Are These Something?

Commenters have posted two good clips from Comic-Con.

First, a Star Wars 7 (The Force Awakens) promotional clip which emphasizes, over and over, in an increasingly obvious and increasingly uncomfortable repudiation of George Lucas, that they are using old-style movie magic -- real sets, real puppetry/mechanically-animated masks, and real Chewbacca and real R2-D2.

Seriously, Lucas? You had to CGI such easy-to-do-practically characters? They were easy enough to do in 1977, when you had like $10 million to spend.

Hard to not think they're on to something here. It does all seem like great fun.

Why are there all these Imperial ships crashed on Tattooine? I assume they'll say there was some big fight there, that we didn't see; but who would fight over Tattooine? As Luke said, "if there's a a bright center to the universe, you're the farthest place from it."

It's a backwater. It's a shithole. They farm sand, for crying out loud. Their chief exports are blue milk, xenoleeks, and rape by Sandpeople.

Their only forms of entertainment are Space Dixieland Jazz and power converters.

Who would contest this planet? Why would one navy send its ships there, let alone two (which is what is required for a battle)? Update: This brilliant commenter proposes an answer that makes sense to me. Update: A commenter says the desert planet is not Tattooine, but a different desert planet, "Jakku."

Then, the new Batman v. Superman trailer, which looks good. Many people noted that Superman didn't really save Metropolis in the last film -- the city was destroyed, and honestly, it was all inadvertently Superman's fault. (The villains followed him to earth, to get the "Codex" out of his bloodstream.)

Well, that pays off in the sequel. As you'll see, someone was in Metropolis that day, and is a little traumatized by seeing Superman level the whole city (okay, he wasn't trying to, but...), and that provides some pretty decent motivation for that character.

Bonus: you see the Third Character everyone is curious about. In fact, you might get a quick glimpse at the Fourth Character, but I'm not sure of that.

Drawback: Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor is pretty much as weak as you were expecting.

Next up: Michael Cera as Apocalypse.

I do like Luthor's lines, though. Lately they've given Luthor an understandable motivation for hating Superman: 1, Luthor is an egomaniac and is just threatened by the Man of Tomorrow, and 2, Luthor honestly views Superman as a threat to humanity, and, being a messianic narcissist, sees himself as the crusading hero who will save humanity from this alien threat (and then be celebrated by mankind as a near god himself).

Given the mayhem in Man of Steel -- which is now, frankly, starting to make sense dramatically, at least for the sequel -- one can understand why Luthor despises this alien false god and wants to reclaim earth for humanity.

Question: We know that the movie will not end with Batman and Superman fighting each other. Spoiler alert: They will, like all Heroes Who Fight Each Other, unite against a common villain at the end.

But which one? A Batman villain is teased, but I doubt very much he'll be in this.

Zod's dead body is shown -- but he's dead.

So who will the villain be?

Might Luthor will attempt to recreate Zod (or any Kryptonian) from Zod's blood (and maybe some of Supes' blood; surely he bled some in that big fight and of course Lex collected it) and screw it up and create... Bizarro?

But Bizarro is kind of a silly character.

Unless they just go for Zombie Monster Giant Ugly Scary Bizarro.

Which would fit this series.

posted by Ace at 05:00 PM

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