Captain America : The First Avenger dir. by Joe Johnston
Too short, too unfit, too ill for military service, all Steve Rogers wants is to join up and serve his country in fighting the Nazis. He has been picked on all his life, but refuses to back down, once you start running, he believes, you’ll never stop. When Dr. Abraham Erskine discovers this desire he begins to pull strings and gets Rogers into the army, into a special, experiemental unit, to be precise. Soon Rogers is no longer too small, or too unfit, he is in fact a super-soldier. Although what can one man do? Well, propaganda. He is sent off touring the states in an effort to try and persuade the public to buy war bonds. And then, on to Europe to entertain the troops. But they aren’t interested in his performance, they want to see the girls. Rogers, however, is very interested in the news that this is the 107th, the very same unit his best friend joined, but of Bucky there is no sign. Rogers decides that he has had enough of Captain America the stage hero and decides to go in and rescue the missing soldiers.
But you don’t really need that back story do you? I mean, we’ve all heard of Captain America, the superhero who fought the Nazis, right?
Charles Xavier and Eric Lensherr weren’t always the famous Professor X and Magento. This is their origin story, the origin story of the original X-Men. Set in the 1960s with the Cuban Missile crises at boiling point, the pot of tensions is being stirred further by Sebastian Shaw, a mutant who has been doing the rounds since the 1940s. He believes that mutants are the superior race, and that they must destroy the inferior human race in order to take their rightful place as masters of the earth. Lebensraum and all that.
I mean, it has a catchy title, in a Snakes on a plane sort of way. And the idea of a sort of comedy action film with Rutger Hauer as a hobo with a shotgun sounded like it might be vaguely entertaining.
When I first started watching Spartacus : Blood and Sand I have to say that I wasn’t overly impressed. Obviously influenced by the style and look of 300 it seemed to be a show that existed only to show glossy violence and sex. And boy did it ever show that. But after the first few episodes it developed into a very enjoyable, almost addictive, show. But then its star was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and so film making was delayed as he underwent treatment. And so instead of a second season we got a prequel. Spartacus : gods of the arena. Don’t be fooled by that name in the title, this has no Spartacus as all, instead it tells the story of how John Hannah’s Lentulus Batiatus comes to run the family ludus, and how Crixus becomes a gladiator.