I have a confession to make first, I had been watching Satantango for most of the day because where I live you get scheduled black outs every two hours and if it wasn't the blackouts stopping me from watching it then it was me falling asleep from that tremendous piece of work and I was finally over 5 hours in when my friend gives me a call to come over...
And we saw Scott Pilgrim vs. The World! I suggested it cuz I always wanted to, it was one of the movies that came on tv on an Arabic channel with Arabic subtitles and the scene that played was when Ramona and Scott are in the bus and she tells him about her evil exes and how he has to defeat them, they kiss and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is so fucking cute in the scene
Well, so yeah now that I have seen it I think I'm even more fond of this movie. It's so confident and realized and Edgar Wright has somehow made this silly, goofy comic-book story with it's ridiculous plot come out in all it's colors and beauty which is just fascinating to watch. I was in awe at most of the action sequences at how well choreographed they are.
The movie is also genuinely one of the most fun times I have had watching a comic-book movie ever, it's very funny in a not-annoying way that is beyond Marvel Studio's ability it seems. Which is what I wanted to talk about a bit.
How is it that we have so many comic-book movies and they all look the same thing, the reason I quit superhero movies once was because it was becoming more and more meh and then there is a property like Scott-Pilgrim vs. The World that brings it's own language to the movie genre with it's comic-book animation in 2010.
It's also a really well-made movie in terms of plot and characters, no side character takes up too much space, the plot has a lot of twists and turns that feel organic because they tease you about these things beforehand.
I want more comic-book stuff like this: original, weird and that accepts it's own ridiculousness without trying to fit into another genre because most comic-book movies are trying so hard to be just another action popcorn movie and it's tiring to look at them
It is a shame, because comics are a medium like many others where you can express a wide variety of styles and stories, but because so many comic book movies were poorly made and half-assed before the massive success of Iron Man, they're just afraid to deviate from that style much. I have to feel like they've been thinking about doing some different things for a while now, since they're certainly getting diminished returns, but I know that my interest in comic book movies has also dwindled quite a lot.
Some things in the Marvel area do stand out as being different in style/tone while still being good, though. i.e. I enjoyed Logan quite a lot. I want to say the Deadpool movies are different from the main-series Marvel stuff, but they still have that... annoying snarky tone to them. It's edgier but not entirely different.
Yeah, I still find them funnier than most Marvel stuff except Deadpool 2 which was boring for me. The only Marvel Studios film that was funny to me was Thor: Ragnarok I think.
The original Spider-Man, atleast the first two were also very distinctive atleast for me as they were the definitive teenager movies in my time. X-Men movies had a more serious grounded tone to them which I found way more compelling
Then Into the Spider-Verse came and made every other animation studio wanna experiment with colorful visuals hahaha so yeah, there's been some good stuff in the mix but rare
There were a couple interesting comic book movies with distinctive styles, like Sin City or 300 (ya I know it's racist but it at least has a distinctive style)... And... Hm... Actually, those are the only two I can think of at the moment. And I didn't even see Sim City. Ya, most comic book movies before then sucked. I did like the first two X-men movies though and the Spiderman movies had their charm. But most comic book movies before then were either bad, generic, or both.
Check out Persepolis (2007) if you haven't. It's based on a comic by a woman who was a young girl during the Iranian Revolution and eventually made her way to France. There's also Dredd (2012) with its "slow-mo" visuals. I didn't see it in 3D, though.
Heavy Metal (1981) has some really cool animation and rotoscoping with several different styles. Also the best movie soundtrack of all time IMO. Be warned, it was considered sexist even when it was released. Definitely infested with nerdy, gamer misogyny.
V for Vendetta (2006), From Hell (2001), Kick Ass (2010), Hellboy (2004), and the new version of Watchmen (2024) are all good, but don't have distinctive styles.