{"id":2051,"date":"2002-05-03T16:23:47","date_gmt":"2002-05-03T23:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=2051"},"modified":"2002-05-03T16:23:47","modified_gmt":"2002-05-03T23:23:47","slug":"movies-overlooked-superhero-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2002\/05\/03\/movies-overlooked-superhero-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Movies: Overlooked Superhero Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All jazzed up for &#8220;Spider-Man&#8221; but don&#8217;t want to brave opening weekend crowds?  Fire up the DVD and enjoy one of these fine superhero movies that you&#8217;ve probably overlooked.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href='http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0120746'>Mask of Zorro<\/a>  According to legend, Martha and Thomas Wayne were  walking home after a seeing <i>Zorro<\/i> with their young son when they took an ill-fated detour through an alley;  years later it was the memory of his parents&#8217; death &#8212; and the movie that proceeded it &#8212; that inspired Bruce Wayne to adopt the identity of The Batman.  The 1998 retelling of <i>The Mask of Zorro<\/i> demonstrates why the tale of the swashbuckling hero is one of the crucial building blocks on which the modern superhero is built.  A thoroughly entertaining flick which will unearth latent &#8220;gee! wow!&#8221; feelings in even the most jaded of moviegoer.\n<li><a href='http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0102803'>The Rocketeer<\/a>  When I went to see <i>The Rocketeer<\/i> in high school, I was soundly mocked by my fellow comic book  afficionado who said that the film would be little more than a tame and cheesy piece of Disney fluff.  But this derision (which turned out to be spot on) didn&#8217;t stop me from having a blast.  The Rocketeer did an admirable job at capturing the spirit of the old Saturday afternoon serials, and managed to tell a charming story almost completely free of cynacism (no small feat coming, as it did, in the era of <a href='http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1563893428'>The Dark Knight Returns<\/a> and <a href='http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0930289234'>The Watchmen<\/a>).  Have popcorn on hand.\n<li><a href='http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0120611'>Blade<\/a>  So the niave innocence of <i>Zorro<\/i> and <i>The Rocketeer<\/i> doesn&#8217;t float your boat.  Then have you seen <i>Blade<\/i>?  Lord knows I&#8217;d understand if you hadn&#8217;t &#8212; if fact, I can&#8217;t for the life of me remember why I rented this one.  But to my surprise both my wife and I quite enjoyed it.  Your willingness to suspension your disblief may be a little overtaxed by the end, but the director does such a good job of setting the &#8220;comic book&#8221; tone that you&#8217;ll happily overlook a lot of logistical flimflam.  <i>Blade<\/i> succeeds where <a href='http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0109506'><i>The Crow<\/i><\/a> fell short.  (P.s.  If you&#8217;ve seen &#8220;Blade II,&#8221; <a href='mailto:matthew@defectiveyeti.com'>drop me a line<\/a> and talk me into or out of seeing it, would&#8217;ja?)\n<li><a href='http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0217869'>Unbreakable<\/a> Just by listing Unbreakable under the heading of &#8220;superhero film&#8221; I&#8217;ve already told you too much about it, so here endth the discussion of plot.  But I will say that this film, the second by writer\/director M. Night Shyamalan, was (in my opinion) unfairly dismissed by many as &#8220;not as good as <i>The Sixth Sense<\/i>&#8220;.  This insistance on comparing Unbreakable to its older brother ignored the fact that it was a very fine film in its own right.  That said, I offer no guarentees that you&#8217;ll like this one:  it&#8217;s one of those flicks that you either love or hate.  I am firmly in the former camp.\n<li><a href='http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0106364'>Batman:  Mask of the Phantasm<\/a>  Fans of the animated Batman series should check out <i>Batman:  Mask of the Phantasm<\/i>, the first full-length feature film by the creators of the show.  Even those Batman fans who have not seen the show should give this one a try &#8212; despite the G rating it&#8217;s a sophisticated story, and better by half than any the live actions Batman movies.  Perfect for watching on a Sunday morning over waffles and coffee.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All jazzed up for &#8220;Spider-Man&#8221; but don&#8217;t want to brave opening weekend crowds? Fire up the DVD and enjoy one of these fine superhero movies that you&#8217;ve probably overlooked. Mask of Zorro According to legend, Martha and Thomas Wayne were walking home after a seeing Zorro with their young son when they took an ill-fated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}