Following up on The Toys That Made Us (previously reviewed here at borg), Netflix’s surprise hit documentary series leaning on viewers’ nostalgia with a look behind toys of the past, in 2019 the streaming service added a new series based on the same formula, The Movies That Made Us. The series took a new look at four movies in four hour-long episodes in its first season, including Die Hard, Ghostbusters,Home Alone, and Dirty Dancing, followed by two holiday episodes featuring Elf and A Nightmare Before Christmas. The Movies That Made Us isn’t really about the movies and their impact so much as what strange stories lie behind how the movies were created, from idea to release, including production foibles and hurdles. The show is trying to appeal to a broad spectrum of viewers, and it’s done it again with four new installments for its second season, featuring Back to the Future, Pretty Woman, Jurassic Park, and Forrest Gump. And new episodes are on their way featuring Aliens, Coming to America, and RoboCop, and October staples A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th,and Halloween.
A little bit Robocop, a little bit Bionic Man, a little bit of every Marvel solo character origin story, and very Vin Diesel, the movie adaptation of the 1990s Valiant Comics Harvey and Eisner Award-nominated sci-fi/superhero Bloodshot was the first movie industry collateral damage from the pandemic because it arrived March 13 in theaters, the same weekend the U.S. federal government began responding and theaters began to modify their rules and ultimately close. Which also made it the first for a studio to release at theatrical prices via the new “theater-at-home” option from Vudu and Amazon Prime. The good news is it’s well worth full ticket prices, and would have been even better on the big screen. It has all of the right beats we’ve seen in the past decade in the better movies adapting comics beyond the traditional superheroes of DC Comics and Marvel. It also introduces fans of all things borg to the next squad of cyborg warriors worthy of sequels.
Super7, the toy company known for its wide variety of action figure licenses and its retro Kenner style carded, 3.75-inch action figures, greatly surpassed its delivery at last year’s Toy Fair (shown here and here) by bring hundreds of prototype figures, card back mock-ups, and final versions to New York Toy Fair 2020 this past weekend. More than the typical sneak peek, Super7 previewed a huge variety of action figure cards for its ReAction line, with pre-ordering forecasted for later this year and some items available now here at Amazon.
New action figure licenses at the show include Army of Darkness, An American Werewolf in London, Aliens,Andre the Giant, Back to the Future II, Knight Rider, The Munsters, Archie, Red Dawn, Beavis and Butt-Head, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Son of Frankenstein, Spongebob Squarepants, Halloween II, and a new line of NBA All Stars. Bands with new figures seen for the first time in the Super7 line include RUN DMC, Notorious B.I.G., and Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
Plus past figure lines will see more additions this year. Those include Universal Studios Monsters, Peanuts, several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Nightmare Before Christmas, lots of Transformers, Toxic Crusader, Thundercats, Ghost, Misfits, Mars Attacks, Alien, Chucky, and Robocop, and Super7 displayed several final figures this weekend that were previewed last year here at borg, includingThey Live, Teen Wolf,Major League Baseball All Stars, MLB Mascots, and characters from the Rocky movie series.
Take a look at close-up views of just a sampling of the action figures on display at this year’s event:
You still have a month before visual effects artist-turned director Dave Wilson’s Bloodshotmovie arrives as the next cyborg superhero from Valiant Comics to hit the big screen. But if you want to get a jump on your friends, there’s Bloodshot: The Official Movie Novelization, just released from Titan Books, a great read for fans of all things borg. Readers will be pulled inside the story of Ray Garrison, a slain special ops Marine, who is resurrected thanks to Dr. Emil Harting, a (mad?) scientist who is perfecting his use of nanotechnology and cybernetics to create an unstoppable squad of super-soldiers. Written by Gavin Smith and based on the Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer screenplay, Bloodshot creates the next step in the evolution of cybernetic technology stories that began with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, mixing the rage of The Punisher with the impact on the human psyche and dehumanization of turning from man to cyborg, as we’ve seen in stories like RoboCop (who was inspired by Judge Dredd and Marvel’s Rom).
As for the comics in film, Bloodshot is poised to stack up neatly beside the lab-created Hulk, the merger of body and “something else” of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, the mission and science of Captain America, Wolverine, and Deadpool, the determination of Cable, and it’s a fitting follow-up to the half-man/half-monster movie, Venom. That’s a lot of Marvel characters with similar struggles, and there are certainly more, characters with the same vintage of origin story–an unlikely or involuntary super-soldier–so how do you spin this key comics trope in a fresh, new way? As Smith, Wadlow, and Heisserer have done it, you go back to the human condition, and look to what has come before. Bloodshot isn’t from Marvel, but indie publisher Valiant, but it’s sourced in a common creative mindset.
Bloodshot reads much like Martin Caidin’s original story of the first modern cyborg in his novel Cyborg, about Steve Austin, the Bionic Man–the Six Million Dollar Man–a military hero brought to death’s door and back via science. In many ways Bloodshot–the program that pulls in the story’s hero and becomes the name of his new persona–is an update to Cyborg–what you could imagine the Bionic Man reboot with Mark Wahlberg to be like. And it pulls in good mind-twisting sci-fi elements evoking Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and Duncan Jones’ Source Code.
If a movie project languishes for twenty years, thee might be several reasons to explain why. Gemini Man, in theaters now, has had both Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer involved in the idea behind the film, but the timing didn’t seem right for them–digital technology had not yet evolved where an actor portraying a 51-year-old could fight himself at age 23, in a believable way. Now here we are in a Hollywood (New York City, Atlanta, Toronto, etc.) where motion capture performances are the norm. It’s not a spoiler if it’s in the movie poster, and that’s the case with Gemini Man. The movie is Will Smith, a retiring government assassin, who must face off against a younger version of himself, raised and trained for combat. So it shouldn’t surprise you thatGemini Man: The Official Movie Novelization, is a character study of what might happen when an assassin meets himself.
If you’re a fan of science fiction, a rush of prior stories and films should come to mind. First of all the novelization, which does not give an author credit, instead listing the screenplay writers, Darren Lemke, David Benioff, and Billy Ray, reads very much like an early Philip K. Dick short story expanded to be novel (or movie) length. The spoiler (if you can call it that) is that there aren’t many surprises. How would a trained assassin react when confronting a younger clone of himself? This is a single sitting read, filled with some interesting characters (the kind you’d find in supporting roles in any film, like Mission: Impossible, the Bourne Legacy films, Tomb Raider, or even Dick adaptations like Paycheck. It’s also heavy on the action, something that would be spotlighted with CGI in the film, leaving the characters in the novel to internalize what is happening on the big screen. The story feels like it was written for Will Smith. His character Henry Brogan is the same guy we’ve seen Smith play in Bright, Suicide Squad, I am Legend, Hitch, I, Robot, Enemy of the State, and Independence Day. Which fortunately means we have a likable protagonist.
The novelization brings in bits and pieces from across decades of science fiction, from addressing the question of how you select who you clone (from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones), to how you control your newly minted human military weapon (from The Manchurian Candidate), to how you survive when the world is crashing in on you (from the Jason Bourne, Shooter, and Mission: Impossible movies), to how you react when you learn you are not really you (from RoboCop, Moon, and the new series Living with Yourself).
A little bit Robocop, a little bit Bionic Man, a little bit Deadpool and Venom, a bit of The Punisher, and very Vin Diesel, the comic book adaptation of the 1990s Valiant Comics Harvey and Eisner Award-nominated superhero Bloodshot is finally making its way to theaters. Sony Pictures released the first trailer for the film this week, and it has all of those components we’ve seen in the past decade from movies adapting comics beyond the traditional superheroes of DC Comics and Marvel. The inclusion of nanites as part of Bloodshot’s powers make him the latest borg to make it to the big screen. Whatever Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola or anyone else wants to say about superhero movies, these films are an art form in their own right, with their own language, look, music, editing, and story–just like every other genre of film. Fans will be the only judge that matters when Bloodshotarrives early next year.
Diesel, who somehow seems to be the pick for Italian characters despite his own northern European roots, is a smart casting decision for Ray Garrison aka Angelo Mortalli (which fits Diesel so well), the new incarnation of the cybernetic warrior whose modified blood gives him regeneration abilities (think Wolverine) but also makes him controllable by others (think Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse). He has the action hero role solidly on his resume from his role as fast car driver and ex-con Dominic Toretto in seven (so far) Fast & Furious films and Xander Cage in two xXx films, and he brings sci-fi street cred playing Riddick in the Chronicles of Riddick series. And, of course, he’s one-half of our favorite superhero duo, playing the voice of Groot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The movie co-stars Guy Pearce (hopefully more LA Confidential and less Iron Man 3),Eiza González(Hobbs & Shaw, Alita; Battle Angel, Baby Driver),Lamorne Morris(New Girl, Game Night),Toby Kebbell(Warcraft, Fantastic Four, Planet of the Apes, Kong: Skull Island),Sam Heughan(Midsomer Murders, Outlander), and Talulah Riley(Doctor Who, Thor: The Dark World, Westworld). Kick-Ass 2 writer Jeff Wadlow wrote this story, which will be directed by visual effects artists Dave Wilson. Music was created by horror movie go-to composer Steve Jablonsky(Ender’s Game, Transformers series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
As with Deadpool and Venom, this second tier character and footage is going to get superhero fans into theaters. Here is the first trailer, with Vin Diesel starring in Bloodshot:
“Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law.”
From Metropolis to Rocky IV, and The Worst to Universal Monsters, Robotech, Shogun, Slayer, Street Fighter II, Lucha, and more, one of the most eagerly awaited has been figures for RoboCop. Although we’ve seen RoboCop as action figures by the likes of toy companies like NECA and other companies over the past 30 years, the new line previewed at New York Toy Fair 2019 from Super7 also pulls in that throwback toy design fans of Super7’s ReAction action figure line flock toward. Super7 has now released its final figure and packaging designs for RoboCop, and they look great (except that sculpt for the toxic slug guy looks a lot like Super7’s sculpt for John Matuszak’s character Sloth from The Goonies).
But of any action figure previewed at New York Toy Fair in February and released this year, is there any single figure with more potential for collectors than Super 7’s Jackie Robinson? It has that trading card quality, with its cardboard backing and its vintage photograph design, plus it’s as American as apple pie as a toy/collectible, crossing over in the collector market between ReAction retro figure fans and baseball fans. And the entire Classic All-Stars line is superb. The other figures in the first group available measure up with Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Juan Marichal, Carlton Fisk, and Orlando Cepeda–plus the first of the mascots in the toy series, from the Philadelphia Phillies. You can pre-order any or all now at Entertainment Earth (links embedded in names above). And if Super7 doesn’t get to your favorite player, these will be easy to paint and modify for your team–just like you may have painted the classic electric football player pieces of years ago.
The other line of figures with potential is the classic Peanuts characters in the ReAction format, featuring two Charlie Browns, Linus, Lucy, Sally, Schroeder, and, of course, Snoopy. These are based on Charles Schulz′s original strips, and have a look that bridges the Funko Pop! and the classic Kenner retro figure sizing and packaging.
Here are images of these three lines and first phases of designs released:
It’s not often a sequel surpasses the first novel in the series, but that’s the place where Spaceside lands. And that’s saying something, because Michael Mammay′s Planetsidewas one powerful first novel. I first reviewed Planetside before its release only a year ago here at borg, and its combination of military thriller and sci-fi action story was one of last year’s best sci-fi reads. Happily for readers of Mammay’s first story, the protagonist this round is again Colonel Carl Butler, that ex-military mastermind who keeps getting pulled back into danger. Imagine Edge of Tomorrow’s General Brigham a few years after the war or Starship Troopers’ Lieutenant Rasczak if he’d lived to fight another day, and you’ll have an idea of what you’re in for with Colonel Butler.
But this story and this style is different for Mammay. I saw Planetside as military conspiracy-thriller in sci-fi dress, but this time Butler is part investigator in a planetside mystery as a bit of a future noir or tech noir detective. Where Planetside featured plenty of the grunt-side action of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, this story delves more into the strategy and corporate politics (think Weyland Corp.), providing a fine standalone story. Yet for those that take on the first novel (as they should), Spacesidefleshes out the secrets of why Butler was thrust far away across the galaxy to deal with the alien race called the Cappans in the first place. Two books in and readers will be asking for more–Mammay has concocted one of the best science fiction universes around. So just when a new series of Blade Runner novels is on its way, Spaceside fits the bill as a worthy read-alike of a future, cybernetically enhanced human trying to stay alive while he’s constantly dodging bullets (although Butler’s borg nature is downplayed for much of the story). More like Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner than Philip K. Dick’s source novel, Mammay’s story is a compelling character study that amps up the intrigue.
Instead of spending most of this novel’s adventure in outer space as the title might suggest, ex-Colonel Butler finds himself grounded, exiled, shunned, and scorned for the murders of millions of Cappans resulting from his decisions in the pages of Planetside. Instead Butler is relegated to leading corporate team-building sessions where he takes groups on virtual reality combat missions with him as the real-life war hero. It’s embarrassing, but it pays the bills, and it keeps him busy after his wife left him and took half his money. That’s until the CEO calls him into his office to investigate a hacking of a major rival corporation–after all, his title has the word “security” in it. If Butler can figure out what went wrong at the rival, then his own company can make sure it doesn’t happen to them, too. Or so his CEO figures.
Make no mistake, Billy Batson aka Fawcett Comics’ Captain Marvel (aka Shazam since 2012) has always been the most difficult to fold into the DC pantheon of superheroes. With Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman–the trinity at the top of DC Comics for so long–audiences always know much of what those characters are going to bring to a story even before they walk into the theater. To be fair, Billy wasn’t a DC original, shuffled much later into the DC universe because of some decades-long legal tedium. Billy Batson is a kid who suddenly becomes a superhero, so the trailers have been compared to Penny Marshall’s Big, another story about a kid suddenly dealing with being grown-up. And that is, indeed, part of Shazam! The movie is also part origin story, because although Shazam! adheres to Billy’s origin story going back to the 1940s (just as Captain America: The First Avenger adhered to its source material), much of the audience that saw the character in his heyday–when he was even more popular and well-known than Superman–aren’t around to make up the target moviegoing audience. But Big and an origin story is just the beginning.
You know it when you watch a movie unfold and realize something great is happening. DC Entertainment–the movie guys–finally paid attention to DC Comics–the actual writers and artists who built the character from the ground up–and at last delivered what this comic book reader has always wanted. Shazam!, the story, Zachary Levi‘s superhero, and a new young actor named Jack Dylan Grazer as Billy’s friend Freddy–are fantastic. The magic, wonder, and heart of DC Comics is finally back in the theaters. It’s a gamechanger for the DC universe, because it finally steps away from Zack Snyder’s dark and brooding Justice League and returns it to the roots of DC Comics and DC At the Movies that we first got a taste of with Christopher Reeve’s first Superman and Michael Keaton’s first Batman. So if the executives at DC are paying attention, and audiences agree once the film hits general release April 5, this could be an opportunity for a switch-up–an excuse to build a new Marvel-level superhero film universe around the new, amazingly fun and appealing superhero characters in this film.
At its core, the story by new screenwriter Henry Gayden updating a script by Darren Lemke(Shrek Forever After, Jack the Giant Slayer, Goosebumps) is about a foster family and the importance of family, so don’t think this is another frivolous superhero movie to be easily dismissed. As with Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it’s loaded with emotional beats, and it’s all heart. What do kids care about, and what are they afraid of? The film takes some time to look seriously at these things. It’s not only laugh-out-loud funny in spots, expect some snorts, too. But look for some emotional pangs along the way, on par with an oft-forgotten superhero movie that may have more heart than any other, the 1980 John Ritter sleeper (and one of my favorites) Hero At Large. Which makes Shazam! also a movie for fans who count Spider-Man: Homecoming and The Incredibles among their most favorite superhero movies.
For a movie that had some pretty rough previews, including Tom Hardy as a journalist with some indecipherable dialogue and a scientist who mispronounced a key word in the story, the end result may come as a surprise: Venom is actually a pretty good movie. Do we credit a great post-production and re-shoots, including a complete redo of the strange “symbiote” explanatory scene, or does Sony need to simply work on improving its movie trailers? Frankly all that matters is what made it to the screen. Fans of the comic book anti-hero and villain, of alien invasion movies, of that unique character design from co-creator artist Todd McFarlane, of Tom Hardy, and non-traditional superhero movies, you’ll have to work to find anything wrong with this movie. It’s a good Halloween month monster movie and you don’t need to know anything about the character or Marvel Comics to jump right in. But you just might want to check out the comics after you see it. Like Frank Miller caused Daredevil to become popular, McFarlane made Venom big in the 1980s. Unlike McFarlane’s movie Spawn, an R-rated film that was too dark for mainstream audiences, the PG-13 rating for Venom makes this movie accessible to everyone.
A mix of the classic alien invasion flick, the horrifying McFarlane character look, with the grimy city vibe like the Detroit of Robocop, Venom has elements that make it feel like it belongs in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, regardless of its origin as a Sony film. As for quality and delivery, it falls somewhere above Blade, Iron Man 2 and 3,The Fantastic Four, the Hulk movies, and Spawn, X-Men 3 and X-Men: Apocalypse, and somewhere below Hellboy and Deadpool. For most fans of adaptations of comic books on the big screen, that will be enough. Full of good humor moments, the film doesn’t take itself seriously. We meet the archetype from 80 years of superhero comics with Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock, an Everyman, a down-and-out guy who can never get a break who gets caught making a few mistakes. Usually this archetype ends up captured by Batman (or insert other superhero here) and thrown into the slammer, but this time he encounters a body shifting alien presence that merges with him, blending the best and worst of both beings. Beginning with a crash landing as a SpaceX-inspired ship returns with some specimens from outer space, we eventually meet four alien beings, the lowliest of rank who calls himself Venom. Merged with Eddie, Venom needs to eat living lifeforms to continue on and he doesn’t grasp the subtleties of only killing bad guys just yet. Audiences will get to watch these aliens, the symbiotes, body-shift through several random characters (like Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Fallen), including the key cast and an animal or two–and it’s mostly great fun.
Venom is probably a rare time audiences will see Michelle Williams in a stock role. Usually every part she takes on results in an Oscar-worthy performance, but it’s nice seeing her do something less dramatic. And she gets some great scenes directly with Venom (including an Easter Egg scene that points straight back to the origin of the character originally discussed between Marvel Comics editor Jim Salicrup and writer/co-creator David Michelinie). This may be Tom Hardy’s best role since Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (where he was the only good thing in the movie), as he at last gets to play a spectrum of emotions and demonstrate a broad acting range. Despite what we heard in the movie trailers, his regional American accent is spot on in the final cut and his dialogue is delivered clearly–none of that crazy speech we saw him bring as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. Not hiding behind make-up or masks as inMad Max: Fury Road, Dunkirk, or Star Trek: Nemesis, Hardy again proves he’s one of the best actors around. The sound department gets it just right–Hardy’s voice is also the voice transformed into the monstrous, demonic sounding Venom, and it’s unique and effective. No doubt some elaborate work went on behind the scenes for Hardy-as-Eddie to be arguing with Hardy-as-Venom. Some of the best lines, and laugh-out-loud moments come from Venom, reminiscent of Gollum and Sméagol.
