Panel Vision - 9 Possible Characters for Shazam 2

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Judging by its sizable opening I’m assuming by now most folks have seen the infectiously enjoyable Shazam.  This movie has turned into a real slam dunk for the haggard DC Entertainment and seems to mark a turning point where their movies go from polarizing dregs like Suicide Squad and Dawn of Justice to a new era of popular if disconnected hits like Aquaman and Shazam.  

In any event, WB seems to have faith in this as they’ve already re-upped the creative team behind Shazam to begin work on a sequel, which means I get to start speculating on who we might see in said sequel.  I’m not going to address the very obvious appearances in the sequel set-up by Shazam’s post-credits scene but there are still a number of characters from the Shazam mythos and beyond that, I think we can expect to see in whatever adventures are next in store for Shazam and his marvelous family.

 

Chantal Thuy Cast as Grace Choi

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As we continue the slow crawl toward Black Lightning, we’ve started to get a trickle of information about the additional superheroes that will pepper the show.  That’s basically just par for the course of CW superhero shows at this point- single hero shows are out the window and everything now will have a rotating cast of supporting heroes.  Now I'm in favor of this practice, it helps keep things interesting and at an appreciably grand level now that single hero stories have become the bread and butter of the Hollywood hit machine.  

In an age of The Avenger and Justice League selling a whole superhero show on 1 masked crime fighter has become kind of passe.   In the case of Black Lightning, the show already had 2 additional superheroes at the starting track in the form of Black Lightning’s daughters Thunder and Lightning.  Now, the show has reached out to add its first additional hero outside of that immediate family unit with Grace Choi, who will be played by Chantal Thuy. 

Justice League Trailer & News Update

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There’s no more beleaguered a film coming out this year than WB’s long-suffering Justice League film.  The production on this movie has been such a complete mess it’s like something out of a soap opera.  There’s been talk of a bloated production, constant re-edits after test screenings, executive panic and that’s not even touching on stuff we know like Joss Whedon coming in to relieve Zack Snyder after the tragic loss of his daughter.  

Hell, even that particular revelation couldn’t go by without its OWN revelation as Whedon entered a very public scandal of his own in the latter half of the year.  Mark my words, there will be large volumes written about how Justice League came to be.  I say all this now because of the fact that this latest trailer feels like something different yet also quite familiar feels intrinsically tied to the recent avalanche of lurid coverage.  In short, I think Justice League is finally finding itself in the editing and post-production and I actually think it looks…pretty good.

James Cameron's Terminator 6 Update

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By now you’ve probably heard that James Cameron is returning to the Terminator franchise for yet another installment of this moribund film series.  If you’re wondering how that happened after Terminator Genisys was both terrible and a financial disappointment the answer is the rest of the world.  While the film only made back half its budget in the US it took in 350 million dollars overseas, largely from China, so more Terminator films were pretty much locked in.  However, it’s come up now that this new film, which is being pitched as a reunion flick for Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and James Cameron, won’t have anything to do with Terminator Genisys. 

That’s because even though ticket sales are important they aren’t the ultimate qualifier of the franchise age- that would be audience interest.  The way online engagement in fictional universe translates into coverage and speculation as a kind of free publicity and hype is what now drives the box office world, that’s why Marvel is still king, and Genisys did not manage to win anyone’s hearts or minds.  So, with the slate wiped clean and the franchise beginning again for its third attempt at a new trilogy what can we expect from the new Terminator? 

Jamie Lee Curtis Joins the Cast of Halloween (2018)

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One of the curious trends of the 2010s has been the stealth “return” of horror as a dominant force in cinema.  I use air quotes there because horror, as a genre, has never really gone away as it’s fundamental to storytelling as a craft, same as drama or romance.  However, horror has undeniably changed in how it’s perceived and how its made in the 2010s versus previous genres.  

There are a lot of factors to this like the rise of indie art-house horror hits like Babadook, It Follows, and The Witch as well as the return of summer horror blockbusters like The Conjuring and Purge franchises.  The biggest changeup, though, is in the spread of horror influences and how we’re making new films. 

Despite the 2010s as an age of franchises and cinematic universes horror has doggedly rejected those trends, settling more into a ton of very individualistic and different films between one or two actual franchises.  There’s not a lot of common ground between stuff like Lights Out, IT, You’re Next, and Krampus but they were all sizeable horror hits.  

Even among the heavily sequalized horror series like Insidious, they don’t have the same spread and impact as predecessors like Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, or Saw.  Now, in the waning days of the 2010s, that seems like it might be on the road to change with the coming of Danny McBride’s Halloween reboot, which will see the return of series star Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. 

Panel Vision - 10 Possible Wonder Woman 2 Developments

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So, Wonder Woman has become the seminal superhero of 2017 and will probably the ambassador of the entire genre for the next few years.  What’s more, the sequel has been now locked in for 2019 with Patty Jenkins set to return and heavy rumors it will be some kind of Cold War set story.  That could mean a lot of things in the long run so I’ve compiled a list of 10 heroes, villains, storylines, and developments we might see in Wonder Woman 2.  

Pretty much anything and everything is on the table at this point, especially with how the first film opened with 3 villains so it’s not like there’s a clear formula for how to proceed.  What’s more, Wonder Woman’s franchise history has always been kind of a much so there’s really not as much source material to draw from as you might think, though there’s certainly plenty of very interesting and rewarding directions they could take- here are 10 of them. 

Spider-Man: Homecoming Final Trailers Breakdown

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With around a month left to go, Spider-Man: Homecoming is revving up to be a superhero film this year.  I’m not trying to denigrate the movie, in fact as we go through this breakdown I hope it shows I’m somewhat excited for the film, I’m just being honest about where it stands.  In many ways, 2017 has been kind of a hard year on Marvel Studios overall.  There are certainly successes, I don’t think anybody thought Agents of SHIELD would pull off a fourth season as well as it has and Thor: Ragnarok has smash hit written all over it.  But during a year when Marvel is facing down Wonder Woman, Logan, and Justice League none of their adaptations really seem to matter as much, and Homecoming is a pretty solid example of this. 

The film will be the second reboot of Spider-Man this decade and the fourth Spider-Man over the past 10 years.  There’s something in that to the fatigue of franchise management and repetition, especially with a character like Spider-Man who tends to revert to the same role of “teen hero” every time his film series reverts back to square one.  However, credit where it’s due that Homecoming looks very good, it just looks a bit like there might’ve been a more important movie lurking in the original script.  What am I talking about, let’s dive into this latest trailer, and I’ll tell you. 

Justice League Trailer Breakdown

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I don’t think there’s a more inexplicable upcoming blockbuster than Justice League.  Built atop the critically charred bones of the Batman v. Superman, the superhero team-up film looks to be the latest in a long line of brand new starts for the DC entertainment universe, except it’s not even that because that’s Wonder Woman’s job.  The movie seriously seems to have no actual reason to exist.  Maybe a few years ago right Avengers proved that superhero team movies with ensemble casts could be a huge hit, but now it just seems like a late visitor from a bygone age. 

We’ve already seen so many failed attempts to launch the DCEU the entire shared universe concept is tanked, Wonder Woman looks like an infinitely more interesting and thoughtful attempt to course correct the franchise, Zack Snyder’s vision for this property has been consistently underwhelming, and we’ve already seen a slew of garbage superhero team-up movies.  Justice League only seems to be in production because the studio owns some superhero properties and they’ve run out of Lord of the Rings movies to fill the void.  By all accounts, this film should be a rolling dumpster fire…so why does it look kind of fun? 

Panel Vision - History of Superhero Musicals

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Superheroes and the Musical genre have always made for somewhat strange bedfellows.  They’re both styles that emerged in popularity in the ‘60s, both depend heavily on colorful exaggerations of real life, and both are the domain of spectacle-driven popular culture more than the high art of theater or literature.  Despite those similarities and the way the verbosity and simplicity of the superhero would seem a natural fit for the world of the musical the two haven’t intersected as often as you might think. 

There’ve been some notable exceptions over the years, but the two just don’t combine nearly as often as they really ought to, given everything they have in common.  The two are set to combine once more in the upcoming Flash/Supergirl musical crossover episode, which will be the first major superhero musical in the past 5 years.  What previous musicals have there been?  What are the origins of this strange tradition?  Has it ever been done legitimately well?  All these questions and more will be answered in the history of superhero musicals. 

3rd Wonder Woman Trailer Breakdown

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I find myself a little stymied on how to proceed in breaking down this latest Wonder Woman trailer.  As we barrel towards the June release date, I find myself more and more confused by the growing optimism surrounding the film.  Actually confused isn’t the right word- I know why people are psyched for the movie it’s just that at this point the anticipation is starting to feel more like lower expectations and whistling past the graveyard.  

I don’t mean to sound negative, it’s just that the Wonder Woman trailers haven’t promised the second coming that so many are regarding it as and this latest trailer serves as a perfect example of that feeling.  Actually, the true embodiment of my feelings on Wonder Woman is the atrocious theme by Hans Zimmer. 

Zimmer hasn’t really done anything impressive this decade but the Wonder Woman theme is easily his weakest modern piece, a confused medley of electric guitar and vaguely Mediterranean riffs that feels completely out of place for this character.  Maybe this is because Zimmer’s ‘Now We Are Free’ from Gladiator is already the perfect theme for Wonder Woman but still, the new theme lacks a clear identity and is just too much of a heavy war tune to fit the ambassador of peace.  

And yet I still see people praising it, individuals who were actually condemning not too long ago now saying it’s a great ending to the trailer and not a completely out of place button.  It all makes me wonder what exactly it is nervous Wonder Woman fans want from this movie, until finally it hit me: they want Wonder Woman to be awesome, and that’s okay. 

Panel Vision - JLApe: Gorilla Warfare

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that apes on comics sell comics.  This is a fundamental cornerstone of comics going all the way back to the ‘50s.  It first emerged under one of the colossal giants of the medium Julius Schwartz, the man who served as editor of DC Comics during its Silver age through the ‘50s and ‘60s.  Schwartz claimed to have data showing a bump in sales of comics when a gorilla was featured on the cover, data that was so convincing it actually shaped all of DC’s output for a time.  

There were legitimately strict rules and limits on the whole idea of putting apes on comics, treating the phenomena as a finite resource to be carefully exploited to avoid oversaturation of the ape-based marketplace.  Given that those 2 decades have defined the shape of comics to this very day, apes on comics remains a popular tradition to this day.  With The Flash finally bringing Gorilla City to the small screen I figured now would be a perfect time to dive into the great legacy of apes on comics in possibly their finest moment: JLApe.

Static Thoughts - 4 Questions About Supergirl S2B

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Supergirl season 1 was a fun but mixed bag of episodes that did a lot to set the tone of the series.  Its biggest job was planting the show’s flag on exactly what kind of adaptation of Supergirl it wanted to be.  I’ve been over this before, but Supergirl has had a ton of different iterations that the show could’ve chosen and it really didn’t go with any of them.  Instead, they opted for primarily a gender-swapped version of the Superman animated series, making the cornerstone adventures of the Superman mythos about Kara instead of her cousin.  

Now, season 2 has taken that starting point and turned in a knock-out series about the journey of the immigrant in America that could not be more prescient to our current political climate.  All of that is where the series comes from, but I want to talk about where it’s going, which leads me to my 4 questions about Supergirl Season 2B: Spoilers to Follow. 

7 Cameos to Expect in Wonder Woman

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So far, the DCEU has been pretty terrible.  Even if you liked Man of Steel or Suicide Squad for some ungodly reason, there’s no denying that WB has had a serious problem tapping into the same level of mass popularity Marvel has mustered.  By the same token, the DCEU has come off a lot more scattershot than the competition, with the slow march towards Justice League hampered by the producers regularly hitting the restart button on what the big story should be.  

That means that Wonder Woman will have yet another thankless task in addition to being the first woman-led superhero film of the modern era and needing to turn around the DCEU trend of making terrible movies.  Now, Wonder Woman will also have to be setting pieces in motion for future films like Shazam, Justice League, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman 2.  Given that, I’ve come up with a list of 7 character cameos that I think we can expect from Wonder Woman. 

Film Land - The Future of the DCEU

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Let’s talk about the DC Entertainment Universe or DCEU as it’s known for short.  The last time I ventured into these uncharted waters I emerged with a general sense of optimism that the people being entrusted with DC projects were all good choices who could lead to a good future.  However, in the time since then, 2016 has thoroughly drained away any and all optimism I might’ve had so if you’re expecting a kind summation of how the DCEU might correct itself in days to come you’ve arrived at the wrong article. 

No, we’re going to be looking at the DCEU as it is and was it’s been promised, and that means accepting that forward is not where we’re going, and the future most certainly isn’t bright.  In fact, I’d dare hazard the guess that barring some kind of surprise mega-hit, like Avengers/Dark Knight level hit, I don’t think the DCEU will be following us all into the 2020s- here’s why. 

Panel Vision - Justice Riders

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ne of the more surprising trends of the 2010s is that the Western is back from extinction.  This is mainly due to Tarantino re-introducing us to the versatility of the genre in 2012 with Django Unchained but it’s spread well beyond that.  There were more Westerns than superheroes movies in 2015 and now we’re gearing up for a double dose of the old west with the twin remakes of Magnificent Seven and West World.  This is hardly the first time Westerns have impacted the cultural landscape but the revival and the genre versatility it’s brought with it have certainly cast a new light on an old style. 

Even though this current crop of films are set in the Old West and feature cowboys and gun fights they all come with additional genre elements like Bone Tomahawk’s position as a horror movie, Hateful Eight is an Agatha Christie mystery, Ridiculous 6 was a comedy (hey I’m just talking about Westerns, not GOOD Westerns.)  All this genre crossover reminded me of my favorite Western comic book courtesy of DC Comics- the late ‘90s oddity that was The Justice Riders. 

4 DC Films That Could Join Aquaman & Flash in 2018

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Edited by Robert Beach

We’re three movies deep into what’s being called the DC Entertainment Universe. So far none of those entries have managed above “passable,” but they’ve all scored profit, so we’re going to be getting more of these films regardless. However, there might be some hope left for the DCEU as we blaze forward to the end of the decade. Most of the problems with the entries so far come from the meddling of the studio and directors who hold the material in general contempt. And yet, upcoming movies like Flash, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman seem to be helmed by people with real energy for the material. 

There’s still some ambiguity awaiting us, and that’s where I’m going to focus today, specifically on what’s happening with one of DC’s unclaimed movie slots. We know that DC will be releasing a film on October 5, 2018, after Aquaman but before Shazam, but we have no idea what that movie is. Thankfully, DC has a ton of projects in the works that could fit that slot. With that in mind, here are four DC movies we might see in 2018. 

The Man Who Killed Aquaman's Son: Black Manta Revealed as Aquaman Villain

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Edited by Robert Beach

One of the more frustrating elements of the so-called “DC Entertainment Universe” is that WB’s general apathy as producers means that the slow drip of information about their various projects is even slower and sparser than their competition. Where Marvel usually sets up bad guys or McGuffins in other films or designs a long stream of character reveals and posters, WB tends to favor stand-alone movies with little fanfare to the various characters revealed within them. That is unless they’re trying to turn audience opinion around. 

That’s why WB was so happy to dump Doomsday in the central trailers for Batman v. Superman or told everyone Wonder Woman was in the movie, or why the marketing for Suicide Squad was ALL about the quirky tone and nothing else. That same casual indifference reared its head again this week as James Wan and WB announced the villain of their upcoming Aquaman movie will be the long-time Aquaman villain Black Manta.

Cover Story - Top 15 Harley Quinn Covers

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We’re currently a week out from Suicide Squad, DC’s latest attempt to salvage the flaming wreckage of their cinematic universe.  I could go on and on about how bizarre it is that the people with the biggest stable of superheroes imaginable keep consistatly getting one-upped by the likes of Ant-Man and Thor (seriously, 9 years ago who outside the comics fandom even knew those guys existed?) but that’s not the point of this particular column.  No, we gather together today because there’s nothing topical happening this week related to comics but I have a compulsive need to make this show link to something.  

As such, we’re getting a head start on Suicide Squad by looking at the career of its most prominent member in the advertisements: Harley Quinn.  Originating in the Batman animated series of 1992 before immigrating to the comics and taking up residence there for 20 years as her character evolved from tragedy to comedy to something close to DC’s Deadpool.  So, let us celebrate this glorious harlequin of comics and dive into the shallow end to get the cover story on the top 15 Harley Quinn comic covers.

The Flash Season 3 Trailer Breakdown

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Edited by Robert Beach

In about two months, The Flash will premiere its third season on CW. After a shaky season 1 in 2014, The Flash busted out of nowhere to be the premiere series of the CW-verse. It continues to push the boundaries for how much a superhero TV show has ever adapted from its comic origins and bringing in hit new shows like Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl.  

Even though Arrow kicked off CW’s superhero shows, it was The Flash that made them a force to be reckoned with. Its winning combination of weird sci-fi, cool CG action, big, operatic emotional storytelling, and the great collection of lead actors propels the material.  

Now, the show faces its biggest challenge yet, adapting the rolling dumpster fire that was 2011’s Flashpoint event comic into a good season of television. We won’t know till the show comes out if they’ve succeeded, but based on this first trailer, yeah, I’d say they managed it.

1st Justice League Trailer Analyzed

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Edited by Robert Beach 

Well, I can safely say I didn’t see this one coming.  Basically from its announcement WB/DC’s proposed Justice League movie has been the butt of everyone’s joke. It came off as a transparent Avengers rip-off not helped by the lackluster reception to Man of Steel, the distaste for Ben Affleck’s casting as Batman, and the unmitigated disaster that was Batman v. Superman. 

Even fans of this stuff weren’t onboard with Justice League, especially given the only member of the cast that seemed like a real slam dunk was Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman. Then SDCC 2016 happened, and we got our first look at 2017’s Justice League. Out of nowhere, the tables have completely turned.  Suddenly, even the most dedicated cynics have at least moderately relented. Everyone’s starting to wonder if this movie is going to be good?