And then there’s this.
For Comic Con, Marvel has been releasing pieces of a giant poster promoting next May’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
The final pieces were released today.
And yes, that’s the Vision, as played by Paul Bettany, up in the corner. And he looks to be the proper green and yellow color.
That’s a whole lot of Ultrons.
Again, which of us, as little geeks, thought this would happen? All this superhero movie madness?
And who could have imagined it would be so much fun?
Entertainment Weekly – which I haven’t seen yet – has a big preview of next May’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
Marvel announces that, in the comics, Thor will soon be a female who takes the Thunder God’s mighty hammer when the original Odinson is sidelined.
Marvel announces a new Captain America – most likely Sam Wilson, Cap’s longtime partner as the Falcon – will take over for Steve Rogers, also in the comics.
You know, this isn’t entirely new. Thor has been replaced before – once, notably, by a giant frog – and so has Cap (so many times I couldn’t begin to count, but most notably by Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier).
But it’s all fun and fair and will juice up publicity leading up to the “Ultron” movie next May.
So to reiterate: Hell to the yes.
Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.
Hollywood reporter Nikki Finke recently scooped the rest of the entertainment press with a list purporting to detail Warner Bros. and DC’s plans for big-screen superhero movies in the near future.
Here’s the list:
• May 2016 – Batman v Superman
• July 2016 – Shazam
• Xmas 2016 – Sandman
• May 2017 – Justice League
• July 2017 – Wonder Woman
• Xmas 2017 – Flash and Green Lantern team-up
• May 2018 – Man Of Steel 2
Nope. Not happening.
I mean, in many ways, I wish it would. As satisfying as Marvel’s big-screen universe is, I’d like to see DC comics heroes – the most accessible and familiar heroes in the world, in many ways – finally achieve lift off on screen.
Last year’s “Man of Steel” had so many things wrong with it, and with writer David Goyer and others behind the scenes who are plainly ashamed of superhero names, colorful costumes, origins and storylines, I don’t have much hope for future movies in the series.
And in particular I doubt that the studio can pull this off.
Lookit: WB and DC have only just gotten rolling on “BvsS.” How quickly can they turn around “Shazam,” which is supposed to follow the May 2016 release of “BvsS” by a couple of months?
And if they haven’t been able to figure out a big-screen “Wonder Woman” or “Green Lantern,” how can they pull off an oddity like “Sandman?”
Not to mention the whole “seven movies released within two years” thing. That’s a feat that I’m not sure even Marvel, with its assembly-line methods, could pull off.
I’ll go see whatever DC movies get released in the coming years, no doubt. But I’m afraid I’ll find them as lacking as “Green Lantern” and “Man of Steel.”
And I sure don’t think we’ll see one every few months.
So this was “Avengers” mastermind Joss Whedon’s reaction to fellow director Edgar Wright’s departure from Marvels “Ant-Man.”
Whedon tweeted this picture last night. Head bowed, he’s holding aloft a Cornetto – the British sweet that gave its name to Wright’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” including “Shaun of the Dead” – like a candle at a vigil.
It’s already been dubbed “The Cornetto of Solidarity.”
Nicely done, Mr. Whedon.
The news today that Edgar Wright would no longer direct “Ant-Man” – but that the movie, set to kick off the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Three, immediately following 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” would continue under another director – seemed like a bump in the road that Marvel’s been building since before “Iron Man” came out in 2008.
Maybe a major bump.
It’s possible we’ll find out what “creative differences” occurred between Wright, maker of “Shaun of the Dead,” and Marvel and MCU honcho Kevin Feige. These things happen, but aside from some disgruntlement from writers and directors and Jon Favreau’s departure after “Iron Man 2,” we haven’t seen a lot of discord in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
As a matter of fact, compared to DC/Warner Bros.’ problems getting its superhero slate booted up, Marvel has had a pretty smooth time of it. Despite the fact that Marvel is somewhat notoriously cheap in its movie-making.
But Wright’s departure, we have to believe, doesn’t come about because of money. There must have been some fundamental disagreement in how “Ant-Man” was going to come out and how it would fit into the MCU.
What’s even stranger is that Feige recently said that Wright – who has been working on “Ant-Man” since 2006, before most people even knew there was an MCU – was integral in how the universe was developed.
Feige said:
“We changed, frankly some of the MCU to accommodate this version of Ant-Man. Knowing what we wanted to do with Edgar and with Ant-Man, going years and years back, helped to dictate what we did with the roster for Avengers the first time. It was a bit of both in terms of his idea for the Ant-Man story influencing the birth of the MCU in the early films leading up to Avengers…”
Since the movie has mostly been cast, with Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd as older and younger Ant-Men Hank Pym and Scott Lang, and the movie was about to start filming soon, it seems unlikely we’ll see major changes in the story. More likely it will be a matter of tone and execution. Wright was going to do his movie his way and Marvel couldn’t abide by that.
I was excited about “Ant-Man” for a couple of reasons. For one, the character is a lynchpin of the comic-book Marvel universe. He was a founder of “The Avengers,” for pete’s sake.
And the apparent plan to use “Ant-Man” to flesh out the mostly unexplored middle years of the MCU – with Douglas as Pym active in flashback scenes in the 1960s or 1970s – was even cooler.
We still might see that all play out.
Or we might not.
“Ant-Man” might be terrific even without Wright. After all, we all hated the thought of Favreau leaving the “Iron Man” series.
We’ll all be lucky if the MCU can continue on smoothly after this bump in the road.
It gets a bit silly, all the outrage on the Internet.
But then again, people keep saying stupid things.
No matter if they’re fanboys acting like assholes on the topic of female fans or they’re … well, I don’t know how to describe “Man of Steel” screenwriter David S. Goyer, who was all over the web today for really stupid comments he made in a recent interview.
You see, today was supposed to be DC’s big day, announcing the title of that “Man of Steel” sequel coming out – maybe – in a couple of years. It’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” a title so stupid it immediately inspired exactly the opposite reaction that DC must have wanted.
Not only doesn’t the title – really, it’s just too stupid for me to write again – make anyone think that Warner Bros. and DC have their shit together in their efforts to be more like Marvel and create a big-screen universe.
It sounds obvious, even desperate and grasping. I’ve seen it lampooned today as a courtroom drama and Lifetime movie.
Compare that reaction to the Comic Con reveal of “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Fandamonium.
Anyway, Warners and DC might have only just begun regretting their title decision when Goyer, who as writer of most of DC’s very uneven efforts to bring its iconic superheroes to life, was widely quoted for some boneheaded remarks he made in a recent Scriptnotes podcast.
First, Goyer insulted the longtime Marvel hero She-Hulk – who, admittedly, does have a silly name – by noting that she was clearly superhero porn and served only as someone to have sex with the Hulk.
I wonder, did Goyer know before today that the characters of Hulk and She-Hulk were cousins? I’m assuming he does now.
Then Goyer went on to say an incredibly stupid thing that shows just how tone-deaf he is.
In talking about Martian Manhunter, a long-established character made popular on the “Justice League” and “Justice League Unlimited” animated series a few years ago, Goyer made fun of the character and asked how many people had heard of him.
Of course, most of those in attendance had. Probably surprised by this, Goyer then said:
“How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?”
Really?
In one utterance, Goyer shows his ignorance about Martian Manhunter – a major character from the ONLY truly successful iteration of DC characters in the past decade – and also insults comic book movie fans.
You know, the people who pay to see his movies.
Ross Lincoln summed up Goyer’s attitude nicely on his “The Escapist” blog: Goyer and his partners at Warner Bros. are ashamed they’re making superhero movies.
Think about it. Nolan’s Batman movies, which had some strong points, dwindled to awkward absurdity through Goyer’s scripts. “Man of Steel” was awful. Hell, it couldn’t even see fit to actually call its hero Superman.
It’s sad, really, that three quarters of a century of great characters and stories are squandered in such hands.
I’m still not quite sure how “Guardians of the Galaxy” will feel for general moviegoing audiences, but I think that between now and Aug. 1, at least the moviegoing public will know what it is.
There’s a new poster – seen above – and a new trailer coming Monday, I believe.
Right now, “GOTG” is “that space raccoon movie” to some people.
And it’s not a blip on the radar for many people.
For the rest of us, it’s Marvel’s attempt to broaden the Marvel Cinematic Universe the company has been building since “Iron Man” debuted in 2008. Even more so than in “Thor” and the use of the Nine Realms in those movies, “GOTG” is a movie that will play out on a cosmic scale. It’s likely to be as much “Star Wars” as “The Avengers.”
I don’t know a lot about “GOTG” yet, but it’s a pretty sure bet to feature Thanos, the alien bad guy at the end of “The Avengers,” and likely to include a battle over at least one of the Infinity Stones, those powerful artifacts referenced in “Thor: The Dark World.”
And I think all of this is building to a showdown between the Avengers – possibly with the help of the Guardians and others – and Thanos in the third “Avengers” movie.
Right now, though, we’ve got “GOTG” to look forward to. This poster looks familiar enough for those who studied posters for “The Avengers” but also sparks memories of “Star Wars” and other space-faring soap operas.
Which, I think, is what director James Gunn and the Marvel folks want.
I’m not one of those fans that has to declare a victor in the war between Marvel and DC. They’re both doing well – if very differently – in particular areas outside comics, including live-action movies and TV and animation.
Marvel’s big-screen universe is firing on all cylinders through a timetable that, if we’re to believe a recent interview with mastermind Kevin Feige, is loosely planned through 2028. The producers of Marvel movie outliers like the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” series are trying to build their own universes, although that could be a challenge. I still wish we’d see the universes combined on screen someday.
As for DC, Warner Bros. is flat-out struggling to build a cohesive movie universe. The “Man of Steel” sequel featuring Batman – with Wonder Woman and Cyborg and possibly other characters in supporting roles – could be cool or it could fall as flat as “Green Lantern.” And DC has just announced that director Zach Snyder will follow the “Man of Steel” sequel with a “Justice League” movie.
DC’s plans feel a little rushed, with none of the universe-building that Marvel has engaged in with its “Avengers” lead-ins and follow-ups. But maybe it’ll turn out nifty.
On TV, there’s no question that “Arrow,” the second-season CW adaptation of Green Arrow, is the best superhero series ever.
And over on ABC, “Agents of SHIELD” – after a first half of this debut season that felt like wheel-spinning or slow burn, depending on how charitable you might be – is building to what might be a genuinely thrilling climax.
Both series have three episodes left this season. Here are some thoughts:
“Arrow”: After setting up Slade (Deathstroke) Wilson as the good-guy-turned-bad-guy this season, the series has let Slade run rampant on Oliver Queen and his city, family and team. Last week’s episode ended with Slade killing Oliver’s mother, Moira, in a cruel mirror to the “choice” Oliver was given by Ivo on the island.
What we want to see: More DC characters – including Ravager, pictured above, who appears in “City of Blood,” the next episode – more twists, more peril, more return visits from past favorites and more triumph for Team Arrow.
What we don’t want to see: An easy way out for anybody.
“SHIELD”: Spinning off events in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “SHIELD” finds itself in a world where SHIELD itself is in shambles. The agents are on the run, striking back at enemy organization HYDRA and building alliances. All the while, they’re dealing with the treacherous Agent Ward, who has turned out to be a HYDRA agent and has been killing SHIELD agents right and left.
What we want to see: Well, we already know Agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) returns in this week’s episode, “Nothing Personal,” and Samuel L. Jackson is supposed to return as Nick Fury in “Beginning of the End,” the season finale set for May 13. So we’re getting return visits from some favorites. We also want more revelations, including more big-picture tie-ins to the movie universe.
What we don’t want to see: The redemption of Agent Ward. We want him and Agent Garrett (the great Bill Paxton) to continue as our favorite HYDRA turncoats into the second season.
The longterm big picture for both series – if “SHIELD” returns for a second season – could be fantastic. “SHIELD” will be building toward the May 2015 premiere of “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”
And although it’s unlikely, it’s possible Warners will tie “Arrow” to its big-screen franchise in some way. Warners could do a whole lot worse – and likely will – if it ignores the universe created for the small screen.
If you saw “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” you know (spoilers) that Marvel’s longtime super-science, super-evil group Hydra plans a big role.
And you know that “Hail Hydra” is the special password members of Hydra have used since the first “Cap” movie.
Of course, “Hail Hydra” has been around in the comics as long as Hydra has been around, and in the movies it’s never been used more effectively than when Garry Shandling’s corrupt senator whispers it in corrupt SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell’s ear.
So the exchange almost immediately inspired a host of Internet memes.
This is the first one I saw.
This one is great.
And this one.
Can’t top this one.
There’s been a lot of talk about “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” – which I’m going to refer to by some shorter title from here on out – being a game changer for Marvel Studios and its big-screen cinematic universe.
And it is, in a way. Marvel, through co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo, seem prepared to start making changes in the on-screen universe they’ve established.
That risk-taking is only one of the elements that makes “Winter Soldier” feel like we’re now seeing events play out in a living, breathing, changing universe, one that changes a little bit more after the events of every Marvel movie.
I’ll be throwing in some spoilers later in this review, but I’ll warn you first. And I’ll be acknowledging that a big rumor I had speculated about a few weeks ago was wrong, wrong, wrong.
“Winter Soldier” almost feels like more of a “SHIELD” movie or sequel to “The Avengers” than a sequel to “Captain America,” and that’s appropriate. Steve Rogers, who “died” near the end of the first movie, only to be thawed out and revived and eventually teamed up with Iron Man, Hulk and Thor in “The Avengers” two years ago, has gone to work for SHIELD, the super-spy agency led by Nick Fury. Cap (Chris Evans, again charming and low-key and a straight-arrow without being a parody of a paragon of virtue) is working alongside Natasha, the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) on SHIELD ops.
A nighttime raid on a ship at sea ably demonstrates not only Cap’s, Natasha’s and their SHIELD team’s lethal effectiveness but the twisty-turny nature of the work they do. While Steve is there to rescue hostages, Natasha is there to retrieve information from a SHIELD computer on board. (I’m going to have to see the movie a second time to figure out exactly why Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, with more to do here than usual) knew he could find this info on the ship.)
So while Steve is frustrated at Fury’s duplicitousness – and Natasha’s too, frankly – he’s otherwise adjusting well to the modern world. He’s got a list of pop-culture and historical milestones to catch up on – “Star Wars” is included, as is the moon landing – and he’s befriended Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), a fellow veteran who is a VA counselor.
As Cap tries to tell the bad guys from the good guys – aside from his helpful suggestion to Sam that the bad guys will be the ones shooting at them – we’re introduced to Alexander Pierce (Robert freakin’ Redford), a Cabinet-level official who oversees SHIELD.
Before too long, it’s obvious that things are not what they seem with several characters and SHIELD is not the organization Steve would like for it to be. In fact, it’s the organization he and Tony Stark worried about in “The Avengers.” The organization that is experimenting with technology developed by HYDRA and the Red Skull in the first “Cap” movie.
The great part about the Captain America character, as created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, and revived by Kirby and Stan Lee in 1964, is that he’s a man out of time, that his values are unchanging. He’s not a stick-in-the-mud and he’s not a priss. He kills because he’s a soldier, but he won’t kill if someone, even an enemy, can be saved.
The greatest test for Steve is saving the character he shares the movie’s title with. The Winter Soldier is a nearly-unstoppable killing machine, sent out by Hydra to usher in the bloody carnage that leads to a new world order. He’s played by Sebastian Stan, of course, who played Steve’s lifelong friend, James “Bucky” Barnes, in the first “Cap” movie. Here – as in the comics – Bucky, returned from the dead, is a merciless, brainwashed assassin. Once Steve knows who he is, the question becomes, how can he save Bucky instead of killing him?
“Winter Soldier” is two and half hours long, more or less, but never feels that long. Some reviews have declared it’s better than “The Avengers,” but I’m not sure I agree. It is one of the best Marvel movies, no doubt.
This isn’t surprising, considering the nature of the movie and the genre, but “Winter Soldier” feels especially brutal. There’s less Iron Man-style repulsor ray action and less Thor “hammer down” fighting here. This is hard, bone-crunching, hand-to-hand combat with fists and knives. There’s a lot of gunplay and vehicular mayhem. It never feels as callous as the combat scenes in “Man of Steel,” but if you’re sensitive to the idea of this kind of stuff … well, what were you expecting?
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is one of the best of the Marvel movies. It’s a big story about the fight against murderous political ambitions but at the same time a more personal story about trust: Which people and institutions deserve your respect and your trust? For the Marvel movie universe, “Winter Soldier” definitively answers that question.
Okay, spoilers from here on out.
Ready?
Easter eggs are some of our favorite things about these movies, and “Winter Soldier” had plenty of them.
Not only do Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and other major characters get name-dropped – you would expect that – but there’s at least one reference to a major Marvel character to come. Stephen Strange is named as an enemy of Hydra. Why Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, would be taking on this organization is not quite clear, but it was, I hope, a nice foreshadowing of a movie that’s been rumored to be in development.
Toby Jones’ appearance – in an altered form – as Zola, the Skull’s scientific minion, is a treat. It’s such a substantial role that it doesn’t really qualify as an Easter egg, but what the heck. I’ll include it anyway.
I’m sure that on repeated viewings I’ll see more of these, but there’s apparently a quick reference to Stark Tower – the geographic focus of the battle in “The Avengers” – as one of the locations chosen for Pierce’s doomsday scenario attacks. I’m guessing that other locations, glimpsed briefly onscreen, would also offer up some goodies.
How great was it to see Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter? I hope her “Agent Carter” series happens. Seeing her helping form SHIELD in the 1950s would be so much fun. And throw in some Howling Commandos, too.
A lot of sites, including this one, speculated that Redford’s Alexander Pierce was secretly the Red Skull. While I was a little disappointed he was not, thinking it over for a few hours, I’m glad that Pierce was nothing more than a Hydra agent, a politically and morally compromised mad man whose plan for implementing a new world order admittedly rivaled the Skull’s for its viciousness.
Marvel’s weekly TV series, “Agents of SHIELD,” has been building, slowly, to the events that occur in “Winter Soldier.” But how “Agents of SHIELD” operates for the rest of this season and, possibly, next, considering that SHIELD itself is a discredited and defunct as a spy agency, will be interesting to see. Keep in mind, the show will have to avoid stepping on storylines that future Marvel movies might take up.
The trailers for “Winter Soldier” made us think that Redford’s SHIELD honcho was talking to Cap when he was telling him he had “shaped the century.” He was not. Obviously.
There’s something so cool about the montage, set to Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man,” near the end of the movie. We see Steve and Sam and Fury but we also see Maria Hill and Sharon Carter and damned if it all doesn’t feel just right.
The first end-credits scene feels like the most puzzling one yet in a Marvel movie for viewers who don’t know the context. As most have already noted, it introduces characters we’re going to see in next summer’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” including “The Twins,” Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, and Hydra leader Baron Von Strucker. While there’s mention of Hydra, the arch-villain organization of the movie, there’s nary a familiar character in sight. It seems like Marvel has enough confidence in us to let us figure out what’s going on.
The second end-credits scene is directly tied to the movie and to future “Cap” movies, perhaps. Bucky’s return after decades and his stint filling in for Steve as Cap are familiar to comics readers. Speculation recently that Bucky actor Sebastian Stan is signed for nine Marvel movies – so as many as seven more from this point – and the fact that Evans currently has only three more movies in his contract – two “Avengers” movies and a “Cap” movie – suggests that Marvel’s long game might follow the comics storyline.
keithroysdon 