NOTE: I’m not putting a spoiler-tag on this because Marvel clearly has no interest in it being a secret or surprise. It was in USA Today, even.

The thing that always bothered me about Marvel’s “Ultimate” side-universe is that it never lived up to it’s supposed intention of not only dropping the continuity-burden but also doing new and gutsy things with the established characters. “Ultimate” Spider-Man was probably the worst offender, segueing almost-immediately from telling “new” stories to basically being a “remixed” version of Spidey-continuity’s Greatest Hits.

Well, maybe that’s changed.

Revealed to news outlets today (and to readers of “Ultimate Fallout #4” tomorrow) the new “Ultimate” Spider-Man (“Ultimate” Peter Parker’s time ran out in a “Death Of…” story last month) is a half-black, half-hispanic teenager named Mike Morales. Let the “I’m-not-racist-I’m-just-racially-conscious” gnashing of teeth begin.

Amusingly, writer Brian Michael Bendis cites the infamous incident last year – where “Community” star Donald Glover launched a joke Twitter campaign to be cast as the new Spidey and was met with a ridiculous “I’m-not-racist-but” backlash from (some) fans who thought Glover (who is black) was actually up for the part.

Immediate reaction: Interesting choice, I like it. Will it be enough to get me back interested in the “Ultimate” line? Probably not, but you never know. I don’t know that I’m digging the outfit, but that’s a whole other minor thing.

This isn’t exactly a surprise, as Strange has been on the known “wish list” for Marvel Studios’ (alongside Luke Cage, Black Panther, Iron Fist and others) post-“Avengers” slate for awhile. Still, it’s pretty awesome to read Twitch’s report that they’ve accepted a script and are actively working on it.

Short Version: Steven Strange is a brilliant-but-crazy-arrogant surgeon (so yes, “Doctor Strange” is actually his PROFESSIONAL title even before he had powers) who screws up his hands in an accident and can’t do surgery anymore. Seeking a magical hand-cure among Tibetan mystics, he saves the life of an ancient wizard and winds up drafted as the Sorceror Supreme. Even Shorter Version: “Venture Bros.” Doctor Orpheus, only played straight.

So, it’s “House” crossed with “Harry Potter,” basically.

I’m still not sold on Bane in general, but I like the idea of Batman fighting in daylight (assuming this isn’t a day-for-night shot) with the caveat of hoping that they’ve found a way to shoot hand-to-hand combat in a manner that doesn’t come out looking like Christian Bale is trying to claw his way out from under a pile of tires – otherwise, this will be the 7th movie where Batman is again rendered obviously immobile by his godawful rubber armor. More to the point: The leather(?) plate-armor on Bane’s torso looks awfully League of Shadows to me.

Possible-spoiler discussion from here out, last chance to turn back…

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Some of the other pix floating around from the same shoot show Bane carrying a torn scrap of paper, which many had assumed was director’s notes or something to that effect. Well, at least one of the new snaps caught it from the facing-side, and it’s not – it’s a photo of Harvey Dent. Which means… who knows, but it’s interesting.

This sort of thing has passed into film-geek legend at this point, but there’s always been this whole list of “dream projects” George Lucas was going to make once “Star Wars” was suitably wrapped-up; and of all of them “Red Tails” – a WWII actioner about The Tuskegee Airmen – has been one ‘just about to get made’ for at least two decades. Because, y’know… George Lucas.

Well, the son of a gun finally did it – as a producer and (supposedly) very hands-on post-production overseer and genre-TV vet Anthony Hemingway directing. And it has a trailer…

The Tuskegee Airmen are one of those “why haven’t there been FIFTY movies about this?” WWII stories, and while there was already a really good ‘serious’ biopic version for HBO years ago I like the idea of the story getting the soaring, kinda-corny old-Hollywood approach Hemingway and Lucas seem to be striking here.

I wonder… does it still “register” with people that “Star Wars” doesn’t really become a samurai-in-space series until “Empire;” and that the first one is much moreso a WWII fighter-pilot movie but in space?

It’s not so good.

“Intermission” reviews the teasers for Spider-Man, Batman and The Avengers.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

Y’know what’s great about reporting on Robert Rodriguez movies? If you’re seeing SOMETHING visual from it, you know that about 70% of the movie is already done, locked-in and ready-to-go on a thumb-drive in Rodriguez green-screen-studio/garage. ALSO: That when he calls stuff like the image above “concept art,” he means “this is ACTUALLY what it will look like.”

In any case, one of RR’s 5 to 10 currently in-production projects is a live-action remake of “Fire & Ice;” a swords n’ sorcery animated feature from the 80s. It’s LEGENDARY among the relatively small number of young kids who rented it expecting something on the lines of He-Man and instead got 90 minutes of lovingly-rendered brutality, beheadings and barely-contained cartoon-cleavage (anime hadn’t really “happened” in the U.S. yet) but today mostly remembered for being a collaboration between cartoon-renegade Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, the guy who pretty-much invented modern fantasy-art…

Yes, young animation-students in the audience: Those are hand-painted cels rotoscoped frame-by-frame off of live-action actors – keep that in mind the next time Flash makes your wrist hurt a little bit. And as a cel-animation-era attempts at making Frazetta’s signature style “move” go it’s pretty damn gorgeous; but as a narrative it’s largely reflective of the kind of stock high-fantasy schlock his work tended to appear on the cover of – arch, overwrought and sort of forgettable, though the astonishingly politically-incorrect mincing/woman-hating/momma’s-boy gay villain is good for a laugh.

I’m pretty psyched for this. Rodriguez is a Frazetta fanatic, and he’s been trying to make a movie in that style for a long time (he almost made the new “Red Sonja.”) He has his flaws as a filmmaker; but no one in the business is better at turning “unworkable” visual styles into moving images and, as a bonus, his knowingly-juvenile blood-n-boobs-by-the-bucket sensibilities is a perfect fit for the material. Much as I love the more “subtle” fantasy aesthetic of the LOTR films and their descedants… yeah, I’m soooo ready for the return of gore-slathered broadswords and amazons in bronze lingerie. And given how inhumanly shitty the new “Conan” continues to look, I welcome this sucker openly.

The original, incidentally, was put out on a REALLY good DVD set from Blue Underground awhile back that also included the excellent Frazetta biopic “Painting With Fire” (a must-see for aspiring artists) as a bonus feature. Worth picking up if you can find it around.

The big misconcpetion that most of the public has right now about every movie needing to be “based on” something, even old toys and board-games, is that Hollywood is “out of ideas.” Not the case. What they’re “out of” – or at least percieve themselves to be out of – are things that garauntee an instant “connection” with an audience in the marketing sense. A Tom Hanks/Julia Roberts rom-com BOMBED this summer. That scares the shit out of industry people – if name-stars can’t “register,” what the hell can? Well, brand-names – of ANY kind – that’ve been burned into the collective unconscious, for one.

Hence, “Battleship,” which basically takes the name (and probably the “you sank my Battleship!!!” line at least once) and packaging-font of the old naval-warfare game and slaps it onto a (technically) original story about a navy fleet versus water-based aliens…

Take away the “oh, gawd… the BOARD GAME!?” aspect, and I don’t think it looks half bad. Peter Berg is an interesting director; and we haven’t seen a wholly ocean-set genre film in awhile. I’ll admit I’d be exponenially more interested if it didn’t look like they were just regular space-aliens hanging out in the water – when did science-fiction decide that the “undersea invaders from Atlantis, Mu, etc.” bit wasn’t “cool” anymore?

It’s one part more than Part II.

Hat-tip to Devin

It’s kind of a shame that the studios have woken up to the notion that being a big-hit at Comic-Con doesn’t mean it’s going to make money, because otherwise “Knights of Badassadom” would probably already have a distributor. The director is Joe Lynch – who’d be more reverred among horror fans if only his excellent “Wrong Turn 2” wasn’t tainted by being a sequel to “Wrong Turn” – and the premise is a head-slapper: A bunch of LARPer buddies accidentally unleash an actual demon and have to fight it. Peter Dinklage, Steve Zahn, Danny Pudi and Ryan Kwanten star as the hapless heroes, while Summer Glau stars as another $15-20 Million in fanboy tickets alread sold…