HBO’s Watchmen is one of the most discussed shows on TV right now, and it’s stirred up a lot of interest in previous attempts to adapt Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic comic. Even before Zack Snyder’s 2009 movie (which is great, I might add) there were other attempts by Warner Bros., including a 2003 version that would’ve been directed by David Hayter. Hayter would go on to be credited as a co-writer in Snyder’s film, but footage from his earlier attempt is out there and…well, it’s probably best to have gone unproduced.
The test footage from Hayter’s Watchmen has Ray Stevenson, a terrific actor, under a very cheap-looking Rorschach mask. It’s one of the movie’s critical scenes, when Rorschach encounters Night Owl, played by Game of Thrones actor Iain Glen.
I’m not knocking Stevenson or Glen in this scene. I think Stevenson captures Rorschach’s intense, mercurial nature quite well. I’m just a huge fan of what Jackie Earle Haley did in the role, and the faithfulness that Snyder brought to the film. Looking at this footage you can tell it was made in the early 2000s when the standard for comic book movies was Sony’s Spider-Man.
When the unmistakable laugh of Emperor Palpatine was heard in the trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it raised a number of questions. How could he be alive considering what we saw, or think we saw, at the end of Return of the Jedi? What does his return mean for Rey, for Kylo Ren, and for the Resistance? Most of all, has this always been the plan for returning director J.J. Abrams?
Turns out, the answer is “yes”. Speaking with Uproxx, Abrams says the end of the Skywalker Saga pretty much necessitates Palpatine’s return, and to not do so would be weird…
“Well, when you look at this as nine chapters of a story, perhaps the weirder thing would be if Palpatine didn’t return. You just look at what he talks about, who he is, how important he is, what the story is — strangely, his absence entirely from the third trilogy would be conspicuous. It would be very weird.”
He adds that he and co-writer Lawrence Kasdan had been discussing Palpatine’s return since before The Force Awakens…
“So there were discussions about that at the time. Yet, like any beginning, you want to put the threads in, but you don’t want to necessarily be literal about everything…There were some very specific things we did get to do in this movie that we were laughing and going, ‘Oh my god, we’re finally doing that thing we talked about five years ago.’”
Here’s hoping Palpatine is a Force ghost for the Dark Side or something along those lines, perhaps looking to possess Kylo Ren or maybe even Rey.
We’ll find out what Palpatine’s up to when The Rise of Skywalker arrives on December 20th.
By now you’ve likely heard the rave reviews buzzing for Waves, the third feature film from writer/director Trey Edward Shults. His career took off with the family drama Krisha, followed by the horror It Comes at Night, and Waves follows a pattern of following families in a unique state of crisis. This particular story is one that has been coalescing in his mind for years, even before his breakthrough debut, and all it took was the right timing, the right situation, and the right people to bring it together.
Two of those people who were integral to making Waves a reality are its two youngest stars: the red-hot Kelvin Harrison Jr., who worked with Shults on It Comes at Night, and Taylor Russell, whose career is also taking. They star as siblings in a black South Florida family who feel the unique pressures that come with being successful people of color. When that pressure becomes too much for one to handle, it leads to a tragedy that threatens to tear the family apart.
Alongside my colleague Tim Gordon at the Middleburg Film Festival, I had the chance to talk with Shults, Harrison, and Russell about Waves, and the very personal chord it struck with each of them. You can listen to the interview below, and check out my review of Waveshere. The film is in theaters now and expanding nationwide.
Christopher Nolan is continuing his tight-knit association with IMAX, and if you’re really hyped to see his upcoming film Tenet you may want to find a theatre near you. According to Trailer Track, Nolan is planning an IMAX exclusive prologue for the mysterious thriller, and one guess which film it is likely to play ahead of.
A short titled Tenet: Prologue has been rated PG-13 by the MPAA, signaling the prologue’s arrival. Chances are it will be attached to IMAX screenings of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Fans of Nolan are aware that he likes to do stuff like this, previously providing full IMAX scenes/previews of The Dark Knight Rises and Dunkirk months ahead of their release.
Not much is known about Tenet at this point, other than it’s a large-scale spy flick starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh, with a release date set for July 17th 2020.
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Hustlers is available now on digital. 4K Ultra HD, Bluray, and DVD on December 10th.
It’s not like Disney to miss out on an opportunity to cash-in on Star Wars pandemonium, but somehow they missed the ball (for now) with Baby Yoda. The adorable little “asset” has been the biggest thing to come from The Mandalorian, launching the Internet into a full-on frenzy of videos and memes. All it needed was the right merchandise to send it over the top. But as we all know, official Baby Yoda merch is very scarce, but it is now available.
Sadly, it kinda sucks so you might want to wait for the better shit.
If you go to StarWars.com you’ll find some cheap t-shirts, mugs, and stickers with a singular Baby Yoda image on it. Yeah, it’s just that concept art Jon Favreau was
posting online a few days ago. That’s it. That’s all you get, not even that sweet shot of him grasping with his tiny green hand.
It’s pretty lame, but if you absolutely MUST have some Baby Yoda gear (I’m waiting for DJ Baby Yoda to go with my DJ Yoda tee) it’s there for you. Enjoy.
There aren’t as many original Avengers still spending time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Black Widow may have met a tragic demise in Avengers: Endgame, but at least she’s got a solo movie out of it. Thor is doing something unheard of in the MCU and embarking on a fourth solo title, while Hawkeye has a Disney+ series on the way. Last we saw of the Hulk his path was still unclear, and Mark Ruffalo wants to make sure his story continues on the big screen.
Appearing at Tokyo Comic-Con (via CBR), Ruffalo confirmed that he had met with Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige about more Hulk movies, specifically one that would see him go toe-to-toe with Wolverine…
“Kevin Feige just asked me last week if I had any more ideas or stories for the Hulk. And I said yeah, I think there’s still some stories to tell. And he said, ‘Well why don’t you come in and tell me about them and we’ll see if we can find a place for you in the Marvel universe?… I’d like to see that. Hulk versus Wolverine.”
While Hulk and Wolverine have frequently fought on the same side, they are pretty much always going to be seen as rivals. Wolverine’s first appearance in Marvel Comics was against Hulk in 1974’s classic The Incredible Hulk #181.
Marvel tried out a couple of Hulk movies in the past, with neither really clicking with fans. 2003’s Hulk by director Ang Lee starred Eric Bana and took a cerebral approach to the Jade Giant, while 2008’s The Incredible Hulk starred Edward Norton and fully brought the character into the MCU. Rumors have swirled off and on ever since about another Hulk movie, with nothing ever coming together.
A crossover with any X-Men would’ve been unthinkable just a few months ago, but now with Fox under the Disney umbrella we could see the Hulk/Wolverine matchup fans have always wanted to see. Considering the number of interviews he’ll be doing for Dark Waters, and his penchant for having a loose tongue, if a Hulk movie is greenlit Ruffalo will probably let us all know.
For too many black people, being an outlaw is just a part of life. Unlike Bonnie & Clyde or other white outlaws held up as American icons, the simple act of walking home with iced tea and Skittles could make a black man an outlaw. Selling cigarettes on the corner is an intolerable act of defiance. Simply living in this world marks black men as outlaws, so the traditional narrative really doesn’t apply and needs to be reimagined.
Melina Matsoukas and Lena Waithe’s Queen & Slim is a film that seeks to rewrite the outlaw narrative through the black experience, forged inevitably through racism. Fittingly, it’s everyday, common occurrences that prove treacherous. A seemingly forgettable Tinder date between an unnamed couple (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) turns deadly during what should be a routine traffic stop. An act of self-defense sends the couple fleeing from Cleveland through the deep South, encountering swaths of black life that most will never see: a prison chain gang working in the fields under armed guard; a Kentucky juke joint with a receptive clientele; a war veteran-turned-pimp in New Orleans.
Penned by Waithe from a story she got from discredited writer James Frey (How that happened I’d like to know), Queen & Slim struggles for profundity at nearly every turn, when it doesn’t really need to. The duo’s journey crosses more than geographical boundaries; they encounter black people of many different ideologies, economic status, and more. Along the way, they become mythological heroes, symbols of rebellion against an oppressive system. But as their status constantly evolves, Waithe’s screenplay can’t really keep up. While the interactions between Queen and Slim are flirty, soulful, and often revealing, too often they are left to recite long, overdone monologues explaining every emotion they have at that moment. It puts a damper on the already-extravagant 132-minute runtime, during which the characters become shaped by an inconsistent narrative unsure of what it wants to say.
A prime example is during woefully miscalculated scene intercutting Queen and Slim’s first sexual encounter with a violent standoff between protestors and police. That protest ends in tragedy so baffling it throws the entire movie out of balance and it never really recovers. It might’ve been clearer if so much of Queen & Slim was left out of context, but we are kept in the dark about so much. The way our heroes are perceived by the world at large is virtually unknown, especially in light of their clear act of self-defense, but also we learn so little about them as people. He’s a Christian, she’s not; he’s laid back and a little naïve, she’s got a militant streak that pops up when the story needs it to.
Fortunately, Waithe doesn’t turn the outlawed heroes into actual outlaws. This isn’t a wild, gunslinging shoot ’em up where they go on some crazy murder spree. They are instead allowed to mostly go through their journey unmolested, learning to live, laugh, and love while dealing with the burden placed upon them by their predicament. The film is at its best when Queen and Slim are just allowed to exist and be seen, to discuss music with one another (Fat Luther or Skinny Luther?), to dance, to share a homecooked meal, to discuss a future they both know is doomed. In these moments, we see them coping with the changes forced upon them. In some cases they bend to evolution’s will, cutting their hair (a significant act in black culture) to avoid capture. Other times they fight against it defiantly, holding on to some small semblance of who they were before that fateful traffic stop.
Queen & Slim joins a growing genre of films seeking to contextualize black rage at a an unjust legal system, corrupt law enforcement, and institutional racism as high up as the White House. While the film often fails to harness that anger into a cohesive theme, its vital existence is a ringing indictment of the world as we know it.
There’s already a remake of The Fugitive coming to the Quibi streaming service in bite-sized chunks, but since the number of people who will see it may also be bite-sized, a version for the big screen is also in the works. Deadline reports Menace II Society co-director Albert Hughes will take on a remake of the 1993 classic that starred Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.
This will be a new take on the film that starred Ford as a doctor who goes on the run to prove his innocence in the murder of his wife. Jones played the federal agent hot on his trail. The original film was directed by Andrew Davis, based on the 1960s television series.
Hughes is best known for his collaborations with his brother Allen on films such as Menace II Society, Dead Presidents, From Hell, and Book of Eli. He went solo for last year’s underrated survival thriller Alpha. Writing the script for Hughes’ The Fugitive is Brian Tucker, who worked with his brother Allen on 2013’s Broken City.
As a die-hard fan of pretty much everything the Hughes Brothers’ do, I can’t wait to see how this develops. Hopefully, Albert gets some freedom in the casting department and switches things up a little. Maybe add a woman into the mix, or cast a person of color in either main role. I’d love to see Aldis Hodge cast in the fugitive role.
Fresh off the fun but financially abysmal release of Charlie’s Angels Elizabeth Banks proves that the only way to move if forward as it was announced today via Variety that the hyper-talented Jill of all trades will be directing and staring in The Invisible Woman. I was somewhat crushed when I realized that the revitalization of the Universal monsters was an abject failure after the release of Tom Cruise’s The Mummy, but you know what they say…every cloud, a silver lining. It seems that the failure of their cinematic universe has prompted Universal to do something that the fans have been saying EVERYONE involved in remakes/redo’s/re-whatever’s should do, find out what made the thing special in the first place and take it somewhere new. The universal monsters have wonderful stories, and rich histories, there’s NO reason that every movie has to cover the same ground, or even characters. While we have an independent remake of the Invisible Man out in February (starring Elizabeth Moss and being done by Blumhouse) this will be part of Universal’s forward moving slate of films with the IP. While this doesn’t seem exactly like something new (take thing A. and make the main character a woman) I think that Banks has the creative juices to do something truly unique with the property. When you factor in the recently announced Renfield which will focus on Dracula’s much abused sidekick, I think it’s safe to say there is a real possibility for solid stuff on the horizon.
