Posted on

Obi-Wan Kenobi Headed To Disney Plus!

Obi-Wan Kenobi Headed To Disney Plus! 1
denofgeek.com

The great Jedi master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the most legendary and respected figures in Star Wars lore, is apparently being dished out to the Mouse House’s fledgling streaming service, Disney+, in a new show set to (presumably) cover Kenobi’s exploits in the decade between the Star Wars prequels and the original trilogy.

But don’t give up hope just yet: Disney is making a valiant effort to have this show look and feel like movie-quality material – so much so, that they’ve gotten Ewan McGregor, who played Kenobi in the prequels, to reprise the iconic role. There’s no hint yet of how large McGregor’s paycheck for the series is, but I’m guessing it’s got to be pretty big to tempt the actor to the small screen – then again, he seems to have a pretty comfortable relationship with Disney already, having previously portrayed a grown-up version of Christopher Robin in the 2018 film of the same name.

As of right now, the show has no official title, so we’ll call it “Kenobi” because I like the sound of that. More details will probably be announced at Disney’s D23 event later this month, but until then we have a few things to think over.

Firstly, the fact that Kenobi is only a Disney+ streaming show is already upsetting fans (by the way, I’ve begun to spell the name of Disney’s streaming service with a + sign instead of writing the word Plus, since apparently that’s how we do things in Hollywood nowadays). That’s a pretty rational complaint: it’s still unclear how large the budgets for these shows will be, and whether they’ll actually maintain the same level of quality as the movies they’re based on – let’s not beat around the bush; people are worried that it’s going to look like a CW show. I’m sorry, CW, you get a lot of flack for stuff you have absolutely no control over (except the ridiculous costumes; those are entirely your fault), but this is how the public thinks. Some are also frustrated that someone of such prestige in the franchise would be demoted in such a way, instead of getting his own film trilogy: in my opinion, the Star Wars prequels were already a perfectly good Obi-Wan Kenobi trilogy, since he was arguably more of an interesting protagonist than Anakin Skywalker. But yeah, this news probably means that all those rumors of a Kenobi movie are just that – rumors. Even if they did come from Deadline.

As for the show’s setting, we have no indication as of yet: but we have to assume it will take place in the decade or two between The Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope, while Kenobi is off…wandering the barren wastelands of Tattooine? I don’t know about you, but a whole series of Obi-Wan just hanging out with Jawas sounds like fun to me: unfortunately though, the showrunners probably will deny us the content we deserve, and instead give us some half-baked story about Obi-Wan before he arrived on the desert planet, stoking the fires of rebellion, fighting rogue Sith lords and running into CGI reconstructions of characters from the original trilogy. Nowhere near as entertaining, I know.

Do I sound slightly cynical and annoyed in this post? It might be because I’m still trying to sort out how I feel about this news: am I happy, or am I one of those angry fans ranting about how Obi-Wan Kenobi, the greatest Jedi in history, was demoted to a Disney+ series? Or is it just because I’m annoyed that I have to use a dumb + sign from now on?

You know…it might be that.

Posted on

Madness In The Multiverse – And On Disney+!

Marvel’s Phase 4 announcements at last night’s San Diego Comic-Con presentation didn’t just include a detailed outline of the movies they will be releasing over the next few years – all of their Disney Plus streaming shows were also officially announced, and even received logos and some casting announcements. There’s so much to go over in this post. Let’s start with the simplest stuff.

So Falcon And The Winter Soldier is coming to Disney Plus in Fall of 2020, and will bring with it a newly redesigned version of the villain Baron Zemo, still played by Daniel Brühl, but no longer looking quite as…dare I say, boring…as he did in Captain America: Civil War. This time around, he’s sporting a comics-accurate mask, and promises to be much more physically intimidating as well. That show looks promising, but there wasn’t much to talk about. Emily Van Camp, who will star alongside Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, was not present at last night’s panel, so that presentation mostly consisted of the two leads passing around Captain America’s shield for a minute or two.

Loki arrives in the spring of 2021: Tom Hiddleston, who returned to Comic-Con to thunderous applause, will also be returning to the iconic role – Marvel president Kevin Feige confirmed that the Loki we see in the show will indeed be the one from the past who escaped with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame, leaving open the possibility of a return – maybe, somehow, Loki will find a way back into the current timeline.

A Hawkeye series was also confirmed last night, and it was revealed that archer, and sometimes Avenger, Clint Barton will be training Kate Bishop, a character who was rumored to appear in Endgame but turned out to be Barton’s daughter. There was no clue as to who would be playing Bishop, but Jeremy Renner will return to the role of Hawkeye – that will be in fall of 2021.

In one of Marvel’s more unusual panels of the night, a What If? animated series was confirmed for the summer of 2021 – Jeffrey Wright will star as The Watcher, a cosmic entity who observes the world’s history. Many of the Marvel stars will be joining the show for voice-acting work, starting with Hayley Atwell and Chris Evans in an episode which will explore what would have happened if Peggy Carter had taken the Super Soldier serum. It sounds…decent. But it will presumably feature the concept of the Multiverse, and that’s where things get interesting.

WandaVision is the Disney Plus show I’m most looking forward to, and we can expect that to drop in spring of 2021 – it will star Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff the Scarlet Witch, and Paul Bettany as the android Vision (Vision kind of died back in Avengers: Infinity War, and Bettany gave no indication of how he will be returning). The show will be set in the 1950s and have a corresponding retro flair (no explanation for that either), and it will also star Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau. That’s right, the sweet little girl from Captain Marvel, whom we last saw in the 1990s, will now be an adult…in the 1950s. If you’re confused now, prepare to be even more baffled as time goes on: Olsen said that this show is “weird”.

Is it any wonder, then, that the events of WandaVision will apparently lead directly into the most bizarre, freaky movie of the next phase – Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. With a title like that, the film is already promising some seriously trippy weirdness, but apparently it’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before in the MCU – Benedict Cumberbatch came onstage to talk about how this film will stray near, or over, the boundaries of what can be done in a PG-13 film. Apparently it will be Marvel’s first real horror film, and will feature Nightmare as the villain. And, just as many of us had hoped, Scarlet Witch will also be in the film, presumably because of something that happens in WandaVision – possibly, she gets targeted by Doctor Strange’s nemesis Baron Mordo, whom we last saw embarking on a mission to kill magical beings across the world.

Oh yeah, and the title suggests that the whole concept of a Multiverse is real – in Spider-man: Far From Home, we thought we had seen the last of that idea when Quentin Beck revealed that his scriptwriter had made it all up. Looks like that scriptwriter knew a little more than he let on to Beck, because Doctor Strange is about to set out into the Mad Multiverse. This opens so many other possibilities, it’s hard to even think about right now.

Which of these upcoming projects interests you the most? Are you excited that the Multiverse is real? Do you like the idea of Maximoff and Strange teaming up? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Posted on

“Falcon & The Winter Soldier” Updates!

Marvel always has something going on – today had been relatively quiet, as the world calmed down after the epic Game of Thrones finale last night, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe still managed to grab some headlines this evening with the news that the upcoming Falcon & The Winter Soldier streaming show for Disney Plus will start filming in the fall, under the direction of Emmy-nominee and BAFTA-winner Kari Skogland, written by Malcom Spellman of Empire; the show will apparently premiere in August of 2020.

This news would be big enough on its own to be worth an entire post, but Marvel went one step further and even teased us with two very intriguing casting-announcements: one being Emily VanCamp, and the other Daniel Brühl, both of whom will be reprising previous roles in the MCU – those of Sharon Carter (Agent 13) and Helmut Zemo, respectively.

The VanCamp reveal might not be so startling if it weren’t for the fact that Sharon Carter’s character has been almost erased from Marvel continuity, just like…well, all her fellow Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, whose existence on the ABC network has left them too far away to share in the enormous success of the MCU proper. Carter’s unfortunate romantic relationship with her great-aunt’s former boyfriend (long story) also made her character unpopular with fans – and certain cast members. Her subsequent disappearance has not done her any favors either: I’m willing to bet most people have either forgotten her entirely or at least have forgotten what role she plays in the MCU – they’d be forgiven for that, because Sharon Carter really has nothing to do in the MCU, except flirt with Steve Rogers at her great-aunt’s funeral (yeah, that’s not creepy at all), or at other randomly inconvenient moments. Bringing her back is an interesting choice, one that could lead to potential complications – maybe this time she’ll end up with her great-aunt’s former boyfriend’s best friend Bucky Barnes, considering that he’s still single.

The Stucky shippers would riot.

Adding VanCamp – and thus, Sharon Carter – to the cast raises the possibility of Martin Freeman’s character Everett Ross also returning, since one of the only things that Carter did in Captain America: Civil War – besides flirting with Steve, of course – was standing solemnly next to Ross. Freeman already hinted that he might return to the MCU at some point after his popularity in Black Panther, so the possibility is open.

But the big reveal is the Daniel Brühl casting – Helmut Zemo was one of the most peculiar and unsettling Marvel villains to date, and his Civil War storyline was basically left open-ended, with Zemo seemingly unfazed by his imprisonment and still smirking when last we saw him: his plan to divide the Avengers, unlike those of many other villains, actually had lasting repercussions in the MCU, and in some part contributed to the crushing defeat suffered at the hands of Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. The return of Zemo was being rumored a few weeks ago, but the confirmation is an exciting development: in the comics, Zemo heads the Masters of Evil, a team of dangerous supervillains – and, considering how many villains are still around in the MCU, not doing much of anything, there are plenty of candidates to choose from if one were to assemble a team like this: even Marvel president Kevin Feige hinted at the possibility.

So the groundwork has been laid for something truly spectacular – or at least something with potential. With shooting set to begin this fall, it looks like we won’t have to wait long before we get more details on this upcoming project.

Posted on

New Details About “Loki”!

Disney’s upcoming streaming platform/Netflix competitor Disney Plus is set to debut in November, with a whole bunch of old and original content: a Lady & The Tramp remake with music by Janelle Monáe, a Toy Story spinoff based on the adventures of Little Bo Peep, a Frozen 2 documentary, and a National Geographic show hosted by Jeff Goldblum (which actually sounds really interesting). Of course, a treasure-trove of original Marvel content is expected to premiere on Disney Plus as well, including three six-episode miniseries: starring Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Wanda Maximoff and Vision, and Loki – and quite inventively titled Falcon & The Winter Soldier, WandaVision, and Loki, respectively. These three shows will likely be joined by an as yet unconfirmed Hawkeye show.

While filming for WandaVision is set to begin in the fall, plot details about these shows have been scarce: aside from some “plot leaks” that may or may not be true. Today, however, Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo revealed something about the Loki show that might give us a clearer idea of what to expect.

Spoilers for Avengers: Endgame ahead!

New Details About "Loki"! 2
movieweb.com

If you recall, when the Avengers went back in time to the Battle of New York in an attempt to capture the Mind, Space and Time Stones, they almost succeeded, but not quite. Captain America was able to wrest the Mind Stone from…Captain America, and Bruce Banner convinced the Ancient One to give up the Time Stone under the condition that the Stones would be returned to their proper timelines after the Avengers had used them – but Iron Man and Ant-Man had a lot more difficulty on their end.

Their mission was to intercept the past versions of Iron Man and Thor as the two Avengers victoriously escorted their prisoner Loki and the Space Stone into S.H.I.E.L.D custody – unfortunately for the present versions of Iron Man and Ant-Man, their attempt to send past Iron Man into cardiac arrest, causing a distraction, failed massively: the Incredible Hulk smashed into present Iron Man accidentally, sending Tony and the Space Stone flying across the room – and the Space Stone came to rest right at Loki’s feet. The trickster god being the trickster god, he wasted no time grabbing the Stone and teleporting himself away from his current predicament – and that is where his story in Avengers: Endgame ends, but apparently it’s just the beginning for Loki.

At the end of Endgame, Captain America is the hero who decides to go back in time once more in order to return all the Infinity Stones to their correct timelines: how he does this is not explained, but we know that Cap did his job and then decided to take some extra time off so he could spend an entire lifetime with Peggy Carter, the woman he loved in the 1940’s. This raises a whole bunch of timeline-questions and conundrums, but none of them are relevant to the topic of Loki.

According to the Russo Brothers, Peggy Carter wasn’t the only thing that distracted Cap from his mission: apparently he also felt it was his responsibility to track down the escaped Loki in that alternate timeline and follow him across the vast expanses of space – the timeline-questions and conundrums that this raises are most definitely relevant.

For instance, does this mean Loki and a younger version of Cap are still out there somewhere? We know from the Spider-man: Far From Home trailers that holes can open in between dimensions, allowing people from one reality to enter another: so could Loki and Cap abruptly appear out of nowhere in the present day MCU? If not, then what is the point of a Loki show if we know from the outset that Loki will be captured by Cap and all the things he does in the show will simply be undone? If alternate Loki shows up in the present timeline, would he still have the Space Stone? – it wouldn’t be surprising: the Space Stone, or Tesseract, has always been a key element in MCU movies, including Captain America: The First Avenger. Cap is no stranger to the Space Stone’s powers – maybe in order to track down Loki, he has to go back to his 1945 duel with the Red Skull, to take the Space Stone from him…but then where does Red Skull go, and what ramifications could that have for the events of Vormir, and the death of Black Widow? You see, time travel and reality-hopping are pretty complex ideas, and in a six-episode miniseries how much can you really do to explain them?

Does this also mean that the earlier rumors that Loki would depict the god traveling through time, influencing historical events, are untrue? As far as we know, the Space Stone does not have the ability to send the user through time. Which is kind of disappointing, because those rumors sounded awesome. Loki on the run from Captain America does sounds pretty intriguing, especially if it opens the door for Loki eventually returning to the MCU – considering how lame his Infinity War death was, for such a cunning character. It might give us a glimpse at planets and galaxies on the far side of the universe, and it just might explain once and for all why the Space Stone is so vitally important. The Russos did not say whether Tom Hiddleston and Chris Evans would reprise the roles of Loki and Captain America, but it seems likely at this point.