In his usual polite and sincere way, Raimi addresses the plot problems in the audio commentary.

Originally, the script involved Sandman and The Vulture escaping from prison together. They had even gone so far as to cast Ben Kingsley as The Vulture.

And Peter Parker's fall from grace wasn't the result of the symbiote, it was the "sin of pride" as Raimi puts it.

Then Marvel suddenly dictated that Venom HAD to be in the movie.

That meant paying off Ben Kingsley and quickly trying to incorporate Venom into the story. Raimi felt they never had enough time to make the changes work.

Ehhhh.

The problem is that Marvel rarely knows what to do with its properties *ever*. Its certainly not limited to movies.

What about action figures? Please tell me about their action figures!!!

...Do you really want to go there? I can go into why the original Toybiz Ice Man figure was $150 for a long time...

Yes! It can then be story time! =D

http://www.backtothepast.us.com/cata...10-S524_lg.jpg

This picture above is the second generation Ice Man figure. You can tell because of the blue plastic used. Same mold, different colored plastic.

The original was a frosted white, like those $5 glassware sets you can get at Ikea. When you put him in the fridge, he'd get blue icicles on various points on his body. It was a pretty neat effect - except the cold made the plastic EXTREMELY brittle and most of them broke very easily. It also didn't help that for reasons unknown to me they were already hard to find, there was something like one of him for every one or two store cases, so your odds of finding it was about one in eighty per store on the day they put up their figures.

Right out of the gate, in the midst of the 1990s comic book boom, they were going for good money. About $200 to $250 if you read Wizard comics at the time.

I'll say it: Dark Knight is an overrated film.

Also, say what you will about Spider-Man 3, but if you're a fan of Rami's films, it at least finally looked as if he directed it. Not a great film, mind, but I was happy to see his fingerprints on it.

As for what I thought of Iron Man, Yush, I loathed everything that wasn't Tony Stark or Tony Stark's robot. And if the product placement got any more blatant I'd have been sitting in an Audi bucket seat in the theatre while eating my free Whopper.

The best that can be said about the people who made The Dark Knight is that they no longer understand whatever the fuck the subject matter is. There is no emotional content in the film, you don't attach yourself to any of the main characters because you're not *suppose* to be able to unless you're one type of sociopath or another (and if you are, I want nothing to do with you) and yet people across the globe felt like the story had something to say that they agreed with. What there was plenty of was self-involved masturbation over the Bush administration to the point where the anarchist bent quickly reformed into a sly agreement with totalitarianism. I have little doubt that in twenty years, the film will be looked back on and my generation will be looked down on for thinking so highly of what is basically a three digit million dollar Triumph des Willens to announce the arrival of the 21st century.

The entire movie is - and by osmosis, the people who enjoy it and celebrate it - an obnoxious level of willful, flag-waving ignorance that I suspected Todd Strasser to come walking out to inform everyone that they were now card carrying members of a new fascist regime. You people are the future of America and you lather your imaginations with a lame-duck quality of nihilism because you think it's cool.

You people should be nuked until you glow.

http://www.darkstarcinema.net/Missing/Phantom.JPG

The single problem with the Phantom is the problem with Indiana Jones 4 - the audience that would enjoy it no longer exists and the people that watch it now are inherently ignorant of its qualities.

Well, theres a lot wrong with all the movies. The problem with people who dislike IJ4 is that almost no one dislikes it for the reasons that actually exist. These are the jerkoffs that would hate Last Crusade if it came out today because it wasnt as serious and dark as Temple Of Doom. Crystal Skull gets a LOT right, more than it gets wrong (though, admittedly, theres some shit that makes me shake my head a little), its just that people don't want to fucking think for themselves.

...And now we're on a huge tangent about movies.

He just produced it and gave some ideas for the story. He didn't direct or write it... so how can he be responsible in the ways everyone tries to make him? Easy: He's not. We certainly don't go around saying "Hey! George Lucas certainly made Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha great!" (He produced the fucking thing, people). So why do people continue to say this crap? Because they're idiots.

Nah, I just liked the movie because (in comparison with the previous Batman movies) it was grounded in realism and limited the supernatural aspects of the Batman franchise, which I think worked well for a character who's not super powered by any means (but interacts with aliens and so forth on a regular basis in the comic books), and basically, it had batman doing his thing. I liked the movie since it provided, you know, Entertainment. Judging by the ticket sales, and reader and critic reviews, I'd hazard a guess that many other people did as well.... but to each his own *shrug*

There are things I would have like to have seen done differently with Indy 4 (The Darabont script, letting Stoppard have a shot at it) but overall it felt like an Indiana Jones movie, which is all it really needed to be. It wasn't Raiders, but it's been a long time since any American film has approached the level of that movie. Ebert said it best: The people who think this isn't an Indiana Jones movie clearly weren't around for the original trilogy.

P.S.

DN, next time you want to think sales equals quality, take a deep breath, remember how well Harry Potter and Twilight sells in bookstores, and then fist yourself.

I didn't say Ticket sales = quality, I was saying it was one factor among others which indicated that people liked the movie. Anyway I shall bow out of this thread now, you may take your parting shots if you wish.

CONSUME
SHOP
CONSUME

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CONSUME
CONSUME
SPEND
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CONSUME
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BUY
CONSUME
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MORE
MONEY
MORE
MORE
DOLLA DOLLA BILL
MORE
CONSUME
SPEND
STOCKS AND BONDS
MORE
MONEY
CENTS
PROVE YOUR LOVE
BUY
MORE

Ha ha, are you implying there LeHah that studios ought to be making films about comic book characters for the art rather than to make a ton of cash?

Because if you are then you really need to stop reading so many comics and try a bookshop or something. To ciriticise someone for making a soulless cashcow out of source material that is essentially one long stream of throwaway cashcows is just plain silly. Comicbook movies will pretty much always be rubbish because the source material is, for the most part utter garbage too. Truem there are the occasional decent graphic novels which also get murdered (By being trerated as a comic book movie) but if someone took the Xmen franchise and made it anything other than a cliche-ridden, badly shot pile of plop designed for little more than to sell action figures then they'd be completely missing the point of the comics.

Additional Spam:
http://www.b3tards.com/u/cc26661c247...stan_mouse.jpg

I think the moment someone attempts to make a comic book movie for the sake of "art", they need to be removed from the director's chair.

Oh, wait, Watchmen. Nevermind.

And look how THAT turned out.