sum1

A while back I watched the notorious 2004 Catwoman film starring Halle Berry. It was more tolerable than I expected. Halle was very relatable in it. The thing that really brought it down was the costume they put her in. It seemed designed to make a joke out of her. They gave excuses for it, but basically it shows they didn't take the character seriously. And once the film refuses to respect a character, it's hard for the audience to. Ruined the film.

The film was still better than the awful Elektra film starring Jennifer Garner that came out around the same time. Neither the writing nor the acting in that film got Elektra right. She had no edge. Elektra is supposed to be this wild, dangerous, edgy, sexy, ruthless, passionate, conflicted character. Garner's performance was utterly flat. There's a scene where she's telling the girl Abby how her mentor Stick can raise people from the dead and her deivery is so flat she might as well have been reading off a shopping list. And Garner couldn't play a deadly super-ninja if her life depended on it. She's a strongly-built athletic woman with a solid jaw, but the expression in her eyes in her performances conveys weakness. Also blandness. She gives Elektra none of the passion and danger the role requires.

One thing I noticed in Garner's Alias work that pops up in places in the Elektra film is that she goes in for overly frightened or disturbed facial expressions when her character is in dangerous situations, in a way that does not fit a seasoned profesional assassin, ninja or super-spy. Basically she looks like she's running scared when her character should look strong. It doesn't fit Elektra and it doesn't fit what Alias's Syd was supposed to be. Tough professionals like that learn to keep it together, because if you lose it in a firefight you're dead, and that would apply to all such people, regardless of gender. To suggest tough women would be any different from tough men in that way is to impose sexist stereotypes on female characters. Alias was clearly a ripoff of the La Femme Nikita show (1997-2001) starring Peta Wilson. In that show, Peta showed plenty of vulnerability and humanity, but she knew how to be strong when strength was required. Past the first episode (when her character was untrained), you wouldn't catch her looking like she was going to pee her pants in a scary moment the way Syd often does and Garner's Elektra sometimes does. Garner's habit of portraying action heroines like that implies a sexist assumption that all women, even the tough ones, are scared and vulnerable as per sexist stereotype, just because they're women. That really pisses me off.

Garner was terrible as Elektra in the Daredevil film too. People think she's good as an action heroine because she's athletic, but she has no clue. Nor can she act in general. Too stiff. Elodie Yung, who has a Karate black belt and considerable acting talent, was much better as Elektra, when she played the role in the Netflix shows Daredevil and Defenders.

Oh and Terence Stamp was pretty crap as Stick in Elektra. Scott Glenn in the Netflix shows was much better.

Anyway, Halle Berry's performance in Catwoman was way better than Garner's in Elektra. Much more alive and human.

~Search4Truth~

Alexandra Shipp was a better Storm than Halle Berry, but Halle Berry is a better actress overall and I’m glad she played Storm because she was Hugh Jackman’s best friend on the set, and especially when he was first starting off in Hollywood, she was there for him when Bryan Singer had been disrespectful. Also, Shipp completely disrespected Aaliyah by playing her terribly in a film that Aaliyah’s family didn’t want to get made, so as an Aaliyah fan, it’s hard for me to forgive Shipp for that. However, she was the best thing in that Apocalypse movie after Fassbender and McAvoy so I give her credit for that. I personally didn’t like X-Men Apocalypse, but she played Storm well whereas many of the other young actors sucked in my opinion.

Sum, I agree that Garner sucked as Elektra.

sum1

I don't pay much attention to music, so I don't know much about Aaliyah, just that I hated her performance in Queen of the Damned. I don't know about any biopic made about her, so it's not an issue with me. I just know that Shipp was good in X-Men Apocalypse. The film wasn't great, but it did have its good points.


Elodie Yung is so much better. If an Elektra or Daredevil film were being made in the '90s I'd have cast Gina Gershon in the role.

Moving back to Storm, here's a good example of Storm with the Mowhawk from back in the day:

http://comicbookdb.com/graphics/comi...4353_large.jpg

Storm and Kitty Pryde on the cover of Uncanny X-Men 180, 1984, art by JRJR.

And here's Storm on the cover of 178, two months earlier:

http://comicbookdb.com/graphics/comi...2431_large.jpg

They're fighting the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. That's Storm, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Nightcrawler's witch girlfriend Amanda Sefton fighting Pyro, the Blob and Avalanche. Art still by JRJR. This was his early stage, before his art became more polished.

~Search4Truth~

I never saw Queen of the Damned (loved her in Romeo Must Die though, lol). Aaliyah was my favorite singer when I was in middle school and high school. I owned all her albums and used to copy her dance moves and wear my hair like her and simply adored her. Then she died in a plane crash at age 22 when I was around 16 (just two weeks before the 9/11 attack). It was incredibly tragic. When the family of a deceased person disapproves of a movie, it is disrespectful to do it. Alexandra Shipp decided it would be a good idea to do it anyway. I will never be happy about that. But yes, she was a good Storm, which actually annoyed me because I wanted to dislike her while watching it simply because I didn't like her in interviews or for playing Aaliyah, lol. The look they gave her was more fitting for Storm too (compared to the terrible wig they gave Halle Berry).

True! So true!

Love it! Storm is one of my favorite characters. Always loved the Mohawk! Love her in the cartoon too!

sum1

I've added a pic to my above post since you read it.

PhoenixRising

Thanks for all those links, dragonfire!

I'm actually appreciative of Storm's Mohawk. That brings back memories from the 80's.

sum1

I like the Mowhawk. That was the look she had when I first came across her.

http://comicbookdb.com/graphics/comi...1049_large.jpg

Another mowhawk pic, this one from Uncanny X-Men 2016, 1987, art by Barry Windsor Smith.

PhoenixRising

Oh, really? I first saw her before the Mohawk, when she had the long hair.

Thanks for the pics! I remember that artwork. Very 80's.

sum1

Team shot, Uncanny X-Men 300, 1993, art by JRJR:

http://comicbookdb.com/graphics/comi...0954_large.jpg

PhoenixRising

Thanks, sum1. I didn't like Storm's all white outfit, though.

sum1

That wasn't all white. That was black/silver.

PhoenixRising

Well, the cape was black, but the rest of the outfit was white/silver. I preferred the other one. I also never understood what people liked about Wolverine's blue & yellow outfit. I always preferred the brown/yellow one.

sum1

Her outfit was silver with a lot of black shadows, not white. I liked it. And yeah, I prefer Wolverine's brown and yellow outfit.

PhoenixRising

Not to get too off topic, but wasn't there a deleted scene in The Wolverine where Logan had his brown mask?

Oh, okay. Silver then. I still preferred the black one with white trim.

sum1

You mean you preferred the revealing one.

I preferred her eighties outfit.