Marvel Announces Eternals Film

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So, let’s talk about The Eternals.  These folks are, allegedly, going to be Marvel’s next big thing going into phase 4 and the 2020s.  I use the word “allegedly” there because I feel like we’ve definitely been here before and done the “next big thing” dance enough times for it to feel decidedly old hat by now.  In particular, we were last here in 2017 when Marvel spent 2 years and countless comics trying to make the Inhumans into their next big thing only for the property to completely flame out after ½ a season of subpar television.  

Even if you LIKED the Inhumans TV show there’s no denying the concentrated effort to rebrand the Inhumans as the new it thing from Marvel was both a failure and embarrassment, especially with how much they’ve receded from the public eye at this point.  One wonders if the Eternals, a very similar group conceptually, aren’t just Marvel’s new flavor of the month, to be forgotten within a few short years of their culmination? 

Panel Vision - 8 Possibilities for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is now a pretty unequivocal hit, more or less proving that it wasn’t a fluke and Marvel is Jim Henson levels of good at making us empathize with incredibly goofy cartoons like Groot and Rocket.  With a sequel already announced by Marvel, it’s already time for sites like mine to start wildly speculating about what we might see.  

Even though the film hasn’t been written yet there were some pretty much hints towards future storylines in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and James Gunn has said that he already has a sketched out idea for the third film and how it will allegedly set-up the new mega-story for Marvel Phase 4.  Additionally, the Guardians of the Galaxy may not have been major Marvel heroes throughout their career but they do have a fairly notable and bizarre history all their own worth digging into to figure out where things might be going next. 

Filmland - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Review

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It’s good, but then again you probably already knew that.  This is a Marvel movie, after all, they’ve ALL been good even the ones that aren’t very good like Iron Man 2 and Incredible Hulk.  Thankfully, the evolving experiment that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as the auteur career of director James Gunn give me plenty more to dig into with this sequel than just “is it an enjoyable film.”  The whole cast fits naturally and easily back into their roles, and the script manages to find a lot more stuff to do with them beyond the anarchic, rapid-fire comedy of the first film.  

The new/elevated characters like Yondu, Nebula, and Mantis all do a great job and are honestly some of the best parts of the movie, even outshining old favorites like Starlord and Groot at times.  Kurt Russell absolutely steals the show as Peter’s dad and is one of the best new additions to the MCU.  Finally, the more deliberate pacing and smaller, more intimate story-telling may eschew the high octane comedy and novelty of the original but never lose site of the cheeky and subversive spirit the first film had.  All that being said, let’s really get into this beast- spoilers to follow. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Update

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Despite the vastness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the concept of sequels is a strangely sparse and foreign one.  Where this becomes the clearest is that even though the common working knowledge is that Marvel sequels are mostly poor, the actual breakdown is exactly even.  Iron Man 2 was a rush job that did little more than jog in place and remind people of upcoming films, Thor: The Dark World was about on par with its predecessor only with slightly sloppier editing and a more derivative climax, and Age of Ultron had plenty of ambition but lost a good chunk of it in the editing. 

Meanwhile, Iron Man 3 is a thoughtful and well-made revisit of the series core themes in a new context, Winter Soldier complete shake-ups the genre and style of the franchise in an adventurous way, and Civil War stands as one of the best entries in the series.  Now it’s coming time for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and amid the slew of trailers, posters, TV spots, and advertising tie-ins I can’t shake the feeling the brown, drippy lightning that is the lackluster Marvel sequel is gearing up to strike for a fourth time. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Trailer Breakdown

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Somewhere around 3 years ago, Marvel Studios introduced the world to the Guardians of the Galaxy, a plucky band of space rogues who wormed their way into everyone’s hearts with their winning combination of humorous banter and space weirdness.  

Now, Marvel prepares for the Guardians next out, coming spring 2017, with a brand new trailer.  However, a lot can change in 3 years, and the world of 2017 is going to be very different for the Guardians. 

The original film was such a cultural shame it’s shaped a lot of the competition to come out since, both concerning renewed interest in space operas, also shepherded along by the return of Star Wars, and a greater attempt to co-opt the Guardians’ eclectic style, as evidenced by Suicide Squad.  

Given that and Marvel’s less unassailable standing in the current landscape, does the Guardians trailer promise the triumphant return of the kings of the MCU, or were our heroes never quite as fun as we initially thought?

The Belko Experiment Trailer Analysis

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Let’s talk about James Gunn.  Before 2014’s smash hit Guardians of the Galaxy Gunn was a bit of an unknown.  He had made a few good movies, most notably Super and Slither which undoubtedly endeared him to the film geek in everyone’s life, but he wasn’t necessarily a sought after auteur filmmaker.  That’s been true of a lot of Marvel’s collection of misfit and maverick directors, with the most common thread being a cult success like Joss Whedon’s Firefly or the Russo Brother’s work on Community. 

Now, however, Gunn is a name in Hollywood, and that means he’s got the kind of clout to do what he wants now.  Most Marvel directors go through this period, some coming out stronger like Jon Favreau giving us Chef and The Jungle Book while others squander the chance, like Alan Taylor following up Thor: The Dark World with Terminator Genisys.  As for Gunn, while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is on his plate, his real follow-up effort has taken the form of a grimy horror flick called The Belko Experiment. 

8 Characters Sam Neill Could be in Thor: Ragnarok

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Thor: Ragnarok is shaping up to be the most exciting new Marvel movie since Winter Soldier.  The upcoming conclusion to the Thor trilogy jumped from being just another entry in Marvel’s least impressive franchise to something of actual note when Taika Waititi signed up to direct.  

Then the Hulk was revealed to be a major part of the film followed by Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, and Jeff Goldblum joining the cast.  Of course, the “Thor on Vacation” comedy video was an absolute hoot, and now another Jurassic Park alumni has joined the film with Sam Neill, playing a secret role. 

Neill’s announcement is a serious game changer and right from the outset we can extrapolate a few things about his character.  He’s a big name actor, so it’s probably an important part but his limited involvement in production hints at a more restricted role, suggesting the kind of big, meaty, multi-film role that Marvel likes signing more venerable actors like Neill.  With that in mind, and knowing the trajectory of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’ve come up with eight possible roles Sam Neill could be playing in Thor: Ragnarok.

Panel Vision - Reinventing Iron Man for Iron Man 4

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Edited by Robert Beach 

As I write this, Robert Downey Jr. was photographed earlier in the week meeting with Jon Favreau and a handful of former Marvel behind-the-scenes individuals to discuss a new project. This has gotten the ball rolling in some corners of the Internet to start speculating on whether or not we’ll be seeing plans for a new Iron Man film sometime soon.  

The question of fourth installments, like Marvel’s powerhouse solo franchises Iron Man and Captain America, has loomed large in the distance on the long, slow, march towards the 2020s and Marvel’s Phase 4. It’s a legitimately major concern, especially the chopping and the changing over whether or not Robert Downey Jr. was under contract for more Marvel films. Given this recent swirl of rumors, let’s finally answer what’s going on with Iron Man 4.

6 Questions about New Warriors

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Edited by Robert Beach

Something peculiar about the story of Marvel Studios, the little comic book company that dreamed of making movies, is how well they’ve managed to wipe clean people’s memories of their failures. As far as the general public is concerned, Marvel has never failed, more or less cemented themselves as an unstoppable blockbuster juggernaut and America’s cinematic guardian. This takes a lot of mental editing when you take into account how often Marvel has let us down. And nowhere has that been more evident than in their many botched attempts at Network TV. 

After three seasons of diminishing viewership, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to bring in Ghost Rider to resurrect season 4. Their Most Wanted spin-off fell through, and most of Marvel’s “in the works” TV projects seemed to have stalled. This all got so bad that Marvel allegedly met with ABC about what their future in television held. It seems we now have our answer in the form of The New Warriors and also Squirrel Girl.

Panel Vision - 8 Films to Expect From Marvel Phase 4

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Edited by Robert Beach

About 13 months ago, I made a prediction on ten possible films Marvel might have scheduled for the year 2020. While some of those names still stand, and we’ll get to them, I feel the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as the entire film landscape has changed SO much over this past year. It’s time to revisit that issue.  

For one, Marvel has announced several new projects coming to TV like New Warriors, Ghost Rider on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Punisher show that confirm those characters aren’t open for cinematic adaptation. All of that pushes Marvel closer and closer to being out of viable heroes for cinematic adaptation unless you think folks like Stingray or Darkhawk are ripe for film. 

Meanwhile, several of Marvel’s key heroes are close to finishing their runs in key roles while others have been secured following Marvel Studio’s split with Marvel Comics CEO Ike Perlmutter. It’s a different time is my point. And different times call for different solutions, so here are 8 Marvel movies we might see in 2020. 

Panel Vision - 5 Things to Expect from Suicide Squad 2

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Edited by Robert Beach

After three weeks in the #1 spot on the box-office charts and a comfortable spot as the 8^th highest grossing film of the year, Suicide Squad is a bona fide hit. Granted, it’s one of those hits like Godzilla (2014) or Cinderella where it makes a ton of money, but the cultural impact is a lot more questionable. Given DC’s track record, monetary success coupled with anything less than audience loathing seems to be enough to register success. With that, DC still has two open slots in their cinematic schedule; it’s probably that time where we all start speculating about what the sequel might bring. 

However, that’s going to be a little different for DC as their films don’t boast much interconnectivity, and Suicide Squad, in particular, wasn’t founded on a franchise mentality. Regardless of quality, the structure of the film was such that any sequel would be more or less free to be another “villains on a mission” movie, swapping out the villains and the mission. And yet, I believe it could do more. I’ve put together a list of 5 things to improve on the first movie in Suicide Squad 2.

Panel Vision - is Tony Revolori Playing Nova?

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Edited by Robert Beach

As the various Spider-Man: Homecoming casting news continues to trickle in, one particular bit of casting has been niggling at me: Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, Spider-Man’s best frenemy. It’ a relatively minor supporting role in the great scheme of Marvel casting. It's why you’ve most likely never registered Flash’s presence in the previous Spider-Man films even though he was on hand. He’s just not a dynamic character in the initial Spider-Man mythos as his primary role was wish fulfillment, acting as the bully jock to pick on Peter, but he worships Spider-Man. 

However, I don’t think that Tony Revolori fits anyone’s idea of a jock given he’s the same size and build as Tom Holland. At the same time, Flash Thompson isn’t that important to the Spider-Man mythos proper. Flash went on to be integral on a cosmic scale. All of which has led me to the following wild speculation: Tony Revolori is set-up to play Nova.

Panel Vision - Seven Characters Benjamin Bratt May Play in Doctor Strange

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Edited by Robert Beach 

As we continue to march ever closer to Dr. Strange, several people have picked up on a pretty interesting minor detail from the latest trailer for the Sorcerer Supreme’s debut film. So far, the trailers, posters, and announcements have all been pretty sparse for Doctor Strange. Most of the news focus on showing off how strange and different the movie will be. Whether or not that’s the case, it does lead to a lot of lingering questions about what role the various characters in the film are actually playing or if there’s some secret agenda at hand.  

That particular brand of conspiracy speculation got a shot in the arm when the ending credits of Dr. Strange’s latest trailer named Benjamin Bratt as a featured actor. Currently, we have no idea who Bratt is playing or that he was even in this movie as he hasn’t appeared in any of the set pics, posters, or trailers. Now, the question has become “who is he playing?” I thought up seven possibilities. 

Brie Larson Cast as Captain Marvel

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Edited by Robert Beach

As we enter our 8^th year of Marvel-dominated blockbusters and news cycles, the tide is slowly turning into the house of the Avengers built. This particular ball got rolling a few years ago after Avengers became a bonafide hit and definitively closed out phase 1. It turned out phase 2 was just going to be more of the same with some space characters thrown in.  

The big trend of the moment has become a majorly increased demand to see greater representation and diversity from Marvel studios seemingly unstoppable hit-making machine. This particular campaign has only gotten more intense over the past three years. Stuff like Jessica Jones proved a major hit while Marvel’s Dr. Strange and Iron Fist incurred ire over their whitewashing and cultural appropriation.  

This year, Marvel seems poised to turn things around with Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther emerging as the breakout character of Captain America: Civil War, and Luke Cage poised to be the next big Netflix hit.  Now, in the wake of San Diego Comic Con, Marvel takes their next big leap forward with the announcement that their first lead woman superhero, Captain Marvel, will be played by Brie Larson.

 

Film Land - How Do You Solve a Problem Like Thor?

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Edited by Robert Beach

I have a lot of tangents that develop as I do these articles, and one of the most prominent ones has become “how do you solve a problem like Thor?” It’s a question that’s hung around Marvel’s neck like a dead weight ever since 2013 when Thor: The Dark World’s derailment came to a crushing finale. Thor's mighty sequel hammer lost to Hunger Games: Catching Fire at the box office. 

Overall, it’s easy to see how Thor ended up on the fringes of Marvel’s slate. The first Thor was a refreshing and fun fantasy comedy. It served as the world’s introduction to Marvel’s cosmic mythology and acted as the most child-friendly Marvel superhero production. 

Since then, Guardians of the Galaxy has come in as the new face of Marvel cosmic, and the Studio has reclaimed (Editor's Note: joint custody) the rights to Spider-Man to make it their kid-friendly franchise. Even Thor’s possible role as a mystics and magic franchise is teetering now that Dr. Strange and Iron Fist are on the way.  

It also doesn’t help that Chris Hemsworth has proved himself the least versatile of the main Marvel actors. With all that looming overhead, I still ask "how do you solve a problem like Thor?" And the answer from Thor: Ragnarok seems to be this: just make it a Hulk movie. 

Kurt Russell to play Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy 2

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Edited by Robert Beach 

And so another San Diego Comic Con comes to a close.  At this point, the SDCC exists as a trade expo, showcasing the various upcoming film and television projects the nerds of the Internet can obsess over for the next year.  

SDCC has made Marvel Studios king of the castle for the last several years, but, if we’re honest, this year and last year Marvel has been pretty underwhelming in their SDCC presentation. This year, Marvel’s heightened security and strike prohibition of filming makes it hard to get on board with a lot of their announcements. 

At the same time, pretty much all of their announcements were casting news, mainly revolving around Spider-Man: Homecoming and Black Panther. While I’m looking forward to those films, the roles announced have all been small.  

It’s a neat fact that Michael B. Jordan is playing Killmonger or that Tom Rivolo is Flash Thompson. Those aren’t barn burner announcements.  Thankfully, there were two pretty big casting announcements made: the first being Kurt Russell will be playing Ego, the living planet, in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.

1st Concept Art of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

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Edited by Robert Beach 

We’re currently in a bizarre dead zone for Marvel movie news.  After dominating the spring of 2016 through the double barrel punch of Daredevil season 2 and Captain America: Civil War, Marvel has more or less ceded the summer to its competition and aren’t even beginning to push Dr. Strange despite its fall release date.  Instead, Marvel’s spent the last couple months heavily emphasizing 2017’s slate of Marvel features, where they aim to dominate the entire calendar with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 in the spring, Spider-Man: Homecoming in the summer and Thor: Ragnarok in the fall. 

We’ve learned a lot about Thor’s casting breakdown, and Spider-Man can’t stop announcing new cast members. So far, we haven’t heard much about Guardians of the Galaxy. That changed this past week when we got our first look at the concept art for the new film, which revealed a trio of unexpected characters that seemed to be set for the movie. 

Static Thoughts - How to Fix Agents of SHIELD

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Edited by Robert Beach

As we continue the march towards San Diego Comic Con something that’s been weighing on me quite a bit is Agents of SHIELD.  At time of writing Agents of SHIELD is, arguably, Marvel’s largest and most public failing.  Even though the comic company turned blockbuster film studio manage to turn off-beat oddities like Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man into smash hits they just don’t seem able to make Agents of SHIELD stick, not with audiences and not as a credible show worth diving deeper into than a few episodes. 

We’re headed now towards a fourth season that could easily end up the show’s last outing, as four seasons is all that’s required for a show to be eligible for syndication.  Given the show’s diminishing audience that seems the most likely case but, if Marvel is going to pull out all the stops for a season 5 bid, I came up with four ways they can make Agents of SHIELD a better show. 

Static Thoughts - Street Sharks

Edited by Robert Beach

I’ve been playing something of a game of catch-up with geek news lately after being pretty busy with other projects, so I know I’m quite late to the party on this particular news story: the Street Sharks. In case you’ve been as unconnected as me lately, the Street Sharks were recently at the crux of an Internet news story when some plucky cub reporter altered their Wikipedia page to suggest there was a female Street Shark to fill out the roster. 

The ‘twist’ of our story was how the entire Internet was taken in by this ruse and immediately misremembered the show as having a female member of the team, and we all shared a good belly laugh at the fallibility of the human mind (it’s a dark joke.) 

Putting aside the “haha, your mind can betray you at any minute” comedy/commentary of the gag, I think the whole thing brings up a pretty interesting subject that’s been on my mind for a couple of years now, which is the incredibly bizarre relationship nerds all seem to share with The Street Sharks. Rather than pointing and laughing at people remembering the show inaccurately, my question is this: why do we remember the Street Sharks at all? 

Thor: Ragnarok Casting Round-Up

Edited by Robert Beach 

As phase 3 of Marvel dawns, several major questions have started to loom in on the horizon as the previous invulnerability of the MCU begins to crack with age. At this point, Marvel is doing a dance of engagement with its audience, flittering between the fleeting high of Age of Ultron and the genuinely infectious interest of Ant-Man. Captain America: Civil War seems to be the best example of this so far, caught between the fun of the actual story and hanging out with characters we like/ All is enjoyable but fleeting, and the excitement of new heroes like Spider-Man or Black Panther, which is much more persistent. 

It seems that Marvel is legitimately at their best when they’re both expanding the scope of their shared universe and are being incredibly weird and idiosyncratic while doing it. That blend of new horizons and unique characters has reared its head once more with the latest casting announcements for next year’s Thor: Ragnarok. True to form, they seem to have everyone genuinely excited for a Thor film.