Yesterday I was saying how Green Lantern the movie came fourth out of four in the comic movie rankings that No1 son and I thoroughly debated. In the space of five minutes. Walking home from the cinema.
Let me quickly run through how the other three ranked.
X-Men: First Class
Now this was an odd one. Ostensibly a prequel to the other X-Men movies (there are a couple of sequences that tie it very firmly to the continuity of the earlier movies.
And yet the film is very deliberately set in the early 1960s - specifically around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This plays Havok (do you see what I did there?) with the idea of the original films being a short time in the future from the word we would recognise. Not that important but odd. The film makes a big deal of this being the story, already alluded to in the previous films, of how Magneto and Professor X became friends and subsequently enemies.
One of my pet peeves is how producers seem to make superhero movies but always ignore the tone and melodrama of the comics they're based on. There's almost always a knowing wink or some unnecessary change in the details to explain how a superhero could work in the real world (organic webshooters? the Joker killed his parents? his father's experiments helped make him the Hulk?) that shows they don't get just how cool superheroes are .Funnily enough, the director of First Class, Matthew Vaughn was responsible for Kick Ass, a movie about a 'real world' superhero. To First Class' credit however, the hook on which they try to hang the implausable heroics is an interesting one - referencing 60s spy movies (Bond, etc), using the retro futurism of an already well-established genre. It works well, but it still feels like they're apologising it being a superhero movie. Which for me is why it comes in at third on this year's comic book movies (it did for No1 son too.)
Thor
The god of thunder actually made No1 son's favourite comic book film of the year. For me it came second but was still a highly enjoyable bit of high adventure.
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They got Kenneth Branagh, of all people, to direct this. I guess there was always something cod Shakespearean about Thor, what with all the 'thous' and 'dosts' being thrown about (in the comic at least - not too many of them here). But for me the success of this film comes from it embracing its origins and revelling in them (Norse gods! Asgard! Frost Giants! The Rainbow Bridge!) instead of trying to come up with excuses for them. It had a big, fire breathing roboty thing and Thor chucked his hammer a lot. What more could you want? How about a decent villain? Tom Hiddleston does some ace work as Loki in this film.
Captain America
Well, I enjoyed this most this year, but No1 son only ranked it second. Another period piece, set during World War II and directed by Joe Johnston who had dabbled with nazis and Indiana Jones style boys-own-adventure stuff in The Rocketeer, another comic book hero, some twenty years previously.
This just confidently got on with the story, tossing terms like 'vibranium' and 'vita-rays' about without worrying how hokey it sounded. Self-aware enough to have a sense of humour (Cap as star of the song and dance fund raising shows was great) but backing it up with strong and exciting actions sequences. Interesting with the film told in flashback from a modern perspective that it takes in the whole of Cap's WWII career - a montage shows a number of missions over time, establishing his reputation as a hero. It's an intriguing bit of world building - along with Thor, Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, this movie serves as a lead-in to next year's Avengers movie. The structure of this film has to get across how big a deal Cap is, and maybe at the cost of some character development we get the broad strokes of his contribution to the war effort.
So Cap's my favourite this year but none of these films have been truly outstanding. Good as they are there's nothing here that's made me go 'wow!' Maybe that's the job of Joss (Buffy) Whedon's Avengers movie next year. Let's see.
Gotta get to sleep again. Sorry this one's a bit dry again - let's see if we can liven things up next week. Have a great weekend.
More soonliest.
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