Hast thou dawwwww?

Obviously a takeoff on “Little Vader,” and a funny one, but part of me hopes the whole “kid loves Thor” bit isn’t just wishful thinking on Marvel’s part. One thing the early reviews seem to agree on is that this is the “youngest” Marvel-movie yet in terms of likely appeal – i.e. it’s more about the straight-up fantasy/heroics than it is about Iron Man’s middle-aged ennui or Hulk’s anger issues – and it really would be cool to see one of these things take off primarily with kids in a big way.

Oh! And hey, check out my interview on PixelJumpers…

The Escapist has some Reddit pix up, purporting to be design-scans (from developers toolkits?) of Wii2 (aka Project Cafe, aka “The Stream”) controllers that – if real – look an awful lot like my “other” guess at the device’s format; name that it’d be essentially the “bottom half” of a 3DS in the button/screen setup.

That’s certainly what it looks like, and makes me even more curious if one of the “big reveals” of this machine is going to be that you can actually USE a 3DS in place of a controller. “It’s made of stuff you already might have!” strikes me as a very Nintendo-esque marketing theme, and it’d go hand-in-hand with the all-but-innevitable confirmation that it’s going to be backwards-compatible with the Wii Remote as well. They would, after all, be INSANE to tell people that all of the plastic attachments they bought for Wii Sports aren’t “useful” anymore.

And the countdown to “Skyward Sword will be delayed to be a Wii2 launch-title but don’t be mad at us because look! OMG! Smash Bros. 3DS and Raccoon Mario is back!” begins…

(posted to both blogs, because it’s relevant)

Okay. By now, everyone is reasonably-certain that “Wii2” gets revealed at E3. And slightly-less-than-everyone is reasonably-certain that it’s mystery-controller A.) isn’t a Wii-Remote successor but rather can interface with one or something like one (knowing Nintendo this means peripheral backwards-compatibility, which they’d be INSANE not to do after selling everyone’s mom a fortune in Wii Sports toolkits) and B.) incorporates a camera and mini-LCD touch screen into it’s design – with most rumors suggesting the screen is roughly the size of an iPhone’s, which would be HUGE for something that most are assuming is going to be “built-in” to a conventional dual-stick/buttons controller.

I’ve got a different theory…

I’ll say upfront that I’m almost-certainly 100% off-base about this; largely because I have no talent or skillset for engineering. But on the off chance I’m right (or that it’s not Nintendo’s idea but not a bad one either…) here we go:

What if the touch-screen is an “everycontroller?”

Here’s the idea: The screen will “fit” because it isn’t there in-addition to action-buttons, but INSTEAD of action buttons. Basically, instead of dedicated action-buttons that every game has to be engineered for, the controller is just one or two analog sticks with NO dedicated action-buttons – instead, the touch-screen generates a set of “buttons” the arrangement and “form” of which are SPECIFIC to each individual game. Arcade-style buttons for a fighter, NES/SNES setup for a platformer, a PC-style stylus-oriented inventory menu for a sim (or an MMO?), something else for whole other genres I’m not thinking of or haven’t been invented yet?

So, yeah. Crazy, probably not even close. But I don’t think anyone could deny that this sounds EXACTLY like something Nintendo would do, right? Attention-getting, table-upturning, callous disregard for how 3rd party developers will feel about having to be controller-builders as well as game-designers and – this is the important part – it would LOOK ultra-revolutionary and cutting edge but can actually be built entirely out of decades-old technology their tech-teams are already well-versed in from the DS line. (Hmm… slightly-less insane theory: The controler will look like the bottom half of a 3DS, and a 3DS could be used in-place of one.)

So… uh-huh, that’s kind of it: A controller that can turn into “any” controller – at least, that’s how they’d sell it.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.5.swf

Milking it? Probably… but it’s not like I can turn around at this point. Below, the ScrewAttack.com Exclusive trailer for “War of The Thinkers;” the humor value (or lack thereof) may depend wholly on how burned-out you are on “Dead Island” spoofs at this point…

http://v.giantrealm.com/saf/272828ab50091da6eb1ae85133def12ae9a44eb4

The actual episode/mini-move is still set to debut on ScrewAttack a week from tonight, April 25th at 11pm ET.

Below, the exclusive YouTube-exclusive trailer for “War of The Thinkers.” A longer ScrewAttack-exclusive trailer will (probably) debut later this evening.

“Thor” had it’s official premiere yesterday (today?) in Australia, where star Chris Hemsworth got his start as a popular TV actor, in preparation for it’s UK rollout on 4/27 and it’s U.S./etc debut on May 6th. It was also, apparently, shown to some U.S. critics around the same time. The reviews have started hitting the web and Twitter… and so far the word is good. Hollywood Reporter liked it, so did Variety. On the “geek press” side, Drew McWeeny agrees. There are a bunch more, but these will give you a rough consensus.

UPDATE! Empire’s review is another rave.

Those trying to stay 100% spoiler/plot-structure-info free will probably want to just skim those or avoid full-reads altogether (nothing major in them, but you never know) but a few consistent themes run throughout almost every review I’ve read:

It’s bigger than we’ve been sold. The trailers have been short-selling Asgard and focusing on the Earth scenes. Apparently this doesn’t reflect the “ratio” of cosmic-to-earthbound action in the actual film.

It’s not a “dark” movie. This intrigues me – almost every all of the reviews that bother mentioning the other Marvel/Avengers films make a point to mention that this is probably the most “kid-friendly” of the cycle so far; in as much as it’s more heavily grounded in comic/fantasy business than PG-13 body-horror (“Incredible Hulk”) or midlife-crisis and/or corporate politics (“Iron Man 1&2.”) I’m MORE than fine with that – I don’t want to see a “grownup” movie about a Space Viking looking and his Magical Hammer.

Hemsworth is good. This is the first Marvel/Avengers movie that’s being shouldered by a previously-unknown leading man, so it’s good to see mostly across-the-board praise for Chris Hemsworth.

The drama works. Another VERY frequent compliment – though often noted as the “upside” to criticisms that the action/fight sequences aren’t necessarily the most groundbreaking. Probably the single most-recurring thing in the first crop of reviews is near-univesal agreement that the courtly/family intrigue among The Gods kills; with ample credit being given to the choice of Shakespearean/arcane-bombast specialist Brannagh as director. This is GOOD to hear, if it’s true – “Thor” is both the weirdest and least-known of the principal Avengers, and if this film AND its/his part in future continuity is going to work people need to grasp/”buy” the characters and their world. Remember: “Iron Man” worked so well as a superhero character-study that no one cared about (or now remembers) it’s awkward, nonexistant 3rd act.

Don’t bother.

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.5.swf

Intermission has some other slasher movies.

Y’know what’s great about the PoTA franchise? Since it’s ALL about time-travel and alternate-history, this could easily be considered a sequel, prequel, reboot and in-name-only-cash-in all at once. Depicted below: James Franco is putting on his seriousface for reverse-ironic lulz a scientist using primate brain-research to seek “the cure” (Alzheimers again, I’m assuming?) who ends up creating super-intelligent, revolution-minded simians. Money shot? A gorilla preparing to beat up a helicopter. Ticket. SOLD.

How awesome does that look? So awesome I almost don’t want to vomit right now…

Great Rao… can I BE anymore sick of once again hearing the clear “voice of reason” character somberly intone “some things aren’t MEANT tobe changed!” as a ‘step back from the brink’ line to the “mad” scientist?

Some things aren’t meant to be changed? Oh, well – my mistake! By all means, let’s unplug all those artificial hearts, siphon out all those lifesaving medicines and unsew all those awful ungodly stitches – after all, clearly all those “natural causes” weren’t MEANT to be stopped from killing people. Never forget, kids: Science is a scary, hard-to-understand thing that smart people do; which means it’s scary and evil.

Egh. Yeah, fine, movie looks great so far and I can’t hold this “against” it at this point, but still… when did it get decided that Science Fiction always had to be about making people AFRAID of human progress?

In which I say NO to Michael Vick as a Madden 12 cover candidate:

http://cdn2.themis-media.com/media/global/movies/player/flowplayer.commercial-3.2.5.swf

Go HERE to participate in the ESPN cover-vote.