The flashy advertisements, the curving of bullets and Angelina Jolie make it pretty difficult to remember that Wanted was originally based on a series of graphic novels by Mark Millar. From early reports (including a review from Cinematical), the adaptation is a loose one, so you might be surprised to hear that Millar actually felt it was an improvement on his work.
He posted his enthusiastic response on his official message board. (If you choose to click, be warned, the place abounds with spoilers.) "Even the biggest change -- the loom stuff in the middle Timur wrote -- works really well. I think the fate thing really made the character more empathetic as the 'killing for fun' stuff would have made him a little hateful. They kept all the best bits and junked my over-indulgences. So I feel very happy as it was a kind of perfected version that made it to the screen. Could not be happier."
Millar also added that he's been approached by Universal about concocting a sequel. "They've asked me how I can develop some of the other stuff from the book into the sequel. We'll see what box office is like at the weekend, but everyone knows this is going to make a LOT of dough. Wall·E permitting." (He actually has a few choice words for the hapless robot, who really shouldn't be held accountable for his release date.)
It is the wee hours of the morning here in the Colorado Rockies -- and when they said the teaser trailer was to debut Friday, they weren't kidding. They wanted you all to wake up to it. How nice of them!
It is up courtesy of Yahoo! Movies (along with a bunch of new photos), so unfortunately we can't embed it. While it looks better than I expected it would, there isn't much to inspire a lot of excitement for me. I thought the one thing this movie would have in its favor was a new location. But despite being located in China, it manages to boast as many desert battles as the previous two installments. Now, I know there are deserts in China, but that isn't exactly the geography the country is most famous for. Wouldn't you take advantage of the beautiful mountains and bamboo forests? Unless, of course, you were banking on using those dissolving sand effects again, already evident on the poster. (They do venture into the Himalayas at some point from the looks of things. Dissolving snow effects?)
Still, it looks like there are some impressive action sequences. Those terracotta soldiers have always given me the creeps, so bonus points for managing to play on one of my archeological fears. And its nice to see Brendan Fraser again -- like Johnny Depp, he must have a portrait of himself aging in an attic somewhere. His movie son looks older than he does.
The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor will be released August 1st. What do you think -- a good way to spend the end of the summer, or are you just going to buy another ticket to Indiana Jones?
(In addition to the trailer, Universal released a slew of new Mummy images. Check those out in the gallery below.)
Isn't it pretty? I'm still alarmed by the squareness of Obi-Wan's beard though, even the Clone Trooper helmets have more softness. The poster has been released to herald the debut of the trailer, which will air May 8th simultaneously on Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, CNN and Boomerang. It will air at 7:58 in all U.S. time zones. According to the official Star Wars site (where the poster can be purchased and press release can be found), Amidala will be on the front lines alongside Anakin and Obi Wan, and we'll also be introduced to Anakin's Padawan, Ahsoka. Does it surprise anyone else they let him have a Padawan? Way to go, Jedi Academy.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes to the big screen on August 15th, with the premiere of Cartoon Network's weekly series debuting sometime after. With all the big summer movies this year, it's really hard to remember this is coming out too. What a geeky year.
Above: Aaron Eckhart as the villain Two Face in a very brief appearance during the latest trailer for The Dark Knight.
Fresh on the heels of the new trailer comes a Los Angeles Times interview with Aaron Eckhart. Possible spoilers abound -- in fact, I think there is a fairly huge one in there that I cannot believe slipped by. And people rag on us for being spoil sports! So, in order to preserve your innocence (I'm upset that mine is now gone), I shall copy the best quotes here.
Eckhart addressed the fact that the world has not been given a glimpse of his scarred district attorney, and promised that whatever fans have cooked up in their brains is nothing like what we're going to see. "That's right, people don't really know yet. I can tell you that, basically, when you look at Two-Face, you should get sick to your stomach. Being the guy under all that, well, that was a lot of fun for me. It's like you would feel if you met someone whose face had pretty much been ripped off or burned off with acid. I can't talk about it beyond that because I don't want to give away too much of the plans by Chris. There are fans on the Internet who have done artist's versions of what they think it will look like, and I can tell you this: They're thinking small; Chris is going way farther than people think."
Most of us haven't even seen Iron Man yet (though it's possibly just me -- everyone on my MySpace and Facebook is horrified I haven't, and it wasn't even midnight in my time zone), and already they're planning the sequel. Iron ManCinematical reviews are here and here.
Brad Grey, head honcho over at Paramount, told Entertainment Tonight that if all went as hoped with the first movie, the sequel will come out this very week in 2010. (I just saw into the future ... and I'm pretty much typing this same post with the third installment in 2012.) Since it doesn't look like Iron Man is going to be a disaster at the box office, I think it's safe to say you can start counting down to 2010.
Hopefully, as much care and attention will be lavished on the sequel -- again, I haven't seen it yet, but all appearances and reviews suggest that they really knocked it out of the park. It would be awesome if it surpassed X2: X-Men United, which I think is the best superhero sequel yet. (Though maybe your opinion leans more towards Spider-Man 2.)
Now would be a good time for you well-read Iron Man fans to jump in with where you want the sequel to go. (Or, if you're feeling mean, you can also start screaming "sell out!" or something along those lines.) I wish I could throw in a story suggestion here, but I can't ... I'm still waiting to see it! You should feel really bad for me.
It's here, in glorious Quicktime, and not a moment too soon for a June movie. Head over to Apple to watch it. This trailer is a vast improvement on the first, shades of the television show abounding everywhere. And this is definitely going to be much more action packed than Ang Lee's version. Erik Davis was right on the money in his NYCC report -- read his take on the trailer here.
I can't help but feel it was too long though -- between the two trailers, I feel like I've seen the whole movie, barring 18 minutes of that purported 20 minute fight between Abomination and Hulk. The encounter (pictured above) between Tim Roth and the Hulk is absolutely priceless, though. I won't say what it is and spoil it -- but I can't say I haven't wanted to do the same to a few of Roth's nastier characters.
An alternate version of the new trailer for The Dark Knighthas been whispered about online for two days now, but I hadn't seen a decent bootleg version with my very own eyes. At last, one was put up on YouTube -- check it out above. As you probably remember, during that (patently unfair) viral campaign that saw about three hundred lucky fans invited to theatres all over the planet, from Seattle to London, one lucky fan in each group got a film reel of the trailer to keep. Everyone assumed it was just a standard copy of the thing.
Wrong. It turns out this version has been edited by the Joker -- lots of black-eyed smiley faces and "HA HAs." I haven't watched the whole thing because, again, I want to see the new trailer relatively unspoilt, but it is pretty funny. Especially the JUMP! he scrawls next to Batman.
It's good to see the Joker running around the Internet again; I'm going to miss the crazy guy come July 18th. It's been fun. I rather wish they would release this trailer into theatres, though, if only to gauge the audience reaction! And why stop there -- as a final gag, the Joker ought to mess around with all those midnight showing reels.
In the last week, it feels like Iron Man has suddenly gone mainstream. It went from being "another one of them geek movies" to a movie everyone is lining up for. Even my mom is interested, and I can never interest her in anything that originated from a comic book.
But, while this could be the movie that crumbles the walls between geekdom and the ordinary world, there are still going to be many people walking in and out of that theatre confused about all things Tony Stark. Or they will be bitten by the bug, and suddenly desire a stack of graphic novels and comic books beside their bed.
To help, our good friends over at ComicMix have put together a helpful reading list of essential Iron Man stories. I'm delighted to see that Armor Wars (the crazy comic story my friend Matt desires to see onscreen) made the cut . So did another contender for that list, Doomquest, which sees Tony Stark and Doctor Doom hurled into Arthurian England. it's not just essential reading for the new Iron Man movie -- it is essential reading for our Cinematical content too!
I don't know if you can manage to track all of these down before Iron Man opens on Friday -- but it does give you some handy reading for the weekend. And remember to check out their essential Batman reading list before The Dark Knight.
We wanted a trailer, not another poster! Oh well. It is the new banner advertisement for The Dark Knight -- and drat the shape, I had to shrink it ridiculously small to fit our width. You can see a full-sized one over here, courtesy of JoBlo.
Batman is just on a path of destruction in the poster art -- flaming buildings, shattered windows. The geek in me is wondering if this poster is actually a prequel to this one -- and that's how he made the flaming bat. I know, I really should get out more.
Sunday will be here before we know it. We'll have something new to talk about other than posters and complaining that we didn't make it to a Joker drop fast enough.
The Joker launched his latest viral campaign -- and to be honest, I think it was a little lackluster. Nothing has approached the Internet-wide madness of the bowling ball hunt, and Jim Gordon didn't see fit to contact many of us for the next one.
Probably the most disappointing aspect of it was that despite the online community participating wholeheartedly, none of us got the trailer payoff. Roughly 300 people in the targeted cities were invited into movie theatres to watch the trailer on the big screen. The rest of us have to wait until Sunday, when it will premiere online.
I guess this is what comes of throwing our admiration behind a villain. He never looks out for you in the end! Maybe I'll sell him out to Jim Gordon after all!
At least you all have something to mark on your calenders this weekend. Inevitably though, a bootleg has appeared online. It is bad quality and may be gone by the time you read this, but it's available here. I'm not embedding it because Warner Bros will inevitably ask us to take it down, and I want to see this in the official Quicktime quality. Don't you?
Wow, that Hulk issue of Empire is just chockablock full of eye candy, isn't it? Not only is it full of the big green guy, but there's new pictures from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. You can see a few more over on Empire Online, a convincing sell for you to check out the whole feature. I am deeply unsettled by this glimpse of Obi Wan Kenobi -- I can't put my finger on why. He looks kind of like a Lego.
Additionally, MTV Movies snagged a cool update on the Star Wars live-action television series. Steve Sansweet told them that the series will indeed "involve some characters we know" and be "of epic scale." More promising, though, is that the show will delve into the "greasy, seamy underbelly of Star Wars." That just sounds incredibly cool. In my youth, I was really into all those spin-off Star Wars novels and it was always great fun when Han Solo, Leia and Luke found themselves having to venture into the unsavory underworld. It was always so much more interesting than Luke recruiting young Jedis. (Check out Erik's Star Wars report from NY Comic Con.)
LucasFilm is hoping to get the series underway by next year, and debut it in 2010. And Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes to theatres August 15, 2008. It's so weird to have Indy and Star Wars (even if it's animated) released in the same summer, isn't it?
Davis has just reported in from The Incredible Hulk panel, where the new trailer played to a pretty impressed audience. Davis says it "looks awesome" and will be writing a detailed description of it later tonight. The rest of us will have to wait until it premieres in front of Iron Man.
Lou Ferrigno and Tim Roth were both in attendance -- and Ferrigno claimed he was the voice of the new big-screen Hulk, but it wasn't clear if he was joking or not. If that's true, the television homage has stopped being a homage -- it's a remake! But hey, you won't hear us complaining, the TV show was pretty awesome. On Ferrigno's part, it's said to be an actual part, not a cameo and it's "funny."
The panel audience got a special treat that we in theatres (most likely) won't -- after the trailer, they showed the much-discussed cameo that Tony Stark makes in Hulk. Stark is sitting with General 'Thunderbolt' Ross in a bar -- and Ross is completely drunk. Stark says "I hear you've got an unusual problem." "You should talk," replies Ross. Stark then shoots back, all smooth: "You should listen."
Additionally, Empire has two new stills from Hulk out -- one is posted above to provide a fresh illustration to some fun news. I hope they don't get mad at me for using it. Hey, buy the special Hulk issue when it hits stands! 3-D cover.
UPDATE: Erik here -- new Dark Knight trailer just premiered to a thunderous applause. The trailer will be available "in about two weeks" and from what I gather it will come via the viral marketing campaign (we were told to hunt it down from here). Trailer looks great -- lots of Joker dialogue, lot more of Harvey Dent and a possible prelim glimpse at Dent's transformation into Two Face -- though we do not see Two Face in the trailer. Dent does have one awesome line in the trailer; he says, "You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain." Once again, we were told everyone will see the trailer in about two weeks from now. The Dark Knight arrives in theaters on July 18.
I think this photo is officially the funniest still I have seen from a movie, ever. IESB.net was sent four photos from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skullfrom an unknown source. They are quite grainy, so I bet they were scanned in from some kind of companion book.
There's a very classic and iconic one of Indy cracking his bullwhip -- and I very nearly posted it, but we've seen that before. What we've never seen is a Russian Cate Blanchett getting sucker punched ... by Shia LaBeouf! It's like the entire Cold War boiled down to one single image -- you're going down, Communism! But if Irina Spalko is the uber-villain Lucas and Spielberg say she is, there's no way she's going to take that from Mutt Williams. (Then again, if Rocky IV taught us anything, it's that Russians can be beaten by much weaker opponents.) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (sucker) punches its way into theaters on May 22.
After so many headlines across the Internet screaming "New X-Files Photo!" and finding it to be the same broody shot of Mulder and Scully at a desk, it came as a real surprise to find an actual new photo. This comes by way of DVD Forum, who always seem to get their hands on tasty new images (check out a second image after the jump).
This photo is quite intriguing -- ShockTillYouDrop did a set visit where a religious element was mentioned, but with so much smoke and mirrors, it was difficult for them to take anything at face value. Unless Scully is working at a Catholic hospital (and that is a real possibility with her background), then the stained glass back there would back up such a storyline. And it fits with that new I Want to Believe title, doesn't it?
Additionally, our friends at XFilesNews share with us a brand new plot summary coming via the back cover blurb of the novel for the film. To avoid spoilers, we've posted it after the jump. Let us know what you think. Sounds creeeepy ...
The flashy advertisements, the curving of bullets and Angelina Jolie make it pretty difficult to remember that Wanted was originally based on a series of graphic novels by Mark Millar. From early reports (including a review from Cinematical), the adaptation is a loose one, so you might be surprised to hear that Millar actually felt it was an improvement on his work. 
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Most of us haven't even seen 
The Joker launched his latest viral campaign -- and to be honest, I think it was a little lackluster. Nothing has approached the Internet-wide madness of the bowling ball hunt, and Jim Gordon didn't see fit to contact many of us for the next one.
