Yes, I said $300 million.
I sure hope Mark Hamill has a similar type deal because even though star salaries weren't what they are now back when he did the Star Wars films, he certainly deserves it. His co-stars have had their own successes; Harrison Ford was one of the top box office draws in the world for a long time, and Carrie Fisher, when she can keep her act together, is a highly respected and in-demand script doctor. But Hamill has been much more low-profile.
Like Carrie, Hamill opted for a shift in his entertainment career. In his case, Hamill parlayed his life-long love of comics into a career doing voice-overs, often playing villains in animated fare like the Batman series. He's also drawn a mini-series comic called The Black Pearl with his cousin Eric Johnson and has been trying to turn it into a movie.
So a movie like Comic Book: The Movie seems downright natural for the now 52-year-old padawan. He gets to make a movie about something he truly loves, and it shows.
The Movie
Comic Book: The Movie is a mockumentary in the same vein as Christopher Guest's films, but it's more like A Mighty Wind in that it pays a loving tribute to its subject matter rather than the harsh skewering of Waiting for Guffman or Best In Show.
Hamill plays Don Swan, a high school English teacher and comic book aficionado who also publishes his own fanzine for comic book fans. He discovers that his childhood favorite, Commander Courage, is going to be adapted into a feature film. Because of his knowledge of the comic, he's flown to Hollywood to serve as a technical consultant on the film.
What he doesn't realize is the slimy studio executives are planning a major overhaul of the comic and want him to go out there and act as a flack for the movie to create acceptance for it. Tagging along is a cameraman named Ricky (producer Jess Harnell), who comes off as Otto from The Simpsons brought to life. Ricky's intent is to document the whole promotional effort.
Swan discovers the grandson of Commander Courage's creator (Billy West), who spends the whole movie looking scared of his own shadow. It makes for great comedy that he spends so much time with the effusive and outgoing Ricky, who tries to teach him how to pick up girls (with hilarious and disastrous results).
The cameo list is a mile long - Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, Hugh Hefner, Matt Groening, Bill Campbell, Billy Mumy, Ron Perlman (promoted as the star of Hellboy), Donna D'Errico, Ray Harryhausen and Bruce "Groovy" Campbell. All of them play themselves and talk with dead seriousness about Commander Courage, which is fictious.
The bulk of the film takes place at the San Diego Comic-Con, with lots of real-life attendees as background characters. However, attendees aren't the focus, it's Swan and his mission. Much of this movie appears to be ad-libbed, as the deleted scenes show because a few of them bombed. Hamill is incredibly funny and self-deprecating, especially as the film progresses and Swan starts to go off the rails.
I'm mixed in my view on this. No question this movie is a riot and it treats comic fans with affection, not contempt or disdain. But wouldn't it have been better if Hamill went as himself, not in character, and talked to the fans, similar to Trekkies? Or in the example of A Mighty Wind, would the movie be better if it was entirely fictitious?
With Comic Book: The Movie, you have a narrative taking place against a real-life event. With people like Stan Lee in this movie, I'd rather hear their real life stories, not these great entertainers talking about a fictional creation. To some degree, I get my wish with the extras, as everyone is out of character in most of those featurettes.
Regardless of my second-guessing, Hamill's directorial debut is quite funny and I hope he does more directing.
Score: 8 out of 10
The Video
The film is presented in 1.33:1 full screen video, and is a bit of a mixed bag. In many instances, the video looks very, very good for full screen. There's no sign of aliasing or dot crawl so prevalent in full screen video.
The real problem is not video-related, it's lighting. Some scenes take place at night, others are in the dimly lit recesses of the San Diego Convention Center. That hurts the movie itself, but that's not a video performance problem.
Color and fine detail is often very nice, but again it's variable, because they use different cameras at different times. Some times, it's just beautiful, with excellent, bright colors, good flesh tones and nice detail. Then there are times when the colors are muted and detail isn't so good.
Score: 7 out of 10
Languages and Audio
Well, it's supposed to be a Dolby Digital 5.1 track but you'd never know it. This is an entirely character-driven story, so it's all center channel. The problem was that the voices sounded like they were about five feet behind the speaker itself. While not suffering from any hiss or distortion, it's clear no one was miked for the shoot, and the result is their voices sound very far away. This isn't always the case, but there are times when it's not easy to make out what is said.
The film comes with English subtitles.
Score: 5 out of 10
Packaging and Extras
The film comes as a two-disc set in an Amaray case with a hinge holder. There's no insert. This has to be the most impressive collection of extras I've ever seen on a direct-to-video release. I mean, it's amazing.
First up on disc one is a commentary track with Hamill and the gang, including Billy West, and it's mayhem on a scale comparable to the Futurama commentaries. There's about five people gathered together and they are constantly gong into voices and doing impersonations. Hamill tries to keep order, but he really needed The Force with this bunch. They tell all kinds of stories from the shoot, including about people they met, all of which are a riot. This is a great track.
Also on page one is the complete listing of all the cameos (33 total), an art gallery of sketches for Commander Courage, 12 cast and crew bios and Miramax trailers.
Finally, there's 13 deleted scenes, running around 27 minutes. There's no play all option but there is a static page, which looks like a comic book page, introducing the scene and explaining why it was cut. Some were improves that bombed, others were subplots that were cut. The auditions for Liberty Lad were pretty good, though.
On to disc two. Behind The Voices is a 51 minute segment that's all done out of character. All of the main characters address the Comic-Con audience, talking about their backgrounds and such. Hearing Harnell do all his voices was a hoot.
Four Color Frenzy - The Making of Comic Book: The Movie is a making-of featurettes, which features Hamill and his cohorts, plus interviews with people like Stan Lee. This is more straight forward, avoiding the usual backslapping so many documentaries have, where the actors all praise each other. This making-of is actually informative.
Hamill returns to character for Don Swan In-Depth with Kevin Smith (running 20 minutes), Don Swan's Complete Bruce Campbell Interview (running 17 minutes) and Don Swan Interviews Hugh Hefner on Comics and Women (a whopping 40 minutes, which is a real stretch). I would rather he kept it short, because he's talking about a non-existent comic, and why does Hef get 40 minutes without one Playmate appearing on screen?
The Commander Courage Radio Show is a seven-minute segment done at the Behind the Voices event, with his co-stars doing the voices as though they were performing a live radio broadcast.
Stan Lee on Comic Book Movies is a treat from the maestro of comics. He's full of stories, such as how he threw out so many of his original panels when they were drawn in the '50s and '60s to make room in his office. He also lays into the 1980s Spider Man TV series.
The Behind the Voices bios covers four of the voice-over artists - Gary Owens, Jim Cummings, Maurice Lamarche and Rob Paulsen. The bios are just flat panels of text on the four. There's also a one-page panel on Comic-Con and the Actor Comic Fund.
Finally, under More Interviews we have five short Don Swan interviews with Mark Evanier, Scott Shaw, Billy Mumy, Peter David and Paul Dini. There are Easter eggs on both discs, but I will leave them to you to find. There are no DVD-ROM features.
Score: 9 out of 10
