Jumbie

Didn't they do Turok and Magnus, Robot Fighter too?

I figured with the Turok video game success, that'd be number one for the trumpeting of titles.

We get the reverse situation with people who created Superman or Green Lantern or Spiderman etc where we wonder why they never got a big enough cut of the revenues.

When there was a controversy that the creators of Superman were getting no money from the 1978 Superman movie, supporters didn't say that Shuster and Siegel should have gotten that money for 'doing nothing' though they hadn't anything to do with the actual movie.

It was understood that their creative work much earlier merited a payoff when their creation turned out to be more valuable that anyone knew.

I think it's clear from interviews that the actors on Friends had a lot to do with the creation of their roles and that's a reason for them to get paid now.

They're not getting it for doing nothing. They're getting their paycheck late for stuff they did a while back that turned out to be more valuable than people realized.

I think the greedy corporation/lone hero dynamic is a bit more important than you're giving it credit for. In both movies we got the sense that the real villains were the corporate bean counter/weapons manufacturing types and the Aliens were just the space equivalent of wild tigers being true to their nature.

I know it's a cliche at this point in scifi to say, "humans were the true monsters in this" especially since Avatar smeared bright blue paint all over it, but it's still more than just cosmetics in Alien/s.

And corporate greed/boss figures as villains never gets old because people relate to the idea of getting fucked over by the boss over the bottom line. Just ask WWE who keep retreading the evil boss, or Nine to Five/Drew Carey Show etc.

DEA and ATF are definitely more unprofessional and devious. ATF once used a mentally retarded guy as bait in a gun smuggling sting and then charged him for doing what they tricked him into doing.

DEA does some similar stuff.

FBI has done shady stuff with terror plots. They usually find some jackasses mouthing off about committing terrorism but who haven't a clue, then they plant an informant within the group who actually provokes the group to stat plotting violence and then offers to provide a bomb etc that the group would not have any idea how to get on its own.

So the thing is basically entrapment, but the FBI gets to claim it stopped a terror plot when the only reason a plot existed is because they planned it.

FBI also did the Ruby Ridge shooting. No one's sure why that went south, but in the end people who never committed a crime were dead, including at least one kid. I think also that the highest ranking Russian spy ever caught was an FBI agent.

You should also look up the Secret Service and its recent drunken/incompetent adventures (prostitution and partying, crashing drones, letting the wrong people near the president etc etc)

Reading the press release I'm seeing a whole lot of nothing.

It's only about spiderman 'appearing' in Marvel universe and Marvel CU people appearing in Spiderman films.

That could literally just mean cool cameos where Spidey's not integral or developed in any way. Until the details are known, I'm just seeing marketing PR.

The Hays code for potrayal of morality that movies/tv followed for so long and still does to an extent used to say that if a character steps out of line (Adultery, stealing, drug use, buttsecks) they had to be punished for it in the plot.

Seems to me that if Constantine is going to get lung cancer he needs to smoke and it works as karmic punishment.

I don't think the darkness of the trailer is signaling a dark movie. (or at least not a nolan-dark movie. It's probably going to be darker than Avengers 1)

But there's also footage out there of the Avengers fooling around with Thor's hammer etc to show that the fun isn't gone. Granted we know that's from the first part of the movie before Ultron shows up, so the darkness probably comes later, but it indicates that this thing won't just veer off into ominousity.

This trailer focused on the villain with very little dialogue, just shots of drama like people kicking in doors and crushing skulls and throwing cars etc. With so much of Joss Whedon's humor/fun being character/dialogue based this isn't the kind of trailer that can showcase the movie's fun, if indeed it has such an element.

But I keep thinking of like Reavers in Firefly which are just about the creepiest, most ominous things you can have in scifi and even their stories weren't without their fun elements.

Best lines were, "I don't bassoon anymore." and "I love that song."

Didn't care for the chewing gum spitting.

Just watch Episodes 1-6. If it's holding your attention still at that point, then you can go forward.

No need to plunge in when you can dip your toe in.

Well, isn't Sinister Six basically AS3 at this point?

I'm surprised thor 3 and the second purely superman movie don't have a date.

X-force could be kickass once they get into that secret mutant force for dirty deeds concept and let a few people off the chain with respect to killing. I'm not sure how that fares with the ratings issues, but the first X-men seemed to have some killing by the heroes, so I can see a little extra sting in the X force violence.

WE MUST ALSO HAVE UNIFORMS WITH LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF POUCHES AND PADDING. NOT TO MENTION REALLY BIG GUNS AND BLADES ON EVERYTHING, EVEN THE BLADES.

Man, Rayner was so fun under Marz. I remember the issue where he got into an intergalactic bar fight and was using WCW moves on aliens... The crossover with Flash and Green Arrow was cool too.

Although, wasn't Marz also the fridge stuffer? What IS Marz up to these days?

Your GL depression had led you to drinking I see.

Any actors named for the GL or Shazam films? They've nailed down their cyborg and aquaman etc. Also, I hear they've got the Rock signed to be Black Adam. A horrible move in my view since Black Adam's always seemed more cerebral a villain than most and that's not the Rock's thing. Maybe he can pull truly dramatic performance out of his ass and surprise us because he is intelligent, but I doubt it.

Side note: Will there be demons? Besides this being the 'sciency fiction' marvel universe where Asgardians are just aliens, there's the whole issue of the issue of kids/christians/general discomfort. The Marvel video games went out of there way to say that Mephisto wasn't a demon and his realm was not really Hell because of being hesitant to portray real demons.

Given the modern Print-On-Demand capability, Marvel and DC should probably get on this quick. Imagine if they had a build-a-trade website? You pick the issues, or even parts of issues, the reading order, the quality of binding, the cover art, lettering etc. And you pay THEM a premium. It wouldn't be cheap, but people pay lots of $$$ for shit they love in the versions/scenarios they love. Just look at the various Star Wars fan edits.

Offhand, I know I'd probably pay to do this for a lot of 90s Superman since the reading order was in constant crossover between the 4 titles.

I'd also be able to incorporate crossovers into my regular issues collection where relevant and on the flip side I could leave shitty bits out of crossover storyline collections. So that one-off issue of Lobo that fits into Superman's storyline? Slip that in. Those side issues in events like Fear Itself or Blackest Night? I can insert the good ones and ignore the dumb ones.

Yes, especially Wayne Enterprises.

You could watch all of the Connery Bonds in random order and not know which movie comes first going by character traits.

The development we've seen in recent years is more of a deconstructed Bond so they're not in the conversation of static characters.

Static characters can work in a series, just like the Sherlock Holmes books or the Seinfeld gang, but Marvel's claim to fame is characters who change, so if you drop the origin story you probably should have some kind of character conflict to replace it and that is perfectly doable. I think Riggs in Lethal Weapon managed to have no real origin story and play a character who was recognisably the same person from movie to movie, but who had a personal tale to follow during each movie.

I could totally see a magical Indiana Jones/James Bond -style movie where Strange is established as a magical guardian/adventurer who constantly fights off mystical threats to Earth and this is simply adventure #4928.

It runs the risk of making him a static character like Bond or Indy and thus Strange never changes the way Tony Stark evolved from a selfish prick to a um slightly less selfish prick. But you could probably drop in an 'old flame returns' or 'new threat makes him vulnerable in a new way' etc plot that makes him change...

It really is a split with what kind of story you're trying to tell.

Luke Skywalker totally would not work as a character if he just started out wearing black and slicing up Jabba's barge or wearing orange and blowing up the deathstar. We had to see him start as the whiny kid and get introduced to the concept of the force and lose his mentor etc so that when he's finally doing that heroic thing it clicks. It feels like a triumph.

On the other hand, I've read one attempt to tell a Han Solo origin story and it sucked. Han doesn't need explaining. Where did he learn to shoot? Don't care. Where did he get his ship? Explained in three lines of movie dialogue and we never hear about it again. We don't need to know more. Why is Chewbacca loyal to Han? Don't care. In the movies at least, they never explain it and simply give us a few throwaway lines to show that they have a long history ("It's not wise to upset a wookiee", "That time doesn't count. I was drunk." "Man Chewie, these guys must really be stuck. This could really save my skin with Jabba.")

The worst news of the Disney buyout of starwars is that they're thinking of a Han Solo origin movie. We're all going to hate it because it will only work by taking the glamour and swagger out of Solo. We'd have to see him as a slave boy getting rescued by wookiees and going to live on Kashyyyk etc and losing his innocence and getting betrayed by his first love etc. Fuck that.

So, what's the character like? Is he traditionally heroic? Give him the origin. Is he a cool anti-hero like Wolverine, Solo, Blade? Skim the origin.

Punisher is the only one I can think of who's character is so tied up in his origin that you cannot possibly get the payoff in the action without showing that origin. Even Batman, the big daddy of cool anti-hero gets away with not having his origin done. Batman 1989 didn't show his parents murder until the middle of the story as a flashback and even then, it just gave us enough impressionistic images to see Jack Napier as the gunman before cutting away.

Wait, you have a girlfriend?

And he didn't even spoiler tag it...

Man Oberyn is gonna fight the mountain, this is gonna be great!

Wow, with the server mindwipe of our all our 2014 posts, I guess season IV never happened...

What about non-dairy alternatives like almond milk or soy milk?