Huge Marvel Cinematic Universe announcements!

GUYS. Hot on the heels of the Benedict-Cumberbatch-as-Doctor-Strange maybe-news yesterday (which was, ironically, the only bit of news Kevin Feige did NOT confirm, if just to make my blog look wrong), Marvel held a press conference to announce the slate of upcoming movies for phase three of the MCU. There are, you guys, some really huge, if not suspected, announcements here.

Captain America 3 gets new title!
After the news that Robert Downey Jr. would join the cast of Cap 3, the next installment of the fantastic Captain America movies will officially be called Captain America: Civil War. This is a huge deal and is likely something that will have seeds planted all over the coming Marvel movies. I talked a lot about the implications of Civil War in my post about RDJ in Cap 3 so I won't spend too much time here, except to note that when I went to IMDb for this news, they said it would be called Captain America: Serpent Society, which is...interesting? Whatever. Mark May 6th, 2016 on your calendars now.

Doctor Strange gets a release date!
No new news here (and, as I mentioned, no confirmation of now day-old news) except to say that the new Doctor Strange will land on November 4th, 2016.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 gets bumped up!
After a wildly successful and unexpected opening for the first film, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 will now open May 5th, 2017.

Thor 3 ALSO gets new title!
Things are decidedly about to go bad for Thor as the latest in his franchise has officially taken the name Thor: Ragnarok. It has also slid into the release spot vacated by Guardians 2, set to release July 28th, 2017.

Black Panther officially confirmed for 2017, star announced
Ahhhhh, this one is huge! One of Marvel's best and most underrated heroes, Black Panther, will officially get his solo movie. Black Panther is set to be released November 3rd, 2017 and will star 42 and Get On Up star Chadwick Boseman, who is decidedly great. Very, very cool.

Captain Marvel!
Guys! Captain Marvel! Carol Danvers Captain Marvel, no less! Coming July 6th, 2018, everyone's favorite pilot-turned-Captain Marvel will take to the skies in Captain Marvel, which will purportedly find Carol trapped between Earth and outer space. Feige said there's no other news yet, but that a director and writer will be announced soon, though casting, obviously, is still a ways off.

Inhumans coming in 2018
With 2018 shaping up to be a big year for space experiment heroes, Marvel has also confirmed that Inhumans will release November 2nd, 2018 and will at least tie to the hitherto unseen in the MCU Kree-Skrull War.

Avengers: Infinity War to be two parts, spread apart one year
With the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron on the horizon, the third and fourth installments of the landmark Marvel franchise have been given name and tentative dates, with Avengers: Infinity War Part One set to land May 4th, 2018, and Infinity War Part Two coming almost exactly a year later, May 3rd, 2019.




Again, it's confirmation of a ton of news that has been speculated at for some time, with Marvel finally making the splash it needs to with movies like Black Panther and Captain Marvel and other major characters and events coming soon. Really exciting stuff, tucked away on a slow Tuesday. Special thanks to the security guard who wandered over to ask me who Dr. Strange was and kicked all of this off.

Guardians of the Galaxy premiere trailer

So the full trailer for Guardians of the Galaxy just premiered and...it's a little weird. It's very set on explaining who the Guardians are, which makes sense given that they're such an unknown. They also have an interesting dilemma in that they're the first team movie that didn't have, you know, a handful of movies to set it up. The tone is also decidedly different from any other Marvel Cinematic Universe offering thus far, going for an extremely light feel. It wants you to think back to the fun of the Star Wars franchise and to the fun, particularly, of the Mos Eisley Cantina. Chris Pratt's Peter Quill, AKA Star-Lord, shows up first with a pair of headphones and later he gets into a fight he can't win for those same headphones. There's definitely some character there but I'd worry that the character ends up being a bit cliche. More so I worry about the two shots of Gamora we get in the trailer, one where she's topless with her back to us and one where she's whipping her hair in some fight. Granted, Gamora does have some amount of exploitative personality in the comics but I wouldn't have complained if they left it out of the movie and the trailer is making me believe they're not about to.

It's honestly still too little to get a good sense of the movie, obviously, so I won't be posting a big review of this trailer like I did with the recent Super Bowl spots, but it's a pretty good read of the effects and the overall look of the movie, which is not unimpressive. It's hard not to be compared to Star Wars, as is the case whenever there's some sort of space caper movie, because Star Wars is, you know, Star Wars. Still, the look of this movie doesn't go too far off of that so we'll see how this one looks. Also, Karen Gillan looks surprisingly good blue and nearly unrecognizable so, you know, that's a plus.

15-second "Guardians of the Galaxy" trailer debuts

Not much to report on this but Marvel has debuted a 15-second Guardians of the Galaxy trailer. As you can expect, not a lot to glean from this short clip but we get a decent look at some of our main cast, particularly Chris Pratt as Star-Lord, along with Zoe Saldana's Gamora, Dave Bautista's Drax, and Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel. Check out the trailer below and look for the FULL-size trailer, presumably worth watching more, tonight at 11:35 on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Possible Black Widow movie in the works

Pretty early to say but Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige recently said in Total Film magazine that, on top of a bigger role in Captain America: Winter Soldier that would expand her story, "exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that." The wording is still pretty vague and certainly promises nothing but it would make some sense, given Scarlett Johansson's visibility and the cinematic feel of Edmondson and Noto's new series. Excuses are constantly made about why female-led superhero movies wouldn't work but we've never actually seen one tried and more people, it seems are realizing that it simply isn't a good excuse any more. That said, it shows that studios haven't been willing to take a chance yet so it's hard to say whether or not Feige's comments are giving anything new away just yet. I'll believe it when I see it but here's hoping someone figures this out.

More Ant-Man movie details

So this is a new bit. I don't actually know if I talked about it when it started to come up last month but Paul Rudd is confirmed as Edgar Wright's Ant-Man in the 2015 Marvel movie Ant-Man. This still left Marvel fans wondering which Ant-Man Rudd would be playing, as there were three options for the role (but really two major options, no one was really banking on it being Eric O'Grady). Well it seems as if Marvel and Wright are ready to close the doors on those questions as they've just cast Hollywood legend Michael Douglas as Hank Pym, leaving Rudd in the Scott Lang role. The way Lang has worked in the past, for those unfamiliar, is that he becomes Ant-Man after stealing Pym's suit to use it to try to save his daughter Cassie who has a lung condition and requires expensive treatment. Eventually it gets sorted and Pym gives Lang his blessing to become Ant-Man full time, leading to Lang's affiliation with the Fantastic Four (as seen most recently in the current FF series) and to membership on the Avengers. To give away a little too much, probably, he's killed in the AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED storyline that would lead to the major HOUSE OF M business when Scarlet Witch goes a little crazy and ends up accidentally killing members of the Avengers including Lang. He's brought back in the events of 2011's YOUNG AVENGERS: CHILDREN'S CRUSADE when...okay, maybe I'm getting a little too deep into something that does not matter considering this post was originally just about casting news and its implications. Let's get to that then.

So obviously the biggest news of this whole announcement is that Michael Douglas, who will be 70 this year, seems to age Hank Pym out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now, like or dislike Pym, it's hard to argue that he's an important character in the Marvel Universe. In the comics, he's a founding Avenger, he invented Pym particles, and he created Ultron, among other things (probably too bad for him that he's pretty well-known for striking his wife on a particularly bad occasion). He's also not 70 years old in the comics. This changes a lot of what people (me) may have been predicting about the movie. It's almost weirder that they're leaving Pym in but making him 70 than it is to just make it Lang and kind of combine the two characters. I suppose this is a way to keep Pym in the MCU but to de-complicate things a bit instead of having two potential Ant-Mans running around. There are also some other rumors floating around after Edgar Wright posted posted a screencap from Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes on his website which showed a character grabbing for the Ant-Man mask. The episode the shot was taken from is entitled "To Steal an Ant-Man" and features Lang's first appearance on the show, wherein he steals the Ant-Man costume, which caused plenty of people to think a week ago that Rudd would play Lang and not Pym. However, sources like Hollywood Reporter speculated it might mean more than that, as that particular episode also invoked, for the first time in that series, Iron Fist and Luke Cage. I waved that off at first as maybe reaching a little far, even after the article went on to link the whole thing to Iron Fist and Luke Cage's upcoming Netflix series, but I'm not as convinced now. First and foremost: can Ant-Man sustain his own movie? Second: Avengers: EMH was very clearly a sort of testing ground for future MCU concepts so it's not entirely farfetched. Third: Lang, in the comics, had a relationship with Jessica Jones for a time, also slated to get her own Netflix series, which could potentially tie everything together pretty nicely. OKAY, maybe I'm getting a little farfetched now, but maybe-OH MAN, EDGAR WRIGHT DIRECTING A MOVIE WITH IRON FIST IN IT WOULD BE THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED.

Tiny "Thor: The Dark World" review

I don't want to review too much just yet because technically the movie isn't out yet and I don't want to let any spoilers out of the bag (that said, SORRY IF THIS SPOILS ANYTHING FOR YOU) so I plan to go super-basic with just first impressions and give a more full review on maybe Monday.

Really fun movie, definitely another win in Marvel's book. There were certainly bits that felt a little coincidental and really existed to bring our plot and characters together but they're easy enough to overlook. I'd say the movie's biggest flaw, by about tenfold, was Kat Denning's character Darcy, who appears far too much in this movie, a complaint I had with the first Thor although she was in that one less. A couple of forced laugh bits here and there but some truly wonderful humor at points and really solid characterization and acting pretty much all around. Like I said, I plan to go more into this and more spoiler heavy when more of the world has gotten a chance to see it (okay, Monday, not that much more of a chance but you're lucky I'm waiting now) but for now, the takeaway is that I really liked it and I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

OH, also, if they make a SANDMAN movie at any point (preferably soon for this plan), they REALLY need to cast Tom Hiddleston. He'd be amazing.

First look at CAPTAIN AMERICA: WINTER SOLDIER

Hey guys, amazing. Just...amazing. More thoughts later, OBVIOUSLY.

Iron Man 3 review

SPOILERS. Guys, there are going to be spoilers here. I don't want to spoil comics for people (I do anyway, hoping that people won't be too mad) but I really don't want to spoil a major motion picture. DO NOT read this review unless you have no desire to see the movie, have already seen the movie, or do not care about spoilers. On with the show.

There's a real flaw with my vocabulary that extends beyond my inability to think of words to describe comics aside from "interesting." That flaw is the term "comic book villain." When I say it, I think of a villain who is over-the-top evil and seemingly evil for evil's sake. I also know that if other people used that term, I'd be mad because plenty of comic book villains have nuances and real backstory and history and a trajectory on their arc that got them to where they are. In many cases (not all of them) the ones who ARE evil for the sake of evil are still done well enough to make them compelling enough to watch. They have motivations. Iron Man 3 has two villains that eventually, thanks to a twist in the movie, becomes one villain. For about half of the movie we have a terrorist known as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) bombing locations in America with impossible to trace bombs the put out an absurd amount of heat, vaporizing anyone within a few feet of the explosion. Mandarin interrupts all broadcasts and claims responsibility, promising more bombings in time. Not to any end, just to "teach America a lesson." Working under him is Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), creator of a think tank called Advanced Ideas in Mechanics, or AIM. Killian had tried to get Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., of course) onboard back in 1999 but Tony had ignored him. Tony's date for the night though, a biologist named Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), apparently took Killian up on the offer, bringing her invention of a way to recode DNA to heal a person, among other things, over to AIM. We eventually find that Killian is, in fact, not working under the Mandarin but directing things himself and that the Mandarin is a construct, with Kingsley actually playing an actor playing the Mandarin on these broadcasts. It's a twist that will throw off most moviegoers and most comic fans, as the Mandarin is a long time real enemy of Stark in the comics. Killian is behind it all, spreading Hansen's data, called Extremis, I'm not sure there's a huge point to the twist other than being a twist though. This might just be from me as a fan of the comics (though I've been told from non-comic readers this was true) but I feel like we knew Killian was a bad guy all along and we even see him working with the Mandarin before knowing that the Mandarin is fake. So if it's a minor twist, at least we have one solid villain instead of several weaker villains who don't get enough screen time to develop.

Guys, that line was meant to make you think that would be true, but it's not true. Aldrich Killian is a comic book villain. He created the Mandarin so that he has a face to hide behind and a lightning rod for hatred. So what is Killian's end game in all this, now that he has the pieces moved into place? I don't know. I mean, he wants power, I guess. He strings the vice president into his plans which, assuming his last bombing wherein the president would be killed goes off without a hitch, would put an AIM supporter in the White House. He mentions that he controls the war on terror with the west's biggest hitter and its biggest terrorist in his hands. So is he in this for the power? For the money? He seems pretty wealthy already. I didn't get the sense in either of my two viewings over the weekend that he particularly cared about money. There's a little subplot with him in love with Pepper and using her as a trophy that seems a little sudden. Simply put, he seems evil for evil's sake, but without the race hatred of a Red Skull or the power and ego of a Doctor Doom. This might seem like picking on just one aspect of a long movie but it's kind of a make-or-break point. A villain without a sincere motivation is just confusing because there are no terms on the table. I think the film tries to set up the idea of Killian as a once-good guy, back in 1999 when he was a nerd hanger-on with physical deformities, who has been slighted one too many times and snapped, but it doesn't stick. The same is kind of true for Hansen, though we see more of her before and after and she gives us a speech about science meant for good being used for evil. Still, there isn't enough time spent on developing these characters to give us a real sense of why they're doing what they're doing. Hansen is definitely better, showing a woman who is doing important research and will do whatever it takes to get it funded, but she also comes away as someone who has seemingly accepted the Mandarin solution and only thinks better of it later.

Yikes. We've gone two long paragraphs without even touching the titular character. Let's talk about the good first because those paragraphs were definitely huge negatives. The action scenes are intense and fun to watch (if at times a little cluttered and confusing). The film never feels really painful to watch, which seems like a backhanded compliment but really isn't; there are plenty of superhero movies (and movies in general) that don't just drag, they actively seem to resent the viewer. Tony is Tony, suave and cool but able to recognize, eventually the good things in his life. It will never not be fun to watch an Iron Man suit fly through the air and in this movie we get a whole slew of them doing just that. The performances are largely what we would have expected out of the talented group of actors. The film also did a great job of keeping to itself, not reaching out to the Avengers in an attempt at pleasing fans (except in a cute post-credit scene). That can't be easy to do in a time where The Avengers made over a billion dollars.

So let's move on. My biggest flaw with Tony is that there's a plot surrounding his time in The Avengers. Tony has come away from the experience a different person. No matter how cool he seems on the outside, he's torn apart inside trying to cope with things that are bigger than him when, before The Avengers, nothing had really BEEN bigger than him. He knows aliens exist, he knows a little about Thor's nine realms, he knows that there's a guy who can fly and call lightning, and he's the only one on Earth who saw what he saw beyond the portal. Tony's now prone to anxiety attacks and hasn't slept soundly since the events in New York. It's explained as how he has so many new suits; he's spent all of his free time (which is considerable now that he doesn't sleep) building new suits and inventing new tech for his new suits. His newest tech is an ability to call his suit to him at a moment's notice, or to throw it on someone else (like Pepper to get her out of the way of debris). But anyway, the idea of his anxiety attacks is an extremely interesting one. It's easy to forget, given the scale of the movies and the fact that the audience has seen all the Marvel movies and is no stranger to Thor nor to sci-fi as a whole, that Tony Stark wouldn't be comfortable with these things appearing in his world. The anxiety attacks fit well with the character and the problems behind them are real ones that are fascinating to unravel. Then, halfway through the movie, the plot drops out to make way for action scenes.

I'll say again, the action is good if a bit dragged out, but when you set up your main character to have a hugely interesting new flaw then kill it with no resolution and no apparent memory that it was a problem (except for a throwaway line later about how he's sleeping better), you've got a problem in your storytelling. Tony's anxiety attacks, which had played a major role in the first half of the movie, all but disappear when he's told by supporting character Harley Keener (Ty Simpkins), a precocious child with a scientific mind and no father, to go build something. Did...did that solve the problem? Because, from Tony's own testimony and as evidenced by all of the Iron Man suits, he's been building things. Then the anxiety never reappears because we have action scenes to get to. So we take a really interesting and new idea of a character who has always been in control and has understood what he's been doing losing a grip on that control and that reality before completely forgetting we did that and watching Tony and his army of Iron Men attacking an army of Extremis powered soldiers (quick side note: Extremis isn't particularly well-explained either. It "rewires" DNA for the next step in evolution and that MIGHT mean that it makes people able to heal, makes them run faster, makes them stronger, makes them hot to the touch, and so on. But all of that is shown, not told, so who knows what this thing really does?) while trying to save the love interest only to find the love interest saving him. TWIST.

I love Marvel movies. I think that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been unprecedented in its boldness and its willingness to tie together this huge web of movies and characters, despite legal flaws like "you can't use Spider-Man or mutants." I think The Avengers was a pretty near perfect film for what it set out to do and I've been impressed by the depth of story and character each film has put forth when it would have been so easy to just make a popcorn flick. I think Iron Man 3 is a popcorn flick. It's got good action, quippy characters that we know and love, and a rather undefinable antagonist and plot. I think it's the weakest entry from Marvel since Iron Man set the whole universe in motion. On the plus side, the Iron Man franchise as a whole never reached Spider-Man 3 or X-Men the Last Stand depths. The movie is still totally watchable and never gets painful to watch. I like the introduction of both AIM and Roxxon to the MCU. Hopefully it's not a sign so early on into Marvel's Phase II that the direction from here on out is going to be coasting. I still have high hopes for Thor: The Dark World and remarkably high hopes for Captain America: Winter Soldier. For the first time seeing a new Marvel movie though, I can honestly say I'm not dying to see Iron Man 3 again.

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)

Cinematic Universe

Say what you will about superhero movies and cheesy action polluting the CINEMA, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a wonder to behold. Even if you aren't a comic fan (not to discourage readers, but WHY are you on this blog?), you have to understand that what Marvel Studios has done is kind of revolutionary. That might not be revolutionary in a good way, time will tell. But to have taken distinctly different franchises from an incredibly distinctly different medium and tied them all fluidly together is very new. No, of course it's not new to make a series, 1, 2, 3, 4. It's new to make a series like this where the movies don't directly tie to each other until they do.

Matthew Ferguson's box art for the Avengers. Really
awesome.

There are a lot of things I really like about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Universe 199999. I don't know why they couldn't just do a three digit universe like the 616 or something more natural. Typing 616 is WAY easier than saying the main Marvel Universe but typing 199999 seems WAY harder somehow) and only a handful of things I don't like. Are there some lesser entries? Sure. Do I worry that they'll run out of ideas? You bet. Have they characterized the stars as both accurate to the comics and free enough to enter different plots? Absolutely. As I've said several times, I hate seeing Captain America as uber-patriot, beat down all the commies, I've loved America before you were even born kind of guy, which media outside of comics (aside from the 1950s Cap) tends to shift towards. The most encouraging thing for me about the Marvel Universe to that point was Chris Evans' Captain America. He is everything that I want him to be. It's perfect. Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man both reflects and shapes Tony of today. Chris Hemsworth's Thor is accurate in power and humility and dear lord he is huge. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow and Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye, while so far only seen through wider lenses, both seem pretty nicely tuned.

BUT EVEN THAT is not the most brilliant thing to me. Good characterization is obviously very important but it only required someone along the line to read a comic book or two to understand the characters. The most brilliant thing to me is the peppering in of other characters in the movies. Pepperpottsering in of other characters. Because...because Pepper Potts has been... Anyway, the first Iron Man movie saw James Rhodes and Pepper and Happy Hogan throughout the movie, which was kind of cool but all are very strictly relegated to Iron Man's universe so none were a stretch. They're a supporting cast, no matter what any might have gone on to do in the rest of the 616. It was the introduction of Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury that really changed the game. Suddenly the whole universe was open. Iron Man 2 introduced Black Widow, who has acted as an Iron Man supporting cast character but is WAY bigger to the extended universe than, say, Rhodes or Pepper. Thor sort of introduced Hawkeye but didn't throw in too much else (a whole ton of not-so-subtle winks) aside from the Asgard crew and Cap couldn't really go beyond people in World War II. They still threw in a young Howard Stark as a somewhat important character. Avengers, then, was the culmination of everything and it was amazing. The movie was good, it was fun, we got to see Cap and Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk on the big screen exactly the way we all would have wanted to see them, the way none of us could have dreamed we'd get to.

So now we enter Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and everything's coming up Milhouse. Iron Man 3 is going to stick mostly to the Iron Man corner of the world but we could certainly see a couple introductions here or there (fingers crossed for Carol Danvers). Thor 2 sounds like it'll likely still keeping itself to the other eight realms that aren't Midgard (though Christopher Eccleston will also be there so THAT's neat). CAP, though, CAP 2 is going to be HUGE. We're likely going to see an extension of Black Widow's role, the introduction of the Falcon, and the Winter Soldier. I can't say how excited I am for this movie so I won't try here. What I will say is that this sprinkling in of characters here and there, few enough so as not to overwhelm but more than enough to create a bigger universe, is  being handled PERFECTLY. It's reason enough to be excited by all this, even if you're not really a comic fan. If you're a fan of movies and of stories and of characters, this universe should excite you. This doesn't even get INTO Guardians of the Galaxy, which could easily incorporate others like Nova or whoever else (not Silver Surfer, Fox has the rights to that guy). It's a tragedy they don't have the rights to the X-Men or to Spider-Man because this universe would have even THAT much more depth. So if you take anything away from this post, take away the fact that Sony should give back Spider-Man and that Fox should give back X-Men, or at least that they should all work out some kind of deal where Marvel gets to borrow them. Guys, I'm all for that. For the good of the art.