Amazing Realities

 Marvel is reporting that a brand spankin’ new Iron Man trailer will be debuting during the February 28th (this Thursday’s) episode of ABC’s drama “Lost”, airing at 9 EST/8 Central.

Here’s the last trailer we saw.

You can also see the recent Superbowl trailer in HD here.

I’m sure your all aware of the Wolverine solo flick hitting theaters next year. And recently a lot of casting announcements have been released, revealing the fact that no less than 5 other mutants will join Wolverine in the new film. Honestly this comes as a bit of a surprise, I was under the impression that this film was going to focus solely on Wolverine, but it seems the film is going to focus on his recent history. Set only 17 years prior to the first X-men film, it looks like it’ll deal specifically with his induction into the Weapon X program, and his interaction with other Weapon X members.

For the most part the characters confirmed to appear in the film do in fact have ties to Wolverine and the Weapon X project in their comic origins.

The the actors named in recent casting announcements and their respective roles in the film are listed below (it is unknown which of characters are appearing in in brief cameos, or co-starring roles) :

Liv Schreiber as Victor Creed a.k.a Sabertooth 

In the first X-Men film ex-wrestler Tyler Mane played the role of Brotherhood mutant Sabertooth. Physically Mane was exactly what fans hoped for in a live action portrayal of the character, but unfortunately his acting left something to be desired. In the film the character surprisingly enough served mainly as comic relief from the line “Scream for me.”, to Magneto trpping him in a cell and causing him to walk face first into iron bars, the character was poorly utilized as a comic relief villain, and then apparently killed at the end of the film.

With the prequel film they’ve decided to cast Liv Schreiber, an Emmy and Golden Globe Award nominated actor to fill the role of Sabertooth. Now with Schreiber I (and I’m assuming you) hope for a depiction of Sabertooth that exemplifies his vicious nature and status as Wolverine’s archenemy. In the comics Wolverine and Sabertooth are two halves of the same coin, they both posses very animistic mutations, have had their memories erased and altered by Weapon X, and posses a healing factor. The difference between these two men is that while Wolverine seeks redemption, the control of his primal instincts, and the truth of his past, Sabertooth chose long ago to embrace his ruthless nature.

 Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson a.k.a Deadpool

The wise-cracking, Deadpool’s status as a “super-powered” mercenary/anti-hero is loosely connected to Wolverine.

Wade Wilson was an ex-Special Forces member turned Mercenary who developed terminal cancer and enrolled in the Weapon X project in the hopes of attaining a regenerative healing factor (extracted from Wolverine’s DNA) to cure his cancer. Alas the experiment failed, causing him to be severely disfigured and driven insane. Afterward, Wade was sent to a facility a where he and other, “failed experiments” were tortured and experimented on. Within the facility there was a pool where the inmates wagered on who was most likely to die next. Wade was deemed a special experiment, and thus his probability of dying was drastically reduced, and became leader of the “dead pool”. After several run ins with the personification of Death during numerous near death experiences, Wade falls in love with her and does everything in his power to be killed. After the mercy killing of a lobotomized friend, Wilson is scheduled to be executed and it is the execution that activates his healing factor. Unfortunately the healing factor did not heal the disfigurement Wilson suffered at Weapon X, and the shock completely breaks his mind. After freeing the other inmates and escaping the complex, Wade Wilson resumes his occupation as a mercenary under the name “Deadpool”.

Despite his gloomy past Deadpool is oft referred to as “the merc’ with a mouth” he is a character recognized for his black humor and tendency to break the 4th wall within his own book. Ryan Reynolds is without a doubt one of the best choices for this role. Now admittedly, Blade: Trinity was a terrible film, especially compared to the first 2 films in the Blade movie series, but Reynolds as Hannibal King, was one of the few saving graces of the film. His ability to act as a comedic foil to the stoic main character is great, and is able to deliver his lines in a smarmy smart ass way that will always grab a laugh. Out of all the casting announcements this one is most pleasing, and this character is the most likely to successfully spawn a spin-off.

 Will.i.am as John Wraith a.k.a Wraith/Kestrel

In the comic John Wraith, a mildly paranoid recluse, was a Weapon X inductee with the the ability to teleport. Wraith was a part of “Team X”, along with Wolverine and Sabertooth, where he acted as their contingency procedure in case of a failed mission or unexpected situation, able to teleport them away from the source of danger. Years after they left Weapon X, Wraith was drafted once more into the program, but was killed by partner Sabertooth after failing a mission.

Musician, clothing designer, and Black Eyed Peas front man, Will.i.am (William James Adams, Jr.)  certainly looks the part of Kestrel, but I’m unsure of his acting abilities, or in fact if he even has any previous acting experience. Kestrel’s death at the hands of Creed in the movie would certainly serve as a source of conflict between Wolverine and Sabertooth, if it actually happens. Rumor is that Will.i.am actually enrolled in boot camp to prepare for the roll, and since Will.i.am seems like a very talented individual, I’m gonna hope for the best, instead of writing this off as another musician trying to shoe horn their way into acting.

Taylor Kitsch as Remy LeBeau a.k.a Gambit

A Cajun mutant born in New Orleans, Remy was stolen from the hospital he was born in and raised by a guild of thieves. In his early teens his mutation developed, the ability to charge objects with kinetic energy, a process that caused the object to explode and release the transferred energy after a set amount of time.

Model and Friday Night Lights star, Taylor Kitsch, will be playing Gambit.

Gambit was a character that the fan base has been clamoring for since the first film. Even so, debuting him in this movie makes very little sense, even when accounting for the liberties taken with adaptions. I’m not sure why they would choose to make Gambit this old at that point in the storyline, but I guess only time will tell.

Dominic Monaghan as Barnell Bohusk a.k.a Beak

Barnell Bohusk began developing his mutant abilities at the onset of puberty. Developing an avian body structure thus becoming a man-bird something of a less graceful and much less aesthetically pleasing than Warren Kenneth Worthington III, also known as Angel. As of M-Day Beack is depowered.

Beak will be played by Lost star Dominic Monaghan.

Beak does not belong in this film, far more so than Gambit. Besides the fact that he wasn’t even introduced until 2001, the character has absolutely no ties to Wolverine or the Weapon X project. The only way I can see this working is by having Beak be one of the failed experiments kept in the same facility as Deadpool, and hopefully only making a brief cameo appearance.

Daniel Henney as David North a.k.a Maverick/Agent Zero

David North is a mutant with the natural ability to absorb kinetic forces (impacts, falls, energy blasts) and release it as heat disscharges or physical enhancements (limited super strength). Weapon X gives him the aditional abilities of a limted healing factor and an extremely corrosive substance sectreted from his fingertips. As of M-Day he has been depowered.
Maverick will be played by international actor Daniel Henney.

This is a character that makes sense, he was in Weapon X and was one of the mutants that was able escape in the massacre following Wolverine being bonded to adamantium and going feral, and is also in many ways similar to Deadpool, although he is a more serious character. It was also Maverick’s refusal to rejoin Weapon X that lead to Sabertooth killing John Wraith.

Danny Huston as William Stryker

Stryker was a Christian fundamentalist who believed it was his duty to carry out “god’s word” exterminate mutants, in X2 X-Men United, Brian Cox played a slightly altered version of the character. This modified Stryker was an ex-military scientist who had direct ties to Weapon X, and specifically, the procedures that altered Wolverine’s body and mind. 

Brian Cox did a fantastic job in the first film, he conveyed a determination and remorselessness in his hate of mutant kind. But was also able to be a sympathetic character. Cox wanted to reprise the role for the prequel, stating that the special effect techniques used to visually de-age  Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen in the opening of X3: The Last Stand could be applied to him as well. But it was not meant to be, and Danny Huston was cast instead. As bummed as I am not having Brian Cox back, Danny Huston is a great casting choice, he has an authoritative look to him, and he comes from a lineage of talented movie makers.

Lynn Collins as Silver Fox

Silver Fox was a Canadian Indian, and Wolverine’s lover in the early 20th century, the two lived on the Canadian frontier until one year on Logan’s birthday, Sabertooth tracked down Wolverine (as he does every year on that day) and raped and killed Silver Fox. It is discovered that this part of their history was a fabricated memory implanted by Weapon X , or at the very least her death was. Silver Fox appears some years later in the Weapon X project and is given a weak healing factor. It is revealed that Silver Fox had become a leader of a section of the terrorist organization HYDRA. After she, Wolverine, Maverick, Wraith, and Sabertooth reluctantly band together to kill the people responsible for their false memories, Sabertooth’s mind is taken over my another mutant, and he is driven to kill Silver Fox, this time the death is genuine. Wraith tells Logan that the two had in fact shared a life together long ago in a cabin, it is there Logan decides to bury her with a tombstone reading, “Silver Fox+Logan”.

I’m not at all familiar with Lyn Collins or her work. I can only hope that wasn’t a casting decision out of desperation, since she doesn’t really bear a resemblance to the character. And as it stands, she is currently the weakest of  the casting choices announced for the film.

I’ve been been very excited about this film for a while, and honestly this news had the exact opposite effect that I anticipated. With all these characters making appearances, it seem like it could bog down the story and keep this movie from hitting its true potential. Although in the films defense, the X-Men films (well the first 2 anyway) have been one of the few, if not only, comic book film to successfully balance a large number of characters without sacrificing the quality of the movie.

But still, common sense says that this needlessly large list of characters could be the kiss of death for this film.

This is the first week of a little something I like to call “The Video Round-Up” where we take all the new trailers and other videos from the week and it put all in one place for you.

Batman: Gotham Knight- First Look

This is a first look at the the new Batman anime anthology, produced as a part of the new DC Animated Universe film series. It contains interviews with several of the big talents on the American side of the collaboration, it’s a good 10 minutes long so sit back and enjoy.

And for those of you just looking for the anime segments from the video luckily enough I was bored enough to put together a little video for you (Yes, I was really fucking bored).

Release Date- July 2008

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

This past week brought with it the first teaser trailer for the hotly anticipated Indiana Jones 4!

Although not technically comic related, you’ll be hard pressed to find a geek not anticipating this film, especially after viewing this fantastic trailer. The smartest thing is still to keep your expectations on check, but this teaser is definitely reassuring.

Release Date- May 22, 2008

Justice League: The New Frontier

This one is nothing new, but I’m sticking it up here since the DVD is being released next week.

Our review Justice League: The New Frontier will be up this week so make sure to check back soon!

Release Date- February 22, 2008

With Hellboy 2 just on the horizon, figured it was perfect time to take a look at the movie.
The basic plot of the film is as follows:

The villainous elven warrior, Prince Nuada, seeks to instigate an uprising among the supernatural world to destroy mankind, and take back the world that is rightfully theirs. With the aid of a terribly destructive weapon, if need be. And only the horned, red skinned badass, Hellboy and his gang of superpowered friends can handle the threat.

Hellboy creator and comic artist/writer, Mike Mignola, likened the premise of the film to that of the plight of the Native Americans, saying,

“I kind of equate it to the whole American Indian situation. The Indians were shoved onto reservations. You had your old, wise Indians who said, “You know, this is the way it is. We can’t fight anymore. We just have to accept our fate.” You then have your Geronimo character saying, “Or we could just kill the White Man.” That’s kind of the situation we have in the film. We have our elf characters resigning to the way things are and then there’s one saying, “Or we could take the world back.”

The Team:

          From left to right: Johann Kraus (John Alexander), Abraham Sapien (Doug Jones), Hellboy (Ron Perlman), and Liz Sherman (Selma Blair)

All of the main characters from the first film are returning, with the exceptions of Rupert Evens character, John Myers, and David Hyde Pierce’s voice work for Abe Sapien, as Doug Jones will be providing both physical and vocal performances this time around. But there will be atleast one new addition to their ranks.

Johann Kraus

This fellow here is Johann Kraus. Kraus made his first appearance in the B.P.R.D. comic series back in ‘03. Johann Kraus was a highly skilled psychic holding a seance meeting when a Chernobyl sized event caused by a mysterious statue in the possession of the Chinese government incinerated his body and stripped the souls from thousands more, and left him as nothing more than  a mass of ectoplasm. He sought the help of the B.P.R.D. to prevent himself from dissipating. After being fitted into a containment suit Kraus has become an invaluable member of the B.P.R.D. as he no longer required food nor sleep, and thus is able to work around the clock. In the movie Kraus’ suit will be fitted with valves and swites that allow portions of his ectoplasm to extend out as “tendrils” and perform delicate tasks. His physical performance will be supplied by John Alexander and James Dodd, with a vocal performance supplied  by Thomas Kretschmann.

The only other new characters appearing in the film are the supernatural antagonists. And they are as follows:

Prince Nuada

Prince Nuada is an elven warrior who seeks to awaken the unstoppable Golden Army in order to take the world from the humans and return it to the supernatural creatures. Nuada will be played by English actor Luke Goss, who previously worked with del Toro, on the vampire action movie, Blade II, as the villain, Nomak.

Wink

This big blue fella here is cave troll, and his name is Wink.  As if him looking a like a blue monkey with tusks wans’t badass enough, he also has a mechanical right hand that serves as a retractable projectile weapon. Wink is Nuada’s main henchman basically as is there to do as his master commands, even if it’s fighting Hellboy.  Wink will be portrayed by Brian Steele, who appeared in the first film in the role of Sammael, and plays several other supernatural creatures in addition to Wink in Hellboy II.

Well that’s all the news we’ve got for Hellboy II: The Golden Army check back soon as we get closer to the July 11th release date!

In the meantime check out all the Hellboy 2 pics in our Flickr stream.

Superherohype.com has a scan of a flyer of some sort showing off action figures for the new Incredible Hulk movie. The flyer shows off two hulk figures that seem to be about the same as any other we’ve seen, though still nice looking.

What’s really interesting about this pic is the Abomination figure. In an issue of Wizard magazine a couple of months back director, Louis Leterrier stated that the original design, witch was reptilian in nature, made no sense because there was no basis for those characteristics to be there. He said, “so I just changed it and made it like the ‘über-human’. It’s a human that was injected in the wrong places with something, and these places are growing differently. It still has the general shape of the Abomination, but there’s something realistic that I wanted to put in it.”

The re-design looks a bit like Elim Blonsky’s (Abominations) skin sloughed off and his muscle and bone growth went out of control. Hopefully this leak means that we aren’t that far away from a trailer!

Apparently a new trailer for Universal Pictures’ comic film, Wanted played during this years Super Bowl, unfortunately I didn’t know about it until last night. For those of you that don’t know, Wanted was a six issue miniseries published by Top Cow and written by Mark Millar with art by J.G. Jones. The series revolves around a secret world of “super-assassins” fighting for control of the world.
The film was originally to be released on March 28th, 2008, but now fans are going to have to wait it out until June 27, 2008.

Newsarama has an interview with Green Lantern Corp. writer Sterling Gates about upcoming issues of the series:

As readers were introduced to the Alpha-Lanterns in last week’s Green Lantern #27, one thing became clear: Being an Alpha-Lantern isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

Although it was difficult to discern exactly what was done to those members of the Green Lantern Corps who were chosen and agreed to become Alpha-Lanterns, it didn’t look pretty. And what emerged from the surgery was a strange robotic, unfeeling shell of the former Lanterns, but with a whole new type of power.

Now writer Sterling Gates will be exploring what it means to be an Alpha-Lantern in a two-part story in Green Lantern Corps beginning with this month’s issue #21. The two issues will focus on Boodikka, a member of the Corps who was among those chosen to become an Alpha-Lantern.

Introduced to the Green Lantern Corps mythos by Geoff Johns from an idea credited to Grant Morrison, the Alpha-Lanterns are part-person/part-machinery hybrids that were created by the leaders of the Green Lanterns – the Guardians of Oa. This new faction of Alpha-Lanterns serves as a sort of “internal affairs” arm for the Green Lantern Corps, and it’s been implied that they combine a lack of emotion with an internal power level beyond that of a normal ring-bearing Green Lantern.

Check out the interview here.

Sounds like this is gonna be a hell of a ride!

A Heroes fan attending the Jules Verne Festival has  posted a short clip of Volume 3 preview shown at the event. Judging from the little that we do see in the video it’s looking like the series is heading back to its roots and once again giving us what made Volume One so addictive.

But I pose one question: Who the hell is this?

“You can’t hurt me here.”

At least that what i think he says, we are dealing with rather low quality sound. Any guesses on who this character is? Judging by the way he’s acting, it looks like he’s encountered Sylar before.

From CNN, it appears that Heath Ledger’s death was a result of accidental overdose:

“Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine,” the office said in a short statement.

“We have concluded that the manner of death is accident, resulting from the abuse of prescription medications.”

Hydrocodone and oxycodone are painkillers. Diazepam is an anti-anxiety drug commonly sold under the brand name Valium; alprazolam is also an anti-anxiety drug sold under such names as Xanax. Temazepam, sold under such names as Restoril and Euhypnos, is a sleeping agent. Doxylamine, an antihistamine, can be obtained over the counter as a sleep aid.

Ledger died January 22 at an apartment in Lower Manhattan. The Oscar-nominated Australian actor, best known for his role as a stoic, closeted cowboy in the 2005 film “Brokeback Mountain,” was 28.

It’s truly saddening to see such a great talent die so young, but hopefully alleviates the stress on his friends and family members who pondered over the past two weeks over whether his death was an intentional suicide. His final full starring role in the new Batman film, “The Dark Knight” will open on July 18th.

Written by Geoff Johns

Art by Mike McKone and Various

DC Universe | 32pg. | Color | $2.99 US

On Sale Now

This issue is  amazing just like the rest Green Lantern series lately, and the fact that Geoff Johns isn’t letting up an inch has got me itching for another Lantern book monthly. There has been nary a lull in the series since the end of the war. The issue starts out with Amon Sur’s yellow power ring making a stir on its to Arkahm Asylum. We then see that it’s seeking out Johnathan Crane, better know as the Batman villain “Scarecrow”as its new bearer. Unfortunately for him, Hal Jordan and John Stewart are able to find and neutralize the ring just before Crane has the chance to slip it on his finger

As the two Earth Lanterns make a trip to Oa to find out how a ring could be ownerless if the production sites on Qward were shut down. This leads into the two find out about the death of Sinestro Corp. member Amon Sur at the hands of an enraged Laira. Laira killed the surrendered villain in retribution for murdering the family of recently deceased Lantern and close friend Ke’Haan. (more…)

Coming soon will hopefully be a comics related blog so stay tuned!

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