Hollywood Stole my Grey Pupon

Okay, I just saw this on an old comic at nuklearpower.com. I signed the petition, because honestly, I didn't like Halle Berry as Storm. I wasn't a huge fan of the first two X-Men movies, mostly because the writers, producers, directors or whoever, played around with the ages of the characters (Iceman is supposed to be much older, since he was one of the original X-Men with Beast, etc...I won't go on), but I used to read tons of X-Men comics (yes, I am that nerdy) and Storm always struck me as a cultured, refined, brave, mature woman who could manipulate weather just by thinking about it. Halle Berry does not portray her as such. Halle Berry's version of Storm is more "hip," and seems way too... for lack of a better word, adolescent. It's like Storm isn't a leading member of the X-Men anymore. She's like a paper version of Storm. She looks right, but you put her up to the light and you can see right through her.

So, I signed the petition and got this email to forward to my friends. Because I know a lot of my friends and family could probably care less about whether Halle Berry plays Storm in X-3, I'm not going to forward it. Instead I'm just going to post the link here, and anyone who cares can sign it or whatever.

Keep Halle Berry out of X-3

On a similar note, I hear Hollywood is coming out with a Thunderbirds movie. Thunderbirds are super cool, because they're puppets from the 60's. Puppets! Puppets that fly spaceships and jets and submarines!!! The Thunderbirds movie, like the X-Men movies and Spiderman movies, will probably leave me a little disappointed and heartbroken though. Growing up reading these comic books and watching these shows, I have expectations that I don't think any Hollywood incarnation could meet. Oh well, it's Hollywood, so what're you gonna do?

In the Thunderbirds movie, I think the main character is Alan Tracy, the youngest Thunderbird. In the tv show, I always assumed the five Tracy boys were between the ages of 30 and 20. The movie, however, is set up to be a tweeny-bopper movie, and Alan is something like 12 years old. Brains and Tintin are his best friends are are around his age. It just doesn't seem right. Anyone who's seen the tv show from the 60's will know that Brains is supposed to be an accomplished scientist in his own right with bunches of patents, and Tintin is a young woman who is old enough to drink champagne. Blah. I'm tired of the artistic liberties that the studio writers take to draw a younger crowd.

Well, it hasn't come out yet. I'm hoping that the thrilling (well, as thrilling as you can get with puppets and models on strings, which is pretty thrilling) suspense scenes inherent to the tv show will find their way into the main plot of the movie, and I hope that I can overlook the tweeny-bopper aspect of Alan, Tintin and Brains all being really young. I've seen the trailer and the Thunderbirds themselves (the air, space and marinecraft) look amazingly true to form. I'm also intrigued with how Ben Kingsley (you know, Gandhi) will do as The Hood. He looks like The Hood, so it'll be all right, right?

Argh. I just looked up the movie on IMDB (should have done that earlier), and it turns out Anthony Edwards (from ER) is playing Brains. He is by no means 12 years old. I could have just changed all the stuff I wrote earlier, but I don't feel like it. Anyway, now I don't know who that little kid is in the movie trailer. He has blue eyeglasses like Brains, but he's not Brains. Good. At least that's fixed. I think Tintin and Alan are still young though. Blah.

So I guess my point is that comic books and cult classics like "Thunderbirds" usually don't translate well to the silver screen. I've surprised myself. I wrote a lot about this, and I was originally going to write about how Iron Chef is going on Food Network (I'm not happy with that either, but I'll save that for later.)