Why do we need a "NEW" Iron Man?

There is a new disturbing trend in comic books that I want to rant about, and that trend is new characters taking over the mantle for an established superhero.  Just this week it was announced that at the end of Marvel's new event, "Civil War II," Tony Stark will step down from being Iron Man and will be replaced by a new character named Riri Williams, a female college student.  Of course, this is not the first instance of something like this happening in the past few years worth of comics.  While the comic companies always frame it as if it's something we should all be excited about, the reverse happens because they're messing with the foundation of what made their companies to begin with.

When a new character takes over the mantle of Iron Man, they are no longer Iron Man in my opinion.  Iron Man is Tony Stark.  Captain America is Steve Rogers.  Batman is Bruce Wayne.  Spider-Man is Peter Parker.  Etc. and so forth.  You can have as many characters take up the mantles as you want, but there is only one Thor, and it's the traditional Thor from Norse mythology, not the Jane Foster Thor that was introduced a couple of years ago.  The minute you introduce a woman as Iron Man, she's no longer Iron Man.  Not least of which because she isn't a man, she's a woman!  Call her Iron Woman for crying out loud!  It's stupid to call her Iron Man, cause that's not what she is.

I have nothing wrong with Tony Stark going away for a while and a new hero taking his place, and I have nothing wrong with the fact that it's an African American woman wanting to honor the legacy of Iron Man, but she's not Iron Man.  Iron Man will always be Tony Stark, the two are interlinked, and no matter how many times you try to have people take over for a pre-existing character like this, fans get upset for that very reason.  Now if Marvel were to call her Iron Woman, that would be new and unique, and I'd be fine with it, but the silliness of calling her the new Iron Man is just too much.  All of these things that Marvel has been doing with their characters for the past few years really goes back to the big issue...  Create new superheroes, stop taking pre-existing characters and trying to graft onto them.  That is not what longtime fans want.

When I read a Spider-Man comic book, I want to be reading about Peter Parker.  Sure, Ultimate Spider-Man's Miles Morales is okay, but he's not Peter and he never will be.  What makes Spider-Man is not his powers, it's who he is under the suit, and for me, that should always be Peter Parker.  I hated the nearly two year long storyline where Doc Ock took over Peter Parker's body, cause it wasn't Spider-Man, and while I understand Miles Morales is now part of the canon, I just don't care about him as a character the way I do about Peter Parker.  Miles has only been around half a decade, tell him to call me when he's been around for fifty-four years like Peter has.  Of course, it's not just Marvel who has been doing this, DC is real bad to do this as well.

In the past two years, I stopped reading Batman comic books for one reason, because writer Scott Snyder finally wrote a story I didn't like.  He "killed" Bruce Wayne off, made Commissioner Gordon the new Batman by having him wear a robot suit, and then brought Bruce back, saying he wasn't dead, he just had amnesia (to say nothing of the Joker being immortal or being multiple people over the years).  This was just a storyline that negated why I've always loved the character of Batman.  Sure, there have been others to don the cowl over the years, ranging from Azrael to Dick Grayson, but in each of those instances, I wasn't quite as upset.  While I do believe Bruce Wayne is the one true Batman, seeing a sidekick step up and take over the identity isn't as bad as some random person, like what's happening with Iron Man, or what happened with Miles Morales.

Personally, I don't mind the idea of Bucky Barnes as Captain America.  Will he ever replace Steve Rogers?  No, but he's a natural fit.  The same with The Falcon.  I also never had a problem with Wally West taking over as The Flash after Barry Allen died (who himself followed Jay Garrick).  In these instances, you're taking a superhero partner or sidekick and giving them the mantle.  That's actually a neat concept and is fun, so long as one day the true Batman, Cap, or Flash, come back (which they all did).  The bigger issue is when a new character is introduced, or an old character who had no super powers or superhero training (i.e. Jane Foster and Commissioner Gordon), take over the mantle just because the writers want to shake things up.  To me, that's just silly.

I am not sure Bob Kane or Bill Finger would have ever liked seeing Commissioner Gordon as Batman.  Maybe they would have, but at the end of the day, that's not the character they created.  They created Bruce Wayne as Batman.  While Stan Lee has come out in recent years in support of all the changes Marvel has made to his characters, fans haven't been as agreeable, and I hate being the typical fanboy here, but I'm just fed up with the current state of comic books.  When I pick up a comic book, I want to read the characters I've always known and loved in new adventures.  I don't want to read the adventures of someone else as Iron Man or Thor, I just want to see Tony Stark and Thor in the costumes, kicking butt and taking names.  Sure, the argument is always...  "Well, you can just go back and reread old comics," but that's missing the point.  The point is wanting to see the further adventures of Tony Stark's Iron Man.  We know what's already happened, therefore we're more interested in seeing what the next adventure will look like.  Maybe I'm just a sentimentalist, but I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way.

Movie Review: "The BFG"

Director Steven Spielberg has created yet another masterpiece, with this one being a gentle adaptation of Roald Dahl's kid lit book, The BFG.  The BFG is nothing short of brilliant, with imagination on display at every turn.

The movie follows the titular Big Friendly Giant (or BFG as he comes to be known), as he befriends a human girl named Sophie and whisks her away to giant country, where the BFG is the runt of a litter of larger, more violent giants.  Throughout the course of the movie you really get to know Sophie and the BFG, with the two of them forging a friendship due to their shared circumstances.  Both are lonely souls who others think less of, and in the eyes of each other, they discover what it means to be a better human "bean," as the BFG would put it.

Newcomer Ruby Barnhill plays Sophie with wide-eyed wonder and sass, immediately making Sophie an adorable heroine you want to root for.   Then there is recent Oscar winner, and current Spielberg muse, Mark Rylance, stealing each scene he's in as the BFG.  Rylance has this uncanny ability to convey deep wells of emotion with nothing other than his eyes.  He truly is a marvel to watch onscreen, and when you go from his work in Bridge of Spies to his work as the BFG, you see a completely different actor.  The BFG is a warm and gentle soul lacking in bravery, who only wants to help deliver the dreams he catches up in dream country to sleeping people.  Perhaps the greatest marvel of this movie though, is the fact that the special effects manage to make us believe that Ruby Barnhill is interacting with a twenty-four foot tall Mark Rylance.

Through the use of CGI and motion capture work, the special effects crew manage to capture every element of Mark Rylance's performance and make it writ large.  I have seen many movies that try to show us giants interacting with humans, but there is often an odd feeling to the difference in scale.  I never had that feeling with The BFG.  I truly believed that Sophie and the BFG were there together in every scene, and that allows the magic spell of this movie to be cast.

When you get right down to it, The BFG is not an in your face adventure movie, it's a rather simple bedtime story.  There's not a lot of violence, nor are there any real scares (except for when the BFG is bullied by his fellow giants), and the crudest thing the movie has within it is the greatest farting scene I've ever seen in a movie.  The BFG is easily Spielberg's most child appropriate movie he's ever made.  It is sweet, funny, and will have your imagination in overdrive the entire time.  Couple the gorgeous images from longtime Spielberg cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, with the beautiful musical score by John Williams, and the great script by the late E.T. scribe, Melissa Mathison,  and you've got another Spielberg classic.  Will it be remembered as fondly as E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark?  Probably not, but it could very well be on the same plain as Spielberg movies like Hook and War Horse, which is not bad company to share.

I give The BFG a 9 out of 10!

Movie Review: "The Legend of Tarzan"

More and more lately I am discovering a disconnect between myself and the vast majority of movie critics.  I have loved a lot of movies this year that they've hated, and that trend continues here with The Legend of Tarzan.  As far as live-action interpretations of Tarzan go, this and Greystoke are the two champs, with The Legend of Tarzan edging out Greystoke by a teeny bit.

The Legend of Tarzan is unique in that it's not an origin story.  While the origins of Tarzan are explored in a few flashback scenes (reminding me a lot of Batman Begins), the movie is really about John Clayton, Lord of Greystoke (aka Tarzan's real name and title).  Tarzan has been living in England with Jane for the past few years and has left the jungle behind him, but when he is asked to help expose a slavery ring in the Congo, he is drawn back to Africa.

Harry Potter director, David Yates, manages to breathe new life into Tarzan thanks to the modern technological wizardry that CGI enables.  The vast majority of this movie was all shot on sets in England, with pretty much all of the animals and African environments created by a computer.  This sells the reality of the story, much in the same way that The Jungle Book did a few months back.  Of course what really makes this movie resonant is not the craft on display, but the story between Tarzan and Jane.

Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie portray Tarzan and Jane in this movie, and they actually make you care about these two characters.  Skarsgard plays Tarzan as a stoic gentleman trying not to be the animal he was raised to be, while Robbie portrays the feistiest Jane you've ever seen.  Then there's the charisma and humor of Samuel L. Jackson as real-life historical figure, Dr. George Washington Williams, who joins Tarzan on his quest to save the Congo.  Couple that with Christoph Waltz being Christoph Waltz as the bad guy, Leon Rom, and you've got a fun, emotionally resonant pulp adventure that Tarzan author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, would most likely be proud of.

When it gets right down to it, don't listen to the critics on this one.  Your enjoyment of The Legend of Tarzan all relies on how much you enjoy the idea of Tarzan in general.  If you think Tarzan is hokey, then this movie probably isn't for you, but there is nothing wrong with the movie itself.  The script is good, the movie is well directed, the cinematography and musical score are beautiful, and there are many well choreographed action sequences.  The bottom line is, if you have an affinity for the character, The Legend of Tarzan is the Tarzan movie you've been looking for.

I give The Legend of Tarzan an 8 out of 10!

Movie Review: "Independence Day: Resurgence"

It has been 20 years since the first Independence Day hit theaters, and now we have a sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence.  Pretty much every major character is back (sans Will Smith), with Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman reprising their iconic roles from the first movie.  In story time, it too has been 20 years, with humanity having united to repurpose the alien technology left behind to improve our own weapons in preparation.  In preparation for what, you might ask?  The aliens inevitable return, of course.

All in all, Independence Day: Resurgence is a fun movie, but it pales in comparison to its predecessor, which has taken on a massive level of iconography for children of the Nineties.  While there are tons of explosions and one-liners, there seems to be something missing.  That something is the indescribable x-factor that movies like this often have that transforms them into cultural touchstones.  Now none of this is to say that Resurgence is a bad movie or a poor sequel, the filmmakers simply failed to catch lightning in a bottle again.  That is a very hard thing to do, and it only makes you more appreciate the movie franchises that have been able to do it multiple times.  Now with all that out of the way, here is where Resurgence really shines, with the new cast of young characters.

Liam Hemsworth leads a talented cast of 20-somethings -- including Maika Monroe and Jesse Usher, as Bill Pullman's daughter and Will Smith's stepson --  that steal the show.  These new characters are a mixture of orphans and children of the heroes from the first Independence Day who have the kind of resolve reminiscent of young men and women from the Greatest Generation.  It is in the scenes with these new characters that I actually found myself most engaged with the movie, which I did not think would happen going in.  However, this does not mean that the returning cast of Goldblum, Pullman, and the rest don't have good standout moments (with welcome returns from Judd Hirsch and Brent Spiner as well), but the filmmakers do a nice job of creating new heroes for a potential sequel.  Another area in which the movie succeeds is in the area of visual effects.

The first Independence Day had amazing visual effects, but the two decades since have really unshackled the filmmakers to let their imaginations run wild.  Things that would have been too expensive to do 20 years ago, can now be done.  While that could have easily been a negative, it actually works as a positive because director Roland Emmerich shows enough restraint to never make the visual effects look like visual effects.  As well, the better visual effects allow the filmmakers to show us more of the aliens this time about.  In the original movie, the aliens were only ever seen in fleeting glimpses or from the waist up.  In this one, there are multiple full body shots of the aliens, which helps to sell the reality of them better.

At the end of the day, if you were a fan of Independence Day, you will probably enjoy this more cartoonish sequel, but I use the word cartoonish in the best possible way.  The first movie had a more realistic tone, whereas this movie reminds me a lot of Japanese animated TV shows I watched growing up in the Nineties and early Aughts.  There seems to be an understanding this go around that it's all fake and meant to just be fun, and while that drains the movie of some of its intensity, it does cause you to childishly grin for most of the runtime.

I give Independence Day: Resurgence a 7 out of 10!

Movie Review: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows"

As a fan of the heroes in a half-shell, I guess I'm just gonna have to accept that this is about as good as this iteration of the Ninja Turtles will get.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is better than its 2014 reboot, but only by a teeny bit.

Out of the Shadows finds the turtles trying to stop the evil Shredder from bringing an alien from another dimension to Earth in order to take over.  Along the way, the turtles make a new ally in Casey Jones (played likably by Stephen Amell), go toe-to-toe with two new mutant minions of Shredder (the fan favorite characters Bebop and Rocksteady), and may have run across a mutagen that could potentially turn them into humans.

There is a lot going on here and it's actually a miracle that the movie makes sense for most of its runtime.  While there are a few plot holes here and there, there are none quite as gaping as the multiple ones that the first movie had.  On top of that, there are some genuinely thrilling action sequences in the movie, with the standout one involving the turtles in their tricked out garbage truck trying to stop Shredder from escaping the 18-wheeler that is transporting him to a different prison.

When it's all said and done, once the original Ninja Turtles theme song plays over the end credits, you realize you actually had fun with Out of the Shadows.  While neither of the two movies in this particular iteration match up to the first two Ninja Turtles movies from the Nineties, Out of the Shadows will entertain.

I give Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows a 7 out of 10!