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!"
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)
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