Monday, January 29, 2007

Ultimately A Little Better The Second Time

So as I mentioned previously, I didn't update my Netflix queue in time and got "Ultimate Avengers II" sent to me. It's actually a slightly better movie than the first one, only because they don't have to spend time introducing all the characters and going through origin stories so there are a couple more action scenes throughout the movie. They do introduce the new ultimate line version of the Black Panther. Iron Man continued his role from the first movie of being the designated punching bag. Seriously, in both movies this guy gets his butt handed to him on multiple occasions. In trying to look at why they did that, especially since he's got his own animated feature that just came out in addition to the live action movie they're doing with Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, I think it's to show the power of the foe they're facing. Having Iron Man get punched full on by the Hulk shows you how powerful the Hulk is because you can see Iron Man's armor is all beat up after the hit. Whereas if the Hulk were to punch Black Widow or Nick Fury with the same amount of strength you would be picking up pieces of them from three states over. So I think Iron Man gets beat up as a way of letting the viewer realize how grave the threat being faced is, while at the same time offering some protection from the same threat by not having the character on the receiving end of the beating get killed. Check the battle with the Hulk from the first movie to see what I mean. Overall I liked the second entry of Ultimate Avengers better than the first one, but considering how bad the first one was, that's not exactly high praise. I am glad I rented it, if only because on this one they put together a 'gag reel' of clips where they spliced together various clips and had the actors re-dubbed some scenes. All in all those five minutes for me made it worth the price of admission.

Oh yea, you know those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials? It appears they're redoing them for the UK. For the most part they're following the scripts of the US versions, but they're ever so slightly tweaked. I love those commercials. But I really liked John Hodgman on the Daily Show before he started doing the US commercials. His statistic segments were always hysterical. And from looking at his IMDB page, he's going to be in Coraline, which is an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman book. So I'll be seeing that at some point, because I really like Neil's stuff (MirrorMask was a very well done movie in my opinion).

6 comments:

Scott said...

Anansi Boys (by Gaiman, of course) was an incredible book. Really, really good.

If you haven't read it, you should.

Curt Sawyer said...

Neverwhere and Good Omens both rocked!!

gaz said...

being a Pratchett fan i'd have to go with Good Omens, definitely!

"pollution took over from pestilence when he retired, muttering about penicilin, in 1936. if only he'd stuck around..."

tehe

JamesF said...

Ok, I'm officially amazed that a throw away line about liking Neil Gaiman has highlighted the fact that this many of us like his stuff. And here I thought I was one of the few people that enjoyed his works.

BullBunky said...

So these UK Apple ads. First off, I'm a sucker for a British accent. So, part of these ads really made me chuckle. But after watching all of the US ads (I do love them), I just can't switch my loyalties. The US mac and PC characters are just too ingrained in my brain.

BullBunky said...

OK, I just had to comment again. I just checked out two of the newer US Apple ads (Surgery and Tech Support) and they are just hysterical. If you haven't seen them, you really should hit the Apple page and do so.