It looks like the best Marvel villain not named Magneto is finally getting the treatment it deserves and I am all sorts of jacked up about it. I am declaring myself ALL IN, six months before it even comes out.
As a comic book nerd I am still angry about the absolute disaster Spider-Man 3 was with Eric Forman as Venom.
Don’t get me wrong, I love That 70s Show. Its a highly underrated sitcom, but holy hell who thought casting this guy:
to play the psychotic badass villain Venom was a good idea? The character that Wikipedia describes as:
“According to S.H.I.E.L.D., [Venom] is considered one of the greatest threats to humanity, alongside Magneto, Doctor Doom, and Red Skull…Venom was ranked as the 22nd Greatest Comic Book Villain of All Time in IGN’s list of the top 100 comic villains.”
I could handle Tobey Maguire as Spidey, but Topher Grace as Venom was just a bad fit from Day 1. But I digress.
When Tom Hardy was announced as the star in Sony’s latest take on the symbiote my nerdgasm could be seen from space. You knew Hardy would nail the darker, grittier tone that Sony was going for, but then rumors started coming out that you might not even see the Venom suit in the movie. Coupled with an ambiguous and underwhelming teaser trailer and I was a little nervous. But then this shit leaked last night:
My goodness. This isn’t Captain America where you had Chris Evans pack on some muscle and put him in the right costume or even the Hulk, which you can just CGI the shit out of. This was going to take some serious work to get it right, as we saw in previous iterations just how wrong it can go.
And they absolutely NAILED it.
October 5th cannot come soon enough. Full trailer below.
Yahoo – After weeks of rumors, the deal is done — Disney will buy up large chunks of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox media empire for $52 billion. The list of what it won’t take is shorter: the Fox News cable channel, broadcast networks and Fox Sports, which are expected to spin off as their own business. The Disney conglomerate adds the Fox movie and TV studios (including big-name franchises like X-Men, Avatar,Alien and The Simpsons), it now has majority control of Hulu, cable channels like FX/FXX and more.
Thats Billion with a B. I’m always a little surprised when giant acquisitions like this actually go through with all the concerns around monopolies. Remember when DraftKings and FanDuel announced a merger last year? Well the United States government disagreed and basically nixed that entire deal. Whoops!
Now onto what everyone cares about from this gigantic deal; the X-Men are finally back under the Marvel umbrella via Disney. It remains to be seen what exactly Disney and Marvel will do with Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, but I am stoked for potential crossovers down the line (and maybe a Fantastic Four movie that doesn’t blow goats).
Its probably a little too late in the game to expect any current X-Men to show up in Avengers 3 or 4 as they bring Phase 1 to an end. Sure, maybe there’s some easter eggs or brief cameos thrown in, but X-Men has a ton of shit already going on they probably need to handle first. There’s the upcoming “Dark Phoenix” movie with my girl Sansa Stark seemingly taking the reigns of the franchise as X-Men does a second take on Jean Grey’s Phoenix character, which they royally fucked up in X-Men 3. *shutters*
Phoenix is slated for a November 2018 release. I haven’t seen much about that one yet, but I’m a huge fan of the X franchise so I’m always juiced for a new one. They’re not always critically acclaimed, but they always do their own thing and take some chances rather than rolling out the same old storylines. They did an entire movie around time travel for christ’s sake in “Days of Future Past.”
There’s also the incredibly intriguing spinoff/horror movie “The New Mutants” coming out in 2018, which the director has already hinted at being a trilogy.
The one thing that does worry me about this acquisition though is Marvel hitting the wrap it up box on the current X-Men universe before rebooting them AGAIN.
Disney/Marvel was not shy about rebooting Spiderman and introducing a third Peter Parker in less than 10 years.
Granted, the GOAT X-Men Wolverine played by Hugh Jackman is allegedly retired from the game so people probably wouldn’t cry too hard if Marvel went in another direction with a new flock of mutants.
Also, good luck fixing some of the inconsistencies that already exist now that both studios are under one roof; most notably the fact that there are two Quicksilvers. One, played by Aaron Taylor Johnson who (spoiler) got gatted in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
Then there’s the FOX version of Quicksilver, Evan Peters, who is still alive and well.
So that character will either require some rickety duct tape explanation for being alive (and deciding which actor will actually play him) or he’ll most likely just get kicked to the curb, which is a shame.
I’m sure there are more of these inconsistencies as FOX owned the rights to X-Men, but not all of the individual X-Men characters, which is why garbage spin off shows with fringe mutants like The Gifted and Inhumans even existed in the first place.
All I ask is that the executives over at the Mouse don’t neuter Deadpool. It took years of Ryan Reynolds campaigning to get that movie made the way it was made and it was a goddamn mega-hit. Don’t fix what ain’t broke.
What have we here? Aside from Deadpool, this is the first real X-Men spinoff/side movie, however you want to phrase it, to really go away from the core characters. Not to mention they seemingly have decided to go a completely new route with the horror movie feel this trailer’s giving off.
I am ALL IN. The X-Men movies in general have always been criminally underrated. X2 is really the only one I remember, and I guess Logan as well, that got any love from people.
The original legit started the whole comic book movie era that we’re still living in today. The first Spiderman with Tobey didn’t even come out for another 2 years after X-Men.
There is some hot garbage in there of course like the clusterfuck that was X-Men: The Last Stand, but this franchise has always been the one thats not afraid of trying new directions. I mean how many other films can take their core characters, and then make prequels about them in the 1960s using completely different actors and have it work? (X-Men: First Class)
And then take that already convoluted idea, and send them back in time? Because time travel always makes things easier to understand. (X-Men: Days of Future Past)
But hey it worked, which is why I’m down with X-Men dipping their toes into the horror genre. Plus you got miniature Arya Stark in there so sign me up.