The web is suddenly inundated with news and rumors about Spider-Man 4 as Sony suddenly starts talking about the web-spinner again. Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because another hugely popular comic book franchise has already eaten almost every box office record for breakfast and just keeps going back for more helpings? The Dark Knight has only been in the theater for just under three weeks and according to Entertainment Weekly, it’s hit the $300 million mark faster than any film in history and is almost sure to beat Titanic’s all-time record. Of course, Spider-Man used to be the talk of the town– the first in the trilogy held the record for largest opening weekend gross, and each film has beaten the previous by leaps and bounds.

But Sony’s only got one problem with their logic– the reason each Spider-Man film has done better than the last is because of the success of the one before it. Spider-Man 3 did so well because Spider-Man 2 was so good; for a long time it was even christened by a lot of critics the best super hero film of all time (though that title was just snagged three weeks ago– Dark Knight is still at 94% on Rotten Tomatoes’ tomatometer). Spider-Man 3 may have grossed well at the Box Office, but it’s received a lot of bad press since then and most fans agree that the franchise lost its magic when it tried to make too many different kinds of people happy instead of making the crisp, solid picture Spider-Man 2 was. In short, most of us are a little tired of Spidey on the big screen by this point. I doubt a fourth film would flop, but it’s certainly not going to make as many people rich.

So what about a spin-off? Wha-huh? you timidly ask. Yep, they’re also seriously talking Venom now. Maybe they should have thought about that before they KILLED HIM OFF at the end of Spider-Man 3.

Sony wants to pull an X-Men Origins: Wolverine and spin off the ever popular Venom into his own picture. Naturally, everyone’s concerned. Some are worried that it’ll be a different character than Eddie Brock (which would be a big, big mistake, since that’s who all the fans know and love– please don’t do to Venom what they did to Catwoman…). Others are wondering who will play him and whether or not Topher Grace can head a whole movie all by himself. Personally, I think Venom and his origins were handled with such disrespect in Spider-Man 3 that Sony should be thinking less X-Men Origins: Wolverine and more The Incredible Hulk. His story and Brock’s character were over-simplified and he appears an hour into the movie like an after-thought, after all the “important” has been introduced, which barely includes him. He looks absolutely fantastic but gets so little screen time that it hardly matters.  Venom needs a complete reboot. I don’t really want a Venom completely without Spider-Man, but I also don’t want some contrived plot device to save Brock, because there’s no way he survives what happens to him at the end of the last movie, and no one can tell me a spin-off was ever planned way back then.

The biggest concern is one I’m not sure I get: can a villain be the protagonist for a whole film? Even Todd McFarlane (who created Venom, in case you weren’t aware) has suggested this is a problem.  First, if you can have a movie like The Punisher (which I absolutely hated, but a lot of people didn’t), who is a brutal killing machine who kills for vengeance, you can do a Venom movie. There are certainly ways to make misguided characters sympathetic. Venom has never been just pure evil– that’s what Carnage is for. He was called the “Lethal Protector” in a lot of the 90s comics, and there was even a mini-series entitled that. I think the concept of a Venom who hates Spider-Man but simultaneously brutally kills in order to protect innocents may have been well after McFarlane left Marvel to start Image Comics, but it’s certainly the way he was for a lot of years. I always thought Venom was interesting because he judged everyone by his own standards, and if he thought someone was harming whomever he deemed “innocent,” they were dead. This isn’t a mustache-twirling villain– this is a guy who really thinks he’s doing the right thing and that every good person should be doing what he’s doing. So even though he’s certainly more of a villain than a hero, I say that makes him sympathetic enough for his own film.

The only question now is, can a Venom movie make money after Spider-Man 3 left a lot of fans cold? I say yes, but only if the trailers make it absolutely obvious that A) it’s Eddie Brock and B) this is much deeper, much more meaningful, and with a much more character-driven story than the last Spider-Man film.

After all, that’s why Dark Knight suddenly has critics taking the medium of comic-book movies seriously.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

I guess sometimes doing your homework before watching a movie isn’t such a great idea. If I hadn’t, I think I would have enjoyed this movie more. According to an article I read in Entertainment Weekly back in May, X-Files: I Want To Believe was suppost to be a stand-alone story that didn’t deal whatsoever with the X-Files mythos, but where Mulder and Scully get on a case that makes Mulder question his beliefs. I assumed the idea was that the roles would be reversed and Mulder would find himself suddenly becoming skeptical of something that appeared supernatural, that he “wants to believe” but is finally having a hard time doing that. But that really isn’t what happened at all. 

It’s actually a pretty decent thriller, if it just didn’t have “X-Files” in the title. It’s extremely low-key, gritty drama, and really tries to surprise, frighten, and keep you guessing without glamourous special effects or extravagant sets. Much of the movie takes place in the arctic, and dark, snowy and icy landscapes are really quite eerie, especially when given the film’s subject matter, which is about human organ harvesting. The bad guys are doing some truly horrifying stuff with human body parts, which is effective in creeping me out, but it isn’t satisfying because I’m all too aware that this is more than likely the last time we’ll see Mulder and Scully on a case. 

The show has been off the air for several years now, and though I was never a die-hard fan I have seen the final episode, and I hoped this movie would give the series more closure than that convoluted and disappointing ending. But Chris Carter wanted to do a film you didn’t have to be a fan to see, and while I really do respect that, especially since the series usually had that stand-alone feel, I also wanted something a little bigger. And if not bigger, at least something to make my brain work a little harder.

I Want To Believe feels like a long episode, and not even one of the more interesting ones, at least in basic plot. It doesn’t have the twists and turns of some episodes I can recall that  made me say, “woah, I had no idea that’s where they were going.” Mulder and Scully are a delight to watch as a team, and I’m sure fans will enjoy their banter and some of Mulder’s very witty comments. But for a casual viewer or someone who just wants to watch a good thriller (and Carter definitely made this movie for those people) it never gains much momentum and is only sometimes visually surprising, and only then in gross-out factor. There’s some moral questioning, but that mostly comes from a subplot about a young boy with a rare disease that Scully is trying to save, and it has almost nothing to do with the rest of the story. The kid was never on screen long enough for me to really care about him, and I was much more interested in Mulder, who I thought would get a real character-shift by the end of the film, and he never did.

The movie is about people’s beliefs, not about what really is “out there” and certainly not about aliens. I knew there would be no aliens going into it, and I was fine with that. But the only supernatural thing about it was a creepy ex-priest and convicted pedophile named Father Joe who claims to have visions from God, and these visions are all the FBI have to go on to look for a missing agent. They call Scully who brings in Mulder, and though neither are agents any longer, they both reluctantly get involved. As throughout the entire series, Mulder always believes this man really is psychic and Scully is always skeptical. I was sold that he was a real psychic from the very beginning, when one of his visions helped the FBI find a severed human arm in the ice. It didn’t matter that, at the time, it seemed this was unrelated to the missing agent. I knew it couldn’t be coincidence that he managed to find that, and if I had any doubt at all after that, I was certainly sold when he suddenly started crying blood. While the FBI starts thinking they should stop following this man’s rantings, Mulder keeps believing in him. His faith really doesn’t seem to waver, and I thought it would have been really neat if it did.

What if Father Joe started to lose us? What if we, the audience, are led to believe early on that this guy really isn’t psychic at all and Mulder is grasping at straws because he “wants to believe?” As is, the visions are so obviously real that it’s hard to understand why Scully is skeptical at all, and that makes it feel like an episode from the first season. Sure, this is a stand-alone, but the characters still have a nine-season progression that shouldn’t be ignored; they should move forward, not be stagnant. I really wanted Mulder to be led on what seemed like a wild goose chase, and then perhaps toward the end, it turns out Father Joe was right all along. Or maybe he wasn’t at all, and we could have an X-Files movie about a complete hoax, where nothing at all is supernatural. I don’t know. I don’t want to re-write this movie, but I just don’t think it has anything new to say.

It’s impressive what is done with very little, but I was bored, especially since this was the X-Files’ last hurrah. There’s really nothing theatrical about this; it could have been a TV movie. I don’t want to say that’s bad, because I think it’s what Carter was going for. The first X-Files movie tried to be a big budget version but the story was so convoluted it lost people. So this one tries to capture the essence of the series, and it does that visually, but the script was weak. It did what I was really afraid of; by the end, it looks like just one more episode of a show that we never thought we’d hear from again.