Gotham is so bad, I think it gave me cancer

Gotham gives the impression of some subpar police show that was thrown back and told "You need a gimmick"... That gimmick? BATMAN! Kind of. Not really but you get the feeling someone said "Hey, Batman is popular and Batman fanboys are idiots that will lap up anything even remotely Batman related!" and with such a profound indictment of the bottomless, ruinous stupidity of fanboys - Gotham was greenlit.

It's quite possible doctorates will be penned on the terribleness of this show. For something to prime an audience on a show, it has one trick "HEY, YOU KNOW BATMAN STUFF?! Do you? DO YOU? DO YOU?!?!" because nothing else in the show is worth noting... well, nothing good.

The acting is wooden, the directing and editing is piss poor. We're supposed to believe that all these characters in Batman lore are interconnected from before the word go and hey, there's nothing wrong with re-imaginings but prequels are always a nightmare, even when well conceived and this is anything but that.

Catwoman witnesses the murder of Batman's parents, Jim Gordon (and Harvey Bullock) investigate. Montoya is tipped off it was a framejob (on Poison Ivy's father) by the Penguin, The Riddler works in the police department. Oh and obviously, they're all doing their schtick. Riddler riddles, Catwoman (a peri-pubescent youth) is flipping around the rooftops, Poison Ivy is always fondling plants, the Penguin starts out with an umbrella.

This stuff makes Smallville seem Shakespearean by comparison.  Even Arrow!

So bad it's awful.

Superman vs. The Elite

So, as we all know - when it comes to live action films, there is no right DC can do for doing wrong... the exception obviously being Chris Nolan's Batman but fortunately, it's continuing to quietly produce animated features.

Superman vs. The Elite is their latest offering and is actually rather good. It's not QUITE in the All Star Superman league but it is good, following - as that did - a pre-existing and critical acclaimed storyline in the comics, which is really how these things should go.

The problem with Superman as a character - regardless of medium - is that a lot of people find him dull. He's   pretty much the dictionary definition of a flying brick (or a physical god) and has about a bajillionty superpowers - to the point that he has to have THREE glass jaws just to compensate for it... and a weakness like kryptonite makes things a bit prosaic because, when you know Superman is essentially invulnerable EXCEPT to kryptonite - well, it doesn't take a genius to work out that people are going to have krptonite... It's either that or Superman is just up against someone he can punch a lot and destroy the city.

Superman is generally considered the quintessential boyscout and hence, being a physical god who personifies hope - the polar opposite of the brooding mere mortal Batman, who is the only Mary Sue that it's acceptable to not just like but openly hero worship. This is the real problem with Superman - it's hard to relate to the guy.

Superman vs. The Elite is essentially a response to all the darker, edgier heroes that are (at best) morally grey and will kill and commit questionable acts to achieve their ends vs. Superman's faith in the justice system and humanity. It's exactly what Superman needs - a problem that he can't punch his way out of. The moral quandary is really the heart of the story.

The Elite are four anti-heroes led by Manchester Black - a Mancunian with immense telepathic and telekinetic powers, a big black guy who is superstrong and has some kind of energy power, a horny succubus type girl with the ability to create snakes or something and The Hat, who is constantly drunk and summons demons from his hat and has various other non-specified magic.

The conflict arises from Superman's belief in the rule of law and The Elite's amoral pursuit of who they judge "the bad guys". The Elite are seen as heroes for their uncompromising treatment of criminals and terrorists and while they both seemingly serve the side of right, a conflict is inevitable.

All-in-all, it's a good offering and if you can suffer through all the awful British accents - it's worth a watch.

Batman/Superman: Apocalypse - let's begin, shall we?

This follows right on the heels of the previous Batman/Superman animated feature - Public Enemies and in much the same way as that, it follows the comics in a general pattern of story... so, if you've read that - you'll know pretty much the entire story.

If you haven't - this picks up almost immediately after the end of Public Enemies, with the giant kryptonite mountain... sorry METEOR impacting into Gotham river. Batman turns up and finds a ship... and in that ship is SUPERGIRL! Except, it's comic book land so... y'know, a fight between Supergirl (only just learning to use her powers) and Batman begins.

Naturally, he eventually just gets some kryptonite out and we cut to some time later. Kara is at the FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE with Bats and Supes... Batman is naturally suspicious about a hot girl with super powers, claiming to be related to Superman and all that kind of stuff... Anyway, Superman trusts her and they take her to Metropolis... whilst trying to fit in, Batman and Wonder Woman essentially spring a trap that shows Supergirl isn't ready and she goes off to the Wonder Woman's magical lesbian island of Amazons for Spring Break for some hot girl on girl action... y'know catfights.

As one might guess, this is all going fine until Dark Seid turns up, abducts Supergirl and brainwashes her.

Supes, Batman, Wonder Woman and Big Barda get together to save her... Batman might be the world's greatest detective but going to Apokolips seems... fairly insane... but as this shows, being THE GOD DAMN BATMAN or his Bat Armour... or... SOMETHING allows him to be thrown against pillars and damage them and still be... well, alive. Most people who get thrown against a solid stone surface with any force would just collapse and die. Batman is fine though.

Anyway, Batman - being THE GOD DAMN BATMAN - basically beats Dark Seid saying "Oh, yeah - armed a bunch of world destroying bombs and if you don't let Supergirl go - BOOM! I'M THE GOD DAMN BATMAN!"

So, everyone goes home and all is well - OR IS IT?! Superman and Supergirl get jumped at the Kent's farm by Dark Seid... who points out that he just said he wouldn't mess with Supergirl... So, I guess he's lawful evil? Amusingly, Supes gets KO'd very early on and Supergirl does most of the punching. Predictably, evil is vanquished and good triumphs!

If you liked Superman/Batman: Public Enemies - this is pretty much more of the same. The story is neither complicated nor deep but it's very tight - that's presumably a function of the limited length of these features - and as far as action goes, it delivers. The quality of animation is impressive... one curious thing is that Granny Goodness not only LOOKS quite mannish... she sounds like a man. That's a minor quibble though, most of character design is great and the voice acting is all pretty good though.

Overall, probably the best DC animated effort thus far.

So, again it's time to comment on how DC has a whopping one live action film franchise (albeit one that is probably the best critically received) while Marvel has a half-dozen projects in the works... but of course, DC is producing animated features and the latest is Green Lantern: First Flight.

So, Hal Jordan is just in a flight simulator when a Green Lantern ring takes him to a dying Green Lantern and before you know it, he's all Green Lantern'd up and... well, y'know... and this is in the first five minutes. No need to take the origin story slow, eh? Of course, it's somewhat difficult to give a great deal of depth to a Green Lantern origin - it's pretty much "here's your ring, good luck with that."

And we get him head off to Oa and all of a sudden, Hal is doing the Green Lantern thing with Sinestro. For those that are unaware of Sinestro's backstory - it's fair to say that his role as bad guy is telegraphed and that it's all but impossible to miss the fact he's cast as the traitor type character for whom the phrase "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" was surely coined. He's openly contemptuous of the Masters and shows very little in the way of restraint. He and Hal are running a very literal good cop/bad cop routine.

We pretty much bounce from this scene to another - bigger action scene... and then, it's just exposition about Sinestro's end game, framing up Hal and then setting up the big fight at the end... As usual, we're in a very short turn around. About seventy minutes... so, really - there's very little time between events for anything approaching character development or serious plot, which seems silly as we got a decent amount of that in Wonder Woman but here, it feels a lot more flat. In fact, Sinestro is the only character that really feels fleshed out.

There are - of course - plenty of the Green Lantern roster for those that know their stuff from the comic or cartoons but hardly any of them really get any time. To the point Killawog is probably the only one that anyone will remember. Even Hal feels a little flat. Oh, yes - he's the square jawed good guy who pretty much walks in and kicks ass with his power ring (despite a total lack of training) but Sinestro just feels like he has more depth but that's possibly a function of the fact he gets a comparable amount of screen time to Hal and he has motives and so on, Hal is kind of just along for the ride.

All in all, it's ok. It's fun... there's some pretty cool action in there but it's just not Wonder Woman but not amazing or anything. Too shallow and the action really doesn't compare to Wonder Woman... or the plot... or the characters.

When Heroes appeared a few years back it was met with universal adoration from critics and audiences alike. It made the initial hype of Lost seem luke warm by comparison. A story of ordinary people with extraordinary powers - mostly just trying to live their lives and yet all being drawn together by fate. Most people would agree that it was probably one of the most easily compelling pieces of TV for many years. In short - it was a well conceived and well executed, developed its characters and built up and up and up to a

The show - like many others - was somewhat inconvenienced by the Writers Strike but regardless, ploughed on. Naturally, when your entire first season is generally considered a televisual masterpiece -that's going to be a hard act to follow. Especially as almost all the storylines brought up were resolved - aside from a few people who may or may not have been alive or dead.

In many ways, this created an almost immediate problem for the show. There was no inherent direction for it to go. While the destruction of New York is far from the top of the scale of epic, the ending didn't really create any particular reason for the characters to stay together. This led to one of the biggest differences between season one and season two. With season one, we hit the ground running. We know there are all these people with special abilities and continue to build momentum with their interwoven tales. Season two was, by contrast - ponderous. As events pick up four months after the climax of season one - we find that, indeed - many of the characters have moved on and so we spend a considerable amount of time establishing this. Also, it's worth noting that a season slated for twenty four episodes became one that was eleven episodes... you'd think that would mean it was MORE intense.

It was lacklustre and introduced some characters that... just went nowhere... and a lot of story lines... that went nowhere. We had a whole character arc with Hiro that seems to have had pretty much no effect. We had Peter go through a character arc... that seems to have had pretty much no effect (beyond depowering him). Ditto Sylar. Ditto Claire. Ditto EVERYONE.

Season 3 was just a BIG mess though. Oh, we had plenty going on! It was just that we traded the sort of... real people dealing with powers angle for SUPERHERO SOAP OPERA! Now, that's not bad per se but we had so many "Oh, I wasn't really dead." And so on type stuff... and "I'm your father... no, not really." And so on. It's a soap opera in the truest American sense of the word.

The ante is upped in season 3, in that THE WORLD IS AT STAKE! Also, we go all X-men - because apparently everyone with powers must be contained... The Company was SO much more interesting than generic government goons taking people down. Yet, here we are in that scenario. It all feels so contrived. People feel as if they're being pushed around like bets on a roulette table, not drawn in by the string of destiny.

Obviously, when your first act is so full of win... it's hard to follow it up - BSG didn't have smooth sailing but almost managed. Lost utterly failed... but Heroes... just went to pieces.

Ah, Wolverine - a word that sets a million fanboy hearts racing. Fanboys are shit and need to die.

Of course, the fact Hugh Jackman is Wolverine means... well, girls melt for him. Guys think he's awesome. Fanboys... are like lawyers. Not really human. Not worth the consideration of being human.

This film apparently needed ten minutes extra... it really didn't. It needed a STORY. Wolverine's story is one of the most tediously over covered parts of Marvel continuity these days. Given the fact his origins are SECRET... anyone that touched a comic book probably knows the Weapon X story by heart.

Sadly, even the recent animated Hulk vs. Wolverine managed to do a better job at the Weapon X story... and everything except Wolverine popping his claws back in the mid 19th century is skipped over. Granted, 150 years would be a fair bit to cover but there you go. After we get to Vietnam, gross insubordination leads to the an execution for Sabertooth and Wolverine - who are half brothers, by the way. So, we get to them joining the Weapon X project. Wolverine gets a bit bored of murdering people - he has apparently fought in a good portion of all major conflicts in the 19th and 20th centuries... so, makes sense he might get bored of seeing his brother go crazy.

There's no real point getting to know his team mates because they're one dimensional and their screen time is easily counted in seconds. Get used to that. There are a whole gamut of mutant cameos that are short even by cameo standards. Even characters that are significant to the plot - like Gambit... who actually is essentially there PURELY as a plot device to move Logan from A to B - don't get a great deal of screen time. It's really all about Wolverine... like all the X-men films, really. Anyway, he hooks up with Silverfox and is a happy lumberjack - for... no reason but predictably... walking away from a secret black ops group doesn't work out too well and Sabretooth is murdering former team mates - but who REALLY cares. There's no investment in these characters... so, Sabretooth kills Silverfox and Wolverine goes to Weapon X to get adamantium so he can murder Sabretooth.

Then he goes to fight Sabretooth - fights Sabretooth... Then Weapon XI turns up. Yeah, not a real character from the comics... and he has a half dozen powers - oh and he's supposed to be Deadpool... even though Deadpool just has a healing factor... and the fight was fairly anticlimatic.

Then, naturally - Wolverine's memories get wiped by a magical plot device bullet. Silverfox dies... again - oh and Emma Frost is her sister... and another swathe of meaningless mutants... including Cyclops... for no real reason. They do nothing more than run out of the base after Wolverine frees them. So, Gambit comes back to pick up Wolverine - and Wolverine goes off to forget everything and wander around until the X-men film...

It's the problem all prequels suffer from... you always know where things are going to be come the end... so, we knew that Logan was going to end up having his memory wiped... ah well... That's really the least of the problems. The characters really just seem to orbit Jackman, pushing him in the direction he needs to go. The story is pretty weak and it's hard to give a damn about anyone other than Wolverine and maybe Sabretooth because no one is really around long enough to do more than show their abilities. Wolverine's claws look terrible throughout - it's very obviously they're CGI... Really, just a chronically weak story, pretty average fight scenes and just a slew of not very compelling cameos that amounted to little make this a pretty luke warm film. Fanboys might get hung up on some of the details... but really, they're not worth paying attention to compared to a number of rather more glaring inadequacies.

DC has... a huge monopoly on characters that have become ingrained upon the collective cultural memory of the West. It goes without saying that Batman is probably only really in competition with Superman for the most ubiquitous... although, these days Batman is probably firmly on top in terms of popularity - not least due to the uber popular Chris Nolan Batman films.

Naturally, that was preceded by the Timmverse Batman: The Animated Series and the Justice League cartoon. Which are generally considered by fans and critics to be awesome. Even the somewhat weaker Gotham Knights is still pretty solid.

And then came THE BATMAN. Unashamedly aimed at the 5 year olds and mentally retarded. Mostly the mentally. Whatever the Timmverse was... was so quickly forgotten in this shameful embarrassment of that abortive nonsense. That well... uh.

Anyway, THE BATMAN finished. It was natural for fans to be apprehensive about Batman: The Brave And The Bold... It was pretty much proclaiming to be campy... but as it happens... it's pretty good. It's using some of DC's less known villains - but deliberately so... Blue Beetle is there, the Green Arrow and Batman have a rivalry. Not nearly as campy as one might think.

Batman is still kinda broody not the campy 60s Batman... or the pointless The Batman character... It was easy to see this as a futile venture but it has proven itself... It's rather enjoyable.

As is obvious to any cinema goer - Marvels march of films continues... they're pretty much booked up until the Avengers film and they've just got a whole lot of stuff going on in terms of live action, animated features, animated series and the like - even if the Iron Man: Armoured Adventures looks like the most horrific piece of trash ever conceived... since The Batman.

Where is DC and its slew of - much better known and more recognisable - superheroes? Naturally, the world gets excited when there's a new Chris Nolan Batman film about to come out... Superman was met with general indifference and the sequel is going to need to give the titular Man of Steel something more than a fucking mountain of kryptonite to fight.

DC has however made a few forays into the animated features - the previous outting was the pretty damned awesome Justice League: New Frontier, which is definitely worth checking out and now, we've got Wonder Woman. While the live action film sits in purgatory, quietly waiting to be made... we have this to tide us over.

Wonder Woman is often pushed in with Batman and Superman to form DC's "big three"... but really, that's more of a publicity stunt than anything. Despite having been around since the Golden Age... she's not really on a par with either of those characters... so, it's nice to see her get a film to make her own...

And this is QUITE a film. The JLU cartoon had more than its fair share of crowning moments of awesome in terms of fights... but just the opening battle sequence of this film easily puts those to shame in terms of animation and awesome. As with most of these features, it's about 70 minutes... so, the story is pretty simple. We get the backstory of the Amazons and Wonder Woman and the long and short of it is, Wonder Woman has to go into the world of men to take back stray jet pilot Steve Trevor and also stop an evil unleashed that threatens to etc. etc.

It really isn't going to win any awards for the complex weave of stories... it's very simple but there's not a lot of time to tell a complicated story and the simple one works. Naturally, we get Wonder Woman starting out to be a bit "MEN ARE EVIL!" but of course, she relents a bit on that one by the end. The romance angle is there - Trevor is a bit of a goof to start with but he's a decent character and does a good job of cutting WW some slack... because a lot of people might have been tempted to call her a bitch.

Something a little surprising about the whole thing - although, the DCAU tends to be rather more relaxed about such things in straight-to-DVD releases - is that there are quite a few deaths... and beheadings. The beheadings are - in fairness - only done in silouette but there are people being stabbed and having their spines broken... nothing that would get close to warranting the term gore... but it's nice to see battle scenes where those without powers can actually die.

So... in summary, a good yarn with some absolutely wonderful action and battle scenes. The final battle especially, I suspect - will be a crowd pleaser... and there's even a nice little tease at the very end... that many fans of WW and probably the DCAU will smile at. For DCAU and WW fans, a must... and for general superhero fans too. If you finished the recent Hulk Vs. and felt it was too action light? Give this a try. Wonder Woman tosses and gets tossed through more buildings than her insurance can realistically cover. All good wholesome fun with a simple but steady and pretty well paced story. Enjoyable to the point where it's worth hoping that there is more to come.

All comments about Watchmen - the film - will invariably be preceded by "based on the greatest graphic novel of all time." And... it's fair to say that that Alan Moore's piece will take quite something to be supplanted for that honour... Much of Moore's success with it is because he weaves a story of incredible complexity and density, using the medium to the fullest extent possibly. Which is why many people were worried about the film. Adaptations are a tricky business at the best of times and Watchmen was very specifically written to be a comic, not merely a story TOLD in a comic... SPOILERS AHEAD!

That said, Watchmen (the film) does a FAIRLY good job. Rorschach sounds rather too much like Christian Bale's Batman... but the wonderful effects of his mask make that a forgiveable offence... and the film uses a lot of the dialogue and iconography from the comic pretty much verbatim. The entire intro monologue is pretty much directly in line with the book.

The issue of course becomes one of time. There are just a lot of elements that had to be dropped for this film to be of an acceptable length. That's a given of the change of medium. They do however manage to cover the backstory of each character rather well... but the ENDING... the ending is where it all falls apart.

Moore spent considerable amounts of time hinting at some plot beyond the mere mask killings and that while Rorschach might rabidly obsess about it - the reader especially has plenty of incite to the fact that there is something more afoot and that it's not going to be pretty... of course, what this turns out to be is the fact that Adrian Veidt - former superhero - has come up with a plan to SAVE the world from nuclear armaggedon. Which involves manufacturing a threat of alien invasion by teleporting in (thanks to Dr. Manhattan tech) a giant alien which explodes (because teleporters work about as reliably as they do in Star Trek) and also, psychically imprinting images of cosmic horror on the survivors... basically, to make humans do what they do best, unite in fear of something different to them! It's also explained that The Comedian stumbles upon the island where all this is going on and that this is what breaks his spirit...

Some fans of the graphic novel got very upset about the squid... as some fanboys will. Really, what it was... was no big deal. It just had to be a threat to unite the world against an external threat by introducing the outside context problem. Hence pulling humanity BACK from the brink of destruction - albeit it at the cost of millions of lives.

Now... the ending in the FILM... They kind of ignore the advanced tech that Dr. Manhattan made possible and have "free energy" as a recent development... which Veidt uses as a means to simulate an attack by Dr. Manhattan - essentially to the same end as the alien attack. Except... this doesn't really make any sense, although - he never actually says "I'm Off To MARS!" in this... it's fairly clear that everyone knows he has fucked off... so, why would he come back just to sucker punch New York? It might seem trivial but it's FURTHER exacerbated by the fact Nite Owl sees Dr. Manhattan waste Rorschach, does a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"... and then goes to bitch slap Veidt and declares the terrible perversion of humanity this constitutes.

Which might be somewhat acceptable if it wasn't for the fact about 30 seconds earlier, he was saying "Yeah, I'm down with keeping this secret." Part of the CRUX of the film is the moral greyness of the actions of Veidt and the obvious similiarities to the Tale Of The Black Freighter. He is a man GUIDED in his own eyes by right at every turn and yet, in the end - he has become a murderer but feels entirely justified. This pretty much slaps us in the face - almost as much as with Dr. Manhattan's genitals - and says "THIS IS BAD!"

For some people, this will not be a big issue for others it will be. It doesn't really mesh with the overall story. It's kind of hammered in and a number of compromises - beyond those required to compensate for the different mediums - are made in terms of continuity for no other reason than... uh...

The ending aside... For those that pay attention, Zack Snyder (the director) gives you a little hint of his previous film - 300 - by having The Comedian's flat be... 300! Don't worry, if you miss that little tipoff... you'll probably manage to work it out from the repeated and gratuitous use of the slomo/speedup action cuts the made seems to have a raging hardon for - and also the overly long, rather awkward sex scenes. If you don't mind the stylistic slomo of the action scenes, they're fun... although, there are a few more added in but that makes sense - this IS a long film... and the book is not particularly action packed. So, it's an understandable compromise.

Much like the dropping of the Tales of The Black Freighter comic and the newstand owner and not really having the detective involved in The Comedian's murder do much outside the first five minutes. Or reducing Rorschach's running around and beating people up... or his backstory... You could have made Lord of the Rings in its entirety seem short if you'd wanted to FULLY explore the backstory of every character in the same depth as the graphic novel.

It's really... just OK. About as good an adaptation as one could really expect. Nowhere near the same level as the graphic novel... and certainly not the kind of film you want to see if you're expecting a brainless superhero action film... but... just... OK.

Ang Lee's "Hulk" having been atoned for with the rather better received The Incredible Hulk, Marvel has released "Hulk vs.", which is specifically Hulk vs. Wolverine - a fight that fanboys seem to get all kinds of worked up about - and Hulk vs. Thor.

They're totally unrelated, both forty minutes long and pretty much excuse plots for big fights. Which is pretty much what anyone looking into these is going to want.

Hulk vs. Thor is almost painful in its excuse plot. We start out with some exposition from Loki about how Odin does some magical sleep thing once a year and during that time, Asgard is vulnerable and Thor and his pals have to protect him. Loki figures this is a good time for him to send the Hulk in to wipe the floor with Thor - all pretty non-sequiter.

Loki gets Enchantress to work some magic mojo on Banner, separating Banner and the Hulk and then doing some mind control on him (because that ALWAYS goes so well). Loki goes to town in control of Hulk and wipes the floor with a bunch of guards and minor characters who were chatting at the start. Naturally, Thor comes along to lay the smackdown but Loki manages to do a pretty good job of thrashing him.

A lot of this fight is almost beautiful but it's not that impressive as a fight. Inevitably, Loki dicks around too much and the spell is broken. At this point, Enchantress goes "Oh... wait - so, the plan was to KILL Thor... well, I wasn't in for that!" And Loki offs Banner. The Hulk just about beats Thor to death but then Enchantress comes and kisses it better (literally) and for some reason, the Hulk decides to go back and beat the hell out of the city some more.

Thor has some words with Loki but then Enchantress tells us that with Banner dead, she can't return the Hulk to Midgard. At this point, Loki realises - and Thor choking him might help. Irritatingly enough, we are teased with occasional shots of the cannon fodder defence of Odin - which looks pretty awesome but we KEEP missing the good stuff, it seems. Well, what would you rather see - an idyllic after-life for Banner, or the fighty fighty?

Naturally, this being a story with mythology - all you need to do is pop to Hell or its equivalent and ask the relevant deity for your soul back. Banner angsts for a while but chickens out, it turns to Loki to finally convince Hella to take the Hulk. Which naturally saves the day. Of course, then they have the Hulk running around the Hell-equivalent and for some reason this necessitates another fight and then Hella sends him home. Loki gets his comeuppance, Odin wakes up up and we find pretty much everyone survived getting stamped on.

The pacing is pretty uneven, we're slow to start off and constantly, CONSTANTLY avoiding the big fights. We get one decent sized Hulk/Thor fight and one pretty short one at the end. The story really is an embarrassment. It was all so arbitrary. Fun but there's so much "that's it?" feeling. Far too much cutting away from the action and filler for something that is cutting to the credits at close to forty minutes.

All-in-all, it's decent but the pretty animation can't rescue a story that struggles to be mediocre. It's almost as if they'd decided to a double feature and just plucked Thor out of thin air because... well, he's another well known Marvel heavy hitter. It's something of a shame they didn't go for something a little more interesting... Thor is pretty much solidly getting his ass handed to him by the Hulk. So, any notion that this would be more of a match of equals is flawed. Something that pitted Hulk against maybe Juggernaut might have been more fun... and wouldn't have required the terrible excuse story.

Hulk vs. Wolverine is rather more interesting and isn't so painfully contrived. The name is a big misnomer though. The conflict here is really more about Wolverine vs. his former compatriots from Weapon X - Lady Death Strike, Deadpool, Sabertooth and Omega Red.

Wolverine starts out not sure what's going on, before we cut to four hours earlier. Wolverine does his badass thing - including JUMPING OUT A HELICOPTER WITH NO PARACHUTE... and kind of sliding down a mountain. Yeah, he runs around being cool before he tracks down Banner. This being Wolverine... he antagonises Banner but naturally, doesn't off him and ends up getting punted across the forest.

Cue fanboy pleasing fight. Healing factor and adamantium aside - Wolverine would pretty much be paste after the thrashing he takes... but THE POWER OF FANBOYS COMPELS HIM. Round two is just getting underway when Weapon X turn up and tranq the hell out of both of them.

Cue another flashback - this time to Wolverine getting abducted by Weapon X goons and getting his adamantium... and a bit of training and escaping. In which Wolverine kills about a dozen people. It's pretty awesome. Deadpool is also great - in fact, he's a terrible scene stealer.

Deathstrike wants to off Wolverine... but escape ensues and eventually he frees Banner. They do a bit of escaping and fighting - then Wolverine stabs Banner so he'll Hulk out. This results in some awesomeness from most everyone. Even a little more Hulk vs. Wolverine - gasp! Then... we have the mandatory explodey base... but... why the tease of Wolverine & Hulk at the end? It's a fantastic finishing shot but leaves the question unresolved and the Hulk vs. Wolverine quotient very low.

Hulk vs. Wolverine isn't quite as pretty as Hulk vs. Thor but it is really in a different ballpark as far as the story goes. Now, it's fair to say that you'd have to have been hiding under a rock not to have a basic grasp of Wolverine's back story insofar as Weapon X goes but the retelling is cool and gives the characters a reason to be there rather than "the plot demands it".

It's a little ironic that this is shipping dubbed "Hulk Vs." because it does feel a lot like he's really just cameoing despite being the titular character... he does the HULK SMASH, fairly competently but it really feels as if he's never given time to shine... Not just that but anyone hoping these would be actual Hulk stories, will be sadly disappointed. Thor allows for Banner to be a whiney little bitch a bit but really, it's all very trite and the kind of pathos that defines the character is pretty absent.

Bottom line: worth it if you've been gagging to see Wolverine just run around and MURDER A LOT OF PEOPLE, like a bad ass - without the child friendly parameters of the recent cartoon. Worth it if you just want some pretty cool fights... Definitely worth it for people who are Deadpool fans... if Wolverine hogs the screen time from the Hulk, Deadpool steals the scenes from Wolverine... But, if you're looking for something you can get your teeth into? Not for you, not really. The stories are insubstantial and in the case of Wolverine, the kind of stuff even a level one fanboy could summarise without thinking... Really, just there for the bigger fans or those who like the big fights. Those buying it because they love the Hulk - will be a little disappointed.

Autumn - or Fall if you're so inclined - is a season where the days shorten, the nights draw in, the sun weakens and the leaves on the trees turn a dozen hues of gold and rust. It's also time for new seasons for TV to start! Making an an unwelcome return, Smallville season 8 - so, now 5 too many - lumbers onto the scene with about as much energy as a hibernating sloth.

Smallville started out as an attempt to re-energise the live action televisual fortunes of Superman after the rather dire New Adventures of Superman, featuring Dean Cain and Terry Hatcher... it was rather low budget and cheesy in that early 90s way... the first season was passable because they pretty much set up the Lex vs. Superman dynamic nicely but after that, they kind of lost the plot.

Which is really the problem that Smallville has had for some time... It wasn't exactly a show that hit the ground running... but over the first season there was a gradual buildup and that really worked for seasons two and three which culminated in a rather sublime finale. Everything was up in the air...

And then season four happened and in a single episode, everything that had been built crumbled like a sandcastle before an oncoming tide. The cliffhanger was lazily resolved in a binge of deus ex that all too quickly restored the status quo - minus Pete. Except of course, we just had a bunch of stupid stuff happen and the bottom kind of fell out of the show.

In truth, there are two problems that arise for any long running show. It either stays the same or changes abruptly - either in terms of cast or format or style... The secret is walking the line, letting a cast evolve, letting the focus shift... Farscape was only around for four seasons but managed a considerable evolution of its cast and format - but never in a jarring way.

After leaving the safety of high school, Smallville seemed unsure of what to do. Season 8 has seemingly dismantled the support apparatus of its eponymous setting, Clark moving to Metropolis to become a journalist... Not only that, Lex is currently AWOL (replaced by some sexy CEO chick), Jimmy seems to have been strangely absent (replaced by a much more ruggedly handsome chap) despite having just gotten engaged and it seems Green Arrow is back on the rota while Maw Kent and Lana finally drop off the radar.

That's quite a sizeable change from the original cast... currently, only Chloe and Clark are left as regulars. Although, it's fair to say that they've somewhat dominated the cast for some time... and with Clark's parents out the picture, Lionel Luthor dead and so on... It's pretty much down to the irritating Lois to fill that void and prevent Chloe and Clark from just driving the show entirely by the themselves... although, they have effectively been the dynamo behind the show for some time. Chloe is the computer boffin who just hands Clark the information he needs, when required - and then he bursts in and shouts at people.

It's a show that still fills its remit - it's 40ish minutes where your brain can go into sleep mode and you'll still maybe get some enjoyment but the excitement? It's gone and you can never help but feel that the writers don't want to give Clark flight because that would be the end of his development. Oh, maybe he's a tad less naive than he used to be but he's not really changed. He's still duplicitous and wholesome. That's about as far as the character goes. Oh, sure - we can toss in the Lois/Clark angle... their love/hate relationship has been there since she was crowbarred in.

A corpse staggering along... let's hope this season is the last.

Marvel - in contrast to DC - is a veritable mass media machine these days. Not only have they seemingly dozens of films in the pipeline - both animated and live action - but they're also working on more than a few animated series...

But their latest foray into the direct-to-DVD market that is ever so popular these days is "Next Avengers"... If the name isn't familiar to you, that's probably because this particular DVD had a few names - although the concept never really changed.

It's a pretty straight-forward idea, really - and one that's been done before, though... never at any length in the animated medium. Anyway - the premise, the Avengers are great and all. Save the world, bring peace and harmony etc. Then they settle down, have some kids... shortly after that Ultron pretty much wipes the floor with everyone, kids are flown to safety etc.

Things start some time later with the kids in their adolescence... we've got Thor Girl, Captain America Jr., Black Panther Kid... and Wasp Boy. They're all being looked after by an old Tony Stark... and are blissfully unaware of what's going on in the outside world - despite the fact Stark pretty much tells them through the medium of bedtime stories. As one might expect, things do not continue so peacefully. Vision comes back damaged and the kids accidentally activate the "Iron Avengers".

Why Stark made the Iron Avengers when the greatest threat faced by humanity is currently a robot capable of hacking pretty much any piece of technology is never explained... but he's a billionaire supergenius, so he probably just has that kind of stuff lying around. Anyway, as one might guess a half dozen robot blasting off at top speed throw something of a spanner in the works as regards hiding.

So, Ultron flies out to finish the job. Stark sends the kids away and does his Iron Man thing. Vision is all for taking the kids to the Savage Lands but runs out of power. The kids decide they should go and destroy Ultron... because, well - he just wiped the fucking floor with all their parents who were at the top of their game... and there were eight of them. Still, they are children so logic presumably gets trumped by youthful optimism/naivity.

Anyway, they head to Ultron City and start smashing robots... actually, just Thor Girl does that because she's the only one of them that's actually vaguely useful in terms of ass kicking. As one might expect, 4 kids vs. a city of robots is not exactly a winning formula. Turns out that Hawkeye's boy is here too (yes, this is a pretty male slanted cast) and after the classic "grudging acceptance" thing, he stops being such a downer and turns up to help the kids in their plan to rescue Stark from Ultron.

It all comes down to the kids tricking Ultron into paying a visit to an old Bruce Banner - who is still the Hulk... As one might guess, Hulk does some smashing and things are all happily ever after... well, except all their parents are still dead... except Thor. He's just being an absent father or something... had to go off and look after Asgard, yadda, yadda. Fortunately, he's paying some kind of attention and saves his daughter when she starts freezing in space.

All in all, it's a slickly animated piece... it seems that Marvel have decided that they want a decent quality of animation in their stuff now and it's really about time. Western animation was really just starting to look like it was for the under 5s and the mentally challenged. As with most of these things, it's not even making the magical 90 minutes... but the story is reasonably paced and as this is clearly aimed primarily at a younger audience, it makes sense that it's not some lengthy odessy.

It's fun, the action is decent and the characters are likeable... and really, it's so short that you're fairly unlikely to have any opportunity to get bored with it. Nothing earth shattering just the usual but enjoyably packaged and suitably superhero flavoured. Not a patch on Wolverine & the X-men but still quite fun.

Dark Knight was never going to have an easy time of it. Batman Begins set a high bar and the hype for Dark Knight and the building anticipation of it began almost as soon as the premier ended. Combined with the untimely and unfortunate demise of rising star Heath Ledger, it's hardly surprising that Dark Knight had such massive box office success in its opening weekend... what IS surprising is the general agreement - the film lived up to the hype.

Heath Ledger's performance is truly excellent... which, given the strong portrayal by Nicholson in the 1989 Burton film is saying something. It's new... and very much in keeping with the nature of the atmosphere Nolan has created. Very concerned with realism and a dark, brooding atmosphere... this results in the Joker being simultaneously very different from previous incarnations but very much the same and similarly, Two Face - whose appearance in the film wasn't even touched upon in the trailers - is done in a way that bears little resemblance to the comic book treatments but remains true to the character.

Some might be concerned about the replacement of Katie Holmes... from a continuity point of view... it's unfortunate but in a more circumspect sense? Her substitute is infinitely more suited to the role, so the change of actress is a net benefit... had Holmes been playing against Ledger's sublime Joker, it would have been almost as embarrassing as everyone in Superman Returns trying to act with the talent of Kevin Spacey.

There are a few twists in the film... but most of them are fairly obvious to those paying attention but sitll enjoyable... and overall, the only real failing of the film is maybe that it's pacing at times is a bit on the slow side but overall, the almost universal adoration it received is well deserved and certainly - this deserved to punt the tedious Spiderman 3 into the long grass because it surpasses it in every facet of its existence.

Hellboy 2 was never going to spend a whole lot of time in the lime light, sandwiched between a film that had been hyped for over a year... and one that had been hyped since the instant its predecessor hit the box offices... Even The Incredible Hulk dwarfed Hellboy 2 in terms of presence...

So, Hellboy 2 was always going to have to take a stand against the box office monsters of Ironman and Batman on merit, rather than marketing and hype... which seems rather a shame because it doesn't really compare favourably to any of these films... That's not to say it's bad - there's some visuals in this that are far too original and funky to make their way into the far more mainstream of Marvel and DC films - and that's part of the charm of the film.

Sadly though, it doesn't really grab the attention... The Bureau comes off as MiB on a shoestring... and whether that's true to the comic or not, it doesn't feel particularly compelling. In fact, that's the entire problem with the film. The world is in danger... but that danger never feel particularly pressing. Abe falls in love... but it's never particularly evocative... Hellboy feels torn about trying to defend a world that doesn't love him but who cares... even he doesn't seem to spend more than a few minutes on it... ditto

And it's not really helped that they telegraph the ending... Was there any necessity to have as LITERALLY the first scene in the film being the one that explains how the good guys are going to win... ok, it means that we don't have someone just going "Oh, I know how we can win." out of the blue but... eh, it just means that there's the gratuitous action scene before the final fight... and no particular reason for it.

The visuals are the strength... but the story is weak and it's far too much of the generic A to B to C stuff... which is probably why it's rather unengaging... that and it tries to cover a multitude of topics in a rather short space of time and so, never covers them with sufficient depth that one might actually be interested. It seems like a classic case of numerous ideas having been pitched and rather than thinning them out and just working on a few, they just all got tossed in and everyone hoped it would work.

It's enjoyable enough for a comic book film but not really that good compared to its mainstream rivals.

Hancock, Hancock, Hancock. There are a couple of different types of comedy film… you get the kind of relentless joke after joke films with no real attempt at any serious message, like The Naked Gun or American Pie. Then you get the films that can’t make up their damned minds and switch between serious and comic faster than you can blink – like East is East where scenes of domestic abuse can quickly transition to unattractive girls getting humped by very large dogs… Finally, there’s the films that start out funny and then about halfway through they go “Oh, how about a message and some seriousness?” Like… pretty much every Adam Sandler film and that’s the school from which Hancock seems to be spawned.

This will likely to some people feeling rather disappointed with Hancock because it essentially gets to the halfway mark and suddenly, loses all the fun energy and becomes rather serious and the joke count drops and you wonder what happened to the guy who wrote the first half of the film and why he didn’t write the second half.

Things start out with quite a lot of promise, Hancock is a drunken superhero whose intentions are good but whose methods leave a lot to be desired. Drunkenly destroying large amounts of property while trying to apprehend criminals and carelessly wrecking vehicles as he attempts to save people. Needless to say that this is quite the juxtaposition to Superman… as Hancock’s appearance is greeted with derision and contempt. This really could have been a great premise if only it was explored in more depth but halfway in this film is barely forty five minutes, so depth isn’t something we can really afford.

So - Hancock saves a somewhat down on his luck but all around good guy PR chap from an immensely unlikely accident. The crowd are pretty much shouting "YOU SUCK!" because of his hamfisted rescue technique. PR guy says "Hey, he just saved my life!" So, PR guy takes Hancock home for dinner... because, well he just saved his life. PR guy and his son seem to be about the only people in LA that like Hancock... PR guy's wife seems to be instantly on edge - so you know somethings up there.

Inevitably, the PR guy tries to turn Hancock around - he realises that he's inherently a good guy, trying to do the right thing and that people should love him - not hate him. It's not actually made particularly clear why Hancock is so bad at his rescues... He's a sloppy drunk, sure but you don't go around trying to rescue people who keep complaining for no reason... but that's never really elaborated upon... Anyway, PR guy convinces Hancock to hand himself over to the authorities to show he wants to make amends for essentially being a monumental fuck up as regards property damage and so, he's sent to jail.

If you hadn't guessed, this is pretty much the point at which the film gets serious. PR guy's basic plan is - if Hancock is a good guy, turns himself around and stops fucking up that they'll want him back as crime soars... yeah, we've got a city full of people that commit blatant crime when there's a Superman analogy (even a drunk one) around... that's pretty much a given in these situations though. Anyway, we spend some time showing how Hancock is progressing and eventually the chief of police calls him in for a nasty hostage situation from a bank job gone wrong. Hancock swoops in and saves the day without destroying everything.

There is adulation for Hancock as he becomes the hero he should have been, PR guy is naturally now everyone's best pal - although, he still wants to push his world changing branding... but people are really only interested in Hancock. Hancock relates how he woke up 80 years ago in a hospital and recalls nothing of his life before that moment - hence when the nurse asked for his "John Hancock", he assumed that was his name... but little more of his history is related.

Apparently PR guy had a skin full and when they get home, he goes upstairs to sleep it off. The tension between Hancock and PR guy's wife culminates in a kiss - followed by her tossing a fridge at him, knocking him out into the street. He's stunned but the next day - when the film seems to remember that it started out as a comedy - he smacks her about with various kitchen items while her husband is distracted and she agrees to meet up and tell him what the deal is.

Turns out, both of them are part of some race of superpowered beings who have been around for over 3,000 years. Everyone else has died though, apparently the one weakness they have - and yes, it's really as stupid as it sounds - they were created in pairs and they're drawn to one another, when they're in proximity their powers fade and they become mortal and die. Apparently this has happened several times with Mary and Hancock but he got brained when he was mortal 80 years ago and got the most common brain condition in Hollywood, AMNESIA!

The idiot crooks that Hancock beat in the hostage situation are showing just how stupid they are... because, despite the fact Hancock gets shot and wounded stopping a robbery... there is NO POSSIBLE WAY they could have known he was going to lose his powers unless they're psychic... So, they were pretty much going to chase after a guy who is bullet proof. Damn, they deserve the schooling they get.

As you can guess, Hancock decides it is a far, far better thing he does now... and flies off to save New York and leaves PR guy and his wife to live a normal life... even though she's immortal.

It really feels that the breaks slam on as soon as Hancock decides to reform. The second that happens, the film gets to be a LOT more angsty. It's more drama... the comedy comes to be thin on the ground and you're left wondering what happened to that rather amusing initial premise... because that's how the film was sold. Not very good superhero... but then it turns out he's actually a 3000 year old superbeing whose one weakness is Charlize Theron.

We don't really find out just why he's drunk and a fuck up... Oh, he rises to the challenge PR guy sets him but that's such a generic, loser makes good that if it weren't for the superhero angle - it wouldn't be anything remarkable... It's short and yet, it feels like it drags. The initial premise disregarded for no real reason. It's initially enjoyable but it just becomes so generic that the fairly original concept might as well not have been bothered with. It honestly feels as if the writer for the funny first part walked out after penning the first thirty minutes.

Probably best to wait for the DVD to rent... all the wasted potential just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Ang Lee's Hulk was as big a commercial success as it was a critical failure - which is the obvious reason behind the Ed Norton reboot the Incredible Hulk. As a reboot, all of the Ang Lee material is - of course - totally disavowed and we have a fresh start... new actors, new origins and so on.

Ol' Bruce has been on the run for sometime and he's hiding in Brazil. He's doing just fine at that until he accidentally gets blood into Stan Lee's POWER THIRST. It seems Stan Lee's job is now to appear in ALL Marvel films in increasingly gratuitous cameos... Although, this one is still not quite as toe curling as his appearance in Fantastic Four 2.

Anyway, as you can guess. Stan Lee's "gamma poisoning" is instantly equated with Brucie, so General "Thunderbolt" Ross sends his crack team to the bottling plant - including veteran Emil Blonsky. As you'd guess, the capture operation goes tits up and Banner gets angry and then proceeds to trash the team, much to Blonsky's chagrin.

As you can guess, the Hulk does a bunk and Bruce finds himself in Central America. Having been rumbled in Brazil, he decides to go in search of the data that will allow him to cure the raging spirit that dwells within.

Blonsky points out to General Ross that the mission went tits up because of a big green MONSTAH! Ross informs Blonsky that Banner IS the MONSTAH, which leads to Blonsky volunteering for some of your Captain America flavoured super soldier formula. Which comes in handy when he goes to take down Banner for a second time.

Because, there's nowhere else for Bruce to go and get the data than the university of his sweetheart, Betty Ross. There's some of the usual messing around before the military rumble them. What follows is a fairly awesome Hulk vs. military scene on the university campus... Blonsky tried to take on the Hulk one on one... BAD IDEA. He ends up so many shards of broken bone in encased in flesh. If you didn't see that coming... well...

Of course, thanks to magical super soldier formula - he fixes right up and goes for another dose. During the interim, Bruce and Betty go to see the secret Internet contact that he had, who proposed a cure... they go through with said cure and it seemingly works but Banner finds out that "Mr. Blue"... then it turns out that he's actually your run of the mill mad scientist and wants to do the most diabolical of all things HELP PEOPLE! The fiend.

Brucie can't bear the thought of his misery helping to cure disease and the like and insists that all the blood - how Mr. Blue created all this blood is never really explained... presumably he has a blood-o-matic or some such. Anyway, before Bruce can do anything he gets pumped full of tranquillisers and taken into custody.

Blonsky decides now would be a good time to get pumped full of Banner's blood and becomes Abomination while Mr. Blue get some accidentally creating an obvious means for The Leader to make an appearance.

Anyway, Abomination gets his super villains goody bag and finds out the first thing super strong supervillains do is head downtown and start tearing the place up. This leads to some amusing momentary confusion wherein they think the Hulk is loose again. Once they deduce it's Blonsky, Banner decides to jump out the helicopter in the hopes that the cure didn't actually work... jeez, what an optimist. (Un?)Fortunately, the cure was about as effective as crystal therapy and as such we get a protracted fight between Hulk an Abomination that is pretty much everything that the Ang Lee film lacked. The Hulk schools Abomination and then flees the scene - the end... well, except for the gratuitous Stark cameo with further allusions to the Avengers film.

All in all, it's a solid superhero blockbuster. You've got your superpowered bad guy - no Kryptonite mountains here! - you've got your drama, action and big explosions... all in all, this is pretty much everything Ange Lee's Hulk wasn't. The origin story gets about three minutes... and we aren't landed with it at the start... it's a nice change from the seemingly obligatory origin stories that are hoisted upon all superhero films... the obvious problem with an origin is it means you're lumped with a big impediment to pacing. Just look at Spiderman, encumbered by the necessity of setting up Peter Parker. The Incredible Hulk has no such obstacle... and it's nice to see that they didn't feel it necessary to impose it on the story. There are a few nice references in there for those watching - Lou Ferrago as a security guard, giant purple trousers... a few other references. Everything you want from a superhero film or a summer blockbuster and well worth the price of admission.

Marvel Studios - the film arm of Marvel - made its first real foray into the superhero movie market with Iron Man... a character who (despite his recent prominence in the Marvel comic world) is far less well known than by the general public... while this claim could equally be levelled at Daredevil, Constantine, The Punisher and so on... none of them were hyped up to anywhere near the extent of Iron Man (even the new Incredible Hulk movie has been quiet by comparison)...

Most superhero origin films have felt a little weak... there's some need to build a character up before they fall into a bath of radioactive goop that gives them great powers and the ability to fit into incredibly tight costumes. In other words - you're spending a significant amount of time pretty much sitting around waiting for the person to go "OMG SUPERPOWERS!" Of course... perhaps by the nature of Iron Man... there's none of that. It's a more logical process... but then, that makes sense as there's a lot more logic to a guy building a big, bad ass power armour suit than there is to someone getting bitten by a spider and getting spider and emo superpowers.

So, anyway... the story goes pretty straight forwardly. Genius billionaire arms dealer Tony Stark - played by Robert Downey Jr. - goes off to Afghanistan to show the American military just how spiffy his new missiles are... why this can't be accomplished in America isn't ever explained because there are plenty of mountains to blow the hell out of in the USA... but there are fewer Afghani militants in the USA waiting to ambush the American military... So, Tony Stark gets taken hostage and is coerced into building his super duper Jericho missile because if there's one thing Taliban types want to do, it's blow the ever loving snot out of the mountains that cover their country.

The Taliban types aren't very bright because Tony Stark has an epiphany and realises it's time to repent for being an arms dealer and right wrongs... How does he do this? Well, he makes a big suit of power armour... quite how you can confuse a giant suit of armour with a state of the art missile is never explained but such plot details are neither here nor there. After a bit of heart to heart with a fellow captive, Stark gets his act together and runs off in a giant metal suit having killed a lot of people - naturally, his fellow captive heroically sacrifices himself to allow the armour to power up and kicks the bucket after a few last words to Stark.

As you'd expect, Stark skeedadles after setting a lot of stuff on fire. Somehow surviving a considerable fall and the disintegration of his armour on the way to moments later be fortuitously rescued by an American army chopper. He seems pretty fine when he gets home - despite having had the trauma of some time in captivity and so on. As you might guess - his business partner is all smiles and sunshine when he returns... until Stark says they won't be building weapons anymore... Of course, his business partner was responsible for Stark's imprisonment in the first place and selling weapons to the Ten Rings - a very unsubtle reference to the Mandarin for anyone that has any knowledge of the comics.

So, Tony jets off to save his dead friends village in another fairly cool action sequence which climaxes in the Tonster facing down to F-22s. Then, naturally Tony finds out that his business budy Stanes has been the one pulling the strings all along and that he has reverse engineered Stark's original powersuit. Which naturally leads to the climactic finale battle. No prizes for guessing who wins... and for those who choose to endure lengthy end credits, Samuel L. Jackson pops up to tell Downey that there's another film in it for him.

All-in-all, it's a good film. The action is slick and the effects all work, the look of the suits especially seems to work very well and while the "arc reactor" may in effect be just as magical as spider bites resulting in the ability to hang from walls, it seems much more plausible... so this film will likely be a lot more acceptable for people who find the notion of people firing beams from their eyes or acting like giant magnets to be rather childish.

In fact, Downey himself sells the character of Stark as rather relateable. There's no specific way to pin it down but he's very much the playboy and yet still, personable and human and not in the Bale's Batman is... with him, it's an act - as necessitated by the character... and that gives Downey more room to manoeuvre. He has that drink welded to his hand, sleeps around and yet, goes out and saves the day... oh, certainly we can't deny the comic book nature of his suit and his brawling antics... but he feels more real than most.

The real issue seems to be villains... It is important to have a villain (or villains) to face off again... and no one likes Darth Maul syndrome... actually, no one likes George Lucas anymore... but he can just play with all the Ewoks his money bought him. But beyond the final minutes, Iron Man has no real opponent... Sure, he gets away with the appearance of his business partner in the Iron Monger suit... but he's more of a finishing piece than someone who has been there all the way through...

Still, it easily surpasses Spiderman - if not in box office receipts than at least in interest and action... while it may not quite match Batman Begins it seems proof that Marvel can produce films that are more than just box office hits... it seems that it's own production studio has allowed it to be GOOD... whether The Incredible Hulk will prove this to be a trend or a fluke, remains to be seen.

Spectacular, Spectacular Spiderman!

So, the Spiderman movies managed to make an already popular character even MORE so... as if Spidey really needed it. Naturally - it having been some time since the previous incarnation of an animated Spiderman - it was time for a NEW Spiderman cartoon - Spectacular Spiderman.

Another new cartoon, another beginning. Peter Parker has had a summer to hone his wall crawling skillz by the time things start and wouldn't you know supervillains have started popping up, just as high school begins.

Unlike other rehashes, this remains fairly similar to the general Spiderman mythos. Spidey is the smart, fast talking webslinger whenever the city needs him and of course, struggling to balance that with being in the far more hostile environment of high school and also, helping his Aunt May help ends meet.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gwen Stacy is centre stage - in terms of potential love interests - and Mary Jane has only been mentioned in passing... although, it seems inevitable that she will turn up as she's been mentioned several times... not that Spidey really seems to have much time for fraternising between his crime fighting, school, the Bugle and so on.

Currently - and as one might expect of a new series - the show has very much revolved around the creation of Spiderman's well known rogue's gallery. This translate to roughly a villain a week for Spiderman to defeat - just as well he doesn't have much of a social life, eh?

Stylistically, it favours the more... facile animation style that is ever more prevalent in cartoons. That said, while it may be somewhat less detailed than the 90s, the animation is very slick - so the trade off is fair.

We have some interesting development of characters and relationships, the foreshadowing of the Kingpin (who has been behind half of the villains that Spidey has faced) and so on. It's not exactly Earth shattering stuff but thus far, it's proven to be entertaining. Again, it's not a show that should be compared to it predecessors because, while Spectacular Spiderman is much closer to its roots than, say, Transformers Animated - it's simply not executed in the same way. One to watch.

Many films in recent years have had trailers that misled the viewer as to the quality of the film. Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer has set a new precedent in this regard. The trailer in fact, comprises the bulk of the pitiful action in the film.

The concept of Galactus vs. The Fantastic Four has never really been that good. Basically it involves very little action. Instead we have a lot of meaningless and shallow drama. Reed and Jessica Alba are getting married!

Which is all threatened when the Silver Surfer flies around causing giant sinkholes for no reason... oh yeah, remember how Doctor Doom died? He got better. This shows the fundamental lack of imagination that runs through this film... and instead of lots of action... we get a lot of Mr. Fantastic and some general doing the alpha male thing.

In all honesty, there wasn't any reason why this film had to include the Fantastic Four... it could have been any group of sciency people. The powers were mostly an after thought, it seemed. Beyond this staggering mediocrity though,there is a greater insult. Galactus - one of Marvel's most powerful beings - IS NOTHING BUT A CLOUD OF DEADLY SPACE GAS!

Thus making this the stupidest film ever.