Lots of great geek movie news tidbits rolling out over the past few days/weeks/whenever. Really juicy stuff. Like Marvel announcing the villain in Thor 2 will indeed be Malekith the Accursed, or as I’ve always called him, “Whodahell?” Also, the announcement from Bryan Singer that the X-Men: First Class sequel will be called Days of Future Past; much like the Winter Solider moniker given Captain America 2, that’s a straight-up win.
Finally, there’s been buzz that Marvel Studios and FOX are talking about a trade: the rights to Daredevil and his cronies being extended for FOX in exchange for Galactus going back to Marvel Studios out of the FOX Fantastic Four package, which would be keen because it means perhaps instead of this:
 |
We’ll get to see this:
 |
Very cool stuff. But I’m not going to talk about any of it, because, hey, it’s all just early-snippets info buzz and such, so everything that can be said about that has already been said in some corner or another of the internet… and besides, that’s just how I roll.
Yo.
Instead: Trailer Round-up!
Wreck-It Ralph
Would I prefer this was from Pixar and not just Disney Animation? Yeah, I guess. I mean, Pixar is the gold, platinum, and diamond standard of modern animation… but they tend to get a mite bit preachy. ‘Preachy’ is not what I want from my video game mash-up cartoon movie. I want ridiculous amounts of fun while Reilly, Silverman, and Lynch riff off each other in a recording studio, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED! (For those of you who don’t know, this is not the norm; the voice actors in animated films usually record their roles at completely different times and never interact.)
I’M GONNA WRECK IT! And you can, too, because the fictional game at the center of the movie, “Fix-It Felix, Jr.”, is now playable on Disney’s website.
Rise of the Guardians
Superhero Santa and his Justice Team of Awesomeness is an AWESOME movie idea! And like most awesome movie ideas, Rise of the Guardians is not an original Hollywood creation. It is based on the Guardians of Childhood book series by writer William Joyce who, according to his Wikipedia page, worked on the original Toy Story as well as A Bug’s Life, so clearly awesomeness is in his pedigree.
Dammit, I wish I had thought of this.
Oz The Great and Powerful
Oh, just me? Well, suit yourselves.
L. Frank Baum’s Oz books were my absolute favorite growing up (although I did also have a soft spot for The Great Brain and Encyclopedia Brown.) I know Disney’s gone to this well before, adapting big chunks of Ozma of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz for their live-action nightmare-a-palooza flick Return to Oz. This time, though, instead of casting a witch-to-be as spunky Kansas everygirl Dorothy Gale, they’ve pressed the rewind button to tell a story that, in all the expanded Ozian universe (and that’s a big universe) has not often been fleshed out: how in the world DID the Wonderful Wizard, a small-time huckster back in the states, end up the ruler of the magical land of Oz?
James Franco is the Wizard, and I gotta say: he’s just the right amount of “Seriously, he’s crazy, right?” to play the part. There are other famous people in this, I think; some of the many witches involved. Michelle Williams? Mila Kunis? Who cares? Sam Raimi directs a quirky-creepy film in a quirky-creepy world with a quirky-creepy star. What’s not to like?
Anyone else dressing up in costume for the premiere? Oh, just me? Well, suit yourselves.
Tom Hoefner (@TomHoefner on Twitter) is a playwright, theatre director, college professor, and would-be novelist living in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. He can’t figure out why more people don’t tap into the temple of public domain goodness that is all things Oz.
Check out From the Casefiles of Race and Cookie McCloud, a blog of super-short stories chronicling the adventures of Race McCloud, Private Eye, and his 15-year old former-secret-agent-in-training niece Cookie: http://raceandcookie.blogspot.com
OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL looks really great, but I think I’ll just catch the reboot in ten years when they recast with Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield. Isn’t that what we do with Raimi movies these days?
I have a script idea about Oz where the central characters are jungian archetypes on a first dimensional plane, aliens on a second and self replicating machine elves on a third.
Liev Schreiber plays the lion.
