Customer Reviews

Stan Lee Presents - The Condor

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Regardless what I have read from previous reviews, "The Condor" is a cool movie. Stan Lee is far from burnt out,and gives us a different spin on a comic book character. Normally, I would give you a synopsis of the movie but in this case it's not necessary. Watch it and judge it for what it is people "an animated movie". As a minority,I'm happy to see some diversity in a superhero movie. Thanks Stan or should I say Excelcior!

Hilarious movie, all my kids love it. That 70's show guy is in it and it has a great story about courage. A must buy imho

I'm very happy with the purchase of the CONDOR brought to you by Stan Lee. Having a young latino hero is great idea. Espcially one who is so physical.

Stan Lee has out did himself this movie is awesome and so is the character and story. i love this movie and i love stan lee one of the greatest comic book writer of our time

This is not a movie; it's an animation which is listed nowhere.

It reminded me of Saturday morning cartoons with an adult plot.

It was mindless enough to watch after spending 4 hrs landscaping.
Thankfully, it was terse.

I was lucky that this was on cable when I decided to watch it. I would have been upset if had wasted the money to even rent this. I sat through the whole toon hoping for it to pick up to no avail. It was retardedly stereotypical and the plot holes seemed large enough to drive a truck through. I am hispanic and I found this to be more of an insult than a credit. I really think that it deserves one star but I'll cut it some slack...even though it sucked so bad.

I just wanted to balance the other person who rated this with one star when it hasn't been released yet! You shouldn't rate a film you haven't seen, and certainly not because you think someone like Stan Lee - one of the greatest minds behind comic book innovative plots and character development ever! - is "burnt out". Wait until a few people have seen the film and read their reviews!

Marvel comics shows a historic failing to write good Mestizo and African characters. These movies continue that tradition almost as if it were on purpose. The story is condescending. The story has too much use for street gangs the exploration of which never gets past a sound byte from an infotainment show. The moral at the end of the story is, "you can't save everybody" when of course the only people the mestizo hero tries and fails to save are mestizos. Here I read, if you want to be a mainstream success, distance yourself from your non-European origins. Marvel has been working this angle for decades. Black Falcon, Power Man, and shamefully even Warm Machine who was not originally written this way, were all eventually 1970s blacksploitation style caricatures. Wong could serve no role in the US of Marvel except "faithful man servant". Storm of the luxurious long white hair would go to bed with anybody (Arkon, Forge etc.)even a risen corpse (Dracula), as long as he was not of her own ethnic stock. They even have people approach her and they always look like pimps as if there was no other kind.
Aside from this editorial method the story telling in Condor, while not good, was equal to most of the anime I have seen. The characters were simplistic but anime provides nothing but simplistic characters. The art work could have been better, but it was good enough.

Stan Lee's The Condor is a valiant effort, but poor story-telling, poor voice directing, and cultural omissions, ruin it.

Valderrama may or may not be miscast. As the voice behind the hero of the movie, his performance greatly influences our perception and eventual acceptance of the character. Unfortunately, he gives Tony a slight drawl, which may or may not be a by-product of trying to sound soft-spoken. Tony ends up sounding like a sleepy or drugged out individual throughout the picture, especially during scenes requiring complex emotions such as his parents' death. Combined with the mexican, or perhaps Latin accent, it's almost offensive to Latin Americans in a stereo-typing way.

The accents highlight a problem with the characters. It is never explained of what nationality Tony's family is. Are they Mexican? Cuban? Columbian? It makes a difference because a pivotal plot device recognizes a uniqueness to a culture, but there is no indication what culture that is. While it's great to see some diversity in comic book heroes, ignoring the cultural influences to a character makes the effort pointless. Tony might as well be chinese and speaking with a Mexican accent.

Story-telling is incomplete. A certain amount of "suspension of disbelief" is required, but a few important plot holes exist and parts requiring reality, steer to the impossible. For example, when Tony's parents die, the police don't investigate and stay at the scene of the accident? Tony arrives and all the police are gone? Tony is also vehement his parents are excellent drivers and are the most stand-up citizens, yet so easily believe they could be doing something illegal.

Ultimately, we never identify with Tony. He's uninteresting and stupid when he shouldn't be. The background of skateboarding is supposed to appeal to kids, but he's an obnoxious, stupid adult who has sex with strange women. I'm not sure what kind of role-model he's supposed to be and the age of viewers he appeals to. He's certainly a terrible role model for Spanish-speaking Americans, embodying a number of bad stereotypes. His special abilities are also limited and uninteresting (he can skateboard really fast!). There's potential, but send this back to the drawing board.