Elektra
Generic Ninja attack!
I’ve got to say, I WAS excited when I heard marvel were going to make an Elektra movie, but then after more and more pictures were coming online and then the trailer hit….. They’d turned Elektra into an action packed mish mash of characters. I was less than happy, although I hadn’t really expected less to be honest but I was still disappointed. Even during Daredevil I hadn’t bought Jennifer Garner as Elektra, as much as I like her she’s just so damn nice, a real slice of Americana…. She wouldn’t have even factored into my choices for a big screen adaptation of Elektra, uh uh no way….. But then the movies ARE made for the broader audience who often haven’t picked up a comic book or are too stupid to do so. The movies end up being dumb down leaving the core readers scratching their fat nerdy heads. I’m not saying that all the Marvel movies are bad, look at the success of Blade and the X franchise. But that’s all they’re there for, the Franchise…..meh back to Elektra
I went along last night with HULK (for those of you who remember his handful of posts…post more Brendan) and he was pretty keen to see it, I was more or less excited, I knew what I was in for, 2 hours of sai flipping choppy action and a romantic undertone.. oh and Stick. I didn’t expect them to push the obsessive compulsive bit so much though, apart from her looking more neurotic than she already was it didn’t do much, the counting, arranging and all that, they didn’t justify why she was doing it its just expected she's crazy. And they pushed it so early on in the movie you know she’ll be doing it all the way through it too…. And she was.
The opening scene did very little for me, this is more or less the introduction of Elektra, a small taste of who she is and what she does. I guess from that aspect it wasn’t too bad, but again it could have somewhat more I don’t know…. Exciting? She basically destroys everyone rather quickly, before flicking her cape/jacket off to reveal the costume…. The red costume, the red costume EEEEEEEEEEEEEVERYONE loves. The costume which to me is just average. Its just pants and boots. It rises and falls there, it could have been worse, much much worse but I never liked the idea of pants on her. Fair enough the comic costume would have left nothing to the imagination but they could have met in the middle. So back to the movie, she flicks the cape off to reveal the outfit and she takes a swagger in to kill some guy for some reason, and the butt shot was nice and jiggly, yet firm and toned…. Overall my loins stirred but again it was unnecessary. A nice thing about the movie was the lack of costume, we only see it twice which I thought was good.
Lets take a quick look at the hand, starting with the positives. Stone. Played by Bob Sapp. Who’s a f***ing big powerhouse of a guy. Too bad he’s in the movie for all of 10 minutes with little dialogue. But hopefully someone was watching and is looking for a big guy, I’d like to see him in more, other than K1 fighting and NJPW. Now Typhoid Mary. Mary Mary quite contrary I have no idea why she was in this movie? If anything she’s a Daredevil character, Kingpin was using her to get to Matt Murdock and of course the 2 had a fling because Mary had feelings for Matt and typhoid didn’t…. That’s right, she had a split personality, Mary was good, and Typhoid was bad. Did you see any of this evident in the movie? I sure didn’t, oh that’s right because it wasn’t there! She was fodder to be killed off in the end anyway, closing any possible chance of using her in any sort of Daredevil related future project, which is a shame because I kind of dig her character in the comic. But I really hated it in the movie, she’s not f***ing Poison Ivy but they made her out to be, killing the plants as she walked through the woods and whatnot. The kiss between Elektra and Mary was lame, I wasn’t expecting porno lesbian kissing but it was still lame. Tattoo (i’m assuming that’s how you spell it, I didn’t bother to check. sue me) was the guy who, wait for it…… could make his tattoo’s come to life and they’d burst off his body, like the bear coming out of his chest for example, as seen in the trailer. I was under the impression in the movie that only what he had tattooed on him could come to life, except in one scene, about 50 000 f***ing snaked burst off his back, and apart from looking like the Sentinels from Matrix Revolutions wasn’t consistent. Unless of course he had 50 00 f***ing snakes tattooed on his back. Kirigi in the comics is a rather large foreboding guy, where as in the film, he’s a skinny little guy with a tattoo on his neck. Not that the essence isn’t there, but for someone who hasn’t seen the movie and DON’T know about the hand i’m sure they would have been confused at times. Oh yeah, during the movie one of Elektra’s sai’s was broken when she tried to jab Stone with it, and at the end f the movie it was fixed magically…. Ninja vanish!
Ok Gendo, did you like anything about this movie? Yes. Stick. He was the best thing in the movie I thought. The only nitpicking thing I could have done to make Stick better would have been to give him the white eyes like in the books and made him wear the hat more often. Then that really would have been Stick, Terrance Stamp did a great job in my opinion.
The romantic undertone/sub plot? Ugh come on….it was tacky at best, I don’t know how else to put it.
I guess you cant expect a movie to satisfy everyone, you’d top yourself if you had to. But I knew what I wanted to see with Elektra last night and what I got, on some hands what was good was really good and what was bad was really bad. Waiting in line I felt really indifferent about it, I was excited to actually see it, but I knew I’d leave feeling the same as when I came in, because they’d written Elektra into this sort of Buffy, Dark angel style strong female lead when all they had to do was let her flow on her own, the material was there but they’ve made her into something of an achievable role model I guess? I mean if you take the move for what it is, and don’t bother about the back-story it’s a very shallow experience. Its more of a companion piece to the comics really.
I liked Bowman’s directing, slow and paced when it had to be, some nice long takes as well. The action scenes were a bit too choppy for my liking, especially the final fight scene with the sheets flying around everywhere, and the choppy cuts it got a bit to busy I thought…. If you noticed in the credits, produced by Gary Foster (producer on daredevil) and 1 of the 3 executive producers was Mark Steven Johnson (writer and Director on DD) maybe that’s why it sucked in parts?
If nothing else it might get people to walk into a comic book store and pick up and Elektra comic. It certainly wouldn’t hurt.
3 heads
