CW's "FLASH" Looks Like The Flash And Nothing Makes Sense Anymore

It's been so long since we've seen a visual or story-element "reveal" for a Warner Bros-backed DC Comics adaptation that was depressing, awful or just too headscratching to really contemplate that this headshot from the "ARROW" spinoff actually has me taken aback quite a bit:

I mean... if I wanted to I guess I could speculate as to why it's just the headpiece - does the rest of it look like crap? Will they not do the chest-insignia? - but for now... huh. Not bad. If WB was keeping some kind of functional connectivity between these TV projects and the movies I'd want to speculate about whether this is an indicator for the next bat-suit, but they aren't so for now... hey, cool. They got his head right.

Escape to The Movies: "SON OF GOD"

Holy crap.

ALSO: Oscar handicapping.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Son of God

"PERSECUTED" Trailer Isn't; But Probably Deserves To Be...

You'll hear from me in detail on "SON OF GOD" later today, but until then here's the new trailer for "PERSECUTED" - the Christianity versus (Modern) America B-movie starring a very, very tired-looking James Remar as a preacher that The Gub'mint is trying to frame and/or kill because he's resisting a bill that would require religious broadcasters to present all faith's points of view instead of their own singular but which is actually being pushed as a backdoor method of crushing Team Jesus in particular. The point of reference is likely the old FCC Fairness Doctrine rules for editorial-journalism, the repeal of which under the Reagan Administration cleared the way for the right-wing talk radio explosion in the mid-80s:




I'll admit a peculiar "fetish" for this particular brand of fundie paranoia, which also gave us "THE LAST EAGLE SCOUT." The basic spectacle of one of the largest, longest-lived and most powerful groups/movements in the history of the world play-acting at being genuinely "persecuted" because more and more of the world is moving on from being governed by their arcane "moral" dictums (arcane moral dictums which, incidentally, have been responsible for more actual persecution throughout history than almost any other force on the planet since its inception) is strangely compelling in a "conversation with a toddler and/or crazy-person" kind of way.

"GODZILLA" Has a Full Trailer, Still Not Much Godzilla

I am so nervous about this.



Godzilla should be easy. The basic appeal of Kaiju movies (disaster movies where the disaster itself gets to be a character with a "face," personality, personal narrative, etc) is so, well... basic it's maddening that so few (modern, Western) filmmakers try and so many of those who do keep fucking it up.

This is, to be clear, a really good scifi/disaster movie trailer. They're clearly anchoring the emotional center of the story to Bryan Cranston as an ordinary, utterly average human whose clearly being destroyed by having this unimaginably huge, horrible event falling down around him; which is the right way to go for this project but also a seriously smart move for Cranston, who really needs for his first huge post-"BREAKING BAD" stardom feature to highlight the range that he has beyond Walter White. I'm just sure I'm getting much in the way of a "genuine Godzilla vibe" out of this, which worries me because "genuine Godzilla" is such a broadly-defined thing to begin with.

I like the idea that this is a semi-sequel to the original (that's how all of Toho's reboots have worked so far: The first movie always happened, everything else is new) though I'm curious how they plan to make this "cover-up" angle work: This Godzilla seems to be the largest in size yet, and the ubiquity of cameras today makes the idea of "covering up" that whatever is going on is being caused by a giant dinosaur (climate-change denialist metaphor, I'm assuming?) could seriously strain credulity.

Above all else, I'm trying not to let how much I detested "MONSTERS" taint me on this. We'll see.

BIG PICTURE: "Who Are The 'Guardians of The Galaxy?'"

Who, indeed?

And hey, here's a "filler" column about a TV show with too much filler so far.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Who Are The Guardians of the Galaxy?

"AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2" Trailer Number 4,732 Almsot Looks Like a Good Movie

Credit where it's due: For the most part this is a good trailer and an exceptionally good Spider-Man trailer. It's well-cut, the pacing is great, the music cues work, the effects and cinematography are a 100% improvement on the muddy, cheap-looking first installment and Andrew Garfield is wearing not just the best-looking live-action Spidey-suit ever but probably one of the top-five superhero costumes, period.* And yes, while it's no less criminal that Emma Stone is wasting prime years and substantial talent in this nonsense... she's the franchise MVP, no question...



...and then the "franchise-specific" stuff slides in (the awful-looking bad guys, the stupid conspiracy/mystery/genetic-destiny backstory, the clear indicators that we'll be getting more clumsy "worldbuilding" for future movies than actual plot) and back down to Earth we come. Sigh...

The inherent problem with this series is that Sony has decided to learn all the wrong lessons from "THE AVENGERS" specifically and the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general; i.e. assuming that the Big Secret to having a franchise that dominant is in the ingredients (in this case: a big labyrinth of continuity threads and gigantic "world on the line!!!" climactic setpieces) instead of in the cooking. Yes, the "universe" angle has the benefit of keeping fans buzzing and generating free-publicity speculation between films and lets something like "THE AVENGERS" to jump right into action when it needs to; but if the actual movies aren't good no amount of continuity-porn can make up for that.

Yeah, conceptually it's "interesting" (or interest-piquing, at least) that Norman Osborn has an underground laboratory full of component-parts for eventual Vultures, Doc Ocks, Rhinos, etc... but "I'm kind of curious to see where how that works out, structure-wise" can't erase the more important issues of this version of Peter Parker being a terrible character, or that the big over-arching Peter's Parents uber-plot that's supposed to tie this all together and make it worth caring about beyond fandom shout-outs is thus far even dumber and more ill-advised than it's seldom-revisited presence in the comics. By the same token: I find myself struggling to care about the potential for old questions to be answered and new mysteries revealed in "BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN" because the world suggested by "MAN OF STEEL" (to say nothing of the so-called "characters" residing in it) is so crushingly uninteresting.

By contrast: Yeah, I want to know what (heavily implied) big changes to the infrastructure of the MCU will come out of "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER," and I'll do the expected fanboy cartwheels if Quicksilver, Scarlett Witch, Von Strucker (likely) or Red Skull, Zola, M.O.D.O.K (less likely) show up; but A.) that's mainly because the MCU is an interesting place so far and those all sound like nifty additions and B.) still a distant second to wanting to see how this all impacts Cap, Black Widow, Nick Fury etc. because they're interesting, well-developed characters I want to follow.

On the other hand, I like that Spidey is dressed like a fireman at one part. So there's that.

Harold Ramis, 1944 - 2014

Harold Ramis, the deceptively-quiet engine of the SCTV/SNL/NL wave that effectively overtook and defined American (and Canadian) comedy in the 80s and 90s, has died at 69.  "GHOSTBUSTERS," "ANIMAL HOUSE," "STRIPES," "SCTV," "CADDYSHACK," "MEATBALLS." Any one of those would be enough to make someone a legend - he was a key part of all of them.

(Still) Not Unlikely

Two years ago I whipped up the fake poster on your right as a gag for late-night Twitter. Chuckles were had, then I and everyone else on Earth forgot about it.

Then today, a funny thing happened on The Internet: Deadline reported that someone at Warner Bros. had decided to actually go an make this movie: A 20 years later sequel to "SPACE JAM" - a movie adapted from a sneaker ad-campaign about Michael Jordan playing basketball with The Looney Tunes which, in an act of singular strangeness, actually tries to be a semi-dramatic "What If?" take on Jordan's return to the NBA following his shocking 1993 retirement to play minor-league baseball in reaction to the murder of his father (the film essentially posits that battling aliens alongside Bugs Bunny was the push Jordan needed to rekindle his lost passion for basketball) - with LeBron James (presumably) becoming the new human leader of The ToonStars.

And then Twitter. Went. APESHIT.
Well, LeBron's people have already denied it - so it's probably not real. But the sudden explosion of excitement on social media means it probably could be in the near future. It would not surprise me if Warner Bros. were looking to "reboot" the "SPACE JAM" branding (say, maybe a cartoon-basketball movie without a human guest star) as a way to turn the Looney Tunes mega-marketable again and floated this "leak" as a way to do test the waters. If so, consider that test a success - it seems pretty goddamn clear that if Warners was to release "SPACE JAM 2" in the near future, they'd have the attention of more starry-eyed 90s Kids than a Buzzfeed click-gallery of cats belonging to the rediscovered castmembers of "HEY DUDE!" reacting a Power Rangers reunion.

"SPACE JAM" is one of those movies that works as a cultural dividing-line between Gen-Xers and Millenials. In my own circles, it's really only ever spoken of as a relic of that moment where Jordan probably could've run for President and as the low-point symbol of how Warner Bros. had gutted and drained Bugs and company of their original personalities to become empty marketing vessels. But there's a younger audience for whom this was an unironic VHS touchstone - nothing makes me feel older than running into people who remember it as a good movie... except maybe when those same people are surprised to learn that "the baseball thing" actually happened.

To be honest, the only part of this I could actually not imagine really happening is LeBron being in it. Unlike MJ, he's largely failed to parlay his on the court success into the same kind of self-marketing machine. Jordan was, at the time, every bit as much of a cartoon-character (off the court) as the ToonStars were, which is why the movie worked. If they did do another one of these, I'd expect it to be just the cartoons - maybe rangle Jordan for a cameo, since he really will do just about anything.

Escape to The Movies: "POMPEII"

Blows.

On the higher-end, I interviewed writer Inkoo Kang about her controversial criticisms of Hayo Miyazaki's "THE WIND RISES."

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Pompeii

Tough But Fair

I'm not the hugest fan of MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. He feels, too often, like a solid radio talent who has been given a TV show but no on-camera training; hence the way his sanctimony-oozing vocals don't really fit with his smug, Bill Maher-esque expressions. But here and there he delivers some compelling editorializing, and this bit of business from Thursday night tying together Vladimir Putin, The Olympics, Pussy Riot and Edward Snowden is definitely that - some real throwing-up-of-hands, lesser-of-two-evils, tragedy as parody, "world of gray" stuff that most cable news avoids like the plague.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Start Lowering Your Expectations For "FANTASTIC FOUR"

Sigh...

The whole "Marvel Studios doesn't own it's entire universe" thing gets a lot of ink and makes for fun, juicy stories about Disney and Fox deliberately trying to fuck eachother's Marvel projects over (which, however childish, is apparently quite a real thing); but as a fan and a general moviegoer it honestly doesn't bother me that much. I'm not 13 and this isn't 1996 so I have no desperate "OH MAN I WANNA SEE WOLVERINE FUCK ______ UP!!!" need in my life, which would be the only vaugely compelling reason to not let the X-Men just be their own pocket-universe cinematically - hell, in the comics the fun detail of Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch being Magneto's kids has surprising little regular effect on their lives as Avengers. Even if the current Spider-Man movies weren't awful, I'd be okay with him being off on his own because he and The Avengers generally run in different circles (or they did before Marvel decided he should be an Avenger, which is dumb even if there have been some decent Avengers stories since) and don't interact all that often.

The Fantastic Four, on the other hand? Their absence from the Cinematic Universe feels like a genuine missing piece.

See, Marvel heroes have always had "cliques." Spider-Man, Daredevil, Luke Cage, etc; those are the "renegade" heroes - the good guys with a problematic relationship with the public/police/etc. The X-Men and other mutants have the more extreme persecuted-minority version of that. The Avengers and The Fantastic Four are, jointly, The Establishment. They're the "accepted" heroes. They go to the same parties, know the same people, attend eachothers weddings/funerals, all of that. If The Avengers have a tool or piece of technology not built by Tony Stark, it was built by Reed Richards. The public loves them, the government/military/cops respect and work with them, they do magazine shoots and TV appearances... that's basically why other heroes want to become Avengers in the first place: it's THE mark of legitimacy in their business.

They "fit together," is what I'm saying, which is why I'm not really all that thrilled that Fox is still going ahead with the "FANTASTIC FOUR" reboot. Yes, I like that they got "CHRONICLE's" Josh Trank to direct, and I actually really like the early-announced (so that they could get everybody's bellyaching out of the way) casting of Michael B. Jordan for Human Torch. But as of today, we have a full cast announcement from Variety and... egh.

So. Michael B. Jordan, as announced, is Johnny Storm/Human Torch. Miles Teller is Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic. Kate Mara is Sue Storm/Invisible Woman and Jamie Bell is Ben Grimm/The Thing.

Let's get this out of the way: I have zero problem with Johnny being black. In fact, since Kata Mara is white, that probably means one of them is adopted which is potentially an interesting angle. I also don't think it's a huge problem that Ben Grimm is being played by a skinny young British kid and not a stocky, surly, Jewish (look it up) Noo Yawk'a - The Thing will almost-certainly be a mocap/CGI creation, so it doesn't really matter what Bell really looks like.

No, what bugs me about Bell's casting is what bugs me about the entire cast excluding (mostly) Jordan: They're all too young. I know that's an eye-roll thing, usually, when it comes to this material: Some adult fanboys will never accept that Superman can't look exactly like a father-figure to them anymore because they're father-aged themselves now. I don't necessarily "need" Reed Richards to look like a 50s sitcom dad. What I do need (or, rather, think is important) is that he look like an adult - because that's the core dynamic of this thing: The FF are a family, Reed and Sue are the parents, Johnny and Ben are the kids even though Ben is technically the oldest and Johnny is Sue's younger brother.

At the very least, Reed should look/feel old enough to have become a world-renowned professional scientist. A grown-up. And Miles Teller (who may or may not be a good actor) looks like he's maybe 13. Jamie Bell looks - at least when he's not clean-shaven - like a 19 year-old who kind of has a tough job, like landscaping or something. Kate Mara... is a step up from Jessica Alba, at least, but both of them are too young. One of the main thing that makes this group interesting is that, apart from the powers, 3/4s of them don't "feel" like conventional heroes - they're squares. Grownups. Mom n' Dad types. This makes it just one more Sexy Teenagers Action Movie (in the same way that "STAR TREK" now looks like a bunch of clerks from American Apparel walked over to hang out in the Apple Store), and we've got more than enough of that as it is.

At least, that was my initial objection. Then I read further down in the piece and things all fell into place:

"Based on the comic “The Ultimate Fantastic Four,”

Ah. Well, then, now it all makes sense. In "Ultimate Fantastic Four" they were, in fact, a team of college-aged kids (Reed and Sue are both "child prodigies") working for Sue Storm's father with a completely different, less interesting origin story and personalities. That's one noteworthy thing about "Ultimate Fantastic Four." The other noteworthy thing is that it was god-fucking-awful. Dogshit. Bad even for an "Ultimate" series - and that's pretty damn bad.

Blegh. What a (exceedingly likely) waste of talent, effort, material and money. If anyone needs me, I'll be watching THIS on a continuous loop for awhile.

Five Hi-Res GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Screencaps

Yeah I know, everyone is posting screencaps from this. Here's my five:

Rocket Raccoon getting booked. Note the name LYLLA under his known associates. Lylla is Rocket's girlfriend. She is an otter.

John C. Reilly as a member of the Nova Corps. It is flat-out, no-bullshit embarassing that Nova Corps looks this much cooler than the Green Lantern Corps. did.

NEW RULE: If you can accurately describe any portion of a film's trailer using the words "Green Alien Sideboob," it's probably a good movie.

Karen Gillan as Nebula - and before you ask, this character both existed and was blue, hot and bald at least a decade before either MASS EFFECT or FARSCAPE.

The big fella getting hoisted up is named Drax the Destroyer. The guy lifting him is named Ronan the Accuser. This is going to be amazing.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Trailer

At long last, the trailer - which handles it's number one task (tell audiences who these people are) in a refreshingly direct way: Introducing all of The Guardians in extended medium-shot in the context of getting booked into space jail. It's also being very upfront about the real thing that differentiates this from the prior Marvel movies: Instead of an action film with comedy bits, this is a full-stop comedy with an action movie setting. That's Karen Gillan as Nebula aka "the blue chick," incidentally. This is gonna be nutty:

For Science

I don't generally post "cheesecake" on this blog, but when I do it's for something like this.

For those of you who say that the study of manned flight in Outer Space has nothing left to offer us, that our money would be better spent elsewhere, that nothing new and good can be attained by continuing to look to the stars, I give you: Kate Upton in zero-gravity.

BIG PICTURE: "Ripoff Cop"

The "ROBOCOP" franchise is... not really "back" now in the way the people who paid for that shit remake were probably hoping it would be. Still, let's look at some weird ripoffs of the original movie from the 80s and 90s:

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Ripoff Cop

Second Teaser For The First Trailer For "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY"

Is it hypocritical to rail against the rampant bullshittery that is commercials for commercials and then excitedly post one when it's for something you're into? Probably, if you're into trying to apply broad philosophical concepts like ideological consistency to real life. Fortunately, I'm a realist, which means I'm also fundamentally a pragmatist: Things are "good" when they and/or their results are good, things are "bad" when they and/or their results are bad - everything else is just so much academic masturbation.

Anyway, "trailers for trailers" is a stupid marketing thing, but it's a stupid marketing thing that's now part of the landscape and all marketing is kind of bullshit so we're really just arguing degrees. Bottom line: Marvel is making some of the most dynamic mainstream genre movies right now, everything they release is movie-newsworthy, "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY" looks awesome, this 15 second tease at the trailer set to premier on Jimmy Kimmel tonight shows you some of that awesome, so it's a good thing. Enjoy it:

Heroine

Yeah, well... in my imagination, at least, Kitty Pryde was always a lesbian.



In all seriousness, though, this is fantastic. And before you jump in with "What's the big deal???," remember: Kansas - a part of a first-world country in 2014 - is trying to make it legal for businesses to refuse to serve gay people. You bet your ass this sort of thing still matters - it's huge, in fact, because Ellen Page isn't a former celebrity of some fringe TV persona; she's a major Gen-Y star at probably the peak of her career. Her visibility as an openly gay woman, as cliche as this sounds, absolutely will give strength to people of her generation and younger to accept themselves, and the importance of that cannot be overestimated. No matter how many strides are made legally and otherwise, the first hurdle for LGBTQ youth is still finding a way to cast off the pressures of society and tradition and bullshit primitive superstitions about gender and sexuality and accept that they are who they are. And this helps. Every little bit of this helps. Today, this woman is a hero.

Escape to The Movies: "ROBOCOP (2014)"

Sorry, folks - "not as bad as it could've been" is not the same thing as "not bad."

Also hideous? "A WINTER'S TALE" - but in a way that means you should make it a point to go see it, as soon as possible.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Robocop

BIG PICTURE: "Why Robocop Still Rules"

The remake is terrible, you'll hear more from me on that later. Until then, here's this:

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Why Robocop Still Rules

Escape to The Movies: "THE LEGO MOVIE"

How did they get away with this?

Also, "THE MONUMENTS MEN," which is okay.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Lego Movie

Paul Bettany is THE VISION in "AVENGERS 2: AGE OF ULTRON"

When you think about it, it's kind of odd that Paul Bettany seemed to recede as a leading man just when he was blowing up a decade ago. I think a lot of us just figured that we also wouldn't find a lot of reasons to leave the house if we'd married Jennifer Connelly.

In any case, his most prominent mainstream role for about the last decade has been as the voice of Tony Stark's omnipresent digital servant J.A.R.V.I.S. in the Marvel Studios movies; and as of an hour ago the long-term planning logic of hiring an upscale-accented Brit who's also movie-star handsome for that role makes a lot more sense: He'll stepping in front of the camera in "AVENGERS 2: AGE OF ULTRON" as robotic superhero The Vision.

Well, that's interesting.

That Vision would turn up in the sequel was something of a foregone conclusion, being that his origins are tied to titular villain Ultron and his longest-running character-arc is a human/android romance with Scarlet Witch, previously announced and set to be played by Elizabeth Olsen (incidentally, I'd put serious money on her and Aaron Taylor Johnson's Quicksilver showing up an establishing walk-on either in "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER" or "GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.") For a long time, the popular fan theory was that he'd be a robotic revival for Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson (in the comics, Vision is created by Ultron using the brain-patterns of dead superhero Wonder Man and the chassis of the original android Human Torch) but "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D" has taken that character in a markedly different direction.

So the smart money now says that Vision (whom I imagine will still start out as a henchman and either go good by the finale or be trending that way for "AVENGERS 3") is some permutation of J.A.R.V.I.S, which is what a lot of people assumed would be Ultron's origin - even after it was revealed months ago that James Spader, not Bettany, would be doing the voice. In the comics, Ultron is the gone-wrong creation of Hank "Ant-Man" Pym, but he won't be showing up (so far) until "ANT-MAN" which comes out after this. So where does Ultron come from?

Given that the SDCC teaser for the film was an Iron Man helmet violent morphing into Ultron's head, I think it's still pretty safe to assume that Tony Stark will be the human creator Ultron turns on in the Cinematic Universe version of his origin. It just makes the most sense, and my expectation remains that "AVENGERS 2" will probably wrap-up with the team in a dark place ("EMPIRE STRIKES BACK," "WRATH OF KHAN," etc) and Iron Man in particular left in a defeated position from which to make some kind of triumphant swan-song in Part 3 (RDJ's full-time Marvel contract runs out after that point.)

But if he (apparently) isn't "Evil J.A.R.V.I.S," what is he? An Iron Man armor with a mind of it's own? Some new thing they'll make up just for this film? Plausible. My own pet theory - which I've been joking about for awhile but now feel like they just might actually do - is that, since Ultron in the comics starts out as more-or-less a Roomba that builds itself a humanoid body, movie-Ultron could well be DUM-E (aka "Dummy"), Tony Stark's loyal but mostly-useless pet robot-arm from the "IRON MAN" movies. How fun would that be, for The Avengers next big enemy to be a clumsy workshop-bot that finally gets sick of Tony making fun of it?

I Give Up

So. Here's a trailer for a movie called "ZOMBEAVERS," about killer undead(?) beavers:



Here's one of my "stupid movies I wanted to make, then didn't" columns from The Escapist. Yeah.

There's a lesson in all of this, and it's that whoever told me to think my decisions through and not just go with whatever instinct pops into my head at a given moment was completely fucking full of shit.

Big Picture: "THE DEVIL YOU KNOW - PART II"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : The Devil You Know - Part II

"AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2" Reveals The New Electro

Well, good to see some things don't change. Unfortunately, one of those things is that "AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2" looks awful. Enthusiastically awful, yes, but awful all the same. This new "sizzle reel" trailer basically gives us Electro in a nutshell: He's Jim Carrey's Riddler from "BATMAN FOREVER," (overlooked science dweeb with a stalker-crush on the hero) and he gets his powers from being bitten by radioactive electric eels.

Poor Emma Stone is stuck right in the middle of this mess, putting on a brave face while she waits for a chance to head back to her trailer and shove more pins into that voodoo doll of Jennifer Lawrence.

Second Trailer For "CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER"

It occurs to me that "CAPTAIN AMERICA," as his own franchise and as part of "THE AVENGERS," is pretty-much the central 21st century presence of American pride/patriotism on the world stage. I'm pretty okay with that:



Apparently Marvel/Disney are pretty okay with that, too: The post-production buzz on this one has been off-the-charts positive, particularly considering the early head-scratching over the decision to hire Anthony and Joe Russo - a brother team mainly known for directing TV sitcoms and "YOU, ME & DUPREE." But the Marvel people are so impressed with their work here that they've already signed them for Part 3, scheduled to hit sometime after "AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON."

"TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION" Super Bowl Spot

Aaaaand the expectations come back down to Earth.

For awhile the buzz on "AGE OF EXTINCTION" was that it was going to be some kind of serious departure from the previous installments: Not just a whole new cast (only Optimus Prime and Bumblebee are returning) but a different tone and storyline that may or may not involve time-travel and The Dinobots. But eventually, it became a little clearer that the motif here is less "fresh start" and more "we should do one of these, but partially set in China because for whatever reason China looooooooooves the TRANSFORMERS movies:"



Still, those do seem to be Dinobots, albeit blown up to Godzilla scale and monster-ized (I thought the two-headed guy with the wings might be one of the Terrorcons, but it's Swoop); which is a very Michael Bay-sounding approach: "Can we make the T-Rex BIGGER? Also scarier?" It'll take more than the lack of LaBeouf to really sell me on this, but Optimus Prime riding a robot dinosaur is a hell of a start. Also: The big ship thing at the very beginning and the unnamed robot turning into a turret-canon = Unicron and Galvatron?

No Case Too Small

I've observed before that the Disney Company, despite being founded by (and named for!) the guy who practically invented comodifying nostalgia, has been slow to the party in trading on the nostalgia-market for it's own properties. But they're making up for lost time now, with a specific focus on icons especially prized by now-grown Gen-X/Y fans (see: live-action "Sleeping Beauty" focused on fan-fave baddie Maleficent). Now, they've innevitably cast their gaze on the other cash-cow of their legendary 90s Renaissance: "The Disney Afternoon."

90s kids? You're getting a live-action "RESCUE RANGERS" movie.


For those born post-90s, Disney's big weekday/after-school TV "thing" in that era was reworking old characters into then-modern genre frameworks a'la "DUCKTALES." "RANGERS" (which started out as a "RESCUERS" update) was a mystery/action/cop riff built around a team of rodent crimefighters led by the chipmunk duo who'd originated as B-listers in the original Mickey etc. shorts. The new project is an origin story (the series had a feature-length multi-episode pilot) based on a pitch from director Robert Rugan, a commercial director most famous for a Durex Condoms viral ad.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go find out which god I have to please and how to get a "DARKWING DUCK" movie out of this...