As we inch closer to the debut of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, teasers have highlighted team members Batman, Superman, Aquaman, The Flash, and Wonder Woman. There was even one for the villains Darkseid and Deathstroke. Today sees the release of one more video, this one focused on Ray Fisher as Cyborg, a character that we know is going to have a bigger role this time than he did in Joss Whedon’s version of the film.
Once again, there’s new footage of Victor Stone aka Cyborg so if you want to go into the film having seen as little as possible, best to be aware. It looks as if Cyborg’s tech has received a visual upgrade to go along with an expansion of his story, one that Snyder has said makes him the “heart” of the film. Unfortunately, it’s also likely to be the last time we see Fisher in the role of Cyborg, given his many disputes with Warner Bros. over the last few months.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League hits HBO Max on March 18th.
If you tuned in to HBO Max yesterday to check out Tom & Jerry, you might’ve been met with something wildly different from a cat ‘n mouse comedy. For a while, Zack Snyder’s Justice League played in its stead, leaking more than a week early from its intended release.
The glitch was found when a user posted about it on Twitter, and was corrected within a couple of hours. Still, I find it pretty hilarious that some family gathered together on the couch, all ready for wholesome Tom & Jerry shenanigans, only to be treated to Snyder’s post-apocalyptic Knightmare world.
As for how this happened? Nobody seems to know. Enough of the upcoming superhero film was seen that some leaks are already out there. You won’t find any of them here.
Hopefully, this won’t derail what should be the release of a new teaser centered on Ray Fisher’s Cyborg, a character we know will see his role expanded in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Russell Crowe had one of the biggest hits of the pandemic era with his thriller, Unhinged, and now he’s landed on what’s coming next. Rocket Science has announced that Crowe will play renowned Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko in a biopic from director Sam Taylor-Johnson.
Crowe will head up the Rothko cast, a starry group that includes Aisling Franciosi (The Nightingale), Michael Stuhlbarg (Shirley), Jared Harris (Mad Men), the director’s husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, most-recently seen in Tenet. The film centers on Kate Rothko and the legal battles to prevent her father’s legacy of work from falling into the hands of a corrupt elite.
The film was written by Lara Woods. Taylor-Johnson is probably best known for directing Fifty Shades of Grey, before walking out on the franchise due to disagreements with author E.L. James. She also helmed 2009’s Nowhere Boy, which is where she met her future husband, and 2018’s James Frey adaptation A Million Little Pieces.
Crowe was recently seen as Roger Ailes in Showtime’s series The Loudest Voice. He’ll be seen next in horror The Georgetown Project.
It’s been a while since we heard anything about Concrete Cowboy, the Idris Elba film in which he plays an urban cowboy on the streets of Philadelphia. I saw it at Middleburg a few months ago, not long after it had been acquired by Netflix. And now the streamer has finally given it a release date of April 2nd.
The film marks the directorial debut of Ricky Staub, and stars Elba as Harp, a Philadelphia man who seeks to help his estranged son (Caleb McLaughlin of Stranger Things) stay out of trouble by having him work at the Fletcher Street Stables, a real-life Black urban horsemanship community that has existed for over 100 years.
Also in the cast are Jharrel Jerome, Method Man, Byron Bowers, and Lorraine Toussaint. G. Neri’s novel Ghetto Cowboy served as the inspiration.
We didn’t get to see much of Darkseid in Justice League, but that will change with Zack Snyder’s cut of the film. The ruler of Apokolips will be a major factor, and in a newly-released teaser there’s more footage of him set against the post-apocalyptic Knightmare scenario.
The 30-second video also offers looks at Joe Manganiello as Deathstroke, Ezra Miller as The Flash, and Jared Leto’s Joker. We also get a chance to hear more of Ray Porter as the voice of Darkseid, talking about how he’s turned “1000 worlds to dust” before being robbed of his glory. My guess is he’s referring to the combined might of the Atlanteans and the Amazons.
It only took a couple of decades and a few different actors, but in 2019 Terry Gilliam was finally able to finish and release his long-troubled The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Honestly? I kinda forgot about it. The film didn’t make any waves, even to those who had been waiting so long for it, but at least it was a monkey that had finally gotten off of Gilliam’s back.
So the story was finally over, and so Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, directors of the acclaimed doc, Lost in La Mancha, are back with a sequel titled He Dreams of Giants. Whereas the previous film followed Gilliam’s heartbreak in watching The Man Who Killed Don Quixote fall apart, this one buttons up that journey as he encounters new roadblocks, including his own health, in completing the film once and for all.
He Dreams of Giants opens in the UK on March 29th with a global release to follow.
The finale of WandaVision has come and gone. Whatever you thought of it, the series gave two of its least-developed characters a platform to explore grief, loss, and the odd-but-endearing nature of their relationship. Was the finale short of the bells, whistles, and cameos that had been jokingly promised? Yes, and series director Matt Shakman says a lot of that is due to changes made over the course of an altered production due to the pandemic.
Joining Kevin Smith for his Fatman Beyond podcast, Shakman talks about how he got the WandaVision gig following a meeting with Marvel about an entirely different project. Unfortunately, we never learn what that project would’ve been…
“I got a chance to meet with [Feige] and some of the other amazing leadership over there at Marvel,” said Shakman. “And then they brought me in on one project after that to pitch on before ‘WandaVision’ came around.”
WandaVision ended up being hit hard by the pandemic, with delays that forced Shakman to make some pretty big changes. First of all, there was initially going to be 10 episodes rather than 9. And that would’ve afforded more time for supporting characters Monica Rambeau, Darcy, and Jimmy Woo who many feel were given short shrift in the finale. In fact, they had an entire storyline cut that would’ve found them investigating the Darkhold, only to discover that Agatha’s creepy pet rabbit, Señor Scratchy, was actually a demon.
“Well, yeah, things were constantly changing and getting rebroken. the story was changing, especially a lot of the real-world stuff and the finale,” said Shakman. “There was a lot of experimentation going on and sort of trying different things out. we also at one point had 10 episodes planned and we ended up collapsing a couple, you know just to make the rhythm feel a little bit better. but yeah, they constantly changed, and then of course, once we wrapped in Atlanta the pandemic hit and we ended up having months off so then further changes during that we were doing post-production and then ideas would come up and little changes would happen as a result.”
Hopefully, one of these days we’ll get to see some of that either in deleted scenes or as part of a behind-the-scenes look.
Uh oh, get ready to start hearing about Pepé Le Pew being canceled! The malodorous Looney Tunes skunk was always problematic. We were just too young to notice or care. But he’s known basically for just one thing, and that’s his dogged romantic pursuit of Penelope Pussycat, and refusal to take “no” for an answer. While we may have been able to ignore that back in the day, now it’s really not a good look.
Following on news that Space Jam: A New Legacy has tweaked Lola Bunny’s look to make her less sexualized, we’re also learning from THR that a scene involving Pepe Le Pew has been cut. This follow, quite coincidentally, after opinion writer Charles M. Blow wrote a piece saying the character helped too “normalize rape culture.” Here is his tweet recapping the angry response to that piece by “conservatives”…
RW blogs are mad bc I said Pepe Le Pew added to rape culture. Let’s see. 1. He grabs/kisses a girl/stranger, repeatedly, w/o consent and against her will. 2. She struggles mightily to get away from him, but he won’t release her 3. He locks a door to prevent her from escaping. pic.twitter.com/CbLCldLwvR
It’s worth noting that the decision to cut Le Pew was made over a year ago. According to Deadline, that scene would have found him as a bartender opposite Jane the Virgin actress Greice Santo, and Le Pew would’ve started making his usual advances. However, she would turn the tables on him, ending with him soaking wet, slapped in the face, and spun into a cartoonish whirlwind.
In short, Le Pew would’ve finally gotten his comeuppance.
So yeah, you can expect that some will start adding Le Pew to the”canceled” list along with Gina Carano, Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potatohead.
There’s some perfect symmetry going on with the latest teaser for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. This being International Women’s Day, it’s the right time to shine a spotlight on Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, as her performance as the superhero has become an inspiration to women and girls around the world.
And of course, there is a little bit of new footage of Wonder Woman here, just as we’ve seen in previous teasers for Batman, Superman, Aquaman and The Flash. So if you want to go into the movie having seen as little as possible, just realize what’s up.
The footage begins with Diana recalling the Amazons past encounter with villain Steppenwolf on the island of Themyscira, before we get new footage of her charging into battle against him. They’ve done a good job of touching up his look, too. He looked like garbage in the previous movie.
Next up, Cyborg.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League hits HBO Max on March 18th.
Lots to talk about on this week’s Cinema Royale, starting with the season (series??) finale of WandaVision! Do the Avengers lovebirds manage to fight their way into sitcom happily ever after?
Plus, the long wait for Coming 2 America is over, and should fans of Eddie Murphy’s classic comedy be worried? Also, reviews of Chaos Walking with Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, following a production that was chaotic to say the least; finally reviews of Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon and Joe Carnahan’s long-awaited time-loop flick Boss Level!
All this and more! You can subscribe to Cinema Royale wherever you get your podcasts! Follow the Punch Drunk Critics and Cinema Royale!
