Direct Beam Comms #136

Movies

Here’s everything I’ve seen this year that’s new, or that I missed seeing in 2017.

The kids of It
The kids of It

It: I liked this one a lot and was very happy to see a Stephen King movie that’s horror-related finally get some love. See this one if you love Stranger Things but want more scares with your side of 1980s nostalgia.

Justice League: I still don’t understand the online vitriol against this movie. I liked Justice League. I didn’t think it was the best movie ever but I certainly didn’t think it was bad. See this one if you dig superhero movies and have an open mind.

Movies I’ve seen so far in 2018.

The Cloverfield Paradox: This surprise movie that was announced during the Super Bowl and premiered right after on Netflix is a fun, well-crafted sci-fi yarn about astronauts stuck on a space station fighting the unknown. See this one if you don’t demand that every movie you see be groundbreaking.

Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: Infinity War

Mute: Another Netflix sci-fi flick, Mute takes place in a near-future that’s depressingly a lot like out own. More importantly, it’s a kind’a sort’a sequel to the movie Moon. See this one if you’re ever jonesing for a sci-fi fix.

Black Panther: I liked Black Panther if I thought at times it was a little cluttered in the story department. See this one if… who am I kidding, based on the box office returns you’ve already seen this one.

Avengers: Infinity War: Infinity War is the Marvel team-up movie to top all Marvel team-up movies with all the heroes together to fight a big baddie. See this one if you don’t necessarily always need to know what’s happening on-screen, but like watching things go “boom.”

Deadpool 2
Deadpool 2

Deadpool 2: The hilarious sequel to Deadpool both manages to differentiate itself from the original while being just as funny as that first film. See this one if you like to have a good time while watching movies.

Solo: A Star Wars Story: Another movie that was ravaged by online reviews, I quite liked Solo and thought it was a very strong Star Wars movie. See this one because this might be your last chance to see the character of Han Solo on-screen for a while.

Annihilation: Finally a movie this year I didn’t like. I loved the novel this one’s based on and couldn’t wait to check it out but found Annihilation slow and dull. Honestly, I couldn’t make it through this one and shut it off with about 20 minutes left. See this one if you’re looking for an all-natural sleep aid.

Extinction movie trailer

Books & Comics

Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.

Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.
Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.

Out nearly a year after it was originally scheduled to be released — though series creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have a habit of turning in things late — comes Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.

From Dark Horse:

Ken Plume sits down with series creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer to have a conversation about the creation of every single episode through season 6 and much more. From the earliest sketches of Hank and Dean scribbled in a notebook to pitching the series to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, learning the ins and outs of animation, character designs for each season, storyboards, painted backgrounds, and behind-the-scenes recollections of how the show came together–it’s all here.

Frank Miller’s RONIN

Frank Miller's RONIN
Frank Miller’s RONIN

This week a brand new edition of the collected RONIN story by Frank Miller is set to be released. Though I’ve read the RONIN story before and own an issue or two of the original comic series, I don’t actually own the collected edition so I might pick this one up.

From DC:

Frank Miller’s six-issue miniseries RONIN returns in a new trade paperback! It’s the tale of a 13th century samurai who is reborn in a futuristic 21st century New York City with one last chance to regain his honor: he must defeat the reincarnation of his master’s killer, an ancient demon called Agat. This new edition includes promotional art, fold-out pages and more special features.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. poster

Justice League: the best TV series nobody watched

It’s been a long time coming for the new Justice League movie in theaters now. There was an attempt at creating a live-action Justice League TV series in 1997 that was filmed but never aired, and then George Miller of Mad Max fame very nearly got a film version of Justice League off the ground in 2007 but for various reasons this movie was cancelled just before cameras rolled. It wasn’t until now, with the latest incarnation of the DC movie universe, that this newest Justice League finally made it to the big screen.

While this Justice League might be the biggest, most notable and most expensive version of Justice League, there was another long-running animated Justice League series that aired from 2001 to 2006 that was one of the best superhero TV series of all time. But since most adult viewers shun animation that doesn’t air Sunday nights on FOX, I’m guessing most viewers, even ones who dig superheroes and comic books, never checked out this show.

Justice League, then Justice League: Unlimited was created by animator Bruce Timm and Paul Dini of Batman: The Animated Series fame and aired on Cartoon Network. Characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl all team up to do battle with villains too tough for any one of them to beat on their own.

And, to be honest, there’s been a million and one of these sorts of animated series — one was even a proto-Justice League show called Super Friends that ran in the 1970s and 1980s. Good guys vs bad guys where the good guys always win and the bad guys always go home crying. Except not in the 21st century Justice League. This series was written with such an adept hand that the characters in the show felt like they had real emotions and were real people. And when one of them, I won’t spoil things, turns out to be a traitor and sells the Earth out to alien invaders the pain that I felt for what had happened was real.

I didn’t think that an animated series could have been better than Justice League. That was until the spin-off series Justice League: Unlimited began airing soon after Justice League.

Let’s put it this way, Justice League was great, but it looks like a warm-up exercise when compared with Justice League: Unlimited.

Here, after this invasion there aren’t just a few superheroes in the Justice League, there are literally hundreds. And they orbit the Earth in a massive station to prevent other attacks on the planet before they can happen. The focus shifts a bit from just characters like Superman and Wonder Woman to include the likes of Green Arrow, Captain Atom, Hawk and Dove (brothers who are brilliantly played by Wonder Years TV brothers Fred Savage and Jason Hervey), Black Canary and Huntress to name a few.

Things are going great for the League since they’re able to respond to any crisis on Earth almost instantly from their station in orbit. Except when some of the people on Earth begin realizing that these protectors from above might easily become oppressors if anything should ever change they begin forming plans to eliminate the League if the need ever arises. People like Amanda Waller creates a governmental superhero team of her own Task Force X aka the Suicide Squad to keep tabs on what’s going on up in space. Much of this plot turned up in the movie Suicide Squad a few years back that I can only assume originated here.

When the end came for Justice League: Unlimited it came quickly and without warning — and on a cliffhanger no less! The show had always had its fans but was never a huge hit so when Justice League: Unlimited was finished after two seasons I can’t say I was surprise. Disappointed, yes. But not surprised.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people enjoy the live-action superhero TV series that airs on TV these days. But when it comes to story and writing, I don’t think these shows can hold a candle to either Justice League or especially Justice League: Unlimited. Let’s just hope that the story of the new Justice League movie is able to come close.

Currently, both Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited are available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download.

Direct Beam Comms #85

TV

Game of Thrones

I think I’m done with Game of Thrones. I’ve spent the last six seasons watching the show but the last few years I’ve welcomed its return less and less. It’s not that I don’t like Game of Thrones anymore, it’s just that it watching it has become a chore.

The stories of the first few season of Game of Thrones were much more contained than the ones in the series are now. At first there were stories of Winterfell, Westeros and the Targaryen’s across the sea and that was about it. And even then those stories were interconnected with the likes of the people of Westeros and Winterfell meeting and coming together to the point where there were really only two story locations for a while. But with each season the stories have fragmented more and more and more, to the point where no single episode of Game of Thrones can contain everything going on at once with stories having to be spread out between multiple shows. And even then some stories only get five or ten minutes an episode and one character even went missing an entire season only to pick back up with his story a year later since there wasn’t enough room for him.

With all this story weight meant that each season Game of Thrones started moving slower and slower to the point where in its fifth season, to me at least, there wasn’t enough story progression in it to hold my interest.

While things did pick up in the sixth season of the show, I started finding myself less and less interested in certain stories. So much of what Game of Thrones was last season was of characters who used to be together being off on their own adventures and since I wasn’t into each and ever character’s adventures I found myself more and more skipping through parts of episodes to get to stories that I was interested in. I’d generally stop at Tyrion stories but skip through Arya ones. And honestly by the end of the season I was pretty much only interested in Tyrion.

When I start using my DVR to skip through episodes of any series I know that my days of watching it are numbered.

I do think that if this were the last season of Game of Thrones I wouldn’t be writing this I would instead be watching the show just to see how it all ends. But this season isn’t the last, there’s one more left, and even then HBO is examining the possibility of spinning off the show into a variety of different series. All of which is fine, but at what point is the story of Game of Thrones only about continuing the story of Game of Thrones rather than coming to some sort of ending?

Everyone likes to make fun of soap operas, but at what point do self-perpetuating TV series like Game of Thrones become more soap opera-like than what they initially set out to be like smart, fantasy dramas?

Inhumans promo

Defenders promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_6J9BqgonU

Krypton promo

Westworld promo

https://youtu.be/phFM3V_dors

Stranger Things promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgS2L7WPIO4

Star Trek Discovery promo

The Gifted promo

Movies

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

One of the few movies I did see in the theater in 1987 rather than on VHS or cable was Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. That summer I was watching my younger brother at home while my parents both worked and one week they gave us a little cash to get out of the house and go to a movie. I looked through the paper to see what was playing at the theater in riding distance to our house and the choices were Superman IV and Madonna lead Who’s that Girl. Being the mega-comic book fan that I was with a closed full of Superman back issues I, of course, chose to see, you guessed it, Who’s that Girl. I have no idea why I’d want to see that movie at all — in fact I’m relatively sure I’ve never seen it. I can only guess that it was because it would be easier to explain to my friends that I went to see a movie that starred then it-girl Madonna than a Superman movie, since at the time once you were a certain age you weren’t supposed to like superheroes or comics anymore. My mom used her parent veto and nixed the idea of my eight year old brother seeing Madonna prancing around on-screen in a fancy leotard and told us we were seeing Superman IV with Christopher Reeve prancing around on screen in his fancy leotard.

So, one weekday my brother and myself rode our bikes to the theater and saw Superman IV. When you’re a pre-teen kid Superman IV isn’t a terrible movie. It’s got the humous Lenny (Jon Cryer), Lex Luthor’s nephew, and even has ol’ Lex himself (Gene Hackman) back in the role he originated after missing out on Superman III. And let’s not forget Mariel Hemingway co-stars who was one of the most beautiful women on the planet in 1987 which didn’t hurt the movie either.

Looking back on Superman IV 30 years later, it’s a mess of a movie. Produced by Cannon Films known for such gems as Invasion USA and Over the Top, Superman IV was made on the cheap and looks that way. The movie is barely an hour and a half long and that includes both beginning and end credits with the opening credits being the looooooooong credits the Superman movies were known for back then. Christopher Reeve is back as the Man of Steel and a lot of the other cast members like Margot Kidder have returned as well. But other than Reeve the rest of the recognizable faces other than Hackman are in cameo roles at best.

A lot of the movies I’ve gone back and rewatched from 1987 might not be as good as I remember but they all have some sort of weird nostalgic appeal, and Superman IV is no different. Though I would argue that it’s the one movie I’ve watched that’s actually a lot worse than I remember.

The story of Superman IV is of Superman trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons, but in a devious plans Luthor uses Superman’s tossing all of the nukes into the Sun as a way to make Nuclear Man, a character created for the movie and so-far is his only appearance, in order to destroy Superman. Essentially, Superman IV is a smaller version of everything that had come before in the previous films. It’s almost a small-budget remake of Superman II in many regards with Superman battling one superpower villain instead of three. And since IV was made on the cheap all of the seams show.

Low-budget or not, Christopher Reeve gave it his all in Superman IV in what would be his last role as the title character. After the disappointment of Superman IV it would be nearly 20 years with the release of Superman Returns in 2006 until the character returned to the big screen. However, it’s not like there weren’t attempts at a new Superman movie after IV as most of the 1990s were spent with Tim Burton trying to get his version of the character off the ground in a movie that would have been called Superman Lives and then in the early 2000s there was another attempt this time with J.J. Abrams in another dead movie that would have been called Superman: Flyby.

If you are interested in finding out what happened behind the scenes with Superman IV: The Quest for Peace it’s chronicled in the 2014 documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films (2014) as well as in Jon Cryer’s memoir So that Happened. You can also find out what happened with Tim Burton’s aborted Superman movie in the 2015 doc The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?

Blade Runner 2049 trailer

Starship Troopers: Traitor Of Mars trailer

Justice League trailer

Thor: Ragnarok trailer

Books

Lead Poisoning: The Pencil Art of Geof Darrow

I first became aware of the work of Geof Darrow in his incredibly detailed drawings in the comic mini-series Hard Boiled when I was a bit too young. That comic, an acid trip through a hellish, corporatized future where robots kill scores of people turned me on to Darrow’s work. Years later I found an amazing book on his artistic contribution to the movie The Matrix that is still one of my prized possessions and now comes another Darrow art book, Lead Poisoning: The Pencil Art of Geoff Darrow.

From Dark Horse:

Geof Darrow’s slick, precise inks and stunning detail have amazed comics fans for decades, from his early work with Moebius to Hard Boiled, his first collaboration with Frank Miller, to the overwhelming success of his current series, The Shaolin Cowboy.

Now Darrow provides incredible insight into his process by sharing the pencil drawings behind his meticulous inks in a huge hardcover collection. Featuring well-known covers and never-before-seen drawings alike, Lead Poisoning is a behind-the-scenes look that reveals perfectionism at its best, showing how clean and perfect the initial drawings can be as well as the bizarre alterations that appear to happen on the fly.

Featuring commentary by Darrow and his notable peers, Lead Poisoning: The Pencil Art of Geof Darrow is a hardcover that brings you right to Darrow’s drawing board.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1928: Stanley Kubrick, writer/director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange is born
  • 1956: Kevin Spacey, Lex Luthor of Superman Returns and Moon is born
  • 1957: Nana Visitor, Kira Nerys of of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
  • 1972: Wil Wheaton, Wesley Crusher of Star Trek: The Next Generation
  • 1983: Krull opens in theaters
  • 1986: Maximum Overdrive debuts
  • 1987: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace opens in theaters
  • 1990: The TV series Swamp Thing premiers
  • 1995: Waterworld premiers
  • 1999: Deep Blue Sea premiers
  • 2001: Planet of the Apes opens in theaters
  • 2013: The Wolverine opens in theaters