Lemme guess: subby thinks The Dark Knight was God's gift to cinema and also wears Batman Underoos.

gopher321: Lemme guess: subby thinks The Dark Knight was God's gift to cinema and also wears Batman Underoos.

No. I liked the first two.
And then the third happened; Peter Parker the Emo Spider-Man.
I enjoyed The Dark Knight, but I still think that Burton's Batman was better than both of Nolan's. They're not exactly on par with great cinema, but they're good popcorn movies.
Seeing all the back and forth on Spider-Man 4 has me a little concerned.

/and my Underoos are Aquaman, thank you

gopher321: Lemme guess: subby thinks The Dark Knight was God's gift to cinema and also wears Batman Underoos.

I'm not submitter but that 3rd Spider-Man movie was terrible.

Spidey 3 was a good script. Then Marvel got hold of it.

"Not enough! Sandman isn't cool enough, the fans want Hobgoblin. Wait! The fans also want Venom! Make it all fit, Raimi, or we'll get someone else to write it."

If that's how S-M four is going, too, I'm for skip the damn film entirely.

Hey, I'm sure not defending SM3 - it was screwed from the script stage and we all know it. Hopefully Sony/Columbia Pictures learned their lesson not to interfere with the creative process; but most likely not.

unlikely: Spidey 3 was a good script. Then Marvel got hold of it.

I'm not entirely sure that's how it went down. The first two movies had David Koepp credited as the screen writer. The third flick, his name isn't even in the credits. Instead, Sam and Ivan Raimi wrote it themselves. Now don't get me wrong. I like the Raimi brothers. In addition to the Evil Dead flicks, those guys also brought us the highly underrated Darkman.

But it seemed that Koepp was the missing ingredient.

Spiderman 3 was an unadulterated POS. The Dark Knight deserved to be mentioned as one of the year's best.

With that out of the way, I am befuddled. How hard is it, really, to write a comic book movie script? Here. I have 50,000 bucks. Best 10 fan submissions win a grand, winner gets 40 grand, I get all IP rights to all submissions. I'm set for the decade.

/I am not a movie studio and I am not offering any money for anything

yogaFLAME: How hard is it, really, to write a comic book movie script?

There's the rub. The screenwriter and the director want to tell a story. The producer probably even wants to tell a story. The parent company (Marvel, DC, etc) wants to sell toys, Happy Meals, cereal, t-shirts, and all the other things that the movie will act as an advertisement for - even the eventual DVD sale.

It's not just for comic book movies, either. The whole thing becomes a byzantine mess. If "Hero Guy 2" does well in the theater, it will actually reignite home video sales and rentals of the original "Hero Guy." When "Hero Guy 3" flops, it will negatively affect sales of the first two movies. Show business is less about the show and more about the business.

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying this, but I hate sauerkraut. No, wait. A screenwriter for a comic book movie needs to be some kind of suicidal nut.

The toy company guys will say the villain needs more sidekicks, so they can sell more toys. The distributor will ask you to tone down the violence, but don't tone it down too much. PG-13 movies sell more tickets than R or PG ones. The lead actor will complain there isn't enough of him in the movie.

shivashakti: I'm not submitter but that 3rd Spider-Man movie was terrible.

Same here.

Horrible all the way around.

The only way that the fourth movie could be any good is if you have Bruce Campbell getting into drunken bar fights for two hours.

Oh, and Spider-Man appears at some point and delivers some kind of smarmy putdown or something.

BEST. SPIDEY. MOVIE. EVER.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: The only way that the fourth movie could be any good is if you have Bruce Campbell getting into drunken bar fights for two hours.

Oh, and Spider-Man appears at some point and delivers some kind of smarmy putdown or something.

No, dude. Get rid of Tobey. Bruce Campell is Spider-Man, delivering his own brand of smarmy putdowns while in a drunken two-hour bar fight. And at the very end, they could superimpose Dalton surrounded by a glowing aura, smiling and nodding in approval.

We have to leave Dalton out of this. It's only right.

Road House should never cross the streams with a Spider-Man movie.

Bruce Campbell as a drunkenly brawling Spidey could STILL work, though. I'll stand by this idea.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: Bruce Campbell as a drunkenly brawling Spidey could STILL work, though. I'll stand by this idea.

It needs just a bit more star power, though. It feels like that's not enough to get an audience through 2 solid hours. 1 hour and 50 minutes, maybe. But they're going to need a kicker at the last 10 minutes.

GreenAdder: It needs just a bit more star power, though. It feels like that's not enough to get an audience through 2 solid hours. 1 hour and 50 minutes, maybe. But they're going to need a kicker at the last 10 minutes.

... I'm thinking the entire third act of Hot Fuzz played really, really fast with a ten-minute loop of Herb Alpert's "Spanish Flea" playing in the background.

yogaFLAME: With that out of the way, I am befuddled. How hard is it, really, to write a comic book movie script? Here. I have 50,000 bucks. Best 10 fan submissions win a grand, winner gets 40 grand, I get all IP rights to all submissions. I'm set for the decade.

I'd send you a copy of ASM 39. Or 205. Or anything in the 300-315 run. There, now you've got storyboards, too.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: ... I'm thinking the entire third act of Hot Fuzz played really, really fast with a ten-minute loop of Herb Alpert's "Spanish Flea" playing in the background.

I like it. Think we could get Kevin Murphy to do a running play-by-play on the bar fight?

Hell, you want to do a good Spidey Film, just take AF15 and issues 1-6 and do them in order, use the books for storyboards, and make each book run about 15 minutes.

Spidey lives not as a cool new thing but as a nostalgia thing anyway. CGI it so you will believe a man can swing, run those stories, you get the nostalgia market and take over the world. And as a bonus, you don't get a repeat of SM3.

GreenAdder: I like it. Think we could get Kevin Murphy to do a running play-by-play on the bar fight?

Throw in some color commentary by way of Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett and you've got a deal!

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener: Throw in some color commentary by way of Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett and you've got a deal!

Alright. Let's start filming this.

rcain 2010-01-06 05:36:41 AM

THIS.

rcain: The English Major: I enjoyed The Dark Knight, but I still think that Burton's Batman was better than both of Nolan's.

I strongly beg to differ. Batman Begins blew Burton's franchise out of the water hands down.
There was a lot more depth in developing the character of Batman that Burton's take just didn't get into. Burton assumed the audience already knew Batman and instead put the emphasis on the story behind the bad guys. And in Nolan's take, Batman got reinvented, and it really made for a compelling story that wasn't focused just on fighting the villain of the week, but on the inner torment. It's that strong character development that really made all the difference in the world.


I disagree. Michael Keaton's Batman was genuinely psychotic and out of his league physically but chose to do what he did anyway. Christian Bale's Batman trained as a ninja and we got to see where he ordered his Bat-ears. There wasn't a moment of psychosis in his character. All of which was more logical but not as interesting. Heath Ledger's Joker was a lot better than Jack's though.

FeedTheCollapse: The English Major: I still think that Burton's Batman was better than both of Nolan's.



Eh? Are you submitting those MST3k links because you like the actual films?

SM3 wasn't that bad, but definitely the worst of the series thus far. I would be concerned for SM4 though. Even sadder is that the preview for Iron Man 2 looked like it might be suffering from the same bloat that generally plagues film #3 in comic book movies.

Funny, but no.
I'm not saying Nolan's films were bad; they were good in their own right. Except Scarecrow.
But there's just something about Michael Keaton, Michael Gough, Jack Nicholson, Porkins, and the moody atmosphere that made those films something special. Maybe it was because I was ten when Burton's Batman came out, but it was great.

Just don't let Quesada get involved.

Mr. Slippyfist: This: Again, that was the whole point. Venom was forced onto Raimi. He quite obviously hated being forced to use the character, so gave him 5 minutes of screen time before killing him off. I'm betting the "problems with the script" are Venom-related. The studio is pissed at him over SM 3 and wants him to bring back Venom or Carnage or something like that.

Adding Venom snowballed into the shiat show that was SM3. I can almost guarantee the original script was going to a lot more time on Sandman's story, but since they had to shove in all that symbiote suit and Venom stuff, they had no time.

So instead they just went with, um, yeah, this is the real guy who killed Uncle Ben. That took about 5 minutes and left plenty of time for the emo, dancing, piano playing, jazzy Peter Parker.

But it was SO GOOOOOOOD.