Category Archives: geek culture

Who is Joseph Gordon-Levitt in ‘Dark Knight Rises?’

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He’s Robin!

He’s the Riddler!

He’s the next Batman!

Want my wild-ass guess? He’s the next Batman.

Since last year, online speculation has been steadily rumbling about who Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Surely the explanation — Gotham City police officer John Blake — is only the start of this character’s story.

But surely that can’t be the whole story?

We know that “Dark Knight Rises” touches on some of the themes from the “Knightfall” comic book series. Bad guy Bane (Tom Hardy) is there, of course, and we’ve seen indications that Bane does real physical damage to Batman/Bruce Wayne, just like in the comics. Christian Bale is seen walking with a cane in the movie.

So in the “Knightfall” comics storyline, Bane breaks Batman’s back and puts him out of commission for months. In the interim, Robin, Nightwing and other heroes fill in. A relatively new character introduced, Azrael, even assumes the identity of Batman for a while but goes over the edge before he’s stopped by the returning Bruce Wayne.

So could Gordon-Levitt be playing Azrael, or an Azrael stand-in?

What makes me think that’s likely is that Christopher Nolan has been very intent on grounding his award-winning and ticket-selling Batman movies in the “real world” So much so that Warner Bros. was reluctant to make a “Justice League” movie for fear of irritating the director.

Since “Dark Knight Rises” completes Nolan’s take on the character, Warner Bros. is likely to reboot the character in a couple of years … with someone else besides Bale playing the character.

But which character? After all, who says Batman has to be Bruce Wayne?

Why not John Blake as the avenging angel turned dark knight?

I certainly don’t have any inside info, but a buddy of mine in the business says he’s inclined to believe the same.

If Chris Nolan has outfoxed us with this mystery, my cowl’s off to him.

 

‘Walking Dead’ reveals Michonne

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If we start our “Walking Dead” countdown now, how great a fever pitch of anticipation will we reach by the time the AMC end-of-the-world series returns in October?

And yet …

Entertainment Weekly has a cool pic. Here’s Danai Gurira as Michonne, the fan favorite sword-wielding warrior woman from the “Walking Dead” comics. Michonne, played by an anonymous actor in a hooded robe, showed up in the final moments of the season finale this spring, helping Andrea, who was surrounded by walkers.

After the show aired, the producers announced they had hired Gurira to play Michonne.

I’ve only been a casual reader of the comics, but Gurira looks pretty authentic to me.

The countdown is on!

‘Sherlock’ takes a leap with ‘The Reichenbach Fall’

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Anyone who has read the Canon — as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are known — knows the significance of Reichenbach Falls.

It was there, at the famous Swiss waterfall, that Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective met his end. In the 1893 story “The Final Problem,” Conan Doyle — sick to death of the notoriety and fame and, yes, stereotyping and literary ghetto-izing that the Holmes stories had placed on his shoulders — decided to kill off Holmes once and for all. (Reader demand led Conan Doyle to reverse the decision a few years later.)

Holmes pursued Moriarty, the criminal genius, the spider at the center of the web of crime for all of England and a good portion of the globe, to the falls. Holmes’ friend and biographer, John Watson, becomes separated from the detective and later finds a note from Holmes. He is about to grapple with Moriarty atop the falls.

Two sets of footprints ascend to the top. No footprints are seen coming back down. Even an amateur detective like Watson can see that.

Tonight’s episode of “Sherlock,” “The Reichenbach Fall,” plays on that theme. After a cat-and-mouse game in previous episodes of the first and second seasons of the BBC series — airing on Masterpiece Mystery stateside — Moriarty begins an all-out assault on Holmes in this story.

Moriarty pulls off three seemingly impossible crimes: He opens the vault of the Bank of England, unlocks the gates of an impenetrable prison and seizes the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

But instead of making off with the priceless baubles, Moriarty sits on the throne, be-crowned-and-sceptered, waiting for Lestrade and the other London coppers to arrive.

Holmes testifies at Moriarty’s trial and — being Holmes — irritates the members of the jury so much that they exonerate the criminal. Or is some other game afoot?

After the trial, Moriarty shows up at 221B Baker Street and begins “playing” with Holmes. It is a game that sees Holmes trying to find a computer code of Moriarty’s design that can unlock virtually any door, any secret, a code that makes Holmes a target of an international set of assassins.

Meanwhile, Moriarty begins chipping away at Holmes’ reputation until only Watson is still in his corner. And even Watson’s faith is a little shaken.

Although there are only three “Sherlock” episodes per season — maybe because there are only three — the series is uniformly high in quality and clever beyond compare. I’m guessing they’ll do more episodes this year and we’ll get to see them in 2013. I sure hope so.

Other thoughts about tonight’s episode:

I love the way the series plays with how Sherlock and Watson are perceived. Tonight Watson is irritated to see himself described in the press as a “confirmed bachelor” and constant companion to Holmes.

As a member of the press, I’m a little chagrinned about how it was portrayed tonight. But it is the British press, after all.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman continue to be among my favorite Holmes and Watsons of all time. Cumberbatch in particular isn’t afraid to play Holmes as unlikable for most of an episode.

Andrew Scott played Moriarty with just enough crazy. A little bit more would have been too much. If tonight’s episode, in the style of “The Final Problem,” proves to be his swan song, it was a good one.

Most of this show is attention-grabbing and attention-keeping. There’s some effort involved, of course, in keeping up with the quick-paced, accent-tinged dialogue delivery. But the riveting stories and scenes are another reason to keep watching the screen. The two main dialogue scenes between Holmes and Moriarty in tonight’s episode could not have been more mesmerizing.

 

Marvel movie timeline: What happened when?

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You might have to turn the Internet on its side to fully appreciate this one, but a new book, “Avengers: The Art of Marvel’s ‘The Avengers,'” is coming out and it includes this timeline to the happenings of the Marvel cinematic universe.

I’ve always been a sucker for timelines, whether they’re demarcations of real events or, one of my favorite timelines from a couple of decades ago, a linear recounting of when events in the “Star Trek” universe took place.

Admittedly, the timeline of the Marvel movie universe is kinda thin so far. After all, we’re talking about only a handful of movies leading up to “The Avengers.”

But it’s fun to see how the chronology of the movies’ releases doesn’t always follow the chronology of how events played out in Marvel’s internal storyline.

I mean, it’s pretty cool to find out that when Bruce Banner was hulking out at Culver University in “The Incredible Hulk” in 2008, Thor was defeating the Destroyer in New Mexico on virtually the same day — and that movie came out three years later.

Cosmic, I know.

 

Pixar’s ‘Avengers’ and more

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This is just too much fun to pass up.

Above, behold: The members of “The Avengers” as Pixar characters.

Artist J.M. Walter posted this re-imagining of the Avengers on the Cartoonbrew.com Facebook page the other day and the image has been bouncing around the Interwebs ever since.

Some of the characters are easier to figure out than others. The Hulk, of course, is based on Sully from “Monsters Inc.” And since Samuel L. Jackson contributed the voice of Frozone from “The Incredibles,” why not re-imagine Jackson’s Nick Fury as Frozone?

The only one I haven’t figured out is Hawkeye. Which Pixar character is he taken from?

As an added bonus: The Avengers, known for their late-night meals, inside Edward Hopper’s famous “Nighthawks” painting. This version is by John P. Glynn.

Beautiful!

‘Sherlock’ runs with the pack in ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’

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Since it was published in serialized form in 1901 and 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” has become one of those touchstone Sherlock Holmes stories. As much as everybody knows (often wrongly) that Holmes was a “difficult” genius and that John Watson was always a step behind him, everyone knew that Holmes took on a huge, mysterious hound in this Conan Doyle novel.

So the makers of “Sherlock,” the BBC production airing on PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery” series, had to do an adaptation and had to do something different.

In “The Hounds of Baskerville,” the second of three “Sherlock” episodes in this season, Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) take on the case of Henry Knight, who remains traumatized by seeing his father killed by a huge hound 20 years before. The two venture into the English countryside, specifically to the Baskerville military research base, to find out if giant glowing dogs with red eyes really do exist.

In the process, they have brushes with Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (the top-level British intelligence agent) and even James Moriarty, the warped genius who has become Sherlock’s nemesis. The ending of tonight’s episode forecasts the return of Moriarty next week.

Of course, Holmes and Watson also have the misfortune of running into that hound — as well as a couple of levels of conspiracy.

A few thoughts about the episode:

I loved that Holmes at one point notes that the CIA has a top-secret facility in Liberty, Indiana. That’s just down the road from me and I can assure you that if the Company has set up shop there, it’s pretty well hidden. Made me wish, for a moment, that they had chosen Muncie like everyone from “Tom Slick” to “The Simpsons” to “Hudsucker Proxy” to “Angel” has.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that: Not for the first time in the run of the series, someone mistakes Holmes and Watson for a couple. Cute.

Watson mockingly refers to Holmes as “Spock” after a scene in which Holmes is shaken by his failure to keep his emotions in check. Comparisons between the two have always been made and “Star Trek” episodes have obliquely referred to Spock’s ancestor Holmes (possible, as Trek fans know, because Spock’s mother is human). But for a joke that trumps all, Cumberbatch plays the bad guy in the now-in-production “Star Trek” movie sequel.

This Sherlock turns to cigarettes when he’s bored and anxious between cases, and not a seven percent solution.

Tonight’s episode had the misfortune of airing in the US following a couple of successful movies that had similar elements. The Baskerville hound looked a bit too much like the “mutts” in “Hunger Games,” while the idea of mind-altering gas released into outdoor settings echoed “Cabin in the Woods.”

 

Big easter egg in ‘The Avengers?’

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Did writer/director Joss Whedon include a huge easter egg/teaser for future storylines in “The Avengers?”

That’s the theory circulating online since earlier this week, when Quint wrote a geeky, fun piece on aintitcool.com about one of the most dramatic plot points in “The Avengers” and what it might mean for the future of the movie series.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, read no further.

Okay?

The dramatic turning point in the movie comes when likable SHEILD agent Phil Coulson is killed by Loki. Coulson (Clark Gregg) is impaled on Loki’s scepter. His death gives the Avengers a rallying point — something to avenge.

SHIELD’s Nick Fury heightens the sense of loss by showing Iron Man and Captain America Coulson’s bloody Captain America trading cards. SHIELD agent Maria Hill later notes privately to Fury that Coulson’s cards couldn’t have been bloody because they were in his locker at the time of his death. Fury is a master manipulator, no doubt.

But is Whedon?

After word got out that Whedon assembled his cast following the Hollywood premiere to shoot another scene, some Internet message boards indicated it was a scene in which the Avengers would gather in Tony Stark’s lab to turn Coulson into the Vision, the classic Avengers android character created by Ultron, longtime Avengers enemy. (Of course, it was the enjoyable “Avengers assemble … to eat” scene.)

Quint expands on the “Coulson as Vision” theory by noting that the movie makes passing reference to Life Model Decoys, the robot duplicates SHIELD created in the comics, as well as noting that not once but twice in the movie reference is made to Coulson dating a cellist.

Who’s a cellist in Marvel Comics, according to Quint? Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, sometime Avenger and ultimate wife of … the Vision.

Like the earlier rumors that Spider-Man would be in “The Avengers,” this line of reasoning is just too geeky, too fun, to possibly be true.

Right?

 

Secrets of ‘The Avengers’

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After seeing “The Avengers” for a second time, I thought I’d note a few moments from the movie that didn’t make their way into my review.

In some cases, they might be elements from the movie that blew right past the general audience.

And there’ll be a spoiler alert before the very end, if you still haven’t seen the movie — and contributed to the record-breaking $200 million opening weekend take.

Loki did it: Thor’s brother, Loki, is a troublemaker, a trickster god of the first order. He’s the force that sets the plot of Joss Whedon’s movie in motion by materializing on Earth and stealing the Cosmic Cube. Later, Black Widow, using unconventional interrogation techniques, determines that Loki is trying to get to the Avengers through the Hulk.

That’s perfectly appropriate, because in the first issue of the Avengers comic, released in September 1963, Loki uses tricks and illusions to get superheroes Iron Man, Ant Man and Wasp to go after Hulk. Thor shows up and, after some typical Marvel hero in-fighting, the team is formed. And stays together until the next issue.

Life Model Decoys: When SHIELD agent Phil Coulson calls Tony Stark early in the movie, Stark answers and says he’s not the real Tony Stark, he’s a Life Model Decoy. The geekiest among us know that Life Model Decoys were a creation of SHIELD early in the organization’s Marvel Comics history. In Strange Tales comic in 1965, SHIELD deploys LMDs — perfect copies of agents including Nick Fury — as … well, decoys.

“Puny god:” In one of the funniest moments in “The Avengers,” Hulk thoroughly wallops Loki. The audience is still laughing as Hulk walks away, muttering to himself. (Yes, the Hulk spoke in “The Incredible Hulk” and speaks again here.) What does Hulk say after giving Loki a (literal) smackdown? “Puny god!” It’s a play on Hulk’s patented “Puny humans!” declaration.

The Chitauri: After months of speculation about Loki’s alien army in “The Avengers,” it’s mentioned in the first moments of the movie, during voice-over narration, that the alien warriors are the Chitauri. Who? The Chitauri are, in the Ultimate Marvel comic book universe, the contemporary equivalent of the Skrulls. Apparently the Skrulls are considered part of the “Fantastic Four” movie universe and were not available for Whedon’s use here. Clever writer that he is, he got around that by using the Chitauri.

Stark Tower/Avengers Tower/Avengers Mansion: One thing the movie does, as did many Marvel comics over the past 50 years, is thoroughly establish a setting in New York City. As a kid who didn’t know he would ever visit the Big Apple — still haven’t, actually — I soaked up everything I could about New York from hundreds of Marvel Comics set there.

Second only to the Baxter Building — home of the Fantastic Four — on Marvel’s Landmarks of New York Tour is Avengers Mansion. Originally belonging to Tony Stark, the mansion is loaned to the Avengers for use as their home base. Jarvis, Tony’s butler, even becomes the butler for the Avengers.

In the movie, Stark is building a NYC skyscraper emblazoned with his name. During the battle with Loki and the Chitauri, most of the STARK lettering gets knocked off, leaving only a bold “A.” We notice this at the end of the movie and can assume that, for the inevitable sequel, the Avengers will hang out here.

Here’s the big “Avengers” movie secret. Once again, if you haven’t seen the movie, spoiler alert in …

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Thanos: Partway through the end credits, the mysterious alien who had been talking to Loki is seen, on a crumbling asteroid in space, talking to a creature seated on a throne.

To go to Earth and take on the Avengers would be to “court death,” the alien says.

The massive figure stands up from the throne, turns his head and smiles.

It is Thanos, the Marvel Comics alien introduced in Iron Man comics in 1973. Thanos, created by writer/artist Jim Starlin, is based on Thanatos, the god of death from Greek mythology. In the comics, Thanos is to some extent Marvel’s counterpart to DC’s Darkseid, an extremely powerful and dangerous alien creature who has crossed over from comic to comic, posing a threat to many of the heroes of the Marvel Universe.

Whedon is a comic book fan (and writer) and, by including Thanos in “The Avengers,” sparked shivers down the spines of fans everywhere. If Thanos shows up in an “Avengers” sequel, the threat he poses will be far greater than that posed by Loki.

Just sayin’.

 

‘Shocking’ drive-in movie ads!

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There’s something about this weather that reminds me of going to drive-in movies.

Around here, we had two — the Muncie Drive-In and the Ski-Hi Drive-In — in or near the city and another — the Blackford County Drive-In — just to the north. The latter wasn’t the type of drive-in your parents took you to, however. The Blackford showed “adult” movies — porn, in other words.

As for the Muncie and the Ski-Hi, I spent many, many hours there as a kid and young adult.

One of my earliest drive-in moviegoing memories was of seeing the 1967 flick “Born Losers” at one of Muncie’s two drive-ins. “Born Losers” was a low-budget action movie that introduced the cult character of Billy Jack (played by Tom Laughlin), a returning Vietnam vet who takes on a motorcycle gang. The movie actually inspired sequels.

I remember seeing it with my parents and paternal grandmother. Why my parents decided to take me or my grandmother to a (in my memory) sleazy, bloody action movie I can’t imagine.

I just remember my grandmother nearly fainting into her concession-stand pizza after the bad guys push a young man’s face into the windshield of a car, resulting in a bloody, slobbery mess. Onscreen, I mean.

From time to time in this spot I’ll share some memories and some great old drive-in movie ads.

How about this one for a re-release of “The Mask” Not the Jim Carrey comedy but a bizarre 1961 horror movie about an ancient mask that has the power to drive people crazy. Some remember “The Mask” from the early 1980s, when it was re-released at the height of the 3-D revival.

This “midnight shock-a-thon” ad features not only “The Mask” but “The Bat,” probably a 1959 Vincent Price thriller and “Town Without Pity,” a 1961 Kirk Douglas movie that is sold, as you can tell from the ad, in the sleaziest way possible:

“The story of what four men did to a girl .. and what the town did to them!”

This ad has some exploitation/drive-in advertising gems, including “A free comb to all after your hair-raising experience!” I can hear it now: “Mom, Dad, can we go to the drive-in tonight? They’re giving away free combs!”

Lastly, how about the exploitation double-feature classic “I Drink Your Blood” and “I Eat Your Skin.” The former is a 1970 movie about Satanists terrorizing a town. The latter originally came out in 1964 and was about zombies. The combination of titles was drive-in movie gold.

The canny drive-in operator offered a free buffet of “skin chips and dip” and “flesh fries” and provided free Tums.

Who wouldn’t turn out for this drive-in combo?

‘The Avengers’ delivers on four decades of fanboy dreaming

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There’s little to be said regarding “The Avengers” that hundreds of reviews and a million online message board postings haven’t said already.

So I’ll say it anyway. “The Avengers” rocks.

Writer/director Joss Whedon’s big-screen version of the Marvel comic — you’ve probably heard of it by now — seems to have broken our collective “Holy Jebus I’m so relieved” meter. Since Marvel published “Avengers” issue number 4 in March 1964, some of us have been waiting for this day with a mixture of anticipation and dread.

Right up until not long before 2008’s “Iron Man” introduced the concept of Marvel’s superhero team — created way back when as an answer to DC’s “Justice League” — to the movies with Nick Fury’s post-credits reference to “The Avengers Initiative,” most of us believed this would never happen. The odds just seemed too great that someone could get this all so right.

Over the decades, superhero movies had gotten bits and pieces of the comic book experience right: The first night Christopher Reeve’s “Superman” patrolled Metropolis; the slightly off-kilter emotional balance of Bruce Wayne and his alter ego in Tim Burton’s “Batman”; the concept of a tempestuous but effective super-powered fighting force in “X-Men.”

But more often than not, filmmakers proved they didn’t have what it takes.

Whedon ably demonstrated he could do heroic, tragic, funny and deprecatingly self-referential in his TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel” and “Firefly.” But to cap — pun only slightly intended — four years of Marvel movie foundation-building with one honkin’ big superhero slugfest seemed like more than anyone could manage.

And yet Whedon did it.

If you’re not familiar with the basic premise by now … I can’t imagine why you’re reading this. Suffice it to say that the heroes and supporting players of “Iron Man,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Thor” and “Captain America” come together when Loki, Thor’s brother, makes a deal with the devil (spoilers later) to take over the Earth in exchange for the Tesseract — known as the Cosmic Cube in the comics — the source of infinite power introduced in “Captain America”  last year.

The first half of the movie finds the Avengers introducing themselves in Mighty Marvel style: Through a series of misunderstandings and moments of self-interest, they fight, bicker and fight some more, much to the exasperation of Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), the SHIELD spymaster who, we discover in this movie, has to answer to a (literally) shadowy group of superiors. And isn’t beyond manipulation.

The threat posed by Loki (Tom Hiddleton, in straight-on villain mode here) is great enough — an alien invasion force poised to devastate New York and, presumably, the planet — to convince the heroes to stop squabbling and work together. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) turns his cool sarcasm down a few notches, Captain America (Chris Evans) learns how to be a leader even in the modern world, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) balances his love for his brother and his sense of guilt, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo, in both human and Hulk guises) almost seems to revel in letting the beast off the chain and SHIELD agents Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) more than prove their worth as the non-superpowered members of the team.

(I have to say I haven’t understood those people, many of them ostensibly fans of comic books, who said they didn’t understand why Black Widow and Hawkeye would be members of the team considering their lack of superpowers and invulnerability. The Avengers comic has always included human beings — although highly skilled ones — as members. While the movie has great fight scenes involving Thor and Hulk and Thor and Iron Man and Cap, one of the most dramatic scenes involves Black Widow dealing with the onslaught of the Hulk and its aftermath.)

The second half of the movie finds the Avengers, spurred on by dire circumstances, facing off against not only Loki but his invasion force, made up of the Chitauri, Skrull surrogates from the comics.

If there’s a weakness about the movie it is that the Chitauri are nothing but cannon fodder, not unlike the legion of orcs in “Lord of the Rings” or stormtroopers/fighting droids in the “Star Wars” prequels. While the climactic battle that pits the Avengers against the Chitauri — and devastates half of New York, it seems — is beyond exciting, and scenes with the Avengers in battle against the alien invaders and their giant flying snake things — ask for them by name — are great, it all feels like an extended warm-up for something bigger.

Although it’s hard to imagine what could be bigger than this.

Other thoughts:

Hulk catch: Even if you’ve seen the many, many commercials and clips from “The Avengers,” there are entire sequences you haven’t even glimpsed yet. But I did regret that one of the trailers used the shot of Hulk flinging himself through the air and catching Iron Man as he fell, braking their descent by sliding down the side of a building. When the shot comes, late in the movie, I could anticipate it because I knew I hadn’t seen it yet.

Natasha and Boris — er, Clint: I really want to know more about Black Widow and Hawkeye. The movie doesn’t give them an outright romance, but there’s a lot of shared history there, so much so that they can even joke about it. I want to know all about the movie’s ostensibly “puny humans.”

Tony Stark and Bruce Banner: I loved how Whedon matched up the story’s resident eggheads. They share a lab and a skepticism of SHIELD’s motivations and even ride off into the sunset together at the end. How about making Iron Man/Hulk team-up movies?

Cap’s leadership: Since the fourth issue of  “The Avengers” comic, Captain America has been the team’s leader. There have been many moments of self-doubt for this man out of time. But Steve Rogers is a natural born leader of men. The movie establishes that in a scene in which he barks out orders to some NYC cops who wonder why they should obey his directives. Cap then smoothly demolishes some Chitauri, causing the cops to quickly turn and begin following his orders.

More Pepper: I didn’t realize Gwyneth Paltrow had as prominent a supporting role in “The Avengers” as she does. She and Downey are perfect together. I want a scene or two with her in every “Avengers” sequel.

That’s not creepy at all: SHIELD agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) has had nice supporting parts in several of the Marvel movies. Whedon gives him great stuff here, including a funny scene in which he professes his fanboy love for Cap. “I watched you when you were sleeping,” Coulson says before realizing how stalkerish that sounded. “I was present when you were unconscious .. from the ice,” he quickly adds.

Whedon brings the funny: The whole movie is full of funny quips and scenes like that one.  The guy knows when to ratchet up the action and when to leaven it with humor.

Whedon undercuts expectations. Some people fault Whedon with being too self-referential and jocular, but his sense of humor is perfect for a movie that could be ridiculous. That’s what the final credits scene is about. Finally, after four years of Marvel movies, Whedon came along and played with the audience’s expectations about Marvel’s patented “surprise” extra scenes following the end credits. And he did so in a style familiar to any Whedon watchers.

Spoilers ahead:

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What you’ve heard about the two “Avengers” credits scenes is true. Partway through the end credits, the mysterious figure backing Loki’s invasion is revealed, although non-fans might not recognize Thanos, the Marvel Comics god of death. It sets things up nicely for a sequel.

And the scene at the very end — showing the exhausted heroes having a bite to eat in a battle-scarred New York restaurant, while an employee tries to sweep up in the background — is quintessential Whedon.