The Future of the "Iron Man" Movies?

A couple of minor spoilers for "Iron Man 3" ahead.

It was announced a few days ago that Robert Downey Jr. had signed on to reprise the role of Iron Man in the upcoming "Avengers 2" and "Avengers 3." There was no mention of an "Iron Man 4," though that doesn't rule out the possibility that deals for more sequels may happen later. I know that the ending of "Iron Man 3" looked pretty definitive, and if I had my way it would be the last "Iron Man" movie for a long time, but we are talking about a film that has so far made $1.2 billion dollars in ticket sales alone. Disney and Marvel will be make as many more "Iron Man" movies as they can get away with.

But what if Downey doesn't sign on for any more "Iron Man" installments? Well, right now what this new deal means practically, is that Downey is going still to be Tony Stark through at least 2018, when "Avengers 3" is most likely to hit the big screen. My guess is that "Avengers 3" may be Downey's last appearance as the cinematic Iron Man, even if there is an "Iron Man 4." I don't know if Joss Whedon is going to still be involved at that point, but I expect that we're going to see him permanently retired in some manner (I doubt Disney would allow him to be killed off in traditional Whedon fashion) that sends him off with a bang. At that point Downey will be 53 years old - not too old for another few rounds as a superhero, but old enough that Disney and Marvel should be seriously entertaining the notion of rebooting "Iron Man." There was a five year gap between the two "Spider-Man" movie franchises, and assuming that window keeps shrinking, I don't think it's unlikely that we'll get a new actor playing Tony Stark as early as 2022, four years after "Avengers 3" and fourteen years after the first "Iron Man" movie.

The more important question for audiences is whether this is a good thing. Do we want more Iron Man? And is "Avengers 2," "Avengers 3," and a possible fourth and even fifth "Iron Man" movie how we want him? Well, looking at the four appearances of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark onscreen so far (not counting cameos), I have serious doubts. If you treat the existing "Iron Man" trilogy as a finished series, it's pretty mediocre. Great first film, lackluster second film, and an okay third film. Both the second and third film offer some character development, where Tony has to pull himself out of existential funks, but he doesn't make any major advances, and the status quo is unchanged until the very, very end of "Iron Man 3," where the ending isn't convincing. We already know Tony's going to be back for another "Avengers." Also, the sequels have been relentlessly safe, avoiding the hard partying reprobate Tony we were first introduced to, and staying far, far away from the comic book version who battled alcoholism and other personal demons. It's no secret that Shane Black wanted to adapt the "Demon in a Bottle" arc, but Disney nixed the idea as too dark and kid-unfriendly.

I'm not saying that we need "Iron Man" to get R-rated, but it's been depressing to see a character with so much potential wasted in so many disposable, lukewarm adventures. If we get an "Iron Man 4" and "Iron Man 5," it's only going to get worse, the way that the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies have progressively declined. I'd actually prefer seeing an "Iron Man" prequel without the superhero elements, because we would actually be able to see more of the major milestones in his life - Tony meeting Pepper, Tony becoming friends with Rhodey, and maybe even Tony having to deal with the aftermath of his father's early demise. These are the kinds of things that I can't help feeling that the "Iron Man" films should have made time to explore by now, but they haven't. "Iron Man 2" was a particularly egregious example of the franchise treading water and shamelessly taking advantage of the audience's goodwill.

I find I'm more interested in the next "Thor" and "Captain America" movies. "Thor: The Dark World" is at least getting a good villain in Loki, and Thor's long-distance relationship with Jane Foster will be a focal point. "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" moves storylines with Black Widow and Bucky Barnes forward, and we should see more of Cap's fish-out-of-water experiences living in the modern day world. I can buy that these superheroes still have a lot of major battles ahead of them that could support big films. I'm sure an "Iron Man 4" could drum up some dire new threat for Tony Stark to tackle, but by nixing most of his usual personality flaws It feels like all of his biggest challenges have already been met. He got the girl. He's faced the demons of his past multiple times. The bad boy was tamed, though mostly offscreen. He's become a better person and has his happy ending.

Too bad Marvel and Disney aren't going to be able to leave well enough alone.
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My Top Ten Episodes of "Angel"

Well, I've done "Buffy," so it's only fair that her ex should get a list too. A quick disclaimer that I know I've seen every episode, but most of those were at the time of airing over a decade ago and I haven't revisited most of them in a while. Picks are arranged by airdate, and are not ranked. Lots of spoilers ahead:

In the Dark - "Angel" leaned heavily on crossover episodes with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in the early going, when it was still trying to find its footing. Faith was a great recurring villain, and Wesley, Spike and Harmony would join the cast more permanently. The first crossover remains one of my favorites, the one where Spike rolls into town to cause some trouble. The opening scene alone, where Spike offers his own snarky narration to Angel's hero activities, is worth a watch. And there's another fun "Buffy" cameo at the end.

Hero - The character of Doyle the half-demon was a big part of the first season, and his departure was one of the show's first milestones. Though it was sudden, Doyle goes out in a much more satisfying way than most characters in Joss Whedon shows, on his own terms. It was also a good reminder that nobody on the show except the title character was safe. My only quibble isn't with this episode itself, but the lack of impact on subsequent episodes - I think Doyle was only mentioned again once after this.

Darla - The counterpart to one of my favorite "Buffy" episodes, "Fool for Love," which aired the same night and shared several plot points and flashback scenes. The episode covers Angel and Darla's history together as vampires, told through the recently re-ensouled Darla's fever dreams as Angel is trying to rescue her from the clutches of evil law firm of Wolfram and Hart. The jaunts into the past are a lot of fun, especially the appearances by other familiar faces including Spike, Drusilla, and even the Master.

Billy - It took a while for Fred to grow on me, and I think that was helped along by Wesley being so smitten with her. "Billy" marks the first of many missteps in their romance, where a man named Billy who can induce violent misogyny in other men causes Wesley to nearly kill Fred. It's a strong character episode for both of them, and nicely incorporates a real-world fear. Also, this one features one of the better appearances by Wolfram and Hart villain Lilah, who gets to show her more vulnerable side.

Lullaby - Honestly, this one's only on the list for the ending, which is one of the most memorable death scenes I've ever seen on television. It's a pretty chaotic episode, with Darla in labor, Holtz on the warpath, and the gang still grappling with the implications of the prophecy baby. Julie Benz really delivers as Darla, wrapping up the whole Angel-Darla relationship in truly epic fashion. There's also the great use of demon bar host Lorne, who would become a regular in the next season, but was already acting like one here.

A New World - Everybody hated Vincent Kartheiser as Connor, right? Well I didn't, at least not for his first appearance as a teenager, just returned from a hell dimension to confront his father. The episode is a great introduction to the little hellion, especially in the way that it gives us a different perspective on the "Angel" universe from his point of view and sets up all these new quandaries for Angel. At ths point it wasn't clear how Connor was going to fit into the show's existing dynamics, which brings us to -

Shiny Happy People and The Magic Bullet - Yes, I'm cheating, but I think of these two as a single story. I really disliked most of Season Four and where it took Cordelia and Connor. However, the climax of the storyline with Jasmine nearly taking over the world and briefly enslaving the entire cast was a lot of fun. "Buffy" and "Angel" featured several different flavors of apocalypse, but this is one of the most intriguing versions. Also, it gave Fred a chance to be the hero, which never happened enough.

The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco - I know several people who hate this episode, but I can't help lighting up with glee at the thought of it. There's just something so goofy and wonderful about Angel teaming up with a Mexican luchador named Numero Cinco from a family of number themed luchadores to fight evil. I know that Ben Edlund wasn't in any way involved in this episode, but it feels like a live action version of "The Tick" - moreso than the actual live action version of "The Tick"!

Smile Time - I'm a sucker for theme and gimmick episodes, and so we have to have the episode where Angel gets turned into a puppet version of himself while investigating an evil children's show. Season Five is far and away my favorite year of "Angel" because they finally settled into a format that worked, and found a good balance between the genre elements and the soap opera elements. And they started to really embrace the ridiculous. Like puppet Angel's hysterical brawl with Spike.

Not Fade Away - The finale episode frustrated me to no end when I first saw it, because it ended on a cliffhanger and they killed off my favorite character to boot. However, there's so much good stuff here, so many good character moments and resolutions and callbacks that acknowledged how much the show had changed over the years. I don't think there was a better way for "Angel" to go out, with everyone still fighting the good fight, even though I'm still disappointed that it didn't get to continue.
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"Star Trek" Into Derivativeness (With Spoilers)

Spoilers for "Star Trek Into Darkness" ahead. Lots of them. I mean it.

Whatever happened to boldly going where no one has gone before?

Now, I understand wanting to bring back one of the most infamous villains of the "Star Trek" series. I understand all the song-and-dance about trying to keep him out of the marketing, and J.J. Abrams prevaricating around the bush about who Benedict Cumberbatch was actually playing. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why you wouldn't use the opportunity of the alternate timeline to do something different with Khan. I don't understand why we had to have such a shameless rehash of the ending of "Wrath of Khan," especially one that never had any hope of having remotely as much emotional impact as the original.

I have to wonder what viewers unfamiliar with "Wrath of Khan" thought of these developments, whether they bought Kirk's sacrifice instead of being distracted by the parallels to the previous film like I was. It was hard to watch what I consider one of the most iconic moments of the "Star Trek" films essentially turned into a cheap fake-out death akin to too many others in modern action films. Was the reversal of Kirk and Spock's roles clever? Not very, since that was a pretty obvious way to play it. I'd have been much more impressed if Khan switched sides and was the one who made the sacrifice, as he seems far more morally ambiguous in this timeline. Or if they really had been gutsy enough to kill off Captain Kirk and left Spock or Sulu in charge. However, the moment I saw that dead tribble, I knew they were just going through the motions. And there was way too much of the nudge, nudge, wink, wink, aren't-we-being-clever attitude, plus a totally unearned "KHAAAAAAAN!" callback.

I've heard the charge that J.J. Abrams and the team of writers he's working with do not understand "Star Trek," and I don't agree with that. I think they have a perfectly good grasp on the themes and the ideas at the heart of this franchise. The new versions of the characters are perfectly fine and worthy creations. The trouble is that "Star Trek Into Darkness" was obligated to be a summer blockbuster tentpole aimed at a mainstream audience. To that end, they seem to have banished all the brainier, more conceptually challenging ideas that make "Star Trek" distinctive. In the 2009 reboot, Abrams managed to introduce all these new characters and ideas at a breakneck pace, and that worked because it was a first outing, and you could get away with substituting potential for substance. Trying to repeat that trick failed, because it revealed that the creators weren't willing to explore any of these ideas that they were evoking in any real depth.

What really boggles me is that "Into Darkness" follows nearly the same beats as the first movie. You have Kirk introduced as a rebel, a massive crisis gives him a chance to prove himself, and then Spock and Kirk do some bonding. The difference is that this time Khan is the threat, reimagined as yet another in a long line of recent terrorist villains. I was also very aware that other than the fairly simple concepts of super-soldiers and cryogenics, there's nothing in "Into Darkness" that doesn't have obvious analogs to a typical non-science-fiction action movie, like "Mission: Impossible" or "James Bond." The 2009 reboot at least had parallel universes and time travel for us geeks, but "Into Darkness" takes special pains to avoid anything remotely complicated or nerdy.

Instead, it was lots of big action sequences, lots of fantastic eye-candy, and the obvious villains: Khan and a quick glimpse of the Klingons. I get that the writers were trying to pay homage to the series' roots, but this time out they leaned far too heavily on the mythology and didn't take the kind of creative chances that would have pushed the franchise forward. When you have this kind of talent involved, the possibilities are endless, and I thought that the success of the 2009 movie would have given Abrams and company the clout to do something more ambitious, instead of another generic action picture grafted to a replay of the last half of "Wrath of Khan."

I appreciate that the new "Star Trek" is a series of movies that can't operate the way that the old ones did, but tribbles and namedropping do not make a "Star Trek" movie, and I needed to see more effort. In the end, I found myself wishing for a new "Star Trek" series or miniseries featuring these versions of the characters, just so they could stop running and yelling and fighting long enough to have real conversations with each other, and maybe go on the kind of cheesy, but inspiring adventures that the old crew of the Enterprise used to.
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"Star Trek" Into Derivativeness

This one's going to need a double review, one without spoilers, which I'm posting today, and one with spoilers that I'll be posting tomorrow. This is the one without the spoilers, so if you're planning to watch "Star Trek Into Darkness," go right on reading.

Coming out of the theater after my screening, I asked myself a question I find helpful to judge certain movies: who was this made for? "Star Trek Into Darkness," the follow-up to the 2009 movie reboot of the franchise, has lots and lots of references to "Trek" lore for fans of the original incarnation of the series. It brings back a few familiar concepts and ideas, reinterpreting them in intriguing ways. However, it's clear that director J.J. Abrams, and writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof were not trying to make a film that would appeal to the usual "Trek" fans at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure that "Into Darkness" is going to end up disappointing many of them. Instead, their intended audience is the broader summer blockbuster crowd, and the emphasis is all on action and mayhem and special effects. Of course, that was also true of the 2009 "Star Trek" to a large degree, but it's much more apparent this time out and harder to ignore. "Into Darkness" doesn't feel like a "Star Trek" movie. It feels like a much more generic space adventure that is using the most famous and recognizable elements of the old "Star Trek" as window dressing.

Take the opening sequence, for instance. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) violates the Prime Directive, that states the Federation cannot interfere in the development of emerging alien species, by rescuing Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto) from certain doom and allowing a primitive civilization of aliens to see the Enterprise in the process. The consequences are severe for Kirk. He's removed from command, and the Enterprise returned to Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood), Kirk's mentor. However, all the discussion is focused on Kirk's recklessness and Kirk's lack of appreciation for his responsibilities. We fail to see any of the negative consequences that affect the aliens, and there's no mention of how the damage to their society is going to be addressed. The Prime Directive has created many serious moral quandaries that have been at the center of multiple "Star Trek" episodes, and easily could have been the basis of an entire film by itself. However, "Into Darkness" immediately ducks the whole matter, skips the hard questions, and moves on to introduce the villain of our story: John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), a terrorist who has a serious bone to pick with the Federation.

And so, "Into Darkness" quickly becomes a breathless action spectacular as the Enterprise crew goes on the hunt for Harrison, giving us one impressive set piece after another, and stopping only long enough for a few lines of tense exposition here and there before running off again. The movie is exciting and it is visually impressive. I think most people who go to see superhero and disaster movies are going to be perfectly happy with it. Casual viewers who liked the 2009 "Star Trek" movies should enjoy this one just as much. The characters are a lot of fun to watch, and the whole gang's back from the first film: Karl Urban as Dr. Bones McCoy, Zoe Saldana as Lt Uhura, Simon Pegg as Chief Engineer Scotty, John Cho as Lt. Sulu, and Anton Yelchin as Ensign Chekov. No matter who your favorite is, they all get their little moments to shine. And casting Cumberbatch as Harrison was a great choice, because his performances gives that character all these interesting ambiguities, suggesting that there's more to him than there really is.

Also, it's not fair to call "Star Trek Into Darkness" a mindless CGI action movie, because the writers did attempt to give us some semblance of a deeper story to go along with all the thrills. There's a new character, Admiral Alexander Marcus (Peter Weller), who can be interpreted to be a commentary on current American military policies. And there's some groundwork being laid for some specific future conflicts that might yield interesting things in the future. However, it's hard to give the writers much credit when so much of the material for "Into Darkness" is taken from previous "Star Trek" stories, and the new approach to them just isn't very creative or interesting. The execution feels so half-hearted, and comes off as underwhelming at best. There's so much impact lost, because the characters never slow down enough to have the important conversations, and to feel the impact of the events we witness. Instead, the pace is relentless, pushing on from one spectacle to the next like a "Die Hard" movie in space.

And if you like "Die Hard," that's fine, but I wanted to see a "Star Trek" movie. "Into Darkness" included a lot of references that only fans would appreciate, but in a way that played very badly for anyone who knew enough about "Star Trek" to get those references. I was disappointed by "Star Trek Into Darkness," and now I'm very worried about where this franchise is going.
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"Doctor Who" Prepares For a Milestone

Spoilers ahead for the latest season of "Doctor Who."

The much-anticipated 50th anniversary of "Doctor Who" is coming up in November, and a star-studded special has been commissioned to mark the happy occasion. This most recent series of "Doctor Who," however, particularly the back half that featured Jenna-Louise Coleman as the newest Companion, Clara Oswald, often felt too much like it was setting things up for the big event. There was a lot of time talking up the big, plotty mysteries and series mythology, and not as much on the individual adventures. I liked fewer episodes this series, and didn't feel like I'd gotten to know Clara very well, but whenever we have any kind of format change on "Doctor Who," that's normal in my experience. I didn't like Amy much until Rory became a regular companion, and the last two Doctors each took nearly an entire series each to grow on me.

It wasn't a bad stretch of episodes at all, though understandably not as emotionally charged as the goodbye tour of the Ponds that came before it. My favorites included "The Bells of Saint John," "Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS" and "The Crimson Horror." "The Name of the Doctor," which left us on a big cliffhanger going into the special, was kind of a mess, but also a really fun and tense installment that neatly answered all the questions about Clara and will hopefully give her character a chance to grow from here on out. It's not that Jenna-Louise Coleman isn't doing a perfectly good job, but there really hasn't been much to Clara except being "The Impossible Girl." I'd like to see her given more substance, or at least her current situation as a live-in nanny fleshed out more. The point of Clara may be that she's ordinary, but she shouldn't feel so generic.

Matt Smith continues to impress. He's gotten so well situated into the role of the Eleventh Doctor, that I'm having trouble imagining anyone else in the role now. I've really grown to like this version of the character, who can get emotional and dark and lose control of himself, but there's always something a little otherworldly and a little inhuman about him. Where the David Tennant and Christopher Eccleston Doctors were very good, they always seemed to be very advanced humans instead of truly alien creatures. There's something about Smith that is always off-kilter in just the right way to remind us that he's an alien being doing his best impression of a human, and not the genuine article. And even though he's the youngest actor to play the part, he comes across as having a much higher mileage on him. He's the only reason that some of the weaker scripts worked this year.

This series also brought to the forefront a trio of new sidekicks who won me over in a very short time: the reptilian Silurian detective, Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), her plucky wife Jenny (Catrin Stewart), and their butler Strax (Dan Starkey), the potato-shaped Sontaran warrior. The three of them have been hanging out in Victorian England, meeting up with the Doctor whenever he happens to be in their time period. Aside from Madame Vastra, I don't remember how these characters were introduced, but they make for wonderful secondary heroes, and Strax is especially good comic relief. I love that he continually screws up genders and still retains a love for carnage that keeps getting him scolded. I've been hoping for a little more variety in companions, and this is the next best thing. I'm firmly with those who have been calling for a spinoff series to feature this trio.

Disappointments? There weren't any major ones that stuck out on the level of some of the episodes from previous series and previous Doctors. I can't point to anything specific that outright failed, but a few things I was hoping would be really exceptional, turned out to be just all right. The Neil Gaiman episode with Warwick Davis and the Cybermen? All right. Richard E. Grant as this year's Big Bad, the Great Intelligence? Sorely underused, but all right. The return of Alex Kingston's mysterious River Song? All right. The mystery of The Impossible Girl? Fine. It's likely that the anniversary special is going to turn out the same way, even with the promised appearances of so many past actors plus a bonus John Hurt.

However, I've got to say that I'm really impressed with where Stephen Moffat left us with the big cliffhanger. It may end up being a tease, as so many of these things are, but there's the potential for some really serious delving into the show's mythology coming our way. Even if the special in November doesn't deliver, it'll be fun to watch them try. And I'm happily attached enough to this particularly grouping of characters that I don't mind if we hit a few more bumps in the road going forward.
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"Person of Interest," Year Two

As we work our way through sweeps, it's time to check in on "Person of Interest," which has been developing nicely in its second year. It started out as a crime procedural with some conspiracy elements and vaguely sci-fi concepts. Now it's handily juggling storylines involving organized crime, police corruption, government cover-ups, espionage, cyberterrorism, and a surprisingly strong dose of good, old-fashioned cyberpunk - with better fashion sense. "Person of Interest" has been particularly good at parsing out information, a little at a time, particularly the sequence of events that led Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) to his current cause, using the Machine to help people in need. Despite all the memorable antagonists he and John Reese (Jim Caviezel) have faced this year, it's the revelations about the past that had all the best moments. Some minor spoilers ahead.

First, let me acknowledge the new additions and the expanded roles of the show's ever-growing recurring cast. Alonzo Quinn (Clarke Peters) and Officer Simmons (Robert John Burke) were introduced as the top of the chain of the criminal HR organization, mostly keeping the pressure on Detective Fusco (Kevin Chapman) as he struggled to stay on the side of angels. Detective Cal Beecher (Sterling K. Brown), got a nice arc as a love interest for Detective Carter (Taraji P. Henson), who also may have been mixed up with HR. Nathan Ingram (Brett Cullen) and Grace Hendricks (Carrie Preston) got a lot of screen time as figures from Finch's past, while Kara Stanton (Annie Parisse) and Mark Snow (Michael Kelly) from the CIA showed up for a few episodes to complicate Reese's present. Amy Acker is far and away the show's best villain as the hacker Root, who walks that fine line between crazy and true believer. Every time she kidnaps Finch is a treat. Then there's the weaselly, but helpful Leon Tao (Ken Leung) and government assassin Samantha Shaw (Sarah Shahi), who become regular allies. Oh, and we can't forget Bear, the Belgian Shepherd attack dog who Reese adopted at the beginning of the season. He's become a great source of humor and a way to inject a little more humanity into his human partners.

It's surprising when you look back and see how much happened this season. All four of the leads, Finch, Reese, Carter, and Fusco got their own recurring storylines, and there was frequent switching around among them. You'd get Fusco battling HR one week, Carter navigating her relationship with Beecher in another, and then Reese getting an arc with the CIA to break things up. I found it especially clever that most of the flashbacks with Finch tended to happen in the case-of-the-week episodes that otherwise could be treated as filler. Even more impressive, it never felt like any of the conflicts or mysteries were being dragged out for too long. We got some very definite answers this year about the nature of the botched mission that Reese and Kara Stanton were sent on, about the loyalties of Fusco and Beecher, and lots of details about the Machine. The character who got the most development this year was arguably the Machine itself, which was revealed to be sentient at the end of last season, and this year has to battle a destructive virus, multiple factions trying to gain control of it, and finally a game-changing finale event that shifts the show's power dynamics considerably. I don't think there's a single of the series' big mysteries that didn't see some significant advancement this year, and a few were even resolved completely.

Week to week, "Person of Interest" certainly had its mediocre episodes. The big action setpieces with all the fancy weaponry were used sparingly, mostly saved for the episodes right before or after a breaks. The production wasn't quite as good as the best episodes from last year, but the quality remained very high and very consistent, with some especially spiffy new twists on the surveillance footage visuals. The writing rarely devolved into technobabble, but there was the usual reliance on technology so sophisticated it functions like magic, and the super-cool action hero antics of Mr. Reese and Shaw occasionally bordered on the cartoonish. These were the two characters who I don't think got as much attention as they probably should have, especially Shaw, who was introduced late in the year and abruptly became a major player. Mr. Reese, true to his name, is still rocking his mysterious Man-in-Suit persona, but considering how much we've learned about all of our other leads, he's starting to come off as a little two-dimensional by comparison, and the mannerisms increasingly seem affected.

Well, there's always next season to tackle those issues, and considering how much the second season got done, the third shouldn't have too much trouble getting Reese lined up for growth spurt. Maybe get Paige Turco's fixer character Zoe involved - she's always a highlight, and her appearances this year were too brief. "Person of Interest" moves to Tuesdays in the fall. Stay tuned.
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Trailers! Trailers! The Catching-Up Edition

It's the first week of May, and we've already got several full trailers for some of the big November movies in circulation. I haven't done a trailer post in a while, so we'll be talking about these, plus some of the notable later summer films where the first trailers were only released in the last few months. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. As usual, all links below lead to Trailer Addict.

Thor: The Dark World - Of all the individual Marvel movies, I'd put "Thor" near the bottom of the list. I like the character, but his appearances on screen have felt the most slapdash and lacking in substance. I expect the filmmakers know this, which is why they make sure to show us part of a scene that likely happens a good ways into the second act: Thor seeking help from Loki, who is easily the most memorable villain in Marvel's film universe so far. We don't see anything of the film's actual villains, or really much of the threat they pose, but Loki's involvement is enough.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - I've already been spoiled regarding a lot of what happens in this movie, so I was impressed with how well this trailer kept some of the biggest plot points under wraps, at least for now. I wouldn't be surprised if future trailers go on to reveal more. However, this one nicely sets up the rising tensions between Katniss and the Capitol, giving a lot of screen time to Donald Sutherland, who plays the major antagonist President Snow. And the sight of Philip Seymour Hoffman getting in on the fun makes me indescribably happy.

R.I.P.D. - The trailer spends most of its time setting up the concept of Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as part of an undead police force, but what it's really doing is selling you on a certain mood and tone. This is going to be a supernatural action movie with a lot of CGI effects, but it's also going to be a broad comedy. I can definitely see why people are suggesting that this is going to be "MIB" with the undead. Even the poster looks pretty similar. But will "R.I.P.D." be any good? I can't tell from what we've seen so far, but I do like everybody involved here.

2 Guns - Here's Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg playing a pair of cops, who are both working undercover at cross purposes, get betrayed, and have to join forces to win the day. Pretty standard buddy movie setup. So you sell the movie the way you always do. Car chases! Gun battles! One liners! The big question is whether Washington and Wahlberg are going to work well together onscreen, and I think the clips make a decent case for it. The banter flows, and the antagonism feels genuine. It's not very original, but who sees a movie like this for originality?

RED 2 - The retirees are back for more mayhem, and this time they're joined by new villains Catherine Zeta-Jones and Lee Byung-hun. However, the highlight of this installment is almost certainly going to be Anthony Hopkins, who is acting a great deal sillier than I've seen him on the screen in some time. Will he and John Malkovitch have a ham-off at some point? I can only hope. Otherwise, you have your typical spies and renegades story and most of the cast of the previous film back for more fun - including Helen Mirren and all her dangerous toys.

The Wolverine - The problems of "The Wolverine" trailer are twofold. On the one hand, it's relying way too much on previously established imagery from the "X-men" franchise. And on the other hand, the new material looks pretty weak. The bulk of this movie will be set in Japan, but the visuals are generic, the action and effects look underwhelming, and the whole thing is just so much smaller scale than anything else in the franchise. These are major problems that the marketing for "X-men: First Class" had too, and I hope "The Wolverine" is similarly better than its ads.

Elysium - Director Neil Blomkamp is back, and he's brought more "Halo"- like visuals and some big stars for his latest science-fiction film. Matt Damon and Jodie Foster star in the tale of a dystopian future society where an extreme split has developed between the haves and the have-nots. I'm expecting more social commentary, more crazy action scenes, and more deeply flawed characters. And I'm intrigued that the story appears to have many similarities to the manga "Battle Angel Alita," the one James Cameron's been trying to turn into a film for a decade now.

Ender's Game - And here's the movie that I'm the most curious about, out of everything else listed here. How do you turn Orson Scott Card's science-fiction classic into a Hollywood effects extravaganza? From the new trailer I recognize the characters and the concepts, but how faithful is this adaptation going to be? The trailer is provocative, but it's hardly very informative, more concerned with making sure we see every award-winning actor who will appear in the film than introducing us to Ender Wiggins or his universe. The glimpses of Battle School and the Formics are encouraging though.

Turbo - I know, I know, but the little snails are frickin' adorable!
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About That Third "Iron Man" Movie

The trailers for "Iron Man 3" were darker in tone, showing the dramatic destruction of Tony Stark's home, and Tony himself being put in grave peril. Gone were the jokes and the snark, suggesting that this sequel was going to be a much more serious film than the others. Well, that's not the case. "Iron Man 3" is just as light-hearted and irreverent as the "Iron Man" films have ever been, though the stakes are pretty high this time out, and director Shane Black does manage to make the peril suitably impressive. However, if you're one of those fans hoping to watch Tony Stark really face his inner demons, his alcoholism, and his psychological baggage in an adult way, this is not the movie for you. And we're probably never to see that movie because Marvel is now owned Disney. However, if you're in the mood for a light, fun action movie with whole lot of shiny special effects, this one should do the trick. There's a little bit of Tony Stark facing his demons too. Not much, but enough to keep things interesting.

So when last we saw Tony Stark, played as always by Robert Downey Jr., he had just helped save the world from certain doom in "The Avengers." Now it's been a couple of months, and we find that Stark hasn't been dealing well with the aftermath. He's become a workaholic, staying up for days at a time, and has built dozens of new Iron Man suits. The latest can be controlled remotely, and the individual pieces summoned to form the full suit wherever Stark happens to be. Girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), still CEO of Stark Industries, has moved in with him, and she's worried about him. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Stark's best friend and current owner of the War Machine suit, recently rebranded by the government as the Iron Patriot, is also worried about him. Even Stark's former bodyguard Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), recently promoted to Head of Security of Stark Industries, is worried about him. He calls up Tony when Pepper takes a meeting with handsome scientist and think-tank founder Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), to voice his suspicions. Stark and Killian have a past, as it turns out, stemming from a bad encounter during Tony Stark's less altruistic days.

However, the more obvious threat to Tony is The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), an elusive terrorist who has been behind several deadly bombing incidents, and claims the credit through sinister video broadcasts that promise worse to come. Nobody can figure out how he's executing the bombings, because there's no evidence of bombs left behind. The Mandarin is a considerably better villain in conception and execution than anyone else Tony Stark has faced onscreen, though as usual he's no match for Stark himself, who will always been his own worst enemy. This time out Stark has mostly cleaned up his act and is refraining from bad behavior, but he's still battling personal doubts that have escalated to the point where he's having anxiety attacks. It's Robert Downey Jr. who sells this, and it's a notion that pretty hard to swallow given what we know about Tony Stark, but this franchise's biggest asset has always been its leading man. Despite all the fancy CGI visuals, in the end it's Downey Jr.'s performance that's the biggest attraction.

Now there are some decent twists and turns in the bigger plot, but the real fun is in the little incidental moments, when Stark is interacting with new characters and in situations that are very different than the ones we've seen him in before. At times "Iron Man 3" feels like a cop or detective movie, as Tony Stark tries to sort out his foes' big master plan with very limited resources. Some of the later scenes where he and Don Cheadle join forces have the DNA of an old buddy action caper, the kind that Shane Black is best known for. Black was a great choice to replace Jon Favreau in the director's chair this time out, because his ironic, self-aware sense of humor is a great match for the Tony Stark character, and he's not shy about taking Iron Man in some risky directions. For instance, there are a couple of scenes involving Stark and a cute kid, and I was bracing myself for all the usual clichés involving cute kids and superheroes. I shouldn't have worried. The clichés all get subverted in about ten minutes flat.

"Iron Man 3" is not anywhere near as good as the first Iron Man movie – it's third act is far too predictable, and several good characters get shortchanged – but still a vast improvement over the second. If I had my way it would be the last "Iron Man" movie, because the direction they're taking the Tony Stark character is one that's going to be difficult to maintain in any subsequent sequels. And it goes out with enough closure and on a big enough bang that it's going to be very hard to top.
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2014 and 2015 Movies I Wanna See

The 2013 summer movie season looks to be on the quieter side this year, with only about five or six titles that I'm really curious about. I figured it was a good time to look ahead to other film projects that have been quietly coming together over the past few months. I've wanted to write about several of them individually, but it never felt like I had enough material, so I'm going to use this post to geek out about everything coming up in the near future that I'm really getting excited about. As usual for me, there's a lot of science fiction on the list. I'm a nerd. I admit it.

2014

In March we're getting Darren Aronofsky's long-awaited "Noah" project, starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly. Then shortly after comes "Transcendance," the directing debut of cinematographer Wally Pfister, who is best known for working with Christopher Nolan. It's been described as a science-fiction neo-noir that will star Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany. Nolan will be helming his own original science-fiction movie, "Interstellar," which has something to do with time travel and will star Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. That one's currently dated for November. And a month later, we're finally going to see what Brad Bird's secret "Tomorrowland" project with George Clooney is all about.

Summer currently looks a little dire for original projects, but the Wachowski siblings will be returning with "Jupiter Ascending" in July, with Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis. We're finally learning a little more about it this week since filming has begun, and it sounds like a promisingly crazy space opera in the same vein as the Korean segment of "Cloud Atlas." And a week later, Disney and Marvel will be unleashing "The Guardians of the Galaxy," one of the pivotal Marvel Universe Phase 2 films. Everything I've read about this goofy-sounding tale of intergalactic space cops sounds ridiculous (alien raccoons?!) and I can't wait to see how they're going to pull this off. Will this finally break the curse of the movies with the word "Guardians" in the title? Either way, this is going to be a big one.

Most of 2014' s sequels don't interest me (Amazing Spidey 2, Jurassic Park 4, Fast and Furious 7, Transformers 4), and others are too sketchy to say much about yet (Apes prequel #2, Hunger Games 3, Captain America 2, 21 Jump Street 2, Hobbit 3), but one that I'm definitely looking forward to is "X-Men: Days of Future Past" that will be coming in July. Brian Singer is back as director, and will be combining the various X-men movie canons with the franchise's most famous time travel storyline. Matthew Vaughn, who did such a fantastic job with "First Class," is contributing to the screenplay. The press has been full of announcements about returning castmembers, and we're getting Peter Dinklage and Omar Sy to boot. Bring it on!

On the animation front, there are a couple of potentially interesting titles: "The Good Dinosaur" form PIXAR, "Mr. Peabody & Sherman" and "Happy Smekday!" from Dreamworks, and "The Boxtrolls" from Laika. We'll also be getting the highly anticipated sequel to "How to Train Your Dragon," which Dreamworks is counting on to become its next major franchise, so expect a lot of push behind that one.

Finally, some smaller movies with no set dates that we can only speculate are going to arrive in 2014 include Wes Anderson's "Grand Budapest Hotel," Terrence Malick's "Knight of Cups," Paul Thomas Anderson's "Inherent Vice," and the "Veronica Mars" movie. Note to self: go watch "Veronica Mars."

2015

Only the really big studio productions get scheduled this far out in advance, mostly animated films and superhero movies. But by any measure, 2015 is going to be a big movie year. The main events, of course, will be "Avengers 2" and "Star Wars VII," but PIXAR also recently announced that their mysterious November, 2015 release was "Finding Dory." The fact that Disney is behind all three of these movies points to the strength of the studio's brand acquisition strategy over the last few years.

On top of that, we've got the final "Hunger Games" movie, the "Avatar" sequel, Edgar Wright's "Ant-Man," and an original PIXAR movie called "Inside Out." Probably only of interest to me are the just-announced "Pitch Perfect" sequel and "Kung-Fu Panda 3." I like "Dragons" very much, but I don't think the "Panda" franchise gets nearly enough credit.

The most intriguing "maybe" of the year, however, is still only in the planning stages: Warners' potential "Justice League" movie. Depending on how "Man of Steel" does, this project may or may not happen, and we may or may not be getting a superhero team showdown with "The Avengers 2," and it may or may not be a complete disaster for Warners.

And that may or may not be the best entertainment of all.

Happy watching!
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Need a Space Western? Try "Defiance"

I have subjected myself to so many mainstream pandering, emphatically mediocre science fiction series lately, it is a tremendous relief to find one like Syfy's new show "Defiance," that is classic geek bait. Here we have a show with not just one or two very human-looking aliens, but at least half a dozen species of them living alongside humans, ranging from the albino-looking Castithan race, to a big guy who looks like an orangutan. And we don't just have a standard post-apocalyptic future, but a future where the entire planet Earth has been terraformed by alien colonists so that Antarctica is now rumored to be a tropical paradise, and a couple of major wars between the humans and the aliens have made a lasting impact.

The action centers in and around the city of Defiance, formerly St. Louis. It's known as a place where human beings and many of the newly arrived alien races decided to stop fighting and live side by side, banding together against the myriad threats posed by the rest of the world. Theirs is a frontier-like existence, and the whole series definitely has a lot of Western vibes. The pilot episode is all about how newcomers to Defiance, former soldier Joshua Nolan (Grant Bowler) and his adopted alien daughter Irisa (Stephanie Leonidas), end up becoming the new sheriff and deputy, after a raucous adventure that involves a hand-to-hand fighting match, getting involved in a family feud, solving a murder, a visit to the local bordello, and turning back an invading army of machine warriors called the Volge.

What I have always loved about science-fiction shows like this is the characters. "Defiance" has a lot of the types that you'd expect. There's the inexperienced mayor Amanda (Julie Benz), steadfast deputy Tommy (Deshane Williams), the sultry bordello and bar proprietress Kenya (Mia Kirshner), no-nonsense Doc Yewll (Treanna Keating), and a pair of feuding families, the McCawleys and the Tarrs, with offspring that turn out to be lovebirds, of course. But when you've got characters like Datak Tarr (Tony Curran) and his wife Stahma (Jaime Murray) under a couple of layers of makeup, you can buy them acting broader, and larger than life than if they were human characters. The Tarrs are the show's mob family, clearly devoted to each other and their son Alak (Jesse Rath), but they handle a lot of unsavory business, and have the temperament to match. Datak Tarr in particular gets to chew a lot of scenery. This makes them a lot more fun to watch than the human McCawley family, comprised of father Rafe (Graham Greene), son Quentin (Justin Rain), and daughter Christie (Nicole Muñoz).

I was surprised at just how much "Defiance" gets done in its two-hour premiere. There's a lot of backstory missing - we don't yet know where the aliens came from or why - but the show's creators do a great job of establishing a very weird and interesting status quo. It was very encouraging to note that one of those creators is Rockne S. O'Bannon, who also worked on the similar "Farscape" series. I don't think that "Defiance" is as visually distinct as "Farscape," but it's definitely aiming high. You've got several major alien characters in complicated makeup, a setting that may as well be on another planet, and loads of special effects for everything from the vehicles and weapons to the drinks at the bar. This isn't anything that we haven't seen before in science-fiction television, and it's certainly not pushing any new boundaries, but the execution is so good, I'm already invested in the show. I got a real kick out of how fast it managed to set up all these different relationships and conflicts while hinting at many more to come.

There are some elements that I think could use some work. One character who didn't come off very well is Irisa, who is a familiar sulking teenager for most of the pilot, and doesn't say much. Even though we know from the start that Irisa considers Nolan her father, it takes longer than it should to work out how they function together. Hopefully she'll open up a bit more in the coming weeks - she's already got a potential love interest lined up. Also, I'd really appreciate a little more worldbuilding information like timelines and better introductions to the different races to start getting a clearer picture of how the "Defiance" world operates. There's something to be said for being thrown into the deep end like this, but only if the show is able to follow through on its ideas.

I have a really good feeling about this one though, for the simple reason that "Defiance" has so much action and humor and cheeseball fun. This is the first new show in a while that feels like the lighter, weirder, more adventurous science fiction I always liked best.
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The Movie Gender Switch Project: The Princess Bride

YAM Magazine, an online publication about cultural media, came up with this interesting little prompt: The Movie Gender Switch Project. Simply take a movie with prominent male and female leads, swap their roles, and see how the story would play out as a result. I'm doing "The Princess Bride," which I guess becomes "The Prince Groom." Spoilers everywhere!

First off, the rules of the challenge specify changing the genders of the lead characters only, so the big stumbling block right off the bat is the original story would have Westley marrying Prince Humperdinck. I know society is more progressive in this area than it used to be, but this just isn't going to happen when you take into account that royal marriages are all about the procreation. However, Humperdinck could still appear to ally himself with Westley without the whole marriage thing, and then set him up to be killed off to start that war with Guilder.

Oh, I've got it. You can have the old king adopt Westley into the royal family as a prince for, let's say, saving his life. That keeps the title intact, puts the people on his side, and gives Humperdinck a reason to want to get rid of him. Of course he has to appear to play nice with Westley in order to respect his father's wishes, but truthfully he doesn't want any competition around even if he's next in line for the throne anyway. So Humperdinck has Westley kidnapped and has to make a big show of getting his new brother back. And you could switch out the wedding for a big coronation ceremony for the climax scenes.

On Buttercup's side of the equation, she probably wouldn't be going out into the world to make her fortune if Westley was a landowner with his own farm in the beginning. So she's traveling to visit relatives, her ship is boarded by the Dread Pirate Roberts, and she is presumed to have been killed. This gets a little tricky because Roberts is still a man, but Buttercup could feasibly find a way to disguise herself and replace him. There are always girls passing themselves off as boys in pirate stories, and of course there were real life women pirates. The disguise just wouldn't be as convincing to the audience, but we all knew that the Man in Black was really Westley from the beginning anyway, right?

So Buttercup follows the kidnappers, beats Inigo Montoya at swordfighting, Vizzini at the game of wits, and Fezzik - oh dear. Is it plausible for Buttercup to beat Fezzik at wrestling? Well, maybe it is. I mean, Westley was completely physically outmatched by Fezzik in the first place, and the tactics he used probably could be used by Buttercup effectively. Yeah, let's go with that. Buttercup beats Fezzik at wrestling, reunites with Westley, and they almost escape until Prince Humperdinck intervenes. Buttercup ends up with the albino and Count Rugen in the torture chamber, and Westley is back at the castle with time running out before he has to be... coronated. Oh, that doesn't sound right, does it?

What do we replace Buttercup's anxieties about getting married to Humperdinck with? A big part of her character arc was rejecting the prince and deciding not to go through with the wedding. No matter how you cut it, becoming royalty doesn't have the same amount of emotional heft as deciding whether or not to marry somebody. Well, we can turn a negative decision into a positive one. Westley can turn down the prince gig because he decides he wants to marry Buttercup, and he can't do that if he's royalty. And Humperdinck's plotting by that point would be too far along to allow Westley to decline the honor, so he tricks him into it. We can leave out the suicide business, I think.

Then the rest of the story plays out as usual. Storm the castle, rescue the new prince, Inigo Montoya gets that awesome revenge scene, and happy ending.

It's interesting how putting Buttercup into the typically male storyline, with the adventuring and the physical feats isn't nearly as hard as trying to work Westley into the typically female one, where the conflict is mostly about relationships and emotions. And it feels very strange to have Buttercup doing so much action-wise, while Westley doesn't get to do anything rougher than name-calling. The most affirmative thing he does is to save the king, which I invented to make the plot work. Buttercup was originally chosen by Humperdinck for being the fairest in the land.

Buttercup being an action heroine works pretty well, but I think some of the later scenes with Count Rugen in the torture chamber, and being dragged around as a corpse, end up with some additional naughty connotations that may raise some eyebrows. Miracle Max would likely be suspicious of Inigo and Fezzik for entirely different reasons and the tone of the comedy would be very different.

As for all the emphasis on true love, you end up with a very forceful Buttercup who may be coming on too strong, and a Westley who is very passive, and not too smart. More than anything else, I was surprised at how the characterizations that seemed so classical and sweet one way, play very, very differently when they're switched.
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"Jurassic Park" and the Summer of '93

The summer of 1993 was my first big movie summer. It was the year I I first regularly started watching new movies in theaters on my own, the year I started paying attention to what was going on at the box office at the time. Prior to that, I'd kept an eye out for the yearly Disney animated moves, but I didn't really have a sense of the business of movies, or how the successes and the failures were determined.

I know exactly when that changed. My parents got the Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times every week, and I always liked paging through the "Calendar" section devoted to the entertainment coverage to look at the movie ads. L.A. is a movie town, and with few exceptions, studios always took out ads for new releases in the Times' "Calendar" section. And then one week, twenty years ago, they put out their yearly summer preview edition. The cover art showed Arnold Schwarzenegger locked in mortal combat with a dinosaur, in honor of the coming box office clash between "Last Action Hero" and "Jurassic Park." As I read through all the write-ups of the summer's films, and the predictions of their chances at the box office, it began to dawn on me. There were going to be winners and losers. There were stakes here that went beyond the movies simply being good or bad.

I still was a kid in '93, so of course I was focused on the kids' films like "Dennis the Menace," "Rookie of the Year," "Free Willy," and "Super Mario Bros." When "Mario" bombed, it was the first movie I think I really appreciated being a bomb. There were movies I'd liked that hadn't done well before, but I hadn't quite been able to tie the failure with box office performance prior to that point. So when "Last Action Hero" was trounced by "Jurassic Park" a few weeks later, I knew what it meant. I noticed when that summer's big hits like "The Firm" and "The Fugitive" stayed in the public eye and in the larger conversations about the movies, becoming points of common reference. I hadn't seen either of them, but I saw so many clips and read so much about them, that the awareness was there, long before my parents rented them from the video store the next year. I distinctly remember this article talking about possible tiered pricing schemes, that suggested charging top dollar for the most popular films, like "Jurassic Park" and "The Firm," and only half as much for Pauly Shore's latest comedy, "Son in Law."

Did this affect my view of the movies? Did I become more cynical about them? Not really. I still saw very few movies in theaters, so the box office game hardly affected me personally. Also, I was still young enough that I couldn't really differentiate between the good and bad movies, so it didn't really bother me if something I was looking forward to tanked and got bad reviews. All I knew was that it would still come out on video eventually. I remember being confused, but not disappointed by "Super Mario Bros." when I saw it. A few years later I would learn to appreciate some of the other consequences of being a bomb - no sequels, the talent involved taking hits to their reputations, and in the worst cases, companies like Carolco disappearing completely. And sometimes this would happen to perfectly good movies that didn't deserve it.

But the summer of '93 was the summer of Michael Jackson's "Will You Be There," from "Free Willy" playing endlessly on the radio. It was the summer of every female relative of mine reading Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club," because the movie was coming out that fall. It was the summer I noticed a cute guy named Leonardo DiCaprio getting a lot of press for his performance in "This Boy's Life," a couple of months before he'd land his first Oscar nomination for "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." It was the summer of listening to the "Jurassic Park" soundtrack over and over again, which we bought on cassette tape, long before the days when the studios would release them for free, as just another piece of promotional material.

The funny thing is, I can't remember if I actually saw "Jurassic Park" in theaters that summer. I remember watching it lots of times on VHS and on television, but did I ever see it on the big screen? Were my memories of it from a visit to the theater, or am I just remembering the ubiquitous marketing campaign and the making-of specials and the tie-in merchandise? I think I still have a few "Jurassic Park" pogs laying around somewhere.

The thing is, I'm not particularly nostalgic for the movie itself. I liked it fine, but it didn't resonate with me, really. I didn't fall in love with it the way so many other kids did. In fact, it marked another first for me. It was one of the first big blockbuster summer movies I got all hyped up for, and pretty much forgot about as soon as the next one came along.
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Let's Check in With "Archer"

So the newest season of FX's "Archer" has been rolling along nicely. The adults-only animated spy spoof is currently in its fourth season, and has picked up two new recurring characters. First there's Ron Cadillac (Ron Leibman), Malory's new husband, and Rodney (Andrew Donnelly), the ISIS armory's new clerk. Also, Ray is now a cyborg with robot legs, Cyril is dating Lana again, and Pam seems to be on the verge of becoming a new ISIS field agent. Barry and Katya have been making multiple appearances throughout this run of episodes, clearly being set up to for a big showdown a few episodes from now. And Sterling Archer? Though he occasionally shows tiny signs of growth, he's still the immature, emotionally stunted, spycraft savant man-child that we all know and love. And the show is full of just as much blood and guts and perversion and hilarity as ever.

However, the success of "Archer" has afforded it a few perks. The limited animation has been getting more animated, tackling more ambitious visuals, including several action scenes and better looking CGI vehicles. The guest star roster has also gotten more high-powered. Burt Reynolds famously stopped by last season, and this year an entire episode parodied reality television cooking shows with the help of Anthony Bourdain playing a pompous version of himself. For me, the biggest improvement is that at this point in the show's run, the shock value of the content has largely worn off, but the writers and the cast have become so comfortable in this universe that they can do more character-focused pieces and introduce characters that might not have worked in earlier seasons. Ron Cadillac is a good example, a charming older gent whose courtship of Malory happened off screen, and who has been played fairly straight so far. Cadillac displays no extreme behavior, and gives no reason for Archer to hate or suspect him, except we know that Archer's relationship with his mother has always been pretty warped, and Malory's love life has been colorful, to say the least. The old ultraviolence is still in play, but the writers don't need to go there as often.

I'm pretty settled on Pam and Cheryl being my favorite characters in the show, because the two of them are so horrible in such an entertaining way. Cheryl being a masochist and an airhead wouldn't fly anywhere else on television, but she's so cheerfully self-assured about it, and her inanity is taken to such wonderful extremes. It's one thing if the bimbo is just around to be saved by the show's heroes over and over again. It's quite another if her incompetence keeps making bad situations worse, and she just finds it hilarious. Pam is even more of a jerk because she's the smarter of the two, and she should know better, but on the other hand, everyone in ISIS is pretty awful in their own special way, so her apathy actually comes off as pretty reasonable most of the time. Also, I love that she's the biggest girl in the room, and she enjoys it. We've seen that Pam's very sexually active and more than capable of handling herself in a fight. Compared to these two, the rest of ISIS's roster of corporate drones can't compete.

I have to say that as far as late-night cartoon action spoofs go, I still prefer "Venture Bros.," which is finally returning to Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in a few more weeks. "Venture" has a bigger universe, a more well-developed mythology, and more complex character relationships, so it tends to be more resonant underneath all the pop-culture references. "Archer," even though it can consistently get big laughs out of me, is much more shallow and disposable. It's still very committed to a very particular level of humor, and has only recently started poking around into deeper, more emotionally interesting places. The Lana/Archer/Ray love triangle has been heating up again, and Archer's had a few moments of real self-examination this year. Then again, getting in too deep could easily spoil that great satirical tone that "Archer" has developed, and it's still among the better comedies on television right now.

FX has already renewed "Archer" for a fifth season, and its success has contributed to the continued expansion of late night animation offerings. FOX Network, which is in the same corporate family tree as FX, is about to launch a Saturday night expansion of its "Animation Domination" programming block to compete with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in July. These late-night cartoons for grown-ups are no longer a rarity, but they still don't get as much respect as they should. So it's nice to see "Archer" thriving and kicking ass in the ratings. I fully understand why some are still skeptical of these shows, but they can no longer be ignored, and they're not going away any time soon.
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What Do You Want Out of a New "Star Wars" Movie?

Since there's a nice lull in the "Star Wars" rumor mill for the moment, I thought I'd take the chance to put down a few notes on what I'd like to see out of the new "Star Wars" movies. Most of these are very general, aspirational thoughts, really applicable to a lot of different franchises, but I get the sense that the "Star Wars" filmmakers and the fandom could both stand to be reminded of some of the basics, considering how nuts the rumor mill has been lately. So what do I really want out of new "Star Wars" movies?

Story vs. Mythology – One of the reasons I'm glad that J.J. Abrams is working on the new "Star Wars" films is that he blew up the planet Vulcan. He ignored decades of "Star Trek" canon and just blew it up, because it served the needs of the story that he wanted to tell. Despite most of the recent "Star Wars" rumors being about whether the older actors from the original series will return or not, I'm not too interested in seeing Han Solo and Princess Leia back on the big screen unless Abrams and writer Michael Ardnt figure out a way to use them right, for the purposes of telling me a new "Star Wars" story. Remember that in the prequels, we had the two beloved droids, R2-D2 and C3PO, running around as comic relief, and I can barely remember what they actually did in those movies. There were altogether too many call-backs and references in the prequels, and the new "Star Wars" trilogy would benefit from toning those elements down. Sure, there should be some "Star Wars" mythology in the mix in order to keep the series' continuity, but the story has to come first.

Character vs. Effects – This is a harder one, because the "Star Wars" movies are known for pushing the envelope on special effects, and its' the spectacle that is the biggest selling point of the franchise. The new movies are bound to introduce new alien races and robots and space vehicles and so on. However, it's very easy for the effects to become overwhelming. If the writing's not in place to sufficiently ground these elements, they become weightless and empty. This has been particularly true of all the CGI characters, who don't have a fraction of the charm that the old puppets and rubber mask aliens did. Now clearly, you can give a CGI character heart and soul, as Gollum and the PIXAR movies have made clear, but Lucasfilm seemed more interested in making their characters looked good as opposed to making good characters, and I hope they don't continue to make that mistake. Also, one of the things that made the original "Star Wars" so distinctive was that it was a more rough-and-tumble universe, where Tatooine was a backwater planetary system and the Millennium Falcon was a hunk of junk. Things shouldn't be looking so pretty anyway.

Old vs. New – This one ties into the "Story vs. Mythology" point. One thing that I can't fault the prequels for was choosing to appeal to a new generation of kids instead of the existing fanbase of "Star Wars" geeks. "Star Wars" was always kid-oriented, based off whiz-bang adventure serials of the 50s the way "Indiana Jones" was. Now that we're thirty years removed from the original films, this point is more important than ever. The new "Star Wars" films have to be made to appeal to modern kids or else the franchise itself just isn't going to last. Of course I'm hoping for a little nostalgia too, but I hope that Abrams and company keep some distance from the fans who want the new trilogy to be more like the old trilogy, lest they end up going too far in that direction. I'm very happy about the apparent involvement of Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote "The Empire Strikes Back," but there's nothing wrong with applying new cinematic developments to the "Star Wars" films as long as they do it right.

The Light vs. The Dark Side of the Force – Finally, one modern trend I hope the new movie avoids is getting too dark. Sure, "Star Wars" has its tragic saga of a divided family and an intergalactic war at its center, but it was never a bleak or cynical story the way that so many are now. Watching franchises like "Terminator" and "Batman" and the James Bond movies get grittier and colder and more merciless over time has been disheartening. At the same time, new franchises like "Transformers" are getting slicker and meaner than ever. I hope that "Star Wars" can hold on to a little idealism and a little magic when it returns to the silver screen.

Mostly, I hope the new movies will give me a reason to be a "Star Wars" fan again.
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Brave New "Utopia"

The similarities between the six-episode British thriller "Utopia" and the graphic novel "Watchmen" are numerous. Both involve massive conspiracies with powerful people behind the scenes trying to manipulate global events. Both involve a lot of graphic violence, so even though comic book imagery and several child characters are involved, they are absolutely not meant for the kids. And then there are the visuals, full of bright primary colors, with a special emphasis on bright yellow. "Watchmen," of course, had an expensive theatrical adaptation that pushed the boundaries regarding violence and sexuality in superhero films. "Utopia" does not have superheroes, but it accomplishes similar goals. And it's a hell of a lot better.

"Utopia" revolves around a graphic novel of the same name, which is the subject of all kinds of wild theories about it possibly predicting the future or being based on real, covered-up events. The manuscript for an unpublished second volume falls into the hands of a fan named Bejan (Mark Stobbart), who intends to share it with fellow regulars from a "Utopia" website, post-grad student Becky (Alexandra Roach), directionless IT worker Ian (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), survivalist hacker Wilson Wilson (Adeel Akhtar), and Grant (Oliver Woollford), who has been passing himself off as a stock trader, but is actually an eleven year-old boy. However, a pair of remorseless killers, Arby (Neil Maskell) and Lee (Paul Ready), from a secret organization called The Network, are also looking for the manuscript. In the opening scene of the first episode, we watch them murder everyone in a comic book shop for information on its whereabouts. Finally, there's Michael Dugdale (Paul Higgins), a hapless civil servant that The Network is blackmailing to do some very, very bad things.

What immediately catches your attention about "Utopia" is how good it looks. The cinematography is gorgeous, and creates this wonderful feeling of artificiality and unease. Nearly every frame conveys the sense that there is something not quite right about this version of the UK, which is beautiful and brightly colored, but seems to be nearing the tipping point of something terrible. And at this point, I should warn again that this is a very violent program. People are killed cruelly and graphically, in significant numbers, and there's a squirm-inducing torture scene in the first episode. Horrible things are regularly threatened with an ease and nonchalance that is genuinely shocking. However, there's a certain honesty to the portrayal of violence here. It's all real-world horrors, not played up for the audience's visceral pleasure, always portrayed negatively, and always, always with terrible consequences. No slow-mo and no silly CGI blood spatter. Take that, Zack Snyder!

Okay, I'm being unfair, but I couldn't help thinking that a more stripped down style and a limited television series format like this would have suited Watchman" so much better. "Utopia" has the length to acquaint us with its large cast and set up a big, epic story. However, it still moves fast enough to resolve everything within six hours, and nearly every mystery or new development that is introduced in one episode is dealt with or at least expanded on in the next episode. So there's a mystery woman named Jessica Hyde (Fiona O'Shaughnessy) that the two killers are looking for? We meet her by the end of the first episode, learn her backstory in the second and third, and by the sixth her whole story arc pays off with a bang. And the big conspiracy that most television shows would drag out for multiple seasons? We get the big reveal in episode five, and it's a doozy. For those of you who love puzzle and mystery shows, "Utopia" is one of the most satisfying I've ever seen.

With the recent leaps that television has been making in quality and willingness to push boundaries, in many ways it's surpassing film as the best medium for comic book adaptations. "Utopia" wasn't based off of a real comic property, but it certainly understands their conventions, and tells a story similar to what we might expect from Grant Morrison or Alan Moore. Though "Utopia" has science-fiction elements, it's the social commentary that stands out. The show has subtle and not-so subtle messages about media manipulation, racial tensions, environmental crises, sources of global unrest, and the cost of doing the right thing. Of course, the story is fantastic and impossible, but it's built on an awful lot of real-world issues that people don't like to talk about. And that's what helps it to strike such a nerve.

Yet again, it's British television that is the source of one of the most exciting pieces of genre work I've seen in a long time. However, in this case I'm not surprised that "Utopia" hasn't reached the States yet, and probably won't for a long time. It's highly provocative stuff that really pushes a lot of buttons, and has the kind of content that many people can't handle. But if you think you can, I highly recommend seeking it out. There's been nothing else quite like it – at least, outside of the comics.
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New Disney Movies Based on the Old Disney Movies

Yesterday Disney announced that they are pursuing development of a live action "Beauty and the Beast," to go along with "Alice in Wonderland," "Mirror, Mirror," and the upcoming "Maleficent" and "Cinderella." The fairy tale trend may be on its last legs in the rest of Hollywood, but Disney being Disney, they've found some success with it. The huge opening for "Oz the Great and Powerful" shows that the classics can still be lucrative if handled properly. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Disney has been going through its back catalog of animated properties looking for more children's stories to reinvent, and not just to keep feeding the storylines on "Once Upon a Time."

So what's next in the pipeline? There are some interesting possibilities. Disney already went through a similar phase in the 90s that netted us live action "The Jungle Book" and "101 Dalmatians" movies. I think "Tangled" and "The Princess and the Frog" are probably too recent, and most of the ones with animal stars like "The Rescuers," "Dumbo," and "Lady and the Tramp" would be too difficult to translate. I've made a list of some possible remaining candidates below.

"Pinocchio" - Remember that cheery "Geppetto" TV movie musical that Disney made back in 2000 with Drew Carey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus? How about the Italian version with Roberto Benigni? No? We're seriously overdue for a new version of "Pinocchio," one that takes the character back to his darker roots. Guillermo Del Toro and the Jim Henson company were working on a stop-motion version which seems to be in limbo at the moment. If that one doesn't pan out, Disney might want to consider going the live action route and seeing if they can find a good angle on reinterpreting what is arguably the best animated film they ever made.

"The Little Mermaid" - There are a lot of technical challenges that would come with this one, which is why "The Little Mermaid" hasn't been adapted as often as most of the other stories on this list. Movies involving water tend to get very expensive in a hurry. However, considering how far CGI has advanced, I think a new live action adaptation is very possible and has lots of potential. Think about how gorgeous those ocean scenes were in "Life of Pi." Also, keep in mind that Disney already produced a perfectly charming mermaid movie back in the 80s with only old fashioned special effects - Ron Howard's "Splash."

"Aladdin" - The biggest problem with doing a live action "Aladdin" is Disney's own discouraging failure at adapting the similarly themed "Prince of Persia" franchise a few years ago. Add likely issues with cultural appropriation, Orientalism, and stereotyping on top of that, and "Aladdin" starts to look like a potential minefield. However, the "Arabian Nights" stories have remained very popular, and everyone knows the "Aladdin" story. If Disney can get a big headliner to play the Genie of the Lamp, and make some genuine attempts at cultural sensitivity, I think the magic carpets and caves of wonder should do the rest.

"The Sword in the Stone" - There have been quite a few attempts at tackling the King Arthur legends recently, but I'm surprised that nobody has thought to take another shot at adapting "The Sword in the Stone," the first volume of T.H. White's "The Once and Future King." Disney made a fun, if significantly edited animated version in 1963, with young Arthur being tutored by a scatterbrained Merlin. With its lighter comedic tone, lots of transformations, talking animals, and the iconic magicians' duel, the original may not have been meant for children, but it's got all the earmarks of good material for a family flick.

"Peter Pan" - Disney has been getting a lot of mileage out of its "Tinkerbell" series, and there are plans for a live action version in the works. If that goes well, it could lead into a new adaptation of "Peter Pan." It's been a decade since the last major adaptation, P.J. Hogan's sorely underseen 2003 version, so I think we're due for another one. There are several "Peter Pan" related projects in various stages of development around Hollywood right now, including a darker revisionist one and an origin story for Peter and the Lost Boys. I can't think of any reason why Disney shouldn't look into revisiting Neverland too.

"The Black Cauldron" - By far the most obscure feature on this list, but I figure that now that Disney's managed to revitalize the Oz franchise, maybe they'll think about trying the Prydain Chronicles again too. Lloyd Alexander's five-book fantasy series was the source material for the disastrous 1985 animated feature. It was too dark and scary for that era, much like the "Return to Oz" movie that came out the same year. However, the darker sword and sorcery storyline and the zombies might work better now, especially in a live-action film that won't be mistaken as being a typical Disney cartoon, and just for kids.
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Regarding "Psychopaths"

"Seven Psychopaths" looks so good on paper. A struggling screenwriter named Marty (Colin Farrell), is trying to write a screenplay based only on a title, "Seven Psychopaths." However, he's distracted by the schemes of his pal Billy (Sam Rockwell), who kidnaps dogs to return them for the reward money. Billy's partner in dognapping is Hans (Christopher Walken), whose wife Myra (Linda Bright Clay) is in the hospital for cancer treatments. One day Billy and Hans grab the wrong dog, a little Shih Tzu named Bonny who belongs to the gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson). Other characters in the mix include a mysterious "Jack of Diamonds" killer who targets members of organized crime, Costello's lovely girlfriend Angela (Olga Kurylenko), a gentleman named Zachariah (Tom Waits), who used to be one half of a Bonnie-and-Clyde serial killer team, and a Vietnamese soldier (Long Nguyen) out for revenge.

"Psychopaths" is the brain child of Irish writer and director Martin McDonagh, who was also responsible for "In Bruges." I’ve been a fan of his for a long time, and I can see what he was going for here. This is a dark, dark satire of the action movie genre with a lot of self-referential, self-critical meta humor, that also takes a genuine stab at addressing several different forms and expressions and treatments of violence. McDonagh's script is frequently clever, has a wonderful puzzle-box structure, and is occasionally very touching. However, it's also wildly inconsistent, has too much going on, and it's hard to feel any sympathy for a pair of lead characters who spend so much time psychoanalyzing themselves through their screenplay, but feel like hastily thrown-together constructs, made of convenient tropes. I had a lot of trouble with Sam Rockwell's Billy, whose arc goes through a bunch of twisted convolutions that just didn't hold together. I could buy a lot of the wild coincidences and moments of action movie logic that the story depends on, but the twists involving Billy weren't properly set up and come off as pretty contrived.

Then again, you could argue that this is the point. "Seven Psychopath" presents itself as a deliberate critique on all the common fallacies of action movies, from the over-the-top badass combatants to the awful female characters (Abbie Cornish briefly appears as Marty's girlfriend) to increasingly outlandish confrontations. McDonagh doesn't push too far, saving the most ridiculous final standoff scenario for a proposed ending to the screenplay that Billy breathlessly describes to Marty with lots of kablooey sound effects. Then again, maybe the movie would have worked a bit better if he had. "Seven Psychopath" never gets as deliriously dark and biting as it could, because McDonagh does want you to care about the characters to some extent, and to consider his take on screen violence with some seriousness. He takes great pains to make sure that some of the deaths have real emotional impact, and shows that the act of killing can have unforeseen consequences. He also presents some thoughtful examples of positive violence to contrast with the usual senseless, negative variety. Some of this works to great effect. Some of it doesn't.

The film is at its best when taken scene by scene, piece by piece. There are some great performances here, particularly from Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken, who gets one of the few really multilayered, memorable parts. Here is an oddball elderly man who has had a rough past, but dearly loves his ailing wife and has had time to reflect on the nature of his misdeeds. His attitude toward violence is the most informed one, and Walken is wonderful in the role, walking that thin line between kookiness and enlightenment. Harrelson's emotional mobster is broader, but he summons such wonderful humor and menace. Some of the film's best scenes involve his tense face-offs with other characters. Then there's Tom Waits, who shows up with a rabbit in his arms and a story to tell. He doesn't seem to be operating quite in the same universe as anyone else, but he makes such an impression that I wished we could have been watching a movie set in whatever universe his character was inhabiting.

There is a lot to get out of "Seven Psychopaths." Too much, maybe. Ultimately, I think McDonagh bit off a little more than he could chew. The ideas all have a lot of potential, but the execution needs work. There were tonal shifts and big reveals and stories within stories that I could see being very effective if they were handled right. McDonagh's not quite at the level to make something this complicated work the way he wants it to. There were a couple of big moments that fell completely flat for me, and a couple of obvious bits of symbolism and character parallels that didn't add up to much of anything. I really enjoy McDonagh as a writer, but his screenplays have been very hit-or-miss so far. And as a director, I think he needs to work a little harder.
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My Most Anticipated Films of 2013, Part II

A quick note before we start that many of these films don't have release dates yet and are included here because they are expected to debut before the end of the year. There's a good possibility that some of them won't be completed or land distribution deals in time, particularly the foreign ones. "Gravity," for instance, was on last year's list too.

"Upstream Color" - Premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival and is getting a limited release in a few weeks. Director Shane Carruth has finally delivered a new film after the success of "Primer" nearly ten years ago, after a different planned follow-up project fell through. The early reactions I've read suggest this is going to be a very polarizing one, an ambitious genre film full of wild concepts with an unconventional narrative, that will leave many audience members confused and frustrated. However, I love movies like this, so I can't wait.

"Gravity" - Here we go again. Alfonso Cuaron's long delayed, much anticipated science fiction film about a female astronaut, played by Sandra Bullock, stranded in outer space, is slated for an October release date. After test screenings were held for an unfinished print last year, the word is that this is going to be challenging and visually gorgeous and well worth the wait. Frankly at this point I'll be more than satisfied if Warners can refrain from moving the release date back again. Can you believe it's been seven years since Cuaron's last film?

"Captain Phillips" - Formerly known as "Maersk Alabama," the film will dramatize the 2009 hijacking of a cargo ship by Somali pirates. Tom Hanks will be playing the title role and Paul Greengrass, best known for "United 93" and the "Bourne" movies is directing. Along with screenwriter Billy Ray, that's an interesting combination of talent that could elevate the film above the level of your usual bio-pic, and makes it a considerably more attractive prospect than Hanks' other big film this year, "Saving Mr. Banks," where he'll be playing Walt Disney.

"Snowpiercer" - Bong Joon-Ho's multicultural post-apocalyptic adventure story about a new society that has formed aboard an ever-running train, will be his English-language debut. It's got quite a cast attached, including Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris. "Snowpiercer" is currently in post-production and expected to premiere in South Korea sometime later this year, but the Weinsteins are handling distribution domestic, so who knows when American audiences will be able to get a look at it.

"Mood Indigo" - Michel Gondry's last film, "The We and the I," is finally getting a limited release in the U.S. next week, but the buzz is already going strong for his next one. The French language "Mood Indigo," based on the Boris Vian's surrealist fantasy novel "Froth on the Daydream," will star Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris as young lovers. The trailer features the whimsical fantasy visuals that Gondry is best known for, including a cartoony cloud car, and multiple scenes where the characters are floating or flying. Even if it's a mess, it'll be gorgeous.

"Fruitvale" - The big winner at Sundance this year follows the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, an Oakland resident whose shooting death in 2009 by transit police sparked massive public outcry. The buzz is that "Fruitvale," named after the BART station where Grant was killed, could follow a similar trajectory of critical acclaim and financial success as "Beasts of the Southern Wild." However, my interest is mainly as a Bay Area resident, who used to ride the BART trains every day, and happened to be living in Oakland at the time these events took place.

"Labor Day" - Jason Reitman has directed four films so far, which can all be categorized as dark comedies or satires to some degree. His next one is going to be "Labor Day," starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. From the descriptions online I initially thought that this was going to be a crime thriller, and maybe it will be to some degree. However, further digging revealed that this is gong to be a small scale interpersonal drama, a little darker than the usual material Reitman works with, but not entirely a departure from his usual style and genre.

"Foxcatcher" - Steve Carrell has done dramatic roles before, but nothing quite like what he's going to attempt in Bennett Miller's "Foxcatcher." The film will be a dramatization of a bizarre crime, where multimillionaire John duPont, played by Carrell, shot and killed a longtime friend in his driveway in full view of witnesses. There aren't many more details yet, but Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum will also star. I also want to note that "Foxcatcher," along with the next entry on the list, were both financed by the increasingly vital Annapurna Pictures.

"Her" - Here's one that's been flying very far under the radar so far, but Spike Jonze's new film has an irresistible premise to a science-fiction geek. A romance between a lonely man and a sophisticated new operating system? Where Joaquin Phoenix is playing the lead? And Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, and Samantha Morton are also in the cast? I'm in. Spike Jonze will be scripting this one solo as well as directing, which is going to be a first for him. He co-wrote "Where the Wild Things Are," though, which I adored, so I have plenty of faith in him.

"12 Years A Slave" - Last, but not least, we have Steve McQueen's upcoming film based on the autobiography of Solomon Northup, who was born a free black man in New York, but kidnapped during a business trip and sold into slavery in the South in 1841. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who we haven't been seeing nearly enough of, has the lead role. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this ends up overshadowing more typical Oscar bait like Lee Daniels' "The Butler" next awards season. And it should provide an interesting contrast to "Django Unchained."
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My Most Anticipated Films of 2013, Part I

I went back and forth about whether or not to write these posts this year, but I figured that they do have some value, the same way that my "Least Anticipated" lists do. I like going back at the end of the year and seeing what met expectations and what didn't. And it's always good to take a good, hard look at where my movie-watching priorities are, and what's going into the decision making process when picking and choosing among new titles. The big question I suppose you're asking right now is, why wait until the beginning of March? Why didn't you write these lists two months ago when everyone else did? Well, because January and February are crap for new releases. Sure, I'll probably rent "Warm Bodies" and "Side Effects," but these aren't priorities. Also, the full year's release schedule still isn't close to being finalized - there was another round of date swapping just yesterday, but now everything through the summer is pretty much set, and it's after Sundance, so at least we've got a better picture of what's coming down the pipe.

I'm going to split these up into two posts, one for the big mainstream blockbusters, and one for the more highbrow pictures. Ten entries apiece. Here we go!

"Iron Man 3" and "Star Trek Into Darkness" - So much of my anticipation for these two sequels is pure hype and I know it. "Iron Man 2" was a disappointment, and there's no guarantee that "Iron Man 3" won't be more of the same. However, Shane Black is directing this time and he's got an awfully good track record, going all the way back to "Lethal Weapon." As for the new "Star Trek," there is the distinct possibility that the baddie that Benedict Cumberbatch is playing is actually Khan. Do I really need any other reason to be excited?

"Man of Steel" - I'm rooting for DC to finally get a Superman reboot right. They've got a lot of factors on their side, but a lot of others against them too. Their biggest liability is director Zack Snyder, whose films have been on a definite downward trajectory as of late. However, the cast looks solid, Christopher Nolan is heavily involved, and the trailers suggest that the filmmakers have a good angle on the origin story. The performance of "Man of Steel" is going to decide the fate of "Justice League," so this is a big one, one way or another.

"This is the End" and "The World's End" - The idea of spoofing the apocalypse appeals to me a lot after so many years of self-serious doom and gloom disaster epics. This year we're getting them in two different flavors. First, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, and their cohorts will be playing themselves getting into celebrity-cameo-studded hijinks during the end times in Los Angeles. Then in the fall, Edgar Wright will reteam with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost for "The World's End," described as a pub crawl that coincides with a global apocalypse.

"Pacific Rim" - Guillermo Del Toro's back! And he's brought what looks an awful lot like a Japanese kaiju monster movie with him, involving giant mecha suits. Visions of "Godzilla" and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" are dancing through my head after that teaser trailer. There are a lot of potentially interesting science fiction coming out this year, and I'm hoping that this one in particular will do well enough to raise some interest in other thematically related projects. And that it'll give Del Toro enough clout to finally make the projects he actually wants to make.

"Elysium" - Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to "District 9" will star Matt Damon and Jodie Foster in a science-fiction story we don't know very many details about, and hopefully it will stay that way. The preview images that have been released so far suggest another gritty, dystopian world and more pointed social commentary, but beyond that it's hard to say. I've also skimmed a plot synopsis that makes it sound a bit like "Battle Angel Alita," and if that turns out to be true then James Cameron has only himself to blame for dragging his feet on that project.

"Ender's Game" - Another possible disaster in the making. The novel is one of those science-fiction holy cows that was on every nerd's wish list to be turned into a feature film for several decades, and the potential for dashed hopes and major disappointment is considerable. There's already been some griping about how the child soldiers, lead by Asa Butterfield and Hailee Steinfeld, have been aged up significantly to lessen the shock of the combat. However, "Ender's Game" tells one hell of a story, and maybe - just maybe - they'll actually get it right.

"Frozen" - It's not shaping up to be a very good year for animated films, and the current slate is mostly dominated by spinoffs and sequels (I'm looking at you, PIXAR). The one feature I'm interested in is "Frozen," Disney's "Snow Queen" project that has been in development for decades. They're going to be following the template of "Tangled" and from what I've seen of the marketing materials so far, "Frozen" is going to be a major departure from the original fairy tale. That doesn't mean it can't still be a lot of fun, though, if all those changes work out.

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" - Oh yes. I may not have been thrilled with how "An Unexpected Journey" turned out, but I have been waiting to see the dragon Smaug on the big screen for as long as I can remember, as least as far back as when the original "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was in production and Peter Jackson first teased the possibility of doing a "Hobbit" movie. Also, most of the big action set pieces of "The Hobbit" will take place in "Desolation," which hopefully means less of the padding and the call-backs that made "Journey" such a slog.
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The Next Movies Becoming TV Shows

It's pilot season in Hollywood, and we're about to get a new crop of television shows based on movies. This is a trend that has been around for decades, and has yielded plenty of classics. Some movie premises worked better as television shows, like "MASH" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." So I'm going to take a look at five of the movie-based series, currently in development, that may be coming soon to a small screen near you. I'm leaving out "Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D.," which is really a spin-off of the Marvel films, and will only be featuring one or two of the minor characters, existing very much on the sidelines of the ongoing movie franchise.

"Beverly Hills Cop" (CBS) - The 80s action comedy series is becoming an hour-long police procedural. Brandon T. Jackson of "Tropic Thunder" fame will star as Axel Foley's son Aaron, a young police officer following his dad's footsteps. "The Shield" creator Shawn Ryan is on board as producer, and Barry Sonnenfeld is directing the pilot. No word yet on whether Axel himself will be stopping by the Beverley Hills Police Department to check up on his son. Interviews suggest that the tone of the show will stay light, but it won't be an out-and-out comedy. The original film series was heavily dependent on the charisma of Eddie Murphy, and new version without him might not work. However, between 80s nostalgia and the public's love of police procedurals, I can certainly see why the studios decided that a reboot deserved a shot.

"Bad Teacher" (CBS) - Remember the 2011 summer comedy starring Cameron Diaz? It did all right at the box office, but not well enough that anyone is clamoring for a sequel. However, CBS thought the premise has potential as a half-hour comedy, and is in the process of transmogrifying it into sitcom form. Ari Graynor will replace Cameron Diaz, and the new cast also includes David Alan Grier and Ryan Hansen. The raunch and the foul language of the movie is going to have to be toned way, way down for television audiences, to the point where I doubt the series will bear much resemblance to the film. Still, the concept of an immature, irresponsible female teacher looking for love should have plenty of legs. Television is generally friendlier to female-led comedies than the movies are, so the TV "Bad Teacher" may actually have a better shot there.

"About A Boy" (NBC) - A decade ago, "About a Boy" was a decent sized hit, but I have no idea what prompted writer-executive producer Jason Katims to decide that now was the time to revisit the property and convert it into half-hour sitcom form. Still, this is the guy who resurrected "Friday Night Lights" and "Parenthood" as critically acclaimed television series, so I'm not inclined to question his instincts. FOX actually tried to turn "About a Boy" into a series way back in 2003 with a different creative team, but nothing came of it. This time, they’ve gotten as far as a pilot directed by John Favreau. No word on casting yet, but considering the scarcity of Hugh Grant over the past few years, and the rate that major movie stars have been doing television projects, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that he’d consider returning to the role.

"The Joneses" (Bravo) - This David Duchovny and Demi Moore indie was released in theaters in 2010, but hardly anyone saw it. That's a shame, because the idea at its core was a fascinating one. The main characters are employees of an advertising agency who are hired to live together as a fake family, push products to their neighbors, and encourage them to keep up with the Joneses (Get it?). Bravo has ordered a pilot as part of its first foray into scripted programming, after ABC took a shot at development. Considering how the movie ended, the television series will likely be a total reboot. Since so few people saw the original "Joneses," it should escape being called a retread. However, I'm not sure about Bravo's claim that it will speak "to the Bravo brand of great aspirational female-driven upscale worlds.” My irony alarm is going off.

"Zombieland" (Amazon) - And finally, Amazon is hot to catch up with Netflix in the production of its own content. It has ordered a half-hour comedy pilot based on 2009's "Zombieland." A sequel never quite came together though there was a lot of interest in one, and the possibility of a television adaptation has been lobbed around Hollywood for a while. Amazon finally took the initiative. The film's original writers have scripted the pilot, and three of the four leads have been recast so far. The zombie craze is still going strong this year, so I expect this one to have a high chance of success. On the other hand, Amazon's distribution system isn't quite where Netflix's is at the moment, and I'm not sure if they have the subscriber base to support a show like this. There are a lot of different factors that could affect this one, so stay tuned.

Happy watching!
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