It’s been a busy weekend for lovers of DC and Marvel properties. If you were one of the bastards lucky enough to be physically present at San Diego Comic Con, or just one of us sad bastards following along on Twitter, Tumblr, and official livestreams at home, you know some big movie news dropped over the course of the weekend. Here’s the run-down.
Warner Bros. released their newest lineup of DC film properties, all of which are set in the same universe, intended to emulate the success of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. Building off the relative success of the Man of Steel movie, their next film will be a Batman/Superman team movie, coming in 2015. (Well, I say team, but lines from The Dark Knight Returns comic, the climactic battle of which is between Supes and Batsy, were used in introducing it, so maybe ‘team’ is hasty.) Henry Cavill will reprise his role as Superman, and an as-of-yet unannounced actor will play Batman.
Here, have a grainy picture of the logo on the screen at the panel.
Following this, a Flash movie will premiere in 2016, followed by a Justice League film in 2017. Notably absent from this lineup is the third member of DC’s Trinity, Wonder Woman, whose relatively simple backstory (which is not unlike Thor’s, depending on what route you take) has been consistently denounced as too “tricky” for a big screen adaptation in recent discussions. Methinks the ‘trickiness’ has more to do with Hollywood’s fear that female-led movies won’t do as well because they still erroneously belive that teh wimmins don’t care about superheroes and teh menz don’t want to see movies about ladies in capes, and very little to do with Diana of Themyscira herself.
Over to Marvel, then. No news about the Phase 3 films, still, unfortunately (holding out for Black Panther and a Carol Danvers Captain Marvel until the day I die). The cast and crew of Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier appeared to discuss the film, which they said was going to be a pretty faithful retelling of Ed Brubaker’s original Winter Soldier story. They also said that Falcon has a pretty large part in the film, and that this is, in part, the Black Widow backstory movie we’ve been clamoring for, as Natasha’s character is going to have essentially equal billing with Cap. In a nutshell, I’m pretty excited.
The Thor 2: The Dark World section of Marvel’s panel included the standard questions about the film, cast appearances, and special footage, but the most notable part according to pretty much everyone was Tom Hiddleston’s in-costume, in-character appearance as Loki. He appeared briefly to introduce the exclusive footage, and it seems pretty universally agreed that that appearance was the highlight of SDCC full stop.
The entire Guardians of the Galaxy cast flew in from London just for the panel, and even had some footage to show to the fans despite that they’ve only been shooting the movie for two weeks now. The most notable reveal from this part of the panel was that Karen Gillan has shaved her head for her role of Nebula, which, you know, whatever. She still looks awesome and I’m sort of annoyed by the buzz it’s getting because it smacks of policing what people can and can’t do with their appearances. (I’d rather talk about it because Nebula-isn’t-usually-bald-but-Moondragon-sure-is, give-me-queer-superheroes-goddamnit.)
Finally, the last news of the night came from Joss Whedon himself, who was pulled onstage in the last minutes of the panel. Following some buildup, he revealed that the second Avengers movie will be subtitled Age of Ultron. Later, Marvel execs clarified that the movie is only taking the name from the recent Age of Ultron Marvel Comics event, not the storyline.
And that’s all the movie news that’s fit to print! (Or at least I think so—if I missed anything let me know!) Which movie are you most excited to see?
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 