Tag Archives: Sony

Movie Trailers

Final “Amazing Spider-Man” Trailer Gives Spidey The Douchiness We All Wanted

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Well, it’s that time of Spring again. We’ve gotten three full trailers for The Dark Knight Rises, and now we’ve got our third and final trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man, which officially seals the deal for all the biggest trailers of the summer. An extremely anticipated day it is, which is why I’m happy to say, with a large sigh of relief, that the newest Spidey trailer is also the best. Much like The Dark Knight Rises, this latest web-crawling preview shows both the humane and rather hilarious side of a hero that we all know and love.

British actor Andrew Garfield, who plays the title character, has pretty much perfected his American accent at this point, and the little New York touch he adds to the character’s voice is pretty perfect. Take THAT, Tobey Maguire! But all Maguire bashing aside, the trailer is CGI-heavy, which means that the film itself will probably be CGI-heavy, something I can handle if it at least looks somewhat realistic. Granted, the movie’s about a flying kid in tights, but I’m not asking for too much, am I?

I’ve mentioned it before, but by golly I’ll say it again. I love the premise for this damn flick. You might be saying, “But, Joey! It’s the same premise as the original film! Young boy is bitten by a spider, turns into a human spider, and decides to use his powers for good.” Sure, if you want to talk semantics, same plot. But, the idea that Peter Parker is looking for the true identity of his birth parents is something I’ve been waiting to see on film for a long time.

Now, you may or may not have heard about the rumors regarding Sony’s absolute hatred for this film. I say screw them. The director, stars, and story for this film all seem to be top notch, and I see no reason why this can’t be a blockbuster with a brain. Watch this trailer and think what you will, but I can’t wait to see the web-crawler go back into action.

Movie News & Opinions

Do You Think “The Amazing Spider-Man” Is Going To Suck? Well, Sony Does.

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When the preview for The Amazing Spider-Man was released a couple of months back, many people were both confused and disappointed by the trailer’s apparent lack of excitement and promise. That skepticism has followed the film up until now and many fans of the original trilogy are crying for the touch of Sam Raimi once again.

But it seems like moviegoers aren’t the only ones who aren’t thrilled by the film’s trailer. The rumor mill has recently churned out the opinions of execs over at Sony. “Inside sources” claim they despise this film. Gammasquad.uproxx.com reports:

“Of course, regardless of what they think of Amazing Spider-Man, Sony is already moving ahead on a sequel, because come on, it’s Spider-Man, but tellingly the sequel will have an all-new writing team (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, of Star Trek and the Transformers movies). I wouldn’t be surprised to see director Marc Webb also end up on the trash heap if Amazing isn’t received well.”

Personally, I think this is another instance of studios thinking quantity over quality. The previews that I saw for the film impressed me simply because of how true it stayed to the comics. From the story of Peter Parker’s parents, to the devices he has to use to correctly shoot his webs, I feel like The Amazing Spider-Man is going to be for all the fans of the comics who felt cheated when Raimi’s trilogy refused to acknowledge some of the finer plot points in the comic (cough, cough, Gwen Stacy came before Mary-Jane Parker, cough, cough).

Granted, this reboot is coming fairly soon after Spider-Man 3, but I’m interested to see how (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb handles such a high-risk production. And when I say high-risk, I do so for two different reasons. On the financial side of things, he needs to make enough money to not only break even for the budget, but for the marketing and all that good stuff. It’s no secret that this is a pretty big chunk o’change. But, on the critical side, he’s got to not only make up for Spider-Man 3, he has to convince fans to like his version just as much, if not more than the original Raimi Spidey, something that is near impossible.

My hat is off to him. Here’s to the shred of hope that remains for The Amazing Spider-Man, who is up against The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, two films that are trying very hard to take the title of highest gross of 2012.

GAMING

Sony Reveals new ‘God of War: Ascension’ Trailer

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Thanks to an Amazon page that jumped the gun revealing possible box art, and a tentative release date, Sony has been forced to show its hand and publicly announce God of War Ascension, the fourth game in the GoW series. Sony broke the news officially with a brief and vague teaser that revealed PlayStation’s iconic God-killer suspended in chains.

All signs point to the upcoming game serving as a prequel to the first game, which makes some sense considering Kratos has already systematically murdered his way through Olympus and razed the Earth in the process — there clearly isn’t much story left to tell after that. However, fans of the series are already familiar with Kratos’s history in the Spartan army and the misguided deal with Ares that sealed his fate as the Ghost of Sparta. Admittedly the backstory was only alluded to in short sprinklings throughout the three games, but the origins of Kratos seem very tame compared to the epic scale of the original trilogy. Nevertheless Sony is claiming this will be “the most ambitious God of War adventure in the series yet.”

God of War Ascension reportedly has a release date of Spring 2013.

Movie News & Opinions

‘Chronicle’ Director in Talks for ‘Venom’ Movie

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Amongst the greatest movie atrocities ever committed, aside from Jar Jar Binks and all of George Lucas’ terrible Star Wars alterations, Spiderman 3 stands alone from many others. I don’t remember being quite so disappointed by a movie in my life as Peter Parker went Emo, Sandman was just a “guy trying to get his kid back” and Venom? Venom was saved as the closing act jobber played by That 70’s Show’s ‘Eric Foreman’ – Topher Grace.

What happened? Where was the Venom from the comics who was cold, calculating and basically a mountain of muscle? Instead, we get possibly the most whiny Eddie Brock imaginable, and a Venom who sounds like a velociraptor and has to peel back his face to show us Topher Grace with sharp teeth every time he wants to talk. It was a complete and utter betrayal, and nauseating display of a studio grabbing for the almighty buck right out of our pockets. Sam Raimi himself even let everyone in on the secret that this wasn’t even his vision of Venom at all, but the studio wanted him in there because he was sooooooo cool to the fans. Nevermind story or any of that kind of shit Sony, just fit him into your already horrible movie during the last fifteen minutes because, ya know… it’d be cool. UNCOOL!

But anyways, onward to the subject at hand.

Even after the debacle that was Venom in Spiderman 3, the powers that be have decided to give our favorite symbiote a second chance and are even attempting to place it in very capable hands. Josh Trank, the director of the newly successful movie Chronicle, has reportedly been tapped to take on directing duties for the newest Venom movie. Chronicle was a found footage approach movie that let us have a look at three young fellas who stumble upon telekinetic powers and then proceed to use them to dick around. There’s a tad bit more to it, but in the long run the movie cost 12 million to make and ended up grossing over 100 million. So, there’s definitely no reason a Venom movie should be terribly hard to make on a modest budget and still be profitable because let’s face it; the days of big budget films that don’t already have a huge fan base may be pretty much over. John Carter and Green Lantern are prime examples of that. Why not start off small and see where the box office revenue takes you before you determine whether or not there will be a sequel.

Next is the question of whether or not the Venom movie will tie into the forthcoming The Amazing Spider-Man movie and what Venom’s origin will be. In the other Spidey movies, they didn’t even bother utilizing the space shuttle angle, even though they had already used John Jameson in Spiderman 2. Instead, filmmakers decided that it would be a good idea to just have it fall from the sky like a meteor in the general vicinity of Peter Parker. In the new Venom, I’d think it would be a better idea to follow the Ultimate Spiderman comic book link of Peter and Eddie Brock being old childhood friends and Venom being a creation of both their parents. Of course they can change it up a little more but that seems like a simple, yet better way than a blob of black good falling from the sky. Only time will tell what direction the Venom movie will take, or if Josh Trank will indeed helm the movie. Rest assured, we will bring you news as soon as it hits!

Movie News & Opinions

Twisted Metal: The Movie!

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The new Twisted Metal video game on the PS3 came out today. I haven’t yet had a chance to go out and rent it, but my heart yearns for some vehicular combat where car and body parts fly hither and yon across the screen. I mean seriously, check out this game play video below and tell me that the mass mayhem isn’t something every guy dreams of being in the thick of every now and then.

I’m not so sure of Sweet Tooth turning into an effin’ transformer, but with a storyline so completely ridiculous who the hell am I to judge?

Now comes the news of a Twisted Metal movie in the works to further rock our worlds and it is being developed by the same team bringing us Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance this Friday in theaters. They are also the same team behind the Crank movies starring Jason Statham. The trailer from Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance actually looks as if they were possibly doing a test run for a Twisted Metal movie with the car and motorcycle scenes. Not to mention with the frantic pace and ferocity of the Crank films I’d say it’s safe to assume they can handle a Twisted Metal movie. Check out a little from the story reported at Deadline:

Sony Pictures has made a preemptive 7-figure deal for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance co-director Brian Taylor to write and direct a live action adaptation of the iconic video gameTwisted Metal. Ghost Rider’s Avi and Ari Arad are producing the adaptation of the game, which has been published in various configurations by Sony Computer and is one of the biggest selling video games. The newest version of the game was just released today for PlayStation 3. Avi Arad, of course, has been a producer of Sony’s Spider-Man films since the beginning, including the upcoming 3D The Amazing Spider-Man.

I know what you’re thinking; how is this different from any other terrible videogame adaptation out there? How is it different from the egregious Street Fighter movies? The all but destined to be doomed Doom movie? The numerous pieces of Uwe Bol directed drivel? The answer is simple, that there is no difference. The movie will more than likely suck, but we fans of Twisted Metal can only hope and pray that it doesn’t.

I think it will be fine just so long as they don’t try to make the movie smarter than what the game itself is. Let’s face it, the Twisted Metal story is fairly simple; a group of broken and desperate drivers have turned their cars into killing machines in order to be the one to reach the organizer of the Twisted Metal tournament so he can grant them a wish. How can you screw up a 90 minute movie given that premise? I think they can make it at least passable as a video game adaptation like the Resident Evil franchise and possibly spawn some sequels off of it. I for one hate the Resident Evil movies, but somebody likes them as they are already on part 5. We can only hope a classic video game like Twisted Metal gets the same chance.