Ben Lyons Talks Summer Movies Part 2

1 month ago 20th May 09:12

After discussing the massive success of Iron Man in part one of my exclusive chat with E! Entertainment film critic Ben Lyons in part two we talk about other comic book movies that are due out this summer, how the untimely death of Heath Ledger will affect the box office and what we will be watching this time next year.

Batman is obviously the other big comic book movie that is coming this summer what can we expect from it?

From Batman I you can expect more of Christopher Nolan’s dark brooding style again, like Batman Begins which was released two years ago and really reinvented the franchise, it feels like it is set in the real world it’s not overly fantastical, remember the ones that Joel Schumacher did with Tommy lee Jones and Jim Carey? It felt like you were watching a comic book.

This one appeals to a little bit older of an audience Christopher Nolan said at the screening if the film that he had to ask Heath Ledger to tone it down a bit otherwise I was going to get an R rating that’s how menacing and violent he is. The film is going to be a little darker than some of the other comic book movies that come out that really appeal to kids.

What do you think Heath ledger’s death will do to The Dark Knight in terms of box office performance, although Batman Begins was very good it didn’t gross $400 million?

What did it gross $399 million at the end of the day it’s Batman and it’s a huge franchise for Warner Bros, In a sick and twisted way, I hate to say it, it will help the box office people will want to go and see his final performance people will want to go and see what everyone is talking about.

But he is that good in it, it’s not like he just shows up in the movie and you go just to see his last performance, he is amazing in the film and I think that’s what people are going to take away from it is that wow we really lost someone special here we lost, not just another young actor in Hollywood, but a true talent and it’s going to be sad when people walk out they are gonna think wow I’m never going to see that amazing talent work again.

And all eyes are on the likes of Indy and Batman but what is slipping under the radar but still worth a look?

There is a sweet British film called Son of Rambow that I really love, you hear the title Son of Rambow and you think it’s some twenty two year old kid in the jungle with a machine gun but it’s not the son of Sylvester Stallone’s character Rambo, it two British kids who love movies and create their own little Rambo film, it’s got imagination and it stars Ed Westwood from Gossip Girl, very cool. And there’s another film that I saw at the Tribecca Film Festival called The Wackness are you ready for this cast? It’s another typical indie film, bought by Sony Classics, it has Sir Ben Kingsley, Mary Kate Olsen, Method Man, from the Wu Tang Klan, and Famke Janssen how about that for a melting pot of a cast I mean Ben Kingsley making out with Mary Kate Olsen that is reason enough to go see it right?

But it’s a really cool film it’s set in New York in the 1990s about a white kid from the Upper East Side of Manhattan private school listens to hip hop, this is the story of my life so I responded to it well.

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