***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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The first image of Mickey Rourke as the villain Whiplash in Iron Man 2 has been released (click the image to the right for a much larger & complete image) and it is an… interesting look?

As with almost every comic book character that makes it to the big screen, numerous changes have been made to Whiplash.  You can read the rather lengthy official bio over at the Marvel Comics website, but essentially he was an American that went to work for Stark Industries (as in Tony Stark’s company), fell in with a bad crowd, became a supper villain… you know how that goes.  Well, somehow in the moie he is now Russian, and reportedly just escaped from prison (check the orange outfit on his lower half in the large picture).

When it was first reported that Rourke was playing a Russian villain in the film, the natural conclusions where that he was either playing Titanium Man or The Crimson Dynamo, but instead they have to mess around with another character for no good reason.  Luckily I have a lot of trust in Jon Favreau as a director and storyteller, so I won’t totally scratch my head at this one yet, but it does seem like a totally unnecessary change.

If you’re wondering about the lighted piece on his chest looking so much like Iron Man’s, Mr. Favreau said to USA Today that is intentional and somehow figures into the plot of the film.  I have my suspicions of how, but I won’t spoil it for those who aren’t familiar with the overall driving forces of the Iron Man series.

Iron Man 2 is due for release May 7th, 2010 with Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Rockwell (playing Justin Hammer), Scarlett Johansson (playing Black Widow), Don Cheadle and Samuel L. Jackson.

I don’t normally get all that excited about fan made stuff.  I have nothing against it as a hobby, I just don’t ever see much point to watching them.  Well, seeing as I am suffering a bout of writer’s block on the article I’m working on, and someone Tweeted about a fan made Green Lantern trailer, and I thought, “Oh, what the heck”, so I checked it out.

Wow.

This is one of the best fan made videos I’ve seen, and yes, I know that the majority of the footage comes from other films, but it works, and it works well.  And, I have to say, seeing Nathan Fillion in connection with Hal Jordan, he would be excellent in the role,but I don’t expect him to get it.

I would say for those of you unfamiliar with the mythos of the Green Lanterns, this covers it pretty well.  I’m not sure how much the movie will deal with the other members of the Green Lantern Corps, it was a cool concept seeing so many of the recognizable members in there. (Kilowog and Tomar-Re to name a couple)

Good job to whomever made this, lets hope Warner Brothers treats the property with as much reverence as you did.

Marvel Comics has found their Thor!

According to Nikki Finke, Chris Hemsworth has been cast as the God of Thunder in their upcomng Thor movie to be release May 20th, 2011.  If he looks familiar, it may be because he is currently playing George Kirk, the father of James T. Kirk, in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.  He is also extremely familiar to Australians as the 25-year-old has appeared in 171 episodes of the hit show, Home and Away.

Supposedly there will be some other casting news for this film when the official press release comes out, but for now this should be enough to tide most people over.  Add in Kenneth Branagh as the director of the film, and there are going to be all sorts of accents flying around in his movie.

The big question that will haunt this movie up until premiere date is whether the movie going public is ready for a movie about a viking god.  Not sure how this will play with the mainstream movie going public.

At least they’ve got an actor locked for their lead role… unlike the Green Lantern movie project.

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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How on Earth did I totally miss that work had begun on the Jonah Hex movie?

Imagine my surprise when the picture of Megan Fox on her way to the set of Jonah Hex popped up online today.  This picture surprised me for a number of reasons.

1. I hadn’t even heard this movie had been greenlit (it’s been rumored for years), let alone gone through casting, pre-production and is actually before the lens.
2. That it actually DID get greenlit.  Jonah Hex is one of those characters that is going to make for a really odd movie.
3. Oh look… a movie team found yet another way to cover Ms. Fox’s hideous Marilyn Monroe tattoo on her inner right forearm.

For those who have never heard of Jonah Hex, don’t worry, you aren’t alone.  He is a character in the DC Comics universe that first appeared in 1972, and is known more for his odd facial scar than anything else.  However, I will let Wikipedia explain a bit more for you:

Throughout the character’s history, the western genre conventions have been heavily subverted. Jonah has battled alcoholism, and as an adult faced his mother’s turn to prostitution. Though he traveled extensively throughout the American West, he also ended up in South America and China. At one point he quit bounty hunting, got married and had a son, and took up farming, though it didn’t last.

Hex’s facial injuries can be traced back to being sold into slavery by his father to the Apache for safe passage. Jonah eventually saved the chief from being killed by a mountain lion and was made an honorary member of the tribe. He was soon betrayed by the envious son of the chief while on a raid. He returned years later to challenge him in a sacred tomahawk battle. But the chief’s son sabotaged Jonah’s tomahawk and Jonah used his knife in self defense when the tomahawk broke. The tribe saw this as breaking the rules of the sacred battle and sentenced Jonah to wear the mark of the demon by pressing a searing hot tomahawk to his face. They said his honorary relationship to the chief was the only thing that saved him from death.

Despite the oddness of the property itself, they have assembled a pretty great cast for the film.  Besides Ms. Fox, they have Josh Brolin as Jonah and John Malkovich as Turnbull.  The question is how will a movie about a scarred bounty hunter, set in the old west, play during their height of a summer movie movie run?  Probably pretty well with this cast involved.  Despite my problems with Ms. Fox’s acting abilities, she is a box office draw, and judging by seeing her in this corset, she won’t have any problem drawing in the teenage boy crowd come next summer.

I do find it interesting she keeps showing up in things like Transformers and Jonah Hex, and now there there are rumors she will soon play another comic book character in Fathom based on the recently deceased Michael Turner’s book of the same name.  Apparently if you are hot, and comfortable with fan boys drooling all over you, you can get a lot of work in Hollywood.  Good to know…

I’ve done a quick update for my regular readers of all the comic book related movies I know of, and what their expected release dates currently are.  If you know of any other projects (seeing as this one totally got past me) please let me know in the comments and I will look into it.  If you have a link to info on it, all the better.

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine – May 1, 2009
• Iron Man 2 – May 7, 2010
• Thor – June 4, 2010
• Jonah Hex – August 6, 2010
• Green Lantern – December 17, 2010
• The First Avenger: Captain America – May 6, 2011
• Spider-Man 4 – May, 2011 (tentative)
• The Avengers – July 15, 2011
• Kick-Ass – To be announced, but my guess is sometime in 2009

I think I would start laughing if I could muster it.

Warner Brothers and DC Comics announced earlier this month that the Green Lantern movie, something I have been waiting decades for, will be shooting by the end of the year at Fox Studios in Australia.  The movie is set to begin pre-production in July with initial photography beginning in November.  The release date has already been announced as December 17, 2010.

And, oh yeah, it still doesn’t have a cast or a director.  Obviously those items aren’t important to a production any more.

I remember back in the summer of 1985, I was 14-years-old and my parents took me to a science fiction convention in St. Louis.  Part of the reason I wanted to go was James Doohan, Scotty from Star Trek, was going to be there.  During his big question and answer session, a lot of people were asking questions about the upcoming Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and after my excitement for this movie could no longer be contained, I stood up and asked Mr. Doohan if a release date had been announced for the movie yet.  I can clearly remember his answer as being, “Oh no, sir, you never announce the release date of a movie until it’s completed!”

… apparently a lot has changed in Hollywood in the past 24 years.

I am extremely excited for this movie as the character has always held a lot of appeal to me, but I am getting worried about the quality of the production before even one storyboard is drawn.  It’s as if the film was a ship, and someone told it to go ahead and sail without her captain… the first mate… oh yeah, and a map on board.  I think DC and Warner Brothers are so concerned with the release schedule that they are forgetting some of the most basic steps in the filmmaking process, and that is always an early sign of a film becoming a disaster.

Anyone remember the recent remake of Planet of the Apes?  Tim Burton was brought in as the director late into the production process, and we all saw how that turned out.

I beg of Warner Brothers and DC Comics to consider the fans on this one for just a minute, and not put a release schedule ahead of quality.  If you have any hopes of continuing the success of the Batman franchise, you have to remember those are succeeding on quality, and not the slapdash production style and look of the majority of the Marvel Comics films.  Quality has to be a priority here, and you need to realize that any work done without your director in place could go disastoursly wrong.  And a director without his lead is never a good idea either.

Please, PLEASE, don’t mess this one up.

It would seem Marvel Comics really doesn’t like you to talk about them… unless they tell you what to say.

The Inquisitr and Newsarama are both talking about Marvel Comics seeming hatred of the comic industry press and Twitter.  While using Twitter comments (also known as “Tweets”) in reporting is considered lazy by some, I don’t see it as any different than quoting something printed elsewhere such as in a magazine or newspaper.  I honestly think it is a littler stronger than that because you are 100% sure the person (or their paid representative in the case of some celebrities) actually said it.  However, some of the exectutives at Marvel are taking offense at their Tweets being reprinted elsewhere and are launching a war of words with bloggers, and even going so far as to suggest they are owed payment for their use.

Are they out of their freaking minds?

Oh wait, this is the comic book industry… they ARE out of their freaking minds.

From August 1986 to December 2001 I ran a comic book store.  During that time I worked for a comic book company on the side, consulted with companies, and even worked inside the comic book & toy press industries.  As much as I love comic books as an art medium, it was sort of like the old saying about loving sausage doesn’t mean you want to see how it is made.  I have only recently returned to reading comics, something I used to have a die hard passion for, because it took me over seven years to try to forget just how messed up of an industry it is.

I have still been involved with it slightly over the past few years, and I have grown amazed by seeing an average comic book rise in price to $2.99 a month, with others hitting the $3.99 and $4.99 mark; the days of the entry level pricing are gone.  I have also seen the number of venues where comics are sold dwindle to near non-existence, all but assuring that the industry is surviving only on those that have been it for years already, and no new blood is coming into it.

With all of this in mind, don’t you think they may want to have the word spread as far and wide as they can about what is going on in the business?  Don’t you think that they should welcome every mention of their names and brands in the hopes it might bring in more readers?

Apparently if your name is “Marvel”, you don’t.

Tom Brevoort, Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada, all employed by Marvel, and they decided to launch arguments with the comic press about their, publicly available mind you, Tweets being used as quotes in articles.  This has begun happening in the mainstream press on a regular basis, and even Ashton Kutcher said in the Oprah episode about Twitter that he likes the fact that he can diffuse some stories about himself in the press because he can refute them quickly on the site.  Here is someone who is virtually a household name, and he encourages people to use his Twitter stream as a source of information about him.

Not in the comic book industry though.  Oh no, we can’t have you using something they made public themselves without first asking their permission to do it.  Apparently they have missed the fact that you can lock a Twitter stream which means that no one is allowed to republish your Tweets.  No, they’ll just go on saying things that anyone can see and then get angry when people actually quote them on it.

In Lucas Siegel’s rebuttal piece to all this (Newsarama link above), he points out that due to the walled garden type situation in the comics industry, the comic book companies enjoy an unprecedented control over their industry press.  If you print something before THEY say you can, they can simply cut you off from any future information.  So, in general, the comics press does nothing that could potentially anger the comic book companies.  This has left them with a feeling of omnipotence that they can somehow control everything that happens, but they have forgotten that once something is on the Internet, you generally lost all control of it.  It takes on a life of its own, and the possibility of controlling the ways it is consumed are completely lost. As someone who has also worked inside the comic book press, I can tell you that Mr. Siegel is 100% accurate in his portrayal of how things work. No matter when or how you learn about an upcoming project, you could not run the news until the company said you could for fear of having all of your in roads to that company quickly severed.

I can almost understand their anger over the Tweets because they simply aren’t used to not having complete control over a press situation.  However, to suggest that they should get paid for their Tweets, let alone the asking for permission to reprint something that was made available to the public, is just disgusting at its core.  If you don’t want it done, don’t Tweet or lock the stream.  Two very easy solutions, but solutions they are choosing not to take.  It is far easier, it would seem, to whine and cry about it and make the press look the proverbial comic book bad guys, and the bad PR they garner over this be damned.

… have I mentioned how glad I am to be away from this industry?

Be sure to listen to this week’s Scattercast, which comes out tomorrow, where I will continue stories of my life in the comic industry, and how one big name creator once called and cursed me out for 90 minutes for daring to express my opinion about his work ethic on a CLOSED forum.

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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Well, as I predicted, the Marvel movie line-up was overly ambitious.

Marvel seems to have woken up to the fact that they were rushing their films out too fast, and they have announced an adjusted line-up of their films through 2012.  They’ve only shifted three of the movies, but it gives them some more breathing room in the production timeline, and hopefully this will lead to higher quality films.  I imagine this was somewhat assisted by Sony announcing their target date for the fourth Spider-Man movie in May of 2011.

Thor: formerly July 16, 2010, now June 17, 2011
Captain America: formerly May 6, 2011, now July 22, 2011
The Avengers: formerly July 15, 2011, now May 4, 2012

So the new line-up is (films in bold are part of The Avengers “series”):

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine – May 1, 2009
• Iron Man 2 – May 7, 2010
• Spider-Man 4 – May 6, 2011
• Thor- June 17, 2011
• Captain America – July 22, 2011
• The Avengers – May 4, 2012
• Ant-Man – To Be Announced (to be fair, the press release no longer mentions this film)

There is also some speculation this was somewhat prompted by all of the big named actors being attached to The Avengers, so they may have had to move it further out to accomadate all of the people this film is going to require.  By the time this film roles around they will need Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and which ever actors they choose for the parts of Thor and Captain America will also be in it for sure.  Beyond that, who knows who else they will drag along from these movies to be included, so it is going to be a nightmare scheduling wise to get this many actors together all at once for the project.

One person who is probably thrilled by the move is Jon Favreau, director of the Iron Man films, who is going to serve as a producer on The Avengers.  He was essentially going to have to go directly from work on Iron Man 2 to working on team film, I would imagine he’ll enjoy at least a short break.

I also think this may solve the problem I was concerned with with having the films coming out too fast and wearing out the public.  I would like to see some more space between Thor and Captain America, but oh well, it’s their call.  Lets just hope the public doesn’t fall into super hero fatigue.

This is one of those movie reviews where you have to wonder where you even begin. Do you judge it based on its faithfulness to the source material? Do you judge it based on it solely as a theatrical work? It’s a tough question, and an even tougher one when it is a film adaptation one of the most beloved works ever in the history of comics.

For 23 years people have attempted to make Watchmen into a movie.  Some called it “unfilmable”, others wanted to make huge changes to the plot and characters, but ultimately it fell into the lap of Zack Snyder, the director of 300.  The good news was he didn’t want to make many changes at all, and he fought to keep it as true to the original as he could.  While there are some minor and some major changes, overall the main themes still shine through, and it makes for an engaging film.

Let me be up front in saying I thought the opening credits, all set to “The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan, may be some of my favorite opening credits of all time.  As the music plays, we are treated to amazing photographs and video that helps us follow all of the costumed crime fighters that have existed in this movie universe since the 1940’s.  It is a great use of time, it conveys the history you need to know that this is an alternative world you have entered that runs fairly close to ours, but not quite.

This is a story that happens on so many levels simultaneously that it is almost impossible to easily summarize what it is really about.  It is a story of humanity and are failings.  It is a story of what would you be willing to do and/or live with to accomplish what is ultimately a noble goal.  It is a story about ideals.  It is a story about the type of people it would take to dress up in a silly costumes and fight crime, and if they do it for the good of their fellow man or if they do it as some sort of  adrenaline rush/aphrodisiac.  When you realize the number of ideas this work tries to convey, you begin to understand why people thought it was “unfilmable”.

What you end up with for the film that is a surprisingly breezy 2 hour and 43 minute running time that flies by without feeling anywhere near that long.  And while it may not give you clean-cut answers to those questions and ideas it puts forth, it at least addresses each of them.  The thing is that you have to watch for them, you have to pay attention to so much, that most people will just see it as an unusual super hero movie when it is really so much more.

If anything surprised me about the film, it is how unbelievably brutal it is.  While the comic was certainly no field of daisies, when you see the violence of the comic projected on a theater screen, it becomes shockingly violent, but it works.  This is not a film for the squeamish, you will feel uncomfortable, and that may be one of the highest compliments you can pay the filmmakers.  It never feels exaggerated, it feels like these people live in a brutal world, and, at times, they must be brutal in return to do good.  Although I will say the Comedian/Sally Jupiter scene in the billiards room is done so effectively, that even knowing the outcome, I still found it difficult to watch for its realism.

From filming, music selection, special effects and acting, this movie delivers on all fronts. (With the exception of Malin Akerman as Laurie… she got it right in some scenes, and in others you were fairly certain she had no clue what was going on, or how to play it)   Sure some things are missing that I would have liked to see stay in from the original work such as the news stand owner and the kid for example, or Rorschach having his pocketful of sugar cubes, but, in general, Mr. Snyder did his job, and you get to see a Watchmen movie that is darn close to the original work, and is a heck of a good film to boot.

To the fans of the book who have complained about “the squid” being absent (I’m not going to explain this to non-readers of the book as it would give away the ending of the movie completely), what they replaced it with makes a ton more sense.  You don’t miss the squid at all, and you actually wonder if it was ever really needed in the original work.  Believe me, I was nervous about the change, but the new solution works out a heck of a lot better.

Although I was uncertain as I left the theater, I liked the film more and more as I thought about it through out the evening.  My highest possible recommendation, even if you have no clue what you are getting in to.  Just don’t go expecting The Dark Knight, because this is certainly nothing like it.

(And thank you to regular commentor “Contrary Jack” and his wife for actually convincing me to leave my office to see this opening day with them)

It may be hard to believe, but there was once a time where a movie based on a comic book being released was like some sort of weird dream.  It was rare, and it was even rarer that they were actually good.  Luckily all of that has changed over the years, and the rule of thumb now seems to be more towards actual quality and care being put into the productions based on the comic book art form.

With the new Watchmen movie being talked about by every one, it seems like a good time to discuss what some of the best comic book movies are up until now.  The question is do you judge them solely as a movie or how faithful they are to the source material?  I think this is one of those instances where you have to do a little bit of both.  Some succeed as movies in spite of a total difference from the books that spawned them, and others are so dead on faithful that it almost feels like you watched the artwork come to life.

In case you were wondering what qualifies me to speak on this subject the answer is  33 years of comic book collecting, 15 & 1/2 years managing a comic shop and a well-known harsh eye for movies.  So go ahead and click to find a list of what I find to be the best movies based on comic books, and then let me know what your top choices are.
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