Iron Man 3 - One for the Junk Pile

Arguably the worst of the MCU films, Iron Man 3 (although I find it more watchable than, Spider Man Far From Home) left a lot to be desired, and as we got the "twist" in the film, it wasn't a thrill, it was a direct shot to the unarmored iron balls.

When it was announced that Ben Kingsley had been cast and it appeared that he was playing the Mandarin, I was thrilled, this is one of the greatest actors of the last century.  Then I saw the movie and felt like chucking my large Sprite at the screen.

For the longest time, the Mandarin has been one of Stark's greatest enemies, now it seemed that they were dialing it up to 11 by making him a terrorist leader as well as everything else he's supposed to be, but just another angry CEO... didn't we do that with Obie and Hammer?  This was the opportunity of a real hardcore Ironman villain, and Marvel failed big time.

The one good thing I'll say about the film is that it was still a lot of the nuts & bolts Ironman and not that nanotech nonsense they would later use to screw up the character more.

It started off great, the video threats from the supposed Mandarin, matching up with a lot of the way terrorists like to operate, it was a change for him, but it was okay, kinda matched up with reality a bit more, I could live with that.  Using human bombs that could go off and walk away, VERY COOL, could leave those investigating it fooled for who knows how long, no evidence.  

Stark meets this really cool kid in Tennessee, a kid with some of the same talents as Stark, nice appeal to younger audiences but not to over-cutsie as Disney products tend to overdue it, it was working so far.

This could have let up to an even better Shang-Chi if the real 10 Rings had been in play, like the Mandarin used in the comic.  At Mandarins defeat the rings could have gone to Shang-Chi's father, and we could have seen that unfold in their film.

But the moment we learned that the Kingsley character not only wasn't the Mandarin but just an actor, the film died, right then, it was over and not worth another kernal of popcorn, and it was such a bad choice it took credibility from the entire MCU.  If they were willing to make a decision this bad on an Iron Man movie, what else might they severely screw up?!?

I'm not a fan of Guy Pearce anyway, I'm not impressed with his acting and can't understand how anyone is, he comes off as slimey from the first second, even when he's not trying to.

Let's hope that Shane Black just goes away and doesn't return to the MCU anytime ... at all, the writing was terrible and the direction was abysmal.  Let him go make B-level action flicks with Z-list actors where he belongs.

In the end, this was just a really bad addition to the MCU and probably shouldn't have been done if they weren't going to do it right.

Overall this film gets half a star, but for a single film, it gets none, it was just a mistake, plain and simple.

This film will forever be in the ranks of Indiana Jones 4 and the Star Wars sequels of, WHAT THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING!?!

 

MRM: The band is finally together, The Avengers

The buildup of the MCU Phase 1 came to a head in this groundbreaking film, that brought these heroes together to fight against the invading army of ... Loki, well sort of.

In the very first scene we learn that the villain isn't really the main villain, just someone doing his bidding.

Nick Fury shows up at SHIELD HQ to find the teseract has been "misbehaving" as we're reintroduced to Dr Selvig (from Thor) and Hawkeye  who points out that the teseract is a door and that doors open from both directions, which it quickly does, and Loki starts blowing things up, as well as taking Selvig and Hawkeye as his "personal flying monkeys"... no worries, Cap gets the reference.... or does later... 

One of the more important scenes that a lot of people might overlook is when Nick is speaking to the "shodowy committee" and we see that they are just bureaucrats and don't really get what should/needs to be done, but still people in a position of power that can cause problems.

The recruitment scenes are good, get the job done, but (other than Nat & Banner) really don't have a lot of emotion.  Bringing Cap & Banner onto the Carrier is good stuff, seeing Cap have to pay off his $10 bet with Fury is great bit between "old soldiers".

Thor is drawn in just in his search for Loki, but they make up for that in an really well written scene between Thor and Coulson on the Helicarrier.  Helmsworth should have been on an episode or two of, Agents of SHIELD, maybe a two parter with he and Coulson working, just the two of them, good matchup of characters.

Arguably the best scene in the film is the confrontation scene in the Helicarriers lab, when Loki's influence is affecting all of them, and stirring the pot.

"The world is filling up with people who can't be matched." is one of the phrases that Nick uses to justify more movies about hero's that are already there before The Avengers.  Who else is Nick talking about?  This is probably the biggest hole that they never really address.

This is also when we get that great scene between Cap & Stark when Cap challenges, "Big man in a suit of armor, take that off, what are you?"  But also in that scene, Stark shows his latent hate for Cap by calling him "you're a laboratory experiment Rogers, everything special about you came out of a bottle." which anyone knows, that's really the least of Cap, but they put it in to pump up the Star character and tone down Cap.  The scene didn't achieve what it should but did some of what they wanted, even if it was bad for the story.

The scene is interrupted by Hawkeye's attack on the Helicarrier.  Banner and Romanov fall to a lower level where Banner does his "party trick" and the Hulk is loose on the carrier, just as Loki wanted.  The ensuing battle on board splits the team up with Hulk and Thor knocked off but Hawkeye is brought back with a little smack to the coconut.

This also leads to the tragic loss of Agent Phil Coulson (yeah, I know 😉) as Loki stabs him in the back.  Fury uses the incident to motivate the team, and while in deep thought over what happened, Stark gets a revelation... "son of a b*tch", and he knows where Loki is heading.

Another great scene is the dialogue between Loki & Stark, sorry Tony, the threatening... it's a scene where we see Stark playing with Loki's emotions about Thor and then a final line about Coulson.  But in here we also get to see the real Iron Man, the nuts & bolts Iron Man instead of that nanotech nonsense.

The battle in New York is outrageous and a great climax for this phase of the MCU, but we see another issue when Cap lands on a police car and tells some police what he needs, the officer looks at him and says, "why should I take orders from you?".... IT'S CAPTAIN FREAKIN' AMERICA... so we have to see him smash some aliens for one minor laugh in the script, not a cool thing.

During the battle, here comes the shadowy committee again, bureaucrats making fool decisions for a fight they aren't part of and don't get, and Nick trying to tell them how foolish they are.  We see them again at the end of the film, where Nick pretty much brushes them off, too bad he couldn't do that earlier.  We get hints at this committee but overall in the MCU, they really never make a difference either way from here out.  One has to wonder, how many were on our side and how many were Hydra.  Looking back now, that committee seems like it was pretty useless in the MCU.

An end credit scene finally shows us Thanos, which was pretty cool but it was a bit obvious to begin with, studios let too much slip out before films are released, or many put the whole story into their trailers, not great filmmaking. 

In the end, Nick's plan worked, but was it by design or did he get lucky with the Avengers?  Did they get along because they could or because they had to?  We see some of that answer in a great, and simple, post credit scene of the crew having schwarma (I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it).

The film gets 🌟🌟🌟 and a half stars out of five, it was great to see the team together, the fight is good, but overall the film doesn't hit as hard as it could have.

 

FFF & Happy Birthday to the incredible, Dorothy Lamour

 

One of the most legendary names in film and in sex symbols, Dorothy Lamour had the entire world in love with her, some of us still are...

Born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 10, 1914.

She turned heads as a teenager with her beauty and long dark hair, she went on to win Miss New Orleans in 1931.

She moved to Chicago, dreaming of being a famous singer, she found work as an elevator operator at a department store before becoming a vocalist for the Herbie Kay band, and then married Kay in 1935 but their marriage would only last four years.

In 1933 she began her Hollywood career as a chorus girl in, Footlight Parade (1933) but wouldn't be in another film until 1936 with, College Holiday, then later in the same year, she was cast in, The Jungle Princess (in her would-be famous sarong) and the film was a smash hit, and co-starred Ray Milland.  She would go on to star in many other similar films as a child of nature/female Tarzan type role.

Lamour would co-star in five of the famous "Road To" films with Hollywood legends Bob Hope and Bing Crosby; Road to Singapore, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Morocco and Road to Utopia.  A comeback, Road To the Fountain of Youth was in the works in 1977 but was cancelled due to the sudden death of Bing Crosby.

Lamour would star with many other Hollywood legends and was one of the "it girls" who really saw success with a great number of them.

My personal favorite, with Jungle Princess in close 2nd, is her role opposite John Wayne and Lee Marvin in 1963's South Pacific film, Donovan's Reef.

Lamour would only make 10 films from 1951 to 1987, as her popularity trailed off.  She would pass away in Los Angeles on September 22nd 1996.

Lamour was beloved for her beauty and body but also for her great range from comedy to dramatic, often quoted about her "Road To" films sayin, "I was the happiest and highest paid straight woman in the business.", referring to the constant comedic quips of Hope & Crosby, along with many others.

Today, we say Happy Birthday to, Dorothy Lamour 💘

The Laughing Fish

Back to a classic DC villain for this weeks, Weirdo Wednesday ... or is it Wacked-out Wednesday?  Oh who cares... 😆

This week I wanted to talk about the best Joker episode of, Batman The Animated Series, The Laughing Fish.

Most fans have this episode in their Top 3 or 5 at the worst, it's truly a Joker story at it's core because the whole plot of it is around the fact that his crimes usually only make sense to the Joker himself.

The episode is directly inspired from, Detective Comics #475 and was just part of a much larger story arc for the clown prince of crime and proof that the animated series producers should have gotten more inspiration from classic issues of comics rather than todays Hollywood writers.

Too often on they misused the Joker as little more than a painted up gangster with a nasty sense of humor and that's about it, but this episode got to the core of the character the way he should be portrayed.

This story should have probably should have been a two-part episode, but they stuffed it into one and it felt rushed, but that's not the first time they did that and certainly not the last.

The animated episodes always had the Jokers victims merely drugged instead of dead, so he never really carried the terror that the character should have held.  Heck in the Power Records stories of The Batman they would let the Joker kill people with his toxin, but couldn't let it happen in the Animated Series...

In the story, The Joker poured a special mix of his laughing toxin into Gotham bay and then tried to claim that all the fish with his ghoulish grin were his property, but since fish are a natural resource, they couldn't be patented, but that made no sense to him, it looked like him, he should get all the money from fish products and he was willing to take out any government official that he saw as being in his way.

Harley Quinn was basically comic relief only in this one, since she had a small problem with fish 😫 and gets sick around the thought of eating  them.

The "television commercial" part of the show feels like the writers ripped it directly off the 1989 Batman motion picture of "Joker Products." and makes it just seem like filler for the episode.  This would have been fine for a two-part episode but not just one.

Batman is lured to the Gotham Aquarium to the Joker's trap, as is the stumbling detective Bullock, who Joker ends up using as bait for "his" shark, who he claims to share a grin with.  

The episode has some great Joker moments but also shows that the writers really didn't know what to do with Joker, even when handed the story on a silver platter from the classic comic book issue.  Batman The Animated Series is still the best rendition of the Batman that DC/Warner Bros has put out and still stands the test of time, too bad they didn't do more Joker episodes like this one.



 

MRM : The Incredible Hulk - The MCU’s split personality

Next up is the one part of Phase 1 that really kinda feels out of place, in more ways than one.

First of all, it's not the Bruce we know now, it's a different guy, Edward Norton is playing Banner in this one and the Hulk is full CGI with none of Norton in the characters face.

One of the things that follows and haunts this film are all the stories of how difficult Norton was to work with on set, it's stuck to this film and that's not good press for the MCU.

The one thing I will give them is all the Hulk history they toss in, Ferigno (who also voices The Hulk in this film) and Bixby appear in the film and we even get some bars of, The Lonely Man song from the original series, all of that is awesome and appreciated.  Although, as Bruce left the computer lab, I'd have had Ferigno say, "hope you found what you're looking for, Dr Banner."  And Bruce just smile at him with a nod of thanks.  The film had really good 2nd string and even 3rd string characters, they should have done just a bit more with it.  Stanley and his pizza place was awesome.

Doctor Bruce Banner is still on the run from General Thunderbolt Ross (and his yet unnamed, Hulkbuster squad), and currently hiding out in South America working at a soda pop factory.  Ross sends in his stealth-like troops (like bulls in a china shop) and the Hulk erupts once more.  After recovering, Banner somehow makes it from Central America to Virginia in less than 30 days with no money and no transportation, that seems a bit of a stretch, I'd have made it 60 days, roughly.

One of the parts of this that is out of place is the conversation between Ross and Blonski, when they talk about the bio-enhancement division of WWII, the Super Soldier program and Ross tries to really downplay and makes sure not to mention Steve Rogers or Cap, that was off.

Ross decides to ramp Bronski up with what's left of some form of the super soldier serum, they never explain what it is and where it came from.  If they had this, what where they working on?  Seriously.

Bruce's reunion with Betty Ross is good, the chemistry between the two is good, they play up the tension well, scientists afraid to let "the thing" loose.  But Betty's new beau calls the government over Banner, they never said why or played into the reasons around it, was he a plant?  Designed to get near Betty?  Lots of holes around this part.  The character is credited as Doc Samson but I can't see this guy becoming the Marvel hero of the same name at all, Ty Burrell is a good actor, but poor job in this, but I'd like to see Doc Samson in a future film or part of the upcoming She-Hulk series.

The campus battle is a good one, excellent action, as well as college reporter "Jack McGhee" and his friend "Jim Wilson" getting footage of parts on his cellphone, another nice nod to the original show, but could have been better.  Wilson is a character from Hulk's past in the comics and was one of his good friends/allies in the animated series of the 80's.

Watching this film today, really makes one wonder how General Ross made it to Secretary of Defense, or might be an intentional mockery of how the incompetent rise to the top through lies and political favor.

Banner finally hooks up with "Mr Blue" aka Dr Samuel Sterns (The Leader) and he tries to use an infusion process to clear Banners gamma poisoning, and appears to work.  Bronski wants the reverse, he wants the raw power of the Hulk in him, Sterns goes through with it, creating the Abomination.  In the fury, parts of the gamma serum drip down onto Sterns head and we see him begin his own transformation but never have seen the result so far.

The battle between Hulk and the Abomination is the fight that Roffalo's Banner references to in The Avengers when he says, "I broke Harlem", showing that he still blames himself for something he was actually trying to clean up.

The end credit scene between Ross and Stark felt very forced, like it wasn't part of the original plan.  Especially given the end of, Iron Man 2, where Stark was told that he was rejected from the group, so why did he approach Ross instead of Fury... for the joke about the "nice suits"?  

Bottom line, this was just made as an Incredible Hulk film, not sure it was seriously ever thought that it would be a master part of the MCU and not sure why they decided to keep it, almost none of this films plots ran through to later films and we never have seen Betty Ross again.  Although we do finally see the Abomination pop up in Shang-Chi, hmm… I wonder how he escaped captivity...

Overall, the film gets 🌟🌟 and a half out of five, and a HUGE part of that is in the respect they show for the original television show, although I'd cast Liv Tyler as Betty Ross again.  As far as an MCU film it gets only half a star because so much of what they started in this film has yet to make it into the current MCU.

There is a lot that I'd have done different and I'll get more into it in my blog on, My MCU Universe that I'll release on New Years Day 2022.

 

FFF & Happy Birthday to Flash Gordon's girl... Dale

Happy Birthday to this weeks Femme Fatale, Melody Anderson, and it seems appropriate as this weekend also marks the 41st anniversary of her most famous role as Dale in the rock opera, cult classic, Flash Gordon.

Anderson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, she earned a masters degree in social work and retired from acting in the 1990s to become a substance abuse counselor in NYC.

Anderson started out in modeling and was the Rigid Tools poster girl, appeared in 1977 Victoria's Secret catalog before becoming an actress.

Anderson's first credited role was on the television sit-com, Welcome Back Kotter.  She also appeared on the television shows Logan's Run (sorry Melody), BJ & The Bear and Battlestar Galactica before landing her female lead in, Flash Gordon in 1980.

After that, she co-starred on several television series like St. Elsewhere, Jake & the Fat Man, and the cult favorite, Manimal.

Anderson would get pretty steady work appearing as a guest star on many other television shows like, Archie Bunker's Place, Dallas, The Fall Guy, CHiPs, Murder She Wrote, The Hitcher and Philip Marlow, Private Eye.

Cast in several television movies, many roles asking her to appear in some pretty, skimpy for television, outfits but thankfully she was never shy about her body. 💖

One of the last projects she worked on was the television movie, Marilyn & Bobby : Her Final Affair, where she played the legendary sex symbol and pinup bombshell, Marilyn Monroe, the film got mixed reviews but her performance did get some good praise.

Even though she left acting, Anderson has appeared at many science fiction conventions to honor her most famous role from Flash Gordon, and fans still like to rave about her beauty!

Happy Birthday, Melody 🌹

 

The Riddler, misunderstood & misused genius

 

For a crazy edition of, WOW, Wacked Out Wednesday, I want to talk about one of the most iconic members of, The Rogue’s Gallery, the man of 1,000 riddles, Edward Nigma, The Riddler.

The Batman, I believe, has the best list of villains and rivals of all heroes, the wild array of criminals, lunatics and monsters is astounding. (With Spider-Man in 2nd)

For years, if not decades fans have been describing Riddler as just a Joker wanna-be and/or ripoff, and I think a lot of times, they have been correct but not all.

This character has always had far more potential than he’s been given.  His latest rendition, Hush, is really terrible.  I think this is more what the character would become to jump off the comic book pages and come after all the hacks who have overlooked and misused him for all this time.

The Jokers obsession/core was always to get a laugh out of Batman, make him the punchline or to just set a crazy enough trap to kill him, he never seemed to give a crap who was under the mask.  Maybe Joker thought, that if he unmasked Batman to be just a regular guy, that would ruin the punchline, and not make it as fun.  So, how to make Riddler differ, how to set him apart?

We’ve seen some incredible renditions of the character, from John Aston (Gomez Addams) to the incomparable Frank Gorshin in the Adam West series of the 1960s.  If you’ve ever seen Gorshin play a heavy from the mob, you know that when he wanted to, he could play a character that could chill you to the bone and scare the hell out of you.  But the goal of that version was camp and comedy, and he also pulled that off brilliantly.   I would LOVE to have seen Gorshin as a real Riddler to challenge Batman, he’d have really freaked out the audiences in theaters.

In the 1990’s we got re-introduced to the character in, Batman the Animated Series, and this was a huge step for the character, he was far more cerebral and obsessed with puzzles of all kinds, which gave him his connection to riddles, and outwitting Batman, but there were a lot of characters trying to outwit Batman.  

This one was far less manic than other renditions, and it was a very popular version, because he was more of a thinking villain, rather than the ravenous type that he would usually go against.

It was actually in the 1995 disastrous film, Batman Forever, that they kinda touched on a part of Riddler that we should have seen long ago.  Jim Carrey was cast (Burton originally wanted Robin Williams, for his adaptation) and did an amazing job, but really was a bit too Jim Carrey for a villain that should have been more controlled.  In this film, it becomes a bit of an obsession for Nigma to find out the true identity of the Batman, and that is what the core of the character should have become far before 1995.

I believe that it is THIS obsession that could have defined the character and given the Batman more of a Chess opponent in Nigma than we saw with all the cackling and unhinged types, a master gamesman who really could have been an intellectual equal to Batman.

One of the main problems with this, is finding writers who could have had the intellect to work with such a character, it was always easier to just make him like the others, or a watered down Joker, than for someone to step up and really give us  a battle of wits between these two.

Even if they have done this in the comics, its either not stood out enough for people to make a big deal about it or maybe it’s that I haven’t had time to read the comics in so long.  And, as I inferred earlier, I’m not a fan of “Hush” at all, it’s a really lazy and predictable way to take the character that deserves better.

Personally, I’m a big Riddler fan, he certainly made green & purple a great color combo, I like the characters looks and the bits and pieces that someone should have put together (see what I did there 😉) decades ago.  A chess match that could still be going on today, between, The Detective and The Gamesman…