Today's News: suicide Avengers code

This week's news, first batch:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158219/cast_dcs_suicide_squad_bekendgemaakt

Quite a stellar and diverse cast, but I see some possible problems here. The first addresses the casting itself. To my mind, casting Will Smith in an ensemble movie isn't your best bet. The man is a Hollywood superstar, they tend to demand attention too strongly to cope well with sharing the screen. Especially with actors that aren't in their salary class, as these other cast members simply aren't. Will Smith kinda has a bad reputation in this department since Wild Wild West (if set rumours are to be trusted, that is). Whether he'll readily accept having his face covered continuously in the role of Deadshot also remains to be seen. Of course, you can argue that The Avengers does a pretty good job joining various superstars together for a big epic project, but let's not forget most of them were made that famous because of the work they did previously for Marvel, well aware that they needed to reign in their temperaments in a joint venture soon enough. Their own movies more or less prepared them for that mission, as most of them followed the same strategy of becoming superstars and thus shared the necessary common ground. This is not the case for Suicide Squad, as most of these characters are totally new to the big screen and so they haven't been prepped in their own titles for the audience and neither have the people playing them. They get thrown in the mix together from the get-go instead, and it just very much remains the question on whether they have any affinity with the role at all, whether the audience accepts them in these parts and whether joining these characters and actors together is a good idea. Which brings me to the second issue: the Joker. Like Will Smith is a huge A-lister thrown in with a bunch of actors of a lesser profile (no offense, gang, but that's just the situation), the Joker is a villain much more iconic than the rest of them, especially after the well remembered terrific performance by Heath Ledger not so long ago. Is it really a smart move to introduce a new take on this character, one that is supposed to be around for at least a decade, in an ensemble movie like this, rather than setting him up in the more traditional way, as Batman's most recognizable antagonist in the Caped Crusader's own film? (An argument that can be made for the new incarnation of the Dark Knight himself just as easily, it must be noted.) Probably so. But then, the Joker doesn't adhere to logic like that, he's much too erratic to care. We'll just have to wait and see how this works out. At least the majority of the casting seems pretty nifty. It'll be very interesting to see what Jared Leto brings to the role of the Joker. And he even has his girlfriend Harley Quinn by his side this time. The more madness, the merrier.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158196/extra_opnamen_avengers_2_in_januari

Speaking of the Avengers, they just got some leeway to improve their sequel's scope just that much more. From the looks of it, it's not just the action scenes that get a bit more jibe, but also the characters, including a few we might not have expected to partake in this giant superhero flick. Both Idris Elba and Tom Hiddleston have been revealed to be present in Age of Ultron. That is surprising, considering the story line mostly seemed to center around Tony Stark and his invention, the rogue robot Ultron, running rampant. A little HYDRA espionage plot spilling over from the Cap movies was also already known to be injected through the addition of Baron Von Strucker to the cast. So is there room for some Norse gods? Apparently Marvel is making room. Since more Loki is never a bad thing when Hiddleston plays the part, I'm certainly not complaining. I'm not counting on major scenes of divine exposition though. Probably just some hints at the bigger Thor picture to indicate that while the Avengers get into the usual mischief on Earth, trouble is still brewing in the background on Asgard to plague Thor in his next solo feature (aptly subtitled Ragnarok). Seems that universe building Marvel so excelled at in Phase 1 is now seemlessly flowing into Phase 3.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/158220/source_code_krijgt_vervolg

More of Source Code I'm less positive about. Its whole take on time travel and temporal loops was already nothing new to me thanks to the likes of Star Trek, The X-Files and The Twilight Zone. Though it was still a fresh take on the notion and resulted in an enjoyable and intelligent movie, more of the same would spark a similar feeling of repetition I don't exactly welcome. Of course they can introduce a new main character and director - as they'll have to, since it strongly appears both Jake Gyllenhaal and Duncan Jones are not inclined to be involved, and I can't blame them - but even when tweaking the concept, there's only so much you can do with it. This announced sequel just has 'blatant cash grab' written all over it. Of course, that is hardly a novel thing in Hollywood. It's endless cycle of rehasing and reimaging concepts and franchises that once proved lucrative is quite similarly stuck into an ever revolving loop that knows no end. It's just that in this case, the audience is the poor subject that develops a gnawing, relentless sense of déja vu, the feeling of having experienced it all before. As they have.