Glad you asked. Or, to be exact, glad I asked me on your behalf.
Hit the break for the latest news and my views. Drop a comment and argue with me while you’re here.
CAPTAIN AMERICA. I’m leading with this: How awesome was the Avengers preview after the movie? 100 percent awesome. Check it out here:
watch?v=GkLkqQGOBTs
http://youtu.be/23Lfh_svL1s
DETECTIVE COMICS #880. With the iconic Joker-by-Jock cover, this is one of the best Batman/Joker stories I’ve read since…Ever. If you’re not reading this, you’re stupid.
THE WALKING DEAD UPDATES. I understand that AMC has a few critical darling shows right now (Breaking Bad, The Killing), so maybe they’re getting spoiled…But I would think they’d take better care of a show that one of the highest cable debuts of all time. Writer, producer, director and showrunner Frank Darabont has left the show. Darabont also adapted (brilliantly) a few Stephen King stories into movies you might have heard of—including Shawshank Redemption (one of my top 10 movies of all time) and The Mist (one of the best, scariest horror films of the last 10 years—and it did it without being torture porn!). Another show writer, Glen Mazzara, is taking on the showrunner position, and Robert Kirkman and Gale Anne Hurd are continuing on in producer roles as well. So maybe all will be fine…But it’s never good to lose someone of Darabont’s stature right in the middle of filming, and for the departure to be so abrupt and unexplained.
GREEN LANTERN 2 WILL BE EDGY… The Prez of Warner Bros. says the next one will be edgier—if they make it at all. That’s the word he used. “Edgier.” Was that really the problem with the movie? A guy with a ring that makes giant boxing gloves is not really known for edge. The problem with the movie is that it wasn’t any fun. Making it edgier is just going to make it worse. If that’s possible. Jeff Robinov’s exact quote was: “We had a decent opening so we learned there is an audience. To go forward we need to make it a little edgier and darker with more emphasis on action…. And we have to find a way to balance the time the movie spends in space versus on Earth.” Ahem. No, Jeff, that ain’t the problem. It’s having a girlfriend with zero depth and a Hal Jordan whose character made no sense—and was completely unlikeable. It’s having the other Lanterns basically exist only as comedy relief or background noise. It’s having a villain that looked like smoke, and had the personality of smoke, too. If you want a good GL movie, it’s really not that hard: Focus on the characters, stupid. That’s what made Thor and Captain America and X-Men First Class so great. Good character development, good dialog, and, perhaps most important: A good villain. In the same interview, Robinov said that they have a “solid” script for the next Flash. “Solid?” That’s the best he could do? Is he describing his next DC film or his next bowel movement? Or both? Tell you what: Don’t do another GL (which frees Ryan Reynolds up for Deadpool), just give us a really, really good Superman movie. That hasn’t been done in over 20 years.
…BUT GHOST RIDER 2 WILL BE GRITTY. And the Ghost Rider panel at SDCC mentioned that the new film, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, will be “grittier.” That wouldn’t take much—the first film was neither gritty nor edgy. (Nor interesting, for that matter.) This one is based on the too-brief and seemingly truncated Garth Ennis run on the character, which was one of the stronger comic book runs for this character (whose comics typically, ahem, suck). It’s also directed by the guys who did the Jason Statham movie Crank, so I’ve got hopes…And stars Nic Cage again, which can be very good or atrocious, depending on which Nic Cage shows up to the set. Anyway, the shots released so far look damn cool. And, really, Ghost Rider has always been about the look…
FEAR ITSELF. Sucks. Really. It didn’t even make sense when Tony Stark drank alcohol to get attention from Odin. First of all, there’s been no indication in his regular book that he was getting closer to falling off the wagon. And second of all, it was completely random and weird. And killing Bucky in an event rather than in his own book was a slap in the face of regular readers of Captain America. Now they’re going to be extending the concept of evil magic hammers into a post-event event titled “Battlescars.” I won’t be participating. But if you’re asking can an event be even lamer, the answer has to be: See Flashpoint. Here’s an “event” that we all KNOW doesn’t matter because DC is completely re-doing it’s universe anyway, and it seems fairly obvious at this point that Flashpoint is just a long-winded way of saying “Retcon!” We know the Flashpoint U won’t matter. Martha Wayne won’t be Joker. Superman won’t be a latch-key kid. Come on.
MAN OF STEEL. For the Superman reboot,Laurence Fishburne will play Daily Planet editor Perry White. Question: With newspapers becoming increasingly less relevant, shouldn’t Clark Kent work for something other than a paper in the DC reboot?
YOUNG JUSTICE. Will return for a second season next year (the first season was ridiculously short), and will include a non-team ep focusing on Red Arrow. It’s a great show. Can’t wait.
X-MEN DESTINY. I so can’t wait for this Activision game, set to release in September. You get to be a new mutant, pick her powers, decide whether to take sides with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants or the X-Men…And you can of course play Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, Psylocke, Havoc, Nightcrawler, Storm, Magneto, Juggernaut, etc. I hope it’s 4 player, like Marvel Ultimate Alliance (probably my favorite game ever).