First they said that Guardians of the Galaxy will be the first misstep in the rolling juggernaut train that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How could a film adaptation of a comic book that even hardcore readers barely know ever hit it big with the general public. Yet, it more than shot down detractors and nyasayers to become the biggest hit of 2014 and help usher in a major change in how people will now look at the MCU.
So, Guardians of the Galaxy wasn’t the first mistake. Then it has to be 2015’s Ant-Man starring Paul Rudd and a film already known for being the one where Edgar Wright was forced to leave as director. Yes, this will be Marvel Studios first misstep and it will show that Kevin Feige’s producer-driven plan will never trump the creative-driven director tradition.
So, during the season premiere of Agent Carter, we finally have the first official trailer for Ant-Man. Time will tell if this does become Marvel’s first bump in their road to world domination or will it surprise everyone the way Guardians of the Galaxy did this part summer of 2014.
Greetings, Ladies and Gents. Hope everyone’s faring well after the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the States and a week that’s winding down. Disney, J.J. Abrams and the powers that be have not only made the teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens available in select theatre locations, but have also made it available online.
Like the trailer that premiered for The Phantom Menace, we’re seeing a lot of surprises here. New droid types, unconventional lightsaber designs and the Millenium Falcon in all it’s glory. It’s a small taste of what’s to come, but enough to pique the interests of anyone in love with the franchise. If nothing else, it serves as a good conversation starter.
To much fanfare we finally have the teaser trailer to the latest adventures of Dominic Toretto and his band of misfit drivers.
Now officially titled as Furious 7, the latest film in the franchise goes further away from it’s street racing roots and into the spy thriller and superhero genres it drifted into with Fast Five. Even the title alone sounds like a superhero team straight out of Marvel Comics. It’s almost as if I expect to see Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Daredevil and Elektra plus three other furious heroes fighting the good fight.
The teaser pretty much teases the sort of over-the-top, physics-defying action scenes we’ve come to expect from this franchise. It’s almost as if with each new film they up the ante as to how much universal laws Dom and his crew will break in order to entertain it’s massive fan audience.
Furious 7 is set to ride and die this April 3, 2015.
Having rescued Batman from the Schumacher age and assisting in the full on destruction of Metropolis, Christopher Nolan has reached an interesting point in his life. He can now walk up on stage, grab a microphone, mutter the words “I’m filming a movie.” and have tons of fans (like myself) lose themselves like swooning chickens.
Christopher and Jonathan Nolan are dreaming about the stars. And with a dash of what I think (what I hope) is Zimmer playing in the background, he tells us absolutely nothing. The gaul! The tease! It’s the movie watcher’s equivalent of seeing a bare expanse of leg exposed on someone walking in a sleek black dress. Or perhaps the equivalent of Beyonce’s album drop, only with a movie? Either way, how dare they leave me drooling like a Pavlovian mutt.
So, what do we know about Interstellar? Well, that his brother is on board, and David Goyer is nowhere to be seen, Nolan could be giving us something just a little different – or rather more along the lines of Inception. I’m one of the fans who feels he actually does much better when working with Jonathan and maybe this is good overall. Now that he’s done with everything Batman, he can focus on telling other stories.
I’m just hoping those stories aren’t like Insomnia.
And I’m hoping they’re better edited than The Dark Knight.
Interstellar, on the surface looks like it has something to do with space travel (stating the more than obvious fact), but this feels more like October Sky to me. We have Matthew McConaughey talking about how we’ve lost our way in being explorers and pioneers and the film suggests some kind of return to that. Of course, this is just a teaser, and we really won’t know the full details until the full trailer appears (which for all we know, could have aliens in it).
The thing that stands out on all of this is what isn’t easily noticed. Interstellar will be the first film that Nolan has done since Following where Cinematographer Wally Pfister wasn’t on board. This is akin to the Coens not using Roger Deakins (which is exactly the case with Inside Llewyn Davis). Visually, this could be a different film as Instellar’s Cinematographer is Hoyte Van Hoytema, who was responsible for Her, Let the Right One In and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Very interesting, indeed.
Interstellar premieres in theatres next year.
Oh, and here are some swooning chickens, for added effect.
This past summer saw the return of kaiju to the film vernacular with the release of Guillermo Del Toro’s Pacific Rim. The very same studios which released this film, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures return next summer with a similar film, but this time with the return of the granddaddy of all kaiju: Godzilla.
Godzilla is a reboot of the kaiju franchise with Gareth Edwards trying to make up for the travesty that was Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla of over a decade ago. This time around it looks like (at least from the teaser) that Edwards is going the serious route with this reboot. It helps that he has quite the cast to play around with. This Godzilla will star Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ken Watanabe.
We also get a brief glimpse of Godzilla itself right near the end followed by the iconic monster scream that’s as recognizable as the tweets and twoots of R2-D2.
Godzilla will return to the big-screen on May 16, 2014.
In 2011, a little action film from Indonesia directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans took the world by storm. The film was called The Raid (The Raid: Redemption in the West). It out-actioned every Hollywood blockbuster action film of that year and still manages to hold its own against other action films since.
So, it’s no surprise that a sequel was already in production by the time that film’s theater run was winding down in the West. Gareth Evans will return as director of The Raid 2: Berandal and so will the survivors of the first film.
With filming all pretty much done and the film moving on to post-production the first official teaser trailer for the sequel has been released and all I can say is…WOW.
The Raid 2: Berandal will be punching people in the face sometime around 2014.
Dreamworks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon was one of those films for 2010 that caught me completely off-guard. I had dismissed it as another Dreamworks attempt to try and take the crown from Pixar. So, it was quite a surprise when I finally saw it and realized that Dreamworks had out-Pixared Pixar with this latest offering.
The film did great in the box-office and made the names Hiccup and Toothless names to remember fondly. So, it was a given that a sequel was going to be made and now it is 2013 and we finally have the first teaser trailer for How to Train Your Dragon 2 which will splash across all big-screen theaters around 2014.
To say that this teaser trailer evoked all the fun of the original would be an understatement. I would say that this simple teaser showing Toothless just flying around with Hiccup gave a better sense of the joy of flying than this year’s Man of Steel.
Iron Man 3 teaser trailer is now out and let the hype and speculation move into it’s second phase as the film still has a little under 6 months left before it’s release date.
Marvel Studios, whether one likes them or not in regards to how they treat the original creators of their comic book properties, have been hitting on all cylinders under the focused direction of it’s leader in Kevin Feige. Te Phase One of their plan for an all-ecompassing Marvel Cinematic Universe using Marvel Comics characters still under their control when it comes to film and tv productions culminated with one of the biggest films in history with this year’s Marvel’s The Avengers. We now have Phase Two to look forward to and the first film to start this next phase in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will be none other than the next film in the series which began Phase One: Iron Man 3.
The third film returns the same cast as before with the addition of Sir Ben Kingsley in the role of the Mandarin and Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall and James Badge Dale to round out the rest of the cast. Shane Black now takes over as director of the series with Jon Favreau coming back as executive producer and in the role of Happy Hogan.
The trailer makes mention about how the events of The Avengers has changed the world, but also Tony Stark’s own personal life and he’s finally admitted that being Iron Man and Stark has increased the amount of people who are genuinely out to kill him. The teaser focuses on the dramatic aspect of the film but still manages to put in some “sizzle reel” worthy action sequences with the bulk of it being the destruction of Tony’s cliffside home in Southern California.
I am an unashamed fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and while I will admit every film in it has had flaws in the end they’ve all been entertaining. With Shane Black in the director’s chair I actually think this film may improve on the first film, fix the problems of the second and raise the bar for the rest of the films that will comprise Phase Two of Marvel’s plan.
Iron Man 3 is set for a release date of May 3, 2013.
Through the Shattered Lens 