before destroying it, and it could have worked if the movie would have let itself be hokey. 

Which comes down to the fundamental problem running throughout this movie. It feels like there is a constant struggle between the whether or not the characters should act like themselves. When they do, the movie is better. More often than not, they don't for the sake of fitting into the plot's demands.

A strong character can completely derail a scene or plotline simply by acting in character, spoiling the writer's outline and taking it in a different direction. This movie feels like the characters are trying to do that, but editorial/studio intervention is constantly trying to clamp down on them so that the officially mandated plot can assert itself. Because we have to force nods to The Death and Return of Superman as well as The Dark Knight Returns regardless of them making sense.

Much like that jar of peach juice, the label on Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice tries to tell you its a fun superhero movie about how Superman and Batman met and planted the seeds of the Justice League, when its actually just a bloated mess of conflicting plotlines, characterizations, themes that reminds me more of X-Men III than either the Justice League or even The Avengers.

Its a huge letdown, made more so by the flashes of quality gasping for air. If it was a smaller movie simply about Lex Luthor manipulating the media into getting Batman and Superman to fight each other for his own amusement/ambitions, it could have been fantastic. The climax of the film was and should have remained the fight between the title characters and the realization that they're both good men who've been played. Instead we got a pointless fight with Doomsday for the sake of a fight and Superman's death for the sake of an obvious resurrection down the road to save the Justice League at a critical moment. 

If we're lucky he'll have that 90s era mullet.

Not recommended.

“You realize, of course, if you had been wrong, Clark Kent would've been killed.”

Doing something a little bit different this time around. Remember the exceedingly disappointing Superman II? Boy, I sure do. In my review, I brought up the existence of a “Richard Donner” cut of the film, and also expressed hope that it would be a better experience.

This cut of the film was essentially spliced together from footage that Donner filmed, along with some screen test stuff and some good ol’ editing tricks to give at least a simulacrum of what Donner intended the film to be. And its purportedly been floating around for a while now, but in 2006, Warner Bros. released it on DVD, so that the world could decide what it liked better.

The Good
I am really happy that my faith in Richard Donner has not gone unrewarded. It IS a more entertaining movie. Gone are most of the complaints and grievances I had with the Richard Lester version. Gone is the Super Saran Wrap…thing. Gone is the sudden and unexplained return of Superman’s Powers. Gone is that Goddamned awful Super Amnesia Kiss. Gone are most of those little sigh inducing moments that crop up through the entire movie. Gone is the Eiffel Tower scene, but it didn’t really add anything to film anyway and the explanation for how a missile blows up the Phantom Zone prison where Zod & Co. are is tied directly to the first movie. Gone are the scenes of Non, the big bruiser getting better at heat vision and--wait, no, I actually miss that part from the Lester cut.

What is “new” is more Lex Luthor stuff. The two diner scenes are both still in, and I’m still not a fan of those. Marlon Brando is Jor-El, and the whole relationship with Superman and him is deepened and rather poignant by the end. Even better, Lois is made sharp as a whip in her early suspicions that Clark=Superman, and some of the lengths she takes to get him to admit that are quite hilarious.

Pacing on this film also feels really tight, and the movie seems to go by a lot faster than the Lester cut.

The Bad
Well, being what it is, it isn’t exactly a complete film. Can’t go back and re-shoot stuff generally, and all that. There are bits here and there that don’t really make sense, like the diner scene at the end still being retained, and there are some leaps of logic here and there (though less than the Lester cut takes).

The Verdict
The Richard Donner Cut is a flawed movie in that its more or less been Frankensteined together into its current shape. However, that shape can walk and talk, and is so, so, so much superior to the theatrical cut. Despite having the “Richard Donner” label attached, a large part of the credit also has to go to Michael Thau, the editor. The movie is also really frustrating, because it makes me wish I lived in a universe where Donner wasn’t booted off Superman II and we actually had a fun, polished, completed and most importantly, good version of this film.

“Gods are selfish beings who fly around in little red capes and don't share their power with mankind.”

You thought I was done with Superman?


The Superman franchise whimpered to a halt with the fourth installment. Development Hell ensued for nearly twenty years before Superman returned to the big screen. 2006’s Superman Returns from director Bryan Singer quietly ignored the events of Superman III and IV and brought a big budget, sweeping approach to the character. So why does nobody talk about it much?

Plot
Superman returns (wow, couldn’t go one sentence without a title drop) to Earth after a five year wild goose chase to find the exploded planet Krypton. He finds a world that’s gotten along pretty fine without Superman, including Lois Lane, who’s got a fiancée and a five year old. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor and his surprisingly competent henchmen hatch a land grab scheme involving Kryptonian technology that could kill billions.

Characters
Superman/Clark Kent: Brandon Routh takes over in the big blue tights, and he does a pretty good job. He looks the part, he’s got the voice, and he’s got that idealistic charm that worked well for Reeve. His readjustment to life on Earth is very well done, especially in finding out Lois has moved on from him (then again, after all he’s done to her in the original movies, I can’t blame her). He plays Superman as a more sympathetic, less dickish hero than the Reeve Superman was written as, and there lies the conundrum of the movie. He’s trying to emulate and make up for the shortcomings of Reeve’s Superman while not really making the character his own.

Lois Lane: Kate Bosworth is Superman’s ex-girlfriend, and the character has gone through a rather bitter period of not liking Superman for just up and leaving Earth for five years without even saying goodbye, which…is actually a really good reason to be pissed at him. Of course, Superman’s return (there it is again) shakes up her whole world, just as she was settling down to raise a family. Its interesting stuff what they do with her, but Lois just doesn’t seem to work right in this movie. She seems pretty oblivious to danger, especially when she picks up her kid from school on her way to receive her Pulitzer, so what does she do? She goes to a mysterious address that has some connection to a massive EMP blast that temporarily knocked out the Eastern Seaboard and takes her kid onto a suspicious boat to investigate (forgetting her cell phone in the car) so that they can both be captured. This is more than parental negligence, this is a textbook example of Plot Induced Stupidity. There’s also that little bit of “spitfire” missing from Bosworth’s Lois that Margot Kidder brought to the role too.

Perry White: Frank Langella (Who’s been all sorts of screen villains, from a 1970s Dracula to live-action Skeletor to, uh, Richard Nixon) is the Editor in Chief of the Daily Planet. He’s a constant presence in the film, and gets some great lines and newsman jokes. Hell, he even pulls off White’s iconic “Great Caesar’s ghost!” without the faintest hint of irony or self-awareness, and that’s awesome.

Jimmy Olsen: Sam Huntington is actually really good as Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen. He’s even got the bowtie and red hair this time around, but it works. He’s given more to do, and definitely gets to work as a kind of sidekick/“welcome back here’s what’s happened while you were gone” character.

Richard White: James Marsden (from the X-Men movies) is Perry’s nephew and Lois’ fiancée. He’s a likable, competent, good man who’s been there for Lois when Superman was not. This is a bit of an issue for the movie, since Richard is actually a much more admirable character than Supes. He has no super powers, but he still flies off into a storm to find Lois and her kid after they’ve been captured, risking his life for a woman that he loves but knows he can’t really compete against Superman for her affections. The man’s got stones, and he’s also likely a better father figure for little Jason. These are unfortunate implications for Clark Kent, and no doubt would’ve lead to trouble if they had made a direct sequel to Returns.

Jason White: Tristan Lake Leabu is okay, I suppose, as Lois’ son. The kid has a lot of screen time but pretty much only one expression on his face the whole movie. A weak link, though the idea of the character is not a bad one.

Lex Luthor: You know, I loved Gene Hackman’s gleefully evil portrayal of Lex Luthor in the original movies, but Kevin Spacey just takes the character and transcends him into A Class villainy. While there are definite nods to the prior films, this Luthor is an amoral, incredibly capable, incredibly arrogant, witty, evil genius. Everything he does is either deliberately planned out, or a magnificent adaptation to the situation. Not only that, but he’s also got competent henchmen (unlike Otis) and a fairly competent sidekick in Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey) that’s a good verbal foil for him. Not only does this Luthor get shit done, but he also makes the character something the prior movies didn’t have: a credible, legitimately serious threat to Superman. He is this film’s magnificent bastard badass.

Visuals/Effects
Bryan Singer is a very, very good director. This film goes for a very epic, sweeping feel to it over a frenetic “action-packed” vibe. There is a lot of action in it, but the whole look and feel is more of deliberate craftsmanship than of an action movie feel. In many ways, its aping Richard Donner’s style in the first one, and that’s not a bad thing. A lot of interior scenes are warmly lit, but action scenes are more stark and colorless. The overall effect is of a bright and optimistic tone that works fantastically for the character. Superman is all about hope and optimism triumphing over darkness, so a grimdark feel just wouldn’t fit the character. The only real complaint I can think of is that the pacing does grind down in places more often than I’d like, particularly by the end.

CGI is used a lot in the film, but its always in service to the story. Action sequences, like Superman’s rescue of the jet airliner fairly early in the film are fantastic, and the effects are all very solid.

Writing
Michael Dougherty (writer/director of Trick 'R Treat) and Dan Harris (who both worked with Singer on X2) brought a lot of interesting ideas to the table for this movie in examining the fallout of Superman being AWOL for five years. Characterizations are pretty good, but the movie never really seems to decide if it wants to be a direct sequel to the original movies or more of a reboot. This hurts the overall effect a little bit, though it was nice seeing archived footage of Marlon Brandon as Jor-El in a scene. Also of interesting note is that while nothing from the third or fourth movies is ever mentioned, the events of those films can still plausibly have taken place.

Sound
The score by John Ottman is very good and completely suited for the film, but once again, its all built on John Williams’ original score for the first movie.

Conclusion
You know, I honestly don’t understand nobody really talks about Superman Returns. The movie didn’t really do well at the box office and the studio pretty much washed its hands of it by not making a follow up after it. It’s a very well crafted and enjoyable movie, and easily the second best out of the five (which, if you’re interested in keeping score are ranked here: Superman the Movie, Superman Returns, Superman II, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (full title obligatory) and the vacuum devoid of any entertainment that is Superman III in my arrogant opinion. Its not a perfect film but it’s a really good, non-ironic or campy treatment of Superman. And if that’s not enough for you to see the movie; Kevin Spacey’s Luthor is a revelation of the character’s potential as a great villain.

“If you will not tell me, I will hurt people!”

Oh God, no. Oh God why? Ohhhhhh God in Heaven, forgive me for what I have done. Forgive me for watching 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, for I knew not what I did.

Plot
We start with Superman doing heroic things, like saving a Russkie space capsule from a rogue satellite (that Pinko bastard) and then he watches the news reports saying that the Americans and the Russians are heating up the Cold War and he feels kind of bad about it. Then all of a sudden we go to a random classroom where the teacher was letting the students watch that press conference during class, and then she’s all like “so do you kids have any ideas on how we can stop this?” and the odd little antisocial kid in the back of the room who’s been staring out the window the whole time says “Why can’t Superman do it?” And so the kid gets the media spotlight and calls Superman out on it, and so Supes finally decides that he’s going to embark upon on a quest for peace (dun, dun, DUN!) and fly around the world to collect all the nukes and put them in a big net and throw them into the Sun. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor gets out of jail, makes deals with the recently unemployed nuclear arms dealers of the world and one thing leads to another and some really shady SCIENCE happens and we’ve got a villain, Nuclear Man, for Superman to fight on and off throughout the movie. Then there’s a subplot about a muckraking publisher taking over control of the Daily Planet and turning it into a sensationalist rag and his daughter develops a crush for Clark Kent and turns away from her wicked, yellow journalism ways.

So the lesson we can all learn from this is: If you ever get a chance to let Superman get rid of all the nukes in the world, it will only make things worse because somehow it’ll create an amoral, solar powered evil superhuman with bad 80’s hair that really likes destroying things.

Characters
Superman/Clark Kent: Christopher Reeve for the last time in a Superman movie. He’s still a very fine superman, but these movies still leave in the dickish implications of the character. How does naively throwing all the nukes into the Sun really help anything? Wouldn’t that lead to more/bigger solar flares and a huge power vacuum on Earth? And besides, this was 1987. It wasn’t like Gorbachev and Reagan were actually sitting in their war rooms with their fingers hovering over the red buttons at this point. Besides, that’s not even the worst of his dickery. He’s feeling down, and Lois visits Clark Kent and tries to cheer him up, then Clark reveals himself as Superman to her (again), takes her on a flight across the city (again) they share what might actually be a lasting moment and then he kisses her and makes her forget her identity (AGAIN). What an asshole he is for jerking that poor woman around. Then, when Lacy starts going out with Clark, Clark and Lacy decide to do a double date kind of thing with Lois and Superman. It gets…odd, and not in a good way.

Lois Lane: Margot Kidder is back, and this time for the whole movie. Nothing really majorly bad about her character, but Superman just keeps yanking her around like a negligent boyfriend. Still, its nice seeing the character back in action in full. The worst is when they re-shoot the flying scene and Super-Amnesia kiss near the beginning of the movie for no valid reason. Padding the running time does not count as a reason.

Jimmy Olsen: Marc McLure again, he had quite a bit of stuff in the Daily Planet subplot, so hooray.

Perry White: Jackie Cooper finally gets a character arc in these movies. Perry really doesn’t like the new sheriff in town, eventually resigning his post when he can’t take it anymore (don’t worry, he comes back by the end). That was actually a pleasant surprise.

David Warfield: Sam Wanamaker is the muckracker who takes over the Daily Planet. He’s a jerk because he actually wants the newspaper to turn a profit. Because its absolutely villainous to want to run a business as a success so that you can keep your building full of employees employed. Truly, a scourge on our way of life, he is.

Lacy Warfield: Mariel Hemmingway is Warfield’s daughter, a young woman who is following in daddy’s sludgy footsteps. Until she meets Clark and starts to warm up to actual, honest journalism. Or something. Also, she can apparently scream and not die in Space. No. Really.

Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of our generation: Yaaay!! Gene Hackman’s back to chew scenery as Lex Luthor. And chew it he does. He breaks out of jail and proceeds to develop a really crazy scheme to clone Superman and he creates one. Honestly, it’s a pretty bad plot, but its so damn fun watching Hackman’s Luthor that those scenes were the best in the movie. For that reason (and for actually being able to cut a piece of Superman’s hair with some bolt cutters...., don't look at me for an explanation, I didn't write this crap) he’s the movie’s badass. Also, this Lex is really the kind of guy who would take forty cakes when nobody was looking. Forty cakes. That’s as many as four tens. And that’s terrible.

Lenny Luthor: John Cryer (hey, wait a second. He was Washout in Hot Shots) is Lex’s heretofore unrevealed nephew, and the guy who gets him out of prison. Lenny’s not really a good character, but at least he’s someone for Lex to constantly berate in amusing ways.

Nuclear Man: The comfortably named Mark Pillow had the unenviable job of being the garishly costumed, poorly executed super villain that’s able to beat up Superman. At first appearance, he’s just not a very good actor in a silly costume, but then its revealed that he literally shuts down when not in sunlight and he also has really long metallic fingernails that can grow (menacingly, that’s exactly the opposite of the word I’m going for) and you’ve got a character that’s just laughably badly executed. I’ve read that he was supposed to be Bizarro (like they tried in Superman III and that actually would’ve explained a lot of his “opposite powers”) but the end result is not Bizarre (and not even Firestorm, the Nuclear Man who is a superhero that maybe five of you out there will have heard of), and I just really feel bad for Mr. Pillow. Not so bad that I stopped laughing at the movie, but still…

Visuals/Effects
Sidney J. Furie directed this film, and there’s no doubt about it that he was working with a miniscule budget that was looking to cut costs everywhere. The result is very much a B movie feel, but you know what? The pacing at least moves fairly well (aside from the flying with Lois scene that is completely meaningless to both character development AND plot) and it does deliver a large amount of Superman action. Sure, its cheesy and bad, but at least there’s quite a bit of it, and it’s a hell of a lot more entertaining than the snooze fest that is Superman III.

Writing
Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal wrote the screenplay and Christopher Reeve himself also contributed to the story. The story is a bit silly, but how much of that is the penny pinching studio’s fault I don’t know. There were some really interesting ideas thrown around, like an independent arc about the Daily Planet, the hints that Nuclear Man was actually supposed to be Bizarro, and the fact that it was a movie about Superman eventually having to deal with the fallout (oh yes, I went there) of his rather dickish “heroics.” Nuclear Man comes about solely because of his obsessive desire to rid the world of all nukes launched. There’s also a lot that’s bad too, particularly the dangling plot thread of whatever happened to Lana Lang from the third movie? Is she buried out back of Clark’s Smallville farmstead?

Sound
I can’t believe they got Alexander Courage (they guy who did the original TV theme for Star Trek) for the score. But again, its all built on what John Williams did.

Conclusion
I may have dreaded Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but the end result was surprising. It’s a terrible, terrible movie, but at least its hilariously bad, which immediately puts it over Superman III, which was bad at being hilarious. If you want to laugh at a foolish failure of a movie, then yes, this one might actually be relevant to your interest. Sort of recommended in that regard.

And that’s terrible.

“I don't want to go to jail because there are robbers and rapers and rapers who rape robbers.”

1983 brought Richard Lester back to a Superman movie, only this time he was involved from the very start. Boasting Richard Pryor in the cast, but completely without Gene Hackman, the movie was a definite departure from the previous films.

I hope you appreciate this.

Plot
So, Superman is doing his thing and all that, and Clark Kent goes home to visit Smallville where he reconnects with an old High School friend/crush Lana Lang, who’s got a kid now and a dead-end job and a drunken baby daddy that doesn’t help anything. Clark and her hit things off and they more or less start a relationship and he really wants to help her get out of Smallville. That’s the subplot. The main plot features an ex-con who is somehow a computer savant (at first it seems like a super power, but then not so much) who needs work, so he gets caught up in a scheming businessman’s evil scheme to, I don’t know. Corner some economic markets? Take over the world? Whatever. Some computery stuff happens and this guy ends up infecting Superman with some imperfect Kryptonite, which instead of killing him, turns him into a bigger dick than he’s already proven himself capable of.

Characters
Superman/Clark Kent: Christopher Reeve is still really charismatic and likable in the role, but a lot of it feels like paint the numbers stuff when he’s onscreen. The most interesting stuff that happens with him are the scenes with Clark and Lana Lang, and it was a nice nod to the Silver Age comic stuff that had a love triangle thing between Clark, Lois and Lana. Unfortunately, Superman isn’t really the focus of the movie all that much, and dear God does the movie suffer because of it. What’s worse, is that the movie really jumps the shark after Superman gets infected with the bad kryptonite. At first it turns him into an asshole, which is actually kind of hilarious if you’ve ever browsed the galleries over at http://www.superdickery.com/ and you’re already aware and/or amused by Superman being a dick to innocent bystanders. The real bad part happens when a kid appeals to Superman’s better nature, at which point he splits into two beings: Clark Kent and Douchebag Superman, who are equals in power and then they fight to the death because… Because… Because… Pardon my low Flemish, but WHAT THE FUCK?

Lois Lane: Margot Kidder is still an awesome Lois. For all ten seconds that she’s in the movie. The conceit is that “she’s going off on vacation.” Yeah. Sure. This was apparently studio politics at work.

Perry White: Jackie Cooper doesn’t get a whole lot to do in this movie, but at least he’s in it for a length of time.

Jimmy Olsen: Marc McLure finally gets some major screen time as we finally see him out in the field for real doing photo work and Superman saving him and stuff.

Lana Lang: Annette O’Toole (who would later play Ma Kent on Smallville, which…that’s just weird going from a character who wants to get in Clark’s pants to his mother figure) is actually the most interesting character in the movie. Vulnerable but competent, she’s trying to figure out a way out of her situation and guess what? She falls in love with Clark Kent, not Superman. Its actually a very, very interesting subplot.

Gus Gorman: Oh man. Now, Richard Pryor was a legitimately funny comedian, but this…this is not good. Some of his bits are amusing, but not nearly enough are, especially considering he’s got just as much screen time as Superman. He becomes a clownish henchman for the evil guys, going around getting items and such, but he’s also supposed to be some kind of hacker or computer whiz or. You know what, I don’t even have the heart to point out just how much this character doesn’t work in a Superman movie.

Ross Webster: Our Villain for the movie, an industrialist and philanthropist who wants to take over the world’s coffee and oil supply, because that’s a great villain for Superman to face. I can’t believe this is Robert Vaughn doing this. He was in the Magnificent Seven. He was Napoleon frickin’ Solo on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Why is he being used as a low rent Lex Luthor clone without Hackman’s maniacal charm (Hackman apparently refused to come back after what happened to Donner). Ugh. He’s got a frumpy sister named Vera (Annie Ross) and a loopy “psychic nutritionist” Lorelei (Pamela Stephenson…that name’s familiar. Hey, wait, she was in History of the World Pt. 1) but they’re just there and ultimately, the villains just don’t work.

Visuals/Effects
Well, it definitely looks lower budget. Richard Lester went full blown slapstick for the movie, and the opening credits go off on some sort of zany chain reaction accident sequence, which in itself isn’t exactly bad, but the important question is: Why’s it so prominent in a Superman movie? And that’s really the complaint with most of this stuff. Why is it going for a campy, zany feel when the first movie, which was neither campy nor zany, made a lot of bank and was well regarded by fans.

The pacing is terrible because instead of seeing Superman do various deeds of derring-do, instead we get one where Richard Pryor is narrating it to the villains, and narrating it in an irritating, campy, over-the top way that- Look, there’s an axiom of “show, don’t tell” when it comes to filmmaking and this movie is full of those kinds of failures. The bit is too long, not funny and just screams “we didn’t have the budget to actually film this scene.”

Writing
David Newman and Leslie Newman wrote the script (no Mario Puzo this time) and the story is, for the first half of the movie just a long, inoffensively boring piece of… cinema. I didn’t hate it at that point, I was just trying to stay awake (metaphorically). And then Evil Superman came out of nowhere and everything went to hell. Evil Supes is kind of a Bizarro Superman character, but not, just like the computer going rogue at the end was kind of like Braniac, but not. The ideas were floating around, but the execution for whatever reason was abysmal.

Sound
Ken Thorne and Giorgio Moroder worked on the score, but again, its all built on what John Williams wrote. The music remains decent.

Conclusion
I did not expect to hate this movie as much as I did. At first, the movie seemed simply dreadfully boring but numbly so. You’d have some Superman scenes, then see Richard Pryor bumbling around and so on. Then the movie gets stupid. Painfully stupid without any of that “so bad its hilarious” charm. Superman III fails as a Superman movie, and it fails as a comedy. Not recommended.




....
....
You know. For the kids.

“Come to me, Superman! I defy you! Come and kneel before Zod! Zod!”

Well, this is interesting. While the ending of Superman the Movie had a bit saying that he will return in a year or so, it was only in 1980 that Superman II was released. Unfortunately, Richard Donner, who had filmed a large chunk of footage for Superman II was booted off the project by the studio and didn’t receive any credit for his work on the sequel. Richard Lester was brought on to finish up the movie and received full credit. Studio politics aside, the important question is: is the movie good?

Plot
After Superman foils a terrorist plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower (and presumably the greater Paris area) with a hydrogen bomb, Superman throws the bomb out into space, where it explodes. The shockwave releases three Kryptonian criminals from their eternal prison in the Phantom Zone and they make their way to Earth with conquest on their minds. Meanwhile, the relationship between Lois Lane and Superman grows closer and closer while Lex Luthor breaks out of prison. Secrets are revealed and the planet Earth gets conquered, and then everything that’s happened is completely and lazily reset, rendering the entire movie moot. I’m not even joking. The ending was enormously stupid and completely destroyed whatever character development had taken place.

Characters
Superman/Clark Kent: Christopher Reeve is back in the tights and does a consistently good performance as Superman. However, the stuff the character is given to do is less consistent. The Clark/Superman duality gets explored some more and the love story with Lois gets quite tender in places. Then the movie goes all sideways by throwing in some bullshit about him having to give up his powers if he wants to bang Lois. Of course, he does so without too much angst and proceeds to become a weak sauce milquetoast that gets beat up by a trucker in a diner and then he finds out that the three evil Kryptonians have effectively conquered Earth while he was off snogging Lois. So then he goes back to the Fortress of Solitude, powers back up, somehow, and then goes off to face the bad guys. Is any of this necessary? The fight carries over to the Fortress of Solitude, where the villains get outwitted by Superman’s “taking away superpowers” machine and a friggin’ saran wrap-like version of his logo that he throws at Zod that temporarily ensnares the warlord. I wish I was making that up. Worse, the movie deals with the implications of Lois knowing who Superman is in a terrible way. *Spoilers* At the end of the movie, instead of trying to work things out with Lois about their feelings and doing some deep character growth, Superman just kisses her and SOMEHOW gives her super-amnesia, resetting their relationship to a point where she didn’t know who he was, completely invalidating all that rather touching character growth that we had in the movie. Clearly, Superman is a dick. Oh yeah, and then at the end of the movie, Clark goes back to that diner where he got his ass beat for some petty revenge and property damage, because, you know, he’s a role model. For the kids. *End spoilers*

Lois Lane: Margot Kidder is still great as the scrappy journalist. Her part in the movie is to figure out Superman’s identity, fall in love with Clark and give him some emotional angst over which part of his existence he should choose. She’s fine, but again, the ending of the movie completely craps on her character arc.

Perry White and Jimmy Olsen: Jackie Cooper and Marc McLure return as their respective characters. White still does some great scene chewing, but Jimmy just feels there.

Lara: Marlon Brando wanted more money than the studio was willing to pay him, so Jor-El does not return as the personality in the Fortress of Solitude’s computers. That honor goes to Supes’ mom, played by Susannah York, who’s all right, but its never ever explained WHY Superman has to relinquish his powers to be with a human woman.

Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind on Earth: Gene Hackman is great once more as Lex, hammily breaking out of prison with the help of Ballast, I mean, Otis (Ned Beatty) and Miss Tessmacher (Valerie Perrine). He heads north to the Fortress of Solitude, finds Supes’ secret stash of knowledge, and proceeds to broker a deal with General Zod in the hopes of gaining a modest fiefdom as a reward; Australia. Easily the film’s badass and the most consistently watchable/entertaining character in the movie.

General Zod: Terence Stamp is the grim-faced, conquering Zod. He tried to overthrow the government on Krypton before he got caught, and now, he succeeds in conquering Earth, then gets bored because its no challenge. He’s an all right character, but there’s just something wrong with his performance that I can’t place. Out of the three Kryptonians, he’s the most interesting, what with his egomaniacal penchant for yelling his own name out. Zod!

Ursa: Sarah Douglas (hey look kids, it Queen Taramis from Conan the Destroyer) is Zod’s implied lover and second in command. She seems to derive the most pleasure and wonder in her new powers and gets some great condescending lines of dialog. Because she’s very evil. Sexy evil.

Non: Jack O’Halloran plays the big, dumb, strangely mute brute in service to Zod. Non’s actually pretty funny, what with being given a mini-arc about his heat vision not being as strong as the other two villains’ and his efforts to make it stronger.

Visuals/Effects
Spotty, that’s the word I’d use. Donner and Lester have different styles (Donner directed all of the Lex Luthor parts) and the movie itself has a very, very inconsistent visual tone. The first film is sweeping and epic in its visual presentation, and this movie lacks that. The special effects also look worse, especially the aerial fight scenes between Superman and Zod’s crew. Now, I know, I know. Limitations of the time, but seriously, they’ve aged badly. The pacing is also kind of spotty, though with switching directors mid-stream that’s hardly a surprise.

Writing
Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman and Tom Mankiewicz worked on the script, as in the first movie, but man, what happened? Plot holes big enough to fly a jet through litter the field. Super-amnesia kiss? Superman getting powered back up off-screen like it was nothing after such a tremendous build up to “giving up your powers FOREVER?” And what the hell happened to the villains at the end of the movie?? Superman depowers and beats them, and they just…fall into the shallow-looking pools of the Fortress of Solitude. That’s it. No resolution, no confirmation of if they’re alive or dead. They just literally drop out of the movie. If they died, then Superman’s a bigger dick than I thought, since he deliberately knocked them to their dooms. Oh, I probably should’ve marked that spoilers.

Sound
Ken Thorne turns in a pretty good score, but its all built on top of what John Williams originally wrote. This will become a theme with the Superman movies.

Conclusion
I never saw the Christopher Reeve Superman movies as a kid for some reason, so I never had the nostalgia goggles on for these movies, and I’ve got to admit, I am honestly baffled at how well liked Superman II is. There are some fantastic ideas and moments thrown in, but they’re mired in absolutely terrible storytelling mistakes, particularly in the unforgivably lazy ending. Its nowhere near as good as its predecessor. Hell, its not even a good movie, being decent watchable at best.

Now, I’m aware that a “Richard Donner” cut of the movie has been released on DVD, but I’m in no rush to see it right now (and don’t feel like dropping 25 bucks on it either), but I am slightly curious to get a better idea of what Donner was going for before he got booted.



The trailer lies. If you've only seen the first part, you have seen the best part.

“An ode to spring. How do you spell ‘massacre?’”

Superman. The Man of Steel. The Big Blue Boy Scout. The first superhero’s been around since the 30s and is a fixture of the public conscious (let alone pop culture). Big Blue’s been no stranger to adaptations to the screen, from the radio serials, the awesome rotoscoped Fleischer Studios animated version to the TV series with George Reeves. Still, 1978 was a big year for Supes, because that was the year the big guy got a full-blown Silver Screen adaptation in Superman the Movie.

Plot
The first half follows Superman’s origin pretty closely. The Planet Krypton ‘splodes and baby Kal-El is rocketed away to save his life and he lands on earth, growing up an honest youth in Smallville, Kansas. After his father’s death, he travels to the big city of Metropolis to seek his future. Oh yeah, and Earth’s yellow sun gives him a hell of a lot of super powers. Taking on a “mild mannered news reporter” disguise, he makes a big debut where he flies around the city in a cape and tights, fights crime, has a reporter fall in love with him and gains the attention of Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of his generation.

Characters
Jor-El: Marlon Brando (yes, that one) plays Superman’s doomed father. Stern-faced and trying to warn his people of the impending danger, he’s not in the movie for very long, but after baby Superman is sent into space, he continues to be a presence because he’s recorded himself into the computers that Kal’s got with him.

Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman: This is the movie that put Christopher Reeve on the map. (Young Clark was played by Jeff East) Reeve does a great job with it too. As Superman, he looks the part with his square jaw and honest features, but really, he also pulls out a great performance changing back and forth from Clark to Superman that goes beyond just taking off the glasses. There’s a whole body language and tonal shift that he pulls of effortlessly. For the purposes of the movie, he is Superman, pulling off a great and convincing performance that’s pretty badass in its own right. I should also mention that veteran actor Glenn Ford played Jonathan Kent, his Pa who instilled the down-home values onto him, and he gets a very moving death scene.

Lois Lane: Margot Kidder is great as the ace reporter who befriends Clark but falls for Superman. Lois was updated from the “woman always getting in trouble that Superman rescues” to a more modern, initiative taking, ball busting scrappy newshound whose ambition to get a great story…always get her in trouble… and Superman… rescues… her. Um… It works better here, trust me. There is, however, one catch, and that’s the infamous flying scene (which is great at first). In it, Lois starts reciting a poem in her head about what she’s feeling and its cheesy as all hell.

Perry White: Jackie Cooper plays the boss of the Daily Planet, a straight-shooting, somewhat hyperbolic newshound. He gets some great lines but doesn’t do a whole lot.

Jimmy Olsen: Marc McLure plays the iconic young photographer, but like Perry, he’s not that important to the story. He certainly doesn’t seem like “Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.”

Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of our generation: Gene Hackman’s fantastic as the incredibly hammy, toupee-wearing Lex. The performance is fun and his self-awareness of his own evil is a great contrast to Superman’s wholesome goodness. The scheme that Lex cooks up is thoroughly elaborate and outlandish, and he’s helped by two henchmen, the simpleton Otis (Ned Beatty) and Eve Tessmacher (Valerie Perrine). Lex is awesome in this.

Visuals/Effects
Richard Donner did a fantastic job of making good on the tagline of “You will believe a man can fly.” Considering that this was ‘78, the effects are generally really good, but more than that, the whole visual style of the movie is fantastic. The overall effect is a mythologizing one. The movie is full of light moments and quite a bit of humor (like whenever Lex opens his mouth) but everything about Superman himself is played totally straight, and it works. I’m not that big a fan of the extremely crystalline look of Krypton and the Fortress of Solitude, but that’s just personal interpretation.

Writing
Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster, two Jewish kids from Cleveland, OH (as a Clevelander, I feel obligated to point that out), came up with Superman back in 1932. The script for this version came from David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton and Tom Mankiewicz with lead story credit going to Mario Puzo (Yes, THAT Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather). The movie itself divides into several sections. The Planet Krypton going boom, Clark’s arrival on Earth and his youth, Clark Kent’s arrival in Metropolis, and then the conflict with Luthor. All are classic beats in Superman’s origin, and they all get some fine spotlight time. The pacing does feel a little bit slow, especially after the explosion of Krypton, but as far as origin stories go, this one handles things pretty well.

Not everything’s perfect. Lex, while a really fun character, just doesn’t really feel like a serious threat to Superman, despite doing some pretty heinous stuff. The ending of the movie, too, stretches things a little too far past what would be reasonable. Just because Superman was capable of doing some pretty physically impossible stuff during the 50 and 60s doesn’t mean it should be played straight in 1978. Flying in space is one thing (Supes can do that just fine without a suit), but how the movie resolves the ending is just a little too farfetched in a “modern” Superman take.

Sound
John Williams.

Oh, you want more? Okay. The "Superman Theme" is one of the best cinematic fanfares around, and the whole movie has musical moments of awesomeness. That better?

Conclusion
Superman the Movie is a legitimately fun movie that I would say was an early success of the superhero genre. It slathers the source material with love, but isn’t afraid of doing some self-aware poking fun at the genre either. There are a couple of “what the hell?” moments and some of the effects haven’t aged well, but the good stuff generally overshadows the bad. A very fun movie and definitely recommended.




Yes its an American Express commercial, so what? Its amusing.

“You've been training for two years to take me out, and now here I am. Whew! Ooh, so exciting, isn't it?”

Well fina-damn-ly. Its time to take a look at 2002’s Blade II, a sequel to Blade (obviously) but this time, Guillermo del Toro was behind the helm, steering the vampire slaying ship toward Eastern Europe and giving audiences a closer look at the political machinations of the vampire world. Contextually, this movie comes after the debuts of some high profile comic book movies like X-Men and Spider-Man, and Marvel was much less shy about having their logo planted on the film. It didn’t hurt that del Toro is himself an unabashed comics fan either.

Plot
After tracking down the not-quite-dead body of his mentor in Prague, a vampire slayer gets a curious offer of temporary alliance when the vampires that oppose him face a new strain of bloodsucker that feeds on human and vampire alike. Sounds like a simple vehicle for our hero to kill Euro-trash vampires, right? Well…the third act throws a lot of twists at the audience that throw things into a more…dynastic light.

Characters
Blade: Wesley Snipes is once more the sunglasses wearing, heroically sociopathic dhampir. Blade finds himself in an awkward position when the Vampire Nation offers a truce. Of course he doesn’t trust the bastards and at various points displays an incredible level of magnificent bastardness that reminds everyone why he’s a bogeyman for vampires across the world. Blade is also a lot quicker with the quips in this film, throwing out one-liners with a disturbing smile (considering the character). He even gets some tender moments when he finds his mentor, Whistler and with Nyssa at the end. Easily this film’s Badass for his level of contingency planning (and for attaching a bomb to the back of a guy’s head).

Whistler: Kris Kristofferson returns as Blade’s crotchety- Wait. Didn’t he die in the last movie? He did. Or DID he???? Apparently the Vampire Nation got a hold of him and kept him in a weird state of life/undeath so they could torture him and use him as bait to lure Blade to Prague so he could take care of their reaper problem. He’s still a badass in this film, and actually manages to be even surlier than before (coming back from the dead will do that to you), but doesn’t get as much time to shine what with all the other characters populating the screen. The movie also dangles the idea that he might be a traitor to the cause because of his mysterious disappearances, but you never really get the feel that he actually would betray Blade.

Scud: Norman Reedus (one of the McManus brothers from The Boondock Saints) is Blade’s replacement Whistler. He’s a tech-head with an eye for making vampire-killing gear and vies with Whistler for surly one-liners.

Damaskinos: One of (if not the) Grand Poobahs of the Vampire Nation, he’s a frail, positively ancient bloodsucker geezer that recruits Blade to eliminate the reaper-strain of vampires, since, well, after the new guys finish off the vamps, who else will they turn to for food? He’s just…creepy, but you realize that a vampire like that doesn’t get ancient without good reason, and there’s more to Damaskinos than he lets on.

Nyssa: Chilean actress Leonor Varela is Damaskinos’ daughter, she’s sent to recruit Blade for the job, and the two kind of, sort of bond despite being on opposite sides of the war. He’s a Daywalker bent on slaying them, she’s the leader of a black-ops vampire team called the Bloodpack trained to take him down. You bet there’s a bit of sexual tension. Speaking of the Bloodpack…

Reinhardt: Ron Perlman is easily the most competent of the Pack, a shades wearing, almost totally bald shotgun toting badass who doesn’t hide the fact that he really doesn’t like Blade. He’s definitely a villain, but the question is, who’s he working for, really?

Asad: The other vampire sent with Nyssa to recruit Blade (and something like a lieutenant for her), he’s played by Danny John-Jules, who voiced one of the Fierys in Labyrinth and apparently played Cat (an evolved human-shaped cat) on TV’s Red Dwarf.

Priest: Tony Curran (who was the redheaded, non-tattooed Viking in The 13th Warrior who made it all the way through the film) isn’t in the film much. He’s a pro-pureblood vampire, ready and willing to slaughter turned vampires. He’s the first of the Bloodpack to fall to the reapers, but not without a fight.

Chupa: Matthew Schulze is one of the bigger vampires (and wearing a chain mail shirt for a while). He shares Reinhardt’s sentiments about working with the Daywalker. He gets really pissed about Priest’s death. Actually, he gets pissed about a lot of stuff easily. He’s the easily pissed off one.

Snowman: Big name martial artist/actor Donnie Yen is the silent, katana wielding member of the Bloodpack. Sadly, aside from one pretty cool fight scene, he doesn’t get a whole lot to do in the film.

Lighthammer: Daz Crawford plays the big, largely silent, Maori-face tattooed big guy of the Bloodpack. He’s got a big honkin’ hammer that looks anything but light. Sadly, he’s a case of wasted potential as he’s not nearly as badass as you would hope.

Verlane: Marit Velle Kile is the redheaded vampire who’s the lover of Lighthammer. Aside from one complication near the end of the second act, that’s about as far as her character goes.

Jared Nomak: Oh yeah, the bad guy (well, the bad guy who’s the most urgent threat). Luke Goss’ Nomak looks like a homeless bald guy, which isn’t very scary, until his face opens up like the Predator and he starts killing vampires that turn into other reapers. He’s apparently a carrier for the reaper strain, a mutation of vampirism (which is now referred to as a virus, so in the Blade universe, vampirism is a biological, not mystical condition). The hunger is particularly nasty for reapers. They need blood like junkies need a hit, and he can feed off of vampires as well as humans, the side effect being that vampires killed this way turn into reapers themselves. Unlike Nomak himself, the regular reapers are more zombie-like (fast zombie that is) in their behavior (and lack of coherent speech) and they’re pretty damn creepy when you see them swarming through a suspiciously large, old world sewer at the heroes. However, as the movie progresses, there’s more to Nomak than what’s initially presented, and allows for some tragic elements into his characterization.

Visuals/Effects
Guillermo del Toro is a damn good director, no doubt about that. His shots are well lit, staged and framed, but its also clear that Blade II looks different from the first one. For one thing, the Prague underworld is much more colorful than New York in the movie, and the overarching visual sense of the characters’ isolation isn’t present (probably due in part to the sheer number of characters on screen). Its certainly not a bad thing, and I like what del Toro has done with shooting this movie, but, I really liked that stark, isolated look from the first movie because, in a way, it provided most of the character subtext for Blade.

That said, the visual effects are a huge step forward from the first movie. The reapers are just creepy in their design (and well realized), the movie is particularly gory and squicky in places, and as vampires die, they ignite before turning to ash this time around. The CGI has improved quite a bit, though some of the fight scenes use computer graphics to substitute for actual actors. Those scenes aren’t bad or badly done, but you can tell that the figures are slightly off in those parts.

Action scenes are well done, generally well shot and provide nice visuals. Blade fighting two vampire ninjas against a wall of UV lights is a groovy idea but unfortunately, the CGI “stuntmen” are a little too obvious. The final battle with Nomak is brutal, and the shootout in the sewer is full of that “how the hell are they gonna get out of this?” that caps off the second act nicely. Oddly enough, the only times the movie really goes for more closeups and quick cuts are when Blade fights Nomak.

Writing
David S. Goyer once again behind the keyboard, though the movie also credits Blade’s creators Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan (two well known names in comics) for, um, creating Blade. Anyway, the writing is pretty good. The first movie stayed on its rails until the plot reached the station, but here Goyer adds in intrigue and at least three twists by the end of the film. One of the twists is just kind of tossed in for the hell of it with no foreshadowing, but the other two parts are handled better. Dialog is good, no complaints there. Unfortunately, most of the Bloodpack only have a scene or two to stand out from the background. They don’t really feel like the credible, well-trained unit we’re told they are. Instead, most of them feel like throwaway fodder with an occasional gimmick (poor, poor Lighthammer).

Sound
The original score by Marco Beltrami and Danny Saber peeks its head up from the ambient background for a couple very good moments. In that, its superior to the previous movie’s. The commercial soundtrack of techno and hip-hop continues to be appropriate for action scenes and ass whoopin.’

Conclusion
Blade II is, once more, a solid action movie. It introduces more characters and a few plot twists that mostly work without overflowing the basic idea of “Blade kills Vampires a lot” with a bloated, ponderous movie. Its not quite as streamlined as the first movie, but its by no means bad, and I found myself sitting there watching going “you know what? I like this franchise. These are fun to watch movies.” When you boil it down away from my verbose penchant for pretentious superlatives and thirty dollar words, that’s the whole point of a movie, right?