Logan and the R-Rated Superhero
Deadpool came out almost a year ago and somehow managed to be a huge commercial success. With Logan coming out today, many have predicted that this success will be repeated. But what does this mean for the comic book superhero? Comics can be dark, frequently being much more explicit than their on screen counterparts. Glossy pages splashed with blood and gore, provocatively dressed heroines, and sinister plots spanning decades. Movies aren’t afraid of violence, but blood and sex make them squeamish.
Logan - Review
Logan is a much different “superhero” movie than any we’ve seen before. In fact, it is hard to even call it a superhero movie. It is a movie about old, tired men trapped in a world in which they no longer belong. It is a movie about Logan, not about the Wolverine. It gained a lot from the R-rating, building a bleak world that Logan is trapped in. He’s wracked with pain, scarred and broken from hundreds of years of fighting and killing. He’s taking care of Charles Xavier as they live on the run, the world around them now devoid of mutants.
Why Did I Watch That - Punisher: War Zone
I watched a bad movie today. It is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine. Watching bad movies that is. I revel in the terrible plots, paper-thin characters, cheesy effects, and wooden acting. It fuels me. I love them in a way that I can’t quite describe, or feel about bad games or music. To me, bad films deserve to be recognized, talked about, and maybe occasionally ridiculed. This one is no exception.
Capturing the feel of a comic book accurately is really the goal of every comic book movie. The first Punisher didn’t really do a good job at this, but they ended up making what is (in my opinion) a decent action movie. With Warzone, they did a much better job at capturing the dark, violent lunacy of the comic books, but it turns out that it looks really damn weird when translated to action on screen instead of stylized on the pages of a comic book.