Below, the trailer for Joseph Gordon Levitt’s self-written/directed “Don Jon;” which casts him as a pornography addict who falls for Scarlett Johansson as a woman similarly-addicted… to shitty romantic comedies. Because Mars & Venus and reasons.
In all seriousness, though, it looks REALLY good – I am so psyched for the idea of Tony Danza entering an “aging sought-after character actor” career-phase you have NO idea. I’m just going to assume that casting of two of the best looking people in Hollywood as having “addictions” more generally associated with people who look (regardless of gender) more like me is some kind of meta-joke…
"Man of Steel" Trailers, Once Again
I finally know what date I’ll be seeing “Man of Steel,” which is a relief because the anticipation on this one has been killing me: Every new thing seen/heard from it has been alternately thrilling/terrifying: So much that looks like they “got it,” so much that sounds like they might not have and nothing to change my concerns that while Zack Snyder is the perfect person to direct a Superman movie… the Nolan Bros. don’t belong anywhere near the character.
That sense continues with the new trailer, which is more-or-less the “introducing your villains” one. The look and feel of everything is awesome, and Michael Shannon’s Zod seems to be as magnificient as I’d hoped… but I’m also getting a bad feeling:
“Clark becomes Superman to fight off an alien invasion by his own people” is a serviceable enough new spin on the mythos, fine,” but how many Kryptonians is Zod dragging around with him, exactly? The “one of my citizens” line and the “background details” of the other trailers make it seem an awful lot like they’ve switched Krypton from “destroyed” to “conquered” in this version – a pointless, asinine revision that J.J. Abrams’ abominable “Flyby” script also pulled – though he could also be “ruling” a roaming crew of super-nomads, which has interesting potential (it also occurs to me that we don’t even know HOW Kryptonians having super-powers “works” in this version.)
But it’s worrisome that they either seem to be junking (or have simply “missed”) the quintessential “immigrant story” that’s always been underlying this character. Kal-El being one of very few survivors of an advanced, proud culture that’s been destroyed and (literally) scattered to the stars is what made Superman not just The American Immigrant generally but The Jewish-American Immigrant specifically. Not necessarily saying new ideas are bad, but this is big stuff to be doing away with and I remain thoroughly unconvinced that the people behind the writing of this have the understanding/respect for the things their tinkering with to be trusted with a full-scale overhaul.
We’ll see.
Big Picture: "Secrets of S.H.I.E.L.D."
Not Entirely Unlikely
Just kinda popped in there…
Click for larger version, obviously.
Help Me Out Here…
The second half of my “Star Trek Into Darkness” review got into spoiler-territory in order to address what I see as some pretty serious flaws, but there’s one in particular that I didn’t fully discuss – partially because it would’ve taken too much time and the show ran long as it was, but mainly because I’m not 100% sure that I didn’t “miss” some bit of dialogue that would’ve made this not the ginormous, baffling plot hole that it seems to be.
Obviously, EVERYTHING after the jump is spoiler-territory, including the comments. So read/click through only if you’ve seen the film and/or really, really want to…
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Okay. The issue I’m having concerns the film’s big finale action sequence – which, befitting a Star Trek movie, takes the form of a CGI-assisted parkour foot chase in San Fransisco.
Background: Revealed at midpoint of the film, Benedict Cumberbatch’s “John Harrison” owes his superhuman strength, intelligence and healing-factor to the fact that he’s actually Khan Noonian Singh, the villain from “Space Seed” and later “The Wrath of Khan;” the leader of a crew of genetically engineered superhumans who got cryogenically frozen and lost in space after starting a big mess called “The Eugenics Wars” 300 years pre-Starfleet. (In the film, though, it’s only ever mentioned that he and his crew were superhumans – at one point, Spock pulls “Oh, and they were totally genocidal, too!” out of thin air once Admiral Red Herring has been dispatched and it’s time for Khan to be primary antagonist again.) It has also been revealed that Khan’s super-blood has the power to cure death, which the crew becomes aware of when Bones injects some into a dead tribble he happens to have around. Anyway…
The setup: Having driven Khan into a rage and causing him to scuttle his warship on Earth by pretending to kill the 72 remaining still-frozen superhumans (they’re actually safe aboard the Enterprise,) Spock is informed that the ship was only able to re-start because Kirk elected to climb into the warp-core to repair it manually and is now about to die from radiation poisoning. From there, the climax from “Wrath of Khan” is replayed but in-reverse, with Kirk now dying behind the glass and Spock getting to do the angry “KHAAAAAAN!” yell. Discovering that Khan has survived by beaming into the city, the enraged Spock beams himself down to pursue and kill him. BUT! Bones serendipitously catches sight of his test-tribble coming back to life and realizes that Khan’s magical death-curing blood could save the day, meaning that Uhura now has to beam down into the big fight and convince Spock to spare Khan’s life. She does, he does, Kirk is fine, Khan is back in his freeze-pod so he can come back in a sequel, the end.
Here’s my issue: There are 72 other superhumans, frozen, right there on the ship. Why don’t they just use one of them? Why does it need to be Khan? Did they ever specify that having magic death-curing blood is a special thing only for Khan? Because if they did, I missed it. I’ve heard it suggested that it’s possible Khan’s crew are not all supermen in this timeline, but A.) That doesn’t make sense because this timeline is supposed to have been identical to the original up to the moment Nero came through the wormhole and altered history and B.) Khan specifically says that he and his crew are built for deep-space survival during his big “I’m going to win!” bad guy monologue. Seriously, I cannot figure out how this isn’t a massive hole in the story. Anybody?
UPDATE: Someone has pointed out that a throwaway line earlier in the film about not being able to get the bodies out of cryo-sleep without proper codes or somesuch without killing them being an explanation. Good catch, but clearly Bones doesn’t have any big issue with their death/injury from improper-thawing (and you CAN get blood from a recently-dead corpse) since he orders the crew to eject a body from a pod so he can use it to keep Kirk’s body stable.
And while we’re at it… this basically means Starfleet has a cure for death now, right? I mean, they’re going to have to either explain-away or readjust and deal with the fact that nobody should be dying of anything in this universe from here on out, since there are now 72 bodies worth of self-replenishing Cure-It-All safely tucked away wherever, yes? Because otherwise aren’t we going to be wondering why, if people get killed or mortally wounded in the next movie, they don’t just uncork a vial or two of the serum Bones said he made from the blood and get on with life?
And Your Next Two AVENGERS Are…
Long rumored but now seemingly confirmed by Joss Whedon to IGN, joining the team (or at least in the film to some capacity) will be Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, better known as The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. He’s basically The Flash if he was a Eurotrashy douchebag, she can manipulate probability – i.e. she can make pretty-much anything happen through “magic” handwaved with psuedo-science. They’re fraternal twins, originally villains who reformed and joined The Avengers alongside fellow ex-baddie Hawkeye during the team’s first major overhaul (everyone quit but Captain America, leaving him to train a new team of ex-villains.)
Here’s why this is kind of a big deal: Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, in the comcis, are Mutants. Supposedly, “all” of Marvel’s Mutants are owned as part of the “X-Men Family” by Fox; so they can’t show up in any non-Fox Marvel films. Normally, that shouldn’t be a problem: “Mutant” in the Marvel Universe essentially means anyone who is a human born with an extra-human sense or ability, so it would not be tremendously difficult to augment them into some other variation on “born like this” (or just give them new origins) for “Avengers 2.”
But these aren’t just any two Mutants: Despite being overall more-associated with the Avengers franchise (which is why they can be in this at all, Mutant or not) Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch started out as members of The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants… and they’re Magneto’s children.
Now, sure – that can be written out just as easily as having them be capital-M Mutants, but it also negates most of what would make them novel as members of an ostensible good-guy team. And they’re not exactly popular or novel enough for me to imagine Marvel insisting on their presence – nobody really cares about Quicksilver and there are many more-popular Marvel heroines than Scarlet Witch – so Joss Whedon or someone else on the creative side wanted them specifically for this. That’s interesting.
Here’s the thing: Fox would probably do anything (short of relinquishing the X-rights themselves) to have “their” X-Men franchise be “officially” connected to “Avengers,” even tangentially. Suddenly, any random Mutant movie they crap out becomes much close to must-see because “hey, we might need to have seen this for the next ‘Avengers’ movie!” So the question isn’t whether or not Fox would “go for” some kind of shared-custody of the Mutant characters (they probably would,) nor if Fox and Disney/Marvel have already talked about this (you’d best believe they have – everyone who owns a Marvel franchise has been talking about how to get in on the action, FX scheduling is supposedly the only reason you didn’t see “Amazing Spider-Man’s” OsCorp building in “Avengers.”) The only question is whether Marvel is willing to “work something out” or would rather hold back until Fox has a bad year and needs to sell the X-characters back altogether.
I have a suspicion that there’s another shoe or three yet to drop on this, especially since there’s a LONG time between now and “Avengers 2.” But for now, Fox has two “X-Men” movies set for this year alone, and if they’re both hits that gives them a slightly stronger bargaining position assuming any bargaining is actively going on (I suspect there is, but you never know.)
Escape to The Movies: "Star Trek Into Darkness"
Second time is not the charm.
(Note: later-half of review has clearly-marked spoilers)
“Intermission” has some Blood Dragon for you.
Final(?) "PACIFIC RIM" Trailer Hits
I really, really hope that this marks the start of a much bigger push for this movie. Fairly or not, I feel like so much is riding on “Pacific Rim.” An original (read: not a sequel, remake, reboot, adaptation, etc) big-budget genre movie? Guillermo Del Toro finally on the cusp of the blockbuster clout he should’ve had a decade ago? Giant monsters and robots up onscreen with no “apology” for their own existence or attempt to make them palatable to audiences that might turn their noses up otherwise?
If something like this doesn’t “succeed,” it validates all the worst chickenshit instincts of the current studio-system. “Joe Popcorn” (or whatever the current euphemism is) probably doesn’t deserve this movie… but I hope “he” shows up anyway. There’s more riding on this than just this.
"Riddick" Trailer
In case you weren’t aware, the reason Vin Diesel keeps agreeing to “Fast” sequels is because it’s the only way to force Universal to make more movies featuring his “Riddick” character. The new film, simply titled “Riddick,” now has a trailer:
FULL Three Minute "S.H.I.E.L.D." Promo Hits!
An extended version of the trailer for Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” series has now hit the web HERE.
This follows the previous 30 second teaser, the 7 second teaser for THAT teaser, and the 2/12 hour teaser released to theaters last year as “The Avengers.”
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 