Marvel Phase Two news

With the release of the Marvel Phase One blu-ray box set (which, amazingly, no one has bought me yet), we got some much expected and highly anticipated information about Marvel's coming Phase Two, the second string of new release movies starting next month with Iron Man III and ending in Avengers II in 2015. In between those two movies, we're set to get Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and, if the promo art is to be believed, Ant Man. Let's break this down by movie.

Iron Man III actually has the least new info to talk about. With the release being right around the corner, we already more or less know what to expect. Tony is going to square off against the Mandarin with an army of Iron Man armors as Mandarin hits him where he lives; literally at his house and figuratively with Pepper. The newest trailer shows Tony with the ability to summon his armor to himself or cast it on others, giving us a nice shot of him essentially throwing the armor on Pepper to protect her as the house caves in on itself. It inevitably is drawing Iron Man fans to think about the recent addition of Rescue to the Iron Man universe. For those uninitiated, Rescue is armor that Iron Man developed for Pepper to protect her and also to let her assist in heroing things. Rescue has limited offensive firepower, at Pepper's own request, and is therefore more adept as a...well, a rescue source. So that's the name explained. We also know this movie is set to feature Aldrich Killian (played by the fantastic Guy Pearce) and Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), who are most notable for their hand in the Extremis virus. Lots of plot to get to here, including a War Machine appearance in more colorful armor that is hard not to compare to Norman Osborn's Iron Patriot armor seen in the last couple years. So much to look forward to, potentially, and hopefully the movie lives up to everything it can.

Thor: The Dark World will feature Christopher Eccleston (notably the ninth Doctor in Doctor Who) as Malekith, the dark elf who is an Asgardian supervillain (he's not actually Asgardian, he's from Svartalfheim, but he's from that wing of the Marvel Universe so I guess I'm being racist?) who is typically associated with the Casket of Ancient Winters, a box that's pretty much just Jotunheim in a box. I'm interested in the plot behind this movie because it proves that the Cinematic Universe won't be afraid to stay in the fantasy world of the Asgardian corner of the Marvel Universe. I figured that the first movie would be a way to cement Thor as someone who was not of Earth then would spend a lot of the second movie putting him on Earth, probably still to protect the people from his kind of threats. Though that could still very well be the case, the willingness to keep Thor squared against fantasy villains in their fantasy realms seems pretty brave. I wonder if the movie is heartened by the success over the last decade of things like Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and is willing to throw its lot in with that kind of crowd. I'll get back to things like that with Guardians of the Galaxy but for now, suffice it to say I think sticking with the heavy reliance on Thor's world and his background and people/gods is an interesting and hopefully rewarding move. The new info released with the Phase Two images are largely shots of fight scenes and Natalie Portman in possibly Asgard. Again, not a ton to pull from that but we should be moving right along to getting a trailer relatively soon, as the movie is set to be released in November.

Okay, now let's go to the movie that I'm REALLY writing about. Yes I'm excited about the other movies on this list and yes I'm always going to be thrilled to see these characters portrayed well on screen, but this is my bread and butter. And somehow it keeps making me happier. I was thrilled last Comic-Con when they announced the title of the new Captain America movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I knew there was a good chance we'd get this story in the second movie, as I think it's one of the best stories in Cap's history (competing against the oft-referenced, by me anyway, time that Red Skull used the Cosmic Cube to switch into Cap's body and be kind of a prick to everyone and Cap covered his new Red Skull face with mud and EVERYONE bought it) and it was a little bit set up in the last movie. Set up enough, anyway. I don't want to go too far into details because I don't want to spoil the surprise for any readers (though the IMDb info for the movie does quite enough of that, thanks very much) but I'm absolutely thrilled about this movie. I'm excited to see Cap starring in his own movie in the present day and teaming up with people like Black Widow and Sharon Carter and the Falcon (pictured at right somewhere, assuming I remember to put the picture in). I'm a little bummed that Sharon Carter isn't going to be played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead (as was once reported) because I'm a bit in love with her and it's just about the only thing that could make me MORE excited for this movie, but that's still okay because I went to the IMDb page recently and found out something else about the movie. On top of the Winter Soldier and Crossbones as villains (aw, I hope we don't get Sin, actually, now that I'm saying it. It does sound pretty likely though. Geez, I'm excited to see how this movie plays out), we're also getting another, older-school villain for Cap to face off against at some point, if the cast page is to be believed. That's right, BATROC THE LEAPER IS GOING TO BE IN A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE RELEASE.
Let's give a little backstory here, as I sadly haven't had enough time to gush about Batroc on this blog. One of the ways I got into comics was by reading Wikipedia articles. If you've never read a Wikipedia article about a major superhero, do yourself a favor and check one out. As someone who adores comics and comic-lore, the Wikipedia pages, while typically pretty accurate, are completely indecipherable. There is nothing that makes comics sound more ridiculous than reading the summary of their plots (and yes, I understand how ironic that sounds on a blog that reviews comics). I looked up a page of Cap's villains and found, among other greats like Flag-Smasher and Dredmund the Druid, Batroc the Leaper (or, alternately, Batroc ze Lepair...he's French, you see). Batroc is exactly as ridiculous as he sounds and writers have always treated him well, making sure we know he's never a huge threat. Even Cap tends to sigh when he comes across him. In recent days, Batroc has become far more formidable, as a master of savate, the French martial arts. He's an impressive fighter (being portrayed in The Winter Soldier by a mixed martial artist) mercenary who has a sort of honor code and is ALWAYS hilarious. I'm very excited. My exact thought when I saw his name on the list was "Someone's been looking at my diary!"

Anyway, the Winter Soldier story is one of my favorites in all of comics and cemented my love for Captain America will igniting love for other characters like the Winter Soldier himself. The newly revealed costume for Winter Soldier in the movie looks good, exchanging the domino mask for a full face mask. I'm trying to think of ways this movie could be bad and none are coming up. I trust all the actors in their roles at this point so I'm not worrying about them screwing up the characters like I was the first time around and I think the story is really hard to mess up so I'm hoping for the best. I need to move off this movie now or else I'll talk about it the rest of the day and never end up posting anything.

Guardians of the Galaxy was the most unexpected announcement last year at Comic-Con, when Marvel's Phase Two was revealed hot off the massive release of The Avengers. It's very interesting that Marvel chose this property to show off. It's interesting in the idea that they're willing to push the cosmic corner of the Universe and that they're dedicated to rebooting the brand in that area (also signified by their putting Brian Michael Bendis, one of their most popular writers, on the new Guardians book). The move is also significant in the light of the reveal at the end of The Avengers, that the mastermind pulling the Chitauri strings was Thanos. A Guardians of the Galaxy movie gives a very simple stepping stone for Avengers II as it presents another opportunity to get a glance at Thanos in action as he makes his way towards Earth. With the new images for Phase Two, we're shown some concept art for the movie that includes a couple of Star Wars-esque scenes of characters in space-bars and, you know, in space. We also quite a couple of neat concept art pieces of Rocket Raccoon, who will be one of the most important characters of the movie. First off, he's pretty much the comic relief (particularly tied with Groot) so he's bound to be pretty prominent in the film, but more importantly he's a walking, talking raccoon, as his name might lead you to believe (I'm pretty sure he's not actually a raccoon, he's an alien, but whatever, he's a raccoon). Bad CG here could be an issue for the movie. Concept art is very interesting but it doesn't really mean anything until we see the real rendering in action. Still far too early to expect anything like that though, so let's all marvel at the set pieces they're aiming to create. It's interesting that the art draws comparisons to Star Wars, another new Disney property set to have a huge release the year after Guardians. Maybe Disney wants to test the waters first.

Finally, the other completely new art we're getting is costume design for Ant Man, the long speculated Edgar Wright-Marvel team up. I am not the biggest Ant Man fan, though he's certainly grown on me in recent days, but I am a huge Edgar Wright fan. When I heard that Marvel was interested in making an Ant Man movie, my hopes started to fade. There are so many other great heroes out there that deserve movies, like Black Panther and...okay, look, I really want a Black Panther movie. I'd be happy with Iron Fist in a movie but you kind of have to do Luke Cage alongside with him probably and I'm not as sold on that. Doc Strange would be cool too, but really, where is Black Panther? Anyway, hearing that Ant Man was getting a movie first was disheartening at best. However, the reveal that such a movie would be directed by Edgar Wright of Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and, most recently, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was immensely encouraging. It's safe to say that Edgar Wright is one of my favorite filmmakers so let him do whatever he wants. The new costume design for Ant Man looks pretty good and I heard that the test footage at last year's Comic-Con was very entertaining, even if it was just test footage. Hopefully the inclusion of the Ant Man pieces confirms that Marvel is dedicated to the movie, as it seemed not too long ago that Ant Man's fate was still up in the air.

I think there were also a couple concept pieces for Avengers II in the media dump but I honestly couldn't tell if the last few art pieces were for Guardians or Avengers and, either way, didn't give much new information. One way or another, we're looking at a very exciting and very ambitious Phase Two from Marvel. It's phenomenal that Marvel didn't decide to simply rest after their great successes and churn out very similar movies to that in Phase One, but instead pressed ahead and chose to go to new places with their established cinematic heroes and to include risky choices for the new properties. Let's hope everything works out because then everybody wins. Everybody that loves fun, anyway.


(All pictures are courtesy of IGN and their coverage of the Marvel Phase One boxset, except for the Iron Man III picture which I got from here)

FF 4, Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1

FF 4
Fraction (w) and M. Allred (a) and L. Allred (c)

Boy, really pulled it out at the end there. This was a fun issue all the way through with a couple of developments happening with in the whole FF organization but largely the focus was on the Moloids newfound obsession with She-Hulk. I kind of love the conceit, especially given the Moloids recent love for regular type Hulk (not these Moloids specifically, but the Moloids Hulk went underground with for a little bit). I also like the way Fraction has them speak and interact. It's not really different from what Hickman did but I didn't have this blog then so WHATEVER, I can say what I want. I also appreciate that they instantly fall in love with She-Hulk and, upon hearing of her date, approach Bentley about finding ways to ruin it. That works on just about every level for me.

So most of the issue is that, with Bentley concocting junior super-villain schemes to try to break up the date between Jen and Wyatt Wingfoot and, as you might imagine, these schemes all go wrong and end up making the night more romantic for the two. It's a fun little issue with nothing too serious aside from Scott snapping at older member of the FF Alex Power as Alex questions the whole idea of the FF and of Scott's plan to attack Doom. The end of the issue gets serious too, as Bentley complains about how poorly the night went to an unseen interrogator. The interrogator reassures Bentley and promises to help him live up to his destiny, seemingly as a super-villain, before being revealed as Medusa, Sue's stand-in on the team. Dark things are afoot, dear reader, dark things indeed. It also makes us glance back at a scene earlier when she provokes the future Johnny Storm and causes him to leave. What game is Medusa playing? We'll just have to find out. Pretty solid issue. If you're looking for dark and gritty, it's not here. The majority of this issue was structured for fun with plot seeping in around the corners. Not a bad thing, but certainly not for every reader.

Guardians of the Galaxy 0.1
Bendis (w) and McNiven and Dell (a) and Ponsor (c)

Promising start to the series. It at least gives a background look into Star-Lord, the leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy. I've read the most recent iteration of the series, featuring pretty much everyone on this new team (minus Iron Man), but I haven't read it for a couple years now so I don't remember as much as I'd like going in. Maybe that's good though, time to start fresh. I don't mind the backstory Bendis has crafted for Peter Quill, which seems to follow the story bits I like about Quill's history (there's no mention of a step-father or anything who tried to attack his mother, which Wikipedia claims there was at one point and I am FINE with that). I also like the addition of Iron Man to the team, though it already feels like Marvel time is getting pretty convoluted again, considering how prominent Iron Man is in Marvel books (and the fact that he's in deep space in two series and on Earth in any other). Whatever. Gotta just shake that one off. Anyway, I like that he's on the team because it fills the void left by Nova (in truth, I can't remember if Nova was officially ON the Guardians team in the recent run or if he just fought alongside them for a period or, FRANKLY, if he even did that. It's been a while since I read it, you guys). It's also a nice feature to have Iron Man be the guy who needs stuff explained to him, as opposed to the one doing the explaining. Could be interesting.

There's not a whole ton left to say because this issue was a 0.1, just giving us a little background before the full series starts. I like the art a lot and I don't expect that to change. I've been sold on McNiven for a couple years, since he popped up on my radar (particularly when he took over on Captain America). We don't really have a sense of how Bendis is going to write anyone aside from my Star-Lord and Iron Man for this book, nor a full sense of the dangers they'll face. The Badoon, the alien race that killed Star-Lord's mother, seems like fair game, as does Thanos, considering his history with the team and the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe will likely tie Thanos and the Guardians together again to prepare for Avengers 2. I'll be interested to see how this book shapes up and how the team is represented before their major motion picture in 2014 (where it's recently been announced Chris Pratt, Andy from Parks and Recreation, will play Star-Lord. Pretty excited about that, interested to see how the character shapes out considering Pratt's normal style of character).

Movies of the FUTURE

So a while back on my tumblr, I wrote a bit about Marvel's "phase two" of their cinematic universe. Maybe I'll post that at some point, but I think I've already said a good amount on this here blog. However, my post did generate a question, so I'll answer it here, for newer viewers. I've updated it a bit to be a little more relevant, but I ALSO might have missed some older stuff so sorry about weird tense changes or me talking about things that hadn't happened yet but have by now.


What other Marvel movies would you most like to see made in the next few years and why? Alternatively, which stories from the comics would you really like to see adapted in the inevitable sequels like (for instance) Cap 3? 

I’d love a Black Panther movie, like was rumored over the last few months. I think he’s a remarkable hero and it’d be great to get a strong black hero. Plus he’s an important wheel in that universe, one of the more important ones you could add to the periphery. There are three kind of "big-ish" heroes that I'm really big into and I'd love movies for all three. Black Panther's one, another would be Daredevil. I KNOW, I KNOW, Daredevil's movie was already terrible once. But Marvel's on a roll of "do no wrong" so I think, in the right hands, he'd be great. With the rights back from Fox, I would be a little surprised to see it included in the vaunted "phase three," mostly because of that horrible last attempt. The third character I’m a huge sucker for is Iron Fist but I’d be surprised to see him in a movie without a Heroes for Hire angle and I don’t particularly love Luke Cage, so 50-50 there. I’d also love to see a Captain Marvel/Ms. Marvel movie made, if the character can really catch on through the new book, if just to introduce a strong female character as a major player in the universe. I’d like to see Vision, for some reason, but I can’t see a movie about him working. He’d work fine beside Ultron in a possible Avengers 3 (I almost guarantee that's the third Avengers movie, especially with Ant Man in phase three) and joining the team, but by himself he wouldn’t work. Or maybe he would, I’m no movie maker. I’m also kind of an Inhumans fan, but I don’t know where they’d fall in copyright problems. I know Fox is claiming that they own anyone termed “mutant” and I feel like the Inhumans have, though I might have made this up at some point, in some book been called early mutants. Again, I might have made this up or dreamt it, but Fox could totally be dicks about that. It seems they've announced Doc Strange as a guaranteed movie in phase three alongside at least Ant Man. I'm totally happy with that. Good guy, different feel, different look, it'll be neat.

Stories I’d like to see is a little harder. I really can’t overstate how much I absolutely adore the Winter Soldier storyline so I’m just so giddy about that. I love the idea of Civil War and I don’t really know why you bring Maria Hill into Avengers unless you’re planning to delve into that. Civil War has looked worse in retrospect, I think, because it sort of kicked off the whole “heroes-fighting-heroes in big events” thing that Marvel is on right now, which isn’t necessarily great, but I love the reasoning behind it and it adds depth to Cap. But it would be a tricky movie. Same for Secret Invasion, in a way. I’m not sure I’d like that in a movie, frankly. There’s too much involved. That showing up in Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes was all I really needed. Bummed that show’s getting cancelled, for the record. Boy, World War Hulk was kind of cool, huh? I don’t know if that would work in a movie either, but that was just a pure action event. All kinds of crazy. I wouldn’t mind seeing something in Iron Man with his alcoholism, but I also don’t know that it’s necessary. Why complicate the movie character unless it’s REALLY going to benefit the movies? I think Armor Wars is a pretty standard answer for him, but I’m not sure it’s necessary. I mean, the first two movies so far have been about people using his technology, or technology based on his design. What are the chances the third movie doesn’t have something to do with that (though I think I heard something about Extremis related to this…again, COULD be made up)? There was a GREAT arc in the Black Panther series from the late 90s, I think, where Panther alienates his former Avengers teammates by more or less revealing that he only took the spot on the team to spy on them and gather intelligence. Then a little later on, I think, he absolutely demolishes Iron Man in a fight. I don’t think the stories were related, if I’m remembering correctly, but it’s not a bad idea. I love Panther and characters like him (Namor, Black Bolt, etc) because they will help the Avengers or whoever at times and they’re typically good at heart, but they’re rulers and everything they do has to fall into that perspective. Panther joined the Avengers, sure, but he did it to make sure they wouldn’t negatively impact Wakanda. I love those kinds of ideas.

Age of Ultron series...suspiciously timed?

Was this answer too long? Probably, but everything I write seems to be so WHATEVER. What would you want to see done?