Summer Comic Movie Update: Captain America & Green Lantern

After lukewarm reviews of the other two comic movies I wanted to see, my motivation to write these reviews waned considerably. Having now seen "Green Lantern" on a plane, I'm finally ready to deliver my verdict on the summer of comic adaptations. These four represent only the ones I was willing to sit through, and that says a lot considering how universally panned "Green Lantern" was. Real quick, here's the final list:

#1 - X-Men: First Class
#2 - Captain America
#3 - Thor
#4 - Green Lantern

No surprises there, which is why I want to move on and talk about these films. After seeing "Captain America," I thought about doing one of these essays for it, but I just couldn't. I didn't realize why until I saw "Green Lantern." Both films are unbelieveably tough subject matters to hang a movie on nowadays. Audiences don't like squeaky clean heroes anymore, and these guys are about as squeaky as they come. "The Dark Knight" turned movie-Batman into a morally ambiguous anti-hero and became one of the highest grossing films of all time. "Captain America" is about a guy who wins by being as single-mindedly heroic and honest as possible, and "Green Lantern" speaks an oath where he denounces evil not once, but twice. Neither of these were easy movies to write, but the difference between the two is simply that "Captain America" is well written, whereas "Green Lantern" is not.

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Summer Comic Movie Update: X-Men: First Class

I'm convinced now that every comic book movie this summer is going to be varying levels of awful mixed with varying levels of enjoyable. To that end, I'm going see every, single one (that I want to see) and rank them. By virtue of being better than "Thor," the new X-Men is definitely the best movie of this summer.

#1 - X-Men: First Class
#2 - Thor

While it may be the best comic book movie since "The Dark Knight," I really wish I hadn't heard everyone call it that. I'd go as far as calling it the second best X-Men movie, falling well behind "X2." There was a lot of good stuff going on in there, but it falls into so many traps, I'm having a lot of trouble really loving it. It suffers from a lot of prequelitis (yes, that's inflamation of a prequel), it fails to maintain its own universe, and it makes leaps in logic we're supposed to be okay with because it's just a comic book movie.

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Summer Comic Movie Update: Thor

I'm convinced now that every comic book movie this summer is going to be varying levels of awful mixed with varying levels of enjoyable. To that end, I'm going see every, single one (that I want to see) and rank them. Thor being the only one out right now, it is definitely the best comic book movie of summer 2011.

#1 - Thor

There were two really good movies in here. All of the palace intrigue in Asgard was a hell of a lot better than "Clash of the Titans." There was a lot of great acting under the scenery eating characterizations. On the other hand, the story of a god who falls to Earth to learn humility is a very promising one. I wish they could have spent more time watching Thor grow. There's a lot of dramatic and comedic potential to that premise.

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