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Halloween Jack posted:I don't disagree, but if you're going to make a Matrix sequel, it had better have kung fu fighting. Oh yeah we're 100% on the same page here.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:01
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Halloween Jack posted:The worst take I've ever heard on the Matrix sequels, and probably on all action movies ever, is that the Matrix sequels shouldn't have Neo doing kung fu because he transcended the need for that in the ending of The Matrix. See, that could work. I tried to come up with a reworking of the sequels at one point, just as an exercise, and I thought something you'd have to do is get Neo out of the Matrix and into some parallel thing on his way to the source, like how a martial arts hero might climb a mountain or enter a deep state of meditation. Because, to keep the action scenes having stakes, you've either got to introduce villains that are powerful enough to throw down with him, making everyone else redundant, or just have him style all over everyone easily. Payndz posted:I just now rewatched that chase. Oh, it doesn't work as a narrative thing at all, but it does have some cool stunts. Payndz posted:I kind of liked the sheer balls of dismissing Neo's transcendence in Reloaded with the line "Huh, upgrades" before getting back to the kung-fu. Don't forget that the effect of the upgrades is that he can't fight them with one hand.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:12
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Payndz posted:I kind of liked the sheer balls of dismissing Neo's transcendence in Reloaded with the line "Huh, upgrades" before getting back to the kung-fu. The Matrix: Reloaded has a looooooot of problems, but I’m always surprised that people miss the tonal shift that is indicated with the “upgrades” line. Like the first flick is a fairly serious, direct science fiction film. The sequels are live action anime. The “upgrades” line is one of the key moments this change is shown. In The Matrix, the Agents are all fairly generic, slim nondescript white guys. In the sequels they’re built like brick shithouse bodybuilders Because they literally got upgraded in size and stature.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:18
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Snowman_McK posted:Don't forget that the effect of the upgrades is that he can't fight them with one hand. This is a progression in a sequence that ends with Neo "fighting" them with no hands.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:21
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Fart City posted:I’d for sure say one that you’ve already mentioned: Highlander. It’s got an insane amount of potential, if it was rebooted with an actual roadmap of sorts. I remember there was talk of a Highlander reboot a few years ago with Dave Bautistia tipped to play the Kurgan. quote:Somewhere out there is a really great, atmospheric adaption of The Shadow waiting to be made. Imagine this: The Shadow is delayed a couple of years; in 1996, it's directed by John Woo instead of Broken Arrow; in his civilian identity, Lamont Cranston is played by Christian Slater, but in his Shadow guise, he's played by John Travolta, because Woo loves that duality stuff; Shiwan Khan is played by Chow Yun-fat, and Dr Claymore is played by Nicolas Cage. But more seriously, if The Shadow was remade as a movie today, I don't know who should direct, write or star in it. I think The Spirit deserves a remake. It's been, what, more than 10 years now since the bad one?
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Feb 1, 2018 23:52
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Something I find interesting about Doc Savage and the Shadow is that they have a large cast of supporting characters who are all experts at something. I like the idea of The Shadow being an identity shared by multiple people.
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Feb 1, 2018 23:57
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Halloween Jack posted:Something I find interesting about Doc Savage and the Shadow is that they have a large cast of supporting characters who are all experts at something. I like the idea of The Shadow being an identity shared by multiple people. Zorro had this too! It got quietly dropped. Fun fact: the first Zorro story doesn't reveal that Zorro and Diego are the same guy until the end! It's written as two different characters.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:02
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Isn't the most hilarious part of Doc Savage though that he has this team of experts but he's still as good or better than them in each of their fields? Like he needs a team because he can't be in two places at once but really he's super awesome at everything.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:03
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Wheat Loaf posted:I remember there was talk of a Highlander reboot a few years ago with Dave Bautistia tipped to play the Kurgan. It was clear they expected a lot from the Spirit. My comic book shop still has a bunch of art books from it that they've had sitting on their shelf for years.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:06
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Halloween Jack posted:Something I find interesting about Doc Savage and the Shadow is that they have a large cast of supporting characters who are all experts at something. I like the idea of The Shadow being an identity shared by multiple people. The Shadow's story is much more complicated than it needs to be. The Shadow's real identity is Kent Allard, but he's an exact double for a New York socialite and playboy called Lamont Cranston, so he would masquerade as Cranston when Cranston was away from the city. The movie simplified it by just making him Lamont Cranston, but I've heard that the novelisation of the movie by James Luceno (who's a big fan of old pulp adventure fare) included a bit at the start where he thinks, "But my real name is actually Kent Allard!" which probably made it more confusing than was strictly necessary. If you're familiar with the Wold Newton Family concept, Philip José Farmer had the idea that Kent Allard/Lamont Cranston/The Shadow was also another pulp hero called the Spider, a.k.a. millionaire playboy Richard Wentworth, and he suffered from multiple personalities as a side-effect of shell shock after the First World War. Furthermore, Chris Roberson wrote a fun short story about 15 years ago in which the French film serial hero Judex encounters a rich American doctor and his neglected wife in Paris in 1916, where the wife has had an affair with Kent Allard (then flying with the French air force) and become pregnant, but intends to return to America with her husband and allow him to believe the child is his own, to ensure it has the best upbringing possible. The doctor's name is Thomas Wayne.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:11
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Zorro had this too! It got quietly dropped. Johnston McCulley clearly didn't expect Zorro to catch on, because Don Diego kills his arch-nemesis Captain Ramon in single combat at the end of the first novel, then Ramon is back and no worse for wear in the second one (but he's killed at the end of that one and stays dead).  Zorro is, by some measures, the first American superhero. It's his hundredth anniversary next year and I have no idea if there will be anything done to recognise it in movies or books or comics.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:17
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The movie version of The Shadow takes a lot of influence from the radio serials, too. That was the first version that just made Lamont Cranston the character’s secret identity, to the best of my knowledge. It also does away with a lot of the moral ambiguity of the version in the original pulps.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:18
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The Spider was a blatant ripoff of The Shadow with a couple unique gimmicks, IIRC, so it makes sense to say he was just literally The Shadow on a bender.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:18
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There is an amusing aside in Tarzan Alive where Farmer first posits his theory and comments that he has no idea how Allard/Cranston/Wentworth ever found time to sleep.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:20
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Wheat Loaf posted:The Shadow's story is much more complicated than it needs to be. The Shadow's real identity is Kent Allard, but he's an exact double for a New York socialite and playboy called Lamont Cranston, so he would masquerade as Cranston when Cranston was away from the city. The movie simplified it by just making him Lamont Cranston, but I've heard that the novelisation of the movie by James Luceno (who's a big fan of old pulp adventure fare) included a bit at the start where he thinks, "But my real name is actually Kent Allard!" which probably made it more confusing than was strictly necessary. I wonder how much of this influenced the development of Moon Knight. Sounds very similar.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:51
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Lobok posted:I wonder how much of this influenced the development of Moon Knight. Sounds very similar. I don't know how likely it is, but it's not impossible. Moon Knight debuted in 1975 and Tarzan Alive was published in 1972, and Farmer was a decent-sized name in sci-fi in the 70s so it's certainly plausible that Doug Moench had read his book.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:57
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Wheat Loaf posted:Johnston McCulley clearly didn't expect Zorro to catch on, because Don Diego kills his arch-nemesis Captain Ramon in single combat at the end of the first novel, then Ramon is back and no worse for wear in the second one (but he's killed at the end of that one and stays dead). There’s some wild poo poo going on with the Zorro rights, so I wouldn’t hold your breath.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:58
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DivisionPost posted:There’s some wild poo poo going on with the Zorro rights, so I wouldn’t hold your breath. Honestly, I just assumed Disney had them. They seem like the sort of thing Disney would own.
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Feb 2, 2018 00:59
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I remember like, last year there was some future-set Zorro flick that was being bandied about. Seems like every five years or so some weird new script attempting a reinvention of the property pops up and immediately stalls out.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:05
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You don't need to re-invent Zorro, all the necessary changes were done in Mask of Zorro, they made him a cool bandito elevated to nobility, then for whatever reason they lost heart in it.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:14
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Wheat Loaf posted:Honestly, I just assumed Disney had them. They seem like the sort of thing Disney would own. They’re held by a private interest that does business with Sony, but a playwright who tried to write a Zorro play has them tied up in a lawsuit alleging intellectual property theft and all sorts of other nastiness. poo poo is loving bonkers and I can tell you from personal experience (that I’m unable to talk about) that it gets even crazier.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:14
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Lobok posted:I wonder how much of this influenced the development of Moon Knight. Sounds very similar. Moon Knight is very much a character of that era in a lot of ways despite him being more recent, you might actually dig those old pulp serials. The radio serials just own though and you can hear most of them on YouTube. Wheat Loaf posted:Furthermore, Chris Roberson wrote a fun short story about 15 years ago in which the French film serial hero Judex encounters a rich American doctor and his neglected wife in Paris in 1916, where the wife has had an affair with Kent Allard (then flying with the French air force) and become pregnant, but intends to return to America with her husband and allow him to believe the child is his own, to ensure it has the best upbringing possible. The doctor's name is Thomas Wayne. That reminds me of Commissioner Gordon in Batman. James "Wildcat" Gordon (even the shortlived nickname) began life as a detective in a pulp called The Whisperer wherein he's hunting down the titular vigilante. The conclusion though is that James Gordon IS The Whisperer and took his own case to keep it unsolvable. What's the copyright/trademark/whatever issues about making a movie out of one of those stories? Like they're not Batman at all but characters/plots that clearly heavily inspired Batman. Like The Bat, dude wearing a slick business suit and cowl that covers his entire face too rolling around blasting gangsters and using gadgets (most notably a gun that shoots "knockout gas") to ensure he always leaves one alive to interrogate to figure out the next person in the food chain. You could make awesome action movies out of that stuff and you'd barely have to change anything.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:15
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Neo Rasa posted:What's the copyright/trademark/whatever issues about making a movie out of one of those stories? Like they're not Batman at all but characters/plots that clearly heavily inspired Batman. Like The Bat, dude wearing a slick business suit and cowl that covers his entire face too rolling around blasting gangsters and using gadgets (most notably a gun that shoots "knockout gas") to ensure he always leaves one alive to interrogate to figure out the next person in the food chain. You could make awesome action movies out of that stuff and you'd barely have to change anything. Frankly, Zorro is pretty much just the Scarlet Pimpernel.
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Feb 2, 2018 01:24
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Wheat Loaf posted:I don't know how likely it is, but it's not impossible. Moon Knight debuted in 1975 and Tarzan Alive was published in 1972, and Farmer was a decent-sized name in sci-fi in the 70s so it's certainly plausible that Doug Moench had read his book. I meant just the base concept of The Shadow, but yeah, the extra stuff would also have come out before Moench created Moon Knight.
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Feb 2, 2018 02:00
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I think Moon Knight was expanded (from his role in Werewolf by Night) at a time when they were going for more, how do I put it, international James Bond sorts of characters. DC created Ra's al Ghul for the same reason. Moon Knight fitting in as a pulp character is partially a consequence of that. He also fits in well with Golden Age heroes--a soldier being a lone survivor and getting powers from a hidden temple would make sense if he was part of Operation Torch in WWII.
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Feb 2, 2018 07:49
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Moon Knight is really good, I love his mercurial nature. Everybody who writes him plays with the nature of his reality. In fact a major bombshell just dropped for the character last month and it's...well let's just say it's very soap opera but it opens up a lot of possibilities.
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Feb 2, 2018 17:24
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What's the issue? I like how the end of the 2014 series reveals that his ultimate nemesis is the Marvel editorial board, who will just reset his character development in preparation for the next limited series.
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Feb 2, 2018 17:35
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Halloween Jack posted:What's the issue? Moon Knight #190 It's a new guy running the series with a new arc and I'm not quite sold on it. But he's not afraid to swing big so I respect that.
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Feb 2, 2018 18:00
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I checked out Spectral (2016) last night. It was well paced, solid fun. Didn’t realize that I’ve really been looking for Delta Force Ghostbusters but here we are. I also always get excited when Max Martini pops up in anything. I’m thinking next up is going to be Savage Dogs with Scott Adkins. Has anybody seen?
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Feb 2, 2018 21:25
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Combatace posted:I checked out Spectral (2016) last night. It was well paced, solid fun. Didn’t realize that I’ve really been looking for Delta Force Ghostbusters but here we are. Yep that's a good old fashioned action fest, bit rough around the edges but Adkins is good as usual
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Feb 2, 2018 22:37
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The ending to Savage Dog is loving bonkers
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Feb 3, 2018 04:42
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:The ending to Savage Dog is loving bonkers It really is, and it's not even hinted at in the rest of the movie.
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Feb 3, 2018 05:24
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ok, action movie thread. I'm starting my Bruce Willis weekend. I have Die Hards 1-3, The Last Boy Scout and Last Man Standing. I'm starting off with Last Man Standing because it has been at least 15 years since I've seen it last and I remember liking it. I mean, you can't really go too wrong with remaking Yojimbo after all.
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Feb 3, 2018 19:47
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Mercury Rising and 16 Blocks are pretty good, but more thriller-ish than action
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Feb 3, 2018 19:59
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MrBling posted:ok, action movie thread. I'm starting my Bruce Willis weekend. You have the best ones. Die Hard is obviously one of the greatest action movies of all time, and probably one of the greatest American films, period. I've always been a huge fan of Last Boy Scout and Last Man Standing. As the posted above me noted, 16 Blocks feels more like a Die Hard movie than Live Free or Die Hard did (I've never seen the fifth one). And the only movie I can think of adding is Sin City, which I loved when it came out, but I don't think it has aged well (or more likely, I've just outgrown it).
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Feb 3, 2018 20:16
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is Live Free or Die Hard the one with Justin Long as some sort of hacker and there's a scene where Bruce kills a helicopter with a car? If so, I vaguely remember watching like half of it at some point. edit: also, Last Man Standing has Michael Imperioli playing a gangster. Quelle surprise. It has been surprisingly bloodless so far, despite Bruce killing three guys with about 10 bullets to each man. The actual gunplay seems a bit flat too, as well the gun sounds. Maybe that just comes with that fake noir style they went with. MrBling fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Feb 3, 2018 |
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Feb 3, 2018 20:19
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MrBling posted:is Live Free or Die Hard the one with Justin Long as some sort of hacker and there's a scene where Bruce kills a helicopter with a car? I owe it a rewatch. Timothy Olyphant and Maggie Q were the villains, and I like them so much now from their own shows, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead played McClane's daughter, and of course she's awesome. Kevin Smith was in it too, but oh well.
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Feb 3, 2018 20:22
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There are only a couple of fights and shootouts but in this day and age I'd definitely say that Brawl in Cell Block 99 classifies, and is very, very good. It's basically a more serious, grittier Ricky-Oh, i.e. a prison exploitation flick with brawling instead of kung fu. Vince Vaughn looks legit scary as hell as a guy who's forced back into running drugs, though I'm not entirely sure he sells his dadbod as an in-shape fighter. Obviously things go bad and he's locked up and forced by the bad guys to kill some dude in another prison to save his kidnapped wife.
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Feb 3, 2018 21:15
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MrBling posted:
That's interestingto me, because I feel the opposite. I've always liked the loudness of the guns and the way dudes fly fifty feet from the impact of a bullet. Also, "it'll hurt if I do."
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Feb 3, 2018 21:17
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As much as I'm a huge fan of the entire Fast & Furious franchise, I'm weirdly down on the idea of a 9th film. I'm into the idea of the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff, for sure, but rewatching Fate of the Furious made me realize how integral Paul Walker ended up being to the team. He was kind of a humbling presence. I think Justin Lin is back for 9 though, so I'm sure the first trailer for it will suck me back in.
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Feb 4, 2018 07:04
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