COMIC CON: Get Ready For Marvel's PHASE TWO!

While I already covered some of the early highlights from this year's Comic Con, there's still plenty to talk about.  Let's kick things off with all things Marvel...

Obviously the folks at Marvel are in high spirits in light of the overwhelming success of The Avengers, but they're far from resting on their laurels.  As "Phase One" will hit DVD and Blu-Ray this September in the form of a giant boxed set (complete with glowing Tesseract!) Kevin Feige and friends laid out their blueprint for "Phase Two" on Saturday in Hall H.  Here's what it looks like, including logo branding and new titles!

First up, we've got the Shane Black directed Iron Man 3, hitting theaters May 3, 2013.

Marvel put on a helluva show with this one, including an exclusive footage presentation that more than impressed the audience.  Highlights included shots of Don Cheadle's Rhodey in his new red white & blue War Machine armor and the first glimpse of Ben Kingsley as the now-confirmed Mandarin.  (He does not appear to be playing the role as Asian.)  For a more detailed take on the footage, check out Drew McWeeny's excellent description over at HitFix.  They also had all seven previous versions of Iron Man's armor on display, as well as the newest model we'll see next spring:

Thor: The Dark World opens November 8, 2013.  

That subtitle doesn't give too many clues as to where the story is headed, but we might get a better clue as they finish up casting.  They've already had to replace Josh Dallas with Zachary Levi as Fandral (which is ironic as Levi was originally set to play the role in the first film, but was later replaced by Dallas, both times due to unexpected TV renewals.)  They've also lost their villain in the form of Mads Mikkelsen, whose commitments to the upcoming Bryan Fuller-helmed Hannibal Lecter television series forced him off the Marvel project.  We'll see who emerges to torture the thunder god in his next go-round.


Arriving on April 4, 2014 is Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As opposed to the Thor sequel, this title speaks volumes.  It's clear the Russo brothers (!) will be drawing heavily from Ed Brubaker's infamous run on the comics in which Cap's sidekick Bucky is revealed to be very much alive, now a deadly Russian assassin with a mechanical arm who's spent the decades since WWII in and out of cryo-stasis. (I almost put a spoiler warning there, but ultimately decided the title indicates that Bucky's presence in the movie will probably be well advertised beforehand.)  We've also learned that Cap's 70's-era partner The Falcon will appear and that Marvel is in negotiations with Anthony Mackie.  The Falcon is one of Marvel's early black superheroes, a Harlem native who can fly with the help of a special suit.  He also has a psychic link with his pet Falcon and can generally see through the eyes of birds.  Mackie is a fantastic actor who should be far more successful than he is, so here's hoping he'll get a bit of the Marvel bump.  I wouldn't be surprised to see him appear in the next Avengers flick either.


Marvel's also opening up a new franchise, Guardians Of The Galaxy, on August 1, 2014.

This one is WAY out there compared to the Marvel movies we've seen so far.  This is a huge outer space epic, with a team of heroes named Star Lord, Groot, Frax, Gamorra and Rocket Racoon.  Yes, that last one is an actual racoon.  With automatic weapons.  Oh, and Groot is a walking tree.  Here's some concept art, to give you a sense of the characters.  

The Guardians will be teaming up to fight Thanos, who was briefly glimpsed during the credits of Avengers and will definitely be the villain the next time Earth's mightiest heroes assemble.  I actually love the idea of using this new franchise to flesh out the Avengers' newest foe, as we'll have essentially had three (or in Tony Stark's case four) movies with each of our heroes by the time we get to the next Avengers movie.  Since most folks aren't terribly familiar with Thanos, it'll be nice to have the team fighting an enemy with some serious backstory that the audience might even be more aware of than some of the characters. 

And finally, the much anticipated Ant-Man from Edgar Wright.

Wright recently shot some test footage to see how Ant-Man's growing and shrinking abilities could be utilized on-screen, but this project is still quite a ways off.  While Marvel formally announced the project with Wright attached (and showed the footage, which sounded beyond cool, even sans-ants) there is still no official release or production start date.  Wright is about to start shooting The World's End, the final entry in his infamous "Blood & Ice Cream" trilogy with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.

All told, an ambitious and (hopefully) impressive slate for the next two years.  Color me stoked.

"Frankenweenie" Homage Trailer Is Brilliant

There's a lot of good buzz coming off yesterday's Frankenweenie panel at Comic Con.  The word is that Tim Burton's latest foray into stop-motion is a true to return to form for the suburban-gothic director, which makes sense as the tale of a resurrected pooch is actually a feature adaptation of his own short film from almost 30 years ago.  Now Disney's released the following trailer, which should really be the only trailer to play in a theater from this point on:

I love the quotation marks around Frankenweenie and the grandiosity of those title cards.  Plus the music...I hope we get a good taste of it in the finished film.  I can't wait to get a look at some of the other revived pets, most of whom serve as nods to other classic Universal monsters.  (I particularly like the idea of the invisible goldfish.)  This is officially my most anticipated movie of the Halloween season.

The Great And Powerful Trailer for Sam Raimi's Trip To Oz

Comic Con is in full swing right now, and we've already gotten reports of some interesting trailers and exclusive clips.  Often times these presentations don't make their way online for days or even weeks, if at all.  Fortunately, Disney went the other route and put the first trailer for Sam Raimi's Oz The Great And Powerful online within a matter of hours.  Check it out below:

Whatever issues you may have with James Franco notwithstanding, I'm really excited to see Raimi have such a lush and sprawling world to play with.  At the panel afterwards, they were adamant that this newest journey into the Emerald City is not meant as a prequel to the 1939 movie, but as a play on the original L. Frank Baum books.  (You may have noticed that the circus at the beginning is the Baum Brothers Circus, which is a nice touch.)  In fact, they even mentioned that the infamous ruby slippers would not be making an appearance as they were solely an invention of the Garland film and therefore Raimi didn't have the rights to them.  

This is one of the last scripts I read before leaving Los Angeles and I can tell you that it is EPIC in scope, including a formidable battle sequence near the end.  (There's also a bit of "chosen one" mythology which felt shoe-horned in, but that's par for the course these days.)  I think the three witches are really the star of the show here and Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz are all ideal casting choices.  Kunis in particular is going to break your heart.  And that last shot of the green arm?  Awesome.

Do we really need to return to Oz?  Not really.  But if there's one person whose vision for that world could get me into the theater, it's Sam Raimi.  On a sidenote, I'm astounded at all the weird retconning around Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy.  Yes, the third film was kind of a noble mess, but the second is still one of the best comic book films ever made.  In the weeks leading up to Webb's reboot, it felt like everyone's recollection of the entire trilogy was that one scene where Peter Parker had the audacity to dance in a nightclub, which isn't nearly as bad as you remember it being.

TRAILER OF THE DAY! Knights Of Badassdom

One of my biggest regrets when I left Los Angeles was living there for five years and never making the pilgrimage to the epic-ness that is San Diego Comic Con.  I say "pilgrimage" because the place is basically geek-Mecca.  Filled with the faithful devotees of every comic book and movie property under the sun, Comic Con is three days of parties, panels and promotions for whatever big fanboy properties the studios have coming this year.  The "Comic" in Comic Con is almost purely vestigal at this point; while this past weekend's adventure featured panels on the upcoming Spider-Man and Ghost Rider movies, it also featured movies like Fright Night and Total Recall, stuff which is not comic book related, but appeals to the same audience.

By all accounts, one of the best panels of the weekend was for one of those sort of outlier projects, a little flick called Knights Of Badassdom.  While the movie has yet to find distribution, watching the trailer below makes me think that won't be a problem for long.



I think that trailer pretty much proves that with the right cast, any B-movie concept can actually play above expectations.  I sort of love the tone, almost like the LARPing scenes from Role Models by way of Evil Dead.  The Dink looks like he's absolutely killing it here, and you'd be hard pressed to keep me away from anything featuring Danny Pudi at this point.  (Pudi's Abed on Community is easily the funniest character on network television.  Don't even talk to me about Modern Family, which is just a better executed version of Full House.)  Steve Zahn and Summer Glau are just icing on the cake.  There's also something kind of great about the idea of Ryan Kwanten being tied up, thrown in a van, and then being forced into live-action role playing.

Having recently seen some photos of my own one time experience with LARPing, (I recall being a very spastic skeleton at one point) I'm more than willing to give this one a chance.