Category: Rant

Posted on

Star Wars: Episode VII Has A Cast!

Star-Wars-Episode-VII-cast

Just is case you were somewhere that didn’t have the internet yesterday, Disney and Lucas Film announced the principle cast for Star Wars: Episode VII.  Pretty much it is the cast from the original trilogy: Harrison Ford (Han Solo), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), and Kenny Baker (R2-D2).  Then a bunch of new young kids, plus Andy Serkis, and Max von Sydow.

So the new kids are probably playing the children of Han and Leia, their friends, and the guy from Girls is probably an evil apprentice of some sort.  Max von Sydow is no doubt the bad guy because if he isn’t they have the world’s worst casting director.  This kind of leaves the amazing Andy Serkis as the wild card.  I am sure he will be an animated alien of some sort, but whether his is good or bad is anyone’s guess.  I am just happy he is in it because he makes everything better!  The only real surprise is that Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian) wasn’t in the line up.  How can you have a Han without a Lando?  I am hoping that he shows up at some point to cheat Han out of the Falcon one more time.

Now that they have a cast the movie feels much more real.  It actually feels like it is moving forward.  J.J. Abrams has proven he can direct fun and exciting films, so I just hope the script is well written.  We only need to wait a year and a half for a new Star Wars movie!  I know the last three should have made me more cautious, but I can’t help it.  It makes me giddy just to think about sitting in a theater, watching the intro text scroll, and listening to an amazing John Williams score!

Posted on

Disney Killed The Star Wars Expanded Universe, And It Is OK!

starwars-logo

When I first head that Disney was going to kill off the current Star Wars Expanded Universe, I was dumb struck.  “How dare they just toss out the stories that I love!”, I thought, but the more I think about it, the more I am okay with it.  Disney wants to make a Star Wars Universe that is cohesive and make sense, and that is a good thing.

Most of the stuff in the Expanded Universe was pretty awful anyway, and honestly a lot of it didn’t fit together, so it was broken.  Disney starting over allows them to pick and choose the good ideas out of the EU, and ignore all the garbage.  We don’t know what they are going to keep at this point, but they did give us a few examples: The Inquisitor, the Imperial Security Bureau, and Sienar Fleet Systems from the table top RPG are in the new cartoon, so you never know your favorite EU Star Wars character may still make it in.

Even if something we like doesn’t make the cut it isn’t like it is going to cease to exist.  They didn’t make EA take down Star Wars: The Old Republic, Wookieepedia is still going strong, and the books on your shelf didn’t disappear.  It just isn’t necessarily going to be treated as canon going forward.  If this was a comic book universe the fans would care less because they toss stuff out of the canon all the time.  It is just a big deal to Star Wars geeks because it has held together for as long as it has.

If the new stuff from Disney is awesome nobody will even remember that they tossed out the current Expanded Universe and started over.  They will just be enjoying the cool new stories.  As long as Disney has Chewbacca getting crushed by a Moon (best death ever) the world will keep on spinning fellow Meatbags!

Posted on

Hey Guess What? Warner Bros is Making a Justice League Movie!

Justice-League

Well it is about time that Warner Brothers told us all what we knew was happening anyway, they are making a Justice League Movie!  If you can believe the Wall Street Journal anyway.  This was one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets, even by their loose lipped standards.  It is supposed to come out by 2018 at the earliest after Batman Vs. Superman, and if people like it there will be all sorts of DC superhero moves.

It will be interesting to watch that film develop since they are approaching it the opposite way Marvel did, by making their “Avengers” first, and then having the solo films.  I hope it works because DC has a lot of really good characters that are just waiting around for someone to use them.  Who knows how long people’s appetite for superhero movies will last.

I will be curious to see which villain they use as the impetus for building the League.  I am guessing it will be Brainiac.  He is super smart and super strong, and you can use him in a myriad of ways.  Though my hope is that they use Darkseid, so that in future movies they can have the whole planet of Apokolips attack.  What is more fun than one crazy baddie?  A ton of crazy Baddies!

We have about four years and two months to speculate on this film, and I can’t wait.  Though it all hinges on Batman Vs. Superman being good.  Here is hoping.  Though a part of me just knows that Warner Brothers will find a way to screw this up.

Posted on

We Are Finally Getting A Ms. Marvel!

ms-marvel

There was some big news yesterday as it was announced that Paul Bettany would be playing The Vision in the new Avengers movie.  Since Bettany already plays the voice of JARVIS (Tony Stark’s AI butler) in the in the Marvel Movie Universe, it seems to point to the fact that Tony Stark not Henry Pym (Ant Man) will create the evil android Ultron, and in return Ultron will use Stark’s loyal companion against him.  At least at first if they follow the comics at all.

While that is all very cool news, and interesting to think about.  People seem to missing the even bigger news as the Latino Review pointed out, they are casting for Ms. Marvel (though he says Miss Marvel)!  It is about time Marvel finally brought a top tier female crime fighter in to the mix.  As a matter of fact Ms. Marvel is probably more powerful than the rest of the Avengers combined, so this version of Ultron is going to be one bad dude.

I mean no disrespect to Scarlett Johansson, but the Black Widow would be as useful in a fight against Ultron as a guy with toothpick versus a bunch of samurai with katanas, so to have the Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Ms. Marvel will let the ladies show up to the fight in force.  With the amount of firepower Marvel is packing in to this movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron may be the biggest movie of all time.

Posted on

A Giant Week For DC!

DC-entertainment

I rant about DC comics a lot, but since last time I checked this is my blog, so I am going to do it again today!  The reason for this is that there is a lot of exciting news going around, and I had to give my opinion on all of it.  Lets start with the movie news shall we?

Justice League Movie!

So the current rumor from the website Latino Review is that they will be filming a Justice League film directly after they get done filming Batman vs Superman, and that they are talking to Dwayne Johnson to be John Stewart, one of the cooler Green Lanterns, or possibly some other character, so Cyborg.  This makes a ton of sense since they could spend a lot money, but get two films out of the deal much like The Hobbit, and it would help them catch up to Marvel.  If this is true expect to see a lot of casting rumors in the next few weeks.

It is kind of scary to think that DC is finally getting its movie act together, but this is a large step in the right direction.  If they do this right we will get to see all our favorite DC heroes, but not have to sit through any more origin stories!  What a wonderful future that would be.  Now on to TV news!

Even More TV Shows!

In an earlier rant I talked about the three new DC TV shows in the works: Hourman, The Flash, and a Gotham Cop Show.  Well those are all still on the docket, with the exception that the Gotham cop show is now pretty much Batman Smallville, curse you Fox!  A cop show in Gotham sounded interesting, but a bunch of brooding teenagers fighting each other in high school sounds awful, but maybe it will turn out (it won’t).  I have my fingers crossed!

They also announced this week that NBC is ordering a Constantine show, and since they have already done a good job with Hannibal, Dracula, and Grimm this could be a great fit.  Heck he could fight those guys, and it could be a lot of fun crossing over everything together in a large NBC/DC universe.  They won’t do that, but still it is fun to think about.  That was not the only TV announcement either.

AMC is ordering The Preacher from Sony Pictures Television, and Seth Rogan is producing.  I don’t know if that means it is going to be a comedy (please no, but maybe yes?), or that Rogan just likes The Preacher, so he is putting some skin in the game.  I hope it is the latter.  Either way I love the work AMC does, so I am very excited!

Now if you are counting, the success of Arrow has spawned not one but five TV shows: Gotham (Meh), The Flash, Hourman, Constantine, and The Preacher.  I guess DC decided that they couldn’t beat Marvel in the movie game, so instead they are going to win at TV.  Not a bad plan.  So that means maybe the people running DC are not total idiots.  We live in a brave new world, and I am extremely excited!