BulletPoints - Trailers and Casting Calls Part One

We’ve done a lot of talking about video games and while I could easily spend another BulletPoints throwing Ubisoft under the bus, I thought maybe this would be a week I could take a step away from that and talk about films. It was either this or the alternative of discussing Naruto some more, but I don’t want to waste anyone’s time with that if I don’t have to (but I totally will if pushed to it). 

While I haven’t seen a new film recently (lack of funds mostly), I have been keeping an ear to the ground on casting decisions for various super hero films and watching the trailers to the big movies of 2015 we’ve all been waiting to see SOMETHING of. This might get long, but this will be kind of a “grab bag” BulletPoints of film topics related to all of these. If anything in particular grabs your attention, please let me know in the comments and I’ll maybe try to expand upon that a bit more in a future discussion. That said… 

Let’s get the big one out of the way first, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I haven’t talked about Star Wars on here much, and for good reason. It was one of the few franchises I liked when I was younger, but grew apart from it as I got older. The original films are fine, but not perfect thought I still love the conclusion we reach in Return of the Jedi. The remakes, contrary to popular belief, aren’t horrible, but certainly flawed in many ways, but, once again, the finale reached in Revenge of the Sith is entertaining enough to be passable while the first two are a mix of either boring or focusing too much on the people with the worst acting talent at the time.

Now, to be fair, a lot of the issues in all of the original films stem from George Lucas. Yes, he did a lot that changed film and the industry as a whole, but let’s just be honest here guys, he’s a terrible writer. And he’s especially terrible at dialogue. It’s amazing anyone could put on a semi-decent performance with some of the schlock he wrote for them to spew from their mouths. So, yes, I’m mildly excited, but cautiously so, when it comes to new blood taking on the Star Wars films.

And the trailer looks, for the most part, good. It’s a nice call-back to a lot of the original films with a decent mix of good-looking new visuals. But since there really wasn’t much plot delivered in this trailer, it was mostly a demonstration on the visuals and what they’ve accomplished so far, I’m not sold yet. I’m still not digging the whole continuation of the Skywalker-story when I felt like they’re done and we should move on. And I’m also not sold on J.J. Abrams as our director, but considering he isn’t Lucas, I’ll take what I can get. Again, not hating, but not sold until I see more.

 The other big trailer to make it out recently is the trailer for Jurassic World, which is either an alternate-universe sequel or a reboot. Either way, visually, it looks better than the last two Jurassic Park films, so that’s a nice bonus. What concerns me most is the concept of the Human-Dinosaur hybrid created to be the main monster for the film. Some say that’s the natural progression this series should have taken two films ago. I say that it feels very much like a jumping of the shark.

By that, I mean the first two films were sold on the premise they were “thrillers” or at least suspenseful. There was an element of terror and fear at work with real-looking monsters on the big screen. It made the first movie timeless and the second movie fun at times and silly at worst. The third film… isn’t something I’m going to talk about here. But it feels like Jurassic World has decided to drop all the main notions of a thriller and go straight into a dino-action film. Why do I think this?

The scene that tips me off to this is when you see Chris Pratt riding in the night with a gang of trained velociraptors at his side. Now, taking that alone, I have nothing against. In a sillier action film with dinosaurs, I’m all for it. But it just seems a tad odd to go that route here and now and I’d hate to lose another genuinely “scary” film (or a film that leans towards scary) to the pool of generic action films. That all being said, it’s a new film with dinosaurs and such films come out maybe once every five years. Thus, while not being sold on this either, I’m willing to accept it so long as we don’t have a crap Spinosaurus upstaging the Tyrannosaurus again.

 This is where I’d talk about the Terminator Gensys trailer… if I really knew anything about the original Terminator films. Never got into them because I’ve never been a fan of Arnold or understood why he was so immensely popular. However I do know this film will feature current 2014 Arnold fighting his former 1980’s self. How, I’m not sure, but the concept of that sounds interesting and while it isn’t enough to get me to go and see the film in theatres (probably) it’s something that I want to look into because the novelty of the idea intrigues me.

Now we come to the new casting decisions for the comic book movies that I assume some of you follow and not just me. If that’s not the case… this probably won’t be all too terrible interesting.

First, Ryan Reynolds is confirmed for Deadpool. And now I’m completely uninterested in Deadpool as a film. I get there are people who seem attached to the idea of Ryan Reynolds being a good actor and thinking he fits the part well. I really don’t think he does and he’s been Box Office Poison since he landed the role in the first Wolverine film. Sure, the crap films he’s been in haven’t all been his fault, but you can’t deny he’s had a terrible track record of bad films for… a while now.

That and I don’t know how you make Deadpool’s humor fun and interesting beyond maybe ten minutes without it getting stale. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but this is the same studio responsible for the next Fantastic Four reboot. For those who don’t know much about that reboot, here are several links to reasons as to why. (And, yes, I’ll try to remember to put links in this time).

Next we have Benedict Cumberbatch confirmed for Dr. Strange. This… I have no problems with. Yes, there are other actors I would have preferred to see in the role. But I don’t have anything against Cumberbatch himself. I don’t personally like him, but that’s mostly due to the fact I haven’t seen him in much yet. I haven’t watched Sherlock because… reasons. I haven’t watched Star Trek because I just don’t care for Star Trek. So I guess this will be my first time seeing him outside of a voice role in The Hobbit. Could be fun.

Now for the more interesting news regarding DC’s Suicide Squad film. And, yes, I’m just as surprised as you are that I am more excited about a DC film than the Marvel films. Never expected that to happen. For those not sure what the Suicide Squad is, it’s a team of DC villains (usually minor villains in the B-D tier range) who are contracted by the government to do extremely dangerous missions in exchange for their freedom. Failure to do so results in death. Refusal to do so results in death. And their only escape is success. This is a fun premise and I’m interested to see how it translates to film.

Working our way up to the big one, we have Will Smith as Deadshot, the C-Tier assassin-villain from the Batman rogues gallery. He wasn’t always a bad guy, as he initially was trying to help Batman and Robin by killing criminals. Batman didn’t like this and that’s why Deadshot is a villain and consistent member of the Suicide Squad, even volunteering to rejoin from time to time. What makes this interesting is that Will Smith is kind of a big name taking on a relatively small role. And for those who are making a big deal about the other issue, no. I don’t care that Deadshot is traditionally white and being played by a black man. I’m open to the idea of an African American Spiderman or Batman. So a complete no-name villain like Deadshot doesn’t matter long term. Okay?

I’m not familiar with the actors for the next two, but we have Divergent star Jai Courtney playing Captain Boomerang (a Flash villain) and Cara Delevingne as Enchantress (DC, not Marvel). I can’t provide any real information the actors or DC’s Enchantress as I’m not familiar with DC lore. But I’m familiar with Captain Boomerang and from what I’ve read, there’s a possibility that Jai will be playing the younger son of the original Captain Boomerang. Either way, he’s just a guy with a variety of fancy boomerangs (obviously) and has a bad attitude in general. He can be a fun character and I’m looking forward to seeing where he goes.

Tom Hardy (former actor for Bane in Dark Knight Rises) will be playing Rick Flag, the de facto leader of the Suicide Squad who serves as the right-hand man for Amanda Waller (not yet cast). I don’t know a hell of a whole lot about his character. What I do know is that he’s a soldier who volunteers for this position because of his patriotic belief the government is better at protecting people than the super heroes (or at least that’s who it was in the cartoon). What I can say is that I’m interested to see who the cast for Amanda Waller because I can think of a few names (Oprah) who I DON’T  want to see make the final cut. You already have one big name taking up the cast, we don’t need another one, especially someone who isn’t that great or interesting an actor anyway.

This leaves me with the final two, and most interesting characters mentioned. Joker and Harley Quinn (who I shouldn’t have to explain) are your Batman crime-clown duo. Joker is to be played by Jared Leto while Harley Quinn is played by Margot Robbie. I’m not familiar with either actor to a major degree. But aside from Batman Beyond and maybe Clayface, Harley Quinn has been on the one character from the Batman series I’ve been waiting to see translated to film for YEARS. She was a fun character in the animated series she originated from. She was amazing in the Arkham Games. And really anything written by Paul Dini makes her a fun character to just follow and explore the broken and abusive relationship she shares with the psychotic Joker.

Joker is likely the villain (or target objective for the Suicide Squad… since they’re all technically villains). And I know there are already haters out there that will shoot down this casting because they don’t think he can live up to Heath Ledger. Guys, let’s be real for a second here. That was what EVERYONE thought when Heath Ledger was first announced in regards to Jack Nicholson, and I didn’t even like Jack Nicholson as a Joker because he didn’t sound as good as Mark Hamill doing the animated series. Much like Batfleck, I’m fine with the idea and will reserve judgment until I see the actual movie or a trailer with the character(s) doing a thing.

What I can say is that WB and Jared Leto need to tread lightly when bringing Joker back. Writing him to be too much like Ledger will just force the comparisons and if Leto can’t deliver on basically being Ledger 2.0, then, yes, the criticisms will be legitimate and you’ll have a big problem PR-wise on your hands. On the flip side of that, if you do something too radically different (like making an Adam-West-style Joker again) you’re probably going to alienate even more fans who prefer the dark blood-thirsty murderous clown. I’m not saying don’t do different, but don’t go so far out there that it’s a different movie than what anyone actually wants.

Despite all the excitement I actually have for Harley Quinn in the movie (that’s really the one thing I’m most pumped up about) I’m still not convinced the movie itself will be good. As I previously mentioned, I don’t think casting Oprah will be a smart move if that becomes official. Likewise, the casting of Will Smith seems odd (not a race thing but just strange is all) and I wonder how that will play out. And then there’s the fact that WB’s DC films have been very polarizing (or just bad) for a while now and it has shaken my faith in their ability to deliver a solid film. I’m not saying they can’t, but they have to prove it to me before I’m sold on the Justice-League-Universe concept for their films. And both this and Superman V Batman have to go the extra mile to prove they’re that capable.

And there you go. Unless something else was announced between the time of writing this and the time of posting it, I think that covers all the major/interesting film-news in the past couple weeks. Talk about efficiency. I’ll be back soon with more content related to games, films, TV, and so on. If you like this and want to see more content like it, please be sure to like, share, and subscribe. And if you want me to discuss something in more detail or have news we may have missed out on, let us know in the comments an we’ll look into it for a future BulletPoints as soon as we can. See ya next time!