Movies: Jonah Hex

Rented Jonah Hex with Marisa this weekend.

I kind of wanted to see it, as the Jonah Hex comics from the 80's (drawn by Keith Giffen) were oddly memorable to me as a 10 year old. They were strange, sci-fi, and violent. Different that some of the other stuff I had read. I know now that this was a bizarre plot where DC Comics took a grizzled western hero and dropped him into a post-apocalyptic future to have zany adventures, but back then? It was a non-stop "what the hell?" ride.

In any case, it has been a pretty weak month at the video store for new releases, and that sort of left us with not much we could agree on, so a flashy western-comic adaptation won out.

I'll say a few things to get started: I like westerns. John Malkovich is usually pretty awesome, and he plays the bad guy in this movie. Megan Fox is a scourge on movie-making and I would rather not see her in films again.

All that being said, Jonah Hex was not a terrible movie. A little awkward at times, but Josh Brolin was decent as the lead. The script needed a few more rewrites in order to even it out a little, but the action scenes were fun enough.

A quick scan of his wiki article confirms that the movie makers decided to give him some odd supernatural powers that he never had in the comics, namely the ability to talk to the dead. Strange decision, but it works well enough, or at least better than the idea to include a science-fiction doomsday weapon that the bad guys try to steal. This is where Jonah Hex, the movie, gets dangerously close to "Wild Wild West".

At least there was no giant spider-robot.

I don't know if I can recommend this movie. I liked parts of it, but it had no flow and I think that it was mostly my fanboy side that helped to overlook the flaws this movie has. Josh Brolin did what he could, but the movie itself was working against him.

Wikipedia says that the public was less forgiving:.

• Jonah Hex severely underperformed, opening at #7 during its debut weekend with only $5,379,365 in 2,825 theaters, averaging $1,904 per theater. In its second weekend the film only managed to gross $1,627,442, falling to #10. The film ended its theatrical run on August 12, 2010, grossing only $10,547,117 in total on a $47 million budget, making it a box office bomb. Due to the film's poor domestic take, it was not widely released internationally, grossing less than $500,000 outside the United States.

Guess there won't be a sequel.