Today's News: marvelous termination of Trek director

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158238/eerste_trailer_terminator_genisys

This trailer is receiving a lot of negative feedback. I can understand why. The plot exposed in the first half of the trailer bears a striking recemblance to that of the original 1984 Terminator movie, so much so you would think it's a remake. Then the twist kicks in and things start to turn out differently. The cheap explanation for this (dis)similar turn of events is the 'alternate timeline' route so popular in recent years. Where everyone hailed it as an inventive and effective way of rebooting things while paying homage to the original works with 2009's Star Trek - I didn't, I thought it was disrepectable baloney - by now people have gotten rightly sick of it. Which doesnt leave much to look forward to for Terminator: Genisys. It's apparently another chase movie with all the usual suspects in place. Poor Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese have to try and shake off two different Terminators - the genuine article and the nifty liquid metal type - but get help from an older model reprogrammed in the future. Basically, the plot of T1 and T2 combined. With slick modern FX of course. Some nice new faces (among them both Emilia Clarke and Jason Clarke: no relation, just the eerie hand of fate involved in this bit of casting) in age old roles. And old fossil Schwarzenegger once again doing his Terminator thing, since he's the guy that always says 'I'll be back' and sticks to that promise. Problem is, he need not be involved. Terminator Salvation showed us there's different ways to explore this universe than dragging poor old Arnold in the mix and rehasing the same plot over and over again. Sadly, Salvation failed to convince audiences and box office of that fact. So now studio execs think we'll settle for the routine of the first three movies instead, just tweaked via messing with timelines because that is 'a thing' right now. If only it was an alternate time line, where alternate things happened. From a story perspective, we seem to be stuck in a time loop instead...

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158247/marvel_bevestigt_casting_strange_en_jones

Double casting of Marvel protagonists this week. First, Benedict Cumberbatch has finally been outed as Doctor Strange. Not so surprising, since his name kept reappearing in this casting contest. With Tom Hardy opting for Suicide Squad after all, Cumberbatch proved the last man standing. So the British actor will soon assume the mantle of the Sorcerer Supreme and defend us from interdimensional wrongdoers accordingly. I'm cool with that. Sherlock and The Hobbit have made me largely forget about his Khanberbatch debacle of Star Trek Into Darkness. The other Marvel casting news comes a bit more out of left field, since the project hadn't been discussed as much. Breaking Bad's Krysten Ritter will play Jessica Jones in the new Netflix show that is now called A.K.A. Jessica Jones. And it will debut in the fall of 2015, shortly after Daredevil first paves the way for the announced Defenders miniseries which will incorporate both characters plus two more. Since Ritter so far hasn't had any starring roles, I hope she proves up to the task. She surely made me cry when Heisenberg dramatically let her die in BB, so she's got my sympathy already.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158250/regisseur_star_trek_3_stapt_op

Well, that's just good news for Trek, for two reasons. First, giving the director's chair of a big blockbuster movie to someone who has never directed anything in his life is just an asinine idea (similar to handing the captain's chair to untested cadets, as inexplicably happened in the first Trek relaunch flick). Second, Orci already showed to have little respect or affinity with 40+ years of Trek lore in his piss poor screenplays of the previous two Trek reboot movies. So now someone can step in who does care and at least knows the score of directing. I'm fairly positive that person won't be Edgar Wright, who's on top of Paramount's short list. Considering the studio is in a real hurry to get this starship off the ground - should have built it in a space dock, guys - the new director will have to make do with the script that is available, which leaves little to no room for improvements at rewriting on his part. Wright just left Ant-Man after prepping it for the better part of a decade due to script issues with Marvel; you really think, as big a fanboy as he may be, he'll take kindly to not being allowed the slightest bit of leeway, with another big studio telling him exactly what to do and forebidding him any input of his own? Not gonna happen. Star Trek 3 is in real trouble. The 50th anniversary of the franchise is just around the corner and there's a strict deadline to be reached. There's no director, a script written by rookie writers involving the old and new cast alike (bad idea!!), and shooting is supposed to start within two months. If it's gonna be made at all in time, it's gonna be terribly rushed, and no movie profits from that. Once again, I blame J.J. Abrams for the trouble the franchise is in. He just left a series he never did care that much about to do what he always wanted to do (Star Wars), and things just deteriorated rapidly in his wake. Not to mention cast contracts will expire after having three pictures and I doubt any of them is willing to continue. The only good thing about this debacle is that the studio can only fix it by reboting the franchise yet again. It doesn't seem it can get worse, so a fresh fresh take may be just what Trek requires...

Today's News: two powerhouses join forces for marvelous consequences

Quite the news flash was posted on MovieScene the other day, thanks to me:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/151502/marvel_en_netflix_bundelen_krachten

So basically, what Marvel did on the big screen is being redone on the small screen. Though the originality has worn off, giving several TV shows the same treatment, simultaneously setting up a larger universe that leads to a new (mini)series is quite a novelty, not to matter risky business. But hey, the same thigng was said about Netflix itself, so it comes as no surprise that particular "network" opted to engage in this joint venture. At the same time, Marvel is still cooperating with a regular television network (ABC) on the currently running Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a new show which has still to be revealed (but is probably that Agent Carter show which was suggested earlier these past few months). So Marvel is branching out on all platforms, being visibly active in theaters, on home cinemas and online. It's gonna be hard to miss the company it seems.

But will these TV shows be compelling enough for audiences? I foresee a few potential obstacles. First, there is name recognition. Daredevil people may be aware of, most likely through the 2003 Ben Affleck movie, which isn't a good thing since it wasn't a very good movie. But how many people outside the world of comic book readers are familiar with Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage? Getting people to embrace these could prove quite a challenge, so hopefully that Marvel brand alone is enough to pull in an audience for their shows. Secondly, there's the background of the characters, which in all four cases is rather similar. All four series will take place in the New York neighbourhood of Hell's Kitchen, so instead of battling outlandish super villains these heroes will fight more basic everyday evil, like drugs, corruption, organized crime and such. What's more, in terms of powers these characters aren't all that different either. Though there are some noticeable unique abilities, they mostly feature superhuman strength, speed and reflexes. At least their origins are rather different, but otherwise four shows dealing with the same subject matter seems somewhat redundant. Of course, the final Defenders climax could herald the end of one or more of these shows to balance things out more neatly, but so far it remains to be seen just how far Marvel and Netflix plan to take these shows. Each character gets 13 episodes, after that we'll have to wait and see where they go from there.

Though story and power diversity may not be as strong, at least the characters are fairly different in make-up, which could appeal to a broader audience. You have your heroine to appeal to a female demographic, a black character and a character dabbling in Asian mysticism (but who's not actually Asian!) to get racial minorities interested and a blind guy to engage disabled folk (okay, that last one may be highly debatable, but you never know). In this regard, The Defenders would be far different from The Avengers, which is basically all white males. True, there's Black Widow as a female role model, but she still hasn't gotten a movie of her own, while Samuel L. Jackson's black Nick Fury is only a supporting character that isn't on the Avengers roster proper but mostly overseeing stuff and letting the white people do all the real work (kind of an reverse Black Pete, for Dutch people). The core members with their own films, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Captain America, are all white. Except for the Hulk occasionally, but there's no actual green people to be represented as far as I'm aware. In this light, the four Defenders can make quite a difference, even though they're otherwise not so different. Nice metaphor for humanity me thinks.

And if it doesn't work, Marvel can simply change the Defenders' roster and introduce new characters as they like. After all, the team went through quite a few iterations over the years, just like the Avengers did. As you can see on the picture above, none of the four Defenders you'll see on Netflix appeared in the original first issue. However, the Hulk did, so there's you first potential Defenders/Avengers crossover (even though using the Hulk as a character would probably be too expensive in terms of FX). And then there's the Sub-Mariner and Doctor Strange, both of which have been rumoured to get their own movies. Introducing them in these shows could be explained as testing the waters for a potential movie, or yet another TV series or miniseries. So many characters, so many possibilities and opportunities. One thing's for sure: whether on TV, in theaters or online, the future is gonna be marvelous.