The Voice Of Zod – Man Of Steel Official Site Posts Intriguing Teaser

The official Web site for Man Of Steel posted this garbled transmission from Superman nemesis, Zod. Beware, clicking on the video may expose you to a plot spoiler: seems Zod is in a snit that we have his stuff Kal-El.

Could be an interesting twist on the Superman story to have Kal-El as a Kryptonian fugitive…or the good general may just be getting his crazy on. Either way, the movie is beginning to sound more interesting the closer we get to the opening.

Man Of Steel hits theaters in the US on June 14, 2013.

Via Comics Alliance

Sexy Beast. Or Maybe Blue Balls: Bryan Singer Reveals Beast’s Look in Days of Future Past

While we have been talking about the rapidly ramping up hype around this summer’s geek and genre movies, the cool thing about living in this part of the 21st Century is that no one is waiting to see how the comic book flicks do this year before they make more: we’ve already got at least four of them in the pipe for next year.

As we speak, Marvel Studios has Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of The Galaxy being whipped together, but let’s not forget the Grand Old Man of modern superhero movies: the new X-Men, Days of Future Past, directed by Bryan Singer, the dude who put together the first two X-Men flicks (and I guarantee you that he thanks God for that fact every day, since there ain’t no one wandering around referring to Singer’s accolades as the director of Superman Returns, or Valkyrie).

And even though Singer is relatively early into production on Days of Future Past, he’s done a good job using Twitter to keep the rabid fans on the edges of their seats. Not too long ago, he Tweeted pictures of a bunch of the actors attached to the movie, but now he’s moved to showing off some early makeup effects. Specifically that of Nicholas Hoult in his Beast makeup. Which you can check out after the jump.

T-Minus 27 Days: First Complete Iron Man 3 Scene Released

We are about a month away from the start of summer movie season, and to this day, it feels a little funny to say that this early in April. Back when I was a really little kid, “summer movies” were, well, just movies that came out in the summer, and generally amounted to whatever Disney re-release fronted the double bill at the drive-in theater, where my parents gambled on me falling asleep in the back of the Dodge Aspen early enough for them to get hammered in relative peace and bemoan that they ever decided to have children.

But Jaws, in June 1975, changed all that, with Star Wars moving the start of summer blockbuster season up to Memorial Day. And that’s how it was until Spider-Man moved the magic date up to the first Friday in May back in 2002, and where it has stayed, guaranteeing a huge blockbuster on that day… and a giant pile of expensive shit that Hollywood knows sucks, but is still hoping will lure in enough bored dupes looking for something to do on a Friday night to make back the production investment, the weekend before (hello, Pain & Gain!).

But regardless: the season is coming, and we are, as we have stated in the past, most looking forward to Iron Man 3. Sure, we could spend our early spring looking forward to geek movies like, say, Man of Steel – and make no mistake, we kind of are – but as we have established, this is not our first rodeo. And while the early trailers for Man of Steel look good, we have been burned by a Superman movie made by a director with geek cred starring an unknown before (hello, Superman Returns!), and that one wasn’t even by the poor, deluded schmuck who made Sucker Punch.

So for now, Iron Man 3 is our frontrunner, and since it opens first, on May 3rd, it means we are getting more and more promotional stuff about it. Such as the first complete scene from the movie to be released via Yahoo Screen. It is referred to as “Holiday Greeting,” which is appropriate, because it reminds me of every Christmastime “conversation” I have ever had with my brother. And you can see it after the jump.

Mistaken Identity: Robert Redford “Confirms” Role In Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the sequel to 2011’s Captain America (duh; what did you think it was the sequel to? Ice Castles? Use your head) is in production now, which means that casing rumors and news are coming out on a semi-regular basis. The latest news, from about a week ago, was that Robert Redford was being cast to play… something. But exactly who was anyone’s guess. Was it one of Captain America’s old, pre-freezing, World War II buddies? Agent Coulson’s angry and vengeful father? Batroc The Leaper? Leatherface (Yeah, I know, but the man’s spent a lot of time in the sun, is all)?

Nope. Redford did a press conference to support The Company You Keep, the upcoming political thriller flick he directed, and he point blank told reporters the role he’s playing… and it turns out that, yeah, we still don’t know what role he’s playing in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Because I don’t think Redford knows what the fuck he’s gonna be doing in the movie.

Why do I say that? Well, Redford told reporters he was playing:

Well, the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. The head of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Oh, okay. The head of S.H.I.E.L.D. Got it. Thanks, Bob.

Wait, what?

Bastard In Charge: Guillermo del Toro Confirms Constantine To Lead Dark Universe

We appear to have our Internet and cable issues resolved here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives headquarters, after a long and exhausting weekend digging around in wiring… and we recovered our connectivity just in time for Wondercon to be over. Which means that there is a ton of news that even we need to catch up on, and, having quickly scanned our RSS feeds, it only proves that it would have been smarter and better for us to just catch a Goddamned plane to Wondercon, because not only would we have first-person news to report, but at least our hotel would have had fucking Wi-Fi.

But we couldn’t let the Wondercon weekend slip by without reporting on at least something from the convention, and this is the main item that caught our eyes once we had full Internet: Guillermo del Toro held a panel for his upcoming movie Pacific Rim during the convention, and, as one would expect at a comic convention panel where they hold a Q & A session, someone asked del Toro about his reports that he’s working on Dark Universe – a movie focusing on pretty much all the big Vertigo / DC Dark characters.

Now, what one wouldn’t expect is that a director would say anything at all about a roject in pre-production, particularly at a panel about his latest movie that isn’t even out yet. However, this is Guillermo del Toro we’re talking about, and as the director of Blade II and both Hellboy movies, it’s safe to say that he’s one of us, which means he’s probably as excited about the concept of a Justice League Dark movie as the rest of us are.

While is a long way to go to say that: yeah, del Toro let a couple of things about Dark Universe slip.

Now With Added Ninja (Deadpool Sold Separately): The Wolverine Teaser, Posters Released

When it comes to this summer’s upcoming geek flicks, we here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are obviously, based on the generally increased level of our coverage, most looking forward to Iron Man 3. Call me an old-fashioned Generation X-er, but I’ve got a soft spot for seeing Robert Downey Jr. swilling whiskey, acting inappropriately anti-social, and losing everything important in his life. It reminds me of the 90s.

Iron Man 3 is not, however, the only comic book movie coming out this summer. There is also The Wolverine, the sequel to 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine. On paper, there’s a lot to look forward to in The Wolverine, what with it reportedly being at least somewhat influenced by Chris Claremont’s and Frank Miller’s Wolverine miniseries from back to 1982, which brought us the catchphrase, “I’m the best there is at what I do,” as well as internal monologue captions obviously pasted in at the last minute by Marvel editorial to make it seem, all visual evidence to the contrary, like Wolverine didn’t just kill a room full of ninjas. But on the other hand, The Wolverine is the sequel to a movie that gave us Deadpool – The Merc With a Mouth – with no mouth.

The Vegas Line on this movie is a living document, that’s all I’m saying.

However, as the movie’s release date of July 26th approaches, we are beginning to get some promotional materials about the flick, and there are some reasons to be encouraged. For example, the director released six seconds of video from the movie to Vine (which we can’t embed here, but if you watch closely, you can see Famke Janssen – presumably as Jean Gray – will be making a cameo appearance), but not only that: they just released a teaser to MTV with some new footage that we can embed… along with a couple of posters for the movie showing Logan in what appears to be less-than-happy demeanor. Almost as if he spent a year having to listen to Russell Crowe singing in his ear.

Anyway, you can check out the teaser and the posters after the jump.

I Want These Motherfucking Zombies Off This Mother Fucking Plane – New Trailer For World War Z Leaks Early

According to Bleeding Cool, the new trailer for World War Z was supposed to have an exclusive premiere by Apple on Monday. Guess it’s not so exclusive anymore. Check it out below before it gets pulled from the Internet until Monday.

It seems to bear about as much resemblance to Max Brook’s novel as Tuvan throat singing does to music, but it’s got Brad Pitt and zombies on a plane so that’ll probably put butts in seats.

World War Z opens in the US on June 21, 2013.

Tweet Impairment: Bryan Singer Posts Photo of X-Men: Days of Future Past With New Cast Members

You ever wake up on a Saturday morning, crippled from drink with the sense memories of about seven too many Jack Daniels-based drinks lingering in the back of your throat (along with a flavor that you can’t identify, but strongly suspect is gonorrhea)? And then your phone rings, and it’s a friend of yours saying, “Um, buddy? What exactly is this thing you went me a cell phone picture of? It’s a little blurry, but I figure it’s either a couple of sand dunes in the Saraha Desert, or else you’d better start rehearsing the speech you’re gonna give to your neighbors when the judge orders you to… inform them.”

Of course you have; if you were an upstanding citizen, you’d be getting your comics information from a more reputable source (read: almost anywhere else). And that means you understand the innate and insidious nature of Twitter. Just four years ago, the worst thing you could do with your cell phone camera was baffle a single person. Now, you can baffle the whole world at once!

Which is a long way to go to say that X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer has been Tweeting again.

Crowdfunding Will Not Save Us: Thoughts On The Veronica Mars Kickstarter

Editor’s Note: Please be advised that this long-assed editorial is written by someone who knows exactly fuckall about the television and motion picture industries. So the opinions therein are bourne purely from a dude who has spent more than 40 years watching niche properties flare up on the horizon, getting excited in anticipation like every other genre geek, and being disappointed after they pass. Plus, I’m hung over right now.

The world of genre TV and movie fans went mildly apeshit this week when Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell, the respective creator and star of the mid-2000’s CW show Veronica Mars, put up a Kickstarter project to fund a Veronica Mars major motion picture. At launch time, it seemed like a longshot – they were asking for $2,000,000 within 30 days, which was more than any other Kickstarter had ever set as a funding goal, but Thomas said in the project’s description that the deal with Warner Bros., who owns the actual rights to the property, had already agreed to greenlight the movie (albeit for a limited theatrical release) if they hit the ambitious funding goal.

When I heard about the project, it sounded kinda ridiculous to me. Trying to scrape up two million simoleans from a fanbase just in the hopes of getting a genre flick made seemed about as productive to me as clapping your hands to keep Peter Pan alive, or clawing futilely at a Fenway Park beer counter’s security barrier ten seconds after the seventh-inning stretch.

I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About This: New Star Trek Into Darkness Trailer Released

A cocky starship captain with a problem with authority yells at his partner to stop complaining about the fact that they’re being chased. Then he pilots a largely saucer-shaped spaceship, again, while being pursued, and escapes by turning the ship on its side and shooting a narrow gap. And then he snarls at his co-pilot to, “punch it!”

Yup, J. J. Abrams sure is the guy to direct Star Wars… unfortunately, these are all elements from the latest trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness.

Which I am okay with – as far as I’m concerned, the Star Wars-style elements in the first Star Trek showed he’d be a good guy to drive Star Wars: Episode VII – but then again, I am not the biggest Star Trek fan in the world. Based on some of the chatter at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to offer to show my dilithium crystals to the paying clientele, there are people out there who own the technical manual for the Enterprise and can use the word “nacelle” in a sentence that isn’t, “What the fuck is a nacelle?”, who are looking at this new trailer and losing their shit.

And you can watch the trailer and lose your shit, right after the jump.