There has been an absolute overflow of good comic book based movies this year. It’s almost overwhelming, especially for a comic geek such as myself. I’m a Marvel girl, always have been, but my expertise tended to center around all things X-men.
I remember when no one, least of all the comic readers, got excited for a comic book movie. Most of them (with very few exceptions) were quite terrible. The initial X-Men and Spiderman movies changed that. To say that things were looking up now would be an understatement.
Now, things couldn’t be better. It’s time for comic books to shine, and to faithful readers such as myself, if these movies manage to make a few people actually pick up the books and read, well, they’ve done their job.
Iron Man was a fairly unfamiliar character to me; I only really knew him from what I had read of the Civil War series. However, like any good comic book geek, I did my research before going to see the movie. I was anxious to see it, as it is the first movie coming out of Marvel’s own film studio, giving them control over the film as they have never had before. Iron Man was phenomenal. Updated for the modern audience, of course, but wonderfully done, and Stark couldn’t have been portrayed any better.
The next, of course, was Hellboy 2, directed by Guillermo Del Toro, the director of the absolutely wonderful Pan’s Labyrinth. Outside of the Sandman comics and some peripheral knowledge of Batman and Superman, I am not all that familiar with the DC universe. The first Hellboy had been a fun movie, but not spectacular. However, with Del Toro’s hand in it, and as it dealt with myths I am particularly fond of, I was curious. I cannot say how well the story fit with the Hellboy universe of the comic books, of course, but the myths were applied extremely well and the visuals were absolutely phenomenal. As in Pan’s Labyrinth, it was an extrordinary combination of the familiar and the surreal that made the movie so much fun.
And finally, the daddy of them all, The Dark Knight. While all of the others qualify quite well as “Good Comic Book Movies,” this movie is quite simply a “Good Movie,” genre completely put aside. It kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish, and the darker tone these movies have been taking suits the story of Batman so much better. You really get the feeling in these that instead of Batman’s mask being the disguise for Bruce Wayne, the opposite is actually the case. And in this movie, it was the villain who stole the show. Heath Ledger’s Joker was amazingly, and frighteningly, realistic, a madman who doesn’t realize his own insanity, who is a perfect agent of chaos, someone who lacks any motive other than the pure ecstasy of destruction. A serial killer on an epic scale.
And there is where the bittersweet twinge hits, for that phenomenal performance is something we will never see the like of again, a fact that you cannot help but mourn as the credits roll.
