Posts Tagged ‘X-Men’

Daily News: 12/18/2012

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 18, 2012| 1 Comment »

Going to try something new, unless there is a news article I really want to talk about or is just really big in its own right, then I’ll post some news round-ups which will allow me to not clutter as much and also include some articles I wouldn’t post individually anyway.

io9 – Marvel writer Dan Slott is getting death threats for the leaked ending of Spider-Man #700
some people take comics way to seriously… as the article points out, it’s a comic book, wait a dozen story arcs and whatever ticked you off will be retconned or rendered moot

ComicBookMovie – Jeph Loeb Reveals When We Should  Expect To See The First Episode Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Hint, it’s Fall 2013, to get it in with the new Marvel movies but before the new Avengers film, it’s also when my X-Men series starts!

ComicBookMovie – BSG Actor James Callis Lands  Guest-Starring Role In ARROW
James Callis, otherwise known as Old Spice, something to look forward to

ComicBookMovie – Samuel L. Jackson Talks  S.H.I.E.L.D. TV Series; Teases CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 Role

CinemaBlend – Science Explains Why The Hobbit Looks Weird in 48 Frames Per Second
as our future x-men and comic book movies are likely going to be influenced by how well The Hobbit and this experiment in 48fps does, thought it was both informative and relevant.

CinemaBlend – Amazing Spider-Man Sequel is Changing Electro’s Look, says Jamie Foxx
because you can draw this stuff on people, but real people can’t wear it…

ComicBookMovie – Next Year a Female Marvel Superhero Will Come Down With Cancer to Raise Awareness
Which leads to the question as to why this hasn’t happened before, and why don’t superheroes get sick as often as regular humans do? But yay for raising awareness.

io9 – The 1990s X-Men Cartoon Opening Recreated with Action Figures
I haven’t seen the video, computer issues, but the io9 people seem to think it’s good.

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Millar: Man with a Plan

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , on November 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Mark Millar has spoken up about his role in the new Fox/Marvel movies. Apparently he’s got a three to four year plan. He also wants to see a world where you watch a Marvel comic based movie and they all feel like the same universe.

I’m a bit wary of this.

I suppose not knowing if this is three or four years is typical as he’s got a lot of future scheduling to get around and the studios can be crazy.

But it’s the “all in a same universe” that has me worried. The X-Men movies do not share the same tone as the Avengers films. The Fantastic Four is much closer to the style of the Avengers, that would work, but the X-Men is more akin to Batman than Captain America. Perhaps he meant it a general thing and not all that literal?

The Bleeding Cool article also pointed out that Millar didn’t have a lot of input on The Wolverine, so how that fits into the grand scheme is yet to be figured out, though it could be related to the supposed Jean Grey cameo.

It’s going to be a very interesting next few years…

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Character Spotlight: Jean-Paul Beaubier aka Northstar

Posted in Characters, tagged , , , on November 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Jean-Paul Beaubier aka NorthstarCharacter Spotlight: Jean-Paul Beaubier aka Northstar

Concept:
Jean-Paul was the last addition to the team. I had already decided that I wasn’t going with the original line up or any of the newer teams because I had specific ideas where I wanted certain characters to be. Yet, I knew the team needed one more member in the core team, it just wasn’t feeling right as is.

So I got to thinking about my villains and who would be a good thwart for Quicksilver and I thought to myself ‘another speed mutant’. I looked at a list of those with speed and Northstar jumped out at me as a character with a great background who would work perfectly into the universe I was creating.

Coming from Canada and Department H, I have a plethora of possibilities, story wise, to draw from. His sister, Jeanne-Marie, sets up my ideas for Dissociative Identity Disorder. Jean-Paul himself is a perfect analogue for Mutants and current equality parallels. He’s also a bit of a jerk which nicely rounds out all the personalities.

Unfortunately, due to the realistic take I’m doing, I had to nix his ability to fly. But he can still run really fast, has endurance and invulnerability. This still makes him pretty formable.

Series Biography:
Growing up in Quebec with his twin sister Jeanne-Marie, Jean-Paul was kicked out of the house at 18 when he came out to his parents that he was homosexual. Not sure where to go, he joined the Canadian Armed Forces along with his sister Jeanne-Marie who also left their parents as a form of protest. Their mutant abilities were easily discovered and the siblings were then moved up into elite training and became some of Department H’s finest soldiers.

When Jean-Paul realized that his sister was being pushed too hard and being mistreated by those who only saw Jeanne-Marie as a weapon to use against other mutants, he took her and fled South, ending up at Xavier’s. Seeking refugee, Xavier welcomed the twins, giving Jean-Paul a job as a teacher at the school.

There is much Jean-Paul left behind in Canada but he blames himself for his sister’s current dissociative state and will do anything he has to in order to help her.

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Rumor Mill: Jean Grey in The Wolverine?

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , , , , , on October 21, 2012| 1 Comment »

Famke Janssen as Jean Grey

Famke Janssen as Jean Grey

ComicBookMovie recently posted a rumor that Famke Janssen is going to reprise her role as Jean Grey in a cameo appearance in The Wolverine. This could possibly tie The Wolverine in with Days of Future Past and how they are going to change things up.While I can see where this might be coming from, and how it could might work, depending on when and how her cameo takes place (flash forward maybe?), it’s one of those things that could make or wreck the film in regards to the overall X-Men Cinemagraphic Universe.

Jean Grey is dead via the end of X3 (not that death has ever stopped her) and she turned into Phoenix at the end of X2… so if this is a flash forward then it would have to take place sometime before X2. If it’s about time travel, or Kitty DOFP style mental Time Travel, in X2 Kitty was called “a little girl who could walk through walls” meaning she had to be even younger in X1. (I still don’t know how Kitty will work in DOFP since she won’t even been born yet unless they skip WAY into the future). But then flashing forward to X1-ish means we’re that much closer to a full reboot of the X movies.

If Jean Grey is time traveling, that, again, opens a big can of worms of rebooting which could hopefully only be a good thing.

If The Wolverine actually takes place post X-3, well then, that’s a boat load of confusion as most of thought that this would be a prequel to the X-movies (like Origins but takes place after Origins ala the Easter Egg at the end of that movie). So not only is the movie moved, but Jean Grey is apparently back from the dead (again, not a big stretch). Though now we have total fail on the reboot option.

The biggest problem with all this is that Famke is older now, it’s just fact. X-Men came out in 2000, over a decade ago, and she looks older and more mature from her X1 self. This can be worked around, with makeup and stuff, but they need to be very clear on when and how all of this is happening, esp since the rumor is that only Jean Grey might be in the Wolverine (unless the whole Patrick Stewart thing being in DOFP is actually a cameo in Wolverine, but that only helps a little). Of course, if it’s option three and post X3 then this isn’t an issue.

Really, what Fox needs to do is sit back and say “we made some X-Men movies and while some were good, some weren’t, now we’re going to start all over again with First Class, literally”. It’s not like people are going to look on them any less, just look at Batman, he’s had several films totally unrelated to each other and it’s been pure win. Fox doesn’t have to attempt to save face or anything like that here, it’s been a decade since X1, you have new actors who literally owned their roles in First Class… go from here and leave the first X movies as Alt Uni’s… the comics have tons of them!

So, personally, I hope this is just a rumor… but if it isn’t, then maybe this is part of the Easter Egg and totally brilliant! We’ll have to see in July…

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Of course it’s a great idea!

Posted in Random Stuff, tagged , on October 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Seems I’m not the only person who thinks that the X-Men would make a great tv show.

#4 X-MEN

Without the first X-Men film, I don’t think we’d be where we are as far as superhero films go. It set the bar for comic movies as box office gold and it still continues to make trucks full of cash (last summer’s X-Men: First Class made over $350 million at the global box office). There are so many mutants and storylines with the X-Men that the films Fox has been making will never touch on all of them. What if the comic book took a turn to the small screen? Given the opportunity to put the X-Men on television in live action would be a comic fan’s dream come true, especially if the show starts out solely with Xavier and the original five X-Men (Cyclops, Ice Man, Jean Grey, Beast, and Angel).

The benefits of telling the X-Men story on television as opposed to how it’s been done in the film series is planning. Many television producers and writers plan out their seasons for their shows long in advance, even when they don’t know if they’ve been picked up for another season. With this in mind, the growth for an X-Men series can be planned in advance instead of having to dance around and make all the pieces fit together (see the X-Men movie franchise). If a capable showrunner that loves the material could get a hold of this (unfortunately we hear Joss Whedon is busy), we might eventually get to see real Sentinels, the Age of Apocalypse, (real) Dark Phoenix, etc.
-www.SuperHeroHype.com
They are spot on with the idea that with so many characters in the X-Men universe it’s more suited for the small screen serialized rather than a big mushed together film. I’ve got my series planned out for eight seasons with a spot for just about every character to have it’s moment (thought hopefully mixed up enough not to be the same episode just with a different guest star).

Only thing I disagree with is Sentinels (seriously? three-story tall purple robots?) and having an Age of Apocalypse would only work if you go away from the realistic theme… or allow time travel… but then it’s such a huge story in its own right they should probably back off of it or else just not do it justice.

And as an after thought, while the original team is key (I have Scott, Jean and Bobby in my core team, but Warren is not and Hank is TBD), they would need to mix it up. Bring in some of the newer characters, there is a huge base of New Mutant fans, which is why, as you’ll see in my series, there is a bunch of them who have a rather large role as secondary characters with their own sub-archs.

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Character Spotlight: Robert “Bobby” Drake aka Iceman

Posted in Characters, tagged , , , on October 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Character Spotlight: Robert “Bobby” Drake aka Iceman

Robert "Bobby" Drake aka Iceman

Robert “Bobby” Drake aka Iceman

Concept:
Iceman is one of the original X-Men and I debated for a moment using him. He makes a great foil to Pyro (or Pyro makes a great foil to him?) in the whole Ice vs Fire thing. This was used in the movies and it worked, mostly, but I got annoyed at how forced it felt since they basically re-wrote Pyro to fit. That’s when I realized that I was balking on Iceman because of how much I like Pyro which is totally not fair.

The character of Bobby is that of a prankster (though he’s grown up a lot over the past few years) and he’s the one with the most sense of humor and now I realize I would have been an idiot not to include him. He brings a lightness and fun to the series that I would have found sorely lacking. Yes, this does mean that Bobby gets to be the butt of some classic slapstick, but at the same time he’s the heart of the team. He’s the one who inadvertently holds everything together.

This is how I’m running with Bobby’s characterization. He’s a bit younger than everyone else, very much still a ‘kid’ without actually being a kid, but at the same time, there is a maturity in him just waiting to come of age. He’s the jokester who when he has his moments… he has his moments.

Series Biography:
Bobby grew up in Long Island, the visual aspect of his mutation manifesting a little later than usual. Your typical class clown, his world is turned upside down as his own family doesn’t seem to know what to do with him and just dump him off with Xavier.

The first mutant he met was Scott and the two have become best friends. He’s extremely hopeless, relationship wise, most of the women within dating range at the School thinking of him more as a brother than anything else.

Still earning his degrees, Bobby is a certified Accountant and performs this job for the school. If you are going to buy anything class related, make sure you always save the receipt. If you don’t, you’ll probably find yourself the victim of his latest prank.

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I like a man who can own up…

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , on October 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Thanks again to CinemaBlend for cutting an interview with Mark Miller down to size for us. Miller is Fox’s answer to Whedon in the Comic Book Movie genre. He’s there to whip the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises back into shape.

I’m all for this.

The problem is, is Miller the one to get this done? Not having read any of his work, I just don’t know. I watched the Kick Ass movie and it was decent, I liked the spin and a few great scenes, but overall it didn’t move me to want to read the comics. As for the Ultimates, don’t read those either, mostly cause I don’t care for some of the story lines I’ve seen are in them (though I don’t know how much of those are directly Miller’s creations).

The saving grace here is this:

There have been some poor decisions in the past, but you also have to remember that there have been some excellent ones too. Bryan Singer’s X-Men for example, I think revolutionized superhero movies. It pre-dated Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and I think you forget how close that was chronologically to Batman and Robin! To open with a Holocaust scene in a superhero movie was just unheard of. Fox get a lot of flak for the films which didn’t work out, and quite rightly, but you forget that they’ve done some really great stuff too. I’m thinking specifically of X-Men, X-Men 2 and X-Men: First Class.

He’s right, we give X3 and XOW so much flak cause they are just horrible films (not going to even go there with FF) but really, X-Men was a game changer in the Comic Book Movie genre. I remember watching the movie in the theatres and being totally blown away by it. Granted, it had its flaws, but overall, it was a great film which did its best and provided so much promise (some of which was delivered on… some, not so much).

I’d even go as far to say that we might not have gotten a Batman Begins without an X-Men.

As for Miller, I’m glad that he can recognize this and fully admit it. This bodes well! Now… if we can get him in with the producer lady who wants to merge the universes and then get Marvel interested in cornering the Super Hero tv market with an X-Men tv series… yes, I have a one-track mind.

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Prospects

Posted in News and Editorials, tagged , , , , , on October 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

CinemBlend carried and article discussion from a Crave Online interview and the nuts and bolts of it is that the lady who has produced all the X-Men movies is up for crossing the streams.

As I mentioned in my previous post about why I chose to have this series “air” on Fox, I mentioned that the ideal situation would be for Fox and Marvel to make a deal to produce the tv-series since Fox holds the cinematic licensing rights to the characters but Marvel has a better grasp on bringing those characters to life. Apparently the producer is up for such a cross-over/team-up on a larger scale ala the films.

Many commenters have cried gold-digger as Avengers has done so well and everyone wants a piece of that pie. The way I look at it, if it gets us an awesome X-Men/Avengers team-up movie (or closer to an X-Men live action tv series) then they can gold dig all they want.

The real problem is with the fact that Avengers is tonaly different from X-Men, especially in how X-Men attempted to make a more realistic spin on the comics while Avengers, while more realistic than the comics, is a lot more apt to ‘just go with it’. Also, unless they work it with the reboot supposedly happening with Days of Future Past, most of the main characters everyone knows are dead or been horribly mis-characterized (not to mention the actors are older and moved on).

Still, this could work, in the hands of the right writers, director, etc, a crossover movie more epic than Avengers is possible. All of the origin’s are out of the way for the Avengers team, depending on what we see in more X-Men films, those origins should be out of the way too. All you really need is a reason for them to either team up and/or fight each other and just let them go to town!

Personally, I’d have the movie start with the Avengers stumbling into an X-Men vs Brotherhood scenario and Rogue just kicking the butts of the Avengers (which is totally canon)… but then I am biased.

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Character Spotlight: Jean Grey

Posted in Characters, tagged , , , on September 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Character Spotlight: Jean Grey

Concept:
Jean Grey is one of those characters that you love or you love to hate. Whether it’s wishing that she stepped up and was as awesome as she could be, or maybe you just want her to stop dying, everyone has a pretty opinionated opinion of her.

She is a strong character, being a telepath and a telekinetic means she can pretty much do whatever the heck she wants. In my realistic-ish universe, most powers, such as cryokinesis, terrakinesis, basically anything with kinesis at the end, is just a type of locked telekinesis. Meaning that anything Magneto, Iceman, Pyro, etc, can do, she can do, if she puts her mind to it.

That is dangerous ‘over power’ territory which is arguably why in the comics the Phoenix turned into the Dark Phoenix and it all went downhill from there. They had to reign her in somehow? Well, that’s a theory anyway.

In the movies, they decided that instead of Phoenix being an alien-like entity, they simply gave Jean a split personality ala Jeanne-Marie aka Aurora from the comics. I think this was a good move to replace the Phoenix’s cosmic origins with something more realistic. Whether or not they meant to rip off Jeanne-Marie, I don’t know, but I like the concept.

This is why in my universe there is MIDID, Mutation Induced Dissociative Identity Disorder. It’s a very real disorder to worry about as we will see from Aurora in the first season and something which holds Jean back. It’s not that she has MIDID, but she knows she could easily suffer from it, if she pushes herself too fast and too hard. So Jean is only limited by herself. This keeps her within a reasonable power threshold while adding some character traits and development tools for me to use.

As for Jean Grey not having a nickname, I couldn’t exactly use Marvel Girl in a realistic universe especially as Marvel still exists in this world. I can’t use Phoenix because she’s not Phoenix. I decided to simply not give her a mutant name because not everyone out there has a nickname nor wants one. It also allows for a mixture of character styles which keeps things interesting.

Series Biography:
Jean Grey grew up in upstate New York the daughter of a wealthy and influential lawyer who has served on several State and Congressional Councils as well as on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. She was Xavier’s first student when the first part of her mutation, telepathy, manifested at a rather young age. A few years later, her telekinesis manifests during an attack on herself, the Professor, and Scott.

Even though she is teaching and helping at Xavier’s, she’s studying to get her PhD in Genetics to better understand how mutations work and how to help her fellow mutants.

Jean has two potential suitors, Scott Summers and Warren Worthington III. Her best friend is Betsy Braddock, also a telepath, and she thinks of Kitty and Jubilee as younger sisters.

Currently Jean is the biology, natural sciences, and social science teacher at Xavier’s School for Higher Learning.

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Character Spotlight: Scott Summers aka Cyclops

Posted in Characters, tagged , , , , on September 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Scott Summers aka Cyclops

Scott Summers aka Cyclops

Scott Summers aka Cyclops

Concept Stage:

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big fan of the X-Men leader, mostly because he seems to get the short end of the stick whenever the writers decide that they want to do something different in the storylines. I’m not totally convinced that he’s really supposed to be as bad as he is in the comic, what with the ‘dumping his wife and son for a girlfriend whom he later cheats on anyway and oh he kinda looses it when the mutants start to become extinct’.

Actually, that last part kinda makes sense considering how much he’s been put through over the years, something was bound to make him snap.

Regardless, as much as I don’t care for a character, I still want to do right by them and Scott is no exception. He’s billed as the leader of the X-Men, the stalwart boy scout, and that’s what I’ve created in X-Men: The (fan fic) Series. A man who earns the alt nickname ‘the Boy Scout’, but at the same time is not the ultimate stick in the mud either.

How do I do this? By making him a true leader. He’s the one who everyone turns too when they know that things are going wrong. He’s the one who takes on the responsibilities for creating the team, it’s his idea even. He’s the one who comes up with the plan of action in a situation. He’s the character willing to make the tough and sometimes unpopular decisions because they are the right thing to do, and not because the Professor or anyone else told him to.

Also, one storyline from the comics and movie I’m going to do away with is the Scott/Jean/Logan triangle. Part of the reason is that it was done to death in the movies (literally), but mostly because I don’t want Scott’s role as leader being defined by that relationship. When he butts heads with Logan it will be because these are two fundamentally different people who look at the world from skewed perspectives. I don’t want their conflict basically watered down to a “stay away from my woman” trope as it so often is.

In the end, Scott will be the leader because, as Jean will put it, “you got [the role as leader] because you’re the right man for the job.”

And of course the best leaders are often reluctant.

Character Background:

Scott has a closely traditional origin of being from Hawaii then after having lost his family in a plane crash he moves to Alaska to live with his grandparents. He finds his way to Xavier’s as a teenager where he grows up with Jean Grey and Warren Worthington III. Of course he has a little thing for Jean but never really thought he had a chance, not that Warren got much farther himself.

In an effort to cure himself of a fear of flying due to the incident which killed his family, Scott took flying lessons once he was old enough and is now a licensed pilot with his own personal plane.

After graduation he did a couple of years of college while helping out at Xavier’s seeing as the school has grown vastly in the past few years, picking up the likes of Robert “Iceman” Drake who becomes his best friend.

Currently Scott is Xavier’s math teacher, Algebra, Calculus, Trigonometry, etc.

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