I have it on good authority that GAME OVERTHINKER: EPISODE 54 is coming this Thursday at 11pm EST exclusively on ScrewAttack.com. In this thrilling episode, you will…
LEARN! The OverThinker’s take on the subject YOU voted on!
MEET! A new member of TGO’s expanding supporting cast!
WITNESS! Fiery destrcution EXPLODING across your screen!
MARVEL! As The OverThinker does NOT engage in a pulse-pounding adventure!
THRILL! As our hero actively avoids looking down at his cue-cards!
BEHOLD! TGO’s brand-new abbreviated opening credits!
DISCOVER! The NAME of the mysterious Game Store Arsonist!

It goes on…

Here’s the good-quality version of the “Dark Knight Rises” trailer, with your first tiny glimpses of Bane, flashbacks to “Begins” and Jim Gordon looking pretty beat up.

Incidentally, no – I’m not running the bootlegged “Avengers” thing yet, but I’ll say this: While I understand their thinking, Marvel Studios really needs to get off the guitar-riff/tagline/guitar-riff/tagline/guitar-riff/tagline/guitar-riff/KABOOM!/punchline formula for their trailers. It’s not a dealbreaker, but c’mon guys! You’re selling the first-ever superhero continuity-cross teamup movie! Low angles, slow-motion, orchestral swells, dramatic-nods, y’know? get your shit together…

So… the MAIN speculation based on what we see in this, to my mind, has to go like this:

1.) It’s Gordon who get’s “broken” by Bane instead of Batman.
2.) By now, Gordon is aware that Bruce Wayne is Batman, and keeping that a secret is why we don’t see whether not he’s in costume.
3.) The “arc” of the story involves Batman quitting for awhile.
4.) Heavily referencing “Begins” (whereas TDK ignored it almost-entirely) means The League of Shadows are back in some way, and that’s probably them chanting at the end. As such, I renew my earlier very-unlikely-but-not-unthinkable assertation that the COOLEST possible thing that could happen in this movie is for revivified Liam Neeson to show up and be the big heavy.

I think I’ve mentioned this around a few times, but just in case: I’ll be hobnobbing with game designers and journalists as the IGDA Summit in Seattle on Monday and Tuesday – participating in at least two panels – so if you’re going too feel free to say hi.

In any case, here’s everything you might have missed this past week…

TINTIN has a full trailer!

I agree with JIMQUISITION!

BIG PICTURE: “Hollywood History 101 -Part I”

DARK KNIGHT RISES teaser poster!

Fede Alvarez to direct EVIL DEAD REMAKE for Sam Raimi!

Scary-ass preacher guys!

The Tea Party versus EVIL MANATEE CONSPIRACY!

Diablo Cody polishes the EVIL DEAD REMAKE script!

95-years-in-the-making JOHN CARTER has a trailer!

Entertainment Weekly gives AMAZING SPIDER-MAN a cover-story!

Some early DARK KNIGHT RISES teaser impressions…

A trailer for the “remakequel” of THE THING!

Scorsese makes a 3D KID’S MOVIE!

ESCAPE TO THE MOVIES: “Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows – Part II”

Movie good. Intermission sez it’s an Oscar contender – like it or not.

What does a whimsical children’s film from Martin Scorsese look like? Like this, apparently:

http://cdn.springboard.gorillanation.com/storage/xplayer/yo033.swf

Original title “Hugo Cabret,” incidentally. And those silent-movie-making sequences are apparently setting up Georges Melies as a supporting character, in answer to the “what probably attracted Scorsese to this?” question.

“The Thing” has the mother of all solutions to the “people are sick of remakes” problem: John Carpenter’s original film (itself a remake of an adaptation) opened with the discovery of the aftermath of events similar to what would eventually occur; so the remake purports to depict THAT and therefore technically qualify as a prequel.

…yeah, I’m not not really buyin’ it either – but, whatever, the trailer is actually not half bad:

Yes, I’ve seen the (probably) legit “Dark Knight Rises” teaser that’s supposed to start showing up in front of “Harry Potter” tonight and tomorrow. No, I’m NOT going to post bootleg links on this site.

There’s not much to it, honestly, but some impressions after the jump…

At least half of it is clips from the previous films, primarily “Begins.”

A good deal of Liam Neeson’s “Begins” dialogue used as voiceover; suggesting that the rumors about the loose-ends of that film coming back into play here have merit.

The titles make it EXPLICITLY clear that this is the END of this series.

I don’t know that there was a single good “new” shot of Batman or Bruce Wayne, but his voice is heard.

We see Bane, but not well.

A major character appears to have been critically-injured.

Dialogue heavily implies that a significant amount of time has passed since the last one, and that Batman has not been active for a portion of it.

No Catwoman or implications of Catwoman yet.

The video of the teaser is supposed to be officially released on Monday, but will supposedly be in theaters with most prints of “Potter.”

iFanboy has scans up (now posted in hi-res elsewhere) from Entertainment Weekly’s “Amazing Spider-Man” cover story. The piece itself is so much P.R.-driven fluff (EW, after all) but there’s some new stuff to see: Action poses of the new suit (still looks like an overdesigned mess to me, and the least-likable thing about the Raimi-era suit – the “texture” stuff – is turned up to eleven) first look at Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben (MEGA-SPOILER!!! He looks like… Martin Sheen in a work shirt!!!) and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy.

The big “nerd-minutiae” stuff is real, visual confirmation that the web-shooters are oldschool mechanical – which pretty-much everyone has known for over a year now (yeah, I’ll brag about it – called it right off the bat as the easiest bit of fanservice they could do) but it’s still nice to see.

Still no explanation for Spidey’s odd metal toe-shoes – at least, no official one. It’s not solid enough for me to “tip my hand,” but some of the early rumbles suggest that the “source” of Peter’s powerset (and maybe even transformation/origin itself) are getting a major overhaul that leans heavy on the home-made-hero angle; so take that for what you will.

I wonder if scifi/fantasy fans today appreciate just how ancient Edgar Rice Burroughs “Mars” books are. This is on of the “subject zeroes” of genre-fiction – think “War of the Worlds.” Think “King Solomon’s Mines.” It was old when “Lord of The Rings” was young. The “bedrock” stories modern writers and filmmakers try to live up to today were themselves trying to live up to this.

People have been trying to put the series (which concerns a Civil War veteran named John Carter who is transported to Mars and gets caught up in an alien conflict) on film since the invention of film. This first “real” attempt comes courtesy of Pixar’s Andrew Stanton… and it looks VERY close to a “nailed it.”

I like everything about this trailer – starting from the fact that they’re apparently keeping the “journals kept by a dead relative” framing device and ending with the not-at-all-generic music choice and editing. It’d be nice to see some more of the aliens (whose outlandishness is what’s largely kept the series unfilmmable until now) but I’m liking the look of it – yes, even what looks like a logical-compromise in the realm of costuming (Burroughs was BIG on “going native” machismo, and was seldom without an excuse for his heroes and heroines to do their fighting essentially naked.)

It’ll be interesting to see how a general audience reacts to this – the inherent problem in adapting older genre material is that it’s been so thoroughly cannibalized by it’s descendants that literally EVERYTHING about it will be somewhat familiar dozens of times over – what “Star Wars” borrowed from Flash Gordon, Flash Gordon borrowed from John Carter. So far, I like what I see… but will what boils down to “Conan in Space” go over with anyone else?