New Pet Theory: Guillermo del Toro is “Movie Geek Christ” – the Film Gods allow him and his various passion projects to be repeatedly crucified for the sins of all other projects, so that they might live to see a greenlight.

Today’s round of whippings: “Pacific Rim,” the Kaiju-tribute giant-monster movie he signed onto when “At The Mountains of Madness” as refused a go-ahead by Universal, is now going to need an extensive rewrite to remove references to destruction in Japan – for obvious reasons. Making things stranger, Legendary Pictures (the producers) are apparently leaning HARD on del Toro to also rewrite the script so that the “main” monster is Godzilla, rather than whatever the original was.

“Rim” started out as a hotly-pursued spec-script in which a portal to another dimension opens up in the ocean and starts spitting-out Godzilla-style giant monsters, which humanity (apparently) resists using giant robot battlesuits. That THAT premise can now be an original spec that becomes a bidding-war blockbuster is kind of wonderful.

The no-more-Japan thing makes total sense… but the Godzilla angle sounds suspiciously phony. Everyone knows that Legendary bought “Rim” at first looking to possibly rewrite it into a Godzilla movie… except they later signed “Monsters” Gareth Edwards to a straightforward Godzilla reboot a few months ago. For this to be true, they’d have to have canceled Edwards’ project, or is this more of a crossover/cameo thing?

Either way, not good news – because del Toro’s general reaction to studio interference is to just pack up and move on… and it’s getting to the point where I’m worried the guy might just up and retire at this point.

…would look as rendered by a higher-end Cosplayer.




On the OTHER hand… gah! What’s with the cheezy reflective-latex look? Again, I like the DESIGN… but ye gods, the material makes it look like she’s wearing a WW costume for a Halloween episode of some other show, not “playing” the character. Maybe it looks better under proper lighting?

Actually, I’m wondering if A.) this IS the “real” final outfit, and B.) if, in that case, the cheese-factor is supposed to be the point. The audition tapes had actresses reading from a script where the character referenced her “old” outfit as being less “appropriate” than her current one, and bemoaning that people still considered the old one more “iconic.” This pretty-much IS the old one, just with pants. So maybe this is meant for “flashbacks” to the older suit, and the silly-looking material is meant to accenuate how “lame” it was?

Of course… that same script/scene ALSO involved WW being insecure about her breasts not being big enough (really) and based on this image that’s just NOT going to be a believable sentiment; so it goes without saying that the script itself has probably undergone post-casting changes.

I’ll say this… she looks better than Nu-Spidey does, so far.

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

UPDATED with “Intermission,” an interview with Pegg & Frost.

Head’s up, trailer-mashup creators… a new standard has been set:

http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf

Darren Aronofsky has abruptly dropped out of “The Wolverine,” which was supposed to start shooting in a few months, to spend more time with his family – yes, really, the original “diplomatic answer.”

Wasn’t Fox supposed to be getting LESS impossible to work with on genre projects?

This is pretty incredible: MGM is worried that the Red Dawn remake they’ve had sitting (completed!) on the shelf for 2 years will make China mad at them; so they’re going to digitally change ALL the bad guys’ “stuff” and just call them North Koreans. Really. They DO realize that Chinese and Korean people are a COMPLETELY different ethnicity, right?

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

Short version: It was a BLAST! Long version, after the jump…

BEST PART:
Finally meeting my editor Susan Arendt, the Loading Ready Run crew, Shamus and all the other Escapist peeps in person, plus doing the movie-night panel that went KICKASS.

WORST PART:
Ah, cons – where $5 for a slice of pizza somehow sounds briefly reasonable…

3DS:
For the first half-second of picking it up, my heart-sank: “Oh no… the 3D doesn’t work.” But once your eyes find “dead center” magic-eye style a half-second later… damn, that’s a nifty effect – it really does look like the screen is a “portal” reaching much deeper into the background than possible in your hand, which is freaky as hell at first – and I’ll bet it’ll be even more impressive when not under harsh convention lightning (i.e. when the screen is the brightest thing in your field of vision.) I’m still not 100% sure if the effect has a practical application outside of looking cool, and I can see myself switching the 3D off for longer sessions, but it works and even absent 3D the graphics/controls are – as expected – terrific.

“FIREFALL”
Hadn’t been following development on this, but evidently an online/co-op 3rd-person shooter that looks like “Gears of War” with a stylized, cartoon/comic inspired design aesthetic. They were putting on quite a show.

“MORTAL KOMBAT” REBOOT:
It’s “Mortal Kombat 2” gone 2.5D in High-Definition and with tag-team play… and there isn’t a DAMN THING wrong with that! They had it set up in oldschool arcade-style cabinets complete with “fighter stick” controls; played a match against a friendly stranger and suddenly it was the tolerable part of the 90s again – sooo satisfying to hear “Finish Him!” again. This thing will be HUGE.

(UPDATED TO FIX FACTUAL ERROR.) Please consider making a donation to the charity or relief-organization of your choice to aid in the ongoing tragedy in Japan.

As if anyone needed ANOTHER reason to get behind the Detroit Robocop Statue project, here’s another: Right-Wing douchebag Warner Todd Huston; one of Andrew Breitbart’s professional trolls, is against it.

Donations to detroitneedsrobocop can be made HERE. The statue itself has already been funded, but the group behind the movement has pledged to keep the campaign going until it’s original March 26th end date and expand their scope to include other Detroit-oriented charities.