Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Hollywood's Problem With Comic Book Movies

Doom is not pleased.
Welcome back to the internet's most sporadic comic book blog! I know I haven't written much on here this year, and I'll be honest that that's probably not going to change, but every once in a while I see something so phenomenally great or something so phenomenally dumb that it gets my brain whirring and I have to write something or blood's going to come shooting out of my nose. Today's post is brought to you by the announcement that in the new Fantastic Four film, Dr. Doom will not be named Dr. Doom, nor will he be a Latverian monarch nor even a businessman. He's a computer hacker that goes by the handle DOOM. Take a guess as to whether I regard this as phenomenally great or phenomenally dumb. Go ahead. Guess.

Here's the thing, I can understand how this came about. I can even sympathize with why it did. I mean, I can see the thought process of this change. I used to blame the suits at studios for things like this, but I'm rapidly beginning to understand that a lot of this kind of dumb can be laid at the feet of the creative types, and I think I've finally figured out why.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Why a Wonder Woman Movie is Trickier Than You Might Think

And we're back! Between work and the holidays, I haven't been able to blog, but now Marvel has confirmed development of a solo Black Widow movie. And, of course, everyone's response, including mine, is, "So what's the hold up on the Wonder Woman movie, DC?" DC has one of the most iconic female characters in any medium available to it, yet the property continues to sit in development hell: a TV pilot that went nowhere, a movie that had Joss Whedon attached and died in development, and plenty of other attempts that haven't even made it as far as getting a name attached to them. But the truth is, developing a Wonder Woman movie or TV series is a lot trickier than people want to admit.