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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n
While Richard Donner\u2019s Superman is generally regarded as the first major mainstream superhero blockbuster, which Roger Ebert<\/a> gave full marks, that wasn\u2019t the first time the genre blew him away.<\/p>\n These days, comic book adaptations are among cinema\u2019s most polarising pictures. Box office returns are down, the number of reboots is up, and everyone from Martin Scorsese to Quentin Tarantino has taken a steaming dump all over them<\/a> at one time or another, and Ebert was no different in some respects.<\/p>\n He liked a few of them, with Jon Favreau\u2019s Iron Man, Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Dark Knight, and Sam Raimi\u2019s Spider-Man 2 winning praise, but when they were done badly, he spared no scorn in eviscerating Kenneth Branagh\u2019s Thor, Tim Story\u2019s Fantastic Four<\/a>, and Frank Miller\u2019s The Spirit, among others.<\/p>\n Until Christopher Reeve came along and convinced audiences that a man could fly, Ebert\u2019s favourite superhero flick hailed from Hong Kong. 1975\u2019s Infra-Man, where a villain awakens from a lengthy slumber to conquer the planet with only a solar-powered man in a silly suit capable of stopping them, is nonsense, but he found it to be wonderfully glorious nonsense.<\/p>\n \u201cGigantic mutant monsters with built-in death rays attack Infra-Man, who can hurl lightning bolts from the soles of his feet, and what do they do? They have a karate fight,\u201d he wrote with almost incredulous enthusiasm. \u201cAfter ten minutes of chopping and socking and doing acrobatic flips, then they zap each other.\u201d<\/p>\n From where he was sitting, which sounds like perched on the edge of his seat, Ebert found the preposterous caper to be \u201ctotally, almost joyfully absurd,\u201d and he even managed to make a prediction that would become ever more true today, in an age where most superhero flicks are cut from an almost identical cloth and fail to bring anything even remotely fresh or innovative to the table.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they stop making movies like Infra-Man, a little light will go out of the world,\u201d Ebert eulogised, blissfully unaware of a time to come when the aforementioned Fantastic Four would get five different movies with four different line-ups, The Old Guard 2 is a thing that exists, and Hugh Jackman is still playing Wolverine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Calling it one of his guilty pleasures a decade after its release, Ebert explained how, \u201cWhen I was watching Infra-Man for the first time, I knew I was seeing some kind of berserk masterpiece,\u201d calling it exactly the kind of movie that\u2019s allowed to unfold \u201cwhen the lunatics take over the studio,\u201d which he meant entirely as a compliment.<\/p>\n \u201cI have no idea how or why Infra-Man was made,\u201d he concluded. \u201cBut there\u2019s never been another movie like it, and that may be a good thing.\u201d In today\u2019s world of identikit superhero slop, maybe the world needs a few more Infra-Mans more than ever.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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