jdavis said:
He's a handsome, rich, egotistical, drunken actor
I don't follow the peronal lives of actors so I'm a bit in the dark here. Is Affleck an alcholic or arrested for drunk driving or something?
And I'm not a fan of Affleck either. He seems like a nice guy in interviews, but as an actor he's always, well, Ben Affleck, if you know what I mean. In the trailers and sneak previews I've seen, his portrayal of Matt Murdock (Daredevil's secret identity, a blind lawyer) seems like any other Ben Affleck role except in sunglasses.
OTOH, and actor I
do hate is Val Kilmer. I don't think I've ever seen a nice thing said about him. On the set of The Island Of Dr. Moreau, Brando said to him, "You're confusing your talent with your paycheck."
It was also on that film that a camera man alleges that he put out a cigarette on his face. Kilmer, however, says he merely flicked in the camera man's face. See, he's not a jerk.
I knew someone who work in the crew on a Stallone picture and she said that he was the biggest jerk she'd ever met (Kurt Russell was the nicest, btw). The director of Judge Dredd hated him so much that he swore off working with A list actors (Sly apparently rewrote the movie as they were filming to the point that the director claims it's nothing like the original script).
Anyway, getting back to DD, I'm keeping an open mind, but I'm not too optimistic.
Obviously, I'm not too thrilled with the lead.
I've also seen some clips, including a fight between DD and Elecktra, which wasn't encouraging. First, it was shot too close with too much slo-mo. Also the music, hip hop with a very slow beat, really didn't work for a fight scene. It seemed as inappropriate as Dueling Banjos in the finale of Conan.
I'm hoping the full fight is better. Since the movie hasn't been released, yet, the music might change, and, possibly, the camera is pulled back for the rest of the fight, and it doesn't overuse the slo-mo. It may just be a bad piece of the fight we saw...but I'm worried that may not be the case.
And the costume designer needs to be beaten over the head with something large and heavy. The DD uniform looks good from a distance, but what's up with that collar? Have you seen the clips with it open? Dear God, it looks ugly.
I suppose we should be lucky that they went with the one they did. I saw some sketches in a magazine of some other possiblites, and they were unbelievably bad. One looked like the leather guy from The Village People. No joke. It was all black, bare chested, and with a very, how should I put this, effeminate-looking leather jacket (it really looked like it was made for a woman).
No shirt?! And I thought that the nipples on Batman were bad!
The new Bullseye looks really dumb with that tattoo or scar or whatever it's supposed to be. Why couldn't he wear his costume?
Okay, I know that there will be people who say that what looks good in comics would look stupid on the screen, but I have to disagree. Look at Spider-Man and Superman, two of the most comic booky suits around, and they worked. I'd have like to have seen an attempt to recreate Bullseye's costume, even if it was slightly modified like Batman and The Flash.
But, I'm afraid that the costumes may be symptomatic of a much larger issue.
I remember reading an interview with the writer of that Captain America film. He talked about how he thought the costume was silly, so he tried to keep Cap in regular clothes as long as possible. I'm worried that this may be what's going on here: The producers are embarrassed that they are doing a comic book movie.
I hope I'm wrong about this.
EDIT: And I know I started by saying that I didn't follow the personal lives of actors and then talked about Kilmer and Stallone. I didn't seek these tidbits out, mind you. They were in interviews and news (the camera man sued Kilmer) and a conversation with someone who worked on the set of a movie.
