2016 Summer movie preview

First up this summer, as it has been the last eight years, is a Marvel movie; this time a third Captain America film with Captain America: Civil War on May 6. Really Marvel Movie XII, Civil War features most of the heroes of the Marvel universe splitting up and picking sides against one and other — one side for the superheroes having to register their real identities with the government and the other side against.

horsemenposter_1200_1778_81_sThe Nice Guys, out May 20, is the rare summer movie this year that’s not based on any previous work. Written and directed by Shane Black who also wrote and directed Iron Man 3 and the wonderful Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys has a private eye and a mob goon, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe respectively, tooling around Los Angeles and getting into all sorts of Shane Black themed trouble.

The third movie of the recent X-Men movie series, but really the eighth in the overall franchise, is X-Men: Apocalypse out May 27. I’m a big fan of the most recent retro X-Men movies, the first taking place in the ’60s, the second in the ’70s and this latest one in the ‘90s with some of the characters from that decade I was realllllly into comics. My only concern here is that it seems like with Apocalypse the X-Team is fighting against an all powerful villain who threatens to enslave/destroy the human race. Which sounds a lot like Avengers: Age of Ultron from last summer to me.

WarCraft, based on the fantasy role playing game of the same name, is out June 10. Fantasy seems to be one of the hottest generas today with movies like The Hobbit and TV shows like Game of Thrones being fan-favorites. Except that there’s really nothing I’ve seen from WarCraft, which is admittedly not much, that makes it seem unique, or even all that different that what’s come before.

independence_day_resurgence20 years after the original comes a sequel to the sci-fi alien-invasion action film Independence Day with Independence Day Resurgence on June 24. Now I’ve got no problem with remakes, reboots or relaunches, but it does seem to me that at this point to make a sequel so long after the original is a decade or so too late.

A third Ghostbusters is out on July 15. What looks to be more of a remake/reboot of the original, this time around all of the Ghostbusters are played by women; Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones, and is being directed by Paul Feig who’s directed a ton of movies the last decade but will always be remembered by me and many others as being the creator of the highly influential Freaks and Geeks TV series.

A third Star Trek movie of the recent films Star Trek Beyond warps into theaters July 22. What’s interesting here is that this latest Star Trek adventure is co-written by geek-god Simon Pegg. What’s no so interesting here is that it’s being directed by Justin Lin who helmed three of the Fast & Furious flicks.

Suicide Squad posterMatt Damon returns to the Jason Bourne role he originated 14 years ago with the aptly titled Jason Bourne July 29. Damon skipped the last Bourne movie with Jeremy Renner filling in as a non-Jason Bourne lead. And I don’t think anyone would argue that Renner’s The Bourne Legacy was as good as what had come before. That’s why I’m excited about this new Bourne movie that brings back Damon and director Paul Greengrass that made two of the other previous films so great for Bourne’s latest outing.

If Marvel gets to open the summer movie season then DC’s gonna close it out with Suicide Squad on August 5. Feeling a lot like Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad pares a group of disparate, and so-far unpopular superheroes together to fight some greater evil. But with Suicide Squad instead of the superheroes being the good guys, they’re really bad guys like Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), Deadshoot (Will Smith) and, no joke, Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney). And while admittedly this might seem odd and strange, from what’s so far been released for the film Suicide Squad actually looks kind’a great.

Direct Beam Comms #17

TV

Star Wars Rebels

221-ep-gallery-45_4132c032The second season of the wonderful Star Wars Rebels animated series wrapped up last week on Disney XD. I’ve enjoyed this show since the first season and really appreciate how the creators of Star Wars Rebels have been using design elements that were created, but never used, for the original Star Wars trilogy. While this is a series seemingly directed towards children, see “animated” and “Disney,” non-the-less at times the stories of Star Wars Rebels have had a depth not present in most other series being produced these days.

Taking place before Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars Rebels follows the crew of the ship the “Ghost” who are smugglers by day and proto-rebels by night. It’s sort’a equal parts Firefly and Star Wars in that respect. But Star Wars Rebels also deals with all sorts of interesting ideas like if droids served in the rebellion, would they see themselves as veterans? And most importantly, how does Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) train his apprentice Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) without Bridger being lured to the dark side?

Plus there’s a young Darth Vader (no joke, voiced by Darth Vader himself James Earl Jones) who’s not quite as in-charge as he is in later years, called in almost like a relief pitcher in baseball when the lower “Inquisitors” can’t get the job done against the rebels.

In fact, I catch myself from time to time wondering why some episodes of Star Wars Rebels are more action oriented than story and plot oriented as so many episodes are. Then I have to remind myself; obvstentively Star Wars Rebels is a cartoon for kids. All the extra stuff that I love about the show is just an added benefit that most other animated series don’t bother with. A-

Art

Art of Euclase
Art of Euclase

The artist Euclase does some amazing Photoshop paintings featuring pop-culture figures like Tron, Furiosa and Riddick to name a very few. Her art is simply amazing and drool-worthy. Euclase’s work is, IMHO, in the same realm of that of the great James Bama.

Movies

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

So Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released two weeks ago and did great at the box office. It received terrible reviews across the board but non-the-less the film broke all kinds of records and earned something like more than $460 million at the box office world-wide with $181 from the US alone on opening weekend. To put that number into perspective, Avengers: Age of Ultron earned $191 million its first weekend here in the US and went onto gross more than $1.4 billion worldwide.*

What does this mean for the comic book movies overall?

First, along with Deadpool which was R-rated and has made more than $600 million at the box office and will surly make loads more on home media, there’s no one way to make a superhero movie. Studios don’t have to follow the “Marvel Method;” or bright, shiny and poppy, in order to make a movie audiences are willing to see. If Marvel movies are going to be full of color and positivity, then DC seems to be taking the track of going dark and grim.

Which, with how much Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had to contend with the movie taking years to be released and bad press and bad word-of-mouth, seems to have worked for DC. And with the upcoming Suicide Squad movie later this summer, a movie people are actually excited about, I can only imagine that the hits will keep coming for DC.

DC movie release schedule:

  • Suicide Squad: August 5
  • Wonder Woman: June 23, 2017
  • Justice League 1: November 17, 2017
  • The Flash: March 23, 2018
  • Aquaman: June 27, 2018
  • Batman: 2018
  • Shazam: 2019
  • Justice League 2: June 14, 2019
  • Cyborg: April 3, 2020
  • Green Lantern Corps: June 19, 2020

*Though Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did have a massive drop in ticket sales from its first to second week in release. That being said the movie made a load of money its first week so I’m sure that it’ll be profitable, just not as profitable as other similar movies.

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • King Kong opens in 1933.
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey is released in 1968.
  • In 1978 The TV series The Amazing Spider-Man debuts on CBS.
  • The TV series Twin Peaks debuts in 1990 on ABC.

Direct Beam Comms #16

Movies

All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records

Unpublished Maxx cover
Unpublished Maxx cover

The documentary All Things Must Pass… is an interesting look at the Tower Records phenomena that saw growth from the 1960s to the early 2000s, then because of the high priced CD market and file-sharing services like Napster crashed and burned and was defunct by 2006. The town I lived in never had a Tower Records, but even so I’d heard of the company even if I had to settle buying my CDs at Sam Goody, Best Buy or Musicland.

The story in All Things Must Pass… seems to be pretty standard documentary fare; from humble beginnings a mighty corporation is built that earns huge sums of dough. But the whole thing is brought down because of some bad management, new competition and bad luck.

If there’s one thing I thought needed some work here it’s that the documentary seemed a bit unfocused. It goes from a history of Tower Records to what Tower Records meant to people around the globe to why Tower Records fell. Which is a lot to cover in 90 minutes. B-

The Reading List

On the Horizon

I’ve got columns in the works for a summer movie preview, the Dark Horse Aliens comic books, the X-Men movie franchise and the Independence Day films.

Direct Beam Comms #15

TV

The Carmichael Show

The Carmichael Show returned last week for a second season and is still pretty darn funny. The first preview episode that aired a few Wednesdays ago entitled “Everyone Cheats” was funny enough as were the two that aired last Sunday night; “Fallen Heroes” and “The Funeral.”

The Carmichael Show has a lot of controversial elements, from the characters debating on seeing Bill Cosby in concert even with his trial looming to the pros and cons of cheating on significant others. While it might have controversial elements, it never goes out of its way to simply be controversial, to try and stir up controversy for controversy’s sake. Instead the show tackles weighty subjects head on and doesn’t pull any punches. B

The Americans

Space-Ghost-Variant-Bill-Sienkiewicz
Bill Sienkiewicz Space Ghost comic cover

The Americans returned last week for a fourth season — which is amazing in of itself since the series has never been embraced by the masses so simply getting more than one season is a huge win for those of us who are fans of this show. This new season felt very much like a direct continuation from the last, with daughter Paige learning of her parent’s dual identities and exactly the wrong time in her life and falling into the abyss of depression.

Of course there’s loads of sexy spy stuff too!

The only other thing I the creators of The Americans could’ve done differently this season would have been to move the series ahead a few years in time. To pick up at some point in the future where the Jennings are a bit older and have passed Paige’s crisis where how they dealt with it could have been told via flashbacks. But sometimes handling story this way feels like gimmicky, so I’m not at all disappointed the creators of The Americans handled things like they did.

One prediction for this new season; some major characters won’t make it until the end — and I’m not talking about Pastor Tim whom I’m surprised has made it as long as he has. 😉 I mean it wouldn’t surprise me if a character like Martha or Stan aren’t around at to see the last episode this year. B+

Daredevil

The second season of The Punisher & Daredevil Show, err…, I mean the second season of Daredevil was released on Netflix Friday and so far I’ve watched the first episode. It was actually kind’a great. My big worry was that the Punisher would be “saved” for later episodes, but he had a big presence in the very first episode and from what I’ve heard seems to be a big part of the second season of the show overall so I’m very happy.

The New York City of Daredevil is an interesting place. It seems to take place in some dark reality where the “bad” New York of the 1970s and 1980s never ended and went right into the 21st century. New York City in Daredevil is a dark and dirty and dangerous place where someone like Daredevil really could exist to try and bring order to all this chaos.

Yet into Daredevil trying to bring order is injected a true agent of chaos; The Punisher. Someone who’s simply interested in destroying all crime in the city by any means necessary be it by gun or grenade or garrote. A

Malcolm-Jamal Warner & Max Casella

It’s great to see Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Max Casella on TV again. Warner* is best known for playing Theo in The Cosby Show and Casella* as Vinnie Delpino in Doogie Howser, M.D. Warner currently plays Al Cowlings in The People vs OJ Simpson on FX and Casella as Julie Silver in Vinyl on HBO.

Though that’s not quite fair, over the years Warner and Casella have been in many movies and films outside of those roles. For example, Casella did 28 episodes of The Sopranos* and Warner has appeared in Community, Sons of Anarchy and American Horror Story to name a few.

Movies

Star Trek

Other than budget, I think the main difference between the Star Trek TV series and the Star Trek movies are there are more people on the bridge of the Enterprise in the movies than the TV shows. 😉

X-Men: Apocalypse

Toys

Starship Troopers Roger Young 35″ Long Studio Scale Model Kit

The $650 model in question
The $650 model in question

I’m a huge fan of Starship Troopers and am always on the lookout for a good collectible from the film. And a few collectibles have been released for the film the last few years, but they’re always quite expensive. Take this $650 MODEL KIT, yes, this is a kit you put together yourself that costs $650!

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • William Shatner turns, and Leonard Nemoy would’ve turned, 85 this week.
  • The last episode of the modern Battlestar Galactica aired seven years ago this week.

Daredevil: The Punishement Due

The first season of Daredevil was the finest live-action superhero TV series since … well, since forever. The series creators flawlessly built a show around a strong and skilled yet non-superpowered lead living in a world of superheroes like Thor, Captain America and Iron Man. And the latest season brings the introduction of one of Daredevil’s biggest foes; the Punisher.

The character of Punisher has a bit of a checkered history. He first appeared in issues of The Amazing Spider-Man where he was portrayed as a sort of dimwitted assassin who could be tricked into going after heroes like Spider-Man by less dimwitted villains. Over time the Punisher’s history would expand and be filled in.

Originally created in 1974, Frank Castle aka the Punisher, was a Vietnam vet living in New York City who’s family was gunned down in Central Park by mobsters. Afterwards, Castle, with nothing to lose, decided to battle crime expecting that it would one day cost him his life. A b-list character at the start, it wasn’t until the mid-‘80s that the character of the Punisher would find popularity. So popular that for a time in the early ‘90s there were three different Punisher comic titles all being produced simultaneously.

The comic book The Punisher was a sort of Death Wish-like series of adventures where the Punisher would destroy various drug cartels, street gangs and even military contractors skimming from Uncle Sam. The Punisher War Journal was like a Tom Clancy-like techno-thriller where the Punisher, along with a host of gadgets like his “battle van” and with help from computer expert Micro would battle a high-tech criminal element. And Punisher War Zone had Punisher infiltrating the mob in order to take it down from the inside.

How comic book readers could accept essentially three different versions of the character at the same time in these titles is beyond me, but we did!

PunisherWJ5As the Punisher comic series went on over the years he would be used to prop up lower selling comics titles. But as the Punisher appeared alongside the then very unpopular The Avengers and in the pages of the Vietnam war comic The ‘Nam he would lose more and more of his edge.

As the years went by and Punisher’s popularity began to wain, more recent comics turned Frank Castle into Frankenstein in (no joke) Frankencastle and a doughy-eyed serial killer of criminals ala the horror icon Jason in later Punisher series.

Three low-rated movies would also be made of the Punisher over the years; The Punisher in both 1989 and 2004 and Punisher: War Zone in 2008. I consider myself a Punisher super-fan — he’s always been one of my favorite characters and I can’t imagine how much money I’ve spend on Punisher comics. I watched the first two Punisher movies but couldn’t bring myself to watch even a minute of the crappy-campy looking Punisher: War Zone.

While early runs of The Punisher by Mike Baron and War Journal by Carl Potts might be some of my favorite comics books, to me the Punisher works best when he’s the antagonist in some other character’s comic. Like when he was Daredevil’s nemesis in early ‘80s issues of Daredevil by Frank Miller.

daredevil_ver17Maybe “nemesis” is too strong a word. Really, both Daredevil and Punisher want the same thing — an end to crime. But Punisher is willing to kill people as a means to an end whereas Daredevil is not — and will actively try to stop the Punisher from doing so. Which is where much of the two character’s conflicts arises.

In Miller’s Daredevil, rather than having entire stories developed around the Punisher he would just show up and cause havoc before disappearing for a while. Which to me is how he’s handled best and is how the Punisher is being handled in the second season of Daredevil.

This TV Punisher, played by Jon Bernthal, is a kind of ally and kind of enemy at the same time. Someone who might help Daredevil one minute but be enemies the next when he’s trying to murder someone Daredevil’s trying to protect and take to justice.

All episodes of the latest second season of Daredevil are currently streaming on Netflix.