Fantastic Four: First Steps is on the horizon

The first Fantastic Four movie produced entirely by Marvel Studios and subtitled First Steps is being released to theaters July 25, 2025, and features a mixture of familiar faces and up and coming actors: Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm/Invisible Woman), Joseph Quinn (Johnny Storm/The Human Torch), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm/The Thing. Set in a retro 1960s timeline, the adventurous quartet face the menace of the World Devourer himself, Galactus (Ralph Ineson). I am guessing there will be a cameo from long-time FF comic book menace Doctor Doom (Robert Downey Jr.) who is the villain of 2026's Avengers: Doomsday film, but that is merely conjecture.

The Fantastic Four really holds a special place in my comic book-loving heart and after three, count 'em THREE, prior big screen adaptations ranging from mediocre to terrible, I am hoping FF:FS finally hits it out of the park with wonderful characters who are faithful to the spirit of the comics, an engaging storyline (It's Galactus! Don't screw that up!), and stunning visuals and set pieces (It's Galactus! Don't screw that up!).

Fantastic Four. Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

The Fantastic Four, once Marvel Comics' flagship title, now a series canceled since 2015, was like the Star Trek of comic books: a group of adventurers boldly going into the unknown frontiers of space and time and other dimensions, meeting the challenges head on and bringing back that knowledge to help mankind.

Art: Anthony Castrillo. Characters Copyright 2016 by Marvel Comics. No infringement of those rights is intended.


Apparently Marvel Comics decided to stop making FF comics as they don't own the (potentially) lucrative film rights, which they sold off to 20th Century Fox for relatively cheap in the late 90s while undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. Why make new stories in the comics which might fuel the competition's movie coffers? It makes (dollars and) sense, but it still stings.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby crafted 102 issues together as writer/co-plotter and artist/co-plotter respectively. They gave us not only our flawed quartet of heroes in Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Ben Grimm/The Thing, Susan Storm Richards/Invisible Woman and Johnny Storm/Human Torch, but Doctor Doom, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, Mole Man, the Watcher, Skrulls, the Puppet Master, the Inhumans (Black Bolt, Medusa, Karnak, Gorgon, Triton and Lockjaw), the Frightful Four, and so much more.

There's a gold mine of stories there, enough for several movies. Since Fox tried three times to bring the FF to the big screen and failed, maybe in a few years they might sell the rights back to Marvel so that their film arm Marvel Studios might make a truly great Fantastic Four film.

To the Pogo Plane, everyone!

Killer Bees On Horseback -- Once Upon A Swarm In The West

Henry Fonda, one of the greatest actors of his generation, was in many classic films, including the Sergio Leone masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West.

Fonda was also in The Swarm. That's right the Irwin Allen movie about the killer bees that you used to see on late night TV; now it's hopefully in the free stuff on Amazon Prime or similar.

I thought what could be better than to combine these two films. So I give you Once Upon A Swarm In The West. 

Note: No one will be allowed to leave the theater during the thrilling "bees on horseback" sequence.

Robert Pattinson's Batmobile Is Just Wacky

 With all the hubbub this weekend from DC's Fandome I just want to remind everyone that Robert Pattinson's Batman drive this new Batmobile. 

The Poseidon Adventure on the Planet of the Apes

Two great genre tastes that go great together (or at least they should).

Journey with us now as our stalwart heroes, including Taylor, a cynical astronaut, Reverend Scott, a cynical priest, Roddy McDowall in surprising dual roles, and a cast of Hollywood luminaries sail aboard the S.S. Poseidon on its fateful voyage. 

The reveries soon turn to screams as the Poseidon encounters the strangest, strongest tsunami wave ever, which not only overturns our ship but sends it thousands of years into the future. A future ruled by Apes!

Parody poster. No copyright infringement is intended with this work.

Batwheels - An Alternate Take on the Batmobile

Back in the Dark Ages, we're talking early 2000s, the Batman film franchise was going nowhere after the cringe inducing box office failure of Batman and Robin, released 1997. Here is one project which almost saw the light of day.

Darren Aronofsky, director of Pi and Requiem For A Dream, and comic book artist/writer Frank Miller collaborated on a new script for a fresh look at Batman, which used Miller's acclaimed tale Batman: Year One as a jumping off point.

The pair wanted to do an ultra-gritty, realistic take on Bruce Wayne's origins and Batman's beginnings, more in line with a bleak 1970s crime drama like Taxi Driver or The French Connection than the colorful Adam West TV series. They really pulled out all the stops: after Bruce's parents are murdered he becomes a street orphan, taken in at one point by Big Al, a mechanic. The Batcave is an old abandoned Gotham City subway station.

What really got my interest, as if these wholesale changes weren't mind-blowing enough, is that the Aronofsky/Miller Batmobile was to be a black 1960s Lincoln Continental with two bus engines to power it. That image stuck with me so I had to do something about it. I am no mechanic like Big Al but here is my version.

The powers that be at Warner Brothers studio thought Aronofsky and Miller went too far off the mark and chose to work with Christopher Nolan and his team to bring Batman to modern audiences with the crowd-pleasing Batman Begins. We got Nolan's killer Tumbler update on the Batmobile, among other things, but I sure do wish we could have seen some production or concept art on this crazy "realistic" take of the Batmobile.

We can dream can't we? (We can also Photoshop.)

Who Wore It Better: Zardoz vs Vartox

The cover of Superman #281 (Nov 1974) popped up on a Twitter account recently, featuring the introduction to a hirsute, mustachioed villain named Vartox.



 If you thought he looked just like Sean Connery's character of Zed in the trippy sci fi flick Zardoz (released in Feb 1974) you win the Golden Thigh High Boot.

Now the question is, Who wore it better? And why was this deemed appropriate for young boys of the 1970s?

Godzilla: King of the Job Seekers

Godzilla: King of the Monsters opens in theaters May 31, 2019. Whatever supplies you may have accumulated for the zombie apocalypse...DOUBLE THEM.

Await Further Instructions -- Which are to NOT watch this BAD movie!

Await Further Instructions (2018)

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

Nick Milgram and his Indian girlfriend Annji show up unannounced to Nick's family home in England for the worst Christmas gathering of all time, seeing as how his family (father, grandfather, sister and bro-in-law) is mostly just a bunch of ugly racists. (Dear mother is not racist but severely repressed.) Things go from bad to worst when they wake up one morning to find the house has been completely sealed off from the outside world and the television starts giving them directions which polarizes this Brexit family. And this is before Comcast Cable shows up!

This is not a very good film. The cast is capable and there are a few ideas at play here (mostly underdone), especially a satire of television, but nothing is given enough care and attention to come to fruition. The story simply leaves too many questions in the mind of the audience.For example, why is almost everyone a racist in this movie? It was made in England so is it meant to comment on the current social/political climate surrounding Brexit? Not really. Racist in chief Grandpa (David Bradley from Harry Potter and Game of Thrones) is a thoroughly ugly and nasty person, who immediately upon meeting Annji comments about her skin color and later uses the vilest of terms to refer to women. Why? Why not, the movie says. What does any of this mean?
 
Nick's father Tony (Grant Masters) is a by the book, follow the rules man. Since he is the head of the house he sets the course for everyone and decides to blindly follow whatever instructions the TV puts forth, no matter how ludicrous or insane they may seem, for example the screen directs them to "inoculate" themselves against some unstated airborne poison and provides them with syringes - used syringes EMT Annji points out - with which to do so. Why on Earth would anyone who isn't a heroin addict use an unclean needle? Tony doesn't even blink an eye in hesitation; he just grabs a syringe and injects himself and instructs the rest of the family to do the same, including his very pregnant daughter.

Perhaps if Tony had some military background - the movie doesn't make it clear what he does for a living - that might explain his blindly following the instructions coming over his television screen. The fact that there is no official UK logo or any agency identifier at all like "From the Ministry of When Things Go Tits Up" doesn't raise any red flags with anyone in the house. It's just brief cryptic text on a plain greenish background, like an old style computer monitor. And everyone is fine with that.

Many if not all viewers watching this type of genre movie will recognize the fingerprints of the great Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" on this idea. However this movie was not written by the incredible Rod Serling, who did more in a half hour to show the paranoia of a typical American street tearing itself apart when the power goes out and suspicions flare, than this film does in its hour and half run time.

We have to talk about the final act. The reveal of the "big bad." I mentioned Comcast Cable early on, well after Annji discovered "something alive" in the back of an old TV we soon discover that the things covering the doors and windows are strands and strands of coaxial cable. The monster is MONSTER CABLE! The cables aren't even attached to some creature. The cables, singly and in bunches strands, is the creature. What a serious letdown and a colossally stupid idea.

But the movie isn't done with us yet.

In the ultimate what the f-ck, pull it out of your ass ending, the cable monster puppeteers Tony's corpse and tells the remaining family members it just wants to be worshiped. But why the hell would you kill off your captives if you just wanted a congregation to fill the pews as it were? The filmmakers quickly kill off all the remaining adult characters leaving Nick's sister's baby alone on the living room floor to stare at the TV screen. I guess celebrated author Harlan Ellison was right about television being The Glass Teat being all that we need.

If this story had its shit together and been smarter we could have had a decent satire of television and its all pervasive influence on us. Christmas time is ripe for this type of thing, as we are bombarded by ads starting in October about Christmas this and Christmas that, and extended store hours, and never to be seen again savings, buy this, buy that, and you can't live without this. The television in the Milgram home could have been on all the time, perhaps with ads for the Christmas ham that Nick's mother was persuaded to buy, and they could have exchanged gifts based on what programs they enjoy watching (and the commercials contained within). Perhaps Nick and Annji as the outsiders too busy in their careers with no time for TV could have been seen as the enemies of the family and the cable monster.

But nothing like this remotely (excuse the pun) happens. There is simply no reason for the ending other than they wanted a "monster" and a big shock. Not that either was earned.

All things considered, there was no reason for this movie. Or any reason for you to watch it.

Giant Bat-Starfish Coming Your Way (Yes, It's From Ultraman)

Ultraman.

A giant (of course Ultraman) starfish -- excuse me, DOUBLE starfish with baby bat in the middle kaiju.

Some days I don't want to know what the Japanese are smoking/drinking/eating/imbibing to create such BIZARRO SHIT. And other days I'd like to MAINLINE IT STRAIGHT INTO MY EYEBALLS.

 

One day I would like to dress like this and walk into a restaurant at noon and see what goes down. Would I get a great table or one in the back near the bathrooms.

I think this picture is best viewed while listening to David Bowie's classic "Fashion."

Ultraman: Copyright and Trademark 2019 by its rights holder. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody.

Robin Hood seriously wounds Mortal Engines

The audience has spoken.

And they are not happy with Mortal Engines, the new blockbuster produced by Peter Jackson.

Per boxofficemojo.com's projections through December 23, 2018, the $100 million dollar budgeted film about a post-apocalyptic Earth where a variety of cities such as London survive as gigantic mobile platforms on wheels has grossed less than $12 million domestically since its release on December 14.

In a world where resources are scarce, how does it make ANY sense to have to propel your cities on giant wheels and treads? You have to agree that is a seriously goofy premise.

Moviegoers thought it was such a stupid premise because they actually went to see the 14,573rd version of Robin Hood instead. Yes, Robin fcuking Hood, which brought in just over $30 million in North America.

 Perhaps if Mortal Engines had featured Robin Hood were riding atop a fast moving Sherwood Forest-mobile shooting arrows at a furiously zooming Nottingham piloted by the Sheriff it would have gotten more butts in ye olde seats.

The Con is On

San Diego Comic Con 2018 is underway.

Some rumblings from the get go:

1. Robin blurts out "F--- Batman!" in the trailer for new "Titans" series. What, did Frank ("Are you RETARDED? I'm the GODDAMN Batman!") Miller stop by the set that day?

2. Screencrush looks at the new, female DR. WHO, played by the talented Jodie Whitaker.

3. StarTrek.com has a guide to the Trek side of life at SDCC. I am really digging that mood rock & phaser set from ThinkGeek (you fire the phaser at the rock to "heat it up" [it changes color]). Genius!

Jurassic World: Farsical Kingdom

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

The latest "run the dinosaurs are attacking!" movie is an abysmal failure, adding nothing new to this long in the saurian tooth franchise.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom takes place three years after the events of Jurassic World, with the abandoned park now overrun not only with island growth but dinosaurs - keep out, no humans allowed. However, the island's volcano (the other movies never mentioned a volcano) is erupting, posing the question, "Should someone save Earth's only remaining dinosaurs, who were extinct until greedy billionaires and unscrupulous geneticists recreated them for fun and profit?"

Enter Claire and Owen (Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, respectively, back from the last film), who are tasked by Generic Evil Corporate Guy (Rafe Spall), on behalf of Unwitting Sick Industrialist Guy (James Cromwell as the shady partner to park founder John Hammond, whom we have never seen nor heard mentioned before in the previous FOUR JP movies).

Claire and Owen take along Fourteen Year Old Nervous Techie and Animal Girl, face off against Mercenary Hunter Guy and his goons, and...oh, what's the point? We've seen this all before, and done much, much better.  The point is a dollar sign, something the Jurassic Park/World backers and Universal Studios are both chasing. Now a bad movie isn't going to kill anybody, but it can kill - or at least seriously dampen - the movie-going experience. The first Jurassic World movie was released ten years after JP III, showing the world that dinosaurs are still fascinating, enthralling creatures in the public's imaginations. But that will hold water, or plesiosaurs, only so long if you don't have an engaging story and interesting characters, things which are plainly absent in JW:FK.

Fallen Kingdom's story is cherry-picked from previous films in this series: an abandoned park (from JP 2 & 3), the evil industrialists/capitalists (JP2), the protagonists made to return to the park under false pretenses (JP3), the misguided geneticists creating designer dinos (JW), and so on. We might be able to forgive them is they cherry picked from other movies and not so incestuously from within their own franchise.

The most engaging dinosaur in the public's imagination has long been the Tyrannosaurus Rex. After being put through some of the greatest action/suspense/thriller sequences by the master Steven Spielberg in the first two films in the Jurassic Park series, the T-Rex was given the back seat in JPIII to the Spinosaurus, a much bigger dino with a crocodile-like snout. When the series was revived with Jurassic World, the filmmakers got the idea to just invent a new dinosaur called the Indominus Rex, a creature made from the DNA of T-Rex, Velociraptor, and a half dozen other big, angry dinos. This weirdo made no real impression on me and was replaced as the dinosaur du-jour in Fallen Kingdom with another dino-Frankenstein in the form of the Indoraptor, which was the Indominus mixed more closely with the Velociraptor. The Jurassic World films clearly are trying to turn the public's fascination and love toward the Velociraptor (the hero dinos during the JW movies' final sequences) but we ain't having none of it. No matter how smart scientists think raptors were, Tyrannosaurus is still King of the Dinosaurs.

The first three Jurassic Park movies relied heavily on the on-set dinosaurs created by the late Stan Winston and his team. The filmmakers had to constantly cut from Winston's dinos to visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic's computer-generated dinosaurs. As a testament to the fluidity and believability of Winston's creations, especially the T-Rex and Spinosaurus, they matched seamlessly with ILM's digital wonders.  The Jurassic World franchise is all CGI and it shows. The actors are staring at nothing, except maybe a tennis ball or "x" taped to a green screen wall. I no longer believe I am watching real animals on the screen. The wonder is gone.

There will be the inevitable, and already scheduled, Jurassic World III, but I do not look forward to it. Why should I, when it will simply be another loud, frenetic CGI-filled summer blockbuster. So much sound and fury, signifying dino-nothing.

Warcraft Movie Review

My review for the movie Warcraft (2016).

With apologies to the millions of faithful Warcraft gamers, I just could NOT take this movie seriously. A bunch of overly muscled and very toothy action figures (here called orcs) seek to leave their dying home planet Draenor for a time share in the much nicer other-dimensional world of Azeroth. One of the lower order orcs, Durotan, begins to wonder if this is a good idea, as the reason their planet looks like Detroit after the bomb is because their leader Gul'dan practices a nasty brand of magic, called covfefe, sorry it is the "Fel" which consumes everything around it, like Black Friday shoppers stampeding into Wal-Mart.

Less than five minutes into this eyesore, all I could see whenever one of the orcs spoke is Sweetums from the Muppets BECAUSE ALL THE ORCS LOOK LIKE HIM. Every orc with their big lower canines sounds like they have a speech impediment. They also look like He-Man action figures brought to life, with their ridiculously muscled torsos which should make them collapse into their chests like a personal black hole, or at the very least falling over all the time, especially with the comically large weapons they brandish.

This is a bad, bad, very terrible movie; the story is thin and paint by numbers, with characters who are silly when they are not totally forgettable.  Special shout out to Ben Foster (great in 3:10 to Yuma) who is horribly miscast as a great wizard (here called mages, which is a word they OVERUSE by about a thousand times). There are some actors who only should play contemporary characters (Richard Gere as Lancelot in First Knight, anyone?), when they do period or fantasy pieces they stick out like a sore thumb. I expected so much more from directer/co-writer Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code).

This movie is proof that not everything needs a live action/photo-real adaptation.

Avoid at all costs, unless you have a case of beer, some robot puppets lying around, and a wish to put on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 home edition in your living room.

Warcraft image and Muppets image copyright 2018 by their respective rights holders. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody review.

War For The Planet Of The Apes Brings New Trilogy To A Satisfying Close

My favorite thing this year was the character of Bad Ape in the thrilling War For the Planet of the Apes, the likely conclusion to the latest Apes trilogy involving the intelligent talking ape Caesar.

As the latest Apes movie was a serious war movie with death and destruction aplenty, the filmmakers included some welcome humor in the form of Steve Zahn's character of Bad Ape.

BABY DRIVER Posters Run The Gamut From Cliche to Cool

Great movie poster illustrations are becoming a lost artform.

Here is a quite standard Hollywood poster for the upcoming BABY DRIVER. It's not terrible, with its collage of characters grouped at the top and the slanted angle of the car in the lower half.

Here's an image that could be on a poster, but targets the film's sure-to-be-classic rock song soundtrack. Now THIS is a cool image. It grabs your attention with the graphic of the car zooming out of Baby's ever present iPod.

This next poster I absolutely adore. Simple, clean graphics. No collage, no clutter.

Baby Driver movie and images Copyright 2017 Sony Pictures Digital Productions Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended.

Miguel Ferrer, 1955 to 2017

"I fucking love that guy!"

That exclamation in the sci fi classic RoboCop (1987) forever cemented actor Miguel Ferrer into the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere.

Mr. Ferrer, the son of Hollywood legends Jose Ferrer (the Emperor in David Lynch's Dune) and Rosemary Clooney, and first cousin to George Clooney, passed away on January 19. He was 61. 

Mr. Ferrer had roles on the big screen and on TV: Star Trek III: The Search For Spock, Miami Vice, Deepstar Six, Twin Peaks, and The Stand to name just a few.

However this blogger really grew to love Mr.Ferrer for his voice over work. His amazingly deep resonant voice gave life to the animated classic Mulan's villan Shan Yu and Aquaman in Superman: The Animated Series. Mr. Ferrer also had a thriving career as a movie trailer announcer, narrating the trailers for such films as The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, U-571, Rent, and Romeo Must Die.

Fantastic Four. Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

The Fantastic Four, once Marvel Comics' flagship title, now a series canceled since 2015, was like the Star Trek of comic books: a group of adventurers boldly going into the unknown frontiers of space and time and other dimensions, meeting the challenges head on and bringing back that knowledge to help mankind.

Art: Anthony Castrillo. Characters Copyright 2016 by Marvel Comics. No infringement of those rights is intended.


Apparently Marvel Comics decided to stop making FF comics as they don't own the (potentially) lucrative film rights, which they sold off to 20th Century Fox for relatively cheap in the late 90s while undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. Why make new stories in the comics which might fuel the competition's movie coffers? It makes (dollars and) sense, but it still stings.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby crafted 102 issues together as writer/co-plotter and artist/co-plotter respectively. They gave us not only our flawed quartet of heroes in Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic, Ben Grimm/The Thing, Susan Storm Richards/Invisible Woman and Johnny Storm/Human Torch, but Doctor Doom, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Black Panther, Mole Man, the Watcher, Skrulls, the Puppet Master, the Inhumans (Black Bolt, Medusa, Karnak, Gorgon, Triton and Lockjaw), the Frightful Four, and so much more.

There's a gold mine of stories there, enough for several movies. Since Fox tried three times to bring the FF to the big screen and failed, maybe in a few years they might sell the rights back to Marvel so that their film arm Marvel Studios might make a truly great Fantastic Four film.

To the Pogo Plane, everyone!

Kong: Skull Island trailer goes BIG

King Kong roars back to life, and onto to the big screen.

Kong: Skull Island looks terrific, with a great cast including om Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman.

The studio behind it, Legendary Pictures is setting the stage for their new GIANT Kong to face off against Godzilla in just a few years.

Let's Get Ready To Crumble!

Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2 Trailer

"Showtime, a-holes!"

That phrase will be on everyone's lips and t-shirts next summer, thanks to Chris Pratt's charisma and the deft writing and directing of James Gunn in reassembling his misfit Guardians of the Galaxy for new exploits in the sequel.

The new trailer has got it all: laughs, spectacle, Baby Groot, button pushing, beautiful multihued people, great 70s rock music. Enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2.

Indiana Jones and The Animation Genre

George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford have committed to another Indiana Jones adventure for 2019.

I prefer my Indiana Jones at the age he was - late 30s - when we first met him in Raiders Of The Lost Ark. What if we could always have Indy at that perfect age?

Filmmaker Patrick Schoenmaker and friends put together an amazing little teaser trailer showing us a version of Indiana Jones we've never seen, an animated version. With great attention to detail, good character designs, beautiful backgrounds and color scheme, Mr. Schoenmaker proves Indy could live in a different medium, one where Dr. Jones does not have to age.

Indiana Jones character copyright 2016 Lucasfilm/Disney.