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

Lego managed to successfully follow up its highly entertaining and replayable Lego Star Wars games with Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. It plays with the same format as the Lego Star Wars games, looking almost like another sequel than a brand new game, but including new elements that make sense for Indiana Jones, like searching for tools to unlock various parts of levels and repair broken machines, and stealing the bad guys’ weapons and throwing various objects. The two player drop in/drop out co-op is still these games’ strongest element. It’s a format that lends itself to any number of other games with liscenced characters Lego might think to use.

Up until now, Lego has been working with film trilogies. Each game gets a total of eighteen levels, six for each film, which plays through the entire trilogy. Many of the levels are quite extensive and with all of the extra things you can’t get to in story mode, which you have to go back to find in free play, these games are very long and the levels are worth coming back to more than once. Lego Batman: The Video Game comes out in September, and it’ll be the first one not to use this trilogy format. It’s also the first not to be based on films, and it contains its own original story, one in which all of Gotham’s villains escape from Arkam and Batman has to round them all up. I’m interested to see how well the story holds up in comparison to the other games, especially since they already had a road map laid out for them by the film trilogies.

As popular as these games have been (and I imagine Batman will prove to be Lego’s most successful) I doubt Lego will stop with Batman. I’d eventually like to see a return to the film trilogy format, and I have some ideas for candidates that would make very good Lego games.

Lego Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park has a lot of potential for a Lego game because A) It’s a trilogy, B) there are plenty of built in action scenes, C) watching Lego characters get eaten and trampled on by dinosaurs is nothing short of hillarious, and D) it’s another Spielberg property. Both Star Wars and Indiana Jones are Lucasfilm movies, but since Spielberg also partially owns Indiana Jones, it’s possible that might make it easier for Lego to get permission for this game. In fact, they might not even need it– there have been Jurassic Park legos in the past, with their Jurassic Park III line. Keep in mind that Lego only makes video games that it has also made Lego sets for.

The only real problem with a game for the Jurassic Park trilogy is that the films get progressively worse. The most fun in my mind, at least to design, would be the sets from the first film, because we would get to see the whole theme park in Lego. The Lost World was a decent movie and still has Lego potential, but most of it is in the jungle without many structures to work with. Most of what could be built with Legos would be vehicles. And Jurassic Park III… was boring and far too short. They’d be hard pressed to come up with six good levels for that movie, and they’d have even fewer man-made structures to work with. Then again, some of Lego Star Wars’ best levels were from the unforgivable Attack of the Clones, so maybe they could work a miracle.

Some other folks have built some Jurassic Park sets and vehicles out of their own Legos, and they look pretty good. If Lego ever thought to make this game, perhaps some of it would look similar to this.

Lego Harry Potter

I would bet money this game really is coming. Lego already has the rights to Harry Potter, and there are a good number of sets already out from the film series. The problem with making it into one of these games, though, is that it’s much longer than a trilogy. I suppose they could go ahead and release the first three in a game, wait for the last two films, and then make the last four into a game… but that’s lopsided and a little strange. More likely, they’ll wait for the last two movies and then release one very large game. Seven films broken into six levels apiece would have been too much for the PS2 and XBox, but the nextgen systems could handle it, as evidenced by the fact that both Lego Star Wars have been released as one big game on those systems just recently.

A lot of new concepts would probably need to be introduced– I wonder how magic wands would work in a Lego version? Probably a lot like the Force. Something glows, you point your wand at it, it explodes and studs pop out, or you move it to build something. But wands do all kinds of other things in Harry Potter, so it would be interesting to see how it was handled. The Quidditch scenes would probably be a lot like the ship battle scenes in Star Wars. Every film has a lot of potential for interesting levels, and unlike with Jurassic Park III, these movies would be hard to break down into only six levels apiece. 

The Lego Matrix

A lot of fans have envisioned this one too, and there are several Lego Matrix fan videos (most of them not especially impressive) on YouTube. Whether you like the last two movies are not, this is a trilogy where every film lends itself to a game like this. The first film has the big hellicopter sequence, the second has the fight with a bazillion Agent Smiths and the fight on the freeway, and the last film has the epic battle for Zion. Getting to see Legos in bullet time is reason enough to make this game, and I imagine, if it could ever get off the ground, it would be one of Lego’s biggest sellers and maybe even the best Matrix video game, considering some of those that have come before it. One thing that could hurt this as a possibility though, is that it would promote a Rated R franchise.

Lego Back to the Future

As far as action scenes go, this would be more in the vein of Lego Indiana Jones, where goons would run into a room and you’d punch them all to pieces. And the problem there is that really all the bad guys would be either Biff or Biff’s thugs. Other than figuring out who Marty and the Doc would fight though, a lot of really neat Lego sets could be built and as classic as these movies are, all three with plenty to offer a Lego game, the best part would be the animated film sequences in between levels. This one would be great for the co-op because you could be Marty and the Doc most of the time. The Lego games have also used their films’ music throughout the levels, and Back to the Future would be great for that, as well. Maybe it would even give Huey Lewis a comeback. Like The Matrix, there haven’t been Back to the Future Legos before, but I think it could happen, especially with the mass nostalgia around today.

Lego Spider-Man and Lego X-Men

Both have three movies. Both have a lot of characters, especially X-Men, which would work in their favor, as it’s good to have a lot of people to unlock and choose between in free play mode. One of them already has Legos, and that’s Spider-Man. If I had to guess, I’d say Lego Spider-Man is probably the next game that really will come out. The X-Men films would lend themselves better to a game, I think, again because of all the characters, but also because of the sets. The Lego X mansion, Lego Cerebro, Lady Liberty from the first movie, Stryker’s base from the second… and although X-Men: The Last Stand was pretty awful, I think it would still make for some cool levels, especially Magneto moving the bridge and some of the stuff with the Phoenix. We haven’t seen Legos have to push against wind yet… for that matter, we haven’t seen a Lego with a healing factor yet! But Spider-Man could be fun, too. Lego web-slinging sounds hillarious.

Regardless of what gets made, the sky is really the limit. We’ve all imagined our favorite films, comics, and tv shows as Legos. Virtually every property has its own Mini-Mate set (or some equvialent) now, and although those lines are really funny, you have to assume we have our nostalgia for Legos to thank for a desire to see cute, plastic, disproportionate versions of our favorite charcters.

Mini-Mates Back to the Future

Mini-Mates 24

Mini-Mates Star Trek

Mini-Mates Rocky

I don’t know if a Lego Rocky game would work or not… but it seems to me that if Mini-Mates could get the rights to so many liscenced characters, Lego shouldn’t have a problem.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan