Category: Fanboy

Don’t Panic!

This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but…Vogon poetry? The brief teaser for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, rumored since Comicon, is now freely available online. Be sure to check out the production slideshow, which shows off the splendid designs of Marvin the Paranoid Android and the Heart of Gold. Oh, and don’t forget your towel. Update: More production art here.

Incredible Journey.


Well, the folks making next summer’s Fantastic Four film must be having a really bad couple of weeks. ‘Cause it’s hard to see how they can even close to topping the energy and fun of Brad Bird’s The Incredibles, Pixar’s new gold standard (and here I thought Toy Story 2 was going to hold that honor for some time to come.) More a film for comic fans than for little kids, The Incredibles is an inventive, madcap romp through superhero tropes that gives Spiderman 2 a serious run for its money as the best comic book film of 2004.

I must say, I was surprised right off the bat at how PG the film turned out to be. This is a darker film than most previous Pixar forays, with a surprisingly high body count and some mordant sight gags in the mix (for example, the montage explaining the trouble with capes). Whatsmore, Mr. Incredible’s most potent villain turns out to be existential ennui at the workplace, which seems as if it might fly right over the heads of the Finding Nemo age demographic.

Their loss, our gain. The Incredibles is a consistently clever ride, right down to the details. The writers and production designers have not only designed robots, ships, and a evil fortress that breathe originality while still paying homage to classic icons (Not unlike Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant in that regard — so take that, Sky Captain.) They’ve also come up with unique applications and situations for some of the hoariest superpowers going (strength, elasticity, speed, etc…Elastigirl’s break-in to Syndrome’s lair stands out as a particular highlight.)

The only real misstep in the film, aside from it feeling maybe 10-15 minutes too long (and, arguably, the Ayn Randish subtext), is the Brad Bird-voiced Edna Mode, who seems like some unholy cross between Vera Wang and Joan Rivers and comes off as somewhat embarrassing and misconceived. Better thought out is Mr. Incredible’s McNamara-esque boss and the “Issue No. 2” villain, The Underminer, whom I very much look forward to in the sequel. But, look, here I am monologuing again…To sum up, as the sinister mime Bomb Voyage might put it, “C’est incroyable!”

Sai it ain’t so.

Alias meets Mortal Kombat (with a dash of The Next Karate Kid) in this rather goofy trailer for Elektra. I haven’t read anything other than the Frank Miller Daredevil arc, so I have no clue how this fits into the character’s continuity. But, I gotta say, this looks pretty dumb.

Stay on Target.

Empires collide as the Dark Lord of the Sith shills for Target (with Heidi Klum). Given that Star Wars was memorialized on Burger King glasses over 25 years ago, it seems a little late to bemoan the saga’s commercialization. Still, this makes it even harder to imagine Episode III as anything but another disappointment.

Heir to the Empire.

In case you couldn’t find it for some reason last week, the Episode III trailer is now officially available. And, if you’re looking for more SW news, Lucasfilm has also released the first film image of General Grievous, a.k.a. the new and goofily named Big Bad that was supposed to be voiced by Gary Oldman.

Fanboy Post-Mortems.

Some pop culture quotes that, applicable or not, have been flitting about my head the past few days:

“And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.“
– Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“Where is the horse and the rider?
Where is the horn that was blowing?
They’ve passed like rain on the mountain, like wind in the meadow.

The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into shadow.”
– Theoden, The Two Towers

“Ladies and gentlemen, er, we’ve just lost the picture, but, uh, what we’ve seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over — ‘conquered’, if you will — by a master race of giant space ants. It’s difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”
– Kent Brockman, “Deep Space Homer” (This last one birddogged, after much mutual quoting, by Mark at Nofeblog.)

Downfall of the Republic.

“Lord Vader…rise.” My, how delightfully apropos. The teaser for Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which will appear in theaters before The Incredibles tomorrow, is now available for Hyperspace members, AOL users, and file-sharers (as well as on some overextended mirrors such as here.) All in all, it’s pretty well done, with a good deal of footage from the other films (particularly A New Hope), and some brief glimpses of the CGI & lightsaber carnage we’re all expecting. Update: Several more mirrors here. Update: It’s now officially available.