The Week In Geek:Comic Book Movies Galore-X-Men, JLA, and Superman. And Zombies Too!
Amy Adams Is Our Daily Planet Star Reporter
Remember when Kate Bosworth was cast as Lois Lane, and the moment you heard that announcement it just felt wrong? Well, I’m having the opposite effect with the announcement that Amy Adams would be playing the new Lois Lane in Zack Snyder’s Superman reboot. She has the right amount of spunk, attitude and cuteness to be Lois Lane. Also, at 36 Amy Adams actually seems old enough to be an actual star reporter for a newspaper (Kate Bosworth was 23 and looked even younger when she played Lois) I know there are already a lot of sexist fanboys bitching that Adams is “too old” for the 28 year old Henry Cavill, but I’d bet real money if the ages were reversed we’d never hear a single complaint. Besides, Margot Kidder was about 5 years older than Chris Reeve, and no one said a peep back in the day. So far all the casting announcments have been spot on for Man of Steel, so let’s hope they stay that way.
Justice Leage of America Movie Back On
In other even bigger DC Comics movie news, in a somewhat surprise announcement Warner Brothers president Jeff Robinov (in an interview with the LA Times) mentioned a Justice League of America movie coming for 2013. Many fans thought this was maybe a misprint, but in the following days it was indeed confirmed by the studio. Robinov insists however, that this JLA would be a different approach to the way that Marvel is handling Avengers. The Christopher Nolan Batman and the upcoming Zack Snyder/Henry Cavill Superman are not going to be in this version of the JLA. The characters of Superman and Batman would be in it, but would be different versions unrelated to either solo franchises. In addition to Supes and Bats, when asked if the upcoming Wonder Woman tv series on NBC would affect this movie too, Robinov stated “Wonder Woman could be a film as well, the same way that ‘Superman Returns’ came out while ‘Smallville’ was on.” which suggests that whomever plays Wonder Woman in the JLA movie, Adrianne Palicki is SOL.
I personally have no problem with this. DC’s characters are more mythic and open to interpretation than Marvel’s. The idea of a multivers and multiple versions is a very DC Comics thing anyway, and it would be only fitting to have the Movie DC universe reflect the comics. No one’s head exploded when Robert Downey Jr. played Sherlock Holmes on the big screen at the same time that the contemporary version Sherlock was airing on television. The same holds true for the cultural icons like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. People understand that these are all separate versions in various media. And if they don’t understand, then they just as likely don’t care and just want to see fights and explosions anyway.
The real question is whether any of the upcoming other non Super/Bat DC films would tie into JLA, like Green Lantern and the upcoming Flash movie. The scrapped script from 2007 took their cue from the Bruce Timm animated series and had John Stewert as the League’s resident Green Lantern. I could easily see Warners going this route, aside from having the obvious racial diversity, it also keeps a star like Ryan Reynolds from making a pricey supporting only role. But they could introduce John Stewart as Hal Jordan’s partner, looking after Earth while Hal is off in space, therefore tying in the Green Lantern movie universe with the JLA one. And what about the upcoming Flash movie? That seems like another obvious tie-in. In any event, I think 2013 is a wee bit optimistic for a JLA movie, but 2014 doesn’t seem out of the question if Warners and DC Entertainment start getting all their ducks in a row now.
And might I add one fanboy suggestion? If you’re gonna recast Superman, why not give Brandon Routh another chance? Even the most ardent haters of Superman Returns seemed to like Routh in the role, and Lord knows he’ll come cheap. I think he deserves more than being the George Lazenby of Supermen. (for those of you who don’t know, George Lazenby was the only actor to portray James Bond only once) Save yourselves the nationwide casting search Warner Brothers. Go Team Routh!
World War Z Set To Erupt At Paramount
It was reported a week or so back that Paramount was about to give up on adapting Max Brook’s zombie apocalypse novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, due to a price tag that looked to escalate into about $125 million. Not a huge amount for a PG-13 rated sci fi or action flick, but a lot for a bloody sure to be R Rated zombie movie. Enter Brad Pitt, who is now attached to star, and now Paramount is planning a June start date. It looks like thanks to Pitt’s involvement, Paramount was able to find a couple of co financiers and will be able to get this baby made after all. Marc Forster, director of Quantum of Solace and Finding Neverand, is going to direct the film, which looks at the aftermath of a global zombie infestation a decade after the fact. Paramount Pictures is hoping to have the film finished before the second wave of zombie flicks coming out soon, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, R.I.P.D. and Zombieland 2 (not to mention the Walking Dead on AMC) Paramount had better strike while the iron is hot.
X-Men 4 AND 5? Just Please, No Brett Ratner. Thanks.
With all the noise being made about X-Men: First Class and The Wolverine, many would assume that Fox has given up the notion of continuing the original X-Men films. Well, not so fast; in an interview with Empire magazine, X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner said that she has turned in a treatment to Fox studios for an X-Men 4 “that leads into an X-Men 5” Although that’s all she really said on the subject…no clues as to who would come back and who wouldn’t, but I imagine Hugh Jackman as Wolverine is a given. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll re-cast Halle Berry.
Now, this is just my own fanboy speculation, but with Bryan Singer back in the mix at Fox as a producer on First Class, might he be thinking of going back to the Xavier’s School of the present day too? Could fans finally see his take on what X3 would have been? In an interview with X2 screenwriter Michael Dougherty last year while promoting his feature film Trick r’ Treat, he mentioned some details on what would have been Bryan Singer’s follow up to X2.
“The idea – you open up with Alkali Lake but it’s completely barren and dried up and there are these odd reports of strange phenomena going on around the world accompanied by bright lights in the sky. The idea would be that both the X-Men and the Brotherhood realize that essentially a very god-like force had entered their reality and that it was causing disruptions around the world – mutant prisons being decimated. I had pitched an idea about a fleet of cargo ships getting torn apart in the Atlantic and you found out that they were shuttling mutants as slave labor.”
“So basically you found out was that Phoenix was going round the world taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned as a god, which they did touch upon in X3. She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was basically sick of the fighting and she was going to take things into her own hands and she didn’t give a shit what the X-Men or the Brotherhood had to say about it.”
“And ultimately the way it was going to end, at least the version I was pushing for, would be that Phoenix was kind of like the Starchild at the end of 2001, she didn’t just get stabbed and die again, but she kind of chose to leave.”
“The one idea that I loved, that I really wanted to do, was that Cyclops would build the Danger Room. Cyclops felt guilty, he felt that because the X-Men were too weak, they weren’t strong enough, they weren’t fast enough, that was the reason Jean died. If they were a little bit better at fighting, then she might still be alive. It was all about this guilt he had about her death and so he built the Danger Room to train them to be better. But in the end it really was about him not being able to let go of her, so that causes all the chaos and disruption in the movie. But in the end it’s about him letting her go.”
“Ultimately she kind of becomes that cosmic force that Phoenix is known to be, she choose to leave Earth and become a god, or at least a higher level of intelligence, and she goes into the cosmos possibly to kick-start life somewhere else… The final scene for me would have been her telling Cyclops or her telling the X-Men ‘I’ll be watching.’ Essentially she becomes a god.”
Sounds a hell of a lot better than what we ended up with, doesn’t it? I mean, who really wanted to see Famke Jansen doing a Carrie White at the Prom imitation? I could see X4 being much like Dougherty’s description, despite X-Men: The Last Stand having already come and gone. What if when Wolverine killed Jean in that movie, he just freed her and allowed her to ascend to a higher level? What if this higher version of the Phoenix started to un-do the damage she wrought when in human form (a quick and easy way to explain why Cyclops and Xavier are alive in this movie) Cyclops, Xavier and the rest of the X-Men might not even remember what happened in the other timeline, or their deaths at the hands of Jean, since in her omnipotence she re-wrote history. (For Buffy fans out there, think of the way they introduced Buffy’s previously unmentioned sister Dawn in season five, where slowly people started to realize that the timeline had been altered) To me, this seems like the easiest way to fix this broken franchise and just move forward.
New Wonder Woman Costume
And finally, just wanted to close out with this thought: Sometimes, when fanboys bitch enough, God listens. Evidence being the improved pants and boots to the new tv Wonder Woman costume. Hopefully, God also listened to my bitching about the script too. But probably not.
