laupäev, 23. august 2014

Recent superhero science fiction movies

This is a comment I wrote on a busy IMDb forum. Posted it first in an IMDb forum, but this is backup, because after a certain threshold, IMDb forum threads get deleted.

Late 1990s was the period of huge disaster movies, starting with "Twister" and "Independence Day" in 1996; then in the one year of 1998 two huge asteroid disaster movies, which were "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon". 1997 gave us "Event Horizon". Of all these, ID4, "Deep Impact" and "Event Horizon" might have aged better, IMO. Though "Armageddon" had a bigger production, more star power (back then), and an awesome theme song.

Now, I think at some point we're going to reach, or have already reached Peak Superhero Movie, aka the point when all recent Superhero movies end up with the one that jumps the shark on them all.

Because Ant-Man is in production.

The current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles release had extensive advertising, but the problem is that I don't like them all that much, even from the trailers. I think I liked the old Turtles movies better, if only because they were more fun and the turtles' prosthetics seemed to have appeared more natural, even if from a production standpoint they might have looked fake. And I was a kid back then.

I have not seen Iron Man movies. I remember I really liked the 1990s cartoons.

This Summer I saw "Transformers: Age of Extinction". Ugh. But it got huge, because it was one of the few Hollywood flicks this year permitted to be screened in China, to which they paid huge lip service in the very movie.

Man of Steel was allowed the previous year. It also gets extra props for awesome eye candy :9

The Turtles and Transformers are basically kiddie movies. Iron Man is teenage material, and Man of Steel for teenagers and young adults. So are "Star Trek 2009" and "Star Trek Into Darkness", both mindless sci-fi action flicks.

Whereas "Lucy" is rated R (haven't seen it yet).

All in all, I'll give Iron Man the benefit of the doubt. Star Trek reboots were rather successful, and Man of Steel is a very nice Superman reboot (I'll forgive camcorder zoom-ins).

The real science fiction goodies were "Prometheus" and "Gravity", of which I haven't seen either.