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Most notably the final shot of the movie, Luke’s X-Wing approaching Cloud City and a completely new background for Hoth when Luke decides to leave.

Star Wars Episode V: Revisited will come out soon as the trailer promises.
I hope it does

The adaption of Stephen King’s Magnum Opus The Dark Tower might be in a little trouble according to Variety:

Sources tell Variety that in the past few days, the project, based on Stephen King’s sweeping seven-book-and-counting series, has run into budgetary complications that have caused Universal execs to rethink original plans. Insiders expect U brass to meet in coming days to decide whether to put the project into turnaround, whereby producer Imagine Entertainment could shop it to another studio, either to partner with Universal or take over entirely.

[...] With a project of this size and scope, it wouldn’t be unusual for any studio to weigh its risk-sharing options — or pulling out — at this stage of development. And “Dark Tower” isn’t the only major project that Universal has recently reconsidered. “At the Mountains of Madness,” which had Guillermo del Toro set to direct and Tom Cruise circling to star, was scrapped on the brink of lensing after U calculated that it would struggle to make money with its $150 million budget and R rating.

The mention of the recently cancelled H.P. Lovecraft adaption reminds me how easy awesome projects like Mountains of Madness can get tossed aside no matter how creatively intersting they might become. Seeing that the project Dark Tower as laid out by Ron Howard is wildly ambitious it is not very surprising that problems like this might occure – I just hope they prevail and that events like this will be told similar to the success stories of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Avatar (very troubled production, so ambitious, almost cancelled but prevailed in the end).

Well there will be water if god wills it…

]]> http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/trouble-along-the-beam/feed/ 0 flipthetruck Go then! http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/the-dark-knight-rises-has-started-shooting/ http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/the-dark-knight-rises-has-started-shooting/#comments Fri, 06 May 2011 12:20:46 +0000 flipthetruck http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/?p=1116 Continue reading →]]>

Wow, damn… so we are now really entering the phase where the news become real news and not some speculations about “Robin’s hideout”, “CGI-Joker” and stuff like that. The shooting starts in India for May 6th and 7th with actor Christian Bale.

They will film in Jodhpur and use the Mehrangarh Fort as a background – I am very curious what this will turn into…

Let’s hope the movie can pull a Thor and profit from our low expectations.

Trailer in 1080p
Wondercon 4 minute footage in 1080p

Ok, that’s it…
Those are not the droids you’re looking for!
Move along!

So much for empty promises!

The story of the Dark Tower is finished and for a time I thought Stephen King would only revisit the world of his gunslinger via other books*, most notably the third installment in the collaboration with Peter Straub that started with The Talisman.
But apparently his mind has returned to Mid-World. There were hints when a poll appeared if the next Stephen King novel should be a sequel to the Shinning or a novel set in Mid-World.

Well… it is not just set in Mid-World:

In 2012 Old long tall and ugly will return in the novel The Wind through the Keyhole – official announcement here.

The novel will be set between Dark Tower IV and V since in the fifth part there is an obvious timegap signalling the second big story-segment – also narratively the tone shifts since V, V and VII were written in one massive etappe contrary to the previous books that were finished and released without the sequels being planned out.
Many fans hate that about the last three books, but the reason was clearly that after King’s almost fatal accident he did not want to die and leave the story untold so he went to finish his life-work after escaping death so very closely.

That being said I am of course thrilled to return to the Ka-tet of Roland and find out what they did. King writes himself:

It won’t tell you much that’s new about Roland and his friends, but there’s a lot none of us knew about Mid-World, both past and present. The novel is shorter than DT 2-7, but quite a bit longer than the first volume—call this one DT-4.5. It’s not going to change anybody’s life, but God, I had fun.

I hope we will have fun too!

__________________________
* For those who don’t know: The Dark Tower is a construct that in the story connects time and space in all it’s incarnations. This is true not only for the seven books but for all of Stephen King’s books: they are just “other worlds than these” all held together by The Dark Tower. So whenever you grab a Stephen King book you will find traces of Roland’s journey as well as themes that stem from or towards the Dark Tower series.

Apparantly there is more of this on the DVD/Blu Ray/Monster 5-Disc-identitiy-disc-set which I think makes for a nice addition to round the package.

The message “Flynn lives” stems from the viral marketing game of the same name. I only read a few things about the marketing, but searching for the teaser above I found this very nice video that sums up how much happened to promote this movie in a viral way:

I haven’t found time to complete a full Tron Legacy review since I like this movie, but it is very flawed, so for the time being here’s (a little late) the moviequation for Tron: Legacy

]]> http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/tron-3-viral-teaser/feed/ 0 flipthetruck A lot of sums! http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/the-avengers-getting-rewrites-after-script-got-stolen/ http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/04/30/the-avengers-getting-rewrites-after-script-got-stolen/#comments Sat, 30 Apr 2011 19:02:09 +0000 flipthetruck http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/?p=1077 Continue reading →]]> After a script for 2012′s Avengers (directed by Joss Whedon) belonging to Samuel L. Jackson got stolen the production for Avengers might be put on halt for a rewrite of the stolen pages – let’s just hope this rewrite is not too drastic/forced/obvious.

The Avengers will unite Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo after the studio had some conflicts with Edward Norton), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Captain America (Chris Evans) in a giant project started in 2008′s Iron Man that either pays off or turns into one of the biggest advertising stunts ever.

Fanposter shamelessly stolen from here.

How do you sell a movie about Gods?

That was the tricky question Marvel had to answer when kicking off the summer season with Thor – a movie where the trailers have not managed to get me excited to watch this movie and seeing that posters looked a bit too campy as well my expectations for Thor were pretty low.

Maybe because of that I must say that Thor is a thoroughly entertaining summer blockbuster. It starts of with the typical “random thing happening” at the beginning before we jump into a long flashback to see where this man who has appeared out of nowhere infront of Natalie Portman has come from.

Shooting across the dimensions
What follows is an introduction of Asgard, the realm of the beings that we perceive as Gods. Odin tells the story of the great war between the people of Asgard and the Frost Giants from another realm. The story wisely avoids to paint the picture of the Asgardians as gods – they really are more like beings from a different dimension with superpowers instead of all-knowing indestructible deities. Especially at the beginning when Thor kicks off a quest with his brother Loki and his four interchangeable extra-friends the characters feel more like something from Lord of the Rings, sure they are overpowered, but that is kind of necessary if you are traveling across dimensions to kick some Frost-ass.

The beginning of Thor is it’s strongest part and it is kind of strange in a movie about Norse gods swinging their hammer and traveling through space time by the means of a black guardian in golden armor sticking a sword into a chamber that all those things work perfectly and the problems the movie has start when Thor gets to earth.

I remember reading a script review of Thor a long time ago where the reviewer mentioned that the entire movie was set in Asgard and only at the end there was a little action on earth. Seeing as how much better the Asgard sequences are I can’t shake this feeling that the entire subplot with Thor landing on earth was a big revision to have some “grounded in reality” footage plus some SHIELD cameos.

We’re here to talk about the Avengers Initiative
But don’t worry about SHIELD. Compared to Iron Man 2 Thor stands on his own two feet and the advertisement for the Avengers is not nearly as hamfisted as Iron Man 2′s 2 hour commercial. Shield is only there to secure the hammer of Thor (as seen in Iron Man 2′s ending) to give Thor more trouble. In a way this time SHIELD really works since normally you would just have random FBI suits guarding the hammer for state security, but with the fact that we already know SHIELD they seem a little less like the usual “we are the evil government and just block the road for the hero”-guys.

Of course there is the cameo of Jeremy Renner who will re-appear in The Avengers but again, this is not like Scarlett Johansson constantly reminding us of the Avengers. Renner is there for a few moments, playing the tough guy hired by SHIELD and even if you don’t know that there will be a film with him he works as said hired tough guy without distracting from the story (maybe aside from the fact the he chooses a bow over a sniper).

The obligatory romance
Thor has to learn to be humble because of his arrogant nature and the movie gives him about 2-3 days to change 800 years of being a self-loving douchebag. On top of that is the forced romance with Natalie Portman’s character Jane an astrophysicist who doesn’t do much except fall for Thor because of plot contrivances. It is during that segment that Thor starts losing steam and stops being risky. One must applaud the entire creative team for taking this movie seriously because frankly this could have gone wrong so easily and it is astounding how entertaining Thor turned out to be.

The problem is that during the earth parts the movie gets content with just going along the usual superhero routine. You have the romance angle, the self-doubting period and of course the generic “dramatic scene” plus slow-motion dramatic running. The tension is not really there because while the character of Thor is charming and funny (cudos to Chris Hemsworth for a really good performance) the threats never seem lethal.

Writing this review I was not sure if or when to use spoiler tags since most of the scenes are either already in the trailer or anyone can guess the general direction the film is going (and probably also the deusexmachina relieves all the tension of a scene within seconds).

But thankfully there is a little Asgard action to round the movie and it is actually not that shabby (albeit again very predictable).

A tale of two brothers
Basically this movie has two characters that are interesting: Thor and Loki. As I said before Hemsworth really delivers a great Thor performance and is bound to become for Thor what Christopher Reeve and Robert Downey Jr. became for Superman and Iron Man.

He is likeable, funny, has the gravitas required to become the god of thunder and the comedic scenes where he acts like a god when he is on earth are the thing that saves the earth part from becoming too boring.

Loki played by Tom Hiddleston is the movie’s hidden gem, offering a well acted role plus a interesting character. Hiddleston plays Loki the Trickster in a very sincere, serious way so the movie succeeds in having a villain that is not just a standard “I want to kill everyone”-bad guy like we had in both Iron Man movies or The Incredible Hulk.

The rest of the characters fall flatter than flat, Thor’s four sidekicks are distinguishable only by their costumes and gender and when the movie adds three more characters to accompany Thor on earth the audience is left with seven (7!) characters that are just there for the sake of being there.

The movie would have profited a lot if they scrapped the part about earth and just fleshed out the brother conflict, which is at the heart of the movie.

The great war against the Frost Giants
Speaking of conflicts I did not like the conflict that sets the movie in motion: an ancient battle between Frost Giants and the inhabitants of Asgard. The problem for me was that the conflict never felt in any way like an emotional conflict and more like a fantasy conflict for the sake of having epic battle scenes.

Fantasy conflicts only work well when they reflect our fears and internal conflicts. The battle is more a visualization of this fear. This can be the devastating result of technology and the pollution of our quiet home (The Lord of the Rings), it can be the defiance of a dictatorial force built on slavery and oppression (Star Wars). Even if the conflict is very one-dimensional at the beginning it can be used as a stepping stone to further reflect on the themes, my favorite example for this would be Hellboy II, which starts with a conflict very similar to the faceless “two armies battle” that we have at the beginning of Thor. However Hellboy II twists the story since it makes humanity the villain that destroys beauty (more or less turning our society into a modern day Mordor) and lets Hellboy reflects on the merits of human life despite its shortcomings.

With those examples I feel like a broken record to repeat that the Frost Giant conflict is just that – a conflict. Without genuine emotion. It is never clear why it can’t have a peaceful solution. They use the Frost Giants for an interesting story between Thor and Loki and especially Loki profits from the Giants, but the fact remains that the Giants themselves are very cardboard cutout and could be replaced with any other race from any other fantasy game.

That being said: the realm of the Giants is spectacular, the voices and make up is great, there is a super fantasy vibe when watching the scenes – it is just a pity that it just feels like a set to have Thor fight instead of a living breathing world.

Generally the art direction is very interesting, the exotic world of Asgard is very nice to look at, the costumes work way better when watching the film in context than watching individual character posters. Especially Heimdall, who just looked stupid on the posters in my eyes looks great in this world.

But like the conflict with Thor and Loki the movie would have immensely profited from scrapping the earth part, giving the Frost Giants more character and fleshing out the story for maximum emotional pay-off.

Thor and the Avengers
I have never been a fan of the Avengers and Thor again reminds me why: the movie while standing solidly on two feet cannot shake this feeling that they held back because they knew Thor would return. Having all storylines culminate into one movie might get fans very excited, but I think it cheapens the emotional impact of the individual movies since we know they have to survive because they will reappear.

Naturally one could make that case about every superhero movie since the hero never dies, but with Thor I could never shake this “next time on Thor” feeling.

Without spoiling any plot points: there is a big sacrifice at the end of the movie which would have been very heroic, but the fact that we know that the story will continue somehow makes this sacrifice have less impact than it should have.

I hope that when we finally get this Avengers movie that superhero movies can thrive again and experiment. Not having to adhere to other movies, following their own distinct story and interpretation, not being bound by having to have that and that character survive because he is needed in another movies.

People might hate on Burton for killing the Joker, but at least it was the end of this story. There was nothing held back. Burton made a creative choice to make the story he told come to an end and not rely on a sequel. The same way many fans begrudge Nolan for killing of Two Face at the end of The Dark Knight – they might not like it, but the death makes sense and concluded the story. The movie did not have a scene at the end with Two Face appearing promising us another part with him in a cheap cliffhanger.

That little rant aside – Thor deals with the Avengers set up, the story arc of the hero and the villain way better than The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2, it is definitely worth its money but I doubt it will convert people who are already prejudiced against comic book movies.

But if you like those kind of movies and were not sure if Thor would be any good, just watch it and have a fun time!

]]> http://flipthetruck.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/thor/feed/ 5 flipthetruck He has a rotating hammer! More of that less earth stuff! EEEEVIL! Trust me it looks really cool on screen No kidding he has a rotating hammer!