Originally entitled Jack the Giant Killer, this latest Hollywood foray into the classic fairy tale update (Snow White and the Huntsman, Hansel and Gretel) looks like it might actually be worth the trouble. Directed by Bryan Singer – whose last two movies Superman Returns and Valkyrie were decidedly less than stellar – the movie tells the familiar story of a young farmhand (Jack) who must rescue a princess from a race of giants after inadvertently opening a gateway to their world.
2013 is on the horizon and the movie studios are letting us know that there is much to look forward to next year in terms of scifi and superhero movies. Here are a bunch of new trailers that have caught the eye and captured the imagination.
Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead is/was a genre-defining horror classic with some of the grossest scenes ever committed to celluloid (tree rape, anyone?). This remake updates the original with Fede Alvarez at the helm and has Raimi and Bruce Campbell on-board as producers. Does it have any chance of coming close to the beloved original? Watch the redband trailer and make up your own mind. Not for the faint of heart – you have been warned! Hitting cinemas in April 2013.
The Man with the Iron Fists promises to be a campy kung fu classic with a tag line to kill for – “You can’t spell Kung Fu without F and U”!!! To get us geeks in the mood, check out the character trailers below for Bronze Lion (Cung Le) and Madame Blossom (Lucy Liu).
The second trailer for Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s Hobbit has landed. By all accounts, An Unexpected Journey certainly appears to be lighter in tone than the Lord of the Rings trilogy – the original book was written for children, after all – and the stars of the film would definitely be the fun-loving DWARVES, represented by Gimli in LOTR but this time in full force! It’s all looking very promising but whether or not the decision to make three movies is justified or not, remains to be seen. In the meantime, look forward to December!
A Wizard of Oz prequel directed by Sam Raimi. Sounds like a winner right?
Here’s the plot summary - When Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled away from dusty Kansas to the vibrant Land of Oz, he thinks he’s hit the jackpot—fame and fortune are his for the taking—that is until he meets three witches, Theodora (Mila Kunis), Evanora (Rachel Weisz) and Glinda (Michelle Williams), who are not convinced he is the great wizard everyone’s been expecting. Reluctantly drawn into the epic problems facing the Land of Oz and its inhabitants, Oscar must find out who is good and who is evil before it is too late. Putting his magical arts to use through illusion, ingenuity—and even a bit of wizardry—Oscar transforms himself not only into the great and powerful Wizard of Oz but into a better man as well.
A prequel that works? We’ll see…
We are a week away from the movie event of the year – forget about The Avengers – The Dark Knight Rises is the real deal! Four years ago, after watching The Dark Knight, this is what I wrote.
“One imagines that it would be difficult for director Christopher Nolan to follow this wonderful movie achievement but it will be intriguing to see him try.”
The more I see of writer/director Rian Johnsons’s time-travel flick, Looper, the more I think that this is going to be one of the best scifi films of the year. Already, I am totally sold on the fact that the two leads – Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt – play the same person at different ages in a life-and-death struggle with each other! All possible through that wonderful scifi device called time-travel. Wonderful!! Check out the trailer. Looper opens in late September.
Remakes can be tricky. Early on, the producers talked up the new version of Paul Verhoeven’s classic Total Recall as being more a adaptation of Philip K Dick’s short story We Can Remember ItkFor You Wholesale rather than a straight remake of the original movie. WRONG! As it is clearly apparent from this latest trailer, this is a straightforward remake of the movie as there are no three-breasted ladies or actual trips to Mars in the short story. Fact is, the short story would make a boring action movie if faithfully adapted. So is there any point to repeated the whole exercise once over again. Well… I think so. Based on the trailers, the effects and action sequences look pretty good and having Bryan Cranston on board as the villain of the piece never hurts. Also, the combined eye candy of Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale should make up for Colin Farrell’s anticipated over-acting. I mean come on, look at the image above and not picture Arnie in that chair. Try…
With all the hype surrounding Marvel’s Avengers, it’s easy to forget that Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises opens in July and still remains one of the most hotly-anticipated films of 2012. A new trailer was released a few days ago and as trailers go, there’s not much slam bang action to go around but there are enough hints to suggest what will be transpire in this final installment of Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.
Bring together the talents of top writer Don DeLillo, acclaimed director David Cronenberg and urm Twilight actor Robert Pattinson and the result is Cosmopolis. The narrative follows a billionaire (Pattinson) as he takes a stretch limousine ride across Manhattan and the film chronicles his misadventures all in the course of a single day. Selected for competition at this years’ Cannes Film Festival – and based on its trailers so far – Cosmopolis looks like a highly sexed, socially charged study into our modern times, billing itself as “finally, the first film about our new millennium”. Also starring Paul Giamatti, Juliette Binoche, Samantha Morton and Kevin Durand.
This one looks like a cool crime drama, very Euro in tone with award-winning Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn at the helm and a stellar cast including Ryan Gosling (above), Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and Albert Brooks, Check out the trailer below, I really dug that classical piece at the end.
Of all the movies slated for release this summer blockbuster season, the one which seemed to lack the necessary geek credibility was Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. The first trailer did not help this perception as it played more like a comedy (think: Batman & Robin) than a dark epic superhero drama (think: The Dark Knight). But since then, Warners has taken great pains to address that imbalance with a second trailer which has certainly raised the expectations amongst the geek community.
With the movie release coming up very soon and perhaps concerned about public perception (non-geek), a third (and final) trailer has been released – narrated by GL Toma Re (as voiced by the excellent Geoffrey Rush), this trailer gives the requisite background into the GL universe so that neophytes may also understand what Green Lantern is all about. Take a look and you will be convinced that the Green Lantern movie will be a superhero action-adventure to look forward to.
This, for me, is the superhero movie of the summer, mainly because of what I have seen of Michael Fassbinder’s Magneto in the trailers. In addition, I am also putting a certain amount of faith in director Matthew Vaughn’s ability to make this work (but since his competition is the risible X-Men 3 and Wolverine movies, it will not be difficult).
Fox has issued four trailers focusing on the very subject matter of the film – the first class of mutants tutored by Professor X and Magneto viz. Banshee, Mystique, Beast and Havok. Whilst all look intriguing, it only serves to emphasize that the film deviates too much from the comic book to make it an absolute winner.
This is obviously an attempt to link this prequel with the X-Men trilogy in the eyes of movie-goers. Therefore, we get a Havok who is older than Cyclops, a different Angel, a young Banshee and a Mystique that was formerly an X-Man! Only the Beast remains from the original comic book team.
Of course, only geeks like me – who grew up loving the original X-Men – will be pissed off and bothered about this whilst watching the film.
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Trailer
Jack Sparrow is back! The rock ‘n’ roll pirate, portrayed by Johnny Depp by channeling Rolling Stone Keith Richards, carried a trilogy of highly successful movies for Walt Disney Pictures. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the franchise is continuing with this fourth installment.
TRAILER MIX
Just realized that to limit GEEK OUT! to superhero movies only is a rather narrow field and so, we look at trailers of upcoming geek movies that have nothing to do with superheroes. Let’s take a look…
Lazy Sunday afternoons – gotta love ‘em. Make the day better with trailers that PoPTV thinks you need to watch… now…
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