#i need to remake my comic book icons somehow all of these new ones look weird

[gojira007]

Movie Meme

Took me a bit of time, but I was tagged by @bunnikkila to list my nine favorite movies, and since I can’t help but be ridiculously verbose about that very topic, you can see them all under the cut 8D

As for who I tag?  Well, as always with the caveat that you are free to ignore if you don’t wanna, I’ll go with: @elistodragonwings @kaikaku @donnys-boy @robotnik-mun @sally-mun @fini-mun @werewolf-t33th  @cviperfan and @wildwoodmage​

and don’t worry, if you DO go for it, you don’t have to get as Extra as I did about it XD

9.) 

Look, the meme is about Favorite Movies, not necessarily the BEST Movies, OK?  And for the most part this list consists of films where that division is less meaningful in terms of how I evaluate the other movies on here.  But in this specific case, “Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie”, which is ultimately not all that different from the “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ TV show it spun off from and thus not particularly impressive as a work of Cinema Qua Cinema, makes the cut primarily because it’s a movie I know so well and have enjoyed so often that I can practically recite the whole thing to you by rote; I quote it all the time in my day-to-day life, I think about it often when I need a little smile, and it’s also become my favorite tool for introducing newcomers to MST3K as a whole since it was designed with a slightly broader audience in mind than the more willfully-eclectic series.  And given how much I love MST3K As A Whole, that’s an especially strong factor in its favor.

8.) 

Looky looky, @bunnikkila, we (unsurprisingly) have a pick in common!  I’m sure this is the one and only time THAT’S going to happen on this list. 8D

Y’know, nearly thirty years (and one fairly useless remake >_>) later, I think the thing that impresses me about “The Lion King” is just how much it is still able to grab me emotionally.  Some of that is unquestionably tied up with how strongly I associate this movie with my family, all of whom it became very special to as a Shared Experience.  But I also don’t know of a lot of people who haven’t had that same emotional experience with it, and that to me suggests there’s more going on here than just Nostalgia.  The mixture of Shakesperean plotting with Disney’s signature strength of Character, for one thing, granting the movie’s story an Epic Scope that never forgets the emotional inner lives of its cast.  The music for another, not only its instantly-iconic song-book but also its memorable score, armed with both Big Bombast and Gentle Sentiment.  And the unforgettably gorgeous animation, rendering every last element of its world with believable naturalism and strongly-defined personality.  All of it, together, makes for what I still personally consider the Crowning Achievement of the Disney Renaissance.

7.)

I think, if I had to name the thing I find most lacking in far too many modern Action Movies, it’s Clarity.  They all tend to lard their plots up with a bunch of unnecessary contrivances and complications in hopes of making themselves appear more clever than they actually are, and all it usually does is just dilute the impact of the whole thing.  “Mad Max: Fury Road”, by contrast, is all about Clarity.  I could sum up literally its entire plot in a paragraph if I wanted, because it is basically One Big Chase Scene from start to finish, never really deviating from that structure for more than a few minutes at a time.  And that, combined with its exceptionally well-crafted Action Sequences, means that the full weight of its visceral power hits you full force every time.  But don’t be fooled; that simplicity is not to be mistaken for shallowness.  Indeed, precisely by getting out of its own way, knowing exactly what it wants to do and why, “Fury Road” also delivers a story that is, in spite of what you might guess, genuinely subtle and smart.  Every character is immediately unforgettable and compelling because their role in the story is so well-considered and their personalities all so stark.  The world it crafts feels at once fascinatingly surreal and yet All Too Real at the same time because even its most Fantastic elements are ultimately just grotesque reflections of things the audience knows only too well.  And most of all, it tells a story with real, meaningful Themes that are deeply woven into each of its individual elements, such that the whole thing is deeply satisfying emotionally, but also piercingly Relevant in all the best, most affecting ways.

6.) 

Oh look, another pick I have in common with @bunnikkila!  This must be the last one, right?

But yeah, this is just a legitimately great movie, at every level, in every way.  Stylistically, it is one of the most radically inventive things to have ever been made in the world of Western Animated Movies, gleefully mixing together a vast array of Aesthetics and Techniques that are at once viscerally distinct and yet coherently connected, all rendered with a fantastic eye toward the world of Comic Book Visual Language that keeps finding new and extremely fun ways to play with that instantly-recognizable iconography.  For that alone, I would call it one of the greatest triumphs of 21st century animation.  But then, on top of that, the story it tells is one that is simultaneously Arch and self-aware, delivering some of the most fantastically hilarious punch-lines imaginable more than a few of which are at the expense of the very franchise it is working within...but also entirely earnest, sincere, and emotionally affecting.  It is, at once, a movie that manages to be about The Idea Of Spider-Man in its totality while also being about just one kid coming to grips with who he is, what he can do, and what his life can be.  I don’t know that I can remember the last time a movie so immediately and unmistakably marked itself as an Enduring Masterpiece, but “Into the Spider-Verse” absolutely pulled it off.

5.)

Ordinarily, I would cheat and give this slot to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in its totality.  But somehow, the fact that this is about “FAVORITE” movies instead of just what we think the BEST one is compels me to narrow it down to just one.  And if I had to pick just one, it would be the first of the three, “Fellowship of the Ring”.  It’s not necessarily anything that the other two movies get wrong, either.  All three of the LotR movies possess many of its keenest strengths, after all.  For a starter, there’s the keen understanding of how best to adapt the source material without being enslaved to it; capturing many of its most iconic moments while cleverly tweaking elements to make them more cinematic, knowing what scenes to focus on for the sake of more clearly focusing the emotional through-lines of the story, and knowing what scenes, no matter how good on the page, ultimately don’t fit to the shape the adaptation has taken.  There’s also its pitch-perfect casting, each and every actor doing a fantastic job of embodying the characters so well that even as your personal vision of them from the books may differ radically from what is on-screen, they nonetheless end up feeling Right for the part and a strong, compelling presence.  And there’s the deft visual hand of director Peter Jackson, who knows exactly how to craft a Middle Earth that feels at once lived-in and real but also Fantastic and magical.  “Fellowship”, for me at least, thus wins out mostly because it has the good luck of being adapted from the strongest of the three books, the point at which the narrative is at its most unified and thus has the strongest overall momentum.  But also because so few movies have so swept me away with the sense of stepping into a world I have always dreamed of in my mind’s eye, and that’s the sort of thing that can only happen at the beginning of a journey.

4.) 

Now here’s a movie that is literally sown in to my very being.  It’s the last movie my mother saw in theaters before becoming a Mom.  I grew up watching the “Real Ghostbusters” cartoon all the time and playing with the attendant toys; I had a “Ghostbusters” Birthday Party when I was, like, four years old.  It has been my annual Halloween Tradition to get myself a big Cheese Pizza and watch this movie for about as long as I’ve had disposable income to myself.  There is, quite literally, no point in my life where I don’t remember “Ghostbusters” being a fixture in it.  And as a nice bonus?  It is, legitimately, a Genuinely Great Movie.  I realize that isn’t quite as universally agreed upon these days as it was even a few years ago (thanks, Literally The Worst Kind Of Virulently Misogynist Assholes lD; ), but I still feel pretty confident in saying this one really is That Good.  I still find basically every one of its jokes hilarious; even now I could quote just about any one of them and get a laugh.  I still find its central premise, What If Exorcism Was A Blue-Collar Business, a brilliant, almost subversively clever one that takes The Supernatural out of the realm of The Unknowable and into a world where even you, an ordinary person off the street, can in fact fight back against it.  I still think it’s one of the all-time great examples of how to balance Tone in this sort of High Concept Genre Bender, by allowing The Story to be played relatively straight while allowing the comedy to flow naturally from the characters’ reactions to that story, allowing its Ghostly aspects to land as Genuinely Scary (or at least Worth Taking Seriously) without getting too Stern and Serious about it.  And I still listen to that unforgettable Title Song all the time!  So yeah, even if I could be more objective about it, “Ghostbusters” would almost certainly make this cut.      

3.) 

And so we come to the third and last pick I have in common with @bunnikkila, not coincidentally a movie that played a key role in solidifying our friendship, as bonding over our shared love of it was a big part of how we got to know each other on deviantART waaaay back in the day <3

By 2008, I really didn’t think it was possible for a movie or comic or TV show to really become “part” of me anymore, the way things like Sonic the Hedgehog or Marvel Super Heroes or Some Other Movie Character Who Might Be At The Top Of This List had.  And then “WALL-E” came along and proved that to be completely, utterly wrong.  I didn’t just love this movie, I was inspired by it, to a degree of strength and consistency that I’m still not entirely sure has yet been matched.  And to be sure, some of that is undoubtedly because the movie had already basically won the war before I’d even bought my ticket; Adorable Robots In Love is something like My Platonic Storytelling Ideal, after all.  But even setting that aside, “WALL-E” is a movie where even now I can’t help but be keenly aware, and gently awed, at the beauty of its craft; indeed, watching this movie in a theater did a lot to make me better understand why movies work on us the way they do, because I left that theater chewing so much on every last one of its elements.  Its gorgeous animation, the way it conveys Character through Actions more so than language, the dream-like quality of its musical score (even as i type this i get teary thinking about certain motifs), the clear and meaningful way it builds its theme and story together so harmoniously, and the particular perspective it takes on our relationships with each other, with our environments, and with our own technology...all of it speaks to me deeply and profoundly, and it’s no coincidence that I have seen this movie more times in theaters than any other on this list (twelve times, for the record, and I still remember each and every time XD).

2.) 

This one needs no personal qualifications, to my mind.  Yes, I have some degree of nostalgic attachment to it for having seen it relatively young with my brothers and being deeply moved by it then, but it’s not at all like the kind of Nostalgia I have for “The Lion King”.  “Princess Mononoke” is just flat-out, full-stop a complete Masterpiece, not just my personal pick for one of the single-best animated films ever made, but one of the best films period.  It’s almost difficult for me to put into words how great this movie is, certainly in a way that hasn’t been repeated to death by thousands of other smarter people, because no one of its elements quite answers the question of why it is so great, to my mind.  Yes, the animation is absolutely gorgeous with a design sensibility that brings Ancient Mythology to life so vividly that its influence can still be felt today (The Forest Spirit alone has been homaged all over the place).  And yes, the music is hauntingly beautiful, at once capturing the gentle rhythm of nature but also the elegiac tone of Life Moving On.  And yes, the story is an incredible mixture of the Broad Mythic Strokes of an Ancient Legend grounded in all too human Emotions and Ideas about the balance of nature, the full meaning and cost of Warfare, and perhaps most important of all, about how we determine Right and Wrong when everyone involved in a conflict is fighting simply for the right to survive.  But all of those things add up together to something even greater than a simple sum, because each one isn’t just good in its own right but because each element so perfectly reinforces the other.  And even having said all that?  I really could just carry on singing this movie’s praises.  Just...an absolute masterpiece, top to bottom.

1.) 

I don’t imagine any of you are terribly surprised at this, right?  I almost feel like it’d be redundant to explain my love for this movie, given how self-obvious I imagine it is to basically everyone who knows me Literally At All.  But heck, I’ve rambled on this long, why not go all the way?  Because the thing of it is, “Gojira” (to be clear, the original Japanese movie from 1954 rather than its American edit, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” from 1956) doesn’t just top the list by being a Great Movie.  Though to be clear, it really is.  Flawless?  No; there’s a reliance on puppetry that even for the time can be a bit chintzier than the movie can really afford, in particular.  But brilliant, even so, a heart-wrenching example of Science Fiction Storytelling As Allegory, one that, in a rarity not just for its own genre but indeed for many movies in general, very meaningfully lingers on its deepest, darkest implications.  Many a film critic has pointed it out, and it remains true: the stark black-and-white photography heightens the sense of Implacable Horror at the core of the story, and the way the central Melodrama, a tragic love triangle that carries with it many aspects of Class Conflict and Personal Desire VS. The Collective Good, ties back into the main story is truly beautiful in its elegance and emotional impact.  Still, for me personally, it tops the list, now and always, because it is a movie that affirmed something for me, that the character I had fallen in love with as a child convincing his family to watch a monster movie with him on television to prove his seven-year-old bravery, really was as genuinely as powerful and meaningful a figure as I had always imagined him to be. 

[the-working-class-guide-to-films]

Lion King (2019)

Somehow, the remake of Lion King wasn’t the biggest story concerning cats and movies, that is won by that quite fascinating and weird trailer for the new film, Cats; based on the musical of the same. That shit looks mental and terrifying. Luckily, this film about cats looks wonderful, if not slightly disappointing.

Lion King is probably my favourite Disney film, perhaps one of my favourite films in general. It’s hard not to enjoy the original. The animation, the songs, the voice artists, everything about that film is incredible. However, I tried to distance myself away from the original when watching the new one. I didn’t want to compare the two, because that would be unfair to the new people who have worked on the film. However it is hard to not compare, mostly because it is a very shot-for-shot remake. Some of the scenes are exactly the same shot. I imagine it’s hard to not to. You either play it safe and do that, but come under criticism for doing so, or, do something completely different and people hate it for not being the Lion King we know and love. So yeah, the film is good because it is essentially the Lion King. 

The most obvious difference between the two films is the style of animation, the original was hand-drawn, this is done digitally. It was super impressive, it looked wonderful. Almost like we was watching a David Attenborough documentary and we was watching a film of real lions. It simply looked fantastic. Nala had a much more meaningful role, instead of just going out to find help in he first one, we see her be a warrior as well in this. Her character was more rounded and it filled out the film some, which I do think was needed for her. I also think the same can be said for Shenzie, the hyena. She was more of a villain in this, rather than just being the comic relief along with the other hyenas. I thought that this was better in the new Lion King. I think that these two character changes were needed and were necessary to the film. 

There were a few things about the film I wasn’t a fan of. The ‘Be Prepared’ song was poor, in fact, it was pretty much non-existent. This new Lion King has tried to be more realistic, done mainly through the visual style, so it is understandable why the ‘Be Prepared’ sequence didn’t feature the exploding rocks and all that jazz. However the film still tried do a similar sequence and it just looked pretty lacklustre. It probably would have been better to leave that song out and perhaps do something a bit different than that, a political rally or something that wasn’t what the film done. I wasn’t a huge fan of James Earl Jones coming back...hear me out...I just think that if they were trying to distance themselves from the original they could have used another actor who has a deep voice. I’m pretty sure JEJ isn’t the only guy. I know his voice is iconic, but Matthew Broderick is still around, why not use him as Simba, or Jeremy Irons as Scar. That’s a more personal annoyance more than anything. 

Earlier I said that it’s unfair to compare the 1994 version to the 2019, however I did, and I think everyone has. As I said, this version was good, that was probably because it was the same story. This was pretty much a shot-for-shot remake. And a lot of the things in this version didn’t come close to the original. Jeremy Irons’s Scar was a much better villain, his whole performance was very theatrical, whilst Chiwetel Ejiofor’s seemed more psychological, and it did work, it didn’t come close to the original. It was also similar to Idris Elba’s performance in The Jungle Book. Rafiki was pretty poor. What happened to ‘it is time’ that was my favourite line in any film, and they didn’t even do it. I was fuming. I do think that they missed a trick on not doing something different. It lacked any energy really as they knew that the formula would work without seeing if they could possibly top it. Like I said, it’s hard to compare, because they are meant to be two different films. But really, they aren’t. Apart from the visuals and the casting, it’s the same film. And the reason why the film has come out with praise is because of it’s story in all honesty. And yes, visually it looks amazing. But that’s not enough for the financial backing from a massive studio.

3/5 It hasn’t been as bad as people have said, but it’s certainly not fantastic. Visually, it does look incredible. But the story is good because it’s the same as the original. There’s nothing dramatically different about it and that lets it down as it just looks like you’re watching a remastered version of the animation. 

[komicoshea]

Frank Miller introduced Elektra in Daredevil #168 (1981) for one purpose. To be killed off. However, the character was so popular that Frank Miller had to resurrect her a few issues later. Starting out, Elektra was the college lover of Matt Murdock, before her father was killed. She left Matt and trained in martial arts by the Hand before returning to Hell’s Kitchen where he reunited with Matt now as Daredevil. She eventually was made the Kingpin’s assassin before being killed off in a scene that’s has now  become one of the most iconic images in comic history with Bullseye stabbing her through the heart with her own sai.

After being resurrected and being retrained  by the Chaste, she eventually tried to do some good in her life but usually ends up killing her enemies. She has teamed up with the likes of Wolverine and Punisher and was one of the members of Red Hulk’s Thunderbolts.

As for figure, she hasn’t had alot and none really have been good. The TB ones had good articulation but (as was usually the case with TB female sculpt) looked ugly and badly proportioned while the Hasbro was short and had very little articulation. So I’m hoping that the Marvel Knights line will release a updated figure of her eventually.

Made:

Classic Red

Recommend Figure: Toybiz Marvel Legends Series 4 Elektra

Background:

Elektra in her most famous costume to which most of her costume have been based on. It is based on the Hand ninja red costume but redesigned to suit herself.

Why you need it for your collection?:

There’s 2 version of this one from TB and one from Hasbro. Neither are the greatest of figure but if I had to recommend one I’d go with the Toybiz one just due to the articulation alone. She is a extremely important DD character so you will most definitely need one.

Does it need a remake?:

Yes. Hasbro has made some of the best female figure to date so they need to remake this one soon.

Resurrected White

Recommend Figure: Toybiz Marvel Legends Urban Legends Box Set

Background:

After Elektra was killed by Bullseye, The Hand stole her body to resurrect her into one of their slaves. DD, with the help of Black Widow, prevented his from happen and defeated the Hand. As the building they were fighting in was about to collapse, DD notice a faint heartbeat in Elektra and tried to use his own spirit to bring her back. He collapse and was dragged out by Black Widow. Elektra somehow survived and in the last panel of that story she is seen in this costume, which is to symbolise her purified soul.

Why you need it for your collection?:

This was part of very hard to find box set from TB, with Spider-man, DD and Punisher. This is just a repaint of the Series 4 version. I wouldn’t recommend trying to track this down MOC as it is extremely expensive at the moment. So it can be skipped

Does it need a remake?:

If Hasbro redoes the Classic red then yes, they can repaint it as this. Otherwise no, not necessary.

All-New, All Different (Kinda!?)

Recommend Figure: Hasbro Marvel Legends Marvel Knight Wave Elektra

Background:

After the success of her appearance in the Netflix second series of Daredevil, Marvel decided to redesign the character to appear similar to her TV counterpart.

Why you need it for your collection?:

Okay, yeah the design is slightly difference but it is extremely close to the comic book version. If you have no comic book Elektra or any Elektra at that then I highly recommend this one.

Does it need a remake?:

No. Just about to get release so no need.

Need

Below is a gallery of costumes that still need to be made. Click on the image to see chances of it being made. Please note that this is my personal opinion and not fact.

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Low Chance: it wouldn’t pass the PC crowd

Low Chance: possible head swap

No Chance : Short lived and not remembers

Possible : almost a straight repaint of Classic Red.

Elektra (Elektra Natchios, Marvel Prime) Frank Miller introduced Elektra in Daredevil #168 (1981) for one purpose. To be killed off. However, the character was so popular that Frank Miller had to resurrect her a few issues later.