TITLE & REVIEW

Green Hornet (2011)

Playboy Seth Rogan takes over the family business when his father, Newspaper magnate Tom Wilkinson, dies in unlikely circumstances. With the help of kung-fu super-genius chauffeur Kato, and the unwitting advice of criminologist Cameron Diaz , our hero poses as a super-villain in order to take on local crime boss Chemnofsky (Christopher Waltz - Spectre).

This works both as a tongue-in-cheek camped-up superhero story, in the light-hearted manner of the 1960s Batman stories, and as a Hollywood 3-D Action blockbuster. Kato does not steal the show so much as have it handed to him. But in the wake of Bruce Lee biopic Dragon , what else could we expect? To reduce him to the role of mere chauffeur would be unthinkable.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (2008)

The heroic young FBI Agent who was the audience proxy in the first movie has been written out. Hellboy (Ron Perlman - Alien Resurrection ), apparently jealous of his relationship with Liz ( Selma Blair ), had him reassigned to a remote facility in Alaska or wherever. This means that Hellboy himself, as the title character, gets more screen time. There is also a new team leader, a bossy German who provides even more comic relief.

Prince Nuada has returned, and takes his place as ruler of the Elven kingdom. His plan is into conquer the Earth and enslave or destroy humanity. Luckily the heroes have another claimant to the throne - in this case it is Nuada's twin sister. Well, if this general plot sounds familiar that is because it has been recently re-used by Marvel ( Black Panther (2018) ) and DC ( Aquaman (2019) ).

The superhero team go undercover in the Troll market, a gathering place of non-human creatures that live unnoticed by the human population. This sets the story in a different setup than the original movie - instead of fighting human cultists, the heroes now police a non-human subculture. Abe Sapien (Doug Jones - Shape of Water ) falls for the Elven Princess, and it is mutual.

The Golden Army is concealed under the Giant's Causeway in Antrim, Northern Ireland. Although some long shots with stand-ins were filmed on location, the main shots with the featured cast members were done on studio sets elsewhere.

Hellboy (2005)

Hellboy (2018)

This is a reboot that ignores the two previous films. As a result, the original cast have been replaced.

Hellboy (David Harbour - Stranger Things ) was raised by the Professor (Ian McShane - American Gods ), who uses him as a soldier in the war against evil. Now the Prof sends him to England, so help the local demon-slayers to fight some giants.

Hellboy allies himself with a soldier (Daniel Dae Kim - Lost ). This movie was very controversial for its casting decisions. It is very racist for a Japanese character to be played by another race, in this case an ethnic Korean.

The various monsters turn out to be working for the Witch Queen, Maeve ( Milla Jovovich ). Her plan is to come back from hell and conquer Earth.

Hellboy (2005)

Jumper (2008)

Hayden Christiansen ( Attack of the Clones ) has superpowers - not Jedi powers, but good old teleportation. Naturally, he has no idea of how to use his powers to the best of his ability. He does not help people, he merely leads a shallow and vain existence. Robbing banks, for example - the kind of thing that classic supervillains get up to. And his clumsiness brings him to the attention of people in authority.

Samuel L Jackson ( Deep Blue Sea ) confronts people with superpowers, like in the Avengers Assemble series. However, this time he is not hiring - he is firing! This Jedi battle (Anakin vs Mace Windu) gives Hayden an excuse to go back to his school-yard crush ( Rachel Bilson ). However, he stupidly puts her at risk as well.

Billy Elliot ( Fantastic Four (2015) ) is a fellow jumper, living off the grid since Sam Jack killed his parents. He wants revenge, but realises that Hayden is a liability. Can our heroes team up long enough to save the girl and defeat the villain?

The most unrealistic thing in the film? The idea that working-class alkie Michael Rooker ( Guardians of the Galaxy ) could have married middle-class skirt-suit wearing Diane Lane . But watch out for a brief appearance by Kristen Stewart at the end, as the story is set up for a sequel.

Upgrade (2018)

A mechanic (Logan Marshall-Green - Prometheus ) and his wife go out for dinner with a client. On their way home, some crooks hijack the computer on the driverless car. Luckily some good samaritans happen to come along. Did they amazingly happen to be in the right place at the right time?

The police have a lot of hi-tech sci-fi tools for crime-solving. However, that does not seem to help them catch the crooks. As a result, the hero decides to go full vigilante. He hunts down the men who he blames for his wife's death, and uses his computer-controlled martial arts moves to murder them.

The film itself is very straightforward, and does not add anything new to the genre. Since the protagonist is modified with hi-tech weaponry, this is technically a superhero movie like Iron Man (2008) . However, the futuristic setting makes it more like a standard revenge thriller put in a scifi cyberpunk setting.

Captain America (1979)

This is a made-for-TV movie from the late 1970s, and it certainly looks it. Remember, it is from the era in which Nicholas Hammond played The Amazing Spider-Man (1978) .

Steve Rogers (Reb Brown - Space Mutiny ) is a US Army veteran. Not a super-soldier from World War Two, just an average grunt who was in Vietnam. He gets dosed with a super-soldier formula, and goes hunting for some commie spies. Well, it is the Cold War. Rather than fight super-villains, he only fights normal humans.

Possibly the best bit about this is the fact that Captain America has a motorbike. Well, it certainly justifies the fact that he dresses like Evel Keneval. Best of all, his bulletproof shield slots onto the front of the bike so it can protect him while he is riding.

Captain America (1990)

This is quite different from the 2010 version. The lack of CGI technology and the relatively limited budget are only part of the problem. Whereas the newer version of the film allowed the title character to act as a soldier (wearing camouflage and using a gun) in this version they were extremely limited in what they could do. As a result the so-called hero comes across as very weak.

The origin story is the same, with a few changes. The Red Skull is Italian, which makes the Dubrovnik locations less incongruous. The first conflict between the two super-soldiers is a one-all draw: Captain America ends up being knocked out of the war, but the Red Skull's super-rocket (V2 at launch, V1 when it reaches the USA) fails too. They will not meet again until the 1990s -

By 1993, Ronny Cox ( Robocop, Total Recall ) is POTUS and his best buddy (Ned Beatty) is a top journalist. They try to bring Captain America back into the fold, but he would rather hang out with his 1940s GF and her identical daughter.

POTUS wants to pass an eco-friendly law. Rebel General Darren McGavin ( Night Stalker ) secretly joins forces with the Red Skull to subvert the US Government. But first they must get rid of Captain America. The Red Skull sends his daughter ( Francesca Neri ) and her euro-trash catalogue model friends to do his dirty work. For some reason, Asian-American stuntman Jeff Imada is one of her Euro-goons.

Blade: Trinity (2004)

The Vampires (led by Parker Posey and Callum Keith Rennie - BSG 2003 ) have a cunning plan. They revive the oldest vamp in the world (a very badly miscast Dominic Purcell - John Doe ). Then they set Blade (Wesley Snipes - Gallow Walkers ) up, to be wanted by FBI Agent James Remar ( Shannara Chronicles ).

Blade has to team up with new sidekicks, the Nightstalkers:

• buffed-up, wise-cracking, scene-stealing Ryan Reynolds ( Wolverine, Green Lantern, Deadpool )
• Whistler's daughter ( Jessica Biel ), a generic action girl
• scientist Natasha Lyonne , playing against type but doing a decent job of it

This is the weakest of the Blade trilogy. It does not offer anything new, and is considered an abortive backdoor pilot for a Nightstalkers spin-off series.

Elektra (2005)

Instead of making Sin City , Rodriguez and Miller should have adapted Elektra: Assassin. Unfortunately they did not, which is why we are left with this effort. The best thing about it is that Ben Affleck's cameo (as Daredevil ) has been cut. Presumably the film-makers wanted to distance this film from the original, where Garner's character first appeared. Unfortunately they failed - this is just as bad as the original.

Elektra is no longer a vigilante. She was raised from the dead, trained as a Ninja by Terence Stamp ( Superman 2, Star Wars: TPM ), then went freelance as an assassin. Now she is hired to kill the father of a girl she befriends. The girl's dad is a guy from E.R., basically set up as a love interest. That particular plot cliche is worked in for no apparent reason, and makes no sense.

The villains come after Elektra and her new friends. Not only are there evil Ninjas, but even minor-league supervillains like Natassia Malthe . This guarantees that there will be lots of people for Elektra to fight, in a series of action sequences meant to make up for the lousy plot.

Fantastic Four (2015)

Yet another reboot of a Marvel comics-inspired story. It is not part of the MCU (Marvel Comics Universe), so there is no Stan Lee cameo and no after-credits sequence. In fact, if you were to change the names then there is nothing that really marks this as a Marvel storyline at all.

The story is about Reed Richards (Miles Teller - Divergent ), a High School pupil in the USA who wants to build a teleporter in his garage. He borrows parts from his classmate, Ben Grimm (Billy Elliott - Jumper (2008) ) whose dad owns a scrap-yard. Yes, this is basically a kids’ show like Explorers . However, the kids have limited success until the school science faire a few years later …

A super-scientist named Doctor Storm (Reg Querns Cathay - Outcast ) and his adopted daughter Sue ( Kate Mara , playing ten years younger than her real age) attend the science faire to locate and recruit the next generation of super-geniuses. In a movie about pre-teen children who build teleportation machines, this is not the most improbable part of the story. Reed signs up, enticed by Querns’ science and Kate’s charms. Ben gets left behind …

Reed teams up with Sue’s brother (the token black guy) and a Eurotrash slacker named Viktor Von Doom (who the TBG racially slurs by calling him Adolf). They build the teleporter machine, and travel to another universe. Reed even invites his old buddy Ben Grimm along for the ride. However, the alien world’s energies are unleashed on them …

The four survivors have strange powers. Ben gets hit with rocks, so he gets the power of rocks. Johnny Storm gets hit with flames, so he gets flame-power … and he can fly. Reed gets elastic power, somehow … And Sue Storm gets invisibility power - and force-field power, for some reason.

Ben gets co-opted by the US Military-Industrial complex. Johnny Storm is keen to follow his example, and do not-so-secret missions for the USA. Sue and her father play along so they can repair the teleporter and find a cure to Johnny’s super-powers. And Reed Richards mistrusts the US Military-Industrial complex so much that he goes on the run.

Eventually, in the third act, our heroes unite to stop Viktor Von Doom from destroying the Earth.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

The protagonist is Miles Morales, a teenage boy whose father is a cop in the NYPD and whose favourite uncle is a low-level crook. He goes exploring in a disused building, ande discovers some supervillains at work. Their leader, Kingpin, has a supercollider which opens a portal to other universes.

Miles meets an alternate version of Peter Parker (Jake Jones - ) who was sucked in from one of the parallel universes. This one looks like the Jake Gyllenhall version, although he is now a middle-aged loser who has taken up over-eating since his divorce from Mary Jane.

Kingpin's plan is to bring back a version of his wife and son, who in his universe were killed in a car crash. What he does not realise is that alternate universe duplicates have molecular instability while in the wrong universe and will only last a week. His chief scientist should have told him.

Kingpin has a team of supervillains on the payroll, including the local version of Doc Ock. Luckily, Miles and Peter have different spider-heroes from the alternate universes. So what makes Miles the hero? It is his universe, so the others are all guest-stars in his story.

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023)

This starts with the backstory of Spider-Gwen ( Hailee Steinfeld ). She got bitten instead of Peter Parker, so he turned himself into The Lizard in order to help her. It ended badly, and Gwen ended up at odds with her father - Police Captain George Stacy (Shea Wigham - ). The good news is that she was talent-spotted by Miguel O'Hara (Oscar Isaac - Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) and Jessica Drew ( Issa Rae ), who run the multiversal spider-people agency.

Months later, Gwen visits her old buddy Miles Morales. He spends his time fighting low-level supervillains like The Spot, who uses teleportation for half-assed shoplifting. Miles' father Jeff (Brian Tyree Henry - Godzilla ) is a police lieutenant, about to be promoted to captain. This is at odds with the #BLM sticker on Miles' schoolbag, but nobody points out the incongruity.

The Spot blames Miles, and wants to take revenge on him. To do this, he hops around of the multiverse in order to find a particle accellerator. Gwen goes after him, and Miles follows her. She has her own team, including Hobie Brown (Daniel Kaluuya - Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) and Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson - ).

When Gwen takes Miles to the multiversal spider-people agency, he learns the truth. The multiverse is more complex than in the first movie. For example, the Tom Holland version of the Prowler (Donald Glover - Solo: A Star Wars tale ) is in custody alongside the animated characters. It turns out that there are certain set points in every spider-person's life. For example, the Amazing Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield - Silence ) saw Captain Stacey die ... so every Spider-person must lose a Police Captain. Miguel believes that Gwen and Miles must both lose their fathers. Gwen accepts this, but Miles does not. And although the stakes are high - it could destroy one or more universes - this is not really as big as the death of Uncle Ben. Other versions of Spider-Man never had Captain Stacey, and they did just fine. Nobody has done Death of Jean DeWoolf, which would be a fine version, but it seems unlikely in the wake of Gail Simone trolling the industry with her Women in Refrigerators take on the Sacrificial Lamb trope.

Miles decides to prove himself as the Ultimate Spider-Man. Not only is he better than all the other spider-people individually, he is better than a thousand of them put together. This is not so much about undermining Peter - after all, Peter is pretty much retired and yet still takes credit as Miles' mentor. The agency is run by Miguel, so it is Latinx versus Latinx.

Miles wants to save his father, and escapes into the multiverse to do so. There is even a universe where Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali - The 4400 ) survived. Just as Peter would have become the Lizard if he were not Spider-Man, Miles was destined to become the Prowler ...

It turns out that this is part two of a trilogy. Yes, the story is to be continued ...

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)

This is an American movie based on a Korean kids TV show, set in the USA but filmed in Australia.

The protagonists are a group of very bland American teenagers. They are not the Breakfast Club archetypes of the 2016 remake - this lot are diverse in race and gender but not in personality. The only one who has any kind of name recognition is the Pink Ranger, Amy Jo Johnson , and that is because she was the pretty young white girl. The rest of them, generically attractive, just sank without trace.

The protagonists are recruited by a dying alien so they can save the Earth from alien invaders led by Ivan Ooze (Paul Freeman - Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ). They get sent on a quest, where an ass-kicking bikini-clad supermodel ( Gabrielle Fitzpatrick ) gives them further exposition. Well, something had to be put in for the dads.

Ivan and his minions take over a disused bottling plant, and use it to bottle his brainwashing ooze. When distributed for free to local children, it allows him to brainwash their parents. Then he uses the parents as slave labour to dig out some gigantic robotic fighting machines that he had planted on Earth thousands of years earlier. Yes, this seems to have inspired part of the plot to the mediocre War of the Worlds (2005) .

The kids complete the quest, and return to Earth in time to save their parents. This means transforming their individual robotic fighting suits into one giant robot, for a climactic battle that has some of the cheapest and nastiest CGI ever seen. Especially in a movie that actually got a cinematic release. Some of the scenes with the Power Rangers in their face-concealing costumes could easily have been cut and pasted from the original Korean TV show, just like they were for the American TV show that preceded this. Perhaps the CGI was the same, cheap and nasty made-in-Korea style.

Power Rangers (2017)

The quarterpounder of a US High School football team commits a prank, and gets stuck in detention for the rest of the year. He befriends the mis-matched group of delinquents, and they have a series of adventures. No, this is not a remake of The Breakfast Club, it is a dark and edgy version of a childrens TV show. Well, it is meant to be - but not only is it produced by a toy company (and thus designed specifically as an advert for their new line of toys) it is also evidently sponsored by the Krispy Kreme donut store.

The teenagers bump into each other while individually hanging around in an old quarry. This is reminiscent of the UK TV show Dr Who , which regularly filmed in an old quarry as a stand-in for alien planets. After all, it is one of the cheapest locations imaginable. Anyway, they discover alien artefacts in the quarry. The good news is that they become super-soldiers.

By incredible coincidence, arch-villain Rita Repulsa ( Elizabeth Banks ) has survived the last sixty-five million years too, and reappears at exactly the same moment. Some fishermen find her body in the ocean, and put her in the cargo hold with the fish. Nobody points out that this would be a flagrant breach of health and safety laws, and the entire cargo of fish would have to be abandoned as contaminated and completely unfit for human consumption.

The fishermen deliver the body to the same town that the school-kids live in. Rita starts to kill people and steal gold so she can build a magic machine. She then uses this monsterous machine to stomp the town. The Power Rangers, predictably bickering amongst themselves to increase story tension, must team up and defeat her before she conquers the world.

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie

Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997)

This is a cheap made-for-TV effort from 1997. The teenagers, played by a cast of actors in their twenties, must save the world from a cleavage-enhanced villainess named Divatox. Her plan involves throwing the kindly wizard Lerigot into a volcano.

The Rangers get colour-coded SUVs with super-duper bull-bars. Since the villainess is aboard a massive submarine that is en route to a mysterious island in the Pacific, the special SUVs do not get very much use. Except in the massive climactic battle at the end, of course.

The team also have a new member - the blue ranger. Ironically he is an actual child, so he does not get put into actual danger very often.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

New York City is being terrorised by a crime wave. The group responsible are the Foot Clan, who are nominally Ninjas but prefer to use AR-15s instead of martial arts.

April O'Neill ( Megan Fox ), ambitious junior news reporter, wants to cover the crime story. Her cameraman (Will Arnett - ) is eager to help, if only because he wants to date her. However, her boss ( Whoopie Goldberg ) has no tolerance for unproven conspiracy theories.

April not only finds the turtles, but she remembers them from her childhood. It turns out that this version of the TMNT has a different background story. By incredible coincidence, April O'Neill knew them before they were experimented on by her dad's old boss (William Fichtner - ) and his cow-orker Baxter Stockman (K Todd Freeman - Buffy: Season 3 ).

This all builds up to a massive climax. Shredder's evil plan is to release a plague into the city, and then profit from controlling a monopoly on the cure. Mission Impossible 2 , anyone?

The impressive action scenes are basically a CGI cartoon. However, in a light-hearted comedy-thriller type story like this it is hardly a problem.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016)

This starts with a well-written introduction to the turtles and a re-cap of the outcome of the original movie. Since the turtles do not officially exist, the credit for saving the city was given to the cameraman (Will Arnett - ). Well, he did get shot and wounded in the process. However, the turtles are jealous of the attention he is getting.

April O'Neill ( Megan Fox ) is stalking her dad's former colleague Dr Baxter Stockman, who no longer looks like K Todd Freeman ( Buffy: Season 3 ). This gives her the opportunity to do a stylish quick change of costume.

Shredder is being transported to prison by Stephen Amell ( Arrow ), with his new cellmates Be-Bop and Rock-steady.

Krang wants Shredder to collect the parts of an alien device. When Stockman assembles and activates the plot device, it will allow Krang to invade Earth.

Police Chief Laura Linney fixes the blame instead of the problem. Amell wants to be promoted to Detective grade, so he tries to catch the fugitives single-handedly. In a typical display of Police brutality, he extorts information by smashing up someone's business. He has a spare Deathstroke mask handy, along with some Canadian ice-hockey sports vigilante gear.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

A SWAT team go after a mad scientist named Baxter Stockman (Giancarlo Esposito - Revolution ). Unfortunately his secret ooze egts spilled, and contaminates some sewer creatures.

The main story picks up fifteen years later. The teenage mutant turtles were raised by Splinter (Jackie Chan - Shanghai Noon ), a giant rat. However, in one of the new changes the filmmakers have rewritten his backstory. He is no longer the pet of a ninjitsu master, he is just a scavenging sewer rat who learned martial arts by watching chop-socky movies. Also, he realised the hard way to hate humans because they fear what they do not understand.

Although the turtles do not have any character development, because Millenial/Gen Zee characters are apparently too awesome for that, Splinter is the one who actually has an arc. After all, he starts as prejuduced against humans so he has room for improvement.

The main antagonist is a supervillain named Superfly (Ice Cube - Ghosts of Mars ). The old familiar antagonists Rocksteady (John Cena - Peacemaker ) and Bebop (Seth Rogen - ) are his henchmen. Yes, the original story's Asian representation - Shredder - has been written out, and only appears in a credits sequence setting up a sequel.