palsunstar Wrote:Oh, I dunno. That kinda thinking seems limited to me.
Use shorter words, please
Quote:I WAS an avid comic book reader & even though some of the best creations came from the minds of Stan Lee & Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko, they passed the torch onto others who were able to provide entertainment on par with the originators & in some cases, IMO, surpassed the creators.
Take Superman for another instance. The original Superman, as created by Siegel & Schuster (SP?), was a great creation, but the character has come a LONG way since then...don't you think?
Yes, movies are another animal, so to speak, but I wouldn't write off a sequel unless it was very obviously BAD.
Let's go the James Cameron route for instance. The first Alien film was handled by Ridley Scott, then James Cameron took over with Aliens & in most fans views, that I have encountered, they feel Aliens far surpasses Alien in all ways.
Mind you, Terminator: Salvation may just turn out to be a load of crapola...but then again...maybe it won't? :bigsmile:
That Aliens example is a good 'un. One of the few sequels to be better than the original. Another sequel that was better than the original was T2, another JC movie. The man hasn't made a bad film to date, and many of his films are hands down classics.
Terminator and Terminator 2 are amongst his best.
Terminator 3 is swill.
McG might make a decent stab at T:Salvation. It might be a good film. But would JC have made it any better?
No.
Because he would never be stupid enough to make it in the first place.
As for Superman et al, I have never really liked serial fiction that much. After a while the
big reset button in the sky begins to distract me from the never ending slaughter of the red-shirts whilst the 'heroes' stagger through yet another familiar scenario.
Especially with comics like Superman and Batman etc that have been written by numerous talented writers. In many cases the best stories would be no worse off -and perhaps even better- if the hero had been an original character. Superheroes are just archetypes, after all. Instead of having to create another
all-american hero-type-hero-guy, they just slip Superman into the role. Instead of having to create another
conflicted-brooding-anti-hero-type-vigilante character, they just slip Batman into the role. The story would remain the same, but the comic sells 2000% more copies.
There are certain advantages to having long running characters, like the wealth of intertextual background information you have invested in the 50years+ old character.
But ----
----Terminator 3-----
-----dropped the backstory. They're travelling a new, suspiciously familiar tangent of time.
Skynet was inevitable????
One of the main themes of Terminator and Terminator 2 was that the future is not set, and that it is worth fighting for. T3 made me wonder what the bloody point in it all was. And then I remembered. I'd spent £5 renting the DVD . . .