It's been easy to forget - after the (legitimate) down-marks handed him by "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES" and "MAN OF STEEL" plus the (murkier) transformation of his name into a synonym for inappropriately-grim movie adaptations of... anything, really - why everybody got so excited about Christopher Nolan in the first place. Once upon a time, the "big deal" about "BATMAN BEGINS" was that a legitimately great, exciting new(ish) filmmaker was going to make a Batman movie.
This teaser for "INTERSTELLAR," though, serves as a big reminder of the other reason to be glad the Nolan Bros. are mostly getting out of the superhero business:
Show of hands on who would've thought, even five years ago, that Matthew McConaughey would "work" as a voice of sombre inspiration? I'm in love with this teaser, and not only because I'm SO onboard with the the idea that our semi-abandonment of space-exploration as a virtuous goal worth striving for being a goddamn disgrace - which seems to be the implicit them at play here, or at least one of them (it was also one of the dozen or so interesting thematic points raised but for no ultimately purpose in "MAN OF STEEL," so maybe this is a "thing" for these cats.)
Of note: The screenplay for this, by Johnathan Nolan, was originally developed with input/collaboration from Steven Spielberg for him (Spielberg) to direct. He bowed out, Christopher Nolan stepped in. So this is potentially sort of a reverse-"A.I." in as much as we've got a brilliant, anti-emotional, aesthetically-clinical grump taking over a Spielberg project as opposed to the reverse. That should be interesting...
Within Five Years, Every Movie Sony Makes Will Be a SPIDER-MAN Movie
Do I still talk about how great "THE AVENGERS" was too much? Probably - but even I'd be doing it a lot less if the success of that particular film (and the Marvel Cinematic Universe) wasn't hovering so much of current Hollywood business-dealing like an omnipresent specter. In the same way that "HARRY POTTER" sent everyone with money to spend in the movie business scrambling to lock down a kids/YA fantasy franchise of their own, the mad rush now is to set up multi-film/cross-genre "worldbuilding" movie brands - preferably using superheroes but not exclusively, since Universal has been making some noise about bringing back the Universal Monsters for a "seperate-films-followed-by-a-team-up" project of their own.Other than Marvel/Disney, the guys in the best shape in this regard are Fox; who're holding onto the comfortably expansive "X-MEN" franchise strong and hoping that second time will be the charm for "FANTASTIC FOUR." Warner Bros is approximately one Martian Manhunter away from throwing up it's hands and saying "Fuck it! "MAN OF STEEL 2" is now "JUSTICE LEAGUE 1." And Sony? Poor Sony has only James Bond - whom they are obliged to treat gently - and Spider-Man... whom they are demonstrably content to ride hard, put away wet, pass around the yard and rent out to visiting foriegn business associates over the weekend.
The studio has already set up dates for three sequels to "THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN," one of which lands in just a few months. Meanwhile, they've invited five "superstar" writers - Alex Kurtzman (ew), Roberto Orci (eeeeeew), Jeff Pinker (eh), Drew Goddard (oh?) and Ed Solomon (didn't know he was still working) - to work out a "universe" built around the extended Spider-Man mythos. Currently on the docket: A solo "VENOM" feature (because I guess it must still be 1995 somewhere...) and a villain-centric "SINISTER SIX" movie (soooo... will they not be teaming up in the main series? What are these other three movies about, then?) The interesting name is Goddard, since he's also developing the "DAREDEVIL" project for Marvel's "DEFENDERS" run on Netflix.
I imagine the only reason no one is saying "BLACK CAT" yet is solely because they haven't bothered to write her into the movies yet, whereas Eddie "Venom" Brock is being namedropped in viral marketing already. After that, I look forward to seeing what kind of surefire masterpieces can be grown from fertile seeds like Man-Wolf, Rocket Racer, Prowler, Morbius: The Living Vampire (okay, that one could be good) or The Spider-Slingers. What a time to be alive.
EDGE OF TOMORROW trailer needs more Kill
"EDGE OF TOMORROW" is the hopelessly-generic, boring title given to this otherwise pretty damn good-looking Japanese light-novel adaptation in the belief that it's original moniker - "ALL YOU NEED IS KILL" - was just too damn awesome for the average audience to wrap it's brain around. Seriously, WTF? People would actually be talking about that title - "All You Need is KILL?' What is that? What does that even MEAN!??" They wouldn't be able to get it out of their heads. (And did no one suggest calling it "RESPAWN," which still sounds better and would "click" with it's intended audience?)
The premise is one of those "why didn't I think of that?" high-concepts: It's "GROUNDHOG DAY" meets "GEARS OF WAR." Tom Cruise is a green recruit in a war against alien invaders who gets killed in his first deployment... only to find himself somehow stuck in a "time loop" that causes him to wake up alive and well that same first-day of service every time he dies, able to use his gradually improving war skills and specific foreknowledge of what not to do to fight a bit better and progress a bit further each time. Emily Blunt's character (a fellow soldier who has become a wartime celebrity for having developed inexplicably superhuman combat skills "somehow") is called either "Full Metal Bitch" or "The Bitch of War" in translations of the original, which I assume won't be the case here.
The premise is one of those "why didn't I think of that?" high-concepts: It's "GROUNDHOG DAY" meets "GEARS OF WAR." Tom Cruise is a green recruit in a war against alien invaders who gets killed in his first deployment... only to find himself somehow stuck in a "time loop" that causes him to wake up alive and well that same first-day of service every time he dies, able to use his gradually improving war skills and specific foreknowledge of what not to do to fight a bit better and progress a bit further each time. Emily Blunt's character (a fellow soldier who has become a wartime celebrity for having developed inexplicably superhuman combat skills "somehow") is called either "Full Metal Bitch" or "The Bitch of War" in translations of the original, which I assume won't be the case here.
The Big Picture: TOO MANY VILLAINS
"Bob, why won't you just stop talking about this movie based on stuff you're a huge fan of in an insanely popular genre in the medium that you make a living reporting on???"
GODZILLA Teaser... teases
I really like the way this opens. The rest? I can go either way - with apologies to every other genre filmmaker on the planet, Spielberg only makes the "scenes of people looking in lieu of content" thing look easy. It doesn't look anything like director Gareth Edwards "MONSTERS," which I hated, so I'm thankful for that. Big overhanging question remains: Apart from the big-name main star, what is this going to offer that "PACIFIC RIM" didn't already deliver ten times over?
Interesting just how much this looks/feels like the buildup to the previous 1998 remake, minus the self-aware 90s humor. It's odd that two attempts to re-do "GODZILLA" for the U.S. now have (seemingly) focused exclusively on repurposing the original, which is really the extreme outlier of the franchise in terms of tone and focus. There was a period in my life when "Originally, Godzilla was meant to be DARK and SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!" was a really vital, noteworthy thing I wanted the world to know. These days? I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be more pumped right now if this trailer (which does look good, don't get me wrong) featured a little less ominous portent and a little more giant-lobster punching.
We'll see.
Interesting just how much this looks/feels like the buildup to the previous 1998 remake, minus the self-aware 90s humor. It's odd that two attempts to re-do "GODZILLA" for the U.S. now have (seemingly) focused exclusively on repurposing the original, which is really the extreme outlier of the franchise in terms of tone and focus. There was a period in my life when "Originally, Godzilla was meant to be DARK and SERIOUS BUSINESS!!!" was a really vital, noteworthy thing I wanted the world to know. These days? I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be more pumped right now if this trailer (which does look good, don't get me wrong) featured a little less ominous portent and a little more giant-lobster punching.
We'll see.
JUPITER ASCENDING Teases Big Universe
The first teaser for The Wachowski's follow-up to "CLOUD ATLAS," which is alleged to be a more "conventional" (for The Wachowski's) sci-fi/space-opera narrative. Still closely-guarded story features Mila Kunis as a human woman targeted for assassination by an unknown-to-Earth interplanetary empire because she possesses a unique DNA signature that would allow her to usurp the current Queen of The Universe. She is protected by Channing Tatum, whose makeup and prosthetics are being downplayed by this trailer but is supposed to an albino human/wolf hybrid. Me, I want to know what's going on with the bulky winged-reptile guy at 1:29.
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