Warner Bros | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “The Flash” as a Two-Hour-Long Shareholders’ Memo…

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist on Friday. With the release of The Flash in cinemas, it seemed like a good opportunity to consider the movie.

What is interesting about The Flash is that it is a movie almost entirely devoid of any artistic sentiment whatsoever. It is a movie that does not exist because anybody working on it had a brilliant idea that needed to be realised. It exists largely because Warner Bros. decided that they needed a Flash movie, and so – against all laws of nature and reality – simply willed that movie into existence.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: auteur, director, Ezra Miller, intellectual property, media, plot, reality, shareholders, the flash, theme, Vision, Warner Bros, warner discovery | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On The Sincere Nerdery of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Slate…

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist last month. With new creative heads James Gunn and Peter Safran announcing their slate of upcoming DC films, it seemed worth taking account of a production schedule that includes oddities like The Creature Commandos, The Authority and Swamp Thing.

In modern pop culture, “fannishness” is worn as a badge of honour. Producers and writers will often give interviews stressing their sincere affection for the source material with which they are working. However, these adaptations are often superficial or shallow, drawing on surface level details from the rich tapestry of these very old properties. What makes Gunn and Safran’s slate so appealing, even if it may never actually materialise, is that it genuinely feels like the work of enthusiastic and hardcore fans with a deepset and long-standing appreciation for the source material, complete with deep cuts.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Comics, Movies, Television | Tagged: Authority, comic books, Comics, creature commandos, dc, James Gunn, swamp thing, the authority, Warner Bros | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Craft Disservices – “Constantine”

Posted on November 1, 2022 by Darren

I was delighted to join the wonderful Aaron Coker for an episode of his film podcast, Craft Disservices.

The premise of the podcast is built around the discussion of movies that were perhaps undervalued at the time, or that were greeted with critical hostility, and placing them in a broader context. Constantine is an interesting subject for such a reappraisal, and not just because there has recently been a sequel announced. Constantine represents one of the last of a certain breed of comic book adaptations, movies willing to play fast and loose with the lore in the process of translating them to screen. It is also a movie that exists among the last of a wave of truly diverse comic book adaptations before the superhero genre takes over.

You can listen directly to the episode below or by clicking here.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: alan moore, cast, comic books, Comics, constantine, Craft Disservices, devils, Keanu Reeves, podcast, sequel, smoking, Warner Bros, Warner Brothers | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Video! On What the Cancellation of “Batgirl” Means for the Future of Streaming…

Posted on August 22, 2022 by Darren

We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly video companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. And the video will be completely separate from the written content. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.

This week, we took a look at the recent cancellation of Batgirl, following the merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery Media. There has been a lot of noise and shouting about the decision from various angry corners of the internet, but what does it actually mean? And what does that cancellation mean in the context of the larger streaming landscape, which has become an incredibly volatile space within the last six months?

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: david zaslav, distribution, downloads, film, HBO Max, media, streaming, Television, Warner Bros | Leave a comment »

297. Steel – Shaq Week 2022 (-#47)

Posted on July 30, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this time with special guests Niall Glynn and Graham Day, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This week, we’re doing something a bit unusual. To round out Shark Week, we are marking Shaq Week. So today, ending the week with Kenneth Johnson’s Steel.

Following a horrific accident during weapons research, John Irons returns home to South Central Los Angeles to discover that some of the weapons he helped design have been making their way into the hands of the local gangs. Unable to accept this, Irons crafts a superhero persona for himself, vowing to protect the local community as the vigilante Steel.

At time of recording, it was ranked 47th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

Continue reading →

Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: African American, annabeth gish, basketball, comic books, graham day, Judd Nelson, niall glynn, podcast, shaq, shaquille o'neal, Steel, superhero, superheroes, The 250, The Bottom 100, Warner Bros, warners | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! Your Feature Presentation – “What Does The Batman Say About Super Heroes?”

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Darren

The Escapist have launched a new pop culture podcast, and I was thrilled to join Jack Packard for the sixth episode. Jack and I discuss The Batman.

Filed under: Movies, Podcasts! | Tagged: jack packard, superheroes, the batman, the escapist, Warner Bros, your feature presentation | Leave a comment »

Batman – Year Two (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Darren

23rd July is Batman Day, celebrating the character’s 75th anniversary. To celebrate, this July we’re taking a look at some new and classic Batman (and Batman related) stories. Check back daily for the latest review.

Batman: Year Two is an… interesting read. It’s much-maligned by comic book fans, and there are a lot of reasons for that. Most obviously there’s the fact that it really doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there’s also the fact that it was published by DC as a way of capitalising on the success of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. Year One is a classic comic book story, one of the greatest origins ever written, and one that endures to this day, where even Scott Snyder felt intimidated in writing over it more than two decades after it was published.

Batman: Year Two is not that sort of classic.

In fact, it’s not any sort of classic. However, divorced from context, it’s an interesting read. It feels like writer Mike W. Barr is consciously and gleefully subverting absolutely everything that worked so well in Miller’s Batman: Year One, rejecting the notion of a version of Batman anchored in something approaching the real world, and getting right down to the comic-book-y-ness of the character. Positioning it as a sequel to Batman: Year One feels odd. It would almost read better as a rebuke.

Welcome to the late eighties…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Barr, batman, dark knight returns, frank miller, gotham, gotham city, Joe Chill, josh brolin, Mike W. Barr, Miller, Scott Snyder, Warner Bros, zack snyder | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Pacific Rim

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Darren

The generic way of describing Pacific Rim seems to be “Transformers vs. Godzilla“, which really says more about how hard it is to sell an original blockbuster these days than it does about the quality of the film itself. There are obvious and superficial similarities between Pacific Rim and the two film series cited – giant robots and monsters from the ocean – but that cynical synopsis doesn’t do justice to director Guillermo Del Toro’s bold vision.

Pacific Rim is a punchy old-school summer blockbuster, one which remembers that characters are the foundation of drama, and which imbues its flesh-and-blood cast with as much personality as the flesh-and-blood spectacle unfolding overhead.

Here there be monsters…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, Charlie Day, del toro, film, guillermo del toro, Hong Kong, Idris Elba, Kanye West, michael bay, Movie, non-review review, Pacific Rim, r eview, ron perlman, transformers, Warner Bros | 2 Comments »

Superman: The Animated Series – The Way of All Flesh (Review)

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Man of Steel this month, we’re going Superman mad. Check back daily for Superman-related reviews.

Although it was quite clear from The Last Son of Krypton that Superman: The Animated Series was going to be quite a different beast than Batman: The Animated Series, there were times when the show borrowed a trick or two from its older sibling. Particularly early in the show’s run, there were a number of “villain origin” episodes which seemed to emulate the more successful villain-centric stories from Batman: The Animated Series.

Fun and Games, the origin episode for Toyman, could easily have been adapted for the other show with a minimum of fuss. It was probably too similar, and a demonstration that Timm’s approach to Batman couldn’t be expected to work perfectly for Superman. Feeding Time and The Way of All Flesh are two single episodes designed to introduce two of Superman’s second-tier bad guys, the Parasite and Metallo.

While they retain a stronger sense of serialised storytelling than many of the Batman stories, there’s a very clear attempt on the part of the writers to humanise and almost empathise with these villains. The Way of All Flesh is probably the most successful, in part because Metallo has a great hook for writer Stan Berkowitz to mine, in part because he’s an interesting villain is his own right, and in part because it does this without seeming too much like an attempt to copy Batman: The Animated Series.

The real man of steel…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: batman, batman: the animated series, clark kent, dc comics, Dixie Chicks, general zod, lex luthor, lois lane, man of steel, Metallo, scarecrow, superman, superman: the animated series, terminator, toyman, Warner Bros, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment | Leave a comment »

Justice League: The Nail (Review)

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Man of Steel this month, we’re going Superman mad. Check back daily for Superman-related reviews.

What would comics look like without Superman? The character is so iconic and influential and omnipresent that it’s a fun thought experiment to take him out of the DC universe and watch the narrative threads unravel. Alan Davis is a pretty incredible artist. He’s done great work with writers like Mike W. Barr (on an underrated Detective Comics run) and Chris Claremont (on Excalibur). However, he may not have been the best choice to write this three-part Justice League of America Elseworld. It’s a great concept, but the execution leaves a little to be desired.