With the San Diego Comic Con whetting the appetite for geeks and freaks all over the world, Lewis Swift runs down the top 5 moments from this years convention.
5) The first picture from Cowboys and Aliens!
Whilst Scott Mitchell Rosenberg’s graphic novel series retains a relatively cult status for now, chances are, when the film adaptation is released this time next year copies of the genre bending romp will be flying off the shelves. The man in charge of further lining Rosenberg’s pockets is none other than John Favreau, the man who made Iron Man into a phenomenon. Whilst initially rumoured to be another project for The Fav and his go to guy Robert Downey Jr, scheduling issues forced Fav to look further from home, finally settling on none other than Daniel Craig for the lead.
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Way back on the 9th if June it was widely reported that Michael Fassbender would be taking over the role of Erik Lensherr aka Magneto in the Michael Vaughn directed franchise prequel X-men: First Class. Much to my disappointment, only a few days later I read an article claiming that Fassbender had denied rumours linking him with Magneto and also a similar role in the forthcoming Spider-man reboot.
Then, yesterday I breathed a sigh of relief when Entertainment Weekly reported that Fassbender was all but guaranteed to follow/precede Ian McKellan into the X-men universe. As a fan of the X movies and of Fassbender you can see how this past week has been somewhat of a roller coaster for me.
The events of the past week got me to thinking. What is the real effect of twenty four hour casting speculation? Is it merely fan boys run amuck or does it have an almost viral impact on the entertainment industry, be it good or bad? If Inception director Chris Nolan is to be believed the whole thing can have a negative impact on the overall process.
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For a large portion of the twentieth century the Western Genre was king, making icons out of stars like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Then, in 1977 a little movie came along called Star Wars and all of a sudden Cowboys were no longer cool enough. Science fiction was the new box office bread winner and the Old West was once again condemned to the pages of history. Fitting then that it was in that the very same year, bit part, comic book anti hero, cowboy Jonah Hex was given his own self titled series.
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If, like me, you get far too over-excited about ‘event movies’ and, for example, spend days before a Star Wars release swinging a lightsaber from dawn til dusk or, quite fittingly for this review, run around your house singing “I am Owen Man! NA-NA-NA-NA-NANA! Owen Man!” then you’ll also know the crushing disappointment of huge expectations.
While a sleeper hit has, by definition, no expectations around it, a sequel has nothing but. When the first Iron Man hit the screens, despite it being a Marvel tentpole flick, the buzz was fairly minimal. After release it was one of the most hotly anticpated new franchises going. So how does the superhero sequel compare to its brethrin?
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With just eighteen days before the release of Iron Man 2 the seemingly traditional viral marketing campaign has hit the web with a vengeance. The theme of said campaign centres around ‘Stark Expo 2010’, glimpsed briefly in the previously released trailers. The more you explore the intricate and comprehensive mix of viral videos, interactive maps and endorsement tie-ins the more apparent it becomes that the makers of Iron Man 2 have approached the marketing with the same conscientious, attention to detail with which they seem to have made the films.
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Continuing our Kick-Ass week over here on www.thisfilmison.com, we got resident comic book lover/geek/obsessive (delete where applicable) Rob Lawton to start thinking about ‘superheroes’ without anysuper powers. Wandering into the light after a lab full of highly dangerous chemicals exploded all around him, here’s his results.
Thinking of non-super superheroes makes you wonder what classifies a ‘superhero’ exactly. I would say a definition of a superhero is a character possessing “extraordinary or superhuman powers” and dedicated to protecting the public. However, Google’s web definition page gets it a bit wrong saying “A superhero is a character in a cartoon or film who has special powers and fights against evil… Superheroes like Batman and Superman.” Find out why that’s wrong after the jump.
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If, like me, you spent your formative years crawling up and down your horizontal living room floor as if it was a vertical wall situated somewhere along the New York skyline then this is no doubt a subject about which you will have spent substantial hours pondering. If on the other hand you are only now discovering the somewhat delusional feelings of inadequacy that come with reading too many comic books then this article could be viewed as a type of careers advice.
The term Superhero tends to be banded around fairly liberally but it is actually, upon closer inspection, an all encompassing moniker which is often used indiscriminately to identify do-gooders of all shapes and sizes. In honour of Kick-Ass and its misguided protagonist, Dave Lizewski I will now chart five sure fire ways to garner some moral superiority of your own.
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Even the most infrequent cinema-goer cannot have failed to notice the spate of comic book adaptations that have taken over our screens over the past few years. Where once you had just Superman and Batman, a whole cannon of comic book heroes have made the transition from page to film reel over the last decade, the likes of Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Men of X, Spider and Iron, not to mention reboots of the afore-mentioned Superman and Batman.
Now, almost all comic book adaptations follow a set formula – namely, ordinary Joe/Peter/Bruce acquires/inherits superhero powers, faces an almost equally super-powered nemesis, deals with his inner demons, vanquishes said Nemesis and then returns the situation neatly to where it had begun to await the next adventure. Even the much-vaunted “The Dark Knight”, whilst exploring some more shadowed aspects of being a superhero, adheres to this formula.
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I saw Kick Ass last night (it was pretty damn awesome) and seeing how hard as nails a tween superhero girl is, and then looking at other women in superhero movies, I couldn’t help but think that these women are often there for reasons of attractiveness and to act as bait for the villains in these films; do we really need to see the damsel in distress still tied to the train tracks?
Unfortunately if these movies are to be believed, and we at thisfilmison always believe in movies, then the answer is yes.
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He looks like the long lost, curly haired, American brother of Daniel Radcliffe and Elijah Wood combined. He has the “Geek Chic” factor and comic book nerdiness that both Peter Parker and (the lesser known) Chuck AKA Charles Carmichael possess. No one has heard of him…until he dons the green scuba diving suit and becomes a superhero, and as the tagline says he can’t fly, but he could kick your ass.
In case you haven’t guessed I’m talking about the super hero movie Kick Ass, but even though I have put this film under this category don’t think that this is a run of the mill, nobody-geek-to-tough-good-guy film, there’s so much more to it than that! SO much more!
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