jeff wrote:

i completely agree about hancock! i also recently learned about one of my childhood favorite Funky Koval getting turned into a movie .
http://www.facebook.com/people/FunkyKoval-Movie/100000386594846.
i hope it wont have the same fate as hancock did! it d be a shame!
J.

according to one of its producers (?) Roland von Ciel they are trying to remain true to the original hence the reason why its taking a while .so far i think it s been like 3 years since the original announcement from Mr Polch.

here is the IMDB article from Quiet Earth i found a few days ago:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1869438/news

i completely agree about hancock! i also recently learned about one of my childhood favorite Funky Koval getting turned into a movie .
http://www.facebook.com/people/FunkyKoval-Movie/100000386594846.
i hope it wont have the same fate as hancock did! it d be a shame!
J.

Tino wrote:

But wasn’t this actually a quite strong theme in the last batman movie?

You are right, it was. But it also suffers from this syndrome since Batman seems to be the only super hero out there. This sort of paints him as more of a loon that he really is. I mean, who dresses up as a bat and fights crime? The real Batman existed in a world where you could pick up a newspaper and read about the newest heroic exploits of Super Man, Flash or Wonder Woman. He was just a prominent local super in a world in which every major city had several masked vigilantes working the streets at night.

Then again the gritty realism of the series is one of it’s strong points so I actually didn’t mind this. Not to mention that Batman is an antisocial loon and his rogue gallery is a collection of deranged psychopaths that are as crazy or crazier than him. In his case the solitary hero treatment works to his benefit.

Tino wrote:

Did you see Hancock? Its not a great movie, but it also does a bit of this type of introspection. At least for a while before it loses track of its direction and barks off into something else much less interesting.

Ugh… That movie was such a disappointment. It started off so well though. It was funny, light hearted but incredibly accurate and somewhat brilliant deconstruction of the man-of-steel trope. It did what very few movies or even comic books do – it looked at the collateral damage super powered individual could do if he was careless.

I loved seeing superman-like powers being given to a deeply flawed, selfish, short tempered man rather than to a perfect paragon of virtue like Clark Kent. I loved how the movie used real physics for some of his stunts – like that time when he stops a train. When superman did stuff like that we were told that he somehow extends some sort of kinetic force-field around the objects he touches to prevent them from breaking apart as he lifts or pushes them. Hancock had no such power so when he tried to stop the train the locomotive literally wraps itself around him, and the rest of the train pops off the tracks and piles up demolishing everything in the vicinity.

For the first half of the movie I was grinning like an idiot. I already had half of my review composed in my head. I was planning to head straight home and start typing: “Hancock was one of the best superhero films I have seen in years”.

And then they went and ruined it so completely that I left the theater angry, and dissapointed. I literally felt cheated. I paid to see a funny and yet brilliant deconstruction of superman mythos. What I got instead was some re-hashed highlander like bullshit. What the fuck! :(

Wow, great clarification, thanks. I agree with your point about the x-men movies. I essentially understand your text as “I wish more superhero movies included some introspection into the theme of costumed vigilante crime fighting” — or shorter — “I wish there were more movies like Watchmen”, which definitely is something I can get behind. :)

But wasn’t this actually a quite strong theme in the last batman movie? I would go as far as to say that how the world reacts to batman as a costumed vigilante crime fighter was the main storyline. We have batman copycats, protests against vigilante crime fighting, the Joker discussing that he is the extreme and opposite reaction to the extreme that is batman, etc.

Did you see Hancock? Its not a great movie, but it also does a bit of this type of introspection. At least for a while before it loses track of its direction and barks off into something else much less interesting.

Tino wrote:

I don’t get the difference you are making between Watchmen and, e.g., X-men? Don’t both stay within their own range of individuals who somehow have obtained superpowers?

Ok, in Watchmen no one other than Dr. Manhattan has super powers. Anyone can become a masked vigilante – it is a social phenomena. People admire, fear and actually acknowledge the existence of costumed heroes. In a way we can say that everyone in the Watchmen universe is a bit genre savvy – they know how costumed crime fighting works, have opinions on how it should be conducted and etc…

In X-men movies, mutation is the only source of super powers. Costumed crime fighting on the other hand is never, ever even mentioned. Conversations skirt around it trying not to even allude to a possibility that masked vigilantism “is a thing to do” in that universe. In fact, the X-men never actually fight crime – they usually just fight amongst each other.

This of course is not incorrect – a lot of X-men plots revolved about mutants fighting mutants, or arguing about how they feel about being mutants and etc… But they were also a superhero group that existed in an universe where running around town wearing spandex was acceptable.

I mean, when you watch the movie, you know these guys are a super hero team. It is a given. But they never talk about it. They never acknowledge it. I guess I wish some of these movies were more self-aware and took a minute of screen time here and there to actually reflect on this.

Then again, The Watchmen is a deconstruction of the super hero mythos and as such it does tend to be more introspective.

I don’t get the difference you are making between Watchmen and, e.g., X-men? Don’t both stay within their own range of individuals who somehow have obtained superpowers?

I also think it somehow does help believability to rely on only one concurrent mechanism for superpowers, be it mutants (xmen), the force (star wars), radio active bugbites (spiderman), extreme monk-traning (batman), etc. That said, sure, I could imagine a good crossover script based on the premise of competing superheroes. But I also could imagine it being extremely poorly executed :)

Also, be careful what you wish for, now that Disney bought Marvell, the next crossover may be Wolverine teaming up with Winnie the Pooh…