An Interview with Jaws Maquette Sculptor Mike Schultz (Part 1 of 2)

Two Bruce maquettes from Shark City Ozark.

August is going to be a fin-tastic month for Jaws fans. Not only will Jaws be released on Blu-ray on August 14th, but the JawsFest: The Tribute event will be held in Martha’s Vineyard from August 9th to the 12th. At this event will be yet another Jaws milestone: Shark City Ozark will be at JawsFest to officially launch its Jaws 2 maquette, the second in its “Ultimate Bruce Shark” Collector’s Set. That fact that Shark City Ozark has already produced several different movie-accurate Bruce maquettes is amazing, but its production of movie-accurate maquettes for the sequel sharks is unprecedented for the Jaws franchise.

To help celebrate the long overdue Jaws milestone, I had the chance to interview Mike Schultz, the owner of Shark City Ozark and its chief sculptor. Read on for the first part of the interview, where Schultz recalls his first encounter with Jaws, his experiences with sculpting his own mechanical sharks, and his struggles to bring to Jaws fans their own complete versions of Bruce--as Quint himself would say, “The head, the tail, the whole damn thing.” (All photos are provided courtesy of Shark City Ozark.)

Titans, Terrors, and Toys: How long have you been a Jaws fan? When did you first see Jaws?

Mike Schultz: I did not see Jaws when it first came out. I was about 7 years old at that time, so I didn’t see the shark until the re-release. The audience I watched it with included very large woman who blocked most of my view. Every time the shark made an appearance, she screamed and jumped in front of me so I couldn’t see a thing! So, even when I finally did get to see Jaws, that first time was completely Bruce-less. Still, I had loved sharks before that and I was into reading about them and modeling them as well as dinosaurs. If an article, toy, comic or magazine had a shark involved, I collected it.

It was not until home VCRs came out that I began to collect really usable reference materials of the many different Bruce sharks. I would close all of the curtains in the room, set up a camera on a tripod, pause the VCR at the good spots, and take photos. I would study these pictures to death for my different sculptures and models. Back then, I mostly made stop motion puppets and not the fully mechanical kind. They came later. So Jaws has pretty much dominated my time ever since I can remember. Had it not been for that movie, who knows?

TTT: So your interest in sculpting began though your interest in sharks?

MS: Yes. I learned drawing, sculpting, modeling, metal and wood working and working with many different natural and synthetic materials just so that I could achieve my different goals of making sharks, monsters and spaceships for my Super 8 films. I studied under magnifying glass any photos I could get of special effects workshops. If they used a particular tool or material, then I would research it at the library and through effects publications. I was actually making plastics out of spoiled milk and formaldehyde like they used to for making billiard balls last century, and making latex foam using citric acids! Back then, the real materials were too expensive for a kid mowing lawns, so I did what I could with what I learned from study. I would also hang out a lot with maintenance men at apartment complexes and auto mechanics and junkyards just to get experience working with tools and torches and the like. All for the goal of making my stop motion films better. Later, that grew into sets and miniature work, which led to cable control creatures.

Everything somehow always led back to sharks. I even made my first mechanized shark when I was 11 years old. I had to vulcanize the rubber using steam, and I remember suffering many of the same problems that the movie crew suffered with their Bruce sharks. My shark’s paint was stiff and cracked at the stretchy points, and its skins tore and wore rapidly. Smoothly running joints and motors would inevitably stick and jam. The snout and jowls would wrinkly horridly and unrealistically if the mouth closed too far. That sort of stuff. Another shark I made in high school was cable controlled and never broke down, but I got tired of making new skins for it as they wore out rapidly. Many of the sharks I made were just for fun, but this one got me an A as a science project since it could bare its upper jaw just like a real shark.

A Shark City Ozark maquette of a mako shark.

TTT: Did your interest in sharks lead you into the line of work you’re doing today?

MS: Sort of. I decided in my early twenties that I enjoyed making sharks, but did not like the career aspect. The people in the field that I had talked with spent more time worried and unemployed than working, and when they did work it was during insane hours and under high pressure, and not ever enough pay. I did not want that life. Even the pros seemed stressed and burned out and quite used up. Although I loved it, I did not love it that much to lose my life to it. So I no longer aimed to make that field my life’s work. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too somehow.

I became a garbage truck driver for almost 8 years. It allowed me to marry, start a family and pay the bills, but I always had a workshop and a project going. Some of the shark sculpts and models that are pictured on my commissions gallery page on Shark City Ozark came from those years. During that time, I made the forward 6 feet of a 10 foot great white shark. It even rode on its own trolley arm. It was water-tight, pneumatic and strong enough to lift me off the ground. We actually used that prop years later to try and win money in a short funny sketch trying to get on this new TV series called America’s Funniest Home Videos. (You may have heard of it.) I often wonder what happened to that footage we sent to them.

Once Jurassic Park and its sequels came out, I pretty much put the sharks aside to make the money by making dinosaurs. On the side, we set up own local/semi-local Internet business to make and sell dinosaur fossil replicas. We sold thousands of Velociraptor claws and T-Rex teeth at the time. This led to us building the dinosaur displays for museums, too. One job usually led to another, since dinosaurs stayed hot for the first Jurassic Park sequel. Those were fun years. I even got to work on a large fossil dig for awhile in Texas due to knowing the right crowd for such a project. Good times and good pay.

A Shark City Ozary T-Rex Head Mount--a perfect gift for Turok!

TTT: That sounds like it was a lot of fun. What made you decide to pursue the Jaws license as a professional project?

MS: When the dinosaur-craze cooled down, I returned to work in sharks. Sharks are almost always hot in terms of demand. I had acquired a poor quality taxidermy great white shark head about this time. I cut off about 35 percent of it, added about 50 pounds of clay, and remodeled it into a picture-perfect Great White Trophy Head Mount. Once molded, I was able to produce and sell these replicas of a ten foot great white shark’s head at a rate of about two per month on Ebay. I did this for about six years to make ends meet.

One day after searching the Internet for anything new on Jaws, I realized that it was a dead field--dead only because nobody was making anything for fans that was worth their money. I felt that between my background in shark fishing, shark modeling and special effects, I might just be the guy to do Bruce justice. So I found a fan site and announced my goals.

TTT: How hard has it been to find materials regarding the Jaws sharks?

MS: It has been a nightmare finding worthwhile material of the movie sharks. Like many fan bases, it was rare to find those in the Jaws arena who had what I needed and then convince them to share it with me. You have personalities who horde everything that comes their way and once they get their hands on something they never share, even though they often hint at what they have for pride’s sake. Others actually have been doing their homework and gathering materials all these years for things like the Memories From Martha’s Vineyard book. Let me tell you, if had I the photo reference material put out in that book last year, the Jaws fans would already have been drowned in my accurate Bruce Shark collectibles years ago!

TTT: How hard has it been to make something that actually looked like Bruce, as opposed to just a mean looking shark?

MS: I believe that the two main areas that must be addressed in order to replicate the Bruce sharks perfectly are that of proper resource material study, and then sticking with what the reference materials measure out as and never guessing or going with some artistic flair. What many artists and fans do not understand at all is the simple nature of these props. Most have never made a mechanical shark or stop motion puppet. They don’t understand the materials or reality of what is in front of their faces. They think “shark” and superimpose their will on their model and that is the basis for nearly every attempt at modeling Bruce coming out looking like a great shark, but not like Bruce. Or, if the artist does try hard and does have talent, then he will achieve a ‘Bruce-like’ shark that looks somewhat like Bruce from maybe two or three angles but the illusion melts from any other angle. I had never seen anyone actually make a proper scale model of Bruce the shark like they would an F-16 fighter jet or model tank.

My scale Bruce shark model was going to be different. Mine would reflect the actual proportions, with carefully measured angles and curves that make Bruce look like just like Bruce. In a nutshell, I did back then what laser scanners do for people now. Even if I don’t believe my eyes, I will still convey those curves and angles and measurements. I have built props and puppets and mechanical sharks for over 30 years, so that is naturally part of the input as well. I understand the properties of skin stretch and where and why models have hard and soft areas. My wrinkles will look like Bruce’s wrinkles because I know what was under that skin, what that skin was made of, how that skin works, how thick the padding is, and what these materials are like when waterlogged and stressed. You can’t replicate on this scale at this level of museum display quality and remain accurate historically unless you have truly been there, done that and got the t-shirt yourself.

A Bruce maquette wearing a bib, because munching on Amity swimmers can get messy.

TTT: How do you go about converting the information that you get about the mechanical sharks (productions stills, schematic drawings, etc.) into something that can be scaled down into a miniature size?

MS: I do what a laser scanner tries to do, only it has the benefit of working from an actual three dimensional model. For me it has been slow going. My archenemies are lens warping, and poorly cropped or poorly lit photos. Of the 14 GB of photos and footage I have of Bruce, I would be stretching the truth to put my blessing on even 3 GB of that material being of any use as reference material. Often what you need to measure is covered by water, or a boat, or someone’s hand or head. In other cases, the area you need to see is dim or out of focus or in the shadows or something. It is a very frustrating process, and very time consuming and error prone once the material can be found and measured. It must be taken into Photoshop and tortured into giving up its useful data.

Many don’t realize that the sculpting and modeling artist has been nearly completely replaced these days by lasers and computers in the toy and action figure industry, which is a shame. Rapid prototyping and the race for the quick buck has nearly wiped out the joy of getting your hands dirty with clay and materials. Those that still know how to get their hands dirty have been relegated to the tasks of simply cleaning up what the computer prints out in three dimensions. Very few companies will pay for talent, but they will mortgage their futures on the latest in rapid prototyping machines and software. To be blunt, it’s very sad. I think we garage-artists share the pain that Phil Tippet must have felt when computers were brought in to replace go-motion in Jurassic Park. Mind you, computers have a place like any other tool, but it is wrong to replace or to starve a talented artist just to rush the next “Amazing Spider-Man Dirt Bike” toy out to Walmart.

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Stay tuned for part two of this interview, where Schultz discusses the fans’ response to Shark City Ozark’s maquettes, the feedback he’s received from Jaws franchise vet Joe Alves, and what he has in store for horror and sci-fi collectors in the future.

Robo Redneck: Part Man, Part Machine, All Redneck

I'm not a country music fan, but I thought I would share this recent video for "The Wind" by the Zac Brown Band:

I'm posting about this video for three reasons:

1. It's a pretty funny video filled with physical humor and sight gags to which only cartoons can do justice.

2. It's directed by Mike Judge, the same guy who gave us such wonderful things such as Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and Office Space.

3. It's a southern-fried parody of geek-friendly stuff such as The Six Million Dollar Man, The Terminator and Robocop.

Super 7 Will Release Kenner's Lost Alien Action Figure Line

Given how busy my schedule has been as of late, I haven't paid much attention to news from this year's Comic-Con. I have been dropping in from time to time on sites that have been covering this event and of all the stories I've read, one surprises me much more than the rest. Next year, a company called Super 7 will be releasing completed versions of Kenner's unreleased 3 and 3/4 inch action figures from the movie Alien.

You see, Kenner picked up the toy license for Alien back in 1979 after its line of Star Wars toys became a blockbuster success. Kenner thought that Alien would be the next big thing in sci-fi and it apparently didn't give much thought to the film's R rating or the genuinely terrifying nature of the film's titular creature. As a result, the few Alien items that Kenner did release--which included a board game and a 18 inch figure of the Alien--didn't sell well and the toy line was discontinued. A few Alien action figures were sculpted before the line ended, but they remained unreleased until Super 7 decided to finish what Kenner started.

Super 7's five figure set will consist of Ripley, Dallas, Ash, Kane (in a space suit) and the Alien. According to the Super 7 press release, the new figures will be similar to Kenner's Star Wars figures in that they will only have five points of articulation and they will be packaged on "period-authentic" blister cards. Super 7 also plans to release other kinds of Alien and Aliens merchandise, although whether that merchandise will include additional unproduced toys from the Alien franchise remains to be seen. Click here to see a list of unproduced merchandise at the Aliens Collection site.

Kenner's Alien figure from 1979.

Jack Arnold Builds a Better Big Bug in Tarantula (1955)

I like big bugs and I cannot lie. From Them! to the Mimic trilogy, these giant creepy-crawlers always fascinated me with their M.C. Escher-esque distortions of scale. On the other hand, finding big bug movies that are actually worth watching can be a challenge, since the overwhelming majority of them are low-budget, low-talent rip-offs of better movies.

Jack Arnold's Tarantula is one of the better big bug movies from the 50s, the second best movie of its type after Them!. I can't add much more to what has already been said about the quality of Tarantula as a movie, but I've decided to post about it anyway to look back at its impressive effects work. In our modern era where Hollywood's overreliance CGI technology has drained the creative spark out of many horror and sci-fi titles, Tarantula stands as a textbook example of how talented people can make a simple optical illusion yield amazing results. Read on for my complete retrospective, which includes video clips.

The big bug movies of the 50s brought their macro-monsters to life by using one of three methods: scale-sized puppets, stop-motion animation, and/or shooting real bugs with miniature sets and then compositing that footage with human actors and human-sized sets through techniques such as rear-screen projections and traveling mattes. Them! and The Deadly Mantis used the first method, and The Black Scorpion used the second method. Arnold used the third method in Tarantula--as did another filmmaker, Bert I. Gordon, during the same decade for the giant monster movies he shot. The end results from both filmmakers couldn't be more different, as you can see in the clips below.

Arnold's Tarantula:

Gordon's Beginning of the End and Earth vs. The Spider:

Arnold would later build upon his experience with distorting the size of a spider in The Incredible Shrinking Man, where he had to reduce actor Grant Williams from human-sized to microscopic:

On the other hand, Gordon shot so many giant monster movies during his career that earned the nickname "Mr. Big", but his creative output strongly suggests that he never learned to refine his trick photography techniques. For example, the giant ants in his Empire of the Ants look just as hokey as his grasshoppers in The Beginning of the End, even though the films were shot two decades apart:

Not all of the spider shots in Tarantula are perfect. A spider's leg simply vanishes into thin air in one shot, while the spider appears to be walking over--and not on--the desert's surface in another shot. The spider's exact size also shifts between shots, and it never casts a shadow on the desert no matter how big it gets. In spite of these drawbacks, the overall effect works much better than you think it should.

I believe that a lot of the film's success is due to how well the spider is placed within the shot and how the spider remains opaque, even in daylight desert shots. By keeping the details of the spider's body concealed, it forces the viewer to concentrate on the spider's body motion instead of the smaller details that could give away the spider's true scale. Then again, the spider's slow, creeping motions suggest a creature of a large size and weight; these motions build a sense of impending doom whenever it closes in on a victim. Compare that to Gordon's bugs, whose twitchy, jerky motions betray their actual sizes. Furthermore, compare Arnold's work in Tarantula to other movies where the "giant" insects, spiders, and lizards--and even rabbits--are shown in complete detail and in full lighting in composite shots with actors, and the difference in quality becomes apparent:

For a special effects technique that is comparative simple in terms of both concept and execution, it's still amazing that Arnold remains one of the few directors to actually get it right. (Of course, having a solid script also helps, since Tarantula is also better written than most of its counterparts.) Tarantula may not be the best creature feature ever made, but it's a welcome respite for horror fans who have reached their limit of CGI effects and want to see an example of when a filmmaker's knowledge of photography, scale and illusion could produce amazing results on a modest budget.

Team Up With Your Favorite DC Superheroes in Wii's Batman: The Brave and the Bold

With the release of Christopher Nolan's final film in his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises, just a few days away, I thought I would take this time to provide a review of something that involves a different kind of Batman--namely, the Batman: The Brave and the Bold video game for the Wii, a game that's based on the animated series of the same name.

I loved Brave and the Bold when it ran on Cartoon Network, so I really enjoyed how the game successfully imitates the look and feel of the show. However, because this game is a two-dimensional side-scrolling platformer, it will most likely disappoint Batman fans who are looking for another gaming experience along the lines of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Read on for my complete review.

Brave and the Bold plays like four lost episodes of the TV show. The voice talent, writing, animation style and background music are exactly the same as the cartoon. Each episode involves Batman (voiced by Diedrich Bader) teaming up with another DC superhero, and each episode begins with a mini-adventure before the opening credits roll. The game adds to the team up concept by allowing two players to play cooperatively, and each player can earn points to upgrade the weapons and abilities of his respective character. Bat-Mite (Paul Reubens) appears to offer tips throughout the game and after you complete the four episodes, you'll unlock a bonus level that takes place in Bat-Mite's own Batman-centric, comic-book-shop-like world.

A lot of care went into the making of the game, so it's a few steps above most other franchise tie-in games that are little more than poorly-made merchandising opportunities. Each episode in the game is fun in its own right, and the heroes' witty banter both with the villains and between each other keeps the game's energy going even when the gameplay gets somewhat repetitive. Even though Batman teams up with only four superheroes in the game (Robin, Blue Beetle, Hawkman and Guy Gardner, in that order), the game allows you to briefly call in a third superhero of your own choosing to provide extra support for times when you are ambushed by villains. As DC-based video game titles go, Brave and the Bold includes an impressive selection of DC superheroes and villains.

As far as the episodes go, the most interesting team up happens between Batman and Hawkman (voiced by William Katt, who is best known for his work on The Greatest American Hero TV series). This episode depicts Hawkman as a predecessor to Batman, and much of their conversation articulates how being a superhero has changed from one generation to the next. Since the Brave and the Bold cartoon was produced as a tribute of sorts to the Silver Age of DC Comics, this part of the game is like listening to a conversation between a Silver Age Batman and a Golden Age Hawkman--a real treat for superhero fans who know their comic book history.

Where Brave and the Bold stumbles the hardest is its use of the 2D side-scrolling platform format. While this format allows the game to flawlessly adhere the animation style of the cartoon, it lacks the depth and challenge of its 3D counterparts. As a result, most of the game involves dispatching wave after wave of henchmen, which can get predictable and tedious at times. The 2D format also limits what you can do with some of the playable superhero characters. Batman's gadgets are always fun to use in both 2D and 3D and the game's programmers were able to use the Wiimote to inject some distinct features into Guy Gardner's abilities during the Green Lantern episode. On the other hand, Robin's abilities are almost the same as Batman's and the game's flat style severely curtails the abilities of Blue Beetle and Hawkman, which makes them less interesting as game characters than they should be.

Ultimately, Batman: The Brave and the Bold was designed for fans of all ages of the cartoon and for adult superhero fans who are looking for a game that they can play with their kids--for those two groups, this game is a solid success. Anyone else who is looking for something more than that is strongly encourage to look elsewhere.

Nerd Rant: Somewhere Out There, a Comic Book Supervillain is Missing His Face

I don't read monthly comic book series anymore. They're too expensive for my budget these days, so I have reduced my comic book intake to stand-alone graphic novels and multi-issue compilations. I stay informed of what DC and Marvel are doing through comic book reviews and news updates, so I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I found out that the Joker had his face cut off at his own request a few months ago. Yes, really:

Can you read this J-J-J-Joker Face?

I heard about this plot development a while back but I didn't pay much attention to it because of the other stuff that DC had been doing at the time with its company-wide reboot of all of its characters and their respective comic series. Batman series writer Scott Snyder has been touring the news outlets as of late to promote his upcoming story arc involving the Joker called "Death of the Family", which will begin in October. As part of this arc, Joker will be sporting a new look à la Leatherface, with his removed face attached to his head as a sort of mask.

This wouldn't be the first time that Batman has dipped his toes into giallo/slasher territory. Even though their origins pre-date Italy's golden years of giallo and America's slasher movie craze of the 80s, Batman villains such as Two-Face, Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow have backgrounds that are very similar to giallo/slasher villains. In fact, Snyder's recent Batman arc, "Night of the Owls", was clearly influenced by the giallo/slasher subgenre of horror, from the masks worn by the killers to the dramatic unmasking of one of the key villains. Read on for more thoughts about the Dark Knight's repeated flirtations with horror and how they never go anywhere in the long run.

The "Night of the Owls" arc and the faceless Joker come on the heels of four new additions to Batman's rogues’ gallery: Professor Pyg, The Absence, Flamingo, and the Dollmaker. Here are some tidbits about each of these villains, courtesy of Wikipedia and the Batman Wiki:

* "Professor Pyg has an obsession with making people "perfect", which he accomplishes by transforming them into Dollotrons, a process that bonds false "doll" faces to their own, presumably permanently. Professor Pyg uses cordless drills, hammers and ice picks along with the "doll" faces in the process of converting his victims into Dollotrons. It appears the operation he performs involves brain surgery or a form of lobotomization and possible gender realignment."

* The Absence is one of Bruce Wayne's former girlfriends. After surviving a gunshot wound to her head (which has left a permanent hole through her cranium--seriously), she stalks and kills Bruce's other former mistresses.

* "Flamingo is a psychotic hitman. He was lobotomized by the mob and was recruited by them. Despite his name, as well as his pink uniform and vehicles, he is a sociopathic, mindless, killing machine, nicknamed "the eater of faces", a title he has lived up to."

* The Dollmaker is a "Gotham City Serial Killer who creates "dolls" out of the skin and limbs of his victims. ... His mask is partially made of skin from this deceased father." The Dollmaker also has a "family" consisting of disfigured, sewn-together minions. The Dollmaker was also the same character who removed the Joker's face (a face that I'm assuming that the Flamingo will not eat).

As a horror fan, I love when superhero comics feature story lines that are strongly influenced by pulp horror; thus, I would really like to believe that the Batman comic book series will finally commit to becoming a horror comic. Heck, with new villains like this, now would be a perfect time to put Batman in a crossover miniseries with the characters from Hack/Slash.

Yet in light of previous attempts by DC to make Batman "grittier" (read my previous posts about Batman's so-called grittiness here and here), I'm certain that all of these new characters and the now faceless Joker are just more gimmicky and forgettable look-at-how-insane-Gotham-City-has-become-THIS-time stories, something that DC has been trotting out regularly in its Batman titles since The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke during the 80s.

No matter how psychotic and grisly Batman's villains get, the status quo in Gotham City will never change in any significant way (just ask Jason Todd). Such predictability makes DC's attempts at providing grindhouse-style shock and gore through its most popular superhero character feel anticlimactic and feeble. If DC really wanted to be edgy, it would add figures such as Removable-Face Joker, Face-Eating Flamingo, Disfigured Dollotrons, and a Mix-and-Match Dollmaker Family to Fisher-Price's Imaginex DC Super Friends toy line for the ages 3 to 8 demographic.

Look--here's a Fisher-Price Batman play set with a Bane action figure. So where are 

the Broken Back Batman and Paralyzed Bruce Wayne (with Wheelchair) action figures?

If someone from DC Comics is reading this, please take this message to heart: Stop teasing us horror fans like this! Either commit to making Batman a horror comic, or put your new deranged villains into a horror title of their own and not a superhero comic. Anything else is simply a cop-out. Furthermore, DC, in case you're still wondering why Batman doesn't seem to fit so well with the rest of your universe, it could very well be because Batman is busy fighting cannibals, serial killers and sadomasochists while every other character is just being a superhero, like they're supposed to be. In other words, if you make having superpowers seem unremarkable in your comic book universe, then your superhero characters are going to be unremarkable too.

Relive High School as a Video Game with Bully: Scholarship Edition

Throughout the years, video games have allowed players to assume exciting roles such as space adventurers, superheroes, ninjas, soldiers, spies, samurai and medieval knights. However, to assume the role of a surly teenager at a dysfunctional boarding school, you'll have to play Rockstar Games' Bully: Scholarship Edition. I usually purchase horror and sci-fi games, but the premise of Bully was too unique for me to ignore so I picked up a copy for my Wii a few weeks back. I'm glad I did--Bully: Scholarship Edition is one of the best open world video games I've ever seen. Read on for my complete review.

Bully was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2006, and then it was updated and released as the Scholarship Edition for the Wii and Xbox 360 in 2008. I didn't know much about Bully during its first release, other than that it was made by the same company that produced the Grand Theft Auto series of games. That detail alone stirred much controversy for Bully before its initial release, including an unsuccessful lawsuit filed in Florida to block the game's sale in that state.

In Bully, you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a teenager who has been enrolled at Bullworth Academy while his mother goes on a year-long honeymoon in Europe with her latest husband. Your goal is to make it through the school year, navigating your way between the various school cliques and exploring the four Bullworth township boroughs that surround the campus. The game's overall plot is simple, but it is loaded with enough characters, locations, missions, side missions, unlockables and gameplay variety to keep you entertained for hours. If Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop got you in touch with your inner anarchist, then Bully: Scholarship Edition will get you in touch with your inner juvenile delinquent.

The game never takes itself seriously for a second, which in turn adds greatly to Bully's entertainment value. The violence never escalates beyond fisticuffs, and Jimmy's "weapons" consist of stink bombs, firecrackers, bags of marbles and itching powder. Each type of character--school clique students, teachers, and the Bullworth "townies"--is depicted with campy gusto as a satirical stereotype. The nerds are especially wimpy, the jocks are especially dimwitted, the preppies are especially selfish, and so on.

Puberty is so much easier when it includes save, reload, and exit options.

The game's goofiness extends into how it applies the logic of role-playing and video games to teenage life scenarios. You can earn or lose "respect points" from the cliques depending upon which clique is the victim of your latest prank, and you can boost your health reserve by kissing your classmates. The missions and side missions are also funny and outlandish, and they can range from making odd deliveries around town to spray painting graffiti on public property to breaking a Bullworth faculty member out of the local Happy Volts Asylum.

Bully is essentially a third-person adventure game, although many of the missions and side missions involve changes to the gameplay format. Fights with other students utilize fighting controls, and your camera and projectile weapons (which include a slingshot, a firecracker launcher and a spud gun) utilize first-person shooter controls. Since this game is set at a boarding school, you will take classes and each class has its own unique set of controls. For example, English classes require you to provide a list of words based on a given set of letters, Music classes require you to provide percussion in time to different selections of music, and Biology classes require you to dissect different lab animals within a fixed amount of time. Such a diverse range of gameplay styles make Bully ideal for the Wii, as each style translates smoothly to the Wiimote and nunchuk. After finishing this game on the Wii, I can't imagine playing it on any other console.

If all of the cool things that I mentioned above aren't enough, there's also the township of Bullworth itself. There are so many places to explore on campus and in the four boroughs, and there's even an amusement park where you go to play midway games, ride the rollercoaster, and race go-karts. The amount of detail in Bullworth is absolutely astonishing, and there's still plenty left to do after you've finished all of the main missions.

Bully is so well written, designed and programmed that I honestly can't think of any problems that might keep gamers from liking it. The main missions and side missions are clearly identified, so you can choose whether to advance the game's story or just earn some extra bonus cash. You'll encounter some surprising and unintuitive quirks during a few of the missions, but none of them will keep you from enjoying the game.

Bully: Scholarship Edition is a must-have game for the Wii system. If you never played it, I highly recommend that you get a copy and try it for yourself. Click here to go to the Bully Wiki page to learn more about the game, its characters, and its locations.

Sony Keeps Its Seat on the Superhero Blockbuster Bandwagon with The Amazing Spider-Man

Last week I saw The Amazing Spider-Man, a reboot of Sony's series of live action Spider-Man films. This reboot features a new director, new actors and new details added to the Spider-Man origin story that are intended to push this reboot into new directions in subsequent films.

I could say a lot of snarky things at this point, such as how Sony's reboot comes too soon after the last Spider-Man film or how this reboot is another sign that Hollywood is completely out of ideas. Yet the truth of the matter is that Sony rebooted Spider-Man for two reasons: It let go of the director of its first three Spider-Man films, Sam Raimi, as well as his cast, and it had to make another Spider-Man movie this year or else the character's film rights would revert back to Marvel Comics, the company that owns Spider-Man. That's it--there are no other reasons for this reboot. In fact, these were mostly the same reasons behind last summer's superhero reboot movie, X-Men: First Class. (Of course, how Marvel came to own some of its key characters is another story altogether.)

In light of these facts, I can say that The Amazing Spider-Man represents both the best aspects of superhero filmmaking and its possible limitations. The film is much better than I expected it to be even though it feels very familiar at times (more about that later). Yet no matter how much money this film makes in tickets, rentals and sales, it begs the question: Where can the Spider-Man films go from here to keep them fresh and interesting? Read on for my complete review.

The Amazing Spider-Man is a retelling of how Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) changed from an ordinary teenager to a wall-crawling, web-spinning superhero. Like Raimi's first Spider-Man film ten years ago, this story places some emphasis on Peter's relationship with his adoptive parents, Uncle Ben and Aunt May (here played by Martin Sheen and Sally Field). Unlike Raimi's movie, Peter's love interest is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), whose father, NYPD Captain George Stacy (Denis Leary), is determined to stop the vigilante activities of Spider-Man. Peter's transformation into Spider-Man in the reboot occurs while he examines the genetic research left behind by his long-dead father Richard Parker (Campbell Scott); the examination brings Peter into contact with Dr. Curt Connor (Rhys Ifans), a former colleague of Peter's father and who becomes the villain known as the Lizard after an experimental mishap.

If anything, Sony has obviously learned something from Marvel's examples of what it means to make a worthwhile superhero film. Marvel has churned out a series of top-notch films based on its superhero characters--films such as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America--so it only makes sense for Sony to release a Spider-Man film that matches the quality of Marvel's cinematic releases. Everything about The Amazing Spider-Man is of high quality, from Marc Webb's direction to the cast's performances to the special effects work; this film rarely hits a sour note, and it will keep viewers enthralled throughout its two hour plus running time. Furthermore, I had the chance to see this movie in IMAX 3D, which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to get the full effect of Spider-Man's dizzying, high-swinging acrobatics. In fact, it was the IMAX 3D preview that I saw during my IMAX 3D viewing of Prometheus that convinced me to give The Amazing Spider-Man a chance.

The film's biggest problem is its underlying familiarity, which may or may not be the deciding factor in whether people will want to see this movie. Even though this film includes several characters from the Spider-Man comics that were not in Raimi's film, they nevertheless serve similar dramatic purposes as Raimi's selection of characters and have developmental arcs that follow familiar trajectories. I thought it was great that this reboot set up Gwen as the intellectual equal of Peter, which in turn added greatly to the chemistry between these characters as their relationship blossoms, but parts of the relationship's arc feel similar to the arc previously seen between Peter (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) in 2002's Spider-Man.

Comparing Raimi's interpretation of Spider-Man to Webb's interpretation is like comparing the depiction of Spider-Man in comics from the 60s and 70s to his depiction in Brian Michael Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series. Some things are similar, some things are different, and some things are similar but are still different. Some plot points make more sense in one while others make less sense in the other, and vice versa. In my case, I like how Webb's movie spends more time with Peter's high school years (as opposed to breezing through them like Raimi did), but I didn't like the removal of Dr. Connor's wife and son from the script. The fact that Connor has a family makes him a different kind of challenge for Spidey whenever he fights the Lizard in the comics, so removing them from the movie made Connor feel less distinct than his comic book version. Nevertheless, if you're a comic book fan and can accept how frequently both DC and Marvel have rebooted their own characters and/or "retconned" their timelines on the printed page, then seeing The Amazing Spider-Man probably won't bother you in the slightest and you'll probably have a fantastic time.

Unfortunately, the pervasive familiarity The Amazing Spider-Man hints at possible problems with future installments in Sony's franchise. I understand why Sony would want to re-introduce Spider-Man in a new way so that it could take this character and his supporting cast in a new narrative direction. This allows Sony to keep audiences invested in its latest version of a classic Marvel character while Marvel continues to bring its other classic characters to the big screen. Yet even with the new Spider-Man movie putting a greater dramatic emphasis on Peter's late parents and on OsCorp, the company owned by the villainous Norman Osborn, I honestly don't know how the next few Spider-Man movies can be that much different than what has been seen before in Raimi's Spider-Man movies. Much like it does in its comics, Marvel has the opportunity to involve characters and situations across multiple movies to keep the stories interesting and interconnected within a single fictional universe (as seen in this summer's Avengers); this is one major advantage that Marvel will have when and if it gets the movie rights back for Spider-Man. Sony can't do that, which means that its efforts to prolong its ownership of Spidey's film rights through a reboot may ultimately prove to be futile and self-defeating.

The Amazing Spider-Man shows that with the great power of owning the film rights to a popular character comes the great difficulties of maintaining such ownership through a reboot. As a film by itself, I highly recommend The Amazing Spider-Man to fans of Spider-Man, superheroes, high-quality 3D and action-adventure movies. Yet even with the ample amounts of talent both in front of and behind the camera, this film and its inevitable sequels might not be enough to keep Sony out of the entangled legal and creative web of its own making.

Monster on the Campus (1958): The Hulk's Missing Link?

I don't know what it is about creature features from the 1950s. Even when they descend into the depths of accidental camp, there's still something quite charming about them. Maybe it's because creature features were still finding their aesthetic legs, or that the still-new Atomic Age had generated so many larger-than-life anxieties that only creature features could do them justice on the big screen. Regardless, I just re-watched Monster on the Campus, one of Jack Arnold's lesser sci-fi flicks from the 50s. I first saw it a long time ago when running this kind of movie on syndicated TV during the weekend was a common practice, and I was looking forward to seeing it again. Read on for my retrospective of this cult classic, which includes some thoughts as to how it’s connected to Marvel Comics’ not-so-jolly green giant, the Hulk.

For those of you who don't know anything about this film, Monster on the Campus is about a college biology professor named Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) who cuts his hand on teeth of a coelacanth, a prehistoric fish that his department just received from Madagascar. As he begins to suffer blackouts during attacks made against him by an unknown assailant, the professor notices how animals that are exposed to the coelacanth suddenly take on attributes of their prehistoric ancestors (larger fangs, bigger body sizes, etc.). After making this discovery, Blake realizes that his attacker could be a visitor from humanity's distant past, a visitor who is much closer to Blake than he ever could imagine.

While the plot is similar in many respects to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Monster on the Campus is actually a rip-off of an earlier creature feature called The Neanderthal Man (1953). (You can watch The Neanderthal Man on YouTube here.) It's also worthy to note that the same ideas from The Neanderthal Man and Monster on the Campus would be re-used in Altered States (1980), a hallucinatory body horror film that was directed by Ken Russell and based on a novel by Paddy Chayefsky.

Monster on the Campus doesn't meet the same standard of quality as Arnold's other sci-fi films, such as Creature From the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man. Arnold himself has voiced his displeasure with the film in interviews, saying that he agreed to direct it as a favor to someone at Universal. Nevertheless, I have a soft spot for this film because Arnold was able to add some polish and charm to an absurd script and poor special effects. Adding to the film's appeal is the enthusiasm of the cast, particularly Franz's performance as Blake. During the movie, Blake does several things with the dead coelacanth that anyone else would know never to do with raw, rotting meat; thus, Blake shouldn't be allowed to cook food let alone teach a biology class. Yet Franz keeps you believing in the sincerity of Blake's motives and actions, no matter how unintentionally funny they get.

I think that the most intriguing aspect about Monster on the Campus is how at times it feels like the missing link between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Marvel Comics' superhero Hulk. Stan Lee has cited Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as one of the key influences in the creation of the Hulk, but there are enough details in Monster on the Campus to suggest that Lee and Steve Kirby probably saw Arnold's film and drew a lot from it when they developed their monstrous hero.

For example, the Hulk is the alter ego of Dr. Bruce Banner, who became the Hulk after being bombarded by gamma radiation. In Monster on the Campus, Blake finds out that the coelacanth itself is not causing the evolutionary regressions (including Blake's own regressions into a Neanderthal) but that the fish was exposed to gamma radiation to preserve it and thus gave its blood a regressive property. The Hulk hates his human half, and Banner feels lingering remorse over the destruction wreaked by the Hulk. Likewise, the Neanderthal that Blake transforms into harbors a raging anger against him--to the point where local police even think that someone is stalking Blake--and Blake becomes overwhelmed with guilt when he realizes that it is he who is the murderous beast that has been stalking his campus. Furthermore, the relationship dynamics between Banner, his love interest Betty Ross and her father General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross is similar to Blake's relationship with his fiancée Madeline Howard (Joanna Moore) and her father Professor Gilbert Howard (Alexander Lockwood). Another bit of Jack Arnold/Marvel trivia: "Donald Blake" was also the name used for the former alter ego of Thor, another superhero character created by Lee and Kirby.

Monster on the Campus isn't the only example of a commonality between creature features from the 40s and 50s and Marvel Comics characters that were first published in the 60s. I've posted before about how the Fantastic Four bears some similarities to other space radiation films, and two of Spider-Man's archenemies, Electro and the Lizard, have backgrounds are similar to the respective titular monsters in Man-Made Monster (1941) and The Alligator People (1959). I can see why Lee would prefer to mention a literary classic by Robert Louis Stevenson over a b-movie as a source of inspiration for the Hulk, if for no other reason than to suggest an air of artistic sophistication to the creation of a superhero. Nevertheless, movies like Monster on the Campus serve as a reminder to fans of the close conceptual kinship between b-grade creature features and pulpy superhero adventures. The way I see it, that's a beautiful thing.

A Wish for Change Becomes a Curse that Destroys in Pixar’s Brave

When it comes to animated entertainment, Pixar ranks next to Hayao Miyazaki as one of my go-to sources for quality movies. Both provide engaging stories that are told through breathtaking animation, and both are willing to push themselves in new directions while at the same time remaining faithful to a set of recurring themes.

With its latest title Brave, Pixar stakes out new territory to add to its expanding roster of unique characters and gorgeous settings. Indeed, Brave is unique in that it is the first Pixar movie with a female main character and the first Pixar movie that's a period piece--in this case, pre-medieval Scotland. Yet in spite of these differences, Brave remains grounded in one of Pixar's recurring themes: the importance of maintaining ties with family and friends during times of change, particularly changes that are sudden and unexpected. Read on for my complete review.

Brave is about Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) as she defies the custom of arranged marriage and the wishes of her mother Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) in order to determine her own future. Her struggles eventually lead her to an opportunity that allows her to make one wish that will change her fate, but the wish degenerates into a curse that could destroy both her family and her parents' kingdom. Merida must use her skills and her determination to undo the curse before it becomes permanent.

When reading other reviews and comments about Brave, I've noticed that some critics have a difficult time reconciling this film with the kinds of film with which Pixar is often associated. After all, most of Pixar's signature films (Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, the Toy Story trilogy, etc.) are known for bright colors and whimsical stories that are rooted in American pop culture. In contrast, Brave is saturated with dark earth tones and is filled with visual and musical nods to the Scottish landscape culture, both pre-medieval and modern. There are plenty of things in Brave that will remind audiences that they are watching a modern movie, but the animators always keep the Scottish roots of the characters and setting close at hand. Overall, Brave is closer to Pixar's more unorthodox films such as Ratatouille and Up than its more popular, more overtly kid-friendly titles.

By telling a fairy tale that centers on a princess, Brave may appear to be wandering into Disney territory but it never does. The curse that's unwittingly invoked by Merida bears some similarities to the curse in Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Brother Bear, but it has its own logic that echoes the distinct personalities of its characters and their situation. As I said earlier, unity during times of change is an important theme in Brave, both within Merida's own family and among the various clans that rule Scotland, and the curse that ties the story together between past, present and future is different from the curses seen in previous Disney cartoons.

As a youthful spirit, Merida herself is the catalyst of change: She defies the will of her mother by opting instead for pursuits of a more outgoing nature, and she defies the unity of the clans by challenging the tradition of arranged marriage between ruling families. (How Merida goes about challenging the arranged marriage rule through its own wording is pretty clever.) Yet when she accidentally unleashes the curse, Merida must channel her rebellious spirit into keeping her family together under unusual circumstances and ensuring that the peace between clans remains intact. Merida matures during the course of the movie, learning the importance of maintaining balance between tradition with change, stability with progress. Even though she is never swept off of her feet by a pre-arranged Prince Charming, Merida doesn't rule out the possibilities of romance, marriage and children later on in her life--she just wants those things on her terms and no one else's.

Serving as narrative counterweights to Merida are her mother Elinor and the curse itself, which began was a wish for self-determination. Elinor represents tradition, and how her relationship changes with Merida is a portrayal of sorts of how reconciliation can occur between the familiar past and unknown future through mutual understanding and respect. If anything, this maturing and mutually beneficial relationship sets Brave apart from other princess-centric fairy tales, where the mother is either completely absent or is replaced by an evil stepmother figure. The wish/curse represents the difference between change that benefits everyone (the wish) and change that only benefits the individual (the curse). During the film, we see how a previous wish also devolved into a curse and how it tore a family and in turn a kingdom apart because of its intent to secure the power of an individual at the expense of others; thus, it's Merida's quest and path to maturity to learn from the past to ensure that her wish-turned-curse for self-determination doesn't become something that tears her family and the clans apart forever.

(That said, I must be a horror fan: There are times in Brave when the relationship between Merida and her cursed mother reminded me of the relationship between Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) and her disfigured, deteriorating husband in the original version of The Fly.)

There is a lot going on in Brave, and it keeps the story running at a smooth pace without sacrificing character development and ignoring key plot details and themes. It may not be your typical Pixar film, but the fact that it isn't a typical fairy tale means that it's another major accomplishment in Pixar's ever-growing list of innovations.