As Marvel NOW! prepares the second wave of new titles, the first continues to move ahead during the huge Age of Ultron event. Bendis and team have promised a universe changing and ‘unguessable’ ending to the series which is sure to impact a lot of the titles, if not all of them. However, not all the Marvel NOW! titles will be caught up in the Age of Ultron rush, as this week’s crop of previews plainly shows.
Welcome back to the Hero Express, your one-stop sometimes SPOILER filled shop through the top stories in comic based Film & TV news!
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Roy Hobbs confirms his involvement along with a UFC fighter
I’m sure there could be a more random casting, but I’d have to think about it. However, Robert Redford signing on for the new Captain America might be my new go-to example. When it was first announced, I wrote it off as a ridiculous rumor but lo and behold, Mr. Redford himself confirmed it on stage at the Indie Focus Screening Series.
[quote]”I’m doing this film because it’s different. It’s a new thing for me… I think these films are really powerful. I think they’re great. This is the kind of film I would have loved to see as a kid.” – Robert Redford via LA Times[/quote]
What he might look like after Captain America gets to him.
In addition to the fabulous Robert Redford, word has been circulating (starting with the Latino Review) that MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre has been cast as Batroc the Leaper. The real shocker in this headline is this is not Georges St-Pierre’s first film role. Oh no, he’s had the honor of being a part of some real cinematic masterpieces such as Death Warrior and Hell’s Chain. One might say he could be the next Robert Redford.
While we are on the subject, why not enjoy a Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer?
Iron Man 3
New TV spot and what is this about a Chinese Iron Man?
I almost expected the headlines to read “Kid’s Choice Awards ratings skyrocket as thousands of fanboys tune in to catch new Iron Man 3 TV spot”. While no one went with this headline and I have no idea what the ratings for the Nickelodeon awards show were like, there is no doubt in my mind that there were people watching for no other reason than to see this.
Not much that in addition to previous trailers but it was fun to see anyways. With a little over a month left before the movie’s release date, it’s time to get excited about Iron Man 3.
Fan Bingbing
Fans in China are no doubt as excited as the rest of us and they should be even more excited as their version of the Marvel studios film with be just a little bit longer than the rest of the world’s. The studio announced that the Chinese version will include bonus footage of a Chinese actress named Fan Bingbing cast as “Dr. Wu’s wife” but they did not say how the extra scenes related to the plot, if at all. Guess we’ll just have to wait until the illegal copies make their way to eBay to find out.
X-Men: Days of Future Past
Colossus returns, but sadly no Nightcrawler. Oh and more Fan Bingbing.
No really, I’m able to mention Chinese actress Fan Bingbing (let’s be honest here, that is a kickass name) twice in one post. Not only is she going to appear in the Chinese version of Iron Man 3 but it looks like she’s going to be in the new X-Men as well!
Bryan Singer took to twitter a bit ago and posted this
So everyone we expected – Hugh Jackman, Ellen Page, James McAvoy (yum), Patrick Stewart (sexiest bald man alive), Peter Dinklage, and who is that? Oh that’s just Daniel Cudmore which means he is reprising his role of Colosses from X-Men: The Last Stand. Not only that, but the aforementioned Fan Bingbing is there and on her IMDb profile it says she is going to be playing Clarice Ferguson aka Blink. [Ed. Note – The editorial staff would just like to express how much we love this news as Blink is one of our favorite characters, the Age of Apocalypse was awesome, and she doesn’t get the love she deserves…]
All these names are great and wonderful, but I think we can all agree it would be better is Alan Cumming were mentioned amongst them. Unfortunately there will be no Nightcrawler in Days of Future Past. Don’t worry Alan, we’ll always have Spy Kids.
That about does it for this edition of Hero Express! Let us know what you think of these stories in the comments and we’ll see ya next time!
The Wolverine is coming and we have got a bevy of information and pics for you to take a look at. The main reason for all this the first trailer is being released on Wednesday and we wanted a place where you can get all of the content online and get all updates to be ready for Wednesday. We have oh so many images from the film, both leaked and released. We got posters and banners, all the latest news and cast information and we hope you all keep an eye out here Wednesday because we’ll have the trailer on our page ready for consumption. We know we got a while until The Wolverine hits theaters on July 26th (in 3D as well mind you) so let’s drop some knowledge and get you guys situated.
The Wolverine Plot
Official Synopsis:
Based on the celebrated comic book arc, this epic action-adventure takes Wolverine, the most iconic character of the X-Men universe, to modern day Japan. Out of his depth in an unknown world he faces his ultimate nemesis in a life-or-death battle that will leave him forever changed. Vulnerable for the first time and pushed to his physical and emotional limits, he confronts not only lethal samurai steel but also his inner struggle against his own immortality, emerging more powerful than we have ever seen him before.
Wolverine Comic:
The celebrated comic book arc mentioned is the comic Wolverine released in 1982 and covers a large period of Wolverine’s origins and his Weapon X days. In the comic, Wolverine’s love Mariko Yashida wound up getting an arranged marriage set up by her father Lord Shingen. Logan travels to Japan to rescue her and troubles ensue with Samurai getting gutted by some Adamantium claws. We will not go much further as not to spoil the plot of the film. However, we are not sure how closely the film will follow this story line. For example, the film story is set after the events of the third X-Men film but the comics have no specific timeline with the rest of the X-Men. The comic is great and the story arc only has 4 issues so if you feel like getting ahead of the curve, pick it up and enjoy.
The Cast of The Wolverine
Wolverine
Hugh Jackman plays Logan/Wolverine: A mutant and member of the X-Men. I don’t feel I need to explain this character too much. In the film, Logan leaves the X-Men to find himself and get away from the devastating losses that took place in X-Men: The Last Stand. On his journey, he falls in love with a woman Mariko Yashida, although she is to be married off by her father. Logan feels he must do something and naturally gets into a middle of a gang war where probably chaos ensues.
Bloody Claws! Rated R
Lord Shingen
Hiroyuki Sanada stars as Shingen Yashida, a character created by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, who is a Yakuza crime boss and antagonist to Wolverine. Lord Shingen will be one of the main villains in this film as a father to both Silver Samurai and Logan’s love interest that figures into Wolverine’s conflicts. Lord Shingen arranges his daughter Mariko Yashida to marry another crime boss to settle debts.
Shingen
Mariko Yashida
Tao Okamoto plays Mariko Yashida, the daughter of Shingen and one-time fiancee to Wolverine. K.I.S.S.I.N.G. as Logan’s love interest in this film Mariko is the main cause for conflict within the story. Logan falls in love with her but her father arranges a marriage to honor his clans’ debt. Logan goes to rescue her from an abusive husband but the clans obviously don’t like this and violence ensues. This plot could be way off but it is the basic layout of the comic arc the film is based off so I would be surprised if it wasn’t close to this.
Mariko
Yukio
Rila Fukushima stars as Yukio, one of the deadliest assassins in Shingen’s clan. We think she will be an amazing character to watch out for. In the comics, she is a heroine but is described here almost on the other side. Yukio is an occasional thief by profession, as well as a ronin, a masterless samurai. Yukio has been portrayed as a free spirit with an almost careless disregard for personal danger. While she is highly skilled in the martial arts, Yukio is not a mutant and possesses no super powers. Unless being a badass is a mutant power.
Yukio
The Silver Samurai
Will Yun Lee plays Kenuichio Harada, more commonly known as the Silver Samurai, who possesses an electrified suit of samurai armor and is the illegitimate son of the crime lord Shingen. The first Silver Samurai was a mutant with the ability to generate a tachyon field (some kind of heat energy), with which he can surround anything. He commonly used this power on his sword, enabling it to cut through nearly anything, except adamantium, hence the fun with Wolverine. From what we have gathered, the Silver Samurai will be working for the crime boss Shingen Yashida as a bodyguard. In the comics, he has worked for Viper so speaking of…
Silver Samurai
Viper
Svetlana Khodchenkova plays Viper, a one-time peer of Wolverine’s as well as an enemy. Viper, also known as Madame Hydra, should be an interesting character to watch. She was not in the comic arc but she does have affiliations with both the Silver Samurai and Wolverine in other comics. She is certainly a villain but it remains to be seen how she fits into this film. Not sure how I feel about the costume though, it doesn’t really look anything like the original other than the color.
Viper
Teaser
Below is a short GIF released by director James Mangold to give a small teaser to the trailer. It looks very interesting and I am certainly pumped to see the trailer. Are you teased?
Just thought I would devote a part of this round up to point out how to make a good poster and how to make a terrible poster. Below is a great example of a trailer for this film, its got that brilliant hand drawn Japanese style painting which makes Wolverine look cool and strong whilst showing off the claws.
Next however is one of the worst posters I have ever seen for large budget film. It’s just awful! I have seen better Photoshop jobs from my 7 year old cousins (spoiler alert: they’re not good). What is this! Loads of Ninjas with quick cut and paste of an angry Wolverine. To be honest, I am not even sure Ninjas are involved in this story as the main opposition is from Samurai clans. Please look and laugh.
With that, we’ll leave you with a bunch of production stills from the set as well as other photos we have gathered. And how about a 20 second trailer tease too? Hopefully this piques your interest and gets you excited for Wednesday when we finally get to see The Wolverine in action!
Whenever teaser footage is “leaked” there’s always this infinite battle between the internet and movie companies. They for some reason don’t want everyone to see the teaser, and talk about the teaser, and share the teaser and generally do their PR jobs for them. Or maybe they DO, and by hiding it from us like it’s a weird reverse double bluff situation, we’re playing right into their hands? Which is silly, since this footage that was released is from a test reel that was premiered at SDCC last year, and not even technically a teaser. Regardless, the outcome of the studio censorship is it tends to make sharing and viewing these leaked teasers difficult, and sometimes that can lead to a disparity from your expectations and what actually happens. For instance, I thought the teaser was going to be something totally amazing and mind-blowing.
In fact, if I was to describe my imaginary teaser for Ant Man, I would say my favorite scenes were definitely the parts where Ant-Man finally, finally did what we all thought he would do, and shrunk down and crawled up a guard’s pants.
Then as the guard was trying to take off his pants, he ran up his leg and dove into the guard’s penis through his pee hole, and then rapidly expanded himself while in his urethra, tearing the guard’s dick open horribly, then kicking him through the groin out his butthole, in a fantastic display of gore worthy of an old Giallo film! The next few scenes were of him running around inside the other guards inner ear canal, using the harmonic balance and special lower hertz frequencies to sort of “puppeteer” the guard, making the guard punch himself repeatedly in the face over and over before ripping out his own eyes, in what I thought was a great homage to the work of Lucio Fulci. Then Ant-Man expanded inside the man’s head, creating a head explosion that possibly tops the infamous one from Scanners.
This one.
It all ended pretty perfectly when Ant-Man then turned to the camera, pointed his fingers and said his new catch phrase: “It aint easy being cheesy!”, which I found a bit gauche, but I supposed we’ll get used to it.
Right. Well that’s NOT what the Ant-Man teaser was. Here it is as long as it’ll stay up, which probably isn’t long.
VIDEO REMOVED BY VIMEO
Marvel’s Ant-Man Trailer from Anthony Green on Vimeo.
See? Instead of my imaginary awesomeness, it was a fairly interesting fight scene of Ant-Man clearing a hallway with two guards in it, and instead of ripping their dicks or heads open from the inside, he just kinda punches them in the teeth maybe? It was more interesting than it sounds, but only just so. I think my version is a lot better, but for SOME REASON Hollywood has yet to take any of my ideas or use any of the scripts I send their offices detailing my outlandish plans to fix the movie business. I think it’s all a conspiracy against me. Anyway, here’s some screen caps, and gifs courtesy of [Buzzfeed]:
Those are some pretty neat GIFs, but these stills give you a better look at the actual Ant-Man suit, albeit a blurry one. Keep in mind these images are only from a test reel, so the final costume will probably look a lot different.
So all in all, that’s pretty cool, but as always my version is better. But I have trust in Edgar Wright and I presume when the flick rolls by in 2015 it’ll still be pretty great.
In case you didn’t realize what you’re in store for, we are here to talk about Age of Ultron. Marvel has really been hyping this event, and with good reason. This has been in the works for a while now, and so far everything released has looked very interesting. Brian Michael Bendis has been hinting towards Age of Ultron for a few years, and helping him bring it to life will be Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco, and Bryan Hitch, who is no stranger to the Avengers.
Probably one of the biggest changes to come about from Marvel NOW! has to be the return of the Original X-Men to the mainstream Marvel U. This of course comes with the new driving force behind the X-Men, Brian Micheal Bendis, who isn’t afraid to shake things up a bit. He’s actually kind of well known for it.
He revolutionized the classic tale of Peter Parker with Ultimate Spider-Man, then created a franchise out of the Avengers, elevating them to a new height never before experienced. And for the last few months he has been doing the same with the X-Men, whether it’s with the return of the Original X-Men (Jean Grey is back, y’all!) or the new look for Beast (his 4th, to be exact).
Grizzly Bomb 