The Last Jedi gets 2nd Trailer

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One of the curious things about liking Star Wars at this moment is that sometimes I think my distance from the franchise helps me enjoy it more.  I’ve never hidden the fact that I’m not really a huge Star Wars fan- I don’t dislike the franchise and enjoy some of it very much but I just don’t have the same relationship with it that I do with Star Trek or superheroes.  That being said, I think the fact Star Wars was always just another collection of films to me has made me less inclined to feel anything has been lost in the Disney handover. 

More and more I feel like I’m seeing folks angry at the loss of some mercurial inner spark to the Star Wars films that they feel only the original trilogy maintained.  Which seems a damn shame to me because The Last Jedi is quickly gearing up to be the best looking Star Wars film yet, with an ambitious new trailer striking an incredible balance of tone and content that continues to redefine expectations for this film.

Sony Considering Nightwatch Film

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So, one of the developing superhero universe stories of the late 2010s has been that Sony is looking to continue their own movie-verse that’s adjacent to Marvel’s.  If you haven’t been obsessively following superhero copyright disputes and rights agreements, I’ll try and provide an abridged version.  Sony owns the rights to Spider-Man as well as his attendant mythos of characters but the box office failure of the Amazing Spider-Man films coupled with the North Korea hack eroded the studio’s confidence.  In the wake of dwindling returns, Sony elected to strike a shared custody agreement with Marvel Studios and Disney whereby Marvel would produce a new Spider-Man as part of their universe and Sony would get a share of the profits. 

However, the rest of the Spider-Man stable of characters would have their rights determined on a case-by-case basis, which means Sony can make movies out of those characters without sharing the profits with Marvel/Disney.  So far Sony’s confirmed they’re making a Venom movie with Tom Hardy and Gina Prince-Bythewood is on tap to direct a Black Cat & Silver Sable film.  Now the latest hero rumored to be added to that line-up is a bizarre blast from the past in the form of…Nightwatch. 

Static Thoughts - Samurai Pizza Cats

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This Friday marks the premiere of a new Power Rangers movie.  The upcoming blockbuster represents the first attempt by franchise creator Haim Saban cash in on the new superhero craze, which was pretty much inevitable.  See, Saban is an incredibly successful business mogul, and part of that success has sprung from finding profit in the cheapest corners and most exploitable markets.  After all, the Power Rangers’ creation myth has long been that Saban was on a business trip to Japan in the late ‘80s and just happened to see an episode Super Sentai, a kid’s action show, and got the idea to buy up extra footage from that to splice together into an America equivalent.  

That thriftiness and willingness to exploit fertile markets has been a hallmark of Saban’s media corporation since its inception and dominated much of their output during the ‘90s.  However, while there were plenty of Saban produced Power Rangers knock-offs, he also got into another lucrative side of Japanese entertainment imports that led to one of the strangest artifacts of this era- Samurai Pizza Cats. 

Static Thoughts - Beauty and the Beast (1987)

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This Friday marks the premiere of Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.  The hotly anticipated film will be Disney’s 7^th live-action fairy tale blockbuster and is basically the company’s way of planting their flag onto the fantasy genre.  There were sporadic competitors but ultimately Disney’s brand of big-budget fable has become the defining name in post-Game of Thrones mega-fantasy.  What’s more, the film is the first major live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in decades, certainly the first major attempt to try and realize the Beast with CGI. 

Given the occasion, I thought it’d only be fair to take a look back at the last time this particular fairy tale was given a major release.  Back before Disney’s animated adaptation became the Oscar-winning success that completely defines this story there was another Beauty and the Beast, a bizarre 1987 TV series that time has more or less rejected despite featuring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and George RR Martin, the father of modern fantasy.  With such a pedigree how is this series not more widely known; let’s find out. 

Film Land - Moana

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Is there any pop cultural institution as broad reaching or as powerful as Disney Studios?  Certainly, there are competitors, most notably with Warner Brothers who gave the world Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Batman, and the Looney Tunes, but they still rank second place compared to Disney’s cultural dominance. 

We’re currently in the midst of Disney’s most influential period in the cultural zeitgeist, marked by unparalleled critical and box office success from subsidiaries like Pixar and Marvel, their absolute dominance of the fantasy genre through live action fairy tales, and their return to the head of the table in animated family blockbusters.

I’ve taken to calling it the Disney New Wave and Moana is the latest crest of it after the severe trough that was Through the Looking Glass.  So, how does the Polynesian island adventure film from the directors of Hercules, Little Mermaid, and Treasure Planet shake out?  Okay, it’s really okay. 

Disney Announces Rocketeer Reboot

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Edited by Robert Beach

Now that we’ve crossed the midpoint of the 2010s, one thing has become very clear: superheroes aren’t going away.  The genre never really went away after it emerged through Batman in 1989, but for a time, people were expecting there to be a peak or finale to things. However, after eight years of Marvel blockbusters coming out like clockwork along with FOX reviving the X-Men in 2011 and DC/WB getting their act together, the superhero has simply become a constant part of our cultural diet. While this is an exciting prospect, it does raise the question of what happens to those companies without access to the superhero IP of DC or Marvel. 

The answer, clearly, is that they’ll dive into lesser-known heroes, either from the public domain, smaller publishers, or creator owned. We’ve already seen this with the 2000s’ Hellboy, yet it seems the key people jumping on this bandwagon now are, shockingly, Disney. Yes, even though the house of mouse already owns Marvel, they’re hungry for more. Their first aim is a reboot of their 1990s underrated superhero classic The Rocketeer with the new Rocketeer allegedly being conceived as a black woman. 

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword 1st Trailer

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I’ve been saying for a couple years now that the fantasy genre is unmoored.  It’s basically a slogan of these articles because it lets me talk about form and style and genre history, the stuff I know the most about.  However, I’m starting to wonder how true that actually is anymore.  After a decade at the top of the blockbuster fantasy has definitely receded in the 2010s, producing fewer Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings level sagas in comparison to the success of superheroes and sci-fi properties. 

That translated to a thoroughly unsure nature for the first few years of the decade, especially when it turned out The Hobbit wasn’t as successful as everyone was gearing up for it to be.  However, as we pass the midpoint of the decade and begin the slow trickle towards its twilight years it’s starting to seem more and more like the new defining affect of fantasy is what I call Number Zero stories.  I’ll get into what that means in a little bit but there’s no greater example of it than the fact WB is giving Guy Ritchie the reigns of a new big budget King Arthur movie.

Static Thoughts - Future of Marvel TV

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As I write this, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is at something of a crossroads.  The films have entered such an institutional point in our culture that even widespread disinterest is more or less unable to derail their success.  Cycles of disappointment, disengagement, rediscovery, and reappraisal have been sped up to an insane degree and Marvel’s cross-media presence has pretty much guaranteed them cultural dominance through to the end of the decade.  What’s more, their series of Netflix shows have proven thoroughly successful and aside from a handful of major casting flubs the MCU is the most powerful it’s been since Avengers. 

The one area where things have faltered, however, is on TV, with the network television side of the MCU slowly atrophying as projects end up postponed, canceled, or passed on.  Agents of SHIELD is barreling ahead into another season but the proposed spin-off Most Wanted was passed over, the Damage Control show seems to have been quietly scuttled, and Agent Carter was officially canceled.  All of this has folks wondering: what does the future hold for Marvel television?

Film Land - 7 Star Wars Spin-Offs They Should Make

Edited by Robert Beach 

Happy Star Wars Day, presumptive audience! May the force be with us all. This Star Wars Day, however, feels decidedly special as it’s the first time in nearly a decade when celebrating Star Wars felt like a celebration of tomorrow, of looking forward, rather than a nostalgic look back at the triumphs of the past. A lot of that has to do with the massive success enjoyed by The Force Awakens last year and the gathering hype for this December’s Rogue One. 

For the first time in forever, Star Wars is back as a culture force in our society as a name that’s said with pride and an eye towards the future. With that in mind, this article is going to be about the future. I mentioned Rogue One a moment ago because it is a big deal. The first ever theatrical Star Wars spin-off film to be released, and it’s got me thinking about what other spin-offs they could make. Let's jump right in then. 

Dr. Strange Trailer & Set Photos

Edited by Robert Beach

My favorite thing about Marvel studios is even amid all the formula-driven plots and studio-mandated storytelling, there’s still a creative spark and vibrance for the material at the heart of these movies. Every time I’m feeling a little burnt out on the Marvel product something new pops up to drag me back in. When Thor: The Dark World and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. exhausted me, Captain America: Winter Soldier brought me back to life. I liked Age of Ultron, but it was still a frustrating mess. Then Ant-Man and Jessica Jones washed all that away. 

A lot of that has to do with tone and style. Marvel’s simply at their best when they aren’t actively trying to make blockbuster hits, but are more trying to experiment with genre and visuals. And now we have Dr. Strange, Marvel’s latest “experimental risk” in a long line of experiments that proved to be not that risky. But is there a better film to be found in this first trailer, poster, and set photos or are we on track to another well-intended disappointment in the vein of Incredible Hulk. 

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Trailer

Edited by Robert Beach

By now, you’ve probably heard the Disney/Star Wars experiment isn’t going to be limited to the new trilogy of films kicked off by The Force Awakens. In case you didn’t know, the plan is every other year (i.e. 2016, 2018, 2020, and so on) instead of an episodic movie. They’ll release a spin-off flick as part of a new series entitled A Star Wars Story because the original name of Star Wars Anthology wasn’t enough of a mouthful I suppose. 

A lot of folks, including yours truly, are cautious about this plan as it smacks of corporate milking and risk of overexposure for a brand that only just found its way back to credibility after nearly a decade of being a joke in the mainstream; however, all those anxieties were washed away in an instant with the release of the first trailer for the first of these films entitled: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

The Legend of Tarzan Trailer

I’m honestly not sure what to make of the trailer for Legend of Tarzan.  The fact that we’re getting a big budget Tarzan movie isn’t, in and of itself, surprising as it actually conforms to a lot of trends that are dominating the modern blockbuster scene.  What is shocking is that we’re getting this big budget Tarzan movie, produced in the strangest manner by some of the strangest people.  I’ll get more in depth on this as the article goes on but as it stands I have no idea why this movie is happening or what series of events might’ve conspired to force it into existence, it’s like this movie was conceived specifically to vex me. 

Warcraft Movie Trailer

If ever there was a studio that embodied the difference between winning and leading it’d be Universal.  They basically struck gold with the Fast & Furious movies and have been letting that box office money pit accumulate while floundering about in search of fellow hit makers and it’s served them well with equally successful hits like Pitch Perfect, Despicable Me, 50 Shades of Grey, and this year’s mega box office smash Jurassic World.  The thing is that “experimentation” really is the Universal approach as none of their efforts have been in order to define trends or lead the pop cultural scene, simply attempts to get money making films. 

That’s why, even though Jurassic World made unfathomable amounts of cash and Fast & Furious is on its 8^th film I’d never call Universal trend riders or taste makers.  So their latest venture, a collaboration with Blizzard Studios to bring the massively successful Warcraft franchise to life on the big screen is throwing me for a bit of a loop as it actually seems like the most financially successful yet culturally irrelevant studio in Hollywood has finally decided to step up to the plate and lead the way for a change. 

Alice Through The Looking Glass Trailer

One of the weird things about the late 2000s trend of up-jumping classic fairy tales, seminal works of literature we all know from childhood, and even bible stories and myths into fantasy blockbusters is that very few of these films have actually been successful.  Sure, we’ve cranked out film after film in this genre like Mirror Mirror, Jack the Giant Slayer, Pan, Hansel & Gretel: Witchhunters, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Dracula Untold, Hercules and countless more but for the most part they’ve all been total failures, regardless of actual quality.  That same disclaimer, regardless of quality, applies to the smattering of financial success within the genre, almost all of which seem to come from the pop culture warriors at Disney. 

To some extent it makes sense that Disney are the folks making the most money on easily accessible revisions to classic fairy tales, myths, and literature given that’s been their bread and butter since before World War 2.  At the same time however, Disney did more than anyone to launch this particular trend with the 2010 mega-hit Alice in Wonderland, which ended up the 2^nd highest grossing film of the year, beating out competitors like Harry Potter 7 and Twilight: Eclipse.  Now, Disney returns to the Alice well 6 years later with a sequel minus Tim Burton entitled Alice Through The Looking Glass.

Movie Monthly - Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.

And so we come to the end of another Movie Monthly, this month a bit more sparse and transitional than I might’ve hoped it’d be.  Next month things will ideally run a bit more smoothly but at the very least I can say I achieved my central goal of this month by getting to today’s film.  At the start of September in Time and Space I said the reason I chose time travel for this month was to celebrate the return of Doctor Who to television, today I celebrate Doctor Who’s rich film history with Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., a film so nice they named it thrice.  Also yes, you read that sentence correctly; this is a Doctor Who feature length film, one of two produced by a major American studio in the mid ‘60s.  How?  Why?  Is it any good? Let’s dive in. 

Jungle Book Teaser Trailer

Edited by Robert Beach 

Just when you thought the up-jumped fairy tale trend was dead and buried, it’s back from the grave and honestly looking better than ever. I’m honestly not that surprised that it took the involvement of Disney to finally get something good out of this over-used genre. Back in the days before Star Wars made fantasy a viable blockbuster option, Disney was one of the only names in the game alongside Ray Haryhausen, and a lot of their live-action fantasy adventure films were incredibly well received. 

They’re forgotten nowadays, but films like Swiss Family Robinson and Bed Knobs and Broomsticks were major hits in their day. Additionally, Disney was pretty much the only company not to copy the Lord of the Rings approach to fantasy in the 2000s, blazing their own path with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.  Even though Disney didn’t kick-off the fairy tale fantasy craze of the 2010s, they’ve thoroughly capitalized on it. And now they’re at it again with this first trailer for next year’s Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Poster Speculation, Rogue One Photo Implications, & New Episode IX Director

Edited by Robert Beach

D23 happened over the weekend. If you don’t know, that’s a major Disney expo where they start setting up the hype for their new crop of films. A lot of interesting news came out of D23 this year, but most of it was either in the realm of logo posters for Pixar or trailers that haven’t been released to the public from Marvel. 

The big, flashy, reveals so far have come from Star Wars as Disney and J.J. Abrams continue the slow drip of advertising leading up to this winter’s The Force Awakens. D23 saw the first official poster for Force Awakens revealed, the first set and character photos from next year’s Star Wars Anthology: Rogue One, and the announcement of who will direct Star Wars Episode IX.