This is one of those “I need something to post because I didn’t have time to find a proper Showcase” installments. It’s Mystery Science Theater 3000, so you know it’s going to be good…even if the movie they’re riffing isn’t.
It’s Mike Nelson’s first movie since he was knocked out to replace the escaping Joel. His rookie experiment is 1962’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, the tale of a scientist who tries to save his decapitated fiancee by finding a new body to attach her to. We also learn why Tom has to be carried into the theater within what passes for MST lore.
This is actually a follow-up to last week’s article link, and a two-for-one linking. Author Caroline Furlong uses an example left out of her first article on upping the stakes too much to further define the importance of spiritual conflict in the Star Wars franchise, using novels and one of the video games as her examples along with the movies. This inspired a follow-up of his own from Nate Winchester, further defining how spiritual conflict or the lack thereof helped and hurt the nine movies that currently make up the main Star Wars storyline.
Welcome to the first of the banked reviews, as I pushed through movies before cutting the cord and going full ad-sponsored streaming.
It looks like second time was the charm. I was actually able to watch Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse on my second attempt, the first time glitching during playback and only giving me about half the film.
This was Marvel trying to push Miles Morales and Sony trying to get something to actually be successful while trying to hold on tight to the rights of a character they haven’t gotten right since Sam Rami’s second film with Peter Parker. I’m actually watching the Icons Unearthed series on the Spider-Man movies. I’ve gotten through the two episodes that go over the making of the first Rami film, and it’s quite interesting.
For the record, I am one of those whateveryouwantocallmes that says Miles Morales is Miles Morales because that’s how he’s marketed more often than not. Peter is “Spidey” and Miles is “Spin” in the preschool show even though their suit-up stock sequence both has “Spider-Man” in the background text. Otherwise the Peter costume is marketed in merch as Spider-Man and the Miles costume as Miles Morales. You would think they’d want him to step out of Peter’s shadow by giving him his own superhero identity rather than being a white man’s also-ran, but that’s not how they think at Marvel. So does this movie at least earn Miles some respect? Is there something to this character once you get past the name issue?
RELEASE DATE: 2018
RELEASED BY: Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios, and Avi Arad Productions
RUNTIME: 1hr 57 min
RATING: PG
VIEWING SOURCE FOR THIS REVIEW: I should have wrote that down. I’m thinking either FX or TBS/TNT if not one of the Starz Encore previews or that brief time we has MGM+
STARRING: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, and Brian Tyree Henry
SCREENWRITERS: Phil Lord (story) and Rodney Rothman
DIRECTORS: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman
BOX OFFICE: $190,241,310 domestic gross, $384,298,736 worldwide gross, according to IMDB
ESTIMATED BUDGET: $90,000,000 (estimated) according to IMDB
Not the Veteran’s Administration. The title was getting long, or I would have written voice actress, as in Minnie Driver. Driver voices the gender-swapped version of the character in Batman: Caped Crusader, the show that Warner Brothers themselves tossed out and Amazon Prime grabbed like a dog with table scraps. I don’t even hate the show. I don’t even hate Driver’s portrayal. When I reviewed it a couple of days ago, I praised her singing voice. She did a good job voicing Oswalda Cobblepot.
She’s just not the Penguin.
First appearing in Detective Comics #58, Oswald Cobblepot is a mob boss named for his deformity and penchant for tuxedos, both of which combined given them the appearance of the namesake arctic fowl. The Penguin has appeared in every continuity I’m aware of outside of Elseworld one-shots, and he’s even been in some of them. There might be some games he was out of. I don’t know EVERY bat-continuity out there, but he’s made an appearance in the ones I know of. Done right, he would have made a good introduction to this new timeline, since we’re doing another “early Batman” story and that means fighting mobsters rather than supervillains.
I’m not going to slam Driver, who probably never read a comic book or watched a cartoon in her life, for not knowing who the Penguin is, or enjoying her version enough to attempt to defend it since she couldn’t care less about the source material. The fault of the bad adaptation is on Bruce Timm, JJ Abrams, Matt Reeves, and the episode writers, which is Timm and Jase Ricci according to IMDB. On the other hand, saying something stupid that proves you don’t know what your talking about and thinking you’ve owned people who knew who Penguin was while you was playing with Barbie (wow, Driver’s a few years older than me so I had to adjust that, and she’s still pretty hot) is something I’m going to get on your case on. There’s a difference between defending your version and acting like that’s how it always was. To wit, this interview with GamesRadar where she calls Oswald a “genderless creature”. Prepare to lose a brain cell.
Okay, guys, you don’t have to rip off Golden Age anthologies, too.
Lucky Comics Showcase #1
Lucky Comics (February, 2002)
COVER ART: John Michael Helmer
As you can tell from the cover, this comic contains three stories: Beetle Girl, Crom The Barbarian, and Flame Girl. The girls are of course tied to Golden Age superheroes while Crom is a take on Conan. Perhaps this is supposed to be the guy Conan prays to? I don’t know. Good or not, this isn’t a series I would connect to.
Meanwhile, past showings of Beetle Girl in these reviews have not been the best showing for Dan Garrett’s daughter, Flame Girl is new, and I only have limited exposure to The Flame, the guy who travels through flames but also has a cool car and airplane. That will at least be something different. Crom we saw in one of the Free Comic Book Day specials.
BW Media Spotlight 