‘X-Men: First Class’ Sequel – Subtitle Alludes to Classic Storyline


I have a confession to make. Despite being a comics fan, spending nearly 50$ a week on comics, collecting comics memorabilia, spending large amounts of time in a comic shop to the point where the employees and the people who are regulars there are now close friends who I see outside of the store, and just generally being admittedly a comic book nerd, I, am not that big a fan of the X-Men.

In fact, I’ve only cursory knowledge of them at best, no better really than the average, yet slightly more dedicated than usual, “Movies Only” X-Men fan. I know which characters are what, but some of the more obscure ones are lost on me, (X3 was a guessing game for a lot of characters I was clueless about), and I generally understand what their comic characterization is, but on the whole, I couldn’t recite to you a cavalcade of GREAT X-Men stories like I could for Superman or Green Lantern. In fact, when I first read this news, I had no clue of the significance of the source material until reading about it, and it’s inspiration to the tons of media that would follow it. So hearing about the X-Men: First Class sequel, was exciting, and also a bit perplexing, because while I loved First Class, I had no idea what the sequel’s “story” was based on.

Let’s get down to the details, according to [EW], the sequel will be based on ‘Days Of Future Past’, which was a story arc I’ve never heard of, or read:

For the newcomers in the audience: Days of Future Past was a time-travel story released in the early ’80s. In a bleak dystopian future, the mutants of the world are hunted down and sent to internment camps. Most of the X-Men are dead; the ones that are still alive are on the run. In the original story, the future version of Kitty Pryde time-travels back in time into her young self’s brain and works with the present-day X-Men to prevent the atrocity that kickstarts the whole miserable future. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Days of Future Past has been frequently imitated in pop culture. (Remember “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World”?)

Now I gotta say, that sounds pretty awesome. I know I’ll be losing some nerd cred by admitting I haven’t read it, but I’m a firm believer in manning up and admitting what you don’t know, rather than bullshitting people about what you do. To that end, First Class was by far the best of the previous X-Men movies, and was a welcome change from the dull talk tests that were the Bryan Singer X-Men movies. X3 was like weird retarded offshoot, that managed to entertain me more by simply being really dumb, but whenever I think about X-Men 1 or 2, my eyes start to glaze over. I think that’s always been why I could never get into X-Men period, because you have all these amazing characters with mind blowing powers (sometimes literally), and all they ever do is talk each other to death. [Ed. Note – X2 is still one of the 10 Best Comic Movies ever] I’m probably showing my ignorance here of all the tons of badass X-Men stories out there, with huge epic battles, but in my experience, picking up any form of X-Men media, be it a comic, movie, or even that animated Fox cartoon from years back, was an exercise in Mutant-related diplomatic relations, carried out slowly to avoid some really big, really important, impending threat thats juuuust on the horizon, but oh no will-they-talk-it-out-first- it’ssoimportantohmygodohmygodwilltheyfight??!??!  BUT no, they never do.

Anyhow, my bitching aside, the movie sounds really good. I’m excited for it. I just tend to complain about things no matter what. You can watch an interview with Bryan Singer about the movie below:

HBO’s True Blood Episode 5.08 – “Somebody That I Used to Know”

After the brilliance of last week, I was completely underwhelmed by what I was served during this most recent of episodes.

Sookie’s faerie powers are getting ridiculous.  Now apparently she can read the thoughts of dead people?  It’s too much.  It’s too weird.  And who is this creepy new vampire that killed her parents?  The Scarecrow from Batman Begins?  Seems like he’d be pretty cool to have on the show as more than just a memory, so let’s hope we meet him for real.

Continue reading HBO’s True Blood Episode 5.08 – “Somebody That I Used to Know”

Mockingbird Lane: The Munsters’ Family Portrait

A while back you may remember that we reported on the return of The Munsters to tv. If you were lucky enough to be at the Q & A session at Comic-Con you will have seen the 4 minute teaser for the new pilot. For all of us that weren’t there here is the first image of the whole Munster clan (also from Comic-Con and via io9). As you can see they are surprisingly…well, ‘normal’.

Mockingbird Lane Cast

I must admit to being slightly let down by it. I was hoping for them to look a little more monstery. Jerry O’Connell looks less Herman Munster and more Jerry O’Connell.

However, Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daises creator and producer/writer of Mockingbird Lane) told The Hollywood Reporter that they were still very much monsters:

“The Munsters actually do what monsters do: they eat people and they have to live with the ramifications of being monstrous. It’s like grounding it in a reality because the half-hour was a sitcom, we saw the monsters: they were monsters on the outside and weren’t monsters on the inside. For us, they’re monsters outside and inside, and we get to double our story.”

NBC has ordered additional scripts and a decision on whether to order a full series should come soon. If they do we can expect to see other Universal monsters – including The Phantom of The Opera, The Wolfman and The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

I’m still not sure about all this. It feels like an unnecessary remake. They could just have easily renamed the family and not even pretend that they were remaking The Munsters. I’m still waiting to be convinced.

NBC Takes Gold with Fake Fall Lineup

Last year, NBC spent $4.38 BILLION to obtain the rights to broadcast the Olympic games through 2020. Their ratings for the 2012 London games have been stellar, despite outrage from critics professional and amateur alike. By the time they air, sports broadcast during NBC’s evening segments have been completed for nearly twelve hours. That leaves plenty of opportunity for viewers to know the results beforehand.

Continue reading NBC Takes Gold with Fake Fall Lineup

New ‘Paranormal Activity 4’ Trailer! Now With More Ret-cons!


The Paranormal Activity movies are an interesting phenomenon (is that an accidental pun?) in the world of cinema. What started out as an effective, cheaply made, indie flick has now bloomed full on into a Hollywood juggernaut, and looks on track to becoming the next Saw-like yearly horror franchise. The similarities between the two continue as their sequels even out in numbers too, because while Saw became increasingly more convoluted and weird with each movie, so are the PA films. I remember seeing Saw 3 in theaters and thinking – “Well, how the hell are they gonna make a sequel now? Jigsaw is dead!” Oh shit. Spoilers? Bah, that movie is years old anyway, and it’s pretty shitty, so really I’m doing you a favor. Back on topic, I remember thinking how they could possibly stretch that franchise out post-Jigsaw, and sure enough, they found a way. Some could argue it was clever, but I’d simply say those people have clearly never heard of the concept of the “ret-con”, which any comics fan will be very familiar with.

The same is already applying with Paranormal Activity, but it’s somehow become even more full of plot holes and contrivances, with 4 fewer movies than the Saw franchise. I enjoyed the first movie immensely, and thought the second was a creative continuation/prequel. The third seemed to be getting a bit old, despite some creative gimmickry, mostly because of contradictions passed off as “mysteries to be solved” for later sequels, as well as the many cool looking promotional material and trailers. Even if they had nothing to do with what the movie was actually about, nor did they even have that footage in the film. Add in all the anachronistic mistakes prevalent in the film, and it really started to scream “I WAS PHONED IN” at the audience. [Editor’s Note – The last 10 minutes of PA3 scared the shit out of me. That is all.]

So what am I getting at? Basically I’m hoping that this new PA movie will retcon the bad things from PA3 that made no sense, and re-establish itself as a really well made, well acted, realistic exploration of the paranormal, without making any more excessive trips into stupid-town to give us all a SHOCKING TWIST ENDING of Shyamalanian contrivance.

http://youtu.be/X5XOG1lXjM4

If I was directing these movies, I’d pull a Halloween 3: Season Of The Witch, and make them self-contained episodic films, each taking place in a new house, new family, and lay down a framework of back story about the actual demon, rather than follow one dumb family that inexplicably has a long history of recording every waking moment of their lives. Unfortunately, for that to work and be accepted, they’d have to have started that with PA2.

So now we’ll take our ghostly medicine in the form of endless sequels until PA8 where it ends with Katie or Crissie or whoever is battling the ghost/demon on top of a magical spirit tower, while a coven of witches surrounds them chanting and holding newborns. Then GOD himself will appear and smite all of them, and we’ll all pass out in our seats from the retardation of the whole thing.

On a high note – Kate Featherston returns for the 4th time as ‘Katie’.