World's Finest

Sandy Collora's World's Finest is a faux film preview featuring the cinematic team-up of D.C. Comics' two greatest heroes and cultural icons, Superman and Batman.

Collora opted for a different approach to filming his comic book heroes, this time using less atmospheric, lighter fare and giving his audience what constitutes a three-minute tease.

Having said that, World's Finest is a very fine display of the directorial talents of Sandy Collora and is a great follow-up to his masterpiece Batman: Dead End.

Clark Bertram returns as the Dark Knight Detective, and is in fine form, but it's Michael O'Hearn's Man of Steel that really steals the show. O'Hearn does a tremendous job of embodying Superman on screen, and carries the physical presence to pull it off realistically and seriously. Once again, Collora evokes the artwork of comic book painter Alex Ross in his choice of actors and set pieces, and once again, it works terrifically.

Kurt Carley, the Predator of Batman: Dead End, portrays a fleeting, but ominous Lex Luthor, and the gorgeous and sultry Nina Kaczorowski is fine as Lois Lane.

The trailer is a spine-tingling experience for comics fans and fans of superhero movies, but it does leave the audience a bit wistful with its short running time and cliffhanger feel.

Sandy Collora has proved once more that he is a capable filmmaker and here's hoping this will be a further boost to an already impressive career.

Highly recommended!

Sandy should stop making "Movies". He doesn't know what he is doing. Dead End belongs on the Internet along side starwars kid and video's of people getting there hands cut off. He claims to know what feel Batman needs but he doesn't know how to make the audience feel it. Dead end felt so forced and silly. When I was a kid, 9 or 10, I used to put on shows for my family. They were batman stunt shows. Dead End felt as childish and silly and my old shows were only with more money. Sandy has got to be a moron, he took 30 thousand dollars and made a fan film? A good film maker such as Robert Rodriguez can take 7 thousand and make a full length movie of his own, than after he got into the industry he started making his Comic book movies. Sandy doesn't have a chance in hell, from what I've seen, to make it as a director. Worlds finest is one of the saddest things I've seen. It's so easy to make a trailer look exiting and make you want to see the movie, this trailer didn't. It was boring, silly and pretty much crud. I hope he doesn't continue making "movies" we really don't need another Uwe Boll running around.

Sandy Collora made an impressive eight-minute film called BATMAN: DEAD END which pitted Batman against the Joker and two surprise movie monsters from a rival studio's franchises. Collora returns to the comic book genre with WORLD'S FINEST. Longtime comic book readers will recognize that title as the monthly book that teamed Batman with Superman. It's also the title of a three-part episode of "The New Batman/Superman Adventures" that was released on video as THE BATMAN/SUPERMAN MOVIE.

Once again, we can see the influence of artist Alex Ross on Collora's cinematic work as early in the six-minute film we see Clark Kent (Michael O'Hearn, who looks as if he just flew out of the pages of "Action Comics") changing into Superman while being lit by a single, small spotlight. Very similar to some of Ross' artwork. WORLD'S FINEST is shot in the format of a movie trailer for an "upcoming" production from Warner Brothers, who owns both the literary and cinematic rights to the characters. It would appear that Clark/Superman is having trouble with President Lex Luthor (Kurt Carley, who played one of the surprise creatures in BATMAN: DEAD END). So much trouble that he needs the help of Batman (Clark Bartram reprising his role from the previous film). Luthor, meanwhile, enlists the aid of Batman foe Two-Face (Michael Antonik)instead of the Joker like in the animated film. The action primarily takes place in Metropolis as we only see Superman's supporting players: Perry White (Joseph Collora), Jimmy Olsen (Andrew Decker) and, of course, Lois Lane (Nina Kaczorowski).

For a low budget attempt, some of WORLD'S FINEST looks great. There is a scene where Superman catches a car falling from the sky that will remind you of the cover of "Action Comics" #1 and then flies away with it. However, other flying sequences look kind of cheesy. Also, as with BATMAN FOREVER, Two-Face is portrayed as a cackling Joker-wannabe. Two-Face is a very tragic character who seldom laughs. But, for the most part, Collora has done a very good job. Which leads me to issue this challenge on his behalf: Warner Brothers, if you've seen this short, the ball is in your court. With your talent and money behind you, you should be able to produce a film to go with this "trailer". It's all up to you now.

"World's Finest" is an unique project. It's a trailer for a Superman/Batman crossover movie that doesn't exists and will also never exists, at least not in this form, with these characters, actors and plot line anyway.

So the movie is one big tease, even more than standards everyday real movie trailers. The trailer will hype you all up for nothing. In that regard, I really didn't liked this short project. When watching this trailer it makes you hungry and excited for more and at the same time sad- and perhaps you'll even feel cheated afterward, when it turns out that a full length movie of this trailer will never exist at all. Sort of makes you wonder why this project was made in the first place. Surely to show off Sandy Collora's skills but couldn't he had also done this with a real movie short, like his earlier movie "Batman: Dead End".

But when you have to judge this short purely for what it is, so from a movie technical point of view, it's a really great one. It's great looking and way more professional than you'll perhaps at first would expect, although the people who've already seen "Batman: Dead End" will already know better than to expect a short with cardboard sets, cheap homemade costumes and third-rate actors. The short is not constantly impressive looking and obviously the budget wasn't sky-high but for most part it's very impressive and professional looking, with nice costumes, sets, special effects, cinematography and lighting.

The short has a good quick and typical trailer build up, with perhaps a bit too many posing shots too completely find it credible but hey, it works well for the trailer style. It has some impressive shots but also a couple of lame ones, mainly the Superman flying sequences. It was obvious that the guy was just standing at a moving car, with a camera aimed at him from an angle below. I even found it a pretty laughable thing to watch. But really the better and more spectacular moments really compensate for this.

Michael O'Hearn seemed like a pretty good Superman/Clark Kent, although he obviously isn't the greatest talented actor around. Clark Bartram reprises his Batman role well again and Kurt Carley seemed like an awesome Lex Luthor. The rest of the cast also served its purpose well enough.

It's especially interesting to watch this short after the recent new modern reinterpretations of the two main superheroes of this movie, in the movies "Batman Begins" and "Superman Returns". It's interesting to compare the style and character treatment of those movies with this one. It's actually amazing and fun to hear how much Kurt Carley does sound like Kevin Spacey, the actor who played Lex Luthor in "Superman Returns".

It's a good looking and well made and constructed trailer that however will makes you hungry for more, even though you know that there won't be more. Whatever happened to the Waner Bros. plans to create an actual full length Superman/Batman movie by the way? I thought that developments were underway for it a couple of years ago but nothing has been heard of it ever since. Instead two new separate Batman and Superman movies were made; "Batman Begins" and "Superman Returns".

7/10

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This short film has every components of great superhero movie.Good special effects considering its budget.The actors portraying both Superman and Batman,They look as though they came out of an Alex Ross comic book.....very accurate! I'm very much hoping that Warner Bros.would make at least a T.V series out of this and hire the same actors Mike o'Hearn and Clark Bartram(a very superhero name) or do a separate series for each.They deserve it.Superheroes drawn in comics are with heightened fit bodies...depending on the character.Chris Reeves was the best Superman and Brandon Routh is a fine new superman and Mike just came out of the comic book superman and equally good looking as them not to mention properly filling the blue suit.Same with Clark as Batman,He's just perfect for it....all muscles in that tights. Its Superman and Batman for real on this one