Words are power in Scotto Moore’s expansive, mind-bending first novel, Battle of the Linguist Mages. “Power morphemes” are power itself, punctuation marks are aliens, and nothing is as it seems in an almost drug-induced frenzy about a young woman immersed in the real-life politics behind her favorite MMPORG virtual reality universe, Sparkle Dungeon 4. Follow as the Queen of Sparkle Dungeon infiltrates the corporation behind the game in this new Tor release, arriving at bookstores this month, and available for pre-order here at Amazon. How to break reality in three easy steps. Mr. Robot meets Ready Player One and The Fifth Element? Maybe, but the world building is more imaginative and detailed than in Ready Player One, and this story isn’t about nostalgia. The granular level of the world building would feel like something concocted over decades if the subject matter wasn’t so modern. Someone reading it in 1995 wouldn’t have a clue what it’s even about. But it’s an extension of sci-fi storytelling dating back to The Last Starfighter and Ender’s Game. A bit of Avatar--the James Cameron one–but more interesting. It’s ambitious, but mostly a fun ride.
If you have a houseful of kids and both spouses at home, all for the first time for longer than a school break, it may start getting… close… soon, especially if you’ve exhausted your collection of games, and finished cleaning out your garage and basement for the second time. If that’s the case, or you’re just looking for some good reads, Titan Books has just the thing, three new, big books that are sure to keep at least a few of you entertained for the coming weeks. The theme is Marvel Comics superheroes, but they aren’t comics. They are part of Titan Books’ ongoing series of paperback novels delving deep into your favorite superhero characters. Each volume, called an omnibus edition, is a hefty volume featuring three novels by a frequent Marvel writer.
Diane Duane’s 656-page Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus is the ultimate look at the life of Spider-Man. For Peter Parker, it’s one counter after another with three major Spidey characters. Each novel confronts a key adversary, Venom, then the Lizard, then Doctor Octopus. But these aren’t the only familiar faces readers will encounter. And it’s not called The Venom Factor for nothing–look for Venom in a key role throughout these three novels.
Disney and Fox have no expectations for this one, so it would be great for X-Men fans to see it in the theater and make known the X-Men are as important to fans as the Avengers, twenty years after the first X-Men movie arrived in theaters.
We’re hoping The New Mutants was worth the wait. At last we have a trailer that shows the potential of these characters, with this week’s release of the final trailer for the final film of the longest running continuous superhero movie franchise, Fox’s X-Men. This is movie #13, and with it, the first horror superhero movie for Marvel. April 13, 2018, was the original release date for the movie, but it was bumped a few times by the studio to accommodate bigger superhero stories including Deadpool 2 and X-Men: Dark Phoenix, and then Marvel movies after the merger of Fox and Disney. We previewed it here at borg more than two years ago. It looks like M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (and even co-stars that movie’s Anya Taylor-Joy) merged with the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton carrying forward the Johnny Depp look. Or a really haywire The Breakfast Club. As a result of the success of modern horror stories like Get Out and It, the original cut is in final reshoots by director Josh Boone to make it scarier. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s also easy to envision these mutant kids as an offshoot or tie-in story related to the lab that produced Laura aka X-23 in James Mangold’s Academy Award-nominated Logan.
And speaking of Anya Taylor-Joy, the film was made before these young actors’ careers really took off. Taylor-Joy filmed Split just before this and then Glass, was a lead voice (of Brea) in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and in Playmobil: The Movie, starred in Peaky Blinders, and filmed the lead role in a new remake of Emma, with five other films coming out in the next year. Maisie Williams grew up on Game of Thrones. And since filming The New Mutants,Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, and Blu Hunt have appeared in several movies and TV shows. The bad news of the reshoots is that Jon Hamm’s character Mister Sinister was reportedly cut entirely.
It’s the original roster of New Mutants (Cannonball, Mirage, Sunspot, and Wolfsbane), plus Magik from the second roster. Finally! Check out this great new trailer for The New Mutants:
As in any creative industry, as much as Hollywood is rife with successes, far more projects barely make it past the idea stage. Others make it through preliminary steps only to get left behind, most never heard of again. Decisions are made, offers are given, and you move forward. The fact that Tom Selleck rejected the role of Indiana Jones is a famous footnote to movie history. Most recently Amanda Seyfried recounted rejecting the role of Gamora in the Marvel films. A Mouse Guard movie made it through pre-production before getting stalled. For every successful project, how many others are left behind? If you’re as iconic as filmmaker Ray Harryhausen, you might have even more projects left in the discard pile than others. Those might-have-been projects, rejected ideas, and even scenes that made it beyond mere idea to concept art come together in John Walsh’s new look at the auteur and father of stop-motion creatures, Harryhausen: The Lost Movies.
Ray Harryhausen’s creations were cutting edge for the first century of cinema, their creator a special effects visionary who found his niche in fantasy worlds, via films like One Million Years B.C., Clash of the Titans, and Jason and the Argonauts. Documentarian John Walsh met with Harryhausen, who died in 2013, to film a documentary about the filmmaker, and along the way he chronicled 70 projects Harryhausen considered but did not go through with, including script and concept art material. Some of these are projects he was asked to participate in and couldn’t find a fit, or films he passed up for other projects, including films anyone could see translated by Harryhausen, like Conan, Tarzan, King Kong, Moby Dick, John Carter of Mars, and Beowulf. Then there are those surprises fans could only dream about, like Harryhausen’s take on The Empire Strikes Back, The Princess Bride, Dune, or X-Men. Harryhausen: The Lost Movies provides fans with a glimpse into Harryhausen’s involvement in these projects, some with photographic clues of how his input might have resulted in very different films.
Pulling together some never-been-seen-before artwork, sketches, photos, and screencaps of test footage from the Harryhausen Foundation archives, Walsh creates a scrapbook of sorts, an artist’s sketchbook. Harryhausen considered every other major classic fantasy and fairy tale to utilize his brand of special effects storytelling. He created test footage for H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, but his letter to Orson Welles was not answered. His alien designs from that footage are in this book.
Instead of what has been done at past panels at San Diego Comic-Con–having a panel for each or just a few major projects–Marvel Studios exec Kevin Feige was on-hand to get several announcements out the door and as many key cast members in and out of his single panel as possible. For the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase IV, that means tying in Disney’s (pay) streaming service with the movies. The big takeaway? New logos are pretty much all there is so far to share, plus key casting and timing announcements. And although the last Phase had some changes along the way, it looks as if these ten projects will round out the entirety of Marvel over the next few years. The biggest frustration for fans of the X-Men and Fantastic Four is why nobody at Marvel has been getting a head start on these two massively popular teams of characters–money is definitely going to be left on the table for the duration of Phase IV by pushing out these projects. Why aren’t these Priority #1 with someone at Disney in light of the long lead-time the corporation had for the Fox acquisition?
The new time table is straightforward: Black Widow movie (May 1, 2020), The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series (Fall 2020), Eternals movie (November 6, 2020), Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings movie (February 12, 2021), WandaVision TV series (Spring 2021), LokiTV series (Spring 2021), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnessmovie (May 7, 2021), What If…?animated series (Summer 2021), HawkeyeTV series (Fall 2021), and Thor: Love and Thundermovie (November 5, 2021). The most eagerly awaited film after this year’s Avengers: Endgame was the hinted-at Guardians of the Galaxy/Thor or Asgardians of the Galaxy team-up movie, but Marvel still has not confirmed that project, unless it’s tied into the 2021 film. Also relegated to “in development” status: Black Panther 2, Captain Marvel 2, Fantastic Four, X-Men, and the next Tom Holland Spider-Man movie (Spider-Man is Iron Man’s replacement, right?). Silence seems to confirm the death of the Marvel Netflix universe of Luke Cage,The Punisher, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Iron Fist, and maybe even Disney+ projects Runaways, Ghost Rider, and Helstrom. FX’s Legion was already announced as canceled, and we lost track of how many times The New Mutants movie has been pushed back. Even bigger unknowns are the next Ant-Man and The Wasp, which had Hank Pym actor Michael Douglas already discussing it as a prequel, and if anyone is thinking about Prince Namor the Submariner, nobody is talking. It begs the question: Does Disney have too much to handle now?
As a beginning Disney’s Marvel side seems to be taking a lead from its Star Wars division, with its offerings targeting a mix of fans old, new, and in-between. For the fans of the MCU so far you have plenty, a Black Widow (presumably prequel) and Thor movie as bookends for Phase IV, and TV series to keep alive Falcon, Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Loki, Doctor Strange, and Hawkeye. For new audiences (and possibly much older comic book readers) there is Shang-Chi and the Eternals to get to know, along with the announcement that Luke Cage’s Mahershala Ali will be playing Blade in a reboot movie at the beginning of Phase V, the vampire hunter who, like Spider-Man, has already seen an entire series of movies outside of the MCU.
The details are an eclectic mix of things you might want, things you didn’t know you want, and things you won’t know what to make of:
Does every hero have a dark side? It’s impossible Quicksilver has a dark side. But we’ll find out in five weeks as the 12th film in the longest running superhero movie series sees its second-to-last film with the theatrical premiere of Dark Phoenix. The series that started with X-Men in 2000 began as a knockout with the stellar casting of Patrick Stewart as Professor X, Ian McKellen as Magneto, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, ultimately interweaving two separate casts that would include the likes of Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Michael Fassbender as a younger Magneto, and James McElvoy as a younger Professor X. With eleven films across 19 years we’d meet our favorite (or second favorite) Marvel superheroes and supervillains shine in X-Men 2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse, Logan, and Deadpool 2.
Every hero has a dark side.
This week post-merger Fox released ten new character posters for the new film spreading that message.
Dark Phoenixwas written and directed by Simon Kinberg, and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain. Kinberg has promised Dark Phoenix will be a more faithful adaptation of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s Dark Phoenix Saga than seen in X-Men: The Last Stand.
Dark Phoenixrepresents one of X-Men fans’ favorite classic X-Men stories. We have already seen one take on the Dark Phoenix story, as Famke Janssen’s Jane Grey destroyed everyone she cares about in X-Men: The Last Stand, but after the timeline manipulation in X-Men Days of Future Past we learned again the lesson of the Terminator movies: The future’s not set—There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves–A common theme of comics, too, as characters are killed and reborn again and again. Dark Phoenixwas written and directed by Simon Kinberg, and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain. Kinberg has promised Dark Phoenixto be a more faithful adaptation of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s Dark Phoenix Saga.
For those of us who loved the X-Men movies, this is the winding down of a great era, highlighted by the casting of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Patrick Stewart as Professor X, and Ian McKellen as Magneto. Who will ever forget one of the finest adaptations to film of any superhero from any comic book as Evan Peters became Quicksilver, defending his fellow mutants in the Pentagon? And the high point of any superhero movie (from Marvel Comics, DC Comics, or anyone else) must be the Academy Award nomination for best screenplay for Logan last year. Like the competing films in the Avengers films, there were as many high as low points, but some greatness happened throughout X-Men, X-Men 2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, The Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Deadpool, X-Men: Apocalypse, Logan, and Deadpool 2.
For Fox’s long string of connected X-Men films, this is the end. Check out this final trailer for Dark Phoenix:
Ever wonder how the studios make the determination to release one version of a trailer in the U.S. and a different version simultaneously elsewhere? So do we. Language differences aside, a few cultural distinctions would make sense sometimes, but infrequently. But how do you explain it with a straightforward superhero movie? We previewed the U.S. trailer last week here at borg for this summer’s X-Men movie Dark Phoenix. It looked great. Then we saw the international version.
The international version leaves out the introduction with a weepy superheroine Jean Grey, but instead offers a developing, linear short film summary that builds and teases like a good trailer should, reflecting the power and excitement the character Dark Phoenix is known for. And it teases an incredible space shuttle scene. This is the right trailer to get people into theaters. Yet it’s not the trailer most Americans will see.
Take a look and see what you think. Here’s the new international trailer for Dark Phoenix:
In less than four weeks pop culture convention Planet Comicon Kansas City returns, this time to celebrate its 20th year. Even more than before the event is hosting a pantheon of nationally recognized comic book writers and artists for its seventh year in the downtown Kansas City, Missouri, venue at the giant Bartle Hall facility at the Kansas City Convention Center. The show runs Friday, March 29 through Sunday, March 31. Bring your stacks of comics for autographs from your favorite creators–we’ve included here only a few important and familiar books by creators scheduled to be at the event. Attendees will see some of the biggest names and most popular character creators spanning fives decades of comics, including:
Chris Claremont, writer and creator of dozens of characters including Rogue, Mystique, Phoenix, Emma Frost, Legion, Gambit, and Captain Britain. His classic books include a long run on Uncanny X-Men, including the popular story arcs The Dark Phoenix Sagaand Days of Future Past, adapted into X-Men: Days of Future Past, multiple X-Men movies, and this summer’s coming film Dark Phoenix.
Jim Starlin, writer/artist and creator of Thanos, Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, the Master of Kung Fu, and the first graphic novel published by Marvel Comics, The Death of Captain Marvel. His classic books include Batman: The Cult, Batman: A Death in the Family, and Cosmic Odyssey.
Jim Steranko, writer/artist known for his unique 1960s style, his work on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., plus memorable runs on Captain America and X-Men. He was also a creator of concept art designs for Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Fabian Nicieza, writer known for creating Deadpool in the pages of The New Mutants, and working on dozens of key superhero titles. His classic books include New Warriors and Psi-Force.
Keith Giffen, artist and creator of Rocket the Raccoon and Lobo. His classic books include several issues of Legion of Super-Heroes.
Kevin Eastman, writer and creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Steve McNiven, artist and creator of Marvel Comics’ Civil War. McNiven is known for his cover art on dozens of Marvel titles.
Bob McLeod, artist and creator of The New Mutants. (A concept that is the subject of 20th Century Fox’s last slated Marvel project, the coming late summer big-screen release The New Mutants).
It’s hard to believe the reboot cast of the X-Men franchise is at its fourth film with this summer’s 20th Century Fox release, Dark Phoenix. Despite delays caused by studio mergers, this last film before who-knows-what will happen couldn’t look better, an exciting topper on the X-Men movie franchise. With eleven of thirteen films released so far since the first film, X-Men, arrived with Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and Ian McKellen in 2000, it’s become the seventh highest grossing film franchise ever. With a pretty stuffed superhero film market only getting bigger this year (the last of the Fox Marvel films, The New Mutants, follows in August), Dark Phoenix could be the film that dodges the hype, bringing a classic film story and legion of familiar characters into what will hopefully be a solid comic book story adaptation. Since X-Men: First Class, James McAvoy‘s Professor X, Michael Fassbender‘s Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence‘s Raven, Nicholas Hoult‘s Beast, and (with X-Men: Days of Future Past)Evan Peters‘ Quicksilver are among the best actor/character combinations of all the superhero films.
One of the best parts of X-Men: Apocalypse was the re-introduction of Jean Grey, with Sophie Turner providing an engaging take of the character, along with what might be the best incarnation in any medium of the normally bland Scott Summers, improved upon by actor Tye Sheridan. Argue it how you want, Marvel Comics has long established the most powerful superhero to be Jean Grey as Phoenix. And yet among the weakest of the eleven films was X-Men: The Last Stand, the first attempt at revealing her power. With Dark Phoenix, fans get to see another attempt. Were the X-Men movies to be transferred a few years earlier into the Marvel Cinematic Universe of Disney, would we be seeing some version of Jean Grey in the position of Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, poised to eliminate Thanos in Avengers: Endgame? Or Deadpool, also, for that matter, who has similarly been nestled in the Fox version of Marvel and written to destroy Thanos before)?
Whatever the climax of Avengers: Endgame, it’s good to know another superhero movie awaits this summer. Check out the new poster and this stellar new trailer for Dark Phoenix:
