The Screengrab : happy feet

The Less Than Triumphant Return of Mad Max

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:30:00 GMT

Last summer, when Indiana Jones and Rambo were taking advantage of their senior citizens’ discount at the box office, I lamented the absence of my favorite ‘80s action hero, Mad Max. Now it looks like Max may finally make his return to the big screen…but I’m having a little trouble getting excited about it.

George Miller talked to MTV about his plans to revive Fury Road, the long-gestating fourth installment in the series. “Now Miller is resurrecting the idea as an R-rated, stereoscopic anime flick for theatrical release. It’s a curious undertaking, to be sure, but one made all the more certain to happen after the runaway success in 2006 of his computer-animated Happy Feet—not that the newest, ever-violent Max film will have much in common with that kid-friendly penguin party.”

Boy, is that nothing I wanted to hear. Furthermore, even though going the animated route would seem to be a viable way to keep Mel Gibson in the role that made him famous, that apparently is not the plan. “‘We’ll probably go a different route,’ Miller told MTV News about the potential talent voicing the lead role.” Miller is also developing a Mad Max videogame, also without Gibson’s participation. Look, I know the guy’s a loon – but that’s a good thing in this context, no?

Ah, well. Maybe I can work up some enthusiasm for this project. “For the anime release, Miller isn’t looking simply to mimic Japanese-style animation but rather to adapt it for Western audiences. ‘The anime is an opportunity for me to shift a little bit about what anime is doing because anime is ripe for an adjustment or sea change,’ he explained. ‘It’s coming in games and I believe it’s the same in anime. There’s going to be a hybrid anime where it shifts more towards Western sensibilities.’”

Nope. Still not feeling it. Read my post, George! Before it’s too late!

Unwatchable #72: “Meet the Spartans”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Here’s a serendipitous turn of events – not for me, of course, but maybe for somebody out there. On the very day that Disaster Movie, the latest parody from the writing-directing team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, is released in theaters, our Unwatchable selection of the day just happens to be the humor-challenged team’s previous effort, Meet the Spartans. (And when I say effort, I don’t really mean it in any traditional sense of the word.) This is purely coincidental, but if I can do anything to dissuade even one person from spending money on Disaster Movie this weekend, I’ll consider this post a success.

I doubt that’s going to be possible, though, since it seems highly unlikely that any regular Screengrab readers would be seeing Disaster Movie in the first place. For my part, Meet the Spartans was my first experience with the Seltzer-Friedberg team, but I can’t say I was completely unaware of what to expect – basically, that these bozos are Zucker-Abrams-Zucker for people who were often dropped on their heads as children. Spartans is ostensibly a parody of 300, but really just a string of pop culture references linked by scenes of shiny-chested men in leather loinwear. Notice I say pop culture references, not pop culture jokes; Seltzer and Friedberg proved to me that they watch Entertainment Tonight and TMZ, but not that they have any ability to synthesize their crapulent media saturation into something that would make me laugh.

For example: A group of Persians arrive in Sparta to inform King Leonidas (Sean Maguire) that he must submit to the rule of Xerxes. Leonidas proceeds to kick them into the pit of death. He is about to leave when he notices Britney Spears sitting in front of the pit, shaving her head and flashing her pixilized coochie. He then kicks her in the pit of death. Really, it’s not like I’m looking for some explanation for Britney Spears being in ancient Sparta. I realize it’s all part of the free-wheeling zaniness. But you can’t just have her shaving her head and flashing her girl parts. We’ve already seen that. Likewise, when Ryan Seacrest and the American Idol judges appear in front of the pit, it’s not enough that Simon is mean, Paula is loopy and Randy says “dawg” a lot. Maybe that was enough when MAD TV did their very first American Idol send-up 147 years ago, but if you don’t want people to think you’re stupid, untalented assholes, Messrs. Selzer and Friedberg, you really need to step up your game.

Alas, I do think they’re stupid, untalented assholes and I’m just sorry anyone encouraged them as children or even told them they were the “funny guys” in high school. They weren’t, I am almost certain. Here are some things they think are funny: 1) Balls. Now, here they happen to be correct. Balls are funny, particularly when they’re getting punched and they aren’t mine. It’s somewhat less funny when a Happy Feet penguin teabags Leonidas, but again, it’s because there’s no real context. Ball jokes with context – now that’s humor. 2) Homo jokes. Yes, I imagine there is some humor to be mined from the homoeroticism of 300, but the gags here are about as subtle as prison sex. 3) Celebrities and reality TV. In addition to Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan also make appearances to reference their tabloid troubles and flash their digitally obscured vaginas. (All celebrities are impersonated, of course, except for Carmen Electra who seems to be under the impression that she’s acting in the role of Queen Margo.) We not only get the American Idol panel, but the judges from America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars. There’s even a Deal or No Deal reference, which really shows Selzer and Friedberg are invested in crafting timeless comedies for the ages.

The worst thing about these non-jokes is that Selzer and Friedberg feel the need to explain them as they’re happening. So when the fat guy from Borat shows up as Xerxes, the narrator tells us he looks like the fat guy from Borat. And when a symbiotic black Spider-Man costume slithers over Carmen Electra, the narrator tells us it’s much like what happened to Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man. An appearance by Rocky Balboa is highlighted by the lingering close-up of the ROCKY stitched on his shorts. It goes on and on. Actually, it just seems like it goes on and on, because, as we learned from this Phil Nugent post and as I can confirm, Meet the Spartans runs for a little over an hour before the end credits begin. After a while, the credits stop and some deleted scenes from the movie are played. I’d really love to know how these particular scenes became the outtakes. The only thing in the whole movie that remotely caused my mouth to twitch in the direction of a smile was Leonidas howling “Tonight! We Dine! AT HOOTERS!” Yet somewhere along the line, a decision was made to remove that scene and show it at the end to pad out the running time. I take back what I said earlier. I think it was Selzer and Friedberg who were repeatedly dropped on their heads as children.

Previously on Unwatchable:
73. Fascination
74. You Got Served
75. The Last Sign
76. Kickboxer 3: The Art of War
77. BloodRayne 2: Deliverance

Forget Indy and Rambo: Five Reasons We Want Mad Max Back

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Two action heroes in hibernation since the '80s have recently awoken, claimed their AARP discount cards and gone back to work on the big screen, but a third remains in retirement. We now know there’s still an audience for Rambo and (especially) Indiana Jones, even if their respective returns have been met with a tepid critical reaction. Of course, we already knew that nostalgia is one of the most powerful elements on the periodic table, which would be reason enough for the Powers That Be to bring Mad Max out of cold storage. But after taking another look at The Road Warrior recently, I think our old favorite wanderer of the wasteland has a little more to offer than a rehash of the glory days. Here are five reasons why I’d shell out my hard-earned cash for Mad Max 4.

Relevance. The original trio of Indiana Jones movies were a recreation of the old matinee serials, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a recreation of the recreation. Rambo is long past his sell-by date as a Cold War avenger, and the attempt at bringing him up to date by involving him in the Burmese genocide was greeted as forced at best and offensive at worst. Now let’s look at the world of Mad Max as seen in The Road Warrior : hmm, desert tribes warring over the last remaining supplies of gasoline? In these days of $4.00 per gallon at the pumps, I think we can work with that. It doesn’t have to be an all-out Iraq allegory, although those overtones would be hard to avoid. Surely we can all relate to the concept of scavenging for fuel. Who among us has not fantasized about hijacking a tanker full of petrol in recent months?

Getting Beyond “Beyond Thunderdome.” The third and so far final Mad Max movie, Beyond Thunderdome had its moments, mainly the beginning and the end – also known as “the parts George Miller directed.” (Miller did the action scenes, turning the rest of the film over to George Ogilvie.) Most Max fans would probably rather forget the plotline involving the lost tribe of children, an overtly Spielbergian turn of events that doesn’t mesh well with the gear-grinding post-apocalyptic vibe of the series. But it’s easy enough to ignore this episode – the continuity between the three films is rough, anyway. A good parallel would be Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy: how about a Mad Max equivalent of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? Hell, you could bring in two new characters and have Max be “The Ugly,” which brings us to…

The Mel Gibson Factor. Gibson has been conspicuously absent from the screen (as an actor, that is), and with good reason. Given all the controversies of recent years, there may not be many lead characters that audiences would be willing to accept Gibson playing. Because, you know, he’s crazy. So what better role than an aged Max Rockatansky, 20 years further down the road to nowhere? Imagine Gibson with his big ol’ mad prophet beard, more legend than man, the lone remnant of a long-dead civilization no one else believes in anymore. I tell ya, it could work! Rumors of Mad Max 4: Fury Road keep resurfacing, some with Gibson as a participant, some without. I say he’s got to be there, even if he’s not the lead. He could even send up his drunk driving arrest…well, okay, maybe not.

Real Automotive Mayhem. Our own Andrew Osborne covered this in his recent CGI rant: “Why are high speed car chases with actual cars (and trucks and motorcycles and gyrocopters) better than computerized car action? Gee, I don’t know...maybe the same reason sex with an actual human being is better than internet porn?” Naturally, we must insist that CGI be used sparingly in any Mad Max reboot. We want to smell the exhaust pouring off the screen.

No More Penguins. If George Miller gets involved in a new Mad Max movie, it will keep him from making a sequel to Happy Feet. It’s not that we don’t love adorable penguins, but we need a break. Look, I’m not saying a Mad Max sequel is a necessity – none of these revivals are. But this is one action hero’s return I’d greet with more than just a shrug.

Apocalypse Now and Then: Ten Great End-of-the-World Movie Scenarios, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Neil Marshall's new sci-fi action thriller Doomsday, starring the very hard-to-mind-looking-at Rhona Mitra, opens tomorrow. It is but the latest in a long and hallowed tradition of using the controlled, expensive technology of motion pictures to imagine how things will look as our planet, spinning out of control with its resources depleted, chews through its last nerve and prepares to breathe its last. We don't know for sure how the world will really end of course, but one thing's for sure; if the last person who's there to see it has seen the right movies, he's certain to spend his last minutes experiencing a powerful sensation of deja vu.

THE ROAD WARRIOR (1981)

This is actually the second of the three films directed by George Miller and starring Mel Gibson as Mad Max — hence its title outside the United States, Mad Max 2 — but even though it's the one in the middle, it's the one that gets the apocalyptic element just about right. Things are pretty crazy in the original Mad Max, but society hasn't completely flatlined yet. And in Beyond Thunderdome, known to serious film scholars as "the one with Tina Turner", damned if the people don't seem to be having too good a time. (It makes the end of the world look like something that Vince McMahon is staging for a Pay-Per-View.) The Road Warrior gets a real doomsday vibe going by boiling the cutting-edge action movie, circa 1980, down to its essentials: loud motor vehicles, lots of space in which to drive them at high speeds, and plenty of attitude exhibited by people with punk haircuts and Dirty Harry jawlines. It is a hard world where men are men, except for the ones who are more like warthogs who've been hitting the Nautilus machines, and the screenwriter, if he knows what's good for him, isn't getting paid by the spoken word. George Miller has since proven himself to be a director whose talent is varied and many-sided, but he may have had trouble fully shaking this vision off: in his most recent film, Happy Feet, he managed to slip an end-of-days vibe into a story of dancing penguins.

GLEN AND RANDA (1971)

The end of the world as brought to you by hippies. Shaggy-haired Glen (Steve Curry) and Randa (Shelley Plimpton, Martha's mother) are a young couple who have never known civilization; among the last surviving human inhabitants of a world devastated by nuclear war, they have no memory of a pre-apocalyptic world and no knowledge of what has been lost outside of the images Glen sees in some comic books he's scavenged. Childlike and close to nonverbal, they spend their days frisking naked in the grass and among the trees, much as they would if they were rich California trust fund kids before the apocalypse and their parents were out of town for the weekend. They don't even seem to have the instinctive ability to figure out about sex and procreation on their own; after Randa is impregnated by a half-mad old man (Garry Goodrow), Glen, who has led them out on a search to find the wonders he has beheld in his Wonder Woman comic, turns pouty and takes to kicking her in her growing tummy. In the end, Randa dies in childbirth, and Glen sets out to sea in a tiny boat, taking the newborn baby along in case he needs a snack. Glen and Randa had trouble getting released at all, perhaps in part because of its stars' reluctance to put some clothes on, and like some other films by the director Jim McBride, seems to have subsequently vanished from the face of the earth.

BLACK MOON (1975)

The end of the world as brought to you by arty French hippies. Actually, this film was directed by the great Louis Malle, but he was clearly trying to access the counterculture zeitgeist and getting in touch with his inner goofball. Cathryn Harrison, the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of Rex Harrison, is wandering through what's left of the world; she is first seen posing as a man, because, maybe because the women heard about what happened to poor Randa, relations between the sexes have degenerated into a shooting war. She ends up taking refuge in a huge house occupied by Therese Giehse (German), Alexandra Stewart (French Canadian), and Joe Dallesandro (the jury's still out). None of the people talk much, maybe because, given the language barriers, they'd have trouble understanding each other if they did. The cast also includes a rat and a unicorn (which appears to have a glandular condition), both of which do talk; there are also flowers that, when stepped on, whine about it. Shot by Sven Nykvist, Black Moon looks great, thus confirming any suspicions you may have had that the human race will still be able to take pretty pictures even after we've used up our last collective brain cell.

BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES (1970)

Charlton Heston's astronaut character Taylor was already a rather nihilistic fellow in the original Planet of the Apes, but in the first sequel of the series he proves he's not just all talk. First he vanishes for about an hour, shortly after the discovery of the Statue of Liberty that ended the first movie, leaving the main action to a mini-Heston, James Franciscus. (Franciscus's meaningful contributions to the series are few, but we'll always have his incredulous reading of the line "My God — it's a city of apes!") Late in the movie, Franciscus discovers that Taylor is being held captive by a band of underground mutants who worship a doomsday bomb that will, if detonated, destroy the entire planet. The gorilla army descends on the mutant lair and all hell breaks loose, in the course of which poor Franciscus takes a bullet to the head. Having had quite enough of talking apes and telepathic mole-people, Heston unleashes a mighty cry of "You bloody bastards!" and plunges onto the detonator with his dying breath. And you can pry it from his cold, dead hands, if you can find them, which you can't because, indeed, the planet explodes. Or as the abrupt final line of narration has it: "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." Hey, thanks for coming to the show, ladies and gentlemen! Drive home safely! It's an ending that provokes laughter in your modern sophisticated audience, much to the bafflement of a gentleman who was sitting behind me at a revival house screening some years ago. "I dunno what everyone's laughing at," he muttered. "It's gonna happen."

LAST NIGHT (1999)

Most movies about apocalypse tie themselves in knots to imagine the unimaginable. They spend millions of dollars on effects and art direction to stage elaborate scenarios of how the world will end, as the filmmakers work out of the question of why. Standing in contrast to films of this kind is Don McKellar's Last Night, a movie with a strictly ground-level approach to an impending apocalypse. In McKellar's world, the end is imminent, and the characters are powerless to stop it, so rather than focusing on the extremes of human behavior, the film attempts to deal more realistically with how characters would spend their final hours on Earth. The tone is set early on when a woman (Sandra Oh) stops at an abandoned grocery store for a bottle of wine, sees two on the shelf, and instead of simply taking both and leaving she carefully chooses one and politely leaves the other for someone else to take. This small gesture says it all — there is looting and rioting in Last Night, but in the face of the unspeakable many people would prefer to end their lives by maintaining all the order and dignity they can. Consider the gas company executive (played by David Cronenberg) who calls all of the company's customers to assure them that the power will stay on until the end. Other people take the end of the world as an opportunity to fulfill their lifelong wishes, from the aspiring pianist who finally gets a gig a hour before the world is scheduled to end to the man who uses it as an excuse to sleep with one of his former teachers. Last Night lacks the visceral thrills of most films about apocalypse, but instead it focuses on the very different reactions people would inevitably have with the end of the world only hours, minutes, even seconds away.

— Paul Clark, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Scott Von Doviak

Click here for Part 2.

"Surf's Up": Like "Big Wednesday" but with Feathers

Phil Nugent — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT

It's often the case that, come Oscar time, a long-shot candidate for glory attracts a small but passionate cult of die-hards clamoring that attention must be paid. This year, that lucky duck is Surf's Up, which is nominated for Best Animated Feature, where it is scheduled to be steamrollered by Ratatouille when the awards are announced this coming Sunday. Surf's Up, which is set among a tribe of surfboarding penguins, and which features voice work by Shia LaBoef, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel, and James Woods, has already been through one trial of fire last week, at the annual "Annie Awards", celebrating the best in animation in film and television. Although Ratatouille easily dominated that event, Surf's Up did take home two of the smaller prizes, which is more than fellow nominees Persepolis, The Simpsons Movie and Shrek the Third were able to manage. Not too shabby for a box-office disappointment that was widely dismissed as a rider in Happy Feet's tail wind.

As Joel Sappell reports in the Los Angeles Times, the secret to the movie's cult success lies in its having been embraced by the surfing community. "The lead wave animator is a hard-core surfer, as is the film's editor. Recruited as consultants were surfing greats Kelly Slater and Rob Machado, who later gave voice to a couple of penguin sports commentators of the same names and general appearance." The movie also kids the often rocky romance between Hollywood and surf culture with an opening that parodies surfing documentaries such as the Endless Summer films and Riding Giants. The mockery is undercut, though, by a full embrace of the same natural wonders that those docs trance out on. Or, as Sony Entertainment Chief Amy Paschal puts it, "The water is amazing." It is indeed. "Initially," Sappell writes, "the sport was simply a backdrop for a "very cartoony" love story between two penguins living on a tropical island, says producer Chris Jenkins, who, as an animator, specialized in ocean scenes. Jenkins says the more he learned about the spiritual nature of surfing, the more potential he saw for a film with deeper meanings and metaphors." It was a peek at the animated water imagery that sucked in Jeff Bridges: "You look at it and go, 'I know this isn't a photograph, but it looks so damn real.' They showed me those waves, and I got hooked." Bridges' presence on the soundtrack is the movie's ace in the hole in more ways than one: not only is the actor a veteran wave rider whose name gives a project like this credibility, but it enabled him to revive, in all but name and species, the spirit of one of his most beloved characters, the Dude from The Big Lebowski. (Once you recignize that it's Bridges' voice emanating from the legendary surfing bird Big Z, it's hard not to picture the actor recording his lines while poured into a chair and wearing his bathrobe.) Once it was decided to make a movie that would serve as an ode to surfing rather than a cheap joke at its expense, everyone got into the spirit and went all out: "On one occasion, Quiksilver Entertainment, a partner in the film, supplied a surfer to show animators what it's like to nearly drown under a churning mountain of water. 'He was a writhing ball on the floor," says Jenkins. "You absorb moments like that.'" Though Surf's Up is still a dark horse in the Oscar race, the attention it's gotten from the Academy, and from the beach crowd, is a major consolation to the animators who were royally bummed by its failure to smash box office records last summer. Now, maybe if it's cult continues to grow, I can go on eBay and finally unload some of these Slurpee cups.

The Top Ten Action Heroes Who Deserve A Comeback, Part 1

Peter Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:30:00 GMT

This week's top ten comes to us from guest writer Gabriel Mckee, friend of Nerve and author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction. Read his fantastic blog here.

Recent years may well be remembered for bringing back the over-the-top action hero. New sequels to Rocky, Die Hard, and Rambo have revived long-dead franchises, and the trend is continuing. Indiana Jones 4 has started filming, and a fourth Mad Max film would have wrapped by now had scheduling conflicts not led director George Miller to make Happy Feet instead. Though it's an easy trend to mock, it opens the door for other action heroes to be resurrected — here are some top candidates.

10. Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris), The Delta Force

Before he was a meme, before he was Walker, Texas Ranger, even before he was a Karate Kommando, Chuck Norris was Maj. Scott McCoy of the Delta Force. This elite antiterrorist strike force, led by Lee Marvin, consists of some thirty soldiers who are highly trained in standing around in the back of a cargo plane while Chuck Norris rides around on a motorcycle killing terrorists. Delta Force came out in the pre-Die Hard world, before we expected our action heroes to have pathos, depth or family troubles. There's not much character to this character, but when it comes to straightforward ass-kicking, Norris is the undisputed master. Norris is ripe for a Stallone-style comeback, and in the and in the age of the War on Terror, a new entry in the Delta Force saga is the perfect vehicle for his revival.

9. Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy), Beverly Hills Cop

Remember when Eddie Murphy made movies that people enjoyed? Barring Dreamgirls, his film career has been on a losing streak for over a decade, putting him just below Robin Williams on the list of actors who need to be rescued from their own careers. A return to the role of Axel Foley, the detective/con man of Beverly Hills Cop, might be the best way to ensure that Norbit never happens again.

8. Jack Carter (Michael Caine), Get Carter

Michael Caine has made a major comeback in recent years, but in most of his recent roles — in Batman Begins, Children of Men,and The Prestige, for instance — he's played the Kindly Old British Guy. It's easy to forget that he made his name playing jerks — first a heartless cad in Alfie, then a brutal-but-suave thug in Get Carter. This story of a London gangster who travels to Newcastle (Britain's equivalent of South Jersey) to investigate his brother's murder isn't as flashy as more recent tales of the U.K. underworld. But Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham nevertheless owe everything to Get Carter's blueprint and Caine's cynical performance. A return to the character of Carter would give Caine a chance to recapture both the grim violence and the effortless sexiness of one of his greatest roles.

7. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman), The French Connection

The most successful action film of the '70s didn't star Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee or any other established veteran of the genre. The French Connection owes much of its success to Gene Hackman's performance as hot-headed bad cop Popeye Doyle (which earned him his first Academy Award). More than just a tough guy, Doyle is a contemptible bully, and instead of an invincible supercop, his temper makes him a bit of a screw-up. Hackman is still more than capable of this kind of complexity (as proven by The Royal Tenenbaums), and it would be thrilling to see what he could do with this character after thirty-five years.

6. Foxy Brown (Pam Grier)

The 1973 film Coffy established Pam Grier as the undisputed queen of '70s blaxploitation. Foxy Brown (originally intended as a sequel entitled Burn, Coffy, Burn!) justified her ascension — whether infiltrating a high-end call-girl ring, shooting her drug-dealing brother in the ear, or hijacking a drug runner's crop duster, Foxy is "a whole lotta woman." At turns smiling and sneering, she violently opposes an oppressive society symbolized by a white-operated heroin syndicate. Grier has had a slightly higher profile since Quentin Tarantino reintroduced audiences to her charms, but it's been far too long since she's kicked ass like she did in Foxy Brown.

Read PART 2.

Funny Book Funny Business

John Constantine — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:55:00 GMT

The Screengrab’s very own Leonard Pierce wasn’t joking in his post earlier today. We are going to drown you in comic book movie related news and you are going to like it! It’s true that nigh on every superhero that’s seen print in the past seventy years has been optioned by a studio. While the solo heroes are all tied up though, Hollywood has been slow to approach the legal quagmire of producing adaptations of one of comics’ most celebrated traditions: the team-up. No, X-Men and Fantastic Four don’t count. They’re individual properties in their own right.

In the past six months, it’s been looking like Warner Bros. was set to make the first big budget superhero team-up with a George Miller (Babe, Happy Feet, Mad Max) helmed Justice League adaptation. But, according to Entertainment Weekly via AICN, today is the day that determines whether or not the flick happens. An anonymous source indicated that January 15th is the greenlight deadline for Miller’s Justice League and while the WB is pushing to have it in theaters within eighteen months, Miller is still pushing for a re-write. It’s not clear whether or not Warner Bros will bring in another director or if they’ll allow Miller to pursue a non-WGA approved rewrite.

I’m right there with Mr. Pierce in the belief that the most promising comic book material for screen adaptation waits in indie comics. That said though, if the popcorn superhero movie is going to continue to be profitable and entertaining, it has to evolve beyond the origin story-good sequel-bad sequel franchise mold that’s been established in the past decade. Team-ups are a smart way to do this provided they are, unlike most comic book movies (*cough* Ghost Rider), well made. Get someone like Steven Soderbergh, who’s proven just how successful and entertaining an ensemble of colorful characters can be, to make an Avengers movie and then we’ll be getting somewhere.