The Official Conversation Thread

[Drazar]

Ben, when will you see Spidey? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Purchased my tickets for friday, also decided to buy my 2nd viewing tickets for Batman, i can always return them if TDK Rises disappoints.

HD shot of Marvel's relaunch promotional picture:

Spider-Man gets the Alex Ross design, Thor for some reason has become heavily eguipped, what is this? Jeph Loeb taking over Thor and turning him into Conan the Barbarian for real? Iron Man getting a drastic recoloring that will get changed to the classic look the very moment Iron Man 3 launches, Ultimate Captain America armor, ya!

Batman Earth One in stores Tomorrow!

(click image to enlarge)

(click image to enlarge)

[Old_BenKenobi]

The Marvel NOW! thing looks really lame.

[Drazar]

Well it's their answer to New 52. I find it funny that Hulk becoming a SHIELD agent means he has actual armor, isn't the SHIELD head-robo-camera thingy good enough? I mean, yeah the truth is you get a toy out of that, but still.

Also this is a stunning cover:

(click image to enlarge)
I'd wish Capullo was with Morrison. Snyder's average Batman run & his massive ego coming from the interviews is just meh. He really should take notes from himself with "Black Mirror" and do 3-issue arc structures with his Batman work, wonder how long this Joker arc (titled, "Death of the Family" is going to be.

Speaking of Batman, maan is Dick Grayson getting the biggest shafts out there with this relaunch. Him becoming Batman was the best thing, and now he's just another B character more or less again.

[Batman The Trailer Hunter]

Spiderman was sub par. IGN;s review is spot on http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/...n-movie-review

[mwkcope]

Marvel relaunch: Is...Is that a raccoon with a gatling gun?

[Drazar]

Originally Posted by mwkcope

Marvel relaunch: Is...Is that a raccoon with a gatling gun?

Yeah, it's Rocket Racoon. You will see him in Guardians of the Galaxy movie, coming 2014. I bet Trailer Hunter is having tears of joy to see a "superhero sci-fi" franchise becoming reality.

Thoughts & Rambles on Dinosaurs vs. Aliens

Barry Sonnenfeld is best known from adapting the Men in Black into big screen box office hits, now he has teamed up with the superman of comic books and my personal favorite writer Grant Morrison, with the artist Mukesh Singh to tell his visionary story of how Dinosaurs we’re actually smarter than we thought, and they saved our planet from an Alien invasion, this is the secret war of the century, and how awesome is it?

Well, what the marketing nor Sonnenfeld/Morrison never told in any way, this is actually just part one of an ongoing graphic novel series, learning that with the last page, left me sorely disappointed, after all this book is selling for around 20€, luckily I managed to get it for mere 10€, but still you kind of feel cheated on for learning only after reading the book that there might be a sequel, after all this book has to sell to make it affordable for the sequel to ever happen, so why couldn’t Sonnenfeld just make this into a single big hardcover story? If this book doesn’t sell, it might only receive a sequel after the actual Dinosaurs vs. Aliens movie comes out, and that might take a few years.

Now on the actual book, it is utterly gorgeous and majestic. The Dinosaurs come out as these larger than life beings, with majestic tribal tattoos, flower necklaces and different color paints over their bodies to show their hierarchy society, the book informs the reader that despite their brains, they have a more complex brain structure and thus are much smarter than we humans ever could have thought. The narrator of the story is an Alien scout named Kit, the story is mostly narrated and told by the Alien invaders’ perspective.

Now the Aliens are desperate, very desperate. Their home planet is long gone, most of their race is dead due to the great migration, and thus they finally find a planet suitable for them, with just standing in their way are the millions of Dinosaurs, but that’s not all. The Aliens are practically nothing more than machines now, tentacle wired arms, nothing biological on them from what the story tells us, and we also learn they can’t even naturally produce children, but do them via jars, but every new generation is more frail, more sickly, but the answers are found on Earth’s mammals, using the mammal’s DNA could strengthen theirs, but the Dinosaurs are too populated and thus the Aliens cannot harvest them without first having to deal with the Dinosaurs, this is why the war must happen. However things won’t be easy at all for the Aliens, as the protagonist of the book, the one-eyed Tyrannosaurus named One Eye as Morrison describes in the scripts is the Clint Eastwood of “Unforgiven” for the Dinosaurs, things will get very nasty in the next volume.

Reading this book made me think, is this Morrison & Sonnenfeld’s symbolic war between the forces of nature and technology? Are these humans so transhumanist that there is nothing human about them? Are the Dinosaurs symbols for nature and purity? Will this series end with a twist that we Homo Sapiens evolved from these Aliens as a result?

Rating: 83/100 – Despite the fun concept, which I wonder how much is Sonnenfeld and how much is Morrison is left to be seen, and while the art is absolutely stunning and just flat out gorgeous storytelling, I really can’t rate this book any higher due to my personal disappointment on the fact this is merely just the 1st volume of an series, how many more volumes are there? Two in total? Three in total? It’s just disappointing to learn this after making the purchase, because I’d honestly just wait for a big oversized hardcover to be honest.

[SammiiDoogles]

So The Dark Knight Rises is reported to have a running time of 163 minutes (2 hours 43 minutes), while not 'Return of the King' long, this is still a pretty damn long movie - longer than Avatar was at it's initial release. I think it's great - I'm glad Nolan was allowed to take his time and give the trilogy a good close, rather than having to cram it into a shorter run time. Really looking forward to it, what do you guys think of it?

[A Dark Knight]

Originally Posted by Batman The Trailer Hunter

Spiderman was sub par. IGN;s review is spot on http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/...n-movie-review

Further thoughts?

My expectations have been dropping for this film as fast as the RT rating.

[Batman The Trailer Hunter]

Originally Posted by A Dark Knight

Further thoughts?

My expectations have been dropping for this film as fast as the RT rating.

Saw it again...this times with friends, they enjoyed it, but saw similiar problems as i did

[batfan08]

I thoroughly enjoyed the new Spider-Man film. I found it to be the best one yet. Some of the casting choices were absolutely incredible. Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Ben and May Parker? Inspired! Dennis Leary as George Stacy? Brilliant! The storyline was good, and, even if you've seen the Raimi flicks, there are enough differences to warrant a watch. One thing that I didn't like was the character development. I feel that with those fantastic actors and actresses in the film, they didn't take advantage of the opportunity. I would've loved to have seen more of Ben, May, and George, but sadly, they weren't featured as much as I'd hoped. Anyway, I'll have some more developed thoughts soon, but until then, BASK IN ITS GLORY!!!!!!

[Old_BenKenobi]

Tell me thats to scale.

[batfan08]

Yes, yes it is. They've stated that it's their "largest project to date."

[A Dark Knight]

The best one yet?

I doubt that.

[batfan08]

Hence the "I thought", I enjoyed it the most, anyway.

[A Dark Knight]

Hm. I'll relay my thoughts when I see it next week. Hopefully they're decent. I'm not expecting anything more than average.

[Riddling Artist]

Haven't been here in a long time. Anyway thought I'd weigh in on The Amazing Spider-man. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's sloppily edited at times and reeks of Sony taking out some elements they found to risky.

Peter's parents for example. Sort of a thread that was dropped entirely by the time Uncle Ben died

. Of course the biggest praise goes to the actors themselves. It's been highlighted in each review how they perform admirably. The Lizard could have been better, but again, I think the film is a victim of it's own editing. There were several scenes from the trailers that better characterize Connors that were cut from the final movie (which is why I'm hoping for a directors cut). The movie sort of feels like two movies spliced together. The origin of peter parker to spider-man, which I think it nails perfectly. Recently watching Raimi's first Spidey I notice that they rush through the origin and I enjoy the slower pace. The second half of the film is good in it's own right being a spider-man movie. I'd recommend any one go see this.

Of course, with Orco and Kurtzman set for rewrites on TASM 2, I'm worried for the series future, but I think Sony hired them because they panicked about the negative screenings that took place before the movie was released. The panic also explains the dropped plotline. Too risky.



I also was thinking of TDKR recently and just realized how perfectly the 8 year gap fits with the Joker not being in the movie (I know the real reason, but bear with me). In the Miller's TDKR when Batman retired so did the Joker. I assume the same happened here. It's actually a nice plot device for the Joker to not reappear.

[Old_BenKenobi]

Yeah but in TDKR when Batman came back so did Joker.

[Riddling Artist]

Originally Posted by Old_BenKenobi

Yeah but in TDKR when Batman came back so did Joker.

Well maybe in the Nolanverse, Joker moved out of Gotham city. Maybe he found the urban city to be too chaotic and decided to buy a nice farm and live off the land. Just spending the rest of his days farming and being ridiculed by the kids as old man Joe Kerr.

[Old_BenKenobi]

Kids dying wish was to meet Hellboy so Ron Perlman dressed up as Hellboy and hung out with him.

[JackWinz]

Oh my god, that's amazing.

Am I the only one kinda heart broken about the absence of Hellboy3?

[batfan08]

That Hellboy story is amazing.

Ummmm, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.















...and my personal favorite:

[Drazar]

Originally Posted by Old_BenKenobi

Kids dying wish was to meet Hellboy so Ron Perlman dressed up as Hellboy and hung out with him.

Thats really cute.

Amazing Spider-Man had some silly flaws, mainly one major cringe i had with act 3, but overall it was slightly superior to the Raimi movie(s), which doesn't really say much to today's standards whatsoever. Still i look forward what they have in store, the movie does alot of great world building, thats for sure. I'll probably blog about it tomorrow.

My Batman tattoo is ready, ya:

Just need to have it heal for 3 days to see the full results on the shadowing/shading/"coloring".

[Old_BenKenobi]

Lol @ that Bat-Smile.

And sweet tattoo Draz.

[Drazar]

Gracias Amigo, the head still looks too round when we took the photos, but in reality Batman isn't so wide. It needs to heal a few days, and in late August i'll go check again if we need to do some fixes in tiny spots, it's really hard to say.

[Riddling Artist]

So didn't see it discussed in the last few pages, but a couple hints at what Marvels planning to do with all their licences was released and one of the few that intrigued me was Doctor Strange appearing in Thor 2. Anyone else want this to happen?