Things I've Noticed: 2011 was a good year for genre

Happy New Years Everyone (a little early, but my next post would be a little late).

As we move towards the end of 2011, rather than looking forward to the new genre films and stories of 2012, I want to take a quick moment and look back at my favourite stuff from 2011.

In Fantasy, 2011 was definitely the year of Game of Thrones, from those with the cash to get HBO I heard a lot of great things about the series, but I'll have to wait until it's available on DVD to make a judgement of my own. Personally I'll always think of 2011 Fantasy as the year of Thor, whether in the comic series I read in the spring, or in the motion picture. In addition, a special mention for Bill Willingham's Peter & Max, a tie-in novel to his comic book series Fables which I loved, and surprisingly a nod to the Gallager Pub trilogy of romance novels by Nora Roberts that I read for one of my book clubs (romance is definitely not a genre of choice for me) and totally fell in love with.

In Horror, 2011 was my year to understand the remimagining of slasher films that has kept horror in the cinema for the last decade. Looking at the books I most enjoyed, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, Tim Seeley's Hack/Slash, and a number of non-fiction works about the genre definitely stood out, and in movies my favourite two were both horror comedies, Fright Night and Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.

Finally in Science Fiction I found a lot in comic book series that totally amazed me; Starman by James Robinson may perhaps sit as my favourite superhero comic to date, and a series I just started in December Elephantmen by Richard Starkings was a stand out as a wonderfully drawn and intriguing look at a future in which human-animal hybrids are raised to be warriors. Although they came out earlier, 2011 was the year I read The Hunger Games series and out of new stories, Stephen King's 11/22/63 was a personal favourite as well. Also Dead Space gives me hopes for the sub-genre of Zombies in Space.

So there you go, my 2011 in genre stories, television and film. Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog and I'll see you all next year.

Bookmonkey

Things I’ve noticed: It’s not that easy being green

So here I am a week later, and am trying to put together how I felt about the film Green Lantern. Here’s what the movie had in its favour, space travel, aliens, a rich back story, Ryan Reynolds, and the fact that I saw the poster for it in the film I Am Legend four years ago.

In a summer filled with Super hero films (so far I’ve seen Thor, X-Men: First Class, and Green Lantern – next month I’ll be checking out Captain America: The First Avenger), it is really easy to compare the film to its contemporaries. So lets do that.

Compared to Thor, Green Lantern wasn’t quite as funny, or epic in scale. Sure there was this whole alien corps of Green Lanterns, but with the exception of three of them no member of the corps did anything but cheer or die. I did like the villain character of Hector Hammond more than I liked Loki (from Thor), but by the end of the film I felt the character had been under-utilized. I realize that Thor and Green Lantern have two very different tones (one leaning towards SF and the other towards Fantasy), but I felt more connected to the characters in the one from Marvel.

Compared the film to X-Men: First Class is significantly trickier as the Mutant titles has four films worth of back story to draw upon and therefore doesn’t have to explain everything that is going on as it happens. As a film, I liked X-Men First Class a lot due to its pairing of a superhero movie with a film in a historical setting. I did keep hoping throughout Green Lantern that there would be a Superman or Batman reference, but to be fair I kept hoping for the same thing with X-Men: First Class, which had references to the other X-Films but nothing about the larger Marvel Universe.

Personally, I’ve never been much of a Green Lantern fan – the character is cool and all but in terms of DC Comics I always preferred Batman (or more honestly, pretty much anything in their Vertigo line). The character seemed cool, and a Green Lantern-themed article in the onion was the funniest thing I read in 2002, but overall, except for his appearances in Justice League comics I have very little knowledge of the character and back story.

I felt the film hit me with a lot in one movie, three major villains, super powers, an intergalactic corps of policemen, and throughout I wondered if some of these things could have been saved for later films. The movie was fun, I enjoyed myself while watching the film but it didn’t really stand out in any way for me. I’m sure my kids will end up owning it, and if they make a sequel I’ll go see it (I’ve always felt that most Superhero films do better as sequels), but other than saying it was a good film, and I do recommend seeing it on the big screen.

I honestly believe the overall problem comes from the fact that lately there are (sorry fellow fanboys) too many big budget superhero films out there. The ones I’m most excited for these days are the Marvel Avengers-based ones, as each film not only stands on their own, but is also building towards something.