Chris Pine Starring In Wonder Woman

As we continue to barrel ever closer to DC’s ill advised cinematic universe like a runaway train, early details are starting to filter in on their next few films.  It’s honestly pretty unlikely that many of these will come to pass if Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice doesn’t land but for the time being let’s all just keep humoring DC/WB that this grim, gritty, worst of the ‘90s universe they’ve concocted is really worth following up.  The latest news to come through relates to Wonder Woman, DC’/WB’s summer 2017 blockbuster that will follow Suicide Squad and precede Justice League.  Wonder Woman has been in the cards for a while now as she’s probably the third most recognizable DC hero of all time as well as an easy entry point to the fantasy genre that has proved so lucrative for WB in the past. 

The main reason we haven’t seen her on screen yet is probably owed to a combination of apathy and sexism.  WB has never shown all that much interest in actually making superhero films that don’t star Batman and for years studios worked off the thinking that women couldn’t like genre films and men wouldn't like a genre film with a female lead.  That’s obviously a stupid idea and after the Marvel juggernaut WB couldn’t keep its head in the sand over superheroes much longer hence the upcoming Wonder Woman film.  However, our first major detail, that Chris Pine will be playing Wonder Woman’s long time love interest Steve Trevor, makes me raise an eye about this production.

Troll: Rise of Harry Potter Animated Series Coming

Earlier this week it was announced that plans are currently in the works for Troll animated series.  I don’t really know what kind of people read this blog but I’m betting that was probably a strange announcement regardless of your background because there is nothing about this animated series that makes sense.  In fact Troll the animated series actually goes out of its way to defy all rational logic as part of the universe’s ongoing effort to troll rationalists everywhere (pun completely intended.)  Let’s take a guided tour through trolls, animated series, and why this announcement makes no God damn sense. 

Jem & The Holograms #5 Review

Jem & The Holograms does it AGAIN this week with another amazing installment, check out my review on All-Comic, it's seriously worth your time

http://all-comic.com/2015/jem-holograms-5/

Southern Bastards #10 Review

I take a look at the latest issue of Southern Bastards and how well it confronts a lot of the standard nihilistic ideas that pepper this kind of brutal, rural crime character piece.  Check it out over on All-Comic.com

http://all-comic.com/2015/southern-bastards-10/

Gotham by Midnight Annual #1 Review

Gotham By Midnight has finally managed to turn out a good issue with this annual focusing on Hawkman villain Gentleman Ghost, check out the full review over on Front Towards Gamer:

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/31/gotham-by-midnight-annual-1-review-comics/

Spawn #254 Review

More Spawn bashing as I take a look at the latest and terrible issue, this one is the not so compelling story of Spawn doing nothing for 27 pages, don't believe me?  Check out my review on Front Towards Gamer:

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/31/spawn-254-review-comics/

Thors #2 Review

I take a look at Thors #2 Secret Wars: Battleworld tie-in from Jason Aaron as part of my double dose of Aaron's work this week:

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/31/thors-2-review-comics/

Ghostbusters - Get Real #2 Review

I take a look at the awesome comic book Ghostbusters and animated Ghostbusters crossover from IDW, Spoilers: there's a cameo by the Extreme Ghostbusters.  Check it out over on Front Towards Gamer:

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/31/ghostbusters-get-real-2-review-comics/

Panel Vision - Emperor Doom

100^th Post, hurray for arbitrary milestones.  To celebrate I’ve decided to take a look at a forgotten Marvel classic from the late ‘80s entitled Emperor Doom.  Emperor Doom was the 26^th installment in a now forgotten Marvel imprint known as Marvel Graphic Novels.  Marvel Graphic Novels was a line of super-sized one-shots that lasted throughout the entire ‘80s.  Though it started with things grounded in the Marvel universe like Emperor Doom, The Death of Captain Marvel, or The New Mutants it eventually branched out to more non-superhero fiction like Jim Starlin’s Vanth Dreadstar or Steve Gerber’s Void Indigo.  Despite having faded into relative obscurity now Marvel Graphic Novel was a great series and I’ll probably come back to it again in the future, however for right now we’re here to talk about the amazing insanity that is Emperor Doom co-starring the Mighty Avengers.  

Nosferatu Remake Finds Director

Something that’s become abundantly clear in recent years is that remakes, reboots, reimaginings, and all other sundry manner of “RE” terms for bringing back old recognizable franchises, aren’t just a passing trend but a full on cultural force.  For the most part it’s not a surprising shift as the Internet age has helped a lot of older media franchises persist in public memory without really exposing newer generations to the originals, allowing for cheap retreads of classics to seem fresh and new while also milking lucrative nostalgia dollars from completionists fans.  It’s a viscous cycle to be sure but sometimes the system works as with the sequel/reboot Mad Max: Fury Road, the rebooted Hannibal show on NBC, or the highly underrated remake of The Crazies.  My point is that revisitation seems to work best for works of horror which is why I’m kind of on board with the recently announced remake/reboot of Nosferatu. 

Channign Tatum Leaving Gambit?

The rumor mills became a buzz on Tuesday night that Channing Tatum was leaving next year’s Gambit film.  At the time of writing nothing has been more or less confirmed about the status of the film or whether or not Tatum is actually jumping ship but with the Internet panic over the rumblings it’s hard to ignore.  I certainly understand why this would cause such fervor.  Fox has had a pretty solid 3 film run with the X-Men recently as most cinema goers and nerds enjoyed the excellent X-Men: First Class, the serviceable Wolverine, and the for some reason popular X-Men: Days of Future Past. 

All this has helped build up some serious buzz for X-Men: Apocalypse and the franchise overall after its serious drop in relevance at the end of the ‘00s.  Despite the series popularity Fox is still looking to cut down on actor costs so X-Men: Apocalypse is actually slotted as a series reboot in order to drop expensive actors like Michael Fassbender or Jennifer Lawrence.  This has made Gambit the first major post-reboot X-Men film so having its lead suddenly start wobbling is a big deal for all involved. 

Panel Vision - Killing Joke 30 Years Later

A couple weeks ago DC and Warner Brothers announced the latest in a long line of fairly good animated film projects would be an adaptation of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke.  Since then actor Mark Hamill has voiced a lot of interest in the part of the Joker.  Hamill played the Joker in the insanely popular Batman animated series from the ‘90s as well as its subsequent Justice League, Batman Beyond, and Mask of the Phantasm follow-ups.  He was also the voice of the character for the monster hit video game series Batman Arkham, which enjoyed a very successful 4^th installment earlier this summer with Arkham Knight.  Now DC/WB have officially cast Hamill in the part, most likely in direct response to the net fan response Hamill’s comments garnered over coupled with how similar his work in Arkham Knight is to a lot of aspects of The Killing Joke.  The thing is a lot of people don’t see this as a positive, coming down hard on the decision though their issue seems more to be with the very fact that DC is making a Killing Joke movie at all.  

Shaft comedy in the works

New Line Cinema has announced they’re planning to do a reboot of the blaxploitation cult classic Shaft.  The original Shaft became a hit as a sort of Black James Bond action flick in the ‘70s and is probably the best iteration of the blaxploitation genre (aside from possibly Blacula.)  The original Shaft was a strong hit, spawning 2 sequels in Shaft’s Big Score and Shaft in Africa.  Since then Shaft was remade in the ‘90s starring Samuel L. Jackson as a slickly produced action flick with a hard R rating.  This new iteration of the character has attracted the creator of Black-ish Kenya Barris as the writer and the studio has stated they’re aiming for a more comedic tone. 

This decision has been met with a pretty wide array of responses, some have voiced apathy at the prospects of a new Shaft film while others have felt downright outraged over this approach to the classic character.  Me?  I’m firmly entrenched in the angry side of the divide, this strikes me as a thoroughly tone deaf approach to the material with very little to redeem it to say nothing of setting a really bad precedent. 

Ant-Man Holds #1 Against Pixels

Well this is a surprise.  Last week I reported that Ant-Man had enjoyed a strong weekend opening and beat Minions at the #1 spot by a small enough margin to indicate I wasn’t at all hopeful for a sequel.  From there I had assumed, like a lot of other critics I think, that Ant-Man would respectively slip from #1 this week and settle into the middle tear slots before exiting theaters in later August.  Instead Ant-Man held the #1 spot for a second week, passing the 100,000,000 mark on projections and is currently ranked as the 16^th highest grossing film of the year.  That might seem like a high number but similarly offbeat oddities like Rise of the Planet of the Apes or Marvel’s own Thor have managed to turn top 20 success into decent box office clout.   

Obviously the year still has time left for Ant-Man to get bumped from its holding, especially given that Hunger Games, Goosebumps, Spectre, and Star Wars are all waiting in the wind but this is still big news regardless.  Meanwhile Adam Sandler’s Pixels may not be dead on arrival but it’s a strong statement of development that his movie couldn’t overcome a middling Marvel product in its 2^nd week the way Grown Ups 2 beat Pacific Rim two years ago. 

Static Thoughts - Logan's Run 1977

So Logan’s Run was briefly in the news over the weekend when a forgotten planned reboot of the film got new life with the announcement of an actual director attached to the project.  For the most part it isn’t that surprising the Logan’s Run reboot has languished in movie limbo for as long as it has.  The ‘80s work as farm for reboots and remakes because of the unmitigated amount of creativity and cash in the blockbuster scene and the corporate dominated consciousness of animation at the time.  Conversely viable ‘90s reboot properties may be more limited but they’re also more lucrative due to the growing trend of ‘90s nostalgia.

 The ‘70s is much more of a fallow period for rebootable material.  A lot of the stand out pieces of ‘70s cultural were incredibly driven by the auteurship of their maker like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, or The French Connection.  Alternatively projects like Jaws, The Exorcist, or Dirty Harry have become so engrained as classics of their genre a remake would come off as tired and uninspired like 2013’s ill-advised Carrie rehash.  There are some exceptions to this like the upcoming Creed film that looks to reboot/continue the Rocky story and I think Logan’s Run could be such an exception, not because of the film though, but because of the TV show. 

Movie Monthly - Alligator

And so we come to the end of Movie Monthly’s celebration of Shark Week, Sharknado 3, and the Jaws 40^th Anniversary with our Terrors From The Deep series with a look at the 1980 horror comedy Alligator.  Alligator is an odd flick in more ways than one.  The film came out at the tail end of the post Jaws creature feature boom, coming out 5 years after Jaws already made everyone afraid to go in the water.  As such Alligator takes a very different approach to animal horror than a lot of the other Jaws knock-offs like Orca.  The first major difference is that Alligator is actually a land locked horror film but more than that the movie is grounded in a much goofier premise that kind of informs the odd mix of anger and levity that informs the film overall. 

The basic premise of Alligator is that 12 years in the past, a young girl’s parents flushed her pet baby alligator down the toilet.  Rather than dying on the ride or in the sewers the alligator somehow survived and grew to gargantuan size off the strange toxic wastes being dumped into the sewers by a nearby business.  Now, the alligator has emerged from the depths beneath Chicago to exact brutal, animalistic vengeance on the forces that made it along with pretty much anyone else it encounters along the way.

Spider-man Reboot Finds Writers

Awhile back it a rumor started circulating that Marvel had chosen writers for their new Spider-man reboot.  In and of itself this may not seem like a big deal but with a character like Spider-man the writers on the film are actually a big deal.  This will be our third iteration of Spider-man and looking back over the Sam Raimi and Andrew Garfield films its easy to see how much the writing and dialogue defines the character.  In Sam Raimi’s version Spider-man is an earnest throwback to the classic silver age iteration of the character and that depiction filters down through every other aspect of the film.  Conversely Andrew Garfield’s Spider-man is emphasizes cynical sarcasm with a much sleeker and more modern bent to the character so the entire film ended up sleek and cynical in tone. 

 

Baywatch Film Finds Director

As the freight train that is ‘90s nostalgia continues to barrel through popular culture, slowly gathering steam as it rushes towards the ultimate end goal of 2017’s Power Rangers film, it’s picked up another unlikely passenger.  In this case it’s a reboot/revival/reimagining/re-whatever your preferred term is, of the seminal ‘90s life guarding TV show Baywatch.  The Baywatch movie is set to star the rock as part of his post-2013 career revival and, over the weekend, picked up Seth Gordon of Horrible Bosses to direct.  This is the 2^nd time I’ve had to report on a Horrible Bosses alumni getting a major break in recent weeks so I expect Jason Bateman will be getting a major casting break sometime soon as well.  

Gambit Casting Breakdown

Next year is going to bring a lot of big changes to the X-Men franchise.  For the most part this strikes me as being for the best; the X-Men franchise has been more or less running in place since X2 with a major emphasis on the less.  Despite this series lasting for well over a decade the visual emphasis is still on black leather plastic, Wolverine is still king of the party, and the X-Men’s whole existence is still solely defined by fighting to protect a populous that hates them.  It bugs me because so much of that is just the drabbest iteration of these characters.  Hence why I’m really welcoming the changes that will come with X-Men: Apocalypse.  The costumes are imaginative and vibrant, the conflict vast and not just rehashing previous tensions, and it marks the beginning of the end for Wolverine’s role in the franchise.  However, with the series most recognizable actor and character finally bowing out of the spotlight Fox needs a new face for the franchise going forward.  That’s where Channing Tatum’s Gambit comes in. 

Batman v. Superman Empire Cover

As we continue the rising tide of build up for the new starting point to DC Comics cinematic universe Empire has devoted their latest cover to Superman and Batman.  This is in conjunction with Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice, one of the dopiest and most misspelled titles this side of Star Trek Into Darkness.  This cover marks the first time any official media has put the two stars side by side in addition to a much better static look at Batman then we’ve seen in any of the promotional stills.  There’s been the occasional trailer moment of clarity but this is different.  This cover is DC and their WB handlers putting their best forward with this film and introducing us to the designs and visuals of the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel.  And they look…kind of dopey and ridiculous, much like this entire production. 

Marvel Phase 2 Review

The release of any Marvel film brings with it the question of “where does it rank among all the other Marvel movies.”  However, in the case of Ant-Man that question brings with it an added amount of weight and focus, as Ant-Man is also the conclusion to Marvel’s entire Phase 2 enterprise.  This was meant as the big, showy example of everything Marvel could with both Disney’s money and the assured popularity of a mass fan base in the wake of Phase 1’s success at finding an audience for their B & C-list heroes.  Oh there have been installments in phase 2 meant to broaden Marvel’s character rosters but more often than not that job fell to the sidebars of individual films.  New characters like Iron Patriot, The Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and the Falcon weren’t the focus of this experimental phase.  No, the big push of phase 2 has been capitalizing on previous success to move things around for the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe story and there’s no getting around the truth that for the most part it just didn’t work.  

X-Files Season 10 Teaser

So, the first legitimate teaser trailer for the X-Files revival mini-series has finally dropped from Fox.  Even though the new X-Files episodes won’t be hitting the air for another 6 months or so it makes sense that Fox is looking to get the ball rolling on this particular project early.  It’s becoming more and more obvious that this is the year Hollywood is waking up to how impactful 1990s nostalgia really is.  We’ve already seen 90stalgia make Jurassic World a monster hit and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see the same thing again in a few months when that Goosebumps movie comes out.  The X-Files stood as one of the defining cultural touchstones of the ‘90s so Fox trying to really build up its return makes a lot of sense especially given the uphill battle the revival is facing story wise. 

 

Panel Vision - 10 Marvel Women Who Deserve a Solo Movie

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about Marvel’s representation of women in their films.  Though a lot of this has stemmed from Ant-Man’s portrayal of Hope van Dyne and the Wasp it overall has more to do with Marvel Studio’s infinitely too dismissive and uninvolved attitude towards female superheroes.  Given that I’m very much of the opinion that we definitely do need more female superheroes and it’s kind of supremely ludicrous that it’ll take Marvel 10 years to give us a superhero film where the hero is a woman I thought up a list of 10 Marvel super heroes who need a movie of their own. 

Panel Vision - Hope van Dyne & The Marvel Problem

So, it’s been a little over a week now since Ant-Man came out.  The dust is starting to settle as far as the film’s cultural and box office results go and while the box office results seem moderately solid the cultural response has been a bit more mixed.  Sure enough the film had its fans and I certainly count myself as one of them but more often than not I’ve encountered people who regarded it with just sort of a moderate enjoyment.  More over the film has become something of a nerd talking point over the state of representation, especially the representation of women in Marvel films.  I want to talk about this but I can’t do so without spoilers so if you’re still on the fence about Ant-Man go ahead and read my already spoiler free review, then go see the film, then come back here.  For everyone else, let’s go.  

 

Book of the Dead: The Fall of Bloodshot Review

I take a look at Valiant's amazing tie-in to their new event comic with Book of the Dead: The Fall of Bloodshot, short version- it's a masterpiece, check out the full review on Front Towards Gamer: http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/25/the-fall-of-bloodshot-review-comics/

Star Trek #47 Review

I follow up on my review of Star Trek #46 this week by taking a look at the incredible alienating conclusion to this reimagining of the Tholian Web, hosted on Front Towards Gamer http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/25/star-trek-47-review-comics/

C.O.W.L. #11 Review

C.O.W.L. is an Image Comic about a superhero union feuding with Chicago in 1962, it's a slick, smart character study that had a really interesting conclusion this week.  Check out my review for All-Comic

http://all-comic.com/2015/c-o-w-l-11/

Prez #2 Review

DC has been doing a lot of new and interesting things lately with micro-continuity, genre fusion, and obscure revivals and all of that comes together in the master piece that is Prez, a revival of a 1973 mini-series I spotlighted earlier this week.  Check out my review of the 2nd issue here

http://all-comic.com/2015/prez-2/

Winterworld: Frozen Fleet #3 Review

Winterworld is one of the most underrated comics currently being produced.  It's an IDW Apocalypse tale that actually emphasizes imagination and creativity in the apocalypse rather than dreary cynicism or pyrotechniques, check out my review of issue 3 on Front Towards Gamer. 

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/23/weirdworld-3-review-comics/

Weirdworld #2 Review

Jason Aaron's revival of Doug Moench's forgotten '70s fantasy comic Weirdworld has ended up a real highlight of Marvel's Secret Wars spin-off, check out my review of issue #2 on Front Towards Gamer

http://ftg.operationsupplydrop.org/2015/07/23/weirdworld-3-review-comics/

Ant-Man's Role in Marvel Phase 3

So, given that Ant-Man’s been out for a week now I think it’s fair enough to dive into the minutia of his film and what the tells us about Marvel going forward and where he and his supporting cast will most likely pop up next.  This means this blog post will have spoilers for Ant-Man so if you’re still unsure on the film, first go read my review of it, then go see it, then come back here to see where all that’s going and will pop up next.