Marvel Studios has officially begun its conquest of the next few years of cinema and culture, with an absolutely outstanding array of new films and TV shows being revealed at San Diego Comic-Con – the entire world responded accordingly, pushing Avengers: Endgame past its box-office competitor Avatar to make it the highest-grossing film of all time, while also managing to dominate social media, with all of Twitter’s top ten trends being Marvel-related, from Kate Bishop to Thor: Love And Thunder. Marvel has also given me quite the headache, giving me endless topics to discuss for the next few days, or possibly weeks – and discuss we shall, starting with the first film to be released next year (but the last film to be announced by Marvel president Kevin Feige at tonight’s showstopper presentation).
Black Widow, officially confirmed for a May 1st, 2020 release date, with David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Florence Pugh and O.T. Fagbenle set to star alongside Scarlett Johansson’s KGB assassin in what will be a semi-prequel movie set in between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, during a time in which Black Widow was a fugitive from her own government: it was not revealed whether or not Captain America, Falcon or Winter Soldier would be in the film. It appears that large parts of the movie will be set in the fabled city of Budapest, though it is still unclear whether the events depicted there are flashbacks to the battle of Budapest referenced by Black Widow and Hawkeye in The Avengers – and Jeremy Renner was not among the cast members revealed for the film, so there’s a possibility Hawkeye isn’t even in it. Footage from the upcoming film was shown to a cheering crowd (who all received Black Widow hats afterward): the brief sizzle-reel showed Black Widow fighting Florence Pugh’s character, confirmed to be Widow’s antihero nemesis and “sister-figure”, Yelena Belova – called it! – before moving on to an intense brawl with the film’s main villain, Taskmaster, seen sporting his iconic shield: still no word on who will be playing that character, but we do know that David Harbour will portray a man named Alexi – in other words, Harbour will not be playing her father, Ivan, as was previously believed by many theorists. I’m still holding onto hope that my theory about Widow’s father being the Eternal, Ivan Druig, is correct. Eternals had its fair share of surprises during their opening presentation, but we’ll talk about that in a separate post. It was also confirmed that Fagbenle’s character “has feelings for” Black Widow, which is interesting. It wasn’t said whether she reciprocated his affections, or not.
Unfortunately, I’ll have to cover the rest of the SDCC reveals tomorrow morning – Black Widow happened to be the least eventful of Marvel’s many panels, so it was easy to talk about all the basics. Stay tuned for discussion of Lady Thor, the Multiverse, Kate Bishop, Eternals casting and more!
It’s official: Marvel’s Phase 4 line-up will include a fourth chapter in the saga of Norse thunder-god Thor Odinson, continuing on from what was previously believed to be the character’s final solo outing back in 2017, in Thor: Ragnarok. This is huge news – presumably, Marvel wanted to keep it secret for just a few days longer until they could reveal it at San Diego Comic Con, but word has gotten out prematurely.
This is something that a lot of fans have been pushing for, ever since Ragnarok, which proved to be Thor’s most popular film by far, both critically and financially. New Zealand director Taika Waititi brought a fun, zany flair to the character and invigorated what had been one of Marvel’s more stagnant franchises, paving the way for Thor’s hugely expanded role in Avengers: Infinity War, and in Avengers: Endgame. Chris Hemsworth is expected to return to the role, having already admitted that he wants to continue making Thor films, and that he, Waititi, and fellow co-star Tessa Thompson, have all discussed the possibility of a fourth film. Waititi has also been attached to Thor 4, and has in turn delayed production for his live-action Akira anime adaptation for Warner Brothers (poor WB).
As for the plot, that is still completely unknown, but there’s a lot of theories. Thor is expected to at least have a supporting role in the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie, since he joined their team at the end of Avengers: Endgame and was already thinking about renaming the group the “Asgardians of the Galaxy” – something which Guardians director James Gunn has already said won’t be happening: then again, considering that Gunn was recently fired from Disney and is still recovering from his own scandals, he really shouldn’t be calling the shots. But anyway, anything could happen in that film that could affect the plot of a Thor 4.
Another thing to consider is that a fourth film for Thor might not be set in his established homeland of Asgard (since it was destroyed), or even New Asgard, his colony on Earth (since he went off to space). And it also might not include much of the character’s usual supporting cast: aside from Thompson’s character Valkyrie, the rest of them are all kind of…dead. Odin is dead, Loki is dead, the Warriors Three are dead, Heimdall is dead, Lady Sif is just gone, Jane Foster isn’t coming back because Natalie Portman doesn’t want to come back, Hela is supposedly dead (though she’s the Goddess of Death, so I don’t know how that works). This could open the possibility of Thor starting over completely from scratch and gathering an entirely new cast, or it might mean that some of these characters will have to be resurrected. In the case of Loki, that’s not impossible: the trickster god is getting his own Disney Plus series, which suggests that his death in Infinity War was not entirely permanent. As for Hela, she was such a formidable villain, and Cate Blanchett is such an incredible onscreen presence, it seems a waste not to bring her back (especially since we never got to see her as Lady Death, something fans were hoping for before Infinity War came out). Maybe we could even get Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster to return for a brief cameo.
So what do you want to see? Are you happy that Waititi is returning to direct the film? How do you think Warner Brothers must feel about this? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
No offense to director Matthew Vaughn, but now was probably the worst possible time to release this trailer. At least for me – probably only for me.
You see, I have only recently finished watching The Last Czars on Netflix: a semi-dramatized documentary about the final days of the Russian Czar Nicholas and his entire family, who were brutally murdered in 1918 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Their story was very closely linked with that of the highly mysterious monk and spiritual healer Grigori Rasputin. Now, I went into this six-episode series knowing full well what happened to each and every one of these people, and how they died horrific deaths: what I did not know was how the series would choose to depict each and every one in the most awful ways imaginable – from Rasputin’s terrifying ability to defy death several times even while he was poisoned and brutally injured, to the slow and agonizing deaths of the Czar’s four daughters, who were probably the last of the family to perish since they were wearing diamonds sewn into their clothes, granting them a temporary immunity to their murderers’ bullets. I was expecting the deaths to happen off-screen, preferably with a minimum amount of anguished screaming. I watched it at night (could it get any worse?), and I couldn’t sleep for hours afterward. The next morning I tried as hard as I could to forget what I had just witnessed.
And who shows up in today’s first trailer for the upcoming spy thriller The King’s Man? That’s right – the bearded monk Rasputin, looking rather more fictionalized, and showing an impressive skill at wielding…glass ornaments? Teapots? I’m not entirely sure what he’s holding at the 1:18 mark, but it’s also very difficult to focus on anything other than those wide eyes, eyes which supposedly hypnotized and enchanted the Czarina of Russia, to the point where she was unable to break free of his spell. I suspect we even see the Czarina in the trailer: one of the two women clinging to Rasputin’s arm as he strides through an elegant ballroom. Then again, the characters in this film are clearly only loosed based on their historical counterparts, since the IMDb page reveals that the fabled spy Mata Hari will also be in this movie, played by Gemma Arterton (who’s been getting her fair share of spy thrillers recently, coming off the unexpected success of Murder Mystery on Netflix), alongside characters like Field Marshall Haig; U.S. President Woodrow Wilson; the Kaiser Wilhelm II, Czar Nicholas II, and King George V of England, all played by Tom Hollander, which makes me suggest that somehow all three warring heads of state are going to be revealed to be the same man; and…and Rasputin’s real-life killer, the Russian prince Felix Yusupov (played by Daniel Brühl, Marvel’s “Baron Zemo”).
And this is what has me slightly upset. Not the fact that Rasputin is actually as terrifying as all get-out, and his portrayal in this film by Rhys Ifans looks even freakier (well, okay, that too), but the knowledge that this film is going to necessarily fictionalize a whole bunch of this part of history. Now, don’t get me wrong: I like historical fiction. Usually, seeing Mata Hari cross paths with Rasputin wouldn’t be a problem for me – but coming at this time, just after I’ve watched the most grim, grisly, realistic depiction of this very intense period of human history…well, it’s just coming at a bad time. Especially because this has so much potential: it could do so many things – it could, for instance, seek to capitalize on the very popular myths of the “escape” of Russian princess Anastasia Romanov. Let me stress that those are myths: trust me, I’ve just watched the documentary – the bodies of all seven Romanovs have been found as of this writing, and Anastasia is among them. She did not escape, no matter how much we may want to believe that she did. I’m going to make myself cry just writing this, because I loved imagining all the creative ways in which she could have made her daring escape from the House of Special Purpose. But, sadly, none of it’s true.
Anyway…that’s all I’m trying to say. At this moment, watching this trailer, my emotions on the subject are very raw, and I’m not currently relishing the idea of watching our British protagonists smuggle the princess out of Russia before the Bolsheviks (or Mata Hari?) can catch her. I don’t even know if that’s one of the film’s plot points – but if it is, I’d rather not know about it for a little while.
Moving on. The rest of the trailer looks really good, though I do have one other complaint. Namely, that this film already looks like it’s trying to copy certain aspects of my all-time favorite World War 1 film, Wonder Woman. Like, literally, right down to some of the shots in the trailer, such as when Ralph Fiennes (I think it’s him, at any rate) gets thrown through a wall by an explosion, while holding what looks to be a Germanic shield of some sort: it’s basically this shot:
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But with a lot less dimension: seriously, if you’re going to throw a guy through a wall, have him…I don’t know, fall from a height or something? Instead the man in question just falls onto a really barren patch of gray dirt. Not very visually interesting, if you ask me.
Aside from probably coincidental similarities (such as the scene of British soldiers going up over the trenches), we also have the peculiar appearance of a very familiar name in the cast: that of General Ludendorff, whom Wonder Woman fans will remember for his large role in that film, where he was…a glowing superhuman possessed by the Greek god Ares. I know, I was just complaining about fictionalization.
But leaving all that aside, I’m still a sucker for anything set during the Great War; I like Ralph Fiennes as an actor; and I think this film definitely has potential. It’s got elegance, wit, and a good dose of classic British daring-do. Let’s see how it is – and whether it’s got Mata Hari smuggling Anastasia out of a Russian empire controlled by King George – before we make any assumptions.
Millie Bobby Brown, the teenage star of the hit Netflix show Stranger Things is enjoying what is hopefully only the promising beginning of a long career in the entertainment industry: she is still best known for her work on the show, since her film roles have tended to…not go quite as well. This year’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a good example – Brown was supposed to be one of the film’s main selling points, but wasn’t enough to garner any critical or, crucially, financial success for the film, which flopped.
Now, as people begin to wonder how long Stranger Things can last (I’m going to guess that, as long as it keeps drawing in record audiences, it will last for a long time), Brown is turning her attention to the movie industry with new fervor. She’s already snatched up the lead role in Enola Holmes, a film about the crime-solving younger sister of famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, who will be portrayed by Henry Cavill. And, according to one very peculiar reference in an article by Variety (I’ve noticed that Variety does this a lot), Brown might also be on her way to joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The article in question talks about what Marvel will be showcasing at their eagerly-awaited Hall H presentation for San Diego Comic Con. Obviously, the event will be huge, but the article itself seems, at first glance, to just recap what we already guessed. Marvel president Kevin Feige will be there, and will officially announce projects such as Black Widow, Doctor Strange 2, Black Panther 2, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Eternals – “which has been widely reported to star Angelina Jolie, Kumail Nanjiani and Richard Madden, as well as “Stranger Things” lead Millie Bobby Brown”.
Say what now?
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It’s entirely possible that Variety has confirmation of this casting, and just decided, for whatever reason, to randomly drop it as an aside in an article about Comic Con. As I said, they do that sort of stuff a lot. But it is interesting that they don’t actually reference any sources, saying instead that these are just the cast-members “widely reported to star”. Is that confirmation or what? Considering that Brown is currently at the peak of her popularity, wouldn’t it have made sense to, I don’t know, address this major casting announcement in a separate article?
It doesn’t even seem possible that they would be basing this information off the rumors going around a few months ago that Brown had been cast in The Eternals, rumors which Brown herself strongly denied, claiming she didn’t even know what The Eternals was, and that the rumors were “a waste of time”. But, then again, this is not the first time Brown has been associated with Marvel – back in 2017, she was seen visiting Avengers directors Joe and Anthony Russo while they were filming Infinity War and Endgame: and interestingly, a lot of rumors were going around before Endgame‘s release that two characters from The Eternals would be in in the film, specifically in a post-credits scene. It’s important to note that one of these two characters was rumored to be a teenage female, known as “Piper”.
If Brown has been cast as “Piper”, whoever that may be, she will not be the first Stranger Things star to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe: David Harbour, who play Brown’s character’s father on the show, was cast in the upcoming Black Widow movie, also in an undisclosed role.
So what do you think? Is this a slip-up by Variety, or has Millie Bobby Brown actually been cast in The Eternals? How would you feel about this casting? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and be patient: all will be revealed at San Diego Comic Con!
