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.

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.

Pacific Rim: Uprising Trailer Breakdown

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Four years ago the geek world was changed forever with the release of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim.  The film helped kick off the Kaiju craze that’s continued with a new entry every year like clockwork, as well as introducing the term Kaiju into the common parlance.  More than that, the film redefined what it meant to be a success in the modern era.  Despite failing to make back its budget in America and losing the #1 box office spot to Grown Ups 2 the film made big bucks overseas- 3X its American gross.  That overseas success combined with a massive cultural impact that’s continued to fuel fan hype and purchasing power has finally translated into a new movie, coming next year.  Directed by Steven DeKnight and starring John Boyega, Pacific Rim: Uprising finally has its first trailer- let’s take a look. 

Week of Review - Wolverine & the X-Men

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The late 2000s were an unkind time for the X-men franchise.  Specifically, I’m talking about the film side of the X-Men offerings as the comics were actually fairing really well back then.  The movies had completed their trilogy with the spectacular failure that was X-Men: The Last Stand and moment was quickly slipping away from the series as the decade dwindled.  Meanwhile, in the comics, the X-Men had undergone a radical reinvention since the events of the 2005-2006 stories House of M and Decimation. 

Mutants were suddenly an endangered species with barely 100 left alive, Cyclops had become a militant mutant leader and founded his own rogue nation in the San Francisco Bay called Utopia.  Even the Ultimate Comics line was in a fit of bizarre storytelling under the banner of Ultimatum, a mega-event where Magneto killed most of the Ultimate superheroes including Xavier, Cyclops, Captain America, Wolverine and more.  It was a strange time and Wolverine and the X-Men really reflect that particular strangeness.  

Week of Review - Mutant X

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A key evolution of the modern age of superhero blockbusters is that more and more the story of a film has become the story of the film’s behind the scenes drama.  Whether it’s the corporate mismanagement of the Amazing Spider-Man films, Josh Trank’s prima donna antics on Fant4stic, or the family tragedy & directorial scarpering of Justice League the behind the scenes stories are now the stories of those films.  

The oldest and largest looming example of this is the Fox/Marvel feud, a war between companies that’s raged for well over a decade.  The two absolutely loathe each other, to the point Marvel has canceled publishing Fantastic Four comics because Fox owns the movie rights and Fox, in turn, was willing to waste everyone’s time and money with Fant4stic.  But where did all this animosity come from, what’s the origin of their feud?  Well, it all goes back to a little show from 2001 called Mutant X- let’s dive in. 

Week of Review - X-Men: Evolution's X-23

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It’s day 3 of X-Men week here on the Lido Shuffle and time to address the BEST X-Men show ever made: X-Men: Evolution.  Premiering 4 months after the smash hit that was 2000’s X-Men, X-Men: Evolution was meant to continue the adventures of everyone’s favorite mutants though with a bit of a twist.  The series borrows elements of its aesthetic from the films such as the look of Xavier’s Institute and the more uniform costumes but for the most part feels like a throwback to the ‘70s X-Men stuff rebranded for the modern era, or at least a modern late ‘90s. 

The show focused on the X-Men and Brotherhood as teenagers in high school struggling to balance their lives even as the threats they face grow greater and greater.  It’s one of the most character-driven superheroes shows there is and embodies adolescence shockingly well, comparable to Daria levels of well.  Seriously, I’d be here forever praising it so instead I’ve decided to focus specifically on the show’s most enduring creation: X-23. 

Panel Vision - Mnemovore

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Let’s talk about Vertigo Comics.  Established in 1993, Vertigo was intended to be a mature readers imprint for DC Comics as a way to capitalize on the growing adult comic reading marketing.  It’s had ups and downs in its history but, by in large, it has been an enormous success spawning numerous best-sellers and massively popular works that have been adapted into several mediums such as Hellblazer, Fables, Preacher, Lucifer, V for Vendetta, and iZombie.  One of the imprint’s major focuses has turned out to be horror, mainly because that was the easiest genre to turn into R-rated comics back during the ‘90s. 

Since then they’ve consistently put out of some of the most frightening and well-considered horror comics in the medium.  One such miniseries has stuck with me since I read it and now that Channel Zero: No-End House has started hitting on a lot of similar plot points it’s the perfect time to dust off this old chestnut: let’s talk about Mnemovore. 

Week of Review - Generation X

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In 1991 ­X-Men volume 2 #1 came out and became the highest selling single issue of all time.  It was a huge milestone for Marvel comics as well as the entire decade, cementing the ‘90s as a time for comic book opulence and speculator driven sales.  More pertinently, it was the comic that launched the X-Men from a popular franchise into a moneymaking juggernaut that would dominate the next half of the decade.  Within a year Marvel had partnered with Fox to produce X-Men the animated series and its toy line, one of the most successful brand exercises in the entire superhero genre. 

Of course, this kind of success can’t last forever and by 1996 the X-Men were a lot less stable a franchise.  They were still producing hits, like that year’s Age of Apocalypse story, but the writing was very much on the wall for them and for Marvel, with bankruptcy right around the corner.  Still, they managed to produce one last hurrah for the X-Men franchise in 1996 with a live-action pilot film for a proposed X-Men TV show: Generation X. 

Week of Review - X-Men: Monster Armor

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It is X-Men Week here on the Lido Shuffle, specifically because this is the week Fox’s new series The Gifted premieres.  Even though The Gifted is a Monday premiere I’ll be spending the whole week looking at the history of the X-Men on TV starting with the show that started it all: X-Men, the animated series.  Premiering in 1992, X-Men paved the way for a massively profitable decade of Marvel TV adaptations and set the precedent for the initial run of films that are beloved by people to this day.  

It’s also one of the most popular animated series ever made and more or less a direct transliteration of the comics so I don’t have a lot to say about the show proper, which is why this is an Extended Toy Box entry.  The X-Men animated series tie-in toy line lasted a staggering 7 years passing through a ton of variations and unique threads and today I’m spotlighting one of the coolest ones: Monster Armor.  

Cover Story - Top 10 Sentinels Covers

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This coming Monday marks the premiere of The Gifted, a new series from Fox tying into the X-Men mythos.  The X-Men have honestly kind of struggled for modern relevance, as the Avengers became Marvel’s moneymaking brand, which has always struck me as odd.  I mean, we live in an age of mass struggle by marginalized groups for basic human rights- that’s always been the X-Men’s greatest element.  It’s just hard to think that in an era of Black Lives Matter, the Refugee Crisis, the Mexican Border Wall, Muslim travel ban, ICE, and the struggle for Trans rights the X-Men can’t find a foothold.  

The Gifted looks to change that by zeroing in on the X-Men’s most topical bad guy- the Sentinels, basically a domestic anti-mutant drone army.  When they were created that particular idea sounded a lot more like science fiction than a real policy that’s probably just around the corner but regardless let’s dig into X-Men history to see why these big purple robots have always been so enduring.