UPDATED WITH SCREENSHOT!

“Wreck-It Ralph” was already on my most-anticipated movies of the year list. At 1:09 of this trailer, it became #1. I won’t be more psyched for a movie this year…

I’m actually kind of amazed Nintendo signed-off on what looks like a couple of cameos – aren’t they supposed to be REALLY hard to work with on that stuff?

UPDATED! Here’s a high-res screengrab: Look at them! Look at them all! Holy shit – that’s the final Rhino Boss guy from “Altered Beast!” And a fucking BEHOLDER!!??

I try not to cross-post the blogs too much, but it’s kind of bugging me that the most recent TGO is getting somewhat “buried” coming out in the midst of E3 so I feel justified in giving it some space here, too.

For some reason I can’t embed this one right now, but those interested can see EPISODE 71: EULOGii on ScrewAttack by clicking the links in this post.

Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class” not only brought a deader-than-dead franchise back to life, it did so by making the best one yet. So a sequel was kind of expected. What wasn’t expected? That Fox would go ahead and quietly register the new film’s prospective title with MPAA. But they did, and AICN, HitFix and multiple others have confirmed that that title is…

…X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST.

The internet is now broken.

Quick-version, because I’m working at the moment: “DOFP” was a landmark story-arc during Chris Claremont’s defining epic run on the X-Men comics. The basic idea? It’s “Terminator” (which it technically pre-dates) but with The X-Men; involving a dystopian near-future where the human government is successfully carrying out that whole Mutant Holocaust thing that “bad guy” Magneto kept warning everyone would happen. In the original version, the older future-version of Kitty Pryde zaps her consciousness back in time into her younger self and tries to prevent The Brotherhood from carrying out a political-assassination (Senator Kelly, from the first “X-Men” movie) which kicks-off the anti-Mutant backlash.

Other than Fox apparently picking this title, nothing else is known at this time… though, obviously, the immediate speculation is that a time-travel story might allow the “21st Century X-Men” of the original trilogy to share the screen (and maybe patch some plot-holes) alongside the Cold War era X-Men of “First Class.” Also, it’s worth remembering that DOFP’s future anti-Mutant infrastucture was based around – yes – The Sentinels.

So, yes, Warner Bros. is still trying to get a Justice League movie together, with “Gangster Squad” writer Will Beall being the latest to take a crack at the long-stalled project. Honestly, that Warners is working on this isn’t news until they say YES to the script itself (studios comission scripts for potential projects all the time) and I suspect that the only reason we’re hearing about Beall’s script officially is so to bury the less positive announcement that “Wonder Woman” is getting a script from the writer of the “Green Lantern” movie. Ah, well.
It’s simple math: “The Avengers” is the movie of the moment and (unless “Dark Knight Rises” or something else pops in an absolutely stunning way) probably THE pop-cultural event story of Summer 2012. If you’re a studio executive and you aren’t a least exploring options for a “team of superheroes” movie of your own, you are not being responsible to your shareholders. And if you already OWN a team of superheroes – say, one that’s already more well-known and widely-recognized than “The Avengers” – if you aren’t already MAKING that movie you don’t deserve to hold your job.

What I like about this is that they don’t seem to be waiting around to try and do a multi-film buildup like Marvel did. It could end up working out that way anyway – I wouldn’t be totally surprised to see a toe or two being dipped in the continuity-waters in “Man of Steel” – but I don’t know that it needs to. “The Avengers” was a different story – apart from The Hulk, almost no one outside fandom knew much about the other characters. Everyone knows who Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are. Even Flash and Aquaman are more widely-known that Iron Man ever was before the first movie. To my way of thinking, the smartest move Warners could make would be to make JL a top priority, get people under contracts and then figure out who gets movies of their own when the numbers come back.

And, honestly… while continuity-driven shared-universes are fun, Warners painted themselves into a corner in that regard by agreeing to Christopher Nolan’s alleged “nobody touches anything Batman but me!” demands (which may still hold for Superman as well); and starting now would put them way behind the curve.

Obviously, my “best case scenario” hope would be that Warners has it’s shit together and the already-cooking de-Nolanized Batman, “Man of Steel,” Wonder Woman and Flash movies are being built to tie-in to this; but if not I don’t think that many people would mind JL being a seperate thing, partly because (again, unlike “Avengers”) these characters are bigger than any actor playing them could ever be: Whoever’s wearing the Superman costume IS Superman.

Latino Review’s El Mayimbe – who’s just about the most scary-reliable movie news scooper out there right now, sez YES.

No official confirmation from Marvel/Disney yet, but these guys have been spot-on pretty-much every time they’ve made a call. If so, this will mark the first Marvel Studios production to feature a minority lead and will (unless I’m forgetting someone?) be the first comic-based film to star a black superhero since “Blade” back in 98.

More substantially, it’s a terrific character with tons of cinematic potential:

I don’t know how high awareness of the character is outside established comic fandom, but The Black Panther is kind of a big deal: The first black superhero in modern/mainstream comics, and also the first to hail (natively) from Africa.

Shortest possible version: Remember Eddie Murphy in “Coming to America?” He’s that guy, if he was also Batman. Panther’s real name is T’Challa, and he’s the King of an isolated Sub-Saharan African nation called Wakanda; which maintains a surface-level facade of being a “primitive” jungle tribe but is actually a technologically-advanced super-civilization hidden deep underground. In the comics-proper, Wakanda sustains/defends itself primarily as the world’s principal source of Vibranium – the super-special metal that Captain America’s shield is made of.

The casting on this will be really interesting – the mega-success of The Avengers and the automatic high-profile that will come from being the first nonwhite member of what is now Hollywood’s number-one “superhero factory” makes this instantly the biggest role specifically calling for a black male lead in Hollywood right now. Penny-pinching Marvel will almost certainly want to with a fresh face, but you can bet that LOT’S of established names are throwing their hats in as well.

Of less interest but still probably amusing-as-hell: The innevitable Fox News etc. freakout over the name (which predates the 1970s activist organization) and the positioning of an African leader as a superhero. This won’t come out until well after the election, of course, but don’t expect that to stop the fun…

Topical!

Source: Comicbookmovie

A pic snapped on the “Iron Man 3” set appears to set up yet the Marvel Movieverse debut of a huge part of Marvel Comics lore… and possibly open the door to hundreds of potential stories and characters – especially on the Bad Guy side. What a time to be alive.

POSSIBLE spoilers – though I imagine it’s more like “possible stuff you didn’t know about yet” – after the jump:

A.I.M. Advanced Idea Mechanics. Fucking A.

It’s kind of mind-blowing that these guys haven’t shown up sooner, especially in the “Iron Man” franchise. A.I.M. are a collective of mad-scientists who like to go about in matching clean-room hazmat suits and sell the fruits of their genius to be used for nefarious purposes (terrorism, espionage, etc.) “Where did so-and-so get that new super-weapon?” “Probably A.I.M.”

Now that Captain America and Iron Man are officially teammates (if not “pals,”) I wonder if they’ll keep the background-detail of A.I.M. having been founded as a Post WWII outgrowth of HYDRA. It’s the kind of “bonus continuity” you can take care of with a line of dialogue as opposed to expensive or distracting cameos/background-gags… though it would be incredible to see Toby Jones stomping around as the still-alive cyborg version of Arnim Zola (“Captain America” having implied that he wound up spirited-away by the Army like so many real-life Nazi mad-scientists.)

Of course, my mind goes to the same place I’m assuming a lot of your minds are going: Namely that A.I.M. is perhaps best known as the guys behind one of the greatest all-purpose comic book villains ever… M.O.D.O.K.

I want that. I want badly. I want to see Iron Man (or whoever) being menaced by a giant flying half-robot head with stubby little robot-limbs… and more importantly, I want to see an actual flesh-and-blood human actor in a legit, multimillion dollar studio tentpole have to intone with a straight face that his name stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing.

I actually didn’t even realize they were still doing The MTV Movie Awards, let alone that it was tonight. Apparently, the show climaxed with yet another arrangement of footage from “The Dark Knight Rises” – mostly showing off longer takes of stuff we’ve seen before, but now with perhaps a little more context…
http://www.springboardplatform.com/mediaplayer/springboard/video/ltrv001/955/501259/

The most interesting thing, obviously, is what seems to be definitive confirmation that Catwoman ends up as a good guy (or, at least, working on Batman’s side at some point) which is… whatever, let’s see what they do with that. The big stack of junk blocking the tunnel, alongside the previously-seen exploding bridges, implies that Gotham City (or a portion of it) is being deliberately cut-off/”contained” from the mainland; either by Bane or maybe by the authorities in response to Bane? Now I’m wondering if some of this is being taken from the “No Man’s Land” story-arc from the comics, where an Earthquake turned Gotham into an isolated, lawless island for awhile. “Escape From New York” wiht Batman? That’d work.

What continues to intrigue me (and possibly put me a bit “on edge,”) is what exactly Bane is “about.” He’s obviously an in-name-only adaptation of the character, so there’s really no way to say what his story/motivation/etc. are supposed to be. What we can tell, moreso from some earlier trailers, is that there’s a heavy “class war” theme at play in the film – as far back as the first trailer we saw scruffy-looking hordes ransacking mansions, dragging well-dressed people out of hiding places and trashing what looks like a stock-exchange. In this one it looks like Bane is leading (or at least “directing”) the mobs; which sets up some troubling subtext when you consider the filmmakers’ (scrapped) plans to incorporate real footage of the Occupy Wall Street protests into the film.

Is that the idea? Bane/whoever else using a villainized version of OWS as a tool of societal-destruction? If so, that plus Batman as the “good” side of this starts to feel a little “iffy” to me: Batman – the ultimate one-percenter/status-quo/order-as-justice superhero – swooping in to save us from a villainized version of the Discontented Poor? Are we following up TDK’s “shut up and let Bat-Rumsfeld’s surveillance network protect you from The Terrorists!” with “shut up and let Bat-Trump protect you from yourselves!”?

Maybe, maybe not. It does strike me that there’s something oddly “feudal” about Nolan and company’s conception of Batman. It’s comic book tradition for superhero’s to mainly focus on a single city, both because of logistics and… well, just because; but in this series Bruce Wayne’s Gotham-fixation feels a little bit less like focused-benevolence and more like protective-ownership – Gotham City as a modern-day medieval castle-town, Bruce Wayne as the Landed Noble in charge. Hell, he’s even an inheritor-by-birthright of his throne; “Batman Begins” having introduced the idea that the Wayne Family has long taken up maintanence of Gotham as a pet-project.

This isn’t to say that it’s necessarily “wrong” for this particular film to (possibly) be working from an anti-OWS (or, at least, “cut the upper-class some slack, kids!”) angle; or that it’s somehow ill-advised – being pegged in some quarters as a tacit endorsement of Patriot Act overreach certainly didn’t hurt it’s predecessor. But it’s interesting, and this being an election year you can bet it’ll come up.

Not very good.

“Intermission” brings the hype.