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Tags: DC NewsMovie NewsMovie Reviews

A Look Back At 2010’s Jonah Hex Starring Josh Brolin – DC’s First Major Fail?

March 27, 2018
byRick Austin
in Movies
Jonah Hex

With Josh Brolin getting double-duty Marvel movie work in the upcoming Deadpool 2 and Infinity War, it’s time to roll back the clock and remember his time in a DC film. Much like his Deadpool co-star Ryan Reynolds – who appeared in the dismal Green Lantern film – Brolin starred in the lead role in a DC film that many wish had never been made at all: Jonah Hex. But was it really that bad, or should it be considered for some kind of cult status?

Josh Brolin - Jonah Hex

Opening with a decently animated intro sequence to explain Hex’s backstory, it then gets down to business. Set in the good old days of cowboys, it’s whoopin’ and hollerin’ time as rebellious bounty hunter Jonah Hex gets drafted by the military to track down his arch-nemesis: stock villain Quentin Turnbull, the man who killed Hex’s family. Turnbull has built a cannon which fires atomic bombs and is planning to destabilise America by killing the President.

What Turnbull didn’t count on was Hex and the bounty hunter’s ability to temporarily raise the dead… briefly. Hex wanders around the old West, getting into various scraps, adopting dogs and questioning dead people for information. Tracking down leads and dishing out some old-style justice, he saves the day and rides off into the sunset… to some clanging heavy metal country music.

On the surface, that may sound pretty decent and credit where it’s due, it looks it too. It’s got a decent cast, including John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon, and even Arrested Development’s Will Arnett. It’s based on a cult comic book series, and Jonah Hex is certainly worthy of more recognition from the general public. Crank’s renegade filmmaking duo Neveldene/Taylor worked on the script, and it had a wry sense of dark humour to it at times. So what went wrong? Why was it received by critics like it was Waterworld III: The Ishtar Connection?

The problem is that when you look beyond the surface, there’s nothing much there.

Jonah Hex

I’m not saying that the action is bad, because it isn’t. I’m not knocking the performances either, and Josh Brolin made a damn cool Jonah Hex. But when a comic book film clocks in at a measly 81 minutes running time, you know something’s wrong. While the script takes some of the best elements of the Jonah Hex comic books, it also mixes in some of the worst and then tries to set it in a Wild Wild West mould with a slight Hellboy vibe. It’s a film that looks like it’s scrambling to work out what it is, uncertain if it should be a PG adventure movie or an R-rated badass action flick. By the end it still doesn’t know, making the music in the end credits sound like a bad parody of Ghost Rider. It only cost $47 million to make too, yet made less than $11 million back at the box office.

You’d think from how it got hammered by the critics and the fact it got a dishonourable mention at the Golden Raspberry awards, that it was the worst comic book movie ever. That’s wrong, and it certainly isn’t in the realms of Howard the Duck, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace or Fant4stic. Yes, it requires a viewer’s brain to be switched off so that they can succumb to a series of action scenes punctuated with stretches of rather bland exposition. But is it that bad? No… but that doesn’t make it good either.

Jonah Hex Joshn Brolin

Why the film studio chose a little-known character like Jonah Hex for a film but then didn’t really support it is a bit of a mystery… but it’s a fair assumption that – as usual – they wanted to save their focus for the better-known mainstream characters who would get bigger films. Which, based on Justice League and BvS, hasn’t exactly yielded the best of results. Maybe it’s time to treat DC’s cult characters like Jonah Hex a bit better on screen. After all, didn’t anybody learn anything from the Constantine movie? It’s unfortunate that Neveldene/Taylor weren’t allowed to go full throttle on this film both in the script and maybe even behind the camera too, because they could have given it Deadpool-level intensity.

I wouldn’t recommend seeing Jonah Hex unless you just fancy a brief bit of fun to watch after a few drinks. If you do then it has some great set pieces and solid performances, even if it’s far from being any kind of masterpiece. And if you don’t like it, then at least it’s over quickly. For what it’s worth, Jonah Hex is a great character who deserves more exposure and it was great seeing him get the limelight, even if only briefly. Josh Brolin plays him just right, but he deserved a better script and a better comic book movie to be in. Hopefully, Marvel’s ones will fix that…

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Comments 12

  1. Dwayne Hendirckson says:
    3 years ago

    A major problem with the film is that it ignored all past motivation of the main characters. In the books, Turnbull blames Jonah for the death of Turnbull’s son, Jeb. For the entire run of the book, Turnbull is out to get revenge on Hex while Hex wants to be left alone.

    The movie starts with that premise, but then has Turnbull get vengeance on Hex by killing his wife & son (never happened in the books) and branding him with a big QT branding iron. (Folks in the south wonder if QuikTrip paid any money for that endorsement?) And then we are told that Hex is wanting revenge on Turnbull.

    With THIS change, the characters switch motivations and places, dumping years of stories that would have made a much better film.

    I visited the set and Jimmy Hayward talked of his love of the character and how he read all the books, but the focus of Neveldine/Taylor seemed to be more on the Vertigo issues of Hex (playing around with the weird supernatural realms) than of the 70+ issues that came before the Vertigo. I’m convinced that Hayward probably read 5 issues of Hex stories and learned to act like he loved the character.

    There were some good things in the film, some over the top, and some horrible terrible things (Megan Fox, “This country needs a Sheriff.”, dynamite guns, talking to the dead). I advise people to watch the film until Ms. Fox appears and then turn it off. You will have seen the best parts of the film.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    I own it…josh brolin as Jonah Hex but the real stars off the movie ? Megan Fox’s boobs

    Reply
  3. Raj says:
    4 years ago

    Great review, guys!
    I liked the movie, it was okay. Not worth a rewatch though.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    What do you mean first?

    Reply
    • Anonymous says:
      4 years ago

      Catwoman

      Reply
    • Anonymous says:
      4 years ago

      More like Superman 3.

      Reply
    • Anonymous says:
      4 years ago

      I tried to like it. I really did… but I didn’t.

      Reply
  5. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    Never heard of it lol

    Reply
  6. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    I honestly can’t even remember if I’ve seen it

    Reply
  7. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    I honestly can’t even remember if I’ve seen it

    Reply
  8. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    I liked Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex disliked the movie.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous says:
    4 years ago

    In alternate universe this is good and the dark knight is bad

    Reply

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