Shmee.Me

May 5, 2015May 5, 2015

The Suicide Squad Is Ready To Roll, But Who Will Make It Back Alive?

Well we finally got the big cast reveal for the Suicide Squad, and they look pretty good in my opinion. We won’t really know how they turned out until we see them on screen, but they are very close to their New 52 counter parts. They are as follows from left to right: Adam Beach rumored to be Slipknot (not the band), Jai Courtney as Captain Boomerang, Cara Delevingne as Enchantress, in front of Cara is Karen Fukuhara as Katana, back up to Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg, Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Will Smith as Deadshot, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Killer Croc, and last but not least Jay Hernandez as El Diablo (well maybe least, in the running with Slipknot anyway). Plus just for kicks here are Will Smith’s Deadshot and Jared Leto’s Joker in their full garb:

Now that we know the cast the fun part is to try and figure out who will die! This is the Suicide Squad after all, and if they are going to do the comics any justice at all at least three of these people will not make it out alive.

Poor El Diablo doesn’t stand a chance. He dies in every version of the comic book. He is as good as dead. Next up I am going with Katana. Sure she is not a villain, so you would think the heroes make it through, but you would be wrong. She is donezo. The last for sure one to go is Slipknot. Adam Beach is a great actor, but the fact we don’t even know if he is Slipknot, plus the fact I had to look up who Slipknot is, means he is dead in the first thirty minutes. My last prediction is that Rick Flagg will not make it. Again a hero, but the Suicide Squad belongs to Deadshot, so it can’t have two leaders. If Tom Hardy had still been in the movie, he would have lived. Now that it is Joel Kinnaman, Dead.

As for the rest of the cast, I am not sure Enchantress or Killer Croc can physically die, and Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, The Joker, and Harley Quinn are way to popular to kill off, especially in the first movie. We will see of course, but I am pretty sure they are all safe. I hope this movie is fun. Because even though the Suicide Squad Comic is dark and violent, it is always very funny too. So here is hoping!

April 30, 2015April 30, 2015

I Am Not Ready For The Bryan Singer X-Men Universe To Be Over!

So the current rumor is that Bryan Singer’s X-Men universe will be over after X-Men Apocalypse and Wolverine 3 (Working Title). I am not ready for that! The non-Singer X-Men movies (X-3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine) have been terrible! Now that he has been back the X-Men movies have been good again. Really Good! While I am excited to get at least two more movies out of the current X-Men story line, it will be really hard to let it go. It also leaves me wondering if that means the new Deadpool and Gambit movies will exist outside of the current continuity. It will be interesting to find out.

I just hope whoever’s hands the X-Men movie universe lands in are capable. I can’t make it through another Brett Ratner period! Though if Singer wants to come back to DC, I would love to see what he would do.

April 21, 2015

So Much TV!!!

Remember when we used to complain that there was nothing good on? Especially in the summer months? Well Netflix, On Demand, and the DVR have killed that. There is too much TV to watch. It used to be that in the summer time that TV was done, but now it is just heating up again. Game of Thrones and Orphan Black are back on the air. The last episodes of Mad Men started a few weeks ago. Community is going strong. There will not be the usual summer time lull until August, and that time will be used to catch up everything we have missed.

Pretty much I am using this as my excuse for not reviewing the start of Game of Thrones or Orphan Black, but I have watched them, and so should you. Honestly they have gotten to the point I am not sure how to review them without spoilers. They are good. You should watch them if you have time. Though I understand if you don’t because they are not on their own anymore, so it is hard to clear space for yet another show. I think I am going to have to ditch a few shows next year. We will see which ones I watch going forward, but I am guessing Gotham will not make the cut.

With all the good TV starting to get made, anything mediocre will get tossed. It is just the way it has to be. We are witnessing the end of broadcast television, and channel execs are trying everything to get that one last water-cooler hit, and we get to reap the bounty. They are striving for that one last reason to watch their channel over the hundreds of others. It is great. Once TV as we used to know it dies will it still be good? I am not sure, but I guess we will find out soon enough.

April 20, 2015April 20, 2015

What Can We Learn From the Batman V Superman Trailer?

Well about eight million trailers came out over the weekend, and they were all pretty good, but I am going to discuss the Batman V Superman trailer for a little bit. You can watch it again here to refresh your memory. It was a pretty nuts trailer, and it was a teaser in the truest sense. It showed a bunch of stuff without giving away any plot, or did it?

First off people have gone a little crazy for Superman. I mean look at the picture above. He is hanging out with The Warriors for some reason, and people keep kneeling down in front of him. He clearly has some fans. While they were showing people loving Superman, what people were saying about him was quite different. People are unsure of him, and they don’t trust him. The best line came from Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor, “Devils don’t come from Hell beneath us, they come from the sky.”

I am guessing Luthor’s little speech is for Batman. Batman doesn’t trust people with a lot of power (though he and Superman do become best friends), so Luthor is playing on Batman’s paranoia and letting Batman do all his heavy lifting. It is a good plan. They didn’t show it (they did show Superman working with the military though), but I am guessing Superman is getting similar speeches from the military about Batman. Except more along the lines of, “can we trust someone who works on their own without any oversight?” The military is big on oversight.

Finally we get the line that had twitter all a buzz. Batman’s quote, “Tell me, do you bleed?” I am glad Bruce spent some of his money on a voice modulator. That should save him quite a bit on throat lozenges. I am guessing after that they do what superheroes do best, they fight until they become friends. Which is the real question I have with this movie. How long is the fighting until they are friends going to take? Will it be like the first hour, and then they will figure out that they were duped. Then they will team up to take down Lex and tell the military to get their own hitman? That would leave an hour for the rest of the Justice League, or will that take two hours and the Justice League stuff will be like fifteen minutes. It is hard to say, but it will be a long ten months to find out.

April 2, 2015

Star Wars Versus Star Trek, Shmee’s Take!

io9.com recently had their Sci-Fi/Fantasy March Madness poll, and it came down to Star Wars versus Star Trek. It was a predictable final two, but one that was very hard for me to choose between. On the surface they appear to be similar: they take place in space, they have a multitude of alien species, and they both get in quite a few skirmishes, but they are in reality very different.

Star Wars is a mystic fantasy with a mysterious and powerful ancient religion, and no matter how far things progress, they will always stay the same. Humanity can’t get better than it is. There is no light without the dark. Star Trek on the other hand is totally Sci-Fi. Everything can be explained by science, and humanity is always getting better. Give humans more time, and they will make themselves in to better people.

Those are both interesting premises (one person broke it down between theocracy and communism, and he wasn’t far off), and I love to delve in to their worlds, but the fantasy element is what makes Star Wars end up winning this battle for me. It allows my imagination to run wild. Sure it is a bit pessimistic about human nature (so am I), but it gives me space ninjas with laser swords, and a hope that one day I will be able to turn off my light switch at night by just concentrating really hard. I guess I will always be thirteen.

That doesn’t mean the space exploration, and constant state of discovery that Star Trek provides is lost on me. It just doesn’t give my imagination the same sort of jump start that Star Wars does. I love both these franchises very much, but in the end if I had to pick one it would be Star Wars, prequels and all. I hope next year io9.com doesn’t force me to pick between DC and Marvel, because that would just be cruel.