(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Don’t let anyone tell you Pass the Popcorn doesn’t take accountability seriously. Opinion about pop culture is so ephemeral, it’s easy to get away with writing crud because you know nobody will remember it in ten minutes anyway.
So to hold myself to a higher standard, here’s a retrospective of my 2008 movie posts, along with an updated opinion with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight (including home viewing where applicable).
Speed Racer
What I thought last year: Fantastic. Much more than a thrill ride – an exceptionally well constructed and executed melodrama. One of the best movies I’ve seen in years. But I probably won’t enjoy it as much on a small screen.
What I think this year: Boy was I wrong about that last part.
Iron Man
What I thought last year: A better-than-just-good movie that could have been great, except the marketing suits wouldn’t allow the movie to be either clearly pro-weapons-makers or clearly anti-weapons-makers, so the central character development around which the whole movie is built is left ambiguous. That and the climactic battle is lame.
What I think this year: The ambiguity isn’t as bad as I had thought – there are some subtleties that I missed. What’s driving Stark’s crisis of conscience is not that making weapons was bad per se, but that his weapons are being abused. So I’ll upgrade the movie from better-than-just-good to really good. But the battle is still lame.
The Hulk
What I thought last year: The last Hulk movie really stank in spite of having been made by one of the few really great moviemakers of the 1990s, and this one doesn’t look any better. The Hulk character is probably unfilmable; the emotional intimacy you get in comics and (to a lesser degree) on TV isn’t available in the movie format, so the character’s dependence on anger probably just can’t be well exploited on film. I’m going to skip it.
What I think this year: No regrets.
The Happening
What I thought last year: Shyamalan got lazy and his work has gone precipitously downhill. Early reports indicate this doesn’t look like the movie that will turn him around. Skip.
What I think this year: No regrets.
Wall-E
What I thought last year: It’s an “A” movie about a lonely robot who discovers companionship, wrapped in a “C” movie about the evils of consumerism.
What I think this year: The more I watch it, the easier it gets to ignore the “C” movie.
Hancock
What I thought last year: Boy, it’s fun to remember Will Smith’s early-90s novelty act. And this was a fun movie. But not one I’d feel the need to see again.
What I think this year: Yup.
The Dark Knight
What I thought last year: Well, I wrote about it six times (here, here, here, here, here and here) so that gives you an idea of what I thought.
What I think this year: Was six posts really enough?
Quantum of Solace
What I thought last year: Fantastic potential. Squandered.
What I think this year: Can’t wait for the next movie. Can wait to buy this one.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
1) I was not a believer, but I rented Speed Racer and it actually was a well put together story.
2) South Park’s episode Imagination Land (Part Something, I forget which) points out that Shyamalan knows nothing about plot – he only does plot twists.
3) Hancock could have been so much more – it dropped the ball.
4). Wall-E – good movie, could do without the big box mart corporation ruling the universe though.
1) You know, so far I haven’t heard from anyone who didn’t like Speed Racer and wasn’t a professional movie critic. That may be for the reasons I suggested in my original post, or it may be because professional movie critics and myself are almost the only people who have actually seen the movie.
2) But that’s not necessarily a weakness. I don’t notice or care about the paucity of plot in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable or Signs. That’s just not what he’s about. Aeschylus doesn’t have much plot, either. This is a point I made at greater length in the original post.
3) I disagree – certainly there’s a lot of potential for somebody to make a really great movie about a dysfunctional superhero, but it’s clear that nobody involved with this movie was ever aiming for that. These guys were just making a novelty item. Nothing wrong with that – I’m happy I went! But there’s not a lot of potential in this movie to be squandered.
4) Yup. In real life it will be a softly despotic big government promising to protect us from evil big box stores. Tocqueville saw it all coming.
The story of Hancock was about a down and out superhero’s bad PR. – a novelty story to be sure. But personally, I think the story should have been centered around the ending – super god-like humans that have all the power in the world and immortality to boot so long as they stay far away from their mate – that the human emotion of love makes them mortal and the only way to remain a god is to forsake that love. I think that focus would have made a far better story. It, however, would not have been a comedy-action flick.
…or they should have just done away with all that and kept the focus on the humor of PR for a superhero…