Episode 87: Thankful for the Marvel Cinematic Universe!

 

Welcome all, and to our fellow Americans, Happy Thanksgiving! It's become a tradition here at Planet 8 for us to celebrate and be thankful for some genre-related franchise, and in the past, we've been thankful for Star Trek, Star Wars, and James Bond. This year, we are expressing our love and gratitude for the magnificent Marvel Cinematic Universe -the MCU! Now with 26 films and climbing, not to mention the MCU TV series, we've been blessed with a bountiful collection of films that created a rich, complex, and deeply rewarding experience for the viewers. 

We'll have a conversation about our early experience with the MCU, when we first started hearing about Marvel making an Iron Man film, what we thought of it and how Marvel blew us away with that and the succeeding films. 

Casting has been a big key to making the films successful, and we'll talk about our favorite castings and the ones we thought might have been crazy, but actually worked out really well. 

Of course, no discussion of the MCU would be complete without going around and talking about which Marvel movies are our favorites! With so many to choose from now, it's getting harder to pick, but we do come up with a few. Amazingly, there are few MCU films that we don't like. There may be a few that we like less...but somehow they have kept a high level of quality through the series.

The crew also talks a bit about the latest MCU film, The Eternals, so if you haven't seen that film yet, be warned! And we can't neglect all the activity on Disney Plus - four series so far, and as this episode goes live, the Hawkeye series will be hitting the airwaves in a couple of days! Where else will the Marvel Cinematic Universe go? We can't wait to see.

For the Sensor Sweep, Bob shares information about a book by his friend Norman England, Behind the Kaiju Curtain: A Journey onto Japan's Biggest Film Sets. This book is a personal record of Norman's experiences while he wrote for Fangoria and was able to visit the sets of a number of kaiju films in a professional capacity. He met many of the actors and crew on the films and the book gives you an intimate look at what went on in the Japanese film industry in the 90s. If you like kaiju films, this is a must-read! Ask for it at your local bookseller, or get it at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. 

That's all for us this time. Listeners, we are also thankful for you! We appreciate you listening to us, commenting, subscribing, contacting us on Twitter and Facebook. It's great to feel a sense of community forming around Planet 8. We hope that you and yours are safe and well.

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Avengers Assemble!!

Episode 86: They are Legend! Adaptations of I Am Legend

 

Come with us on this episode as we ponder...what would it be like to be the last human being on Earth? How would a person cope with the loneliness, the despair? We look at a trio of films all based on a story built around this concept, Richard Matheson's classic 1954 novel, I Am Legend. Matheson's story took the classic vampire legend and gave it a modern, pseudo-scientific twist, with the vampires created by a bacterial plague, leaving one man,  immune, struggling to survive.

After Bob provides some background on the novel, we dive into the first film adaptation, 1964's Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price. Matheson wrote the first draft of the screenplay but eventually withdrew his name from it after a number of other writers came in later and altered it. However, it is still the most faithful version to the book. It's certainly the one that retains the horror aspects the most. The black and white film gives it a ton of atmosphere, and Price provides a strong performance as the deeply depressed Robert Morgan (not Neville, as he was named in the book and the other two films). Having Morgan's former neighbors, now turned into pseudo vampires/zombies stand outside his house at night groaning, "Morgan!" is pretty chilling. 

By 1971, the concept turns into an action/sci fi vehicle for Charlton Heston, called The Omega Man. This version differs markedly from the original Matheson story. Heston plays Colonel Robert Neville, MD, a military man and doctor, who was working on a vaccine to a biowarfare agent unleashed in a war between China and the USSR. Unfortunately, Neville is the only one to receive the experimental vaccine before most of the world succumbs to the disease. The survivors are mutated into strange albinos who can't stand daylight, and develop a science-hating cult (The Family) led by a former newscaster, played by Anthony Zerbe. During the day, Neville goes around killing The Family where he can find them, and taking whatever food, clothes, cars, etc., he wants. This film features a love interest -Rosalind Cash as Lisa - and is notable for the obvious Christ analogy at the end of the film. It's a big ball of cheese, but entertaining.

The property was moved around Hollywood for a while, with Ridley Scott and Arnold Schwarzenegger attached for a length of time. But the third version was released in 2007, titled I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. This film took many of the ideas of the book, but followed Omega Man's action packed  style. Once again, Smith's character is both a military man and a doctor, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Neville, an Army virologist. He is the only survivor of a plague that has wiped out mankind, with the few survivors turned into wild cannibalistic mutants who can only come out at night. Neville, with his dog Sam as his only companion, hunts the mutants during the day, sometimes capturing them to experiment on them, still searching for a cure. The Planet 8 crew all agrees that we had a hard time sticking with this film once the CGI creatures appeared - it's a shame such bad CGI basically ruined this film.

Of course we will compare and contrast the movies, discuss what elements they have in common, how they differ, and what we thought worked best. It's fascinating to have three films, from different decades, all working from the same source material. Each is a product of its time. And what would a new adaptation look like?

For our Sensor Sweep, fittingly, Karen shares her soundtrack CD for the Omega Man -it's Omega Man 2.0 Unlimited from Film Score Monthly. This version has a whopping 18 tracks, for 64 minutes of amazing music from Ron Grainer. It's a fantastic, memorable 70s score. Put it on the next time you're cruising around Los Angeles!

That's it for us this time. Be sure to share your thoughts with us about the many versions of I Am Legend.

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Moooor - gan!!