KnowTheToe said:
I I passed on seeing Spiderman 2 because I did not see it bringing anything fresh to the screen. I am sure it is good, but it does not really motivate me to go to the theater and I see a lot of films in the theater.
You can still correct that mistake, if you want. Terminator 3 is just a derivative...Spiderman 2, in addition to being one of the best superhero movies ever, is a signifcantly different film from the first one. It isn't about becoming a superhero...it's about the conflicts of desire and duty, responsibility and self-interest. Spiderman 2 is about Peter Parker, the man, and the difficult life he leads. Spiderman 2 is a perfect distillation of why Spiderman rose to popularity and has remained there, ever since.
Ranger REG has it spot on the money concerning CGI actors: it takes a lot of work to puppet one character, and even when it becomes less expensive, it still will be time consuming (regardless of the speed of the rendering). If you compare a CGI movie to Tom Cruise's salary, you'll come out a winner, but compare it to 'El Mariachi' or ''Six-String Samurai', and you won't.
Dave Stebbin's point about the decreasing cost of CGI is probably the most significant. No one honestly thought, in 1982, that an X-men movie could be done
well. The special effects just would be too expensive, and most likely still wouldn't do justice to the material. There have been plenty of superhero movies, but traditionally they all were laughably bad. Superman the Movie was the first serious attempt at the character with a huge budget of $55 million and made $134 million (which, for 1978, was amazing). To put it in perspective, Star Wars (released the prior year) had a budget of....$11 million (Empire? $18 million). Most of that budget was for the expensive special effects. Effects that are, today, much cheaper, primarily due to digital effects.
Superhero movies aren't new, though. We've had serials of superheroes since the very beginning. Add in all comics in general, and we've had lots more. From Blondie, Jose and Pussycats, Archie and so on. Tales from the Crypt is a classic example. Some weren't good, obviously, like Howard the Duck, Swamp Thing, Superman IV, Captain America, Captain America and Captain America. We had Spiderman, Wonder Woman and the Hulk on TV in the 1970s, as well as the Bionic Man and The Man from Atlantis, among many others. We had Dr. Strange, the Punisher, Judge Dread, Barb Wire, Batman, Spawn, Mystery Men, the Fantastic Four and JLA unreleased material, Dick Tracy, TMNT, The Crow, Blade and on and on and on.
The only difference now is that we're getting really good superhero movies, usually made by people who actually read the comics and get it before attempting to make the movie. Spiderman 1/2, X-men 1/2 and Hellboy all work so well because the directors loved the original material. Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro practically are engaged in labors of love, and it shows. Here's hoping they don't mess up the Fantastic Four.
