Tag: Hugh Jackman

Is Marvel Eyeing Shia LaBeouf to Play Iceman in an X-Men Reboot?

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The Loop – According to We Got This Covered (the same site that correctly first reported a She-Hulk show at Disney Plus and a live-action Robin Hood remake at Disney), Marvel is hoping to land LaBeouf to play Iceman in their new X-Men reboot. Previously, MCU was supposedly considering LaBeouf to breathe life into Moon Knight (a rich vigilante character similar to Batman), and while the site reports that LaBeouf is still in the running for that role, the powers-that-be are supposedly more interested in his take on the X-Men character. And, considering LaBeouf’s previous criticism with doing big-budget studio films, this could be a nice way for him to ease back into things without having the pressure as a lead.

Yes, 100 times yes. Count me in. I stan for Shia LaBeouf because he has the makings of a truly elite actor. He’s got action chops (Transformers, Indiana Jones), he’s got Indie chops (Honey Boy, Peanut Butter Falcon), he’s handsome but not overly good looking, he’s already gone off the rails and been to rehab, and he is just generally a weird dude. Not to mention the man can tell one HELL of a drinking story.

LaBeouf is a more of an artist than a traditional actor, which is why I am fascinated by just watching what the guy does. He’s just as likely to be chopping it up on late night TV as he is going to yoga in the outfit of a homeless man.

In all seriousness though the dude is yoked these days and should have no problem convincing people he is an all powerful mutant.

Disney needs to nail this reboot and they know it. I am a huge X-Men fan and I enjoy all of the movies over the last 20 years, some of which were excellent (X-Men 2, Logan, First Class) whereas others were an unmitigated disaster (X-Men 3, Apocalypse). So in this reboot they have to do it right.

I know it’s going to be a massive popcorn flick as the next Marvel tentpole franchise, but all of the best Marvel movies had excellent actors like Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans anchoring them in reality. X-Men in particular needs great actors because the source material is so much more than just people with super powers; it’s outcasts kicked to the fringe of society because of their biological differences. Stan Lee was not afraid to paint the obvious parallels between the X-Men and the battles of similarly ostracized groups fighting for justice like the Civil Rights movement, LGBTQ etc. And this wasn’t just Stan Lee being a woke social justice warrior on Twitter, he was a vocal supporter of these issues dating back to the 60s.

“Let’s lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today,” he wrote in December 1968. “[I]t’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if a man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance.”

So Disney cannot just make another action flick here, they need legit actors who can tackle the breadth of the source material.

As you probably know Iceman has appeared in several X-Men movies already because he is a sick character with a truly awesome power, but he was such a puss in the original movies. He was portrayed like a mopey Abercrombie model pining over his girlfriend rather than the Ice God that he is. He was finally a bit more badass in Days of Future Past in 2014, which the beard probably helped to be honest.

He finally used his iconic ice surfing powers in that movie too.

Buttttttt only got about 90 seconds of screen time before (spoiler alert) biting the big one.

It’s probably going to be a few years before we get any new X-Men movies anyways, maybe even longer before someone attempts to fill the massive shoes of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. But rumors like this are encouraging because it shows you Disney and Marvel are taking this reboot seriously. The X-Men movies always had a ton of potential, but were undone by poor direction or shitty storytelling or continuity issues, most of which should be righted by the MCU.

Disney Confirms That Marvel Will Take Over X-Men

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OMG OMG OMG it’s happening and I am having a gigantic nerdgasm. So a few months back Disney acquired FOX, which I blogged about back in December, and after some anti-trust concerns, Disney finalized the deal. Now its been confirmed that Kevin Feige will oversee the X-Men, which is huge news as he is the president of Marvel Studios. Feige is basically the architect, the godfather, the puppet master of the $17 billion dollar industry that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He got people to see TWENTY movies over more than a decade and care about characters like Iron Man and Thor, who were absolute D-List superheroes back in 2007. Feige essentially created shared universes in cinema as we know it today. Very few, if any, movies were combining IPs to tie into one gigantic story across different franchises like Marvel.

Marvel’s success has only made the failures of company like DC and Sony loom even worse. Sony had a decent run with the first two Tobey Maguire Spiderman movies, but the third one was trash, and then they rebooted it with Andrew Garfield, which was trash, only to have it saved once they rebooted it yet again with the help of Marvel for the current iteration of Spidey.

Now X-Men has been much more of a mixed bag in terms of quality. There have been excellent movies like Logan, Deadpool, and X-Men 2 as well as some truly garbage ones like X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

Most recently they’ve run into trouble as two very publicly announced movies have been pushed back time and time again to the point where I don’t know if we’ll ever even see them. There was the Sophie Turner Dark Phoenix movie and the Maisie Williams X-Men movie, The New Mutants. Both seem to be stuck in purgatory, which says volumes about the overall quality of them both. I mean New Mutants already had a trailer drop a year ago for christ’s sake.

I think the biggest problem with X-Men though has always been seeing the bigger picture. The movies always jumped around without any bigger map of where it was all heading. They never really know where they’re going with anything aside from the one movie they’re currently in. Thats how you end up killing off one of the biggest X-Men ever in Cyclops in the first 20 minutes of X3 (spoiler alert) only to have Days of Future Past completely retcon the whole thing and fix it with some tricky time traveling.

See? Not confusing at all.

Now, enter the GOAT of universe building in Kevin Feige and we’re cooking with gas.
And thats BEFORE we even mention the inevitable crossover events. After Avengers 4 comes out next summer, a movie in which most expect to be the final film for guys like Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr, and Chris Hemsworth, Marvel will be banking on younger players like Black Panther and Spiderman to carry the studio. Just imagine the possibilites with all of the X-Men characters finally available on the roster? It’s going to be truly amazing to watch. Plus they might even be able to reboot Fantastic Four, which was an absolute disaster.

TWICE.

So this is awesome news for fans of comic books and blockbuster movies. Everybody wins. We can start imagining the movies we never thought possible due to bullshit exclusive contracts.

The only downside? It took too long. The greatest character in the 11 movie history of the X-Men universe is dead and retired in Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman. Unless….