Comic Strip: ‘Kick-Ass 2’ Easter Eggs, ‘Guardians’ Spaceships, and Bale Bails on ‘Justice League’
ScreenCrush’s Comic Strip is a weekly roundup of the hottest superhero movie news items. From Marvel to DC and points in between, if it pertains to costumed comic-book heroes, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, we have plenty of ‘Justice League of America’ movie updates, ‘Wolverine’ promo imagery and Mark Millar’s guided tour of the ‘Kicks-Ass 2’ site.
‘Justice League of America’
Ever since ‘Man of Steel’ landed to moderately favorable reviews (our own Jordan Hoffman adores it) and a significant global box office take, DC Comics fans have been hoping that Zack Snyder’s movie would act as the first step on the road to a ‘Justice League of America’ movie, the same way ‘Iron Man’ eventually paved Marvel’s road to ‘The Avengers.’
If it’s going to happen, though, it will happen without Christian Bale in the Batman suit.
Bale told EW that he has not been approached about resurrecting Batman for ‘JLA,’ and likely would pass if he were offered:
I have no information, no knowledge about anything. I’ve literally not had a conversation with a living soul. I understand that they may be making a Justice League movie, that’s it. It’s a torch that should be handed from one actor to another. So I enjoy looking forward to what somebody else will come up with.”
-- So Bale’s out. Does that mean Batman’s out, as well? I actually joined CinemaBlend Editor-In-Chief Katey Rich earlier this week and tried to convince her that Warner Bros. would be crazy not to try and connect Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel’ to Christopher Nolan’s existing Batman trilogy. The realism Snyder sought in his Superman movie feeds beautifully into Nolan’s existing Gotham.
-- But SuperHeroHype countered that optimism with this thorough feature on "The 9 Ways ‘Man of Steel’ Makes a DC Movie Universe More Difficult."
-- Meanwhile, Armie Hammer worked the ‘Lone Ranger’ press circuit and spoke with multiple journalists about the time he almost played Batman in George Miller’s failed ‘JLA’ movie. He tells the Australian talk show The Feed that the planned ‘JLA’ movie would have a hard time finding an audience in a post-‘Avengers’ movie world.
It doesn’t seem like [Miller’s ‘Justice League’ movie] would have been executed as well as Marvel’s done theirs. What they did is they created a following for each of the individual characters and then put them together in a movie, so you had all the people who were Thor fans, all the people who were Hulk fans, all the people who were Iron Man fans, all came together to watch this one mega movie. That was a great idea.”
Here’s Hammer on what Miller’s movie might have looked like. Do you think Bale bailing on ‘Justice League’ stops that movie in its tracks?
-- And finally, Russell Crowe admits during a Twitter Q-and-A that he’d be open to doing a ‘Man of Steel’ prequel, if all of this sequel and spinoff talk goes nowhere.
‘The Wolverine’
Fox shared this hi-res still from ‘The Wolverine,’ showing our invulnerable hero taking a blast of potent radiation to save a man in a Japanese labor camp.
A Japanese poster for James Mangold’s film also arrived online, begging the question, “Why does Wolvie need a Samurai sword if he has claws jutting out of his hands?”
And six character images teased the upcoming movie, including this sleek Will Yun Lee pose for The Silver Samurai.
I expect ‘The Wolverine’ to have a major presence at Comic-Con 2013, but we’ll dig into that festival in greater depths next week.
‘Deadpool’
After appearing as Deadpool in Wolverine’s ‘Origin’ movie, Ryan Reynolds assumed that he’d smoothly transition into his own Deadpool movie. And yet, so far? Nothing.
But Reynolds isn’t giving up hope. In fact, he told TotalFilm this week:
“That movie is alive and kicking, and then it’s dead as a doornail. Then it’s alive and kicking and then it’s dead… it’s like the worst relationship I’ve ever had!”
“The character knows he’s a comic-book character, he knows he’s in a film, he knows who the executives are at the studio making the movie,” Reynolds explained. “In the current iteration of the script, Deadpool is aware of the Wolverine movie. He doesn’t say anything disparaging about it but he does at one point play with the Deadpool action figure with some curiosity.”
By mentioning that there’s a “current” version of the script, Reynolds kind of is saying that the Deadpool movie is trying to get to theaters. But this isn’t the concrete announcement Deadpool fans have been waiting for. Not yet, anyway.
Keep holding out hope, guys. If this meta experiment ever comes to fruition, I think it could be a hell of a lot of fun.
’X-Men: Days of Future Past’
We’re inundated with mutant news this week, and we’ll cap it with a subtle hint ‘X-Men’ director Bryan Singer tweeted: a mailbox located outside the house of Pietro Maximoff, aka Quicksilver.
Singer labeled the picture “House Call.” Will it be reminiscent of the ‘Last Stand’ opening, with Magneto and Professor X calling on a young, talented mutant whom they wish to recruit? Well, it will be a variation of the scene, as Charles (James McAvoy) and Erik (Michael Fassbender) drove a spike through their friendship at the end of ‘X-Men: First Class.’
And here's the latest image Singer released as this feature went to press, with the caption, "The countryside at last":
Singer’s ‘Days of Future Past’ is another comic property that should have a splashy presentation in San Diego. More on that next week.
‘Kick-Ass 2’
Universal’s bringing Jeff Wadlow’s brutal ‘Kick-Ass 2’ to Comic-Con, where it’s expected to whip Hall H fans into a steamy frenzy.
Before that, though, ‘Kick-Ass’ co-creator takes IGN on a set tour of Dave Lizewski’s bedroom, and points out clever Easter eggs eagle-eyed ‘Kick-Ass’ fans will want to look out for:
‘Doctor Strange’
Last week, we started teasing Latino-Review’s detailed explanation of what the site believes to be the opening events in the standalone ‘Doctor Strange’ movie, which is expected to be part of Marvel’s Phase 3. Elmayimbe is back with Part Two of his exclusive ‘Strange’ video, which we’ve embedded below:
At the moment, Marvel has not announced a ‘Doctor Strange’ panel at Comic-Con, choosing only to bring ‘Thor: The Dark World’ and ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ to Hall H. But the studio did hint at “surprise guests,” which could mean new ‘Ant-Man,’ ‘Strange’ or ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ news. Stay tuned.
Oh, speaking of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,' ComicBookMovie found out that James Gunn’s movie plans to film an “Alien Spaceship Crash” scene in a UK farmland. They think it might be Michael Rooker piloting the downed ship, in character as Yondu. Click here for more details, including a rough schematic of how the scene might unfold.
And one last note, Chris Pratt revived his 'Zero Dark Thirty' body in anticipation of filming 'Guardians,' in which he'll be playing team leader Star-Lord/Peter Quinn. What's his secret? "No beer for six months."
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