f13.net

Edit:  Trailer (http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/)

Mickey Rourke as the villain is a fantastic choice. Hope he can bring is best work to the role rather than pissing it away.

Do want!

Looks good so far, I have faith that Favreau can pull off another great movie.

Fucking War Machine.

Speaking of which.  I like Don Cheadle like 100 times better than Terrence Howard.  Shame that they didn't have Don in the first one though.

Unfortunately, i haven't been terribly impressed with either of the actors for Rhodes.  He just does not match the personality / physical look i expect from the character after having read so many Iron man comics, where as RDJ as Stark fits almost too perfectly to be imagined.

I just assumed it was a different character, didn't know they recast the part.

I think Terrence Howard was a much better choice personally and I think he did a great job in the first one, did he ask for too much money or something?

At least in Paramount's view.  I heard they tried to lowball Mickey Rourke, causing him to almost turn down the part.

Marvel Studio tried to lowball everyone after (despite) the success of "Iron Man" - don't know about RDJ, but Favreau definitely had to fight for a pay increase.

Terrence Howard was the highest paid actor in that movie because he was the first to sign on. He didn't want that amount of money to go down for the sequel - given the first film was so huge as well - and he claims that the studio told him they were going to write him up a new contract but that meant he had to cancel his old contract first. Apparently he found out at the same time as the rest of us that Don Cheadle was going to be replacing him. (Publicly he's not pissed at Cheadle since apparently Cheadle helped get him into "Crash", but I'm sure he's just learned something about the film business.)

I think Howard did well with the little he had to do in the first movie and his best work was in the deleted scenes. But then I also think the alternate "Pepper finds out Tony is Iron Man" is 1000x better than the meet cute version that appears in the movie.

Hm.  Not sure about the insidery Hollywood politic sausage-making, but Cheadle is fucking rad and I like him in everything (yes, even Mission to Mars).

He and Bill Nighy are the only people I've ever had an Actor Wishlist setup for in Tivo.

Also, IMDB says he's playing the same character in The Avengers.

I think Terrence Howard should have tried putting a little bass in his voice for the role.

Ah, shame about Howard.. Didn't know that. I think he's a great actor. But Cheadle is as well.

They're both good actors, just from a franchise standpoint it's not a good move or at least not one i'll enjoy.  I can only think watching both movies back to back will be a little jarring because of actor switching.

Mickey Rourke is probably going to be a cool motherfucker in this though. You'll end up forgetting about it.

Trailer now up on apple.com (http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/).

Very. Fucking. Yes.

Wow, War Machine, Black Widow and Nick Fury. Couldn't identify the whip dude though, is it going to be Hydra or something?

I think he's a combination of Whiplash and Crimson Dynamo. Whiplash was.. umm.. a dude with whips. Crimson was a Russian who wore a powered suit.

Do like

Yeah I was thinking Crimson Dynamo when I heard the Russian accent. I felt somewhat confused by the lack of armour but if they're going to combine him with someone else makes sense. Looks like quite a few characters for a solo movie but I guess if they're setting up an Avengers movie they're going to want to be expanding the universe for viewers.

Nerdgasm!

Excellent.

crimson whiplash isn't even going to be the bigbad guy in the movie, I'll be surprised if he's in it past 45min

Fantastic!  May seems so far away now...

Oh, and Garry Shandling as a senator?  I laughed at Stark's "Yes, dear?" response though.

I think it's probably going to be Justin Hammer as the main baddie with stolen Stark technology.

Again?

Yes, they are setting up Armor Wars type stuff so they can have assloads of guys in armor duking it out. I'm ok with that.

Besides armored/high tech supervillains using stolen Stark tech, Iron Man's rogues gallery is pretty silly.  Mandarin?  Grey Gargoyle?  Rhino?  MODAK?  Spymaster?


I remember a storyline from the early '90s where AIM took over a small country... that could work.  Super science evil army vs Iron Man sounds like fun though it sounds alot like what Venture Bros. has been doing.

Edit:
Fin Fan Foon? or whatever the space dragon was called would go over well with the public.

Actually, i think Mandarin would make a pretty cool villian if done correctly.  Besides, they already had one of the Rings of Power show up in the first movie (even if the guy wearing it had no idea what it was).

Isn't Iron Man in the Marvel universe?  With Thor and Spiderman and all their associated villains?  Having each movie just be him fighting an evil version of him, possibly with help from more good versions of him, seems like it'd get old.

That said, the trailer was still  :drill:.

There is so much silly or borderline racist baggage with the Mandarin, I think you'd have to end up doing a full revamp of the character.  Even when the RoPs were retconned from "magic" to alien space dragon superscience, that left you with the cheesy looking giant space dragon baggage.

Especially with the modern climate re China in the US...  A Chinese caracature hell-bent on restoring China to it's natural place as the dominant world power might come off as a bit jingoistic.

Mandarin was the main villain behind Stane in the first movie, but you never saw him nor was he even mentioned. I'm pretty sure he'll be behind the overarching plot for Iron Man 2 and the Avengers.

Man, that's like some deep ass metaphor for his alcoholism, man... duuuude... he's seen some stuff... he's done some things...

Ehhh...just hire Ken Watanabe to be the Mandarin and play him as a smart but evil godfather type figure and you're good to go.

This movie looks good assuming it doesn't overload with supervillians. If Sherlock Holmes turns out to be good RDJ may become my new goto actor.

Just be glad the Avengers won't be facing the Yellow Claw (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Claw).

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1739972/web-images/yellowclawbio.jpg)

Fin Fang Foom will be appearing alongside Iron Man soon, and under the direction of Jon Favreau, but in print, not the big screen.
Favreau's currently on a haitus from writing Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas (with Adi Granov illustrating, he of Iron Man: Extremis/Iron Man movie concept design fame) while finishing up Iron Man 2.

Wow that's some awful art.

The women all seem to have the same face.  It's like that's the only kind of female face the artist could draw or something and hair style and color is the only way to differentiate them.  And the face on the second female is just off... her whole head is off actually, or it seems to be.  Even accounting for the viewing angle and those bad bangs she's got, the top of her head is too small.

I like the technique of the art though, and the execution.  But that can't hide the problems I see with the drawing itself.

Yeah that cover art is bad, I can't even watch this trailer though.  I fucking refuse to put quicktime on my computer and I'd hate to fuck with the delicate balance of my codecs by trying to shoehorn in something that reads .mov files.

VLC player?

Think Yahoo's movie site has the trailer in Flash.

wat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siQgD9qOhRs&feature=related)

If I can't download the true 1080p version I might as well not spoil it.  :grin:

Iron Man 2 Trailer 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOzuBOefL8I)

That shit is sweet.  I can't wait for this movie.   :awesome_for_real:

Quicktime version

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/ironman/

(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y222/Abagadro/1236166298_quagmire_-_giggity.gif)

Oh man, looks great.  Gary Shandling as a senator too.   Portable suit though? Hmm

OR IS HE BLIND!!!

 :awesome_for_real:

I was wondering how they intended him to survive that Race Track scene.


Want now, give please.

Where can one purchase one of those briefcases that turn into a red and white exosuit ?

I demand one.

Not a new idea though. I have back issues from '79 showing the suitcase.

(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff26/stuabrtow/IronMan118-1.jpg)

(maybe it was just that one- been a while)

It's weird, I can't see pictures of stark and NOT think robert downey now.

The Iron Man suit in the briefcase has been around for a long time.  I think it's pretty awesome myself, although i kind of wish they hadn't of shown it in the trailer.

This leads me to wonder just how rough your business meetings get...

Oh I forgot about the briefcase.  Some IM fan I am!  Movie version bothers me a bit, as the suit that comes out is bigger than the briefcase itself.  Yes, I know this is science fantasy, but it's always the little things that bug me, not the millionaire flying around in a powersuit.

I think they handled it rather well, seeing as how the suitcase suit seems to be Ironman Lite and is constructed of hundreds of small foldaway overlapping plates.

I can't think of a single meeting that having such a suitcase wouldn't make better.

Yeah, the great thing about iron man and the "portable-quick-suit" thing is they can skip 90% of the bulk commonly associated with a sci-fi power armor suit due to the "uber tech gimmik" that is the power core imbedded in his chest.   I mean, hell, with stark's level of technology, I am surprised he doesent just wear a metal cloth-mesh suit that becomes nearly bulletproof when "enegrised" by his personal reactor.

In the comics, he recently had a thing where the suit's essentially became him, and the external armor was protection and padding - all the important bits were a part of his body.

Besides one security guard with a gun nailing Whiplash out of range of his attacks?

Oh, that'd never work. I forgot about movie / comic book logic and the rule of cool.

Extremis, which went away along with Tony's brain, which has now been rebooted to before he was in charge of SHIELD and responsible for Cap being arrested and then assassinated. Man I can't wait for this movie so I can have my memories of comicbook stuff erased in favour of RDJ.

I'm fairly certain Whiplash didn't give a fuck about living or dying, as long as he killed Stark first. Have to wait for the movie to be certain though.

Besides the general "Who wants to be a cop/security guard in a world full of super villains?" thing.

Everyone knows the guards would just shoot the air around the bad guy until they ran out of bullets!

Comic Book Security Guards:  Where all the Storm Troopers went when the Death Star Blew Up.

If we want to go into full geek detail, just how many security guards would there be at an F-1 race? Also would they even 'have' guns?  All these things aside I am going to say the events at the track from whiplash showing up to donning the iron man suit probably take place in the span of ten minutes real time.

1.)  Its a major event, there would be plenty of security guards around.

2.)  This is America, everybody is packing.  Even the security guards walking around at the horse race track I went to last weekend were all armed.

Eh around here stadium security is typically NOT armed (at least for baseball and college football) but there are always actual cops around. Armed security guards at... Bay Meadows I'm assuming? is kind of strange. (If I'm misremembering and you're not a Bay Area dude never mind.)

Enough where if shit went down, such as a rogue mechanic obliterating shit on a crowded race track and putting at risk a BILLIONAIRE in a hostile global climate, the threat would have gotten the ballistics equivalent of the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, only the threat wouldn't even get five steps before it'd be dead.

One of the few elements that works for Iron Man is that normal bullets can't hurt him because he's wearing ARMOR. He's immune to most conventional suppression techniques such as strength of body or bullets. That puts him in a different league, one where the threats must escalate to meet him. Whiplash is strutting around bare-chested. One shot, one kill for him.

They show a shot of Tony in armor being strangled by Whiplash's tendrils because he got within 10 yards of him. Bitch took out a tank at 100 yards with a small magnetic missile in the first movie. Different armors, sure, but you get my drift.

I'm sure the complete scene will try and put everything into perspective how a number of cock-ups led to creating the cool situation in the movie, or show how Whiplash's power source creates a field around him that prevents ranged attacks from working against him.

Actually I'm pretty sure it's france since interviews have made a big deal of stark being in other countries and the jail whiplash is put in afterwards has guards speaking french.

The race is supposed to be in Monaco.

I could see Tony having armed guards at a race he's participating in. He's a public superhero with a huge company that does work for the US military. I'd be disappointed if they didn't have a small corporate army.
I'm also fairly sure that blasing a hail of bullets into a track full of speeding cars, pit crews, TV crews and spectators in the stands would be a pretty bad idear.

Anybody here know the proper level of response to a maniac wielding dual energy whips?  :grin:

Stark is enough of an narcissist to NOT have a private army.

Actually, I would say Stark would actively repulse attempts to get himself a "security detail".

First off, as previously mentioned, he is enough of a narcissist (especially now that he has the suit) to personally consider himself untouchable.  I mean, who in their right mind would go after a "super hero".  For that matter, how many "super heroes" do you know that need their own bodyguards (kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "super hero" monicker.

He probably thinks that his personal fame and notoriety is enough to protect him from the run of the mill nutjob; tack on the idea that the average joe probably thinks of him as some kind of "techno superman" toteing around god knows what kind of ubertech death-device at all times, and he is probably right, too.  The only people crazy enough to attack him would also be brilliant enough to at least understand what he is reasonably capable of.

Also, I seem to recall that he shifted stark enterprises AWAY from military asset development, so the military has no real reason to protect him.  He even blatantly slaps them down in the trailers, refusing to hand over the Iron Man tech to the military, citing himself as having privatized world peace.

Golden Gate Fields, actually.  They shut down Bay Meadows in 2008. :(

Oh right, I knew one of 'em was gone...

Depends on the GP and whats going on at the time. Each promoter of the race is responsible for the track security which generally is the local region police force. Some tracks are quite relaxed like the dedicated tracks and that's where you see people occasionally getting on track during an event. Street circuit tracks like Monaco and Singapore involve more security to close down roads and reroute traffic etc. That being said it's not unusual for at the end of event's even today for fans to rush the paddock at the end to celebrate (see crazy tifosi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqz0w7qSY0k)).


Indeed your correct from the trailer it looks like it's suppose to be the chicane in front of the harbor.
(Large shot of the section)

Oh BTW what Stark is driving is not an F1 car from recent years. I'd guess its an older Brabham (like a BT52) but there are a lot of cars in the shots from various decades.

Man a 15 year old Sudanese militia recruit high on turpentine fumes and armed with a 40 year old AK could have ran out there, successfully killed Stark, then turned around and riddled Mickey Rourke with bullets for shits and giggles. What a shit supervillain.

<-- WUA on his friend's account while he stays with them

Is there something stopping you from logging in under your account while you "stay with them"?

Having said that, yeah, I agree, I hope its only that one scene.  Because if he seriously runs around wreaking havoc bare chested with energy wip's the whole movie...... my suspension of belief can only go so far, no matter how awesome the movie is.

It could have been:  

(http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg99/Evildrider/ironmanv3-017.jpg)

Fuck sake, he's got an arc reactor he built IN A CAVE on his chest.

Of course he has  a fucking forcefield !!!

Whiplash is a tactial genius!  Hmm I'm facing a foe who is armored, flies and can attack at range with beams and explosive mini-missiles.  I know!  I'll walk towards him and use melee weapons!  Brilliant!

It IS interesting how we can accept a suit of armor in a briefcase, but not an unarmored power whip user.  It's when suspension of disbelief meets with reality.  Why didn't the eagles fly them to Mount Doom?  And so on. 

My take on it is that in the alternate universe of Iron Man, no security is brave enough to shoot, after all, that's why THAT universe spawned superheroes. 

I remember the comic where Blacklash went back to his home town and end up whipping the local school bullies.  That was silly. 


<----- WUA Posting from Scotland.  Friend got very, very boring.

Damn. I almost wish they hadn't shown how the suitcase worked. That was awesome, but would have preferred it in the theater with hundreds of others of late-30-somethings going "awesome!".

<--- WUA posting from the can.

Yeah, but it's a trailer, you know they give all the good shit away up front these days.

<---- WUA Posting from the cave where Tony Stark built his first suit.

This can only go to good places.  :why_so_serious:

God damnit, I always suspected this forum was nothing but a bunch of WAU gimmick accounts.  I knew Schild couldn't possibly be a real person.

Sup thou.

You all assume that security guards are going to calmly react, draw and aim at the crazy man on the track while the crowd around them freaks out. Maybe they'll actually show security guys trying to get a shot but unable to because of the screaming, running civilians.

<-- Wua posting from Hell. Wait? What? That shit's not real, my bad. WUA on a bad acid trip.

This is all silly, you are arguing about reality in a superhero movie.

<-- WUA Posting from your Mom's.

Smells like mech debate

<- WUA, posting from Gryeyes house.

What's WUA doing in Scotland anyway?

PLAYING THE BEST GAME EVER!!!!!

FINAL FANTASY

<----- WUA posting from Grunk's house on Furiously's account.

We demand nostalgia in this movie

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/ToS39.jpg)

<--- WUA, posting from a Scottish reeducation camp. Bleak is good, bleak is good...

Some jokes are funny, this one isn't.

<-- schild posting from schild's account.

You don't find much funny these days.  You've turned into a miserable fucker.

You're welcome to join my support group or share my Citalopram.

 :why_so_serious:

Not all of them.

Lateredit: While I stand by my post I also missed the whole next page of silliness.

I didn't recognize Scarlett Johansson. I'm not sure I like that casting, but I'm positive it won't matter.  :-P

You know you're old when you don't get a comic reference image and just don't give a damn.

Pretty sure it's going to turn out that Whiplash's apparatus repels bullets, etc. He appears to have an arc reactor, too.

Personally, I'm going to wait for the movie to come out before making complaints about how stupid something is or not. Whiplash may have just been going for a vulgar display of power, to show Stark that he has an equal.

Also: forget all of the idea about security guards - Whiplash is going after Stark without any armour on. Stark, who may very well have ways to kill people strapped to his body at all times. I don't think Whiplash is overly concerned about being shot in the head in any case.

All this is more or less what I'm hoping for.  It's just that it's hard to tell from the trailer.

Man, I created some kinda meme. As for what was stopping me from logging onto my own account from there:

(http://www.whiterockdistilleries.com/assets/images/brands/cordials_and_liqueurs/ice_101.jpg)

I wouldn't have been able to post at all if Ali's user info hadn't been saved for this place and I had to do anything more than click okay.

<-- WUA, posting from home once more, albeit with a bit of a hangover and a bad case of the shits.

What the hell were you two up to?

At a guess, playing Iron Man  :grin:

No, see, the Garrette and Alexia characters in the Baldening were based on real people. Garrette I've known ever since I met him in UO in like 2003, and Alexia is his fiancee. But we had never hung out IRL, so I spent this past week up at their place playing games, meeting their friends, and getting falling down drunk. But I still don't know what the fuck happened to my digestive tract.

It was either the hamburgers or the chicken and cream cheese chip dip. I don't think it was the former, because one of the more sober people chased me and Garrette away from the grill rather than watch us burn the neighborhood down, and he wouldn't have made them too raw. But if it was the latter then that's pretty hilarious, because I only ate a little, while this 6'8" MMA dude who works as a security guard with Garrette ate like half the bowl with a fork and has probably killed several people in some sort of shit explosion by now.

So anyway yeah, how about that Iron Man 2?

The rumors that Joss Whedon is going to be directing the Avengers movie are apparently getting closer to reality. (http://www.deadline.com/2010/04/marvel-close-to-whedon-hire-on-the-avengers/#more-31658)

New clip of Iron Man vs Whiplash, that might have leaked out... Hopefully this link and clip will still work in a couple of days:
http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/MarvelFreshman/news/?a=17410

OK, so they were logical about the circumstances. Tony's beams have a charge-up period, mid-range encounter, missing systems that probably aid maneuverability...

Just got home after seeing this at the Think Tank IMAX in Birmingham. I'm an old school Iron Man fan, and I loved the first film, so to be honest I felt so long as they didn't completely jump the shark I was going to be reasonably happy.

Needn't have worried, it's bigger, bolder, better. I'll keep this first impression spoiler-free.

They've sussed the Iron Man fights - short and sharp - the dialogue is once again top notch with some seriously cringeworthy (deliberately so) puns/one-liners between Iron Man and War Machine and RDJ in pure, ubridled ego-mode. It's fair to say Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer steals the show, so odious and pathetic yet so very similar to Stark, his desperation to be loved as much as Tony is palpable, he just doesn't have that charismatic je ne sais quoi. Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow is my only complaint, looking back. And the only reason I'm complaining is because I could have done with at least twice as much screen time with her again. She's unknowable, ruthlessly efficient and effortlessly sexy.

The action is a deal more savage this time around, as I said earlier, short and sharp - no fucking around - the fight scene at the Monaco GP discussed in the thread is incredibly tense; but when Iron Man hits something, it tends to stay down. The final fight is a measurable success in comparison to the one vs. Ironmonger at the end of the first movie for similar reasons, and ties in nicely with an earlier moment. Also of note, a certain guy with an eyepatch gets a little more to say this time, and there's a teaser at the end of the credits roll, so stick around.

Quick note on that. If you don't want to be spoiled, stay away from Movie Blogs for the time being. I got spoiled sadly, because I read everything in Google Reader, so there was no "Don't read after the jump" warning, it was just there, the image, spoiled. Stupidly, in the full context of the article, before they do a bunch of line breaks before the images, Collider spells out the spoiler about two or three paragraphs above. now, several blogs are just saying it in stories about IM2, so be careful.

Ok saw it last night and it's exactly what a sequel should be. They've taken what made the first movie awesome and done more of it. The Justin Hammer character was also awesome, for some reason he really reminded me of Austin Powers.

Saw it as well - nice movie but i think i was dissapointed on two points. The fact that the excellent villain went out like a chump (and didn't get enough screen time, or development), and that SPOILER Iron Man ends up fighting pretty much the same thing he fought in the end of the first film. Like really, couldn't they think of something more engaging?

All I want to know is if there are any more good Easter Eggs / Potential hints at stuff for next movie in it.  Like do we see any more Mandarin Power Rings show up in 2?

 So some subtle hints about future films.

Just a continuation of the scenes in the first film and Hulk really.

I thought the movie was okay, but not as good as IM1.

If it wasn't for Downey, Tony's birthday would have ended up being this film's emo-Peter-Parker-lounge-act scene.   The whole Shield thing didn't really add anything to the movie.  But Sam Jackson's constant yelling didn't really bother me for the first time in years, so that's a plus.

It definitely ended on a high note though.  The last 20 minutes or so were great.

After the credits.

Think Ironwood was saying that the end credit continued the theme established in the Hulk movie and the first Iron Man.

There was an after credits scene in The Incredible Hulk as well that hints at future movies.

Yeah, Marvel are building up the Avengers hype in multiple films.

Yep.  I think they might end up running into a bit of superhero fatigue from the audiences though by that point.  While Iron Man 2 is the only superhero movie I can think of off-hand for this summer, next summer brings us two Avengers set-up movies in Thor and Captain America, as well as Green Lantern, and the going to get rushed into production X-Men: First Class.

The year after that has the Avengers in May, and then the Spider-man reboot and the next Batman movie both in July.

It has less to do with super hero fatigue so much as the strength of thor and captain america.

Yeah.  Modern Audiences are going to struggle with Captain America, I think and frankly just fall over and die over someone like Thor.

Further, I'm not sure I'm even seeing the point.  That Animated one based on the Ultimates was fine.

Well I just saw Iron Man 2 and it was a packed theater at a 1:30 pm showing.

From reactions during certain scenes and the after credit scene, I can tell you that there is going to be a pretty decent fan base for those movies.

Also loved the movie, I think it was a great sequel.   :awesome_for_real:

Bob Mondello's review on NPR was both useless and more reflective of his fear at entering the 'AARP' age-bracket than anything.  Glad to see the reviews here are positive.

Fucking loved it.  At least as much as the first one.  I will almost certainly see it again in the theater.

Yeah, it was really very good.  It's hard to pull off the 2nd superhero movie because you can't tie up a lot of time with the origin story.  You already know the world and the setting and have to 'get on with it' from the beginning.  The movie did it well and kept a great pace.

There was only one moment I felt it was slow/ dragging and that was when we saw too much of Hammer in the lab areas.  I don't think I've ever wanted to physically assault a movie character, but I just couldn't stand seeing the oily bastard on screen. 

The character kind of oozed a sleaze that you know you can't trust. It was very palpable to me in that here was a guy that would be as sweet and chamring as he could in public but if he had a chance and you were alone he would do all he could to fuck you over. 

In that sense, it was very well acted.

Yeah, the Hammer character annoyed the shit out of me the entire movie, but I actually thought he was a great character.  That's what he is, an annoying as fuck egomaniac CEO.

Saw the movie last night and really enjoyed it.  I wouldn't say its perfect, but definitely a good movie.  I might have worked on the pacing a bit, and had a better spread of action, but that's about it.  I agree they should have done more with the final boss fight, since it was rather short, but I guess leading up to that we already had a long battle sequence with all the droids.

I think they could do very good Thor and Captain America movies.  But it's going to be hard, as both those characters are inherently corny when you take them out of the comic book universe and try to stick them into a realistic universe.  If they look at what the ultimate universe did, and try to keep it edgy but not over the top, it could turn out very well.   If they take the Ultimate Captain America along with the Captain America of Brubaker's run and put them together, they could make a legitimately good movie.  But if they miss, then it could be a very bad movie.  No room for middle ground really.  Captain America is has an even bigger danger than Thor of coming out bad, because they are going to have to find a way to keep the "America Fuck Yeah!" levels down, despite the pressure to up them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CbbtIoUceI

Oh yeah, in no way was I knocking the actor.  It's the character I couldn't stand and for exactly the reasons you outlined.  Fantastic job writing and portraying a complete scumbag.

The only real criticism I could make is that he had NO redeeming qualities, pushing him nearly into the "I can't take you seriously" mustache-twirling cartoon villain category.  Even Senator Douchebag showed he had some redeeming qualities, he just had a problem with Stark and not turning-over the IM suit.

Hmm, yeah, I'll agree with that.  I did find myself wishing they'd make him competent at something.  However all his creations were failures, and he was a total douchebag.  Would have been better if they'd made him seem a bit more of a smarter/cut throat CEO rather than somebody who seemed nothing but a fuckup most of the time.  An evil Bill Gates would have been more believable.  As I said, I liked the character, but I think your right about that criticism.

I don't really see that as being a problem, largely because of the era it takes place in.  It's ok to be patriotic when you're talking about a teenager that really wants to join the Army to fight in WWII, but can't because he physically unfit.

Still, I'm a little more optimistic about the Thor movie right now than I am about Cap even though I've grown to like Cap as a character whereas Thor has never really connected with me.  Captain America is being directed by Joe Johnston, best known for Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, and Jumanji.  Those are what people might somewhat generously refer to as his good movies.  In the last decade, he's directed the Wolfman (which had some well publicized problems), Hidalgo, and Jurassic Park 3.  Also I think casting Chris Evans, the former Human Torch as Cap might not have been the greatest choice.  The writing team behind Captain America are the same people who did the screenplays for the recent Narnia movies (including the third one which comes out at the end of the year).

Wasn't bad - like the other one, begins well, but then sort of gets lost when everything starts blowing up.

I agree with this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYRN1cDk17A

I think the Cap movie, set in WWII could be really, really awesome. They can do a lot of Ra-Ra jingoistic stuff, followed by Cap actually getting dropped into combat and watching men die and being emotionally harrowed with a nice finale involving punching a Nazi Baron in the face and getting frozen. It could be great with just enough emotional nuance to give us a feel for the character as a naive idealist getting dropped into something far bigger than he could ever have expected and coming to fill the role.

I'm not expecting anything great from the creative team on this one coming up. They've revealed a shot of the Thor costume and that at least looks pretty good. Since it's going to be set mostly in Asgard it could well make a pretty good fantasy movie, hopefully with just enough real world stuff happening that Thor doesn't just feel like he's been utterly transplanted into the rest of the franchises to be in the Avengers.

My hope with Thor in the Avengers movie was that they would pull from the Ultimates storyline with the is he/isn't he crazy questioning his godhood. With a standalone movie especially if it's going to be in Asgard that makes it that much harder to do I guess.

I certainly don't like Ultimates more than the regular Marvel stuff but it would have made a far better basis for an Avengers style movie than any regular stuff would. The only problem with it was that it seemed clear Marvel (or movie studio or whoever's making money off this) wanted a number of individual movies to transition into the Avengers franchise. They're making money by building up the universe with individual films and then probably hoping to have an Avengers trilogy.

Just saw it, enjoyed it.  It was almost packed too full, but some really great scenes.  Performances were stellar again and it was great to see IM in action again.  Man I love how he looks on the big screen! 

With the money it's making, I'm sure there'll be an IM3, but I wonder how it will fit into the Avengers stuff.  RDJ will start charging 20mil a movie, and deserve it.

Random thought; WTF happened to Keanau Reeves?  Did "Day the Earth Stood Still" kill his career?

Wikipedia is your friend

Black Widow is the female equivalent of Gerard Butler as Leonidas. A body like that... I see that maybe once or twice a year.

I don't get why anyone would care what Reeves is doing.  He is only notable because the first Matrix wasn't a steaming pile of shit.

Almost certain they announced an Iron Man 3 a long while back, scheduled after the Avengers  (Cap/Thor 2011, Avengers 2012, IM3 2013).  I could be wrong though, I don't have a source offhand, and I'm much too lazy to google that.

He topped out with Point Break.

(http://en.academic.ru/pictures/enwiki/67/Captain_america.jpg)


Sure, if you ignore that he has touched pop culture at least twice, and the matrix wasn't the first time.

Hammer's entire character is rooted in jealousy. It's clear that from a young age he always wanted to be the man on top, be adored, have all the power and control in the world. He gets to the top, unconcerned with the methods that put him there, finally CEO of his own successful company, but then there's Stark - still and always better, smarter, and more popular. He SO VERY MUCH wanted to be Tony Stark but could never quite pull it off.

That's pretty clear in the movie, his motivations I mean, but I very much liked the extra touches - trying to copy Stark's expo event, matching the casual egotism but, without the softness and sentimentality that allows Stark to pull it off, it falls flat and he ends up looking simply desperate for attention. Throughout the movie it's quite clear all he wants is a little respect and he's too narrow minded to realize you can't simply buy or bully it out of people.

I think it was a terrific character and very well acted. Very much the petty tyrant.

I really, really loved the Hammer character. He was fantastically acted, the fact that he clearly wanted to be buddy buddy with Stark showed the power relation there. I don't think it was just the glasses that made me think Austin Powers though, there seemed to be very much the same sort of thing with the Austin Powers character when he got unfrozen, he was acting like he was the man while everyone around him was cringing. Also the sliminess really didn't bother me too much so that must have helped me like him.

I always think of Bill & Ted and Point Break.  Am I missing one? 

Devil's Advocate, Johnny Mnemonic, Speed (though I envy you for forgetting this one).

Speed even spawned a popular haircut.

"Bram Stoker's Dracula"?  :grin:

Reeves has a limited capacity as an actor, but he is solid when he is playing himself - either surfer / stoner guy or charming man.

He was okay in "Constantine", although the supporting cast was better.

Still haven't seen "IM2". Hopefully soon.

and Sandra Bullock's career, I think.

No, She had done Demolition Man before that.

I really liked constantine, I think it suffered from an awkward plot more than Reeve's acting. I would actually say that the main character was one of the movie's stronger points.

A really mediocre movie that sets up some really bad-ass last 15 minutes.

um ?

I like Reeves in A Scanner Darkly, The Gift and many others. He's fun.

Actually, The Gift and Much Ado proved that he's much, much better playing a villian.

MUCH.

I would say that Bill & Ted and Matrix was perhaps his largest impact on pop culture. IMO. Most of his other works were were profitable, and or touched/influenced lesser/niche culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keanu_Reeves#Filmography

Include Speed in that assessment and I agree. That shit didn't die out from pop culture for years, and I'd venture a guess that even today it still has small bits lingering.

(I know I need to go back to bed when I read "Bill & Ted and Matrix" and think about the possibilities of combining those movies  :oh_i_see:)

We may have broken this thread.

I kind of feel sorry for Reeves in "The Matrix" films. It rebooted his career, but his entire role was playing an idiot.

Agreed.. but that last 15 mins was so great I didn't feel guilty buying the DVD at all.

Yeah, the ending of Constintine is pretty damn badass. I thought he was pretty decent in in it too.

I really think Reeve's just needs decent scripts.  I would actually go so far as to say as an actor he's not bad at all but he's terrible at picking his movies.  (the matrix for all its glamor had poorly written characters)

Watch "A Walk in the Clouds" (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/walk_in_the_clouds/).  You'll change your mind about Keanu being able to act.  He can't.  This movie gave him a reasonable script and an ability to play both the hero and the romantic lead.  He's really not up to it. 

Movie rocked, needed more Olivia Munn though.  I don't know how i feel about tossing mythological super heroes into a real world situation, both IM and the Hulk are "science" powered and i just don't see how they can coexist with real live gods.

I was actually thinking this too.  To an extent nearly every successful super-hero movie has been science(super science) with the most fantastical involving aliens but still grounded within the same realm.  Thor, is gonna fuck shit up.

Loved the movie. I read a few reviews that had bagged on it a bit, so i didn't go in expecting much. After seeing it i am now wondering what the hell the reviewers were thinking. The guy that reviewed it at EW needs to have his head checked. I guess there were not enough foreign subtitles in it for him. All in all, i though tit was a step up from the first one. The bad guys were an upgrade, replacing Terrence was an upgrade, and i thought the story in general was a bit better.

The only complaint i have is that Nick Fury is Samuel Jackson. Yea, so i was a bit of an Iron Man nerd, but come on...from a hard-ass white guy a la Sgt. Rock to Samuel Jackson....really?  I guess we're going to have Leonardo DiCaprio playing Hercules at some point. Probably not as big of a deal as i see it, but still bugs me. Rourke and Sam Rockwell definitely made this movie a lot better than i expected. Rockwell was a definite surprise.

All in all i thought it was a lot better than the first movie, but still leaves room for a good third one. One question, when are they going to cast the Mandarin as the bad guy? He seemed to be the top dog bad guy in the comics if i remember right.

- Devildog

Sam Jackson in the IM movies is modeled after the Ultimates version of Nick Fury, who in turn was modeled after Sam Jackson.

Also, EW is hardly a pub that is all over subtitles/foreign language. It's a pretty light magazine centered on popcorn fluff.

Wife and I really enjoyed Iron Man 2 last night. It was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the villains a good bit more than the first movie. Miss Munn was hot hot hot, I'm pretty sure even my wife thought she was hot.

She was on screen for like 2 seconds though.

Scarlett Johansson

(http://cihq.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/scarlett-johansson-1.jpg)


Olivia Munn
(http://catalinawinemixer.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/olivia-munn.jpg)

Who ?

Just another life support system for a pair of tits.  :why_so_serious:

Olivia Munn:

(http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2335199_f520.jpg)

Its nice to be getting older and be able to look at a photo of yet another nameless bikini who no-one will care about inside 5 years and go "so what?"

Well you'll be able to see alot more of her in the fall.   Seems she just landed a sit-com on NBC.

The 19 - 35 male geek crowd must bring in more advertising revenue than I would have imagined. 

Well look how well Big Bang Theory does. 

Who did Olivia Munn even play?

An entertainment news reporter at the start of the expo.

I wish Stark had been a little less jokey, but he did have his reasons.

Pretty entertaining. Venture Brothers has warped me to the point that I couldn't help giggling during John Slattery's scenes.

Yep.  When I heard "Tony..." I was thinking, "Hello, Rusty!"

Of course, Jonas Venture had better tech than Howard Stark.  Stark used film, while Venture could encode long videos onto a single punch card!

Well, even though I think the local theatre charges too much for a 1pm IMAX showing ($14!!  Really?!?!  For a matinee?!) it was worth it.  Excellent movie all around.  And even better, I went by myself so I could sit in the middle of the row and just enjoy.

Saw it.  Did like.

Of course, this movie could have just been 2 hours of Scarlett Johannson reciting poetry and I would have liked it a great deal. 

I like Scarlett anyway, but I REALLY like her as an ass-kicking secret agent.  The rest of the movie was icing.

Really? I thought that was by far the weakest part of the movie. She's a terrible actress and I buy her as a super smart, super tough ass-kicker as much as I buy Tara Reid or Denise Richards as a scientist.

Good flick, not as good as the first.

Mickey Rourke = eternal bad ass.

Wat.

Fantastic sequel, just as good as the first. I can't say which one is better. It definitely needed more Black Widow. The huge number of Avengers easter eggs in the movie were great, especially the Thor cameo. I would have liked to have seen more of Iron Man doing things outside the main arc - we got the idea that he had been quelling trouble around the world but we never actually saw it. Everybody involved did a fantastic job. I especially liked seeing Favreau get more screen time as Happy Hogan.

To non-readers (well, to ME), seeing his chaufer fighting another guy with Super Sound Effects was kinda out of place, until I looked it up and read he was a retired boxer. So, kudos for giving a supporting character his due.

Tony muting O'Reilley Factor was pure awesome, and I almost applauded. Black Widow macing that guy at the end of her AwesomeBackflipExtravaganza DID make me applaud.

Yeah I would have liked to see a couple random superhero moments in there. Still, a very awesome movie. Drunken Iron Man was a good way to visually present a rock bottom moment while still keeping it light hearted action.

That scene was awesome anyways though just for the juxtaposition between Hogan and Black Widows fight.

Please don't be that guy who applauds in the cinema.

(http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy184/raguyver/gifbusey682.gif)

That's pretty similar to what I was wearing, too!

Shit, you should hear him laugh. I get to sit by that guy.  :awesome_for_real:

The whole 20 minute sparring scene in the boxing ring earlier didn't set off the alarm bells ?

Nope. I was a little distracted by Scarlett Johansson to pay attention to other characters.  :grin:

At least you've got your priorities straight.

I must have missed that?

He was inside his hammer.

I'm reading that it was an after credits teaser, I didn't say that long so I did miss it. Or are you talking about something else?

Then, Yes, you must have missed that.

There were two incidents of Thorness.

Spoiler I guess....

What sickrubik said. As I was watching that scene, I knew there was SOMETHING important about that guy, simply by the framing, but I didn't figure out what until later.

One thing that I seem to have missed:

Where the hell was the Stan Lee cameo?    I mean, I work at a movie theatre, I have seen this movie in bits and pieces enough to equal out to about 20 full runs now, and I still have not managed to spot Stan anywhere.

He was Larry King right near the beginning.

Fuck, really?  And here I thought that was the ACTUAL Larry King.

I, too, thought it was the actual Larry King.  I mean, it did look like a fully animated corpse.

Stan Lee isn't well. Apparently he's having trouble remembering lines, which is why he appears less and less in these films.

But then how will he ever win the Oscar for best cameo actor?
(I am quietly hoping when he dies they award it to him for shits and giggles, and for his family).

Finally saw the movie. Pretty badass. RDJ really does a great job as Tony Stark, and I think it would have sucked with any other actor in his place.

Also, I love you Scarlett Johansson.

Seriously, If he dies, I fully expect him to continue makeing cameos.  I can just picture it:

Some furture spiderman reboot, Peter and Aunt May grieving over Uncle Ben's grave, and in the background, Stan Lee's Tomb Stone.

I know!  If you think about it, it's rather amazing that we don't have a Scarlett Johansson thread around here.

I thought we did at one point? Or a pseudo thread, anyway. Maybe it was mixed in with Katy Perry?

I read somewhere that Sam Rockwell was considered for the role before RDJ came aboard. Rockwell was great as Hammer though. That guy is gold in everything he does.

I was kinda hoping to see some more references to the Mandarin, but this movie did a good job of avoiding Schumacher-Batman Syndrome.

Geek logic:

Yeah, but surely it can be moved mechanically, if not actually picked up and wielded by a person. I mean what, if you put Mjolnir on a truck, it'll spin it's wheels in place unless the right person is driving?

I was going to ask that, but I feel like only a living being could move it. Or maybe they picked the hammer up by the earth underneath and just moved the dirt. That looked like a big hole they dug. :awesome_for_real:

edit: Looks like the hole might be a crater...

That's what it looked like to me. A crater where maybe Thor fell to earth, and Mijolnir lay by the side.

As to cheating the Excalibur test.  :awesome_for_real:

I was under the impression that (unless they change the lore from comic book to comic book) only another "God" could lift the Hammer.

As to "escavating" it, I believe that is supposed to be a crater where it fell to earth.  If it follows somewhat with the recent Thor reboot, he gets Banished from Asgard and stripped of his powers for not sympathising enough with the mortals, and his hammer crashes to earth, where it is treated much like excalibur was.  People come from far and wide to try to pick it up, but no one can.

I seem to remember in one of the comics, Doc Doom actually shows up, and using all his power actually manages to lift it like a foot or two off the ground, untill it blasts him across the countryside.

In canon it can be lifted by one who is 'worthy' Beta Ray Bill has some of Thor's power since he was worthy enough to lift the hammer and did a good job with it to get rewarded by Odin. Typically it's only Thor who gets to lift it though (aside from frog Thor whose now one of the Pet Avengers or some crap) I'm sure there have been a few other characters that managed it (aside from the non-canon ones like Deadpool or Spiderman). I'm guessing the Thor film is going to end with him getting sent to Earth as Donald Blake (since IIRC it's mostly taking place in Asgard) and having to get the hammer back.

Hulk picked it up and beaned Thor with it in the Avengers animated.

That was retarded.

That reminds me that Red Hulk recently beat Thor by repeatedly smashing him in the face with his own hammer. Which he managed by jumping with him into space and grabbing Thor's hands in a retarded version of 'quite hitting yourself'. So, yeah, the animated retarded looks pretty small time in comparison.

I'm pretty sure it's been moved by mechanical means quite a few times in the comics. Even picked up by robots on occasion. But for most of his history, Thor can summon the hammer to him from almost any distance and through any obstacles, though when he's been Don Blake, if that takes too long, he'll revert to his civilian form and the hammer will turn into an inert stick. (It always seemed to me that Blake should be able to summon the stick the same way Thor can summon the hammer...)

Anyway, I thought IM2 was just kind of meh. Fine, ok, not bad, but not particularly good either. Hard to put my finger on the main source of its meh-ness, though.

...Red Hulk ?

No, wait.  I don't wanna know.

What bothers me about the whole Red Hulk / Red She Hulk / every fucking thing going on there is that it's like they can't introduce a new character successfully. If they're going to put a spin on a franchise, they have to take an existing character with an extremely convoluted history that has no business in superheroism and force them into an existing hero's status quo as another hero.

Example: Pepper Potts as Rescue.

There are days I want to choke Marvel for being so set in their ways.

Pepper Potts as rescue was weird and I don't really think it worked but it made sense in the context of the storyline with those characters.

Red Hulk was a whole new level of retardation having him beat up people he probably shouldn't be able to touch and topping it off with having the reveal of his identity be utterly retarded. And his 'secret' identity was the main character gimmick.

Grey was the best.  :grin:

Yeah, you really don't. It was fucking awful. Jeph Loeb (who I used to respect as a comics writer) went off the goddamn deep end sometime after his kid died and his writing went with him.

EDIT: I never did get to see the reveal of his identity. Was it Doc Samson?

I don't think Hulk would be terribly comfortable with all of you referring to him by his skin color.  No wonder he is angry.

Oh much better.

Fuck me, that's awful.

Don't worry, in 5 years they'll Retcon the shit out of it and Hulk can get back to being chased by the military.

I mean, if they can change over Spider Man like that through Deus Ex Mafuckina, the Hulk isn't immune.

It does say something when the movie franchise reboot is probably less of a fuck you to the fans than the comic one, which is actually trying to stay in canon with the rest of Marvel Universe.

"NOT CALL HULK RED! HULK IS PROUD NATIVE AMERICAN!"

You know I had forgotten to read this thread and you guys missed something I might have missed if I hadn't seen this with a female. The little detail of Hammer's hands being all orange and nasty from spray on tan was a very nice touch.

I also missed Terrence Howard, he is a much better military man and compassionate but order following side kick.

Also do we know who is going to be in the Avengers movie yet?

Iron Man, Cap, and Thor are obviously a given, along with Nick Fury.  Black Widow is likely, Rhodes might make an appearance, Edward Norton is open to coming back as the Hulk, and Jeremy Renner from Hurt Locker is apparently in negotiations to play Hawkeye.

I think Renner is confirmed as Hawkeye, as is Cheadle as War Machine.

I had heard somewhere that they were going to go with the original line up, Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Giant Man and Wasp. Obviously this seems somewhat weird since they've got a number of other heroes about but sort of makes sense based on the franchises that are around and would mirror the Ultimates line up (that has had a strong influence on some of the movie stuff like Nick Fury's appearance and Iron Man's character). Wouldn't shock me to see Cap being a bit more of a patriotic, conservative man out of time type in the Avengers flm.

There's no way they are tacking on backstories for giant man and wasp. As it is hawkeye is going to be a timesink on the movie that they probably don't want.  The whole point of an avengers movie is to do an ensemble that requires little to no explanation of the characters.  Plus, any more than thor/cap/hulk/ironman and maybe hawkeye is just too big a cast.

Well they could have Giant Man and Wasp if they can hurry out the Ant-Man movie!

Although it seems like Nathan Fillion is rumored to play Hank Pym and with Edgar Wright directing, it has little chance of being horrible!

OK, that could be amazing. I'd watch an Ant Man movie with Nathan Fillion.

But he needs a Scarlett Johansson of a Janet Van Dyne, and preferably the Ultimate version of Jan.

... you want to see Nathan Fillion slap around Scarlett Johansson?

Hawkeye doesn't need much backstory - he's just a good shot.

Well its not Scar, but Eva Longoria is the rumor for Wasp.

Seriously Hawkeye needs nothing beyond Sam Jackson telling them he is good at shooting shit and he is on the team. Does he even have an origin because I read my share of comics and I never heard of it. According to wiki he doesn't, he was in the circus blahblah ok nobody cares and no movie audience needs that. Making him in love w/ Johansson is a good idea though, god she is so fine.

That'll do. She's a petite spitfire and also equally unavailable as Scarlett Johansson.

Saw this in the weekend - not bad. It was a little bit too close to the first movie in structure, but that's a minor complaint.

My wife made the comment that Sam Rockwell was doing his best Tom Cruise impersonation and then that was all I could see in the character.

Tom Cruise or Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder who was so much cooler than real Tom Cruise I vote he be given his own personhood.

Ben Stiller is planning to make a movie just about that Tom Cruise character in "Tropic Thunder".

Hawkeye's origin in regular Marvel was a circus sharpshooter that decided to rob banks, was foiled and became a hero. Ultimates Hawkeye was just someone who was an amazing shot that was partnered with Black Widow on SHIELD's black ops team /geek.

I don't think he'd be great for an Avengers movie just because the character really is pretty shallow if you're not going to be going into any character development. You'd be getting another Wolverine Origins type bit where you've got a guy who really is just like a male version of Black Widow in that he seems to be some super agent that does acrobatic shit and the audience really isn't going to give a fuck about him. Giant Man and Wasp have distinctive designs (in terms of powers and clear character traits, crazy scientist and designer girlfriend) that make it easy to set up relations and differentiate them from everyone else in the movie. If they have Hawkeye he's going to be an uninteresting background character who will look kind of bad ass and have a few scenes where he's leaping through the air shooting a dozen baddies with pin point aim and maybe a closeup of him shooting the gun out of some big baddy's hand. I would much rather see a crazy scientist growing 20m tall and trying to tell his miniature wife how to disable the giant world ending gizmo from the inside. Even if they can't be properly introduced (if the movie hasn't gotten done in time) they can still just give him and the wife a 3 or 4 minute intro scene and explain their powers to the other team members.

He didn't decide to rob banks, he stopped a robbery but the cops thought he was the thief.

Oh sure, that's what HE says

I'm betting they go the Ultimate Wasp route so they have an excuse to include some hot Asian chick in the film.  Always a hit with the nerds.

 :heart: Please!

... and, again, have Hank Pym slap her round. Pym's superpowers are size control and domestic abuse.

And creating autonomous killer robots that go on to commit genocide but also have weird psychosexual obsessions.

and having nervous breakdowns in general.

and having multiple personality problems.

What I really like about Hank Pym as a character is that all this stuff happened organically--it wasn't part of the character's conception, he was just a whitebread superhero-scientist. But as the pile of Pym's neuroses got bigger, it all kind of made sense, and you could even see signs of it way back in his history.

Not sure how you get that in a film, though, unless you set him up as a really anxious nerd to contrast him with Banner and Stark.

Rockwell would have been good for that, but he's been used.  :awesome_for_real:

I'd love it if they included Pym and Wasp, but I don't see the wacked-out wife-beater Pym ever showing up onscreen unless he turns into a complete villain. Even with the level of sophistication the Marvel movies have shown, I don't see anyone taking a flagpole franchise character and turning him into a wife-beater.

I can, if they reinvent the characters into one involving a sadist - masochist relationship. The Wasp is a semi-willing slave to Giant Man, and her freedom from his control represents when she stops shrinking and she starts growing.

Just one possibility of many to make these characters palatable. These people are more than their powers and can have those powers be representative of their character personalities and traits. Look at what they did for the new Fantastic Four.

Do you people even read what you write? Do you honestly think any director is going to spend any amount of time to devote to this or the other dozen suggestions you people are putting out? This is a summer action movie and it is going to be as nuanced as...a summer action movie. You'll be lucky to even get any characters besides the already established movie ones in the avengers and if they do add more, they are sure as hell not going to spend more than 10-15min on backstory. 

One of my favourite interpretations of Pym is that he's actually a typical mad-scientist who keeps trying to be a hero, sort of Rusty Venture type who only seems to really succeed in creating destruction. That said they've been devoting a lot of time in the last couple of years to rehabilitating him as one of Marvel's top scientist hero types, considering the shit Stark and Reed managed it's been a welcome change of pace for science. Honestly I think he's a really fun character with more depth and room for unpredicatbility than some of the others. I'm hoping they at least show spending his time trying to show off in front of Stark and Banner and getting shot down somewhat. Full on Ultimate Marvel domestic abuse Pym isn't going to happen, even if they do a Giant Man movie I don't see that happening, it's just too dark and requires (if it's being handled well) a lot more maturity than any of these movies have shown so far to pull off. Though if they took a Spiderman 3 to it and had him back hand Janet before strutting down the street in a white disco suit I would go see that film for the sheer :awesome_for_real: hilarity.

Like I said before I expect them to be included because as well as being iconic Avengers they've got a very distinctive powers and characters that I think would make them much easier to introduce to audiences, "Here's Hank Pym, he's a scientist and is now 25m tall. This is his hot wife who can shrink real small and shoot zaps from her hand." Everyone knows men need a profession to identify them and women need to be hot, basic character development covered.

Downey as Stark does have a great habit of shutting down any sort of ego that attempts to escalate his own.

Write up on Marvel's movie panel at Comic-Con (http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/104667-sdcc-the-marvel-studios-panel).

Of particular note, Jeremy Renner was confirmed as Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo was announced as the new Hulk for the Avengers.  It looks like the main cast is set.  Also sounds like the Cap and Thor stuff that was shown got a decent reaction from the crowds.

One day it will occur to someone that fucking around with different actors is never going to fix The Incredible Hulk. Unless someone plans to substantially rework the whole concept it isn't going to work on film.

Marvel has a really ambitious plan with Cap, Thor and then the Avengers movie.  But HELL YEAH!  If they pull this off it will be amazing.  The thought of all the Avengers assembled and interacting, not to mention fighting some big badass, is great.

I applaud DC for the extremely high quality Batman movies; lets hope Green Lantern comes close.  But they are at least one step behind Marvel.  DC should re-re-boot Superman and get some more DC characters some screen time somehow.

The rumour mill has DC considering a JLA movie long term, with a few more introducing characters in between but they're holding off to see how the Lantern movie does. I'm hoping they take a leaf out of the Marvel movies so far and make something close to the spirit of the comic, some sort of fun, actiony sci-fi movie would do well. Not sure what the big problem with the Hulk is conceptually eldaec, it's very easy to do badly but the Jekyll and Hyde/Frankenstein premise seems like one that could work well in a single movie. Not much room for franchising though since I'd imagine the theme would be pretty played out after one film. It would require playing up the terrifying destructiveness of the Hulk quite a bit beforehand though to make those hunting him down look like something other than caricature baddies. As a straightforward summer action movie though, yeah a big green guy throwing tanks through walls is cool but doesn't really have room for anything more than mcguffin story telling.

Of course, take any reaction from SDCC with a grain of salt. Purely playing to the home-town crowd, so to speak. It's nice that Cap/Thor seems linked pretty well. everything should tie together nicely.

I liked both of the recent Hulk movies but that could be because The Hulk was my fav growing up (70s) and I'm a slut for a super-hero movie.

NECRO!

Finally saw this last night (thanks, Netflix!). I was surprised at how much I liked it. I didn't hear much buzz about it while it was in the theatres, so  anticipated it being tepid. Not so at all. I didn't recognize Sam Rockwell until he took off his glasses- that little fucker is a chameleon! And as noted above, was doing his best Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder impression. I am pissed I didn't sit through the credits and had to go look up the scene on the 'net, which seems to be bootlegs of it.

I am probably in the minority, but I am glad Mickey Rourke had limited screen time. His character was ok, but have loathed Mickey Rourke the douchebag and actor since the 1980s, and anything to limit my exposure to him was all good with me.

Almost felt sorry for Gwynyth Paltrow a couple of times- it has to be galling to be getting to her age and have to share the screen with ScarJo. Paltrow can actually act a bit, but godDAMN Scarlett is just so so so hot.

It's a movie that seems to be getting an unfair ammount of revile after the fact. It doesn't even feel that much like a backlash; about the most coherently damning thing I ever hear anyone say about it is that it's 'more of the same'. And considering how much of a breath of fresh air the first movie was, I struggle mightily to see why that's a bad thing, in retrospect or otherwise. I think there's a better movie to come, perhaps, and I hear tell of too much Marvel meddling in the creation of the movie, but I can happily look past all the Avengers references and enjoy it as another delicious RDJ-as-Tony Stark character piece.

I don't think 2 was as good as the first one, but I still liked it a lot, so I'm not gonna complain. The first one is hard to top.  :drill:

With Favreau walking away, it's up in the air how good the next movie will be.  I thought 2 was ok, but Stark had a much better character arc in the first movie.  A self-centered arms manufacturer who experiences first hand what his technology does to people and subsequently tries to change his ways is a much better story than him acting drunk and stupid because he thinks he's dying.  Iron Man was one of the few super-hero origin movies where I thought the origin was entertaining in it's own right rather than something the series has to slog through in order to set up subsequent movies.

:rimshot:

 :awesome_for_real:

The second movie had some bad structural problems. For most of the movie there is no villain, at least that Iron Man is a aware of.

The first movie was similar in that regard but it was an origin story and there was other stuff going on.

There are various rumours that both Downey and Favreau were unhappy with having to fit in a set-up to the Avengers movie that takes up a lot of screen time. Nick Fury showing up is fun, but it is a giant stop sign to progressing the movie. If you cut those bits out, you miss practically nothing and the film is tighter.

Also: I'm going to be a total prick of a dad to my kids, but record them a message that they may see 30 years later about how I still love them and they have the potential to be great. And you know what? They'll still hate me because I was a prick to them. As they should.  :grin:

I thought IM2 was ok--I saw it well after it was in theaters. But it definitely had issues with a sloppy story and a less-involving character arc.

Well, sure, but I think I'd be a little more well-disposed to my dad if that video contained information in how to cure my fatal heavy-metal poisoning...

A note would have been fine, rather than, "I've designed my entire park around a new element that requires very specific circumstances for you to see it, just in case you have a massive physical injury that requires you to insert a mini arc reactor into your body".  :grin:

This movie will be remembered as either one of the last movies before, or the first real inking of, Marvel's slaughtering the golden goose in order to create the Marvel Film Universe(tm).

I saw this in the theaters way back in almost July.  I had a hard time following what was going on as I was completely unfamiliar with the story and didn't see the first one.  Not sure if that's a true problem or not though...

Go watch the first one.

Pretty much. While I'm looking forward to Thor as an enjoyable experience it does not look like it will be half the movie an iron man or dark knight was. Also captain america would be great if it was purely a world war 2 flick but i highly doubt they are going to stay in that time period the whole movie and will therefore suck.  I mean, I love cap but seriously, a guy running around in a red white and blue jumpsuit throwing a shield looks dumb in real life no matter how you look at it.

Avengers priority aside, Captain America, at this point in history, would be nice to insert into modern day times and become an embodiment of the American ideal by fighting the American reality.

Too real to make money, Lore, but I agree.

My favorite part of Punisher: MAX was, during the storyline where Frank attempts to rescue a child held captive in Russia, Nick Fury beat the shit out of an American five-star general involved with orchestrating an event similar to 9/11 in Moscow as a distraction for Frank's covert action. Nick did this WITH HIS BELT.

That's what I want to see more of.

Actually yeah, almost the whole movie will be set in WW2.

I can't imagine how Thor won't be cheesy. But I can hope.

Then again, never a big Thor fan.

Honestly I think Thor could have worked as a, slightly weird, fantasy romp through Valhalla ending with Loki finally revealing some great trick and Thor getting banished to Midgard. Instead he's on earth acting all cool and punching people while riding around in a truck. Yes I think it will be cheesy.

I think it would be great if the audience was acclimated to life in Asgard, so that life on Earth looks stupid by comparisson. Have all the Norse deities be realistic and subtle and downright human, while the actual humans are caricature and cheesy.

I'd been thinking a great, larger than life epic for the Asgard portion with a real emphasis on huge characters. Balder, the Warriors Three, etc. would all just be great fun, classic heroes leaping into the fray and getting involved in huge action sequences. The last 15 minutes would be Thor on Earth and just played really low key. Fuck have his one opportunity to be a great hero stopping some guy robbing a Kwik-e-mart while the human police scurry about scared to do anything, just really emphasise what a shitty comedown this is for him. End with Samuel L. Jackson appearing with an offer he can't refuse.

Of course it'd never get greenlit because big epic fantasy isn't what they want in the Marvel movie universe and I don't think studios would want it. Plus I imagine they'd be really put off by the idea of having the climax of the movie 15-20 minutes before the end, especially if the tone radically changes. To be honest, from a commercial standpoint they'd probably be right, I doubt the movie in my head would make bank and I imagine critics would pan it for having a really weak ending. I imagine the epic fantasy could work though if they picked a semi-decent story arc and had fun with it, not too much drama but guys getting into fights with legions of ice giants and clearly having the time of their lives. Hell make Thor clearly something of an asshole who just wants to hit things with his hammer and can't fathom anyone that doesn't, even if he is well intentioned.

I think the other problem is that they've obviously set the movie universe tone with the success of Iron Man and I imagine they'll shy away from introducing any dark themes. The Ultimates Thor was an interesting Avengers character  (spoilered in case anyone hasn't read Ultimates yet and wants to). I don't think they'll want that sort of thing in the Avengers movie though I hope they at least have some grit to the Captain America one. Personally I'm really hoping for something in the vein of Saving Private Ryan with a Capt. Winters style character who just happens to wear a silly costume, something that uses the early part of the film to build Cap as a heroic figure and the middle and end to try and show his humanity. I think there's the opportunity for some dark stuff there just because of the time difference, as long as Cap is a good guy it doesn't need to be carried over to any cross-over movie.