The Amazing Spiderman, which was filming on campus this past weekend, gets better with the addition of Dylan Baker (Happiness, Thirteen Days) as Dr. Curt Conners, a.k.a. The Lizard. Chameleon-like character actors like Baker and Alfred Molina are definitely preferable as villains than the hammy A-listers WB brought to the Batman films. Let’s just hope they find a way in Baker’s makeup to atone for the idiotic decision to put a mask on Willem DeFoe the first time around.
Tag: Marvel
Jolly Green Giant.
Harry gets his hands on a new picture from The Hulk. While the monstrosity in question looks quite good here, I’m really not looking forward to the introduction of “hulk dogs.” I can buy a huge green guy in purple pants, but that’s just plain goofy. Update: The Hulk Dogs are online. Ah, Berk could take him.
Marlon Brando as The Watcher?
Buoyed by the success of Daredevil, Marvel Comics starts casting its B-list superheroes: Deep Blue Sea‘s Thomas Jane is set as The Punisher (I presume the Dolph Lundgren film never happened) and Vin Diesel is bucking for The Silver Surfer. While a really cosmic and contemplative Surfer flick might be worthwhile, I’m personally more interested in Peyton Reed’s The Fantastic Four (and, of course, The Hulk and X2) than either of these projects.
Bespectacled Freak!
The casting powers-that-be over at Sony officially announce Alfred Molina as Dr. Octopus in The Amazing Spiderman. This isn’t bad casting at all, although I still think Stellan Skarsgaard or Phillip Seymour Hoffman (if he could be induced not to go too far over the top) would have been great fun. Also, the new, Michael Chabon-penned script is rumored to only feature Doc Ock here as the main villain – they have wisely decided to forego the Batman route and instead will use one Spidey arch-nemesis at a time. Update: In a similar long-rumored casting call, WB announces that Michael Gambon will play Dumbledore in the next Harry Potter film. With Gary Oldman, Timothy Spall, and most importantly Alfonso Cuaron, this one could be a definite improvement over the first two.
If I ruled the world.
Former Authority scribe Mark Millar offers his vision for revamping Detective Comics. (Via Neilalien.) What with Marvel finally feeling the movie mojo (Daredevil notwithstanding), it’s kinda sad to see DC languish these days. I remember the days when DC/Vertigo were pretty much firing on every cylinder while the X-Men were dinking around the Australian outback and Marvel was trying to garner new readers by having the Secret Wars Beyonder traipsing around dressed like Phillip Michael Thomas. How the mighty have fallen.
Is this a test, sir?
Ok, that’s enough love…now it’s time for hate. Celebrities ponder, Who could you take in a fight? (Seen all over the place, but I caught it first at Webgoddess, Lots of Co., and All About George, none of whom I feel like tussling with.) Whether it be due to Gaelic disposition, number of siblings, or a decade on the school bus, I’ll generally take all comers, be they right-wingers, warbloggers, or whomever made the terrible decision that [Daredevil SPOILERS] a wounded Ben Affleck could beat up Michael Clarke Duncan in three minutes of screen time. (He’s the Kingpin, for Pete’s sake. Fisk should’ve thrown him out the window immediately. Yet another problem in a disappointing film.) At any rate, if you want to throw down, leave a message here and we can meet behind the Piggly-Wiggly after school.
Green Machine.
AICN gets an early look at the Hulk Superbowl trailer. I think the link is broken now (I managed to download it to my desktop before it went under, but I don’t feel like crashing this site by posting it online.), but you can see a few screen-caps of what the gamma-ray freak in question looks like. A bit more cartoony than I expected, but that seems a stylistic choice more than a lapse in the FX. It looks better than Daredevil, at any rate. Update: The trailer is now available here.
Blind Justice.
The newest trailer for Daredevil is now online and, while it’s better than the last one, it still doesn’t quite work for me. Michael Clarke Duncan and Colin Farrell seem like they’re going to have fun chewing the scenery, and Jennifer Garner is obviously easy on the eyes, but Ben Affleck still seems grossly miscast in the lead. Matt Damon would probably have worked better, and Guy Pearce would have been dream casting. Ah, well, there’s still Ang Lee’s The Hulk.
King of New York.
That ain’t Superfly or Marcellus Wallace. That’s Wilson Fisk, looking much more like the fearsome Kingpin than I’d ever imagined. In the still-extant case on the Daredevil movie, this goes in the thumbs’ up pile. Update: The rest of the main characters get their due.
DC Down, Marvel Up.
While Superman continues to languish over at Warner Brothers, Sony gets Michael Chabon to punch up the script for The Amazing Spiderman. Since so much of Spidey’s appeal is his internal monologue, Chabon sounds like a great choice.