LIVE AT EMERALD CITY COMIC CON!
The gang discusses their picks for Comic Book Movie Adaptation Disasters! Recorded live, 12/3/2021.
LIVE AT EMERALD CITY COMIC CON!
The gang discusses their picks for Comic Book Movie Adaptation Disasters! Recorded live, 12/3/2021.
I'm sorry did I break your concentration somewhere between science and superstition such sigh to show you strange aeons. Welcome strange aeons radio. That's Eric over there. Hello. That's Vanessa over there. Hello. That makes me Kelly. We are recording live at Emerald City Comic Con 2021. Which means you guys have to make some noise. Has anyone heard our podcast before? Oh, nice. There's somebody here. I don't like no, that's kind of cool. I mean, maybe you do, maybe I do know you're wearing a mask. Who knows? Well, we record here in Seattle, we are generally a pop culture, podcast, mostly movies, although we talked about comic books, video games, that kind of stuff. Also, normally, we would start the show just talking about what we've seen during the week that we haven't seen each other. And then go into our little gimmick, which is we one of us picks the sub genre that we are going to be talking about. And each of us has to come with a film in that sub genre. For this show, Vanessa pitched this panel to Emerald City, and she suggested that we talk about comic book movies that did not go very well. I have to I have to let everyone know I did not tell them. I just like went ahead and applied. And we got in and then I told them. So here we are. You're welcome. So we've got about an hour to do this. Eric, you want to start us off? Sure. Why not? Comic book movies that well. The adaptations were what show you say crappy. This one was so much worse than I expected. Because it's well let's just dive in. We've we give a little nice little routine the way we introduce all of our things. Today I'll be talking about 2005 Man thing our most powerful Guardian Spirit lives in the dark water to protect what our ancestors call the nexus of all realities. The Guardian has become very angry for the bloods to build it seeks blood I can show you to the IRS as far as I go. I really believe in all this. I believe I don't want to die Share Share Share the dark corner of the world boy you better keep alive is chosen who will die will die pays everyone how can you shove a brush down someone's throat like that? I think somebody is hurt seeing this one. Currently, if you're interested after listening to me talk to it and you shouldn't be. It's available and to be or it's out for rent. The current Rotten Tomatoes score just as a bellwether for how the world looks at this movie is the reviewers have it it's 17% and the audience has it at 13 and I want to call that generous. Oh, our sucker had a budget of $5 million. So no excuses really. I mean independent 5 million but it wasn't independent. I'll get to that in a minute. Directed by Brett learned who I mean how could this not be a success? This is the director of The Lawnmower Man. Oh no. I classic writers credit they do credit Steve Gerber who's a exactly the inventor but the kind of the perfecter of man thing and the 70s the regular writer Hans Rudolph. You're gonna love his resume the skulls to Deep Blue Sea to Oh god. Wait for Lost Boys two and three. I didn't know this existed. stars Jack Thompson. Got like 114 credits Star Wars Episode Two Magic Pudding feeling sexy? Matthew Lane avez whose was in Farscape, which I friggin love, and tons of TV, Steve bustani, who is in the Beastmaster TV show, which I need to now find and watch one person knows. And they want to hear. Tell him we're talking about him. Get him down. There you go. And the wonderfully titled he died with a falafel in his hand. Whoa, and short film or a feature. That's a feature. And finally, Rachel Taylor, who's in Transformers and the actually really good film battleship or Bottle Shock. This is what for those of you that are not familiar, Does everybody here know man thing? Man thing was invented in the late in the early 70s, or created in the early 70s by Stanley and the usual troupe of folks in Marvel. And I've got the full list and trivia. He is best known for his tagline, whatever nose fear burns at the touch of the man thing. So he's a swamp breaks based critter, who's comparable in a lot of ways to Swamp Thing except he's not real bright, except in the very weird rewrite that RL Stein did a few years ago where he discovers how to think and talk very weird. Has a very huge history. He's part of the nexus of all realities. He's the sole guardian of that is a member of the Midnight's sons, which is really interesting, short lived through that ghost rider and a few people like that in it. And a friend and partner of Howard the Duck. Yes, finally, somebody can be friends with Howard tonight, first appeared in savage tales in May of 1971. A full two months before swampthing, who was created by Stanley Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, as I mentioned before, and Gary Conway and the late Gary Morrow all work together in various ways. See, I'm avoiding talking about the film. So I'll just dive in here. I was really, really surprised when the movie started with Marvel's flipping logo that you see, you know, the little flipping things that you see before every Marvel movie. This one, however, was about half the length was really short. But so this is an official Marvel release. It starts off with amazing music that reminded me fondly of bad made TV aren't made for TV movies. The accents are freaking crazy. They are so bad. And it's supposed to be Southern, I think. And they're just terrible. But it starts like this as a slasher film. Like Well, I don't think this is a good representation, but we'll see where it goes. Yep, slasher movie. How do you know because two things go out into a boat in the swamp have sex and get killed? Like okay, this is a slasher movie get killed by man thing that you don't see at that point. Something comes out of the trees and pulls the guy how to talk about this anyway, so I've only cut to a scene where protesters are complaining about something being built in this the swamp but this is simply a setup for the sheriff to arrest the pretty lady that's complaining about the stuff and so they go back in the interrogator and they flirt. Yep, pretty exciting. The next morning, he goes to the diner where we're introduced to the strange guy. The people that know all the secrets of the swamp of the lady he met yesterday is there. And this for some reason the power goes out and now you meet the local shaman guy who's going to warn him about the horrors of the swamp. Yep, it's all in that one scene. Wait, why is the shaman there? He's like the electricity is out. I must be present for this. Yeah, that's pretty much yeah. Wow. Okay. So the movie takes a break then from the poor setups and the thin character introductions to do a sort of scary few more scenes of hunting in the swamp. Watch me skip forward 43 minutes in we first see the same the hand of man thing show up and kill somebody. The movie then has the further now we're going to continue with killing people in swamp with the funny scene of rednecks in the swamp, drinking coffee and having to take a crap and then of course slipping and falling in it. Oh my god. There's some guy in the woods hunting the man thing I think but he's using rope traps to catch him. So I'm like, that's not going to work about an hour in. You get to see a full shot and the man thing. If it's a $5 million budget, I think they spent probably 2 million of it on the man thing because he actually it's kind of cool. The it's it's obviously a suit but it's a CGI enhance suit, which is you know, kind of the best way to do effects. Because the effects the other effects are very good. But so he looks cool. And like all right, that doesn't have been great. Start for man thing does he look like man thing that with the tendrils and the nose tendril and all that sort of a little more like later on he's got the glowing red eyes and he's got the stocks that come out of his own Kool Aid and stuff. So it looks pretty good. The first killing of the poor guy who slipped in the crap is very off center for man thing where he he grabs the guy. Nobody ever burns when he touches them. And, and then he's got a swamp tentacle that comes out and goes right up the guys, but I might. Whoa, wait, what? Yeah, I feel like that's not in the calm and I haven't read them. But is there a lot of like, but infestation buff? No, no, okay, got it. And then we get a whole bunch more scenes of warnings, more people come in to warn him about the swamp. Nobody cares anymore. At least nobody watching the movie. We are then treated to a hodgepodge of warnings from the for the sheriff. A strange love story that really doesn't go anywhere. Dramatic boat rides, and then finally a good shot of the man thing again. At some point in the movie, it sounds like a whole lot of the leads decided to just screw it. I'm not doing Southern accents anymore. And you suddenly realize, oh, this was shot in Australia. Which was ah, and my note for the ending of this. I've got a bunch of nose adventure trivia stuff. But if you're intrigued enough to watch the ending of this movie, feel free. I'm not going to talk about it. Because I don't want to recommend this. But is it good? Or is it unsatisfying? It's fine. Okay. Yeah, you know, I mean, for the regular listeners of strange aeons. You know, I tend towards the more obnoxiously positive about films. Like this is only like the third or fourth one. I really haven't. It's Oh, anyways, bad year for you, Eric. I think it's like in the last month, I've heard some pretty negative. Yeah, yeah. demonia was not great. Steve Gerber. His run was about 39 issues. And it's, it's really good. It's very weird. It starts off with some issue. One is like magicians taking Swamp Thing into another dimension, which I'm assuming is the Nexus. So that's cool. The film was shot in Australia, thus explaining the accents. It was originally intended to be shot in New Orleans, but the budget wasn't available for that. So they decided to go to Australia, which is a weird choice. It's usually you go to European nations when you're looking to cut budget, but okay. So all of the actors are Australian. Filming lasted and this kind of surprises me from August 2003 until October 2003 was the shooting schedule. I figured this was shot on a couple weekends are something that they they had good time to do it. It was originally intended for a small release in theaters and a direct video it never made it into theaters eventually came out in 2005 on Sci Fi, it was a sci fi original movie. And yes, everything that goes with that that you think is what you get in this film. There was one man thing first came out I'm jumping around why? Because the comics were interesting to talk about. When it first came out. Man thing came out. Then two months later swampland came out and Marvel decided they're going to sue Dc. Then when they're looking into finding out to sue them, they found out about a character of a Hillman protocol's of the heap, which is a swamp based superhero that appeared in 1942 when they decided maybe we shouldn't talk, maybe we don't need to worry so much. The Avi Arad, who's now the CEO or has been the CEO of Marvel Studios. was real pissed about this movie. And one hiccup he said quote from him one hiccup we had. This was the one project we didn't micromanage should have never trusted anybody that far away without our supervision. Thankfully, it was a small movie. For there on top of it, it would have been an amazing movie. Okay. David neusoft from real films gives the film one out of four stars calling it the worst comic book movie ever made. Wow. I mean, that's, I'm still gonna call that a stretch. There's some others out there that can give this one a run, but it's not good. The film critic called the film to two out of five stars stating that the film was too lame to be genuinely entertaining, and not stupid enough to be laughable. And if you're really interested, there's a music video of the final film. The final credit run has a song From Azur, called The Man thing lives again. Oh my god. You can see most of the movie in short clips in this four or five minute video. And if you're really interested, I'd recommend going that route. To finish off, Stanley does have a cameo in the movie. Oh shit. He is seen in a picture on a board of missing persons. Oh my god. That is the most clever thing they did. And that's Wow. Yeah, I remember seeing this and not liking it, but I don't. I don't remember hating it that bad. Mainly because Han's who wrote it is a friend of ours. So sorry. The only thing I know about man thing is I went to buy like a vintage collection of swampthing comics and they sent me some man thing like tucked in there. So if anybody wants really random issues of man thing that somebody else tried to get rid of. I'm happy to give them to you. I will give Hans a credit. This was 2003 He's probably a much better writer. He's had time. And so um, yeah, okay, well I'll I'll go ahead and jump right in on my pick. So because Eric chose man thing I was really really tempted to go with an extremely similar property Swamp Thing because I love Alan Moore Swamp Thing it's one of my favorite comics of all time and the TV show is fucking garbage. It's awful but I've already argued how much I hate it previously with these guys. And I also want to do something a little bit more fresh. So I normally pick kind of the most middle of the road popular thing amongst the three of us so I did the same per usual again I'm sorry and I went with the 2003 masterpiece League of Extraordinary Gentlemen hours on Legendary origins are unknown their methods or extreme futures at stake they'll be the world's last in the game next G League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or LG X, O Ma, that is also known as which is upsetting in its own way. Um, I it was nice to get to talk about a different LM more property. Has anybody seen League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Okay, a couple of you are aware. Did you guys see it in theater? Or did you see it recently? Oh, wow. Did you like it in theater? Hey, it's okay. No judgment, no judgment here. So let me go ahead and lead up with a little little bit of fun info. Um, this is quote unquote, the diesel punk superhero film. I don't know what that means. I don't know how that's different than steampunk. Is it because there's automobiles rather than steam mobiles? I think it must be. It's based specifically on the first volume of the comic series by Alan Moore, which had come out in 1999. So this came out only four years after the comic. This has a rotten tomato score 17% from critics and 44% from audience so critics hated audience. Don't love it. Don't hate it somewhere in the middle budget of 78 million box office have 179 point 3 million. Now this is considered a complete disaster. It ruined many people's careers and yet it made 100 million over its budget. So it's amazing, amazing how money doesn't always mean success. The director, one Steven Norrington, he has four directing credits under his belt, including death machine, blade, the last minute and League, which is the last picture he's ever directed. He's also a sculptor and a musician. He's done special effects on nine projects, including hardware aliens, aliens three exorcise beginnings and Harbinger down Harbinger down is also a piece of garbage don't check it out, but some of those other ones are good. And he also know does he doubled and makeup so he worked on makeup and blade Hellraiser bloodline wax work, which is, and he's acted in four projects including playing Gump in return to us. So I don't remember who Gump was. But I was stoked that a kind of B C level director showed up. The writer of this, the screenplay was done by James Robinson. He's not normally a screenwriter. He's actually typically a comic book writer. He's known for Starman and the upcoming series, Star Girl, which he is part of the adaptation for. He has very few film credits outside of son of Batman, cyber bandits and the Star Girl series. And of course the other two writers involved are Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Alan Moore. If anyone is not aware of who that is, you should leave because you're at Emerald City Comic Con. Comics in the name um, Alan Moore did watchmen from hell. swampthing V for Vendetta, Batman The Killing Joke, and recently Providence, which I have like huge copies of and have not gotten around to reading I'm sure it's really good. I know. I'm a bad fan. Kevin O'Neill is an artist and collaborator. He's known more for Nemesis the warlock in martial law. I know nothing of these. I'm sure they're also very good. It stars okay. It's a big cast. It's there. Okay, on the cover of the comic, there are 1234 fives. There's six people. There's more than that in the film. So I'm going to kind of talk about the leads and then sort of quickly go through the rest. So Sean Connery. He has been in 93 projects. You might know him from Dragon heart. Tsar DOS, Operation snafu or my favorite Darby Oh, Gil and the little people he was also in the vengers Not that one and finding Forrester where he he says something that I love you demand now dawg. That's so beautiful. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was not actually his last film, but it was the last that he started the rest are all kind of little voice parts here and there and one really, really awful, sir Billy. I don't. Does anybody know about sir Billy? Oh, God finds YouTube do a search. It's unbelievably upsetting and considering he said he would never work on film again after this. Like he retired. He frickin retired. He came out of retirement for probably the worst possible thing a lot. It's I can't CGI that is just disgusting to stare at. story that is also disgusting to sit through. It also stars a Stuart Townsend as Dorian Gray he's been in 37 things including shooting fish Queen of the Damned, knightstalker series, and 13 the Series lots and lots of other TV and walk on parts. Peter Wilson as Mina Harker she's been in 28 things but the thing you will know her from is La Femme Nikita, as Nikita Jason Fleming as Dr. Henry sorry, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He's been in 138 things, mostly pretty small roles on British TV miniseries, but he also was in Benjamin Button Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels deep rising and X Men first class nosa Rutan Shah as Captain Nemo. I probably said his name heretical horrifically wrong. He's been in 245 projects. He is a very famous Indian actor. Tony Curran as Rodney Skinner. He plays Despereaux on the flash currently, yeah, it lots of other smaller things, tons of small TV roles. Shane West as Tom Sawyer, he's probably the only other really well known name aside from Nina and the person who plays Mina and Sean Connery. He was like a hot thing for a minute in American TV. He has done 48 things including A Walk to Remember Dracula 2000 Whatever it takes, and 36 episodes of Salem 73 episodes of Nikita which I did not realize that he was involved in and 70 episodes of er, again did not realize so this guy's doing stuff even though I don't think he's the heartthrob that once he was and last but not least Richard Roxburgh as an AKA spoiler alert. Moriarty which, okay, it's a spoiler for the film because they don't tell you till the last like third of the movie that Oh, surprise. He's Moriarty that Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes. In this book, it says it on page two. So it's not a spoiler dang it. Okay, the Plot The story of this beautiful film. The year is 1899. The place is England, the Bank of England. is attacked by giant tank which shocks everybody because nobody has seen a diesel moving machine before. They only know of horse and buggy. They're all very shocked and freaked out. So it breaks into the bank and steals a bunch of stuff a bunch of Germans jump out. Speaking we know they're German because they speak a bunch of German. They act like Nazis and they steal a very expensive piece of DaVinci art which just shows Venice I don't know why this is important. I will continue to not know why this is important to the rest of the film. And then we cut to Germany, Germany, a bunch of dudes right up. I can't remember if it's the same tank or not. They dude jump out of their cars attack a bunch of Zeppelin's and Zeplin warehouse apparently those exist. It's the it's the same guys though. And they're speaking English right row. What is happening basically somebody is setting up and trying to create a world war by pinning the Germans and the English against each other. So what is to be done, England's crown decides to put together a team of unique agents to stop to stop this guerrilla attack, which is being led and manipulated by someone in a mask calling themselves the Phantom. We start with the recruitment scenes. We meet Alan Quartermaine aka Sean Connery. He is the legendary sharpshooter and adventurer. He's an Africa he has given up on England and is living a happy life as a colonist. Apparently, it's very, very awkward. I'm sure that he's cool, though, because he's like friends with the black people and they bless him, but it's he's wearing the white hat and he's hanging out in a room with a bunch of white people drinking white drinks and like black people are lying around the edges. Waiter, It's so upsetting. It's fine. Whatever is a different time. 2003 We had different values. So they go to get him he is very, very uninterested in this entire situation until they blow up his favorite bar. Then he decides to join. We then arrive in England where we get to a fancy room. It feels very much like what's the the English film where they're cool people in suits the king's men. It feels like the King's Men, right? It's a recruiting scene from the king's men, and which we need Mina Harker, who special ability is She's a vampire. We need Rodney Skinner is definitely not the Invisible Man. Don't worry about it, he actually became the Invisible Man. But he's not the original one, that guy died. And he's just a thief who like stole the wrong thing. And now he's invisible. And Captain Nemo, you can tell which one didn't get the rights. They need to get to Venice before a European Conference, which is kind of this last chance to stop a World War. And the terrorist group is also heading there because they want to go and blow it up using those drawings that Da Vinci did of Venice. Now this is literally just drawings of like a building. I'm like, I don't know how this is going to help you figure out how to blow up all of Venice, but okay, like I'm, I will stick with you on this one. Kind of. They then have to go and recruit more people for no apparent reason. They go to visit visit Dorian Gray who refuses to join but then they are interrupted by a by those same terrorists who surround them with guns. They're outnumbered until out of the blue out of nowhere. One of the gunmen turns on the rest. It is the American secret service agent Tom Sawyer. They don't want you to know it's Tom Sawyer because they keep calling him Sawyer. It is in the credits though that he is Tom Sawyer the whole time. I was like, Is that supposed to be Tom Sawyer? Why is he a sharpshooter? He's like a fast Sharpshooter. What is going on here? Um, he's pretty fun. That's fine. Mina asked him to join up since Dorian seems super not into it, then Dorian is all pissed and like, Yo, dude, no, actually, I really want to join with y'all. So Quartermaine turns to him and goes, You know what, I'm going to keep people seems good that they go off to Paris to pick up Mr. Hyde, who's terrorizing the people there for some other unknown reason. They offer him amnesty if he will join in with their group. And I think that's it. I think they get everybody at that point. They take Captain Nemo, his boats try and quickly get off to Venice, and we're off and a bunch of shit happens. So this movie is so fast paced. It is impossible. Like I had to keep pausing and rewinding to be like, Wait, where are we? Where are we going with like to get to Venice? They show the boat pick, like show up? No to get to France. I'm sorry. It's that confusing to get to France. The boat shows up. We don't even see them walk onto the boat. Then they're standing in the streets of Paris, which looks identical to the streets of India. lens, which also look identical to the streets of Venice. And it's like, I guess I've traveled, no indication that this occurred. That is this film. Um, in Venice, the terrorist attack happens. There's a big car chase scene. Each character has their own fights constantly. It's like, okay, now the bad chick is gonna go and do the bad stuff. And this guy is gonna jump out of the car and attack this other guy. It's like, the car is literally going 70 miles through Venice. And people are just literally jumping out like, I'm gonna go attack this guy now. And you're like, what is happening? Anyway, so one of the characters betrays everyone they escape, there's a ship blow up scene, they have to chase the dude who portrayed them. I'm not going to spoil it. Because you definitely are going to check this film out, I'm sure. And they find the headquarters of the evil plot terrorist guys who the guy who thought you were one guy was actually a third guy, and oh my God, there's so many masks getting ripped off. It's very confusing. It's great. So why does this movie fail? This is, okay, this right here is a Alan Moore comic. It is slow. It has a lot of text constantly. I mean, at the back, it just becomes pure text. There's a lot of setup. There's a lot of really deep like history being investigated. It's not It's adventurous, but it's not an action comic. This is a fast pot paced adventure action film. Sean Connery his character is completely different than the character in here. The character in here is an opium addict. He's also not the lead. Mina Mina is the lead in the actual comic, she doesn't do a ton in the film other than be really sexy a lot. And like she goes from having her hair or like, you know, librarian style to like down and big curls. And she's like, I'm gonna suck your blood. I've got a corset now. So that's really different. Nemo. In the comic murders people. He's really hardcore. And he in the film, he's basically not a character at all. He doesn't really do any. He's cool. I mean, he's got a cool ship. And that's his character. So there's a lot of issues just between the translation of what's happening in the comic and what's happening in the film. But as far as just the film itself, it's just impossible to keep up with there's so many characters and they don't mean anything to anyone who isn't a giant nerd. Moriarty doesn't mean anything to anyone yet the BBC show has not come out Sherlock has not come out Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock has not come out nobody is like in 1999 or in 2003 Go and more you already I know who that is. Like that's that's now steampunk I'm not sure if in 2003. Steampunk was that big of a thing. So it might have just had a weird tonal feel. The makeup on the invisible guy is rough. He looks like powder. And by seeing the movie powder, he looks like powder like the whole when he's wearing it. It's better when he just doesn't at all. And the CGI is muddy. It's ugly. It's no good. The cool thing is bought it the ship looks very nice. Even though it's the wrong ship, because in the comic it's a giant squid and then this is a giant sword. Dr. Jackals transformation or sorry, Dr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll is trans transformation into Mr. Hyde is cool. It's all practical. It obviously took days to do this shit. And it looks incredible. And each person's like ability is kind of fun, but it really relates to the comic and no serious way. I have trivia, but I feel like I've really talked way too much. I want to hear your trick. Yeah. All right. You guys are okay with a little bit of trivia before you switch over to Kelly. All right. Um, so Alan Moore has had five films adopted or sorry five books adapted into film which includes from hell league be for Vendetta Watchmen, Batman Killing Joke and more recently swampthing. This made it this made Alan Moore that really creaky. I don't want to watch my films, they're going to suck they're not going to do the thing I care about. This is that film that did that for him. It really had so little resemblance to what he wrote. It obviously downsized his main character. It changed around a lot of stuff that he was not into. He was basically unhappy. With adaptation being so different from the original story. He sends distance himself and his adaptations like V for Vendetta and Watchmen, which I think is a shame because I actually think watchmen isn't too bad. In an interview with The Times Kevin O'Neill, the other guy who worked on League who's the illustrator of comics that he believed that this movie failed because it was not respectful the source material, he did not recognize the characters when reading that screenplay, so kind of the same sort of thing. According to the producer, Dan Murphy, who deftly doesn't have a stake in the game. He said in a making of featurette on the DVD release, that pre production work on this movie predated the publication of the first issue of the comic book. So this may explain whether noticeable differences between this movie and the graphic novel. There's like four years of difference how okay, sure, I think they could have done a little rewrite in the production. So Steve Norrington this, obviously his last directing film. He was known as being notoriously difficult to work with. David Esquire, said that, while making blade Norrington began taunting him about how tattoos aren't tough. And the Norton Norton then began flaunting his various piercings and deriving Goyer and during the making of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, some anonymous crew members, claimed that Norrington had no idea what he wanted. He wasted hours setting up scenes differently and filming scenes that would never make it into the movie, and he also had regular verbal arguments with star Sean Connery. According to anonymous sources on the SAT there were frequent shouting matches, and in one infamous incident, Norrington challenged Connery to hit him in the face. Always Connery's responded by walking off the set, Norrington did not attend the opening party for the film and when Connery was asked where Steven could be, he said that he is said to have replied check the local asylum. So no, no real love between these two bros. As for his own perspective of things, one of the few comments Norrington made on the subject was that he does not like studio supervision and is uncomfortable with large crews. So way to go bro, you will never get another big film again. Norrington vowed to never again direct and reportedly after the reportedly horrible experience of making this film, Connery did retire after making this film, for several reasons, but often citing the film, The reason he the reason why he took this role in the first place, which a lot of you might wonder, it's like, why did he take the script out of all the scripts if it was so bad? Well, he'd been offered roles in The Matrix in 99, and Lord of the Rings in 2001. But he said he didn't understand the script. So he didn't take it. And he got this script, and he also didn't understand it. And so he's like, it's gonna be a success. Clearly, he was wrong. There was gonna be a plan sequel. But unfortunately, that did not happen, obviously. So it was gonna be based off of the Martian HG Wells were the world stuff. So we don't have that to look forward to. And that is my movie that is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I would say read the comic, but um, there's like, there's like invisible man rape very early on. I don't know what to tell you. There's there's a lot. There's like so many references to rape in the first five pages. I'm not sure I can really recommend it to anybody if you're a completionist of Alan Moore. There's some cool interesting bits, but just be warned, it's it's rough. It's not always fun with him. I like that the director vowed to never work that way. You don't get many vowels anymore. Seems a little more serious than just saying I'm not gonna do this. I valleys. I have to I have to make a promise to the world. I vow on this day Mr. Connery. I will not be on set again. All right. Well, I chose a little indie thing I let me give you a little backstory. In 1963, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created the X Men you guys heard of them? Nobody. A group of teenager mutants with special abilities that were the inaugural class of the Xavier school for gifted students. Included in those students was a young telekinetic by the name of Jean Grey. She could move objects with her mind, but since this was also the 60s she doubled as a housekeeper and cook for the rest of the student, oh my god. In 1975, Chris Claremont was given the chance to revamp the X Men and with artist Dave Cockrum. He brought in a new crop of mutants as the all new X Men, and in 1976, Jean Grey, who was originally known as Marvel girl found herself dying and then being reborn as a much more powerful mutant named Phoenix. Seven issues later, John Byrne, he took over as the artist and started a four year tenure the saw the uncanny X Men book becoming so popular that retailers begin using an X Men index to rate other publications by by how many orders it garnered compared to that month's issue of the X Men. Oh my god, this is this is how big this X Men were. Byrne hated the Phoenix. He thought she was way too powerful and made the rest of the X Men redundant. And so Claremont and Byrne came up with a three years story arc, a three years story arc that found Jean becoming more and more powerful and more unstable. She was slowly being driven insane by a mutant named mastermind. When she finally realized who was to blame for all this, she turned masterminds brain to mush and we all cheered. But she also flew deep into outer space and ended up consuming a star, which was pretty cool. But we then found out that it was the sun that a planet of 4 billion aliens revolved around, which instantly made her pretty large scale mass murderer, and thus was born the Dark Phoenix, and very emotional run of 10 issues. She fought the X Men and was finally depowered what was then snatched up by the alien race the car and put on trial for the murder of an entire planet's population. And afterwards, she was able to use the power of the Phoenix one last time to kill herself and save the rest of the universe from her dark side. Oh my God, it was arguably the greatest comic book storyline told at that time and in arguably the defining story arc for the X Men with ramifications of her death echoing through the X Men books for years and still even you guys ever heard of this? Oh, yeah. Okay. Wait, what? That's pretty good. Excellent. It brings me to my movie from 2,006x men the last stand on principle I can't negotiate with these people well then you know what needs to be done we're going to protect our citizens make no mistake my brothers the humans will draw first blood the ad is still the light has fallen there's only one question you must answer for your staff the major pharmaceutical company has developed a way to suppress the Mutant X gene permanently they're calling it a cure is nothing to cure nothing's wrong with any of us for that matter of all people know how fast the weather can change the divine what you're looking for source of the cure is a mutant baffling new something but she has to be controlled you know sometimes when you cage the beast, I can't do this. The Beast gets a crane you have no idea of what is upon us now that this world has never whipped us got an army How do you go to war you might not come home. She might not come home you ready for that? When our kids if you want to go and be sure it's what you want. It's time we make our choice if you're with us and be with us they wish to cure and I say we are the cure. We can we can we can make it stay with a budget of $210 million. A box office of $460 million The Rotten Tomatoes critics rating is 57% and the audience have it at 61%. Directed by Brett Ratner. Oh geez. Rush Hour one into Tower Heist Hercules and as apparently a horrible person cannot be blamed for the failings of this movie because he wasn't a big X Men fan. Very helpful. Well, he trusted his writers. One Simon Kinberg who wrote Sherlock Holmes X Men Days of Future Past and X Men apocalypse and Zach pen who wrote x 2x Men United Ready Player One free guy and apparently in developer rom space night. Seriously Yep. Damn it why ham man? I'm not going to tell you what all these people starting because you know everybody in this movie it stars Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, fomka Johnson, Kelsey Grammer, Rebecca Rome's and James Mars and Shawn Ashmore, Elliott Paige and even Vinnie Jones horribly miscast as the juggernaut. Alright shit. Yes. This movie is awful. It did. It did great in the theaters. That's because it came on the heels of the first x movie which was pretty good. And the second X Men movie, which was pretty great. And that second movie ended with a brief glimpse of the Phoenix in the lake where Jean Grey sacrificed herself so everyone could live. This did not need to be a Dark Phoenix movie. This could have been a Phoenix movie, where it was established that Jean Grey's power was getting stronger and stronger, but the main storyline could have been anything else. We'd been given so many interesting storylines in the X Men. By this time, they could have tried anything like maybe introduced the car, and Xavier's love for Princess Alandra, which could have set up a Dark Phoenix movie beautifully. But what we hadn't been given was Ironman, and Marvel's idea of a long game. So it was decided that the X Men movies were a trilogy, and this was going to be the final one, and it had to end with the Dark Phoenix storyline. But they ran into some real problems. Perhaps you have to be a real creep to Direct X ray movies I don't know but super creep. Bryan Singer left the project early in development because he wanted to do Superman Returns instead, which is fine, but he also took his writers with him and James Marzen, who plays Cyclops in Gray's true love. Matthew Vaughn was supposed to come in and direct he directed kick ass and then finally directed X Men first class, which is a pretty cool movie. So he got his chance. But he left the project immediately saying publicly, the studio wasn't interested in giving me the time to make the movie I wanted to make. They had already announced a release date for the film that they had not started making yet. So Ratner is brought in he doesn't know much about the X Men. The studio is fighting the Dark Phoenix storyline now because they feel it's still dark. And they like this idea of curing mutants and make neato free freaking out about it, which is a different storyline from the comic just Sweden wrote and just even was approached to do this. He was busy trying to make a Wonder Woman movie at the time. Consistent though with the other directors. Sure. That would have been fine movie asome but Simon Kinberg the writer, this guy really wants to do the Dark Phoenix storyline, he is a fan. So the studio is fighting him and with the actor playing Cyclops leaving to work on Superman they put down the mandate that Cyclops has to be killed. Now this may or may not have been the studio's way of punishing Marsden by making sure his character can't ever come back. But it results in a very stupid scene, where Cyclops goes to mourn Jean Grey at the lake where she sacrificed herself and he meets the resurrected Phoenix now who kills him immediately. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. The Studio also want a cyclops gone because and I quote here, you can't see his eyes. It's a harder character to relate to for the audience. Oh my god. Another decision. Another decision Fox makes is to have Jean killed Xavier as the middag two turning point of the film, spoilers Has everybody seen this movie, I hope they believe that Xavier's death would relate and match the impact of Spock's death at the end of wrath upon Oh my god. And it is it is a decently dramatic move, but it probably should have happened at the end of the movie instead of in the middle. Because it gives Jean very little to do after that. She basically just stands around looking kind of evil while Magneto is doing all his stuff. So it's just kind of a wasted dramatic moment. Also written for the movie because they had not set any of this up in the previous films was that when Jean sacrificed herself to save the X Men in the last film, she also fried the Phoenix, a dark and extremely powerful alternate personality, which Xavier had telepathically repressed years ago, aware of the possibility of genes godlike, destructive potential. So instead of this amazing trial by fire on Earth's moon that the storyline for the comic ends with the movies third act is set on Alcatraz, where the government has set up vaccination stations where mutants can get the cure for new Tintin. So make Nieto and the Brotherhood of Mutants attack Alcatraz and the X men arrive to save everybody. Now, as an ex fan from this period, I was really thrilled to see a lot of cool characters the beast and Colossus look great. We get to see Kitty Pryde phasing through walls and people. Iceman finally takes on his full ice look, ice body look, which was really cool. We even get to see Colossus and Wolverine performed the fastball special. Your fan that's what Colossus throws Wolverine at the enemies. There is clearly some love for the source material here. However, after Logan has talked Jean down from her Phoenix personality, Army reinforcements arrive and start shooting at them. So the Phoenix has reawakened and starts this center grading the troops I mean, she's basically just pointing at them and they're turning into dust. She then became as to destroy Alcatraz and anyone within range of her powers. Logan realizes that only he can stop the Phoenix due to his healing factor and adamantium skeleton. And when Logan approaches her, he starts being torn apart and healing it's it is admittedly a kind of cool scene. She momentarily gains control and begs him to save her and everyone else by killing her and Logan fatally stabs Jean with his claws kills, which totally turns this into a story about Wolverine instead of Jean Grey, because he now has to live with the idea that he killed the woman he loves. So, way to go. But that's not all. In 2019 13 years after the last, Stan, the X Men have been rebooted had their timeline change with the Days of Future Past movie, which was also a pretty cool movie. And Fox releases Dark Phoenix, which was an attempt to better tell the story from the comics. Not gonna get into the particulars of the actors, because what's really important was it this movie was again written by Simon Kinberg. And to make matters worse, he directs the film Oh, and says publicly that he regretted how the storyline played out in the last stand, and he plan on getting it right this time. Has anybody seen Dark Phoenix, big fans I know. So I will admit, this movie corrects the biggest sin of The Last Stand by making this movie all about genes transformation to Dark Phoenix, so it is a movie about her. Her actions drive the entire film, and the X Men and The Brotherhood of Mutants are just taking sides to kind of figure out what to do with her. Interestingly, though, the villain of the film ends up being Charles Xavier again, who has lied about the fact that he's been manipulating genes of mine since she was eight, because he was afraid of what she might do with her full powers. This was never in the comics. This was a Kinberg idea and he loved it so much. He put it in the his second film about this thing. Just like The Last Stand, though, it turns this into a story about Xavier's hubris, and turns gene into a victim. She is the one who takes control of herself at the end in the comics, and that's what makes it so powerful. Anyway, in this movie, Jean finally sees what she's becoming sees through the deceptions of an alien race that has been shoehorned into this movie and it's not the car for certain goddamn reason. And she then flies into space assumes or final form, destroys the bad guys and flies off into the cosmos as the fully evolved Phoenix Force. Now, I assume this is because even in the comics, Claremont and burn couldn't resist bringing Jean back after all of that drama, years later, and removing all of the gravitas of their Dark Phoenix storyline by letting us know that Dark Phoenix was never Jean Grey. You remember that? No. Yeah, yeah. He was still at the bottom of the ocean preserved by the Phoenix, which is now was revealed as a cosmic entity instead of just Jean Grey fully powered up dig that was always the whole thing is that she got all this power. She didn't know what to do with it. And it just got out of control. And then she realized I got to take care of this is my problem. But they they then fuck that up. So now in the comics, the X Men have had to battle the Phoenix Force in the ensuing years, and I've even seen other x men become wielders of the Phoenix Force. Eric, are you reading the X Men anymore? No. Did you know that? Cyclops himself became Dark Phoenix? Five years ago? Yeah, no, that one. It is all a fucking mess stomps all over the beauty of the original story, in my opinion, but what do I know? I could be wrong. Anyway, the last thing was my movie. I call bullshit on it. And I call it an absolute disaster of a comic book adaptation. I have a little bit of trivia. budgeted at 210 million. This was at the time the most expensive movie ever made. Oh, wow. But it made 460 million. I mean, it would have needed to I guess. Two minutes into the last stand. You didn't see Stanley and Chris Claremont in the opening scene as Jean Grey's neighbors. They are credited as water hose man and Lawnmower Man. And Cyclops appears in the movie for a total of four minutes and 40 seconds. That's the last stand. Wow. I feel like we each had our own very painful week. You guys. I'm sorry. No kidding. Mine was super painful because I went back and read the original storyline. Again. It's it's about 40 issues. And there is such care taken in setting up it's 30 issues of gene becoming Phoenix and getting too powerful. And then 10 issues of Dark Phoenix. They could have set up any of that in the two movies prior but they didn't they just jammed it all into the third film. This guy had how many years to rewrite it the right way. 13 and to rewrite the same thing again, rewrite it the same way. Okay. All right, and to raise your rewrite, you know, I guess though Yeah, he's like, I know I got this part, right. By this part, I mean, the first 8090 pages. I think we've got about five minutes left. I don't know if there were any kind of audience throw out anybody have a really bad comic book adaptation? Oh, my God, I had the question was what other movies were we considering? I had, I texted these guys. And I had like a list. Like this law. I've just potential. And then they told me I had to limit it to ones I was passionate about and it became like a list this long. And then I started really with dwindling down I did consider doing from hell. I thought that would be really interesting. Because anybody who's read the Alan Moore copy, it's like this big. It is a big heavy book that's just kind of about conspiracies and in the film, Johnny Depp just has like a superpower. Yes. Um, what about you guys? Well, mine was relatively quick, because I started looking up at ones you know, there's the ones that I knew already. I didn't even know there had been a man thing movie made. And I man things great. I've right been renamed for a long time on and off. Midnight's sons was a really interesting run some like, Oh, well. So I actually found right away just because I wanted to see this disaster because I like man thing enough. So my research was easy, except for watching the movie. And I was gonna do I thought I might do Daredevil with Ben Affleck. Yeah. And then I thought, oh, no, I'm doing the New Mutants, because I remember loving that comic and hating that movie. And so I started watching the movie again. And I actually was just like, I can't do it again. Can't watch this movie again. Now that will happen. They were talking a little bit about perhaps defending a bad movie, or a bad adaptation. Yes. Yeah. What I liked that I didn't think was nearly as bad as a lot of people did. But again, it was a midnight sons character and I read ghost writer as a kid. So I felt like you know, this is kind of fun. And Nick Cage is Nick Cage. So and that was one of his earlier loose his crap be really weird kind of movies, which I now thoroughly enjoy. So I kinda like that one. It's it's not good. But I kind of liked it i a lot of fun with it the effect it had enough money, the effects your overall good enough. So yeah, I looked into one of the ones that I thought it was going to do, potentially for a bad one was the Green Lantern was Ryan Reynolds. Um, and the problem was, I started watching it, and I was like, oh, but we all like Ryan Reynolds now and we all get it. And for a long time, we just didn't get it. And we're just like, oh, he just can't do anything. And suddenly, it's like, oh my God, but he can do him and it's beautiful. So I was just instantly like, oh, but he's really fun. And then like the effects weren't as bad as I remembered and now that I've seen all the DC shit, I was like, oh, yeah, that Martian guy. There he is. So I actually was like, this movie isn't as bad as I thought I can't be mad about it. And I take a lot of heat for this but I like the Stallone Judge Dredd movie because I'm with you on that if you were reading Judge Dredd at the time that was actually pretty close to the the mood of the comic it was wacky and with weird humor and stuff like that and I thought they got the designs right. I love the movie dread but it is nothing like the comic book judge dress right? Yep. Yeah, and that was in what she does an ad Yeah, so all these people who are like Oh, Dread you got him wrong. I'm like you've been reading a British magazine for like, you know, you know anything about Judge Dredd? Are you sure so a side note um, my first editing job was underneath the person who edited that version of Judge Dredd Alright, not a competition we already lost let me have it. Well, I think that is our episode guys. I do you want to toss out here before you wrap up? One of our fans in Where does he live? Northeast East Coast east coast. Made us challenge coins. If you've enjoyed the show. Come on up. I've got a bunch. I think I have enough for everybody in the room. If not, and you want one. I will get your address and I'll mail you one because we you know, but if you want to come on up, it's got our logo on the front and Nikola Tesla. Why not? On the back? Good morning Sir cool for some reason. Exactly. So thank you so much everybody. This was a blast for us. I hope you enjoyed it. We're gonna finish the night with a couple of drinks and the first round is on Danny Wilford nine just wanted him to know that. So thank you. Thank you all right our show is recorded somewhere high above Naval Station ever. It's at the nexus of all realities, and is engineered and produced by Eric Margaret. Our theme music is strange aeons part one by the band nightshade is usually fine strange aeons radio on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Wherever find podcasts a we are recording live at Emerald City Comic Con