Round Table Cinemaniax: MARVEL (1 of 4)

#1 in a four podcast limited series.

Hope that you’ll enjoy our first round table in English, here at Cinemaniax.Net with a coverage of mostly everything we could came up with to presents a special show from the major part of the cast that works here, talking about films being adapted in the past, currently being made or in the process of becoming a reality from the MARVEL universe. In this first part of the show, Sarah Szefer from Cybermaniax.Net, Guy Caumartin from LeFrelonVert.Com, George Meszaro (guest), Martin Albert from LeCoinDuDVD.Com and myself (Denis Lalumière from… here!), are giving away our thoughts about HOWARD THE DUCK, BLADE and, what could be considered the beginning of well done films, X-MEN.

In 1986, Lucasfilm and Universal Pictures produced the movie Howard the Duck, starring Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, Tim Robbins, and, as the voice of Howard, Chip Zien. Besides Howard (who was portrayed by an assortment of stunt actors in a duck suit) the only character borrowed from the Marvel Comics mythos was Beverly Switzler, though in this version she was a rock singer. In the film, Howard is brought to Cleveland by a laser spectroscope experiment gone awry, which also summoned an evil alien, one of the Dark Overlords of the Universe, who intended to sacrifice all human life in order to free the others of its kind from their celestial prison. The film was widely panned and was a box office bomb. There was also a novelization and a comic adaptation of the film.

The Blade films are based on the fictional Marvel Comics character of the same name, portrayed by Wesley Snipes. They were written by David S. Goyer, Marv Wolfman, and Gene Colan, directed by Stephen Norrington, Guillermo del Toro and David S. Goyer, respectively and distributed by New Line Cinema. The character was created in 1973 for Marvel Comics by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Gene Colan and was a supporting character in the 1970s comic Tomb of Dracula. In the comic, Blade’s mother was bitten by a vampire while she was in labor with Blade. Thus, Blade was born as a dhampir, a human with vampire genes.

X-Men is a 2000 superhero film based on the fictional Marvel Comics characters of the same name. Directed by Bryan Singer, the film stars Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen, Bruce Davison, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romijn, Ray Park and Tyler Mane. It introduces Wolverine and Rogue into the conflict between Professor Xavier’s X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, led by Magneto. Magneto intends to mutate world leaders at a United Nations summit with a machine he has built to bring about acceptance of mutantkind, but Xavier realizes this forced mutation will only result in their deaths. Throughout 1989 and 1990, Stan Lee and Chris Claremont were in discussions with James Cameron and Carolco Pictures for an X-Men film adaptation. The deal fell apart when Cameron went to work on Spider-Man, Carolco went bankrupt, and the film rights reverted to Marvel Studios.