Familiar Terrirtory

A curious thing happened to me yesterday (and no, I am not here referring to the oddity of my decision to write a new blog entry at the school year’s beginning considering my failure to write anything at all during the freedom of summer. I won’t be mentioning that particular irony again). This curiosity concerns the movies previewed before The Dark Knight and it is this: I want to see all of them. Okay, so I won’t be waiting in line opening day for Bolt the animated tale of a dog TV star who believes his own press releases and the wacky cast of animals who help him rescue his owner, but it’s definitely going on my Netflix list. The others, I want to see in the theater.

There is, I suspect, a twofold reason for this. One reason occurred to me last night, the other is only just occurring now as I contemplate the actual list. First of all, these previews are showing before The Dark Knight, which could pretty much be counted a success before anyone actually saw it. I don’t know how previews are chosen, but it’s possible that the studios doing the preview used the venue of such an assumed blockbuster to show off their best stuff (also their most expensive/most in need of big ticket sales to make a profit).

The other reason I may find all these movies so appealing is that, in some ways, they are all familiar to me. With the exception of Bolt none of the movies previewed are original intellectual property. Two are continuations of longstanding franchises and the third is a movie adaptation of a comic book. Not that surprising, I guess, considering The Dark Knight is a sequel to a comic book adaptation.

Let’s list them off, shall we? We’ll go in order of certainty. The least risky of the three is the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace. I thought the last one was excellent and this appears to follow in the same vein: same general tone, same actor (several of my lady friends will be pleased to have a new shirtless scene). I don’t know how the diehard Connery-forever Bond fans feel (Amanda?), but I imagine anyone who liked the last one will probably like this one and vice-versa. So it’s a sure bet either way.

Next comes something a little less certain, given its history, but they’ve got an ace up their sleeve so I’m going to trust them. I’m talking about the next Terminator movie: Terminator Salvation (insert obvious joke about saving the franchise from the last offering). The first two were awesome. The third one less so (and I’ve never seen The Sarah Connor Chronicles, although I feel like I owe it to River Tam, I mean Summer Glau, to at least check it out) but this newest incarnation has something else going for it, specifically Christian Bale as John Connor. He’s excellent in everything I’ve seen him do. I didn’t enjoy American Psycho, and I really want to get back the three hours/million years of my life stolen by New World, but his part in each was certainly well done. Then there’s the Batman series. Bale has pretty much proven he can do dark action and we’ve even seen him do post-apocalyptic grit in Reign of Fire (but I’ve got a thing for dragons so I might be biased).

Finally, the riskiest of the three movies, the one you’ve probably never heard of (unless you’re Brantley who first pushed this comic book on me, for which I thank him), the movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. The comic book (Moore hates the self-importance of the term graphic novel) is excellent. It pulls apart the superhero mythos and uses it as a lens for a deep and exciting and often surprising look at humanity and violence and civilization and other Important Things. It changed the way people thought about or looked at or wrote comic books (it was already a done thing by the time I discovered comic books, so I’m taking someone else’s word on this one). It is also home to one of my all time favorite storytelling moments in any medium (novel, movie, or comic book) ever. I would try to describe it for you, but I can’t do it justice. My only concern is that the movie makers won’t be able to either. A lot of people won’t like it even if they do. It’s not an easy story. I will. Brantley will. My brother will. People who like Batman Begins, and the darker The Dark Knight, and the newest Bond movies probably will. People who like Terminator might, too.

What the heck was Bolt doing hanging out with this crowd?