The Reboot Movie

A recent trend has begun to take over the recent trend of making comic book movies: The reboot movie. The reboot movie is what happens when you let your comic book movie get out into the public eye without having kept an eye on your maverick director, who wouldn't sign the contract unless he could create his "vision."

What the director fails to realize is that no one gives a crap about his "vision." What the fans want is someone to slap their comic books on the big screen. Losing sight of this is what led to the celluloid afterbirth known as "Batman and Robin," quite possibly the worst comic book movie ever, and the movie that put the fatal shots in the head of the Batman movie franchise. It took eight years before Warner Bros. put out "Batman Begins," mainly because they wanted to make sure America forgot about the Bat-nipples and Arnold Schwarzenegger's dialogue.

While it worked to let Christopher Nolan go in his room, play with his toys, and bang out a movie without studio executives saying things to him like, "his costume looks too faggy (an actual Jon Peters quote, albeit for Superman)," or "can you add some elves and monsters like in 'Lord of the Rings,' (an actual Jon Peters sentiment)" it completely failed when they let Bryan Singer retreat to his "Fortress of Man Worship," secretly ogle Brandon Routh through a telephoto lens and call it a movie. As a result, the franchise reboot was dead on arrival, after they worked so hard to bring it back to life, having seen it die on that fateful day in 1987 when Mark Pillow walked out of the dressing room dressed as the Nuclear Man.

Now, Superman is one of those evergreen franchises that can always make money for DC, and they know that a good Superman movie can easily bring in $300 million domestic. Why should they have to wait another 20 years to make another Superman movie just because Bryan Singer couldn't resist making Superman a creepy, deadbeat dad? Why not just pretend that the last movie never even happened?

Just because Singer was so distracted by Routh's package that he forgot that Superman was capable of throwing punches in between knocking up Lois and staring at her in the shower doesn't mean that some other, more talented director won't get it right. And apparently, that's the mentality that Warner Bros. is going with...except Singer is still the director. They just won't let him live betwixt Richard Donner's asscheeks in this outing.

It's a trend that's taking place over at Marvel, as well, where they're trying to repair TWO botched franchises. Hopefully, they won't stop with just these two, because Daredevil doesn't have to have Ben Affleck in the costume to make it work.

In 2008, "Punisher: War Zone" will be released, starring Ray Stevenson as Frank Castle. Ray Stevenson replaces Thomas Jane in the title role and Lee Alexander replaces Jonathan Heinsleigh as a director who's actually familiar with The Punisher. This isn't the first time that a Punisher movie has been made, but if "Punisher: War Zone" turns out to be good it'll be the first time they didn't screw it up. I still fail to see what's so hard about making a movie where the hero is a deranged killer with a van full of guns who drives around town shooting criminals. I used to believe that not even Dolph Lundgren could screw that up, but I was wrong.

Also, in 2008, "The Incredible Hulk" will be released, starring, and apparently, written by, Ed Norton. That might have been too many commas, but what really matters is that this movie needed to be made because the first one was so bad that people at Marvel have felt the need to reassure the public that this one won't suck. Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios' President of Production, said and I quote, "The Hulk movie will be different from this one because this one will be good." The sound you just heard was Feige slapping Ang Lee across the face.

Even the last James Bond movie, "Casino Royale," is considered a reboot. "Star Trek" has a reboot coming sometime down the road. Rumor has it that "Street Fighter" is getting a do-over. Sometimes, this is the best thing you can do for a franchise. You know, just make a movie and hope that no one remembers how badly you screwed up the last one. Maybe the producers of "Resident Evil" or "The Mummy" will read this and take notes. It's never too late to correct your horrible, rage-inducing mistakes.

"Superman Returns" writers shown the door

The world is going to be shocked to discover that Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, the writers who tanked the Superman franchise before it even got off the ground by forgetting to write action and excitement into "Superman Returns," have opted not to write the sequel to 2006's historically bad celluloid turd, according to Variety. They also reported dancing in the streets, or at least in comic book stores, before ambulances were called to provide oxygen for the out-of-shape shut-ins who frequent these establishments.

The word is that Warner Bros. wants to start fresh with the next movie anyway, expressing complete surprise that fans didn't accept Superman being a baby daddy, not throwing a single punch, not doing anything "super," being portrayed as a stalker, and Lex Luthor not being a threat to anyone. Bryan Singer was reportedly pleased with how the movie turned out because Brandon Routh was "delicious."

Here's hoping this leads to a cleaning of house, starting with Bryan Singer, and followed by Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey, having their roles as Lois Lane and Lex Luthor being filled by actors who actually possess the qualities to perform those roles.

Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Nuff said.

Jackie Chan and Jet Li are going to be in a movie together. If you have any follow up comments to that, I couldn't hear them over the sound of my own pleasure moans.

Apparently, this is old news, but since I was killing myself with work back in April (when IGN first reported the name of this project, it must have slipped by me. Working 18 hours days can do that to a guy.

At any rate, the movie is called "The Forbidden Kingdom," but it doesn't matter what it's called, because I'm gonna see it regardless. They could call this movie "The World's Most Funniest Prison Rape Scenes" and I would still go see it. I'd walk right up to the box-office window and in my loudest voice, say "One ticket for the bloody asshole movie."

And if that wasn't enough, the movie's fight scenes are being choreographed by Yuen Wo-Ping, the guy who made Keanu Reeves a man in "The Matrix," and the guy who contributed to my ongoing love affair with Ziyi Zhang. He also made Donnie Yen slightly more famous than Rongguang Yu, but much less famous than Chow Yun-Fat.

The only problem I can foresee is this "family film" label, which can be the kiss of death for something like this. I'm already actively boycotting the "PG-13 comedy," but can being family friendly hurt this movie that much? I can't imagine anyone even wanting to see a movie with Jackie Chan and Jet Li if they weren't going to throw down and I'm sure the studio knows this.

No one goes to see their movies to see their layered performances. Jet Li almost thought they did, but word must have gotten back to him that his movie career was going to end right after "Fearless" if he didn't go back to kicking guys through walls. The word will travel fast if these two guys don't deliver what we want to see: Both of them, beating the pure crap out of each other.

"The Forbidden Kingdom" will be released in September 2008.

The Thievery of Bryan Singer

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