Two of television’s best genre actors are soon going to be donning superhero garb for the two major comic book movie franchises. First, earlier this month Disney+ announced Emmy-winning Orphan Black lead actress Tatiana Maslany will be expanding the realm of the Marvel Universe as She-Hulk in her own series. Then today Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson announced Leverage co-star Aldis Hodge will be joining him to fill bring into the fold one of the last members of the classic Justice League of America to have a major series or movie role. Hodge will play Hawkman in the Black Adam movie. Both will be live-action shows.
Where Marvel Comics has seen its pantheon of characters celebrated both in 20 years of X-Men movies and 11 years of interconnected movies featuring the other major characters from the comics, DC Entertainment has limped along on the big screen, choosing to either go darker than the traditional comics in its adaptations or overlooking the core of its characters altogether. It’s had a better run on television. What we all probably want is something getting closer to the heart of why we loved the characters as kids. And if you want reminded of what that was, you’ll be happy to see that all nine seasons of the animated classic series Super Friends aka SuperFriends are streaming right now on DC Universe.
Yes, a tricked-out, revved-up Pontiac Fiero is cool.
As movie trailers go, if you’re a fan of the Fast & Furiousseries, it can’t get much better than the new nearly four-minute trailer for F9: The Fast Saga. The film is the tenth in the franchise and ninth in the main storyline following Vin Diesel’s action hero car driver Dominic Toretto. Diesel returns with all the major players from the last film, 2017’s The Fate of the Furious: Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty Ortiz (who already died once in the series), Jordana Brewster as Dom’s sister Mia, Tyrese Gibson as Rome Pearce, Ludacris as Tej Parker, plus Charlize Theron (sporting a Seven of Nine vibe with that earring) as Cipher, the franchise’s ultimate villain.
There’s been nothing definitive released yet about the next return of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham after last year’s hit tie-in film, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. But Helen Mirren, who played Shaw’s mom, will be back in the new film and is featured in the first trailer for F9: The Fast Saga(below).
Surprise sibling trope alert! New to the series is a surprise for fans of the series, a brother to Dom played by John Cena. And good news: Lucas Black is back as Sean Boswell (we haven’t seen him in the series since Furious 7) and, after an even longer break from the series, look for Sung Kang’s surprise return as Han Lue, who we haven’t seen since he was supposedly killed by Shaw in Fast & Furious 6 (it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the trailer!).
Here is the great, new, over-the-top (and we love it that way) first trailer for F9: The Fast Saga:
In brief, it’s the best adventure, fantasy, and comedy in theaters in 2019 and a great way to begin your new year. Jumanji: The Next Level is still packing-in theaters a little more than two weeks into its run–an alternative to the other holiday releases and guaranteed to leave you smiling at the end. The four stars didn’t miss a beat in their return, swapping roles and adding new laughs, and the new characters inside and outside the game are perfectly matched to tell a new tale. Two films down and Jumanji: The Next Level is now the new major adventure fantasy franchise, up there with Tarzan, The Jungle Book, Conan the Barbarian, John Carter of Mars, Pirates of the Caribbean,The Mummy, and Indiana Jones. Put this sequel at the top of the best of those franchises.
The studio didn’t hold back on new action sequences–inside the movie again Jumanji is the same video game of curious origin. The new levels introduced this time increase the stakes in bigger and better ways. A bridge-crossing scene with swarming apes and a geometric, Mario Brothers/Donkey Kong-like element is now going to be the adventure film standard to try to beat. Sure, there are throwbacks to jungle adventures of the past, but it’s not derivative, all presented in fresh ways. As another tour inside a video game (like Tron and Ready Player One), you’ll have the added fun of spotting video game influences (like Pitfall and Q-Bert), including a new, more difficult gauntlet.
The movie does double duty as an epic quest and rollicking comedy. Comedians turned comedic actors Jack Black as Dr. Shelly Oberon and Kevin Hart as Mouse Finbar again are comedy gold. Even the small bits are a scream–Hart riding and getting off a camel is a lesson in physical comedy. They make the movie loads of fun, but straight man roles performed by Dwayne Johnson and Karen Gillan as in-game characters Dr. Smolder Bravestone and Ruby Roundhouse share the credit for the laughs, too. If you’ve seen Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, you’d expect big comedy from the sequel. And that’s where the writing genius comes into play, thanks to a script by writer/director Jake Kasdan and writers Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg. How do you bring back the hour movie stars, the four young actors who played the original players (Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner, Alex Wolff, and Ser’Darius Blain), the rescued Alex played by Colin Hanks, and in-game characters played by Nick Jonas, and Rhys Darby without re-hashing the first movie? You’ll have to see it to find out. Just be prepared for some great twists and surprises.
It’s that time of year again, time to take a look forward at what movies should be on your radar for 2020. Are you going to see them all? Heck no. These are the genre films we think borg readers will want to know about to make their own checklists for the coming year–and they are only the films we know about so far. We pulled 85 of the hundreds of films that have been finalized or are in varying stages of final production, slated for next year’s movie calendar.
What looks to top the list for most fanboys and fangirls? Ghostbusters: Afterlife! Scarlett Johannson solo in Black Widow! A new James Bond movie, No Time to Die. Vin Diesel in Bloodshot and a new Fast & Furious. The original Tom Clancy novel series is finally continuing with an adaptation of Without Remorse. Comic book adaptations are in less supply in 2020, but look for Venom 2, Wonder Woman 1984, Eternals, The New Mutants, Morbius, Birds of Prey, The Old Guard, and did we mention Black Widow? Compare the below list to our 2019 list and even the 2018 list, 2017 list, 2016 list, 2015 list, or 2014 list, and your takeaway may be seeing the studios moving genre content from the big screen to the small screen via streaming services.
Do you like sequels? There are far less coming to theaters in 2020 than in 2019, but many more remakes of movies, books, and TV shows are on the way. In fact, with all the blockbusters in 2019, 2020 looks pretty tame as the cinema marquee is concerned. Some films don’t have locked in release dates yet: Amazon Studios and Netflix haven’t revealed dates for the following 2020 releases (those we know you’ll find on the calendar below):
7500, a film about a highjacked airplane, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Amazon Studios)
The Dig,a film about a woman finding archaeological treasures on her land, starring Ralph Fiennes, Lily James, and Carey Mulligan (Netflix)
Horse Girl, Alison Brie stars and directs this story about an awkward girl who fuses her dreams with reality (Netflix)
Jingle Jangle, an animated Christmas story with the voices of Forest Whitaker, Keegan-Michael Key, and Hugh Bonneville (Netflix)
Louis Wain, biopic of the 19th century artist starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, and Andrea Riseborough (Amazon Studios)
The Old Guard, adaptation of comic book story, starring Charlize Theron and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Netflix)
Radioactive, a film about Marie Curie, starring Rosamund Pike and Anya Taylor-Joy (Amazon)
Rebecca, adaptation and remake of the Daphne Du Maurier classic novel, starring Lily James, Keely Hawes, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Armie Hammer (Netflix)
Welcome to Sudden Death, sequel to Jean-Claude van Damme 1995 movie starring Michael Jai White (Netflix)
The Willoughbys, animated adaptation of the Lois Lowry book, with voices of Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, and Jane Krakowski (Netflix)
Wonderland, murder conspiracy mystery starring Mark Wahlberg, Allan Arkin, and Colleen Camp (Netflix)
Some of these films will have revised release dates, or get pushed to 2021.
So grab your calendar and start making your plans–here are the movies you’ll want to see in 2020 (and some you might not!):
January
The Informer – Thriller, starring Joel Kinnaman, Rosamund Pike, Ana de Armas, Common, and Clive Owen – January 10.
Underwater– Thriller, stars Kristin Stewart in underwater horror story – January 10.
Dolittle– Family/Comedy, stars Robert Downey, Jr. in remake of the classic, with voices of Tom Holland, Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, Emma Thompson, Antonio Banderas, Ralph Fiennes, and Michael Sheen – January 17.
The first big Jumanjimovie (we’re ignoring the 1990s version), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, was such a brilliant, laugh-out-loud, adventure and rollercoaster ride, it made the freezing winter two years ago a bit more tolerable. With a Halloween snowfall across the U.S. and a likely colder winter again, the sequel, Jumanji: The Next Level, may just save us again from the winter blues. Directly competing against the final Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, the real competition isn’t going to be about seeing them once, but it will be about which you go back to again. Now with two trailers out following the first trailer four months ago (if you missed it, watch it here), Jumanji: The Next Levelappears to have everything that made us laugh the first time–and more.
In the previous film teenagers get sucked into a video game and emerge in the roles of Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Franklin “Mouse-not-Moose” Finbar (Kevin Hart in his funniest performance ever), Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan), and Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black). In the second trailer we see that returning director Jake Kasdan and writers Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg have shuffled the roles, swapping in one of the kid’s grandfather, played by Danny DeVito, and his friend, played by Danny Glover. The next adventure brings back Nigel (Rhys Darby) as gamerunner and somehow Nick Jonas is back, too, as long-time player Alex–or will Alex really be someone entirely new? They could change up all these character roles over and over and we’ll keep coming back for more.
And there’s a new poster:
What’s funnier, Bethany’s new character or a stack of great Kevin Hart jokes? Here’s the next, and final, trailer for Jumanji: The Next Level:
It looks just like a remake and update of African Queen, and a great set-up for the next big Disney franchise follow-up to Pirates of the Caribbean. The first trailer is out for Jungle Cruise, and the theme park ride turned big-screen adventure could hardly look more fun. Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, Mary Poppins Returns) seems to have walked right into a role written for Johnny Depp, as she teeters through a clever Rube Goldberg-inspired scene as we’re introduced to Lily Houghton, a scientist embarking on a journey with her brother in the Amazon, via riverboat, where they meet an unusual ship captain.
With Hollywood’s #1 box office draw Dwayne Johnson still entertaining us with his Jumanji jungle series and international tours in the Fast & Furious movies, there’s hardly a better person to cast with Blunt in this kind of new team-up, and possibly a new franchise. Here he looks a lot more like Popeye than Humphrey Bogart. Johnson has referred to Blunt’s character as “a female Indiana Jones.” For most of the world–who haven’t ever been to a Disney theme park–it may help to know the movie Jungle Cruise is based on a theme park ride like Pirates of the Caribbean. As much as the latter began as what seemed like a Disney attempt to make some more money off its theme park intellectual property in a new venue, the Pirates films ultimately were a big hit with audiences and a treasure trove for Disney. Will Jungle Cruise find Disney’s next pot of gold?
The great Paul Giamatti(Lodge 49, American Splendor, Paycheck) co-stars with Black Mirror’s Jesse Plemons, with a rousing score by composer James Newton Howard (Dave, Waterworld, The Postman, The Sixth Sense, The Dark Knight, Snow White and the Huntsman). Check out this trailer for what could be a fun amusement park ride of a movie, Jungle Cruise:
The biggest action film of the summer is easily the most enjoyable film of the year. That’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, a movie that gets so many genre formulas right it just can’t miss. Certainly one of the better entries in the Fast & Furious franchise, it knows what works and uses it. That’s a sure-bet cast of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, Mission: Impossible–Fallout’s Vanessa Kirby, Idris Elba in the ultimate badass role as a James Bond spy gone bad with Superman powers, lots of futuristic cyborg tech, and an understanding of why audiences come to the movie theater in the first place. Hobbs & Shaw is a movie for people who like movies.
The trailers gave audiences a glimpse at what to expect, and they delivered on all promises: laugh-out-loud funny dialogue, nonstop action, road races and camera angles that the franchise is known for, and lots of surprises and callbacks, and a script that doesn’t take itself seriously. There’s something for everyone here. If you’re after only the fast cars, action, and speed of the franchise, this entry measures up. And that family drama that the regular franchise leads Diesel, Paul Walker, and Jordana Brewster built the franchise on is here, too. This time that includes digging into the past between Statham’s Deckard Shaw and sister Hattie, played by Kirby, and Helen Mirren back again as their mother (Luke Evans’ brother Owen from the last film may or may not be mentioned this time), and Johnson’s Luke Hobbs is pals with his young daughter at home and returns to the family he left behind years ago in the Samoan Islands.
But stuntman-turned-director David Leitch(Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, John Wick) and script writers Chris Morgan (writer of five prior Fast & Furious films) and Drew Pearce (Hotel Artemis, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation) know why audiences are really buying tickets, and you just need to drift over their previous film credits to see why they were tapped for Hobbs & Shaw. Hattie is a badass equal to Charlize Theron’s Atomic Blonde (Theron also co-starred in the most recent sequel), any of the four lead characters could give Leitch’s John Wick a run for his money, and moviegoers will hardly remember last year’s much-lauded Mission Impossible: Fallout’s action scenes after they see this. (A few casting spoilers follow).
So how do you change the innerworkings of a game-based movie that was such a breakout comedy without gutting the heart of the film that made it all work so well? Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungleas a reboot was such an improvement over the original filmJumanjifrom 1995 that it really took audiences by surprise in those late 2017 cold winter months (check out our review here). In the previous film teenagers get sucked into a video game and emerge into the roles of Dr. Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson), Franklin “Moose” Finbar (Kevin Hart in his funniest performance ever), Ruby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan), and Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black playing his trademark Jack Black routine). So will returning director Jake Kasdan and writers Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg give us a whole new game or take another approach for the next?
The first trailer for Jumanji: The Next Levelmight have the most apt of titles. The inside-the-game characters are the same (phew!), but the video game won’t be the same, instead giving the characters and us–the audience–a new level of play. And the real-world players are moved around a bit, with some new twists. All the kids are back, but Spencer’s grandfather, played by Danny DeVito, and his friend, played by Danny Glover, get sucked into the game with Spencer lost somewhere, and Martha stuck with Fridge trying to find him. Martha is still Ruby/Gillan, but everyone else is different: DeVito is Smolder/Johnson, Glover is Moose/Hart, and Fridge is Shelly/Black. So the swap of kids for old men in the bodies of our lead actors is the new conceit.
The next adventure brings back Nigel (Rhys Darby) as gamerunner and somehow Nick Jonas is back, too, as long-time player Alex–or will Alex really be someone entirely new? They could change up all these character roles over and over and we’ll keep coming back for more.
Here’s the great first trailer for Jumanji: The Next Level:
It emerges from the nearly 20-year franchise about cars and action that began in 2001 with The Fast and the Furious. The ninth movie in the Fast & Furious franchise is on its way to theaters this summer, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, and Universal Pictures has released its second trailer–check it out below. The five leads have ample action movie street cred, beginning with Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, not only from their previous roles in the franchise. In addition to his Time Magazine cover appearance as one of the most influential people of today, Johnson has busted heads in films including Walking Tall, The Mummy series, Get Smart, The Other Guys, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Central Intelligence and the new Jumanji series, and, of course, there’s his wrestling days (and he wrestled Seven of Nine in a memorable Star Trek Voyager episode). He’s already played Hercules, but coming soon look for him as Black Adam, Doc Savage, and he’s said to be in talks to play Jack Burton in a Big Trouble in Little China remake. Statham’s own on-screen fight record goes back to three action movie series: The Transporter, The Expendables, and The Mechanic, plus The Italian Job, The Bank Job, and a bunch more, from Parker to last year’s The Meg.
Although she hails from Plaza Sésamo, Eiza González earned her action film cred in Baby Driver, Alita: Battle Angel, and the From Dusk Till Dawn TV series. Vanessa Kirby climbed the big peak in Everest and had her breakout performance just last year in Mission Impossible: Fallout. As the film’s villain, you couldn’t ask for a better tough guy than Idris Elba, playing Heimdall in the Marvel movies, plus key roles in Star Trek Beyond, Prometheus, 28 Weeks Later, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Pacific Rim, and The Dark Tower). And that’s Helen Mirren in the trailer, too, who also has a slate of badass roles in action films including the RED series, The Fate of the Furious, years of Prime Suspect, and the coming Luc Besson action movie Anna.
The Fast & Furious series has seen plenty of break-out performances along the way, including the span of the career of Paul Walker, and memorable roles for Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, Tyrese Gibson, Ted Levine, Ludacris, Lucas Black, Sung Kang, pre-Wonder Woman Gal Gadot in four of her first films, John Ortiz, Luke Evans, and Kurt Russell. Former Brad Pitt and Jean-Claude Van Damme stunt double-turned-director David Leitch(John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2) is directing this entry, bringing even more action movie experience to the film.
Check out the second trailer for A Ninth of Furious, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw:
