Superheroes!


‘Daredevil’ Disney+ Series Gets Title, Release Date​

The Man Without Fear is coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Daredevil: Born Again” was announced at Marvel’s San Diego Comic Con panel by Kevin Feige. It’s set to release in Spring 2024 with an 18-episode season.

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Eighteen episodes is a big shift, but an appreciated one... depending on whether they'll make the same mistakes as the current series.
 
I see everyone gushing about that but to me it was entirely incoherent. Not a single part of it made sense.
 

I see everyone gushing about that but to me it was entirely incoherent. Not a single part of it made sense.
It does throw a lot at you while trying not to tell you very much. It's not a great trailer, but I'm okay with it erring on the side of not giving away too much.
It's not surprising to see the trailer dedicate so much time to the death of Chadwick Boseman. I hope the film does not.
Lupita Nyongo with long hair. :love:
I don't see how lunging at Namor ends well for M'Baku.
It looks like they did an okay job with Namor's outfit, considering he's one of the more silly-looking characters in the comics. It looks like Atlantis is going to have a pre-Columbian, MesoAmerican vibe in the design, like an offshoot of the Toltecs, Aztecs & Mayans.
I'm completely unfamiliar with Tenoch Huerta, but I'd be a fool to not trust the MCU's casting decisions, by now.
I assume that's Shuri at the end, in a new Black Panther suit.
 

‘Daredevil’ Disney+ Series Gets Title, Release Date​

The Man Without Fear is coming back to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Daredevil: Born Again” was announced at Marvel’s San Diego Comic Con panel by Kevin Feige. It’s set to release in Spring 2024 with an 18-episode season.

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Eighteen episodes is a big shift, but an appreciated one... depending on whether they'll make the same mistakes as the current series.
Of course "Born Again" is a meta subtitle, along the lines of Spider-Man: Homecoming (because Spidey was "coming home" to the MCU), but someone reminded me that the 1986 Daredevil: Born Again story by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli was the basis for season 3 of the Netflix series. In this case, "Born Again" clearly refers to a soft reboot and may not have anything to do with the story. I wouldn't be upset if they came up with a different title, to avoid reference to the '86 Miller comic. "Reborn"? "Rediscovered"? Eh, maybe they can workshop it, they have some time. It was also pointed out on more than one website that Daredevil has a few appearances lined up even before the reboot of his series. She-Hulk, Echo, and the Spider-Man animated show. It remains to be seen whether these are anything more than cameos.

As for the 18 episodes... yeah... I don't remember thinking Daredevil had a lot of bagginess in its 13-episode seasons (the episode where he's trapped in the building with Vladimir stands out to me), but on the whole, it felt like those Netflix series were handed an order for 13 and then tried to fill it. If this is 18 episodes because they already have a script in its close-to-final draft and it needs 18, then fine. The last four MCU series have all felt constrained with only 6 episodes. Someone on a podcast wondered if they might be using this Daredevil series to bring in other heroes and give them some real screen time. That might be okay. Jessica Jones featured Luke Cage in the first season and Daredevil featured The Punisher in its second season, and those both worked nicely. That's pure speculation, though, and I don't know which characters would be good candidates for strong supporting roles (the other Netflix characters, I suppose - I thought Charlie Cox and Krysten Ritter had some nice moments in The Defenders, and their characters are friends in the comics).
 
Nerding out on the Batman franchise, circa 1993, following Burton's Batman Returns:

I sort of assume that Warner Bros was aiming to bring Batman back to something like the 1960s Adam West series when they did Batman Forever (1995). Even if it had worked out better, that wouldn't have been my choice. If I was in charge of Warner Bros in the early '90s and had to replace Tim Burton, I'm not sure who I'd have wanted. Schumacher wasn't my pick back then, and obviously still wouldn't be, in retrospect. What was great about Tim Burton was his eye for weird fantasy. I'm not sure who you could get, back then, to fill those shoes. The name that leaps to my mind is Sam Raimi. He'd just done Darkman, and of course several years later, he hit a pair of homeruns ("scored a brace", for you footy fans) with the first two Spider-Man movies (we wouldn't have known that in 1993-94, but still). I could see Raimi doing a Batman film in the early '90s with one of Batman's monstrous villains - Clayface; Man-Bat; Killer Croc. Imagine Batman chasing & fighting Solomon Grundy through Gotham's sewers in a Sam Raimi movie. (Who were the popular pro wrestlers back then? I think this would have been after Roddy Piper and Jesse Ventura, but before The Rock and Dave Bautista. The Undertaker? Could he have played Solomon Grundy in a Sam Raimi Batman movie?) Anyway, it practically films itself. I bet Raimi could also have done something *ahem* cool with Mister Freeze. Not Arnold Swarzenegger, though.

There's also Paul Verhoeven, who had done Robocop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct by that time. I don't think he had the weird eye that Burton and Raimi had, but he was certainly familiar with science fiction, broadly speaking. But I might have enjoyed seeing Michelle Pfeiffer do a solo Catwoman movie with Verhoeven, ca. 1995. :mischief:

All that said, I might have asked Richard Donner if he wanted to take a crack at Batman. He had just done the first three Lethal Weapon movies, and the tone and visuals of those don't immediately make me think "Batman", but he did Superman and most of Superman II years earlier. And having been a fan of the comics, I would have had an eye on putting those two characters together in what everyone recognizes now as a "shared universe" - I might have asked Donner to do World's Finest. This would have been just before Christopher Reeve's horse-riding accident. I don't know if Reeve or Michael Keaton would have wanted to do another Superman/Batman movie, but maybe if Donner was involved..? Donner's departure was when that series of Superman movies went off the rails (and some would say that no one has yet recaptured what Donner & Reeve were able to do with that character).
 
On his non-nerd podcast with Rachel Lindsay, Van Lathan articulated his feelings on why T'Challa ought to be recast, and not simply replaced as Black Panther by another character. I can't repeat everything he said here, but basically it boils down to the fact that so many other (super-)heroic characters are recast again and again over the years. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, James Bond, Doctor Who, Daredevil, Wonder Woman, Catwoman. They've all been played by multiple actors over the years, for lots of different reasons. We could keep going, but surely you see the pattern by now. He thinks T'Challa should remain a part of the MCU, and I agree with him.

What Lathan didn't address on that particular podcast, although I'm sure he must have thought about it, is that Marvel is clearly setting up the MCU to bring characters in by way of the Multiverse. The X-Men and the Fantastic Four are obvious candidates, especially because those characters would seem to work the best if they've been around a while, and aren't just all-new superheroes, like Ms. Marvel and Ironheart. The Multiverse creates an obvious opening to bring those characters into continuity in a way that says they were there the whole time. You could also recast existing MCU characters, if you wanted to. I don't want a new Tony Stark or a new Steve Rogers - I think bringing those characters back would compromise their stories* - but I wouldn't mind a new T'Challa. I think I dropped John Boyega's name a few pages back. (I'm on the fence about a new Natasha. If she was going to be played by Scarlett Johansson, I could be convinced. If Johansson doesn't want to do it, then I would say leave Natasha be.)


* With one exception: Seeing the adventures of Steve and Peggy in the late '40s-early '50s would be fun, but only if Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell wanted to do it.

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Some bits from the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer that I didn't catch until they were pointed out to me. Images below. I suppose close scrutiny of these shots could count as spoilers of the film, if you really want to go in ice-cold.
Spoiler :
I'm told the woman in brown is Dominique Thorne, who's playing Riri Williams, aka Ironheart. I'm not familiar with Ironheart (or with Thorne), but I think in the comics she was a protege of Tony Stark. Obviously, that can't happen in the MCU now, but connecting her with Shuri may be even better. Someone reminded me that, at the end of Black Panther, Shuri was talking about some kind of STEM grants for the African diaspora, as part of Wakanda's outreach to the world. Riri seems tailor-made to be Shuri's first "Wakandan Genius Grant" recipient, without changing the character much at all.



Here she's hammering out the heart-shaped logo for her armor, in a cave, a scene that's clearly an homage to Tony building his first suit.





I'm ashamed to say I didn't immediately recognize the Mass. Ave. bridge that connects Boston and Cambridge. The taller building on the right of the image, with the orb on top, is the campus of M.I.T.



One website postulates that this is Namora and Attuma, which I think is solid guesswork, and again they appear to be on the Mass. Ave. bridge. Someone with a sharper eye than myself noted that Namora's headdress isn't made of feathers, those are the spines of a lionfish. Attuma appears to be wearing a helmet carved from the skull of a hammerhead shark. And of course the Atlanteans all appear to be wearing respirators. That much, at least, I noticed on my own. :lol: I think we already knew that Riri Williams was going to be an M.I.T. student, and the Atlanteans here appear to be spoiling for a fight. Are they coming after Riri, for some reason?

 
So, I finally saw Multiverse of Madness at the weekend. My response is mostly "meh".

Spoiler for my thoughts :
Many of Wanda's fight scenes suffer from the same problem as Superman - a boring, indestructible hero, yet she's the antagonist! The scenes which didn't involve her murdering everything were much better for it, and I particularly enjoyed Strange's and America's interactions, but for the first chunk of the film, I realised I actively wasn't enjoying it.

America wearing a Progress Pride badge on her jacket all film (possibly a nod to her having two mothers) was a nice touch, though. I also went into the film almost totally unspoiled, so seeing Patrick Stewart as the 90s' animated Professor X, complete with brief musical sting, was a great moment.
 
I think Wanda is anything but boring, but I do agree that she's maybe a little O.P. :lol:
 
Wanda's definitely not boring, no, but the Scarlet Witch on the other hand is nigh indestructible and that's not even her power!
 
So Disney is producing Moon Knight s2 and Eternals 2? And Chloe Zhao is coming back?

I really don't know what is going on in this world. :confused:
 

Marvel’s Kevin Feige and James Gunn React to ‘Batgirl’ Controversy​


Some major Hollywood talents are expressing sympathy over the shelved DC Films project

August 5, 2022 10:03am


Co-director Adil El Arbi revealed on Instagram that Marvel chief Kevin Feige, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and Baby Driver director Edgar Wright are among those who have reached out about the $90 million project, which was shockingly shelved by Warner Bros. as a tax write-down after being filmed.


El Arbi quoted Feige’s email to himself and co-director Bilall Fallah: “My friends, I had to reach out and let you know we are all thinking about you both. Because of the wonderful news about the wedding (congrats!) and the disappointing news about Batgirl. Very proud of you guys and all the amazing work you do and particularly Ms. Marvel of course! Can’t wait to see what is next for you. Hope to see you soon.
Arbi added: “Thanks for all the messages of support all over the world. Shoutout directors Edgar Wright and James Gunn, your kind words and experience mean a lot and help us through this difficult period #batgirlforlife.”


The directors helmed two episodes of Ms. Marvel for Feige. Wright helped develop Ant-Man for Marvel before exiting, while Gunn has worked both sides of the comic-book aisle, helming DC’s The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker along with Marvel’s Guardians franchise.


On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav defended his decision to vault the project, which stars Leslie Grace. He suggested the movie wasn’t good enough for a theatrical release yet also too costly for the HBO Max streaming service and that, financially, Batgirl made the most sense as a write-down. “We’re not going to launch a movie until it’s ready,” Zaslav told investors during an earnings call. “We’re not going to launch a movie to make a quarter, and we’re not going to put a movie out unless we believe in it.”


Batgirl did an audience test screening where it scored in the low 60s, sources previously told The Hollywood Reporter — not stellar, but still far from a number that would typically result in a film not being released at all.


Zaslav also stated the company is implementing a Marvel-like 10-year plan to grow DC into a stronger brand. “You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman — these are brands that are known everywhere in the world,” Zaslav said. “We have done a reset. We’ve restructured the business where we are going to focus, where there is going to be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC. We believe we can build a much more sustainable business. … We’re going to focus on quality. DC is something that we think we could make better, and we’re focused on it now.”


On Friday morning, The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported that DC Films president Walter Hamada has come on the verge of exiting the studio in the wake of the Batgirl decision, but has agreed to stay at his post at least until the Oct. 21 release of Black Adam.
 

Marvel’s Kevin Feige and James Gunn React to ‘Batgirl’ Controversy​


Some major Hollywood talents are expressing sympathy over the shelved DC Films project
I wasn't particularly intrigued by this Batgirl movie anyway - I wasn't even curious to watch it until I saw the first episode of Ms. Marvel, which was directed by the same guys - but I am very intrigued about the bigger picture, about what and where Warner Bros is doing and going. It looks like Black Adam and Shazam will be released as planned. They already had a problem on their hands with The Flash, even before this new guy took over. I think Ezra Miller just got in trouble again, yesterday or the day before. While doom-scrolling on the way to work this morning, I saw myriad "insider reports" and speculation about the future of the various DC projects. I saw one quote on a site that I thought looked reputable that they want to make the DCEU more like the MCU, but it didn't say in what way, or what that meant. Could be fun. Could be a trainwreck. Could be a fun trainwreck.
 
I saw one quote on a site that I thought looked reputable that they want to make the DCEU more like the MCU, but it didn't say in what way, or what that meant. Could be fun. Could be a trainwreck. Could be a fun trainwreck.
Well, it can't be worse than what it's been thus far.
 
Well, it can't be worse than what it's been thus far.
Oh, sure it could. :lol:

Seriously, though, I liked The Suicide Squad, Aquaman, and Shazam well enough. I thought those were on par with the middlin' MCU stuff, like Ant-Man or Age of Ultron. Wonder Woman and Man of Steel had a lot going for them, but I felt they were undermined by a fatal flaw, so I couldn't quite say that I liked them, in the final analysis. They were 'almost there.' Sadly, WW84 was a big backwards step. I had hopes that Patty Jenkins might learn from the mistakes made in first one, but oh well. Also, I think Zack Snyder is just not a filmmaker I like. Letting him move on to other things - and if they can get away from the tone and attitude he established - might improve the DCEU all by itself. I'm cautiously optimistic for Black Adam and Shazam: Fury of the Gods. (Full disclosure: I was a fan of the Justice Society when I was a kid, so if Black Adam is successful enough to give those characters the obvious spinoff, I'll consider that a win.)
 
Fan-made fake trailer for an MCU Fantastic Four. Not bad. I actually like the idea of Vin Deisel as Ben Grimm. I think his voice could work. Remember, he was the voice of The Iron Giant, all those years ago. I don't think I put that together until long after I saw the movie. Of course, he also does Groot, and I'm normally against doubling-up on casting an actor in the same "universe" of films, but because it's just voice-acting, I think I'd be okay with it, in this case. And Deisel would be a decent choice to play Ben before his transformation.


Not quite as good as that Green Lantern fake trailer from years ago, which I think is still the best fan-made fake trailer I've seen.


Not superheroes, but this trailer for When Harry Met Sally... that's been reedited to make it look like a late '80s/early '90s-style stalker thriller is another of my favorites. What's awesome about this one is that it doesn't use any footage from anything else. It adds some music, but the scenes here are all from the real movie, re-cut to be out of context and out of sequence. It's kinda brilliant.


EDIT: F*** me, The Iron Giant was 23 years ago. I was thinking it was, like, 12 years ago.
 
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