Posted in News and Editorials, tagged Days of Future Past, DOFP, Sentinels, X-Men on July 30, 2013| 1 Comment »
Getting some closer looks at Trask Industries and the Sentinels. With the movie a little less than a year away I imagine we’ll get a lot of viral stuff, but it’s surprising we’re getting such a clear look at the Sentinels already. Makes me wonder what they are holding back…
Some images courtesy of CinemaBlend:
Posted in Sneaks, tagged Fan Fiction, Rogue, Sneak Peak, Wolverine, XMTFFS on July 28, 2013| 1 Comment »
Here is a sneak peak at the pilot episode of my X-Men: The (Fan Fic) Series which starts September 20th.
“Rogue,” Quicksilver called her name over the line when Avalanche didn’t answer.
“On it,” she said instantly, slipping the files she had taken into her brown leather jacket.
Running for the stairwell, she pulled off her gloves and tucked them into her pockets. The Boy Scout, though he liked to call himself Cyclops, had probably gotten to Avalanche and while Dom could take a hit from Cyclops optic blast, maybe even two or three, that was no reason to assume he was okay if he wasn’t answering.
Taking the steps two at a time, she made her way up to the ground floor but she was at the East end of building from the lobby, she’d have to take the long connecting hallway to get to him.
Snikt.
Upon exiting the stairs and hearing the distinctive sound, Rogue managed to duck just in time as a pair of Adamantium claws swiped over her head.
Rolling, she was back on her feet within seconds, facing down the man known as Wolverine. He was about her height and made up for his lack of stature with a very gruff and intimidating presence. The mutant’s gift was a healing factor that left most others in the dust, practically coming back from the dead on more than one occasion.
She would know, she had seen it in his head.
“Well, at least you’re learning,” Rogue frowned as she took in the high collar leather biker jacket he wore, with matching full gloves, leaving only the skin of his head vulnerable to her touch. “What we at now, 12-8?”
“I don’t keep track,” he said with a growl, releasing the Adamantium claws in his other fist.
“Sure ya do,” she grinned, then made her move.
Diving low, she kept under his first swing, then bought up both arms in a boxer’s defense to block his second attack. His entire skeleton had been replaced with the toughest metal on Earth and that meant he had a lot more weight behind his punches than his build would suggest.
She tried to reach up and grab his face but he was quicker than he looked, another swipe coming at her head. Ducking again, she managed to slip around him, trying to reach back behind her and grab his neck on her way. Sensing what she was doing, he lunged forward out of her grasp.
Frustrated, Rogue bounced on her toes as she turned to face him, the man laughing. “Same ol’ moves there, skunk,” he brought his claws up.
Practically growling as the voice of Wolverine taunted her both in person and in her head, she got ready to attack again, “Bring it, short stack.”
Posted in Reviews, tagged comics, Review, X-Men Legacy on July 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Now it makes sense for David to have been wearing the Marty McFly jacket before, because the guy does know how to manipulate the time stream.
However, I can’t help but feel a little WTF about him letting Marcus get killed. Sure, the man was a puppet for Red Skull, but that’s hardly his own fault. Yes, the group could be considered very dangerous for mutants, but simply discrediting them would be a far better choice than simply letting the man die like that.
Just seems a little cold blooded.
And David doesn’t seem to be any close to stopping or changing up his path of pre-emptive attacks. This can all go downhill very quickly.
Posted in Reviews, tagged Hugh Jackman, Review, The Wolverine, Wolverine on July 27, 2013| 2 Comments »
The Wolverine was one of those films that you go into hoping it will be good, but have a low standard of what “good” is. Because you do this, you actually enjoy the film.
If you go in expecting this to stick to canon, you’re going to be disappointed from the start. But that’s something we’ve come to expect, even from the Marvel movies, canon gets changed around to better suit the medium and more modern settings. Was there anything in The Wolverine that was unforgivable? On the whole, no, but the fact that it was so predictable is highly disappointing. Much like in Iron Man 3, they changed around who The Silver Samurai is/was. But the Mandarin’s change came completely out of left field and was as amazingly creative as it was controversial. The twist in Wolverine you see coming from about twenty minutes into the movie.
And at one point I thought this film might actually do something different for once. Make Wolvie a real anti-hero and leave him without hooking up with the love interest and truly left like a Ronin by the end, albeit one who finds his own purpose which would be very deep and existential. That would have been awesome, and very much in line with the old Westerns and Samurai films this film was a homage to, but instead the love story is as typical as we’ve seen a thousand times.
That was really this films biggest problem, it was too safe. Yes, that meant that you’re so glad it wasn’t the horrible mess that was X3 and X:O:W, but that’s basically saying after trying all those wax and saw dust flavored jelly beans you’re pleased when you get a red liquorish.
Does that necessarily make it a bad movie? No. The train fight scene was pretty spectacular, plus they played around a bit with the things Wolvie could do with his claws. It was a darker film and definitely more on par with what Wolverine should be. If it actually tried to push the limits more in the story it was trying to tell (and more straight on ninja/Wolvie fighting), then it could have been beyond Epic, it was that close.
Instead, the ending kinda falls flat and really leaves you to wonder ‘why is he doing this’ except, you know, he has to be freed up for Days of Future Past.
Overall though, it’s a decent film which makes up for X:O:W and leaves us with a wonderful little after-credits scene to hook into DOFP. Yukio and Mariko were decently kick ass and Jean’s cameo wasn’t what I thought it was going to be, so that was nice to be surprised (I choose to believe that last scene was a homage to the White Hot Room).
So yeah, go see The Wolverine, just make sure that when you walk in, don’t expect a Rembrandt, and be glad it’s not a finger-paint.
Posted in Reviews, tagged comics, Gambit, Review on July 27, 2013| 2 Comments »
Gambit naked, holding kittens, does it really get any better than that?
Apparently, yes, because in the next panels he’s impersonating Hawkeye (remember he stole his wallet in A+X #3) and the whole thing just made me squeal like a little girl.
Then Gambit plays detective for a bit, then uses his savvy instead of Bo staff to solve a problem. It seems a bit rushed but it does show off Gambit’s ‘hero side’, especially since his thief side is about to be tested, apparently by the Thieves Guild itself.
Now, this isn’t the first time Gambit has been on trial, and he’s been accused of a lot of a bad stuff, done some of it too, so having another trial is a bit of a risky move for Asmus to make this late in the game for Gambit. Already Gambit has done enough stuff to get him back at the top of a bunch of watch lists, and make Rogue worry about him more than normal, so this could be either good/healthy for Gambit, or wreck everything he’s worked towards in the past few years.
That’s the thing though, he’s been working towards being the hero, the good guy, the teacher, and it’s done nothing but leave him feeling a bit empty. Is it because he’d rather be the bad guy? Because it hurts to much to be around Rogue? Or because he just hasn’t really let the past go?
Asmus has said that Remy’s ‘status quo’ will change by the end of his solo, what exactly does that mean?
This could go really good, or really not…
Posted in Reviews, tagged The Wolverine, Wolverine on July 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Just getting back from an early showing of The Wolverine, my initial reaction is thus: Oh the wonders of low expectations and low bars of standards.
Purest will hate the film, but that’s nothing new.
Those who only know Wolvie by the movies will love it.
Everyone in between will pretty much be ‘at least it didn’t totally suck’.
Longer, more insightful, review to come once I’ve had a little time to digest the film, and, you know, sleep.
Posted in News and Editorials, tagged Avengers 2, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Scarlet Witch on July 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »
From BleedingCool
Well, Wolverine lost his cowl in the X-Men movies. Now it looks as if Scarlet Witch will lose hers too for Avengers: The Age Of Ultron.
When asked if Scarlet Witch will keep her head dress,Joss Whedon told Nerdist;
No.
Well that’s nice and clear then. He went on.
No. She might wear a headband or something that might echo it. The guys at Marvel, the conceptual artists, are phenomenal, and they are so good at taking the essence of what works and interpreting it for the actual human body, and when they paint something you can not only tell how it’s gonna work on a person, you can even tell what fabric it’ll be. They are very specific, very talented. So I’m excited to see the designs. Obviously we want to echo the look that people know, but there’s the classic look and the Ultimates look, but you have to do it in a way that will work. But it can’t be too old school… she can’t wear a leotard.
I’m okay with this. I like what they did with her hair in EVO to echo the cowl, though I would prefer they kept it long and curly to befit her background. A simple fix might be giving her red streaks in her bangs (not the whole bangs) but yeah, the conceptual artists have been pretty good so far, I have faith in them.
Posted in Behind the Scenes, tagged Days of Future Past, DOFP, Magneto, Mystique, Quicksilver, Wolverine, X-Men, Xavier on July 21, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Spoilers ahead though only if you’re one of those who never watch teaser trailers. Oh, and Evan Peters literally quoted his character directly from the comics… good sign.
From io9
We saw the first teaser of X-Men: Days of Future Past just now at San Diego Comic-Con, and it was the most exciting X-Men moment in a decade. Here’s our rough impressions of what we saw. UPDATE: More details added!
Spoilers ahead…
Seriously, I hope this footage shows up online soon, because my description is not going to do it justice. There was a lot going on here. We saw it twice, so I’m adding more details from the second watching.
We see a closeup of Patrick Stewart’s eye, and someone (Stewart) asks, “What’s the last thing you remember?” Professor X (Stewart) responds, “I had a glimpse into the past.”Then Professor X tells Wolverine, “You’re going to have to do for me what I once did for you.” We slowly zoom out from Professor X’s aged face, and then we see him with a Cerebro helmet on, and later coming out of the Cerebro chamber.
And this is a dark dystopian future, where the dark, fetishy costumes are looking more dirty and distress and messed up, and Professor X and Ian McKellen’s Magneto seem weary and filled with dread. They’re in a war chamber in front of a table that shows how badly things are going. Wolverine even has a bit of gray in his facial hair.
We see flashes of all our favorite mutants, including Storm against a stormy sky, Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde, and some others. And there are futuristic-looking mutants, including Omar Sy as Bishop, and some others I couldn’t identify wearing dramatic Mad Max-y makeup.
We learn that Professor X and Magneto have come together “side by side, to end this war before it ever begins.”
Wolverine asks, “So I wake up in my younger body, and then what?” Professor X responds, “Find me, convince me of all this.” And Magneto chimes in that Wolverine will find younger Magneto a different person, “a darker person.” We catch glimpses of 1970s versions of Magneto and Professor X — with a lot more hair and a lot more fire to them. Young Professor X has a crazy beard and a 1970s groovy outfit with an X-shaped light on his face, while Young Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is waving a gun.
We see Young Professor X blowing dust off a white globe.
Back then, Professor X says, “I was a very different man. Lead me, guide me, be patient with me.” We see Young Professor X putting his hands on someone’s face as he tries to understand. Maybe Wolverine’s face?
Older Wolverine responds, “Patience isn’t my strong suit.”
And then blue glowing hands are gripping Wolverine’s head, sending him back in time into the body of his younger self.
We catch glimpses of other stuff — Young Magneto using his powers to pull a distressed Mystique along the floor. Young Magneto descending from the air looking scary. There is a mysterious opening under the Oval Office, revealed by the oval opening up like a trapdoor. And protests in the street, and Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) addressing a government hearing. And Richard Nixon looking weird and terrifying — and then Mystique walking down the street changing into a man in a pimp suit.
There is a LOT of stuff blowing up, and Young Professor X using Magneto, and the Beast attacking, a woman walking away from an airplane, and a military setting. We glimpse Professor X shielding his face from an intense white light, and the Cerebro machine exploding.
Young Professor X says, “I don’t want your suffering. I don’t want your future.”
And then Old Professor X is face to face with his younger self. He says: “Please. We need you to hope again.” It’s an actual spine-tingling moment. Actual goosebumps here.
In the panel, we met Omar Sy, who told us that Bishop is visiting from the future and just trying to survive, like everyone. Also on the panel: Peter Dinklage confirmed he really is playing Bolivar Trask.
And Evan Peters was here, as the new Quicksilver. Asked to describe his character, Peters said: “He’s very fast. He’s quick. He’s a spaz. He talks quick, he moves quick, everybody is very slow compared to him. He’s always at an ATM waiting for the bastard in front of him to finish.”
“He’s got excellent genes,” added Michael Fassbender, who plays his father, Magneto.
Someone asks what sort of costume Quicksilver will have, and Singer responds: “It’ll be a seventies costume. I had grown up as a kid in the 1970s and I had forgotten how hideous some of the clothing was back then.”
Someone asked if we might get a Deadpool movie, and Bryan Singer wouldn’t confirm that one will happen — but he did say the X-Men universe is as big as the rest of the Marvel universe, and there’s enough room for a ton of X-Men films developing all the different characters and corners of the universe, building it out.
Someone asked Jackman about musicals, and he said he would never sing as Wolverine. The crowd was disappointed, so he gave us a taste of what a Wolverine musical would be like: “I’m gonna slice ’em, I’m gonna dice ’em,” he sang operatically.
Someone asked the assembled cast which X-Men character, other than their own, they would want to play. Patrick Stewart responded: “I would like to play any female character in any X-Men movie, because then I would have a chance of winning an Academy Award.” (Because three of the women in the X-Men have won Oscars.)
Iain McKellen said: “If I can’t play the younger Magneto, then I would like to grow wings and play Angel.”
Oh, and in the panel for The Wolverine before we saw this footage, Hugh Jackman gave a shoutout to Wolverine co-creator Len Wein, who was in the audience, and it was really gracious and awesome.
Posted in News and Editorials, tagged Beast, Bishop, Colossus, Days of Future Past, Magneto, Rogue, Wolverine, Xavier on July 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »
According to BleedingCool, “the official X-Men: Days Of Future Past tumblr prematurely published and swiftly deleted a series of character headshots showing a whole host of mutants”
Here they are below:
What do we learn?
Wolverine: Well, as has been pointed out on Tumblr and other places, future Wolverine is sporting the iconic gray stripes in his hair and possible iconic yellow jumpsuit. It does look like stretchy yellow spandex… I doubt though that he’s wearing a full yellow jumpsuit, I would wager it’s just a top which hints greatly at his iconic uniform, like the brown leather jacket with yellow stripes. Unfortunately the image is cropped too much to know for sure what he’s wearing, or what’s going on in the background, lots of glow.
Xavier/Magneto/Colossus: They seem to be wearing the same uniform, just a bit different to mark the personalities of the different characters. It definitely looks like armor, similar to what Storm was wearing in her tweeted sneak peak. But Kitty and Bobby don’t seem to be wearing the armor/uniform in their sneaky peak (for that matter neither does Wolvie here either). I’m not sure what this means, why they aren’t all matched up, if they were all mis-matched, okay, but only a few are? Could they have been in a different resistance squad or maybe they were separated then found by the group in order to use Kitty’s powers? The difference in outfits could mean something, could mean nothing…
Bishop: Looks like Bishop, dreadlocks, scar, red sash thingy… no complaints here. But I’m not sure about the ridges on his shoulder, or if his armor is supposed to match the other’s uniform. Could this has something to do with Bobby and Kitty’s non-matching outfits? Different squads? Or maybe the X-Men have broken up?
Beast: They’ve cleaned it up a bit, but he’s still in the yellow striped jumpsuit from the first movie. Will we see the others in their jumpsuits too?
Rogue: We’re getting a lot of peaks at the future cast, and if I miss my guess, we’ve seen everyone (except Rogue) from the original cast (that we know is going to be in the film). We’ve even had looks at the new ‘big names’ like Bishop here… so… why haven’t we had a sneak of Rogue? It’s possible Anna hasn’t done her filming yet, there is still two months-ish left to go… but with everyone else from the future timeline getting their scenes out of the way… how’s this going to work? Simple movie magic? Is her role just not that big and it’ll be filmed later? Or is there a greater plot afoot…
Posted in Reviews, tagged comics, Review, Wolverine and the X-Men on July 16, 2013| Leave a Comment »
I can’t really get enough of Mystique lately, she’s been in several titles and has been some of the best parts in those titles. Here she’s really trying to show just how tough she is, how cold and evil, but you can see it in her words that she wants to believe her rhetoric, but the truth is, she doesn’t. Oh, she’s evil, of course she is, but perhaps not as cold blooded as she lets on. It’s subtle work, maybe even something I’m reading into the dialogue, but it’s there nevertheless.
And of course there is Quire, he hasn’t decided if he’s a good guy or a bad guy. Most likely, he doesn’t care which he falls under. He’s there to help a friend, that’s it. Whether he’ll end up a super hero or a super villain has yet to be determined, but the fact that he cares about someone other than himself is very telling.
As for Paige and Toad… first, what is going on with Paige? She was already a bit out there when she left, but now she’s completely off her rocker. Something happened to her, but what? After all the wonderful characterizations everyone else is getting… surely Aaron didn’t drop the ball with Paige? There is also the way she’s treating Toad… poor Toad… reduced to janitor again like that’s all he’s good at. Toad better get his due by the end of this arc… that’s all I’m asking…
Oh, and there is the Siege Perilous… yeah, that can’t end well.
Feature Length Gambit & Rogue fan fic movie by JCRG. Cover art by VagabondX
X-Men: The (fan fic) Series 