The (Mouse) Empire Strikes Back: Star Wars Expanded Universe No Longer Canon

I know I’ve recounted this story before for people who are far too young to have seen Star Wars in its original theatrical release, but there’s some news today that makes it bear repeating: there was a time, not too long after Return of The Jedi left theaters, when Star Wars didn’t mean shit.

I know, it’s hard to believe, but by around 1989 or 1990, nobody was thinking about Star Wars. After Jedi came and went in 1983, we had moved on. There had been two Indiana Jones movies, Ghostbusters had come out, people who had been scared by Darth Vader as little kids were cackling at Freddy Krueger flicks, and Batman was ushering in the first real age of comic book movies. Star Wars was over. Nobody cared. Hell, even Marvel Comics had stopped publishing Star Wars comics in 1986, and that was the title that kept the company afloat in the late 70s.

Sure, we still loved Star Wars, but by then we had moved on. George Lucas wasn’t talking about making any more movies – sometime around the release of The Empire Strikes Back he was making bold claims about producing a nine-movie epic – and by 1986, he was busier executive producing Howard The Duck, possibly from behind a giant mound of cocaine (Editor’s Note: There is no evidence or allegation whatsoever that George Lucas was using cocaine during this period. Other than the fact that he was in the movie business, and it was the 1980s. Which, as someone who lived through that period, is pretty damning evidence all by itself. But I digress.)

But then, all of a sudden in 1991, there was Timothy Zahn’s Heir to The Empire. A novel set after Return of The Jedi featuring Luke, Han and Leia. And a story that, in those pre-Internet days, was strongly rumored to be the actual stores that Lucas planned to tell in the final three movies.

And once that novel hit, Star Wars interest exploded all over again. There were two sequels to Heir to The Empire. There was the Dark Horse comics sequel to that sequel called Dark Empire. And a metric shit-ton of other novels and comics, which piqued interest enough to get the Star Wars special editions released in theaters (including that victory fireworks display on Coruscant – a city introduced in Zahn’s novels!), and then the prequels, and then years of fandom rage, and now the new Episode VII being directed by J. J. Abrams…

…but without that first novel that really established the Star Wars Expanded Universe and kickstarted a new wave of interest in Star Wars? It’s the 70s and 80s version of The Matrix: One great movie, a couple of sorta okay ones, and ultimately a thing we liked when we were younger, until we moved on to bigger and better things, so we don’t really even think about it anymore.

So Star Wars owes a lot to its Expanded Universe. Which you would think would be recognized by J. J. Abrams, who, when he rebooted Star Trek, went to great story lengths to find a way to reboot the property without invalidating all the other stories that came before.

Yeah, but you’d be wrong. Because as of today, all of those stories? Not even remotely canon anymore.

Eye Candy – VFX Of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Featurette

Weta Digital, the masterminds behind the stunning virtual cinematography in The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, have posted a quick featurette about their work. It’s a neat little package that shows the process from soup to nuts on a small portion of the film. For those of you who were convinced the effects of the movie were the work of digital dark elves on a never ending quest to kill creeps and grind up through levels while leaving magical pixie dust pixels behind in their terrible wake, here is a peek behind the curtain. Also, please stop huffing your keyboard cleaner. It’s becoming a real problem.

Via Bleeding Cool.

Days of Future Passing: X-Men Footage Debuts At MTV Movie Awards

So apparently last night was the MTV Movie Awards, which I missed because I haven’t yet seen the second part of The Hunger Games trilogy, and because I am older than 15 years old and have kissed an actual girl.

But my prejudices are borne of my mid-20s and early 30s, when the only way a superhero story would be referenced would be if Jack Black put on a Robin costume and aped making out with Ben Stiller. That was the 90s, but it is the 2010s, and no less than three superhero movies are on the immediate horizon. That seems to mean that movie studios will try to leverage the MTV Movie Awards for marketing purposes, because apparently the human scum who enjoy watching teenaged mothers assault each other have money that will spend as well as money slung around by decent people.

Which is a long way to go to say that the first minute of the opening fight sequence of X-Men: Days of Future Past debuted during last night’s celebration of movies that appeal to protohumans who still have misplaced affection for Justin Bieber. And not too long ago, seeing this exclusive footage would mean that you would have to swallow your pride and watch some six-packed adolescent wave at the camera for being nominated for Best Movie Kiss in exchange for standing in front of a camera and pretending he liked women. But it is 2014, which means that if you want to see footage from an MTV award show? You just need to visit your favorite comics Web site the day after the awards show.

Or, conversely, you could visit this comics Web site. Which has the goods you’re looking for right after the jump.

Brain Bleach – A Brony Tale…A Documentary Of A Fandom That Refuses To Die

Some time in the early 80s, my kid sister began collecting My Little Pony figures. Her two favorites were a pony called Cotton Candy and a pegasus called Firefly. I generally referred to them as Miss Piggy and Braciole, respectively. So, even at a young age I guess you can already figure out where I stood on the matter of embracing the Love And Tolerance creedo of the MLP fandom, along with picking up on one of the rough 732,000 reasons my sister now lives in Ohio and doesn’t speak to the family.

However, there are a ridiculous number of folks out there that are MLP fans. Some of them are grown ass men. They are called Bronies. They are here and they are legion. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

A Brony Tale opens on April 26, as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Now, for the rest of us, who’s hungry? I’m in the mood for a little braciole…

Via Deadline.

Bryan Singer Explains Why Everybody Loves X-Men

Fox has released into the wild this featurette to promote X-Men: Days Of Future Past with new footage and an interview with Bryan Singer, who explains why he wanted to come back. Click the tag for a hint!

[Show][Hide]
Young Meat.

I know I feel better for having shared that with you.

Wow. James McAvoy “finally feels like he’s in a real X-Men movie”? Damn. Harsh diss on X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn, although I suspect he’s too busy directing the movie version of Mark Millar’s The Secret Service or dealing with the pre-production mishegas of the The Fantastic Four reboot to really give a shit. I wouldn’t.

X-Men: Days Of Future Past opens Stateside on May 23, 2014.
Via Bleeding Cool.

This Godzilla Is A Major Problem For Us; It Will Ruin Our Batch: Godzilla Extended Trailer Released

Dear God, I can’t believe how little I cared about the reboot of Godzilla when I first heard about it at last year’s SDCC. With what I’ve seen since then, I feel shame.

I think part of my initial lack of interest was based on the fact that I hadn’t heard at the time that Bryan Cranston was starring in the flick. Sure, the 90s Roland Emmerich Godzilla flick had Matthew Broderick in it, who I’ve liked since I was a kid, but I think nobody realized at the time that ol’ Matt used up all his “The World Is Coming To An End!” pathos sometime between the end of principal photography for WarGames and when John Hughes told him he’d be headlining a Chicago parade in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Cranston, however, never lost his ability to project desperate doom and gloom. He did it in every third episode of Breaking Bad for years, so I can buy it when he sells that a giant thunder lizard is coming to eat our iPads. But more interesting to me is the fact that, when Cranston wasn’t selling not-so-quiet desperation in that TV series, he was showing us a man who would poison a fucking child to get out of a jam. And that is the kind of guy I want to see spearheading the battle against the Gus Fring of giant monsters. Hell, five’ll get you ten that the last scene of the flick is Godzilla coming ashore, only to meet Matthew Broderick in a wheelchair, frantically dinging a hotel desk bell. And then Honolulu will explode.

Why am I ranting about this? Because Warner Bros. just released an extended trailer for Godzilla, with not only more scenes of Cranston acting angrily pathetic, but of the monster fucking up the U. S. Navy. And you can check it out after the jump.

Cyborgs And Mutants: Terminator Reboot, X-Men: Days of Future Past Videos Released

Let’s be real here: it is April 1st. And that means that you can’t trust a Goddamned thing that you read on this, or any other, Internet.

Just today I have seen stories that Reddit can hijack your webcam and allow you to scroll around by making hipster head nods. I have seen Google claim that you could take pictures of anything from a new kitten to a homegrown snuff film and have Pokemon appear in the photo. And in the comics realm, I have seen Brian Michael Bendis claim that Marvel and DC had buried their more than decade long agreement to disagree on crossover comics to bring back the much remembered and less-much loved Amalgam line of comics.

Bottom line: any words written on any Website between now and midnight tonight should be disregarded as bullshit. So in the interest of proving that we do not have mischief or shenanigans as a motive, we’re just gonna dispense with the words and go straight to whatever genre video we can present without looking like hamfisted amateur comedians.

So in that interest, here is the latest teaser for the upcoming Terminator reboot. It’s just a quick minute or so, and there’s a possibility that it’s just fan service (although the opening credits indicate it’s probably legit), but either way: you can check it out after the jump.

Hugh Jackman Sings!…About Wolverine

I’d like to make a couple things clear before I go any further in this post:

• Hugh Jackman was invited on BBC 1 Radio’s Matt Edmondson Show to plug X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
• Hugh Jackman was handed a set of lyrics to a parody of Les Miserables power ballad “Who Am I?”, which Jackman sang when he took a turn as Jean Valjean in the movie version, scripted as though sung by Wolverine.
• Hugh Jackman gets through the experience nicely and is a very good sport about the whole thing.

Watch.

That being said, Parker The Kitten, Official Office Mascot for Crisis On Infinite Midlives, reacted poorly to this video. Like, nosed my laptop closed, climbed on top of it (on my lap), and then scratched at the cover like he was trying to cover his own deuce in the cat box. To be fair, he also has that reaction to videos of howling puppies, Animal Planet footage of hyenas in the wild, and Bruce Springsteen. I don’t pretend to understand it, but, he’s got enough other adorable things going on that I’m willing to let it slide. Rob hid upstairs the entire time I screened Les Miz here at the home office, shrieking “Who am I? I not fucking drunk enough for this; that’s who I am! Why is Wolverine yelling at me? Where are my pants? Hey, do you smelling burning toast?” But, that’s just Monday around here. Your mileage may vary.

Via ComicBookMovie.com.

Danzig-Free: New X-Men: Days of Future Past Trailer Released

Ever since 2000, when the first X-Men movie was released in theaters, April has been an exciting time to be a comic book geek. Because it seems like every year since then, there has been at least one summer comic book movie to get psyched up about. Sure, in that summer there was just the one flick, but by 2002 we had Blade II and Spider-Man, by 2003 we had Daredevil, X2: X-Men United, Hulk and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and just this summer, we have Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Guardians of The Galaxy, and yet another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for some reason.

And we also have X-Men: Days of Future Past, directed by X-Men and X-2: X-Men United director Bryan Singer, who is, if any one person can be credited as responsible for the superhero movie explosion, that one person. Let us remember that, back in 1998 and 1999, there was widespread speculation that Wolverine would be played by Glenn Danzig. Who I’m sure would be a delight for any kind of fan to meet at a convention, but who I frankly prefer working in small suburban rock clubs, shrieking “MOTHER!” at increasingly aging punk chicks who know that Glenn is checking out their tits when he appears to be ogling their knees.

But the depressing circumstances of being Glenn Danzig are neither here nor there. The important thing is that X-Men: Days of Future Past is opening in American theaters on May 21st, which means that it’s time for a new trailer to come out to whet our appetites. And that is a thing that happened today, along with the release of the latest one-sheet poster for the flick, which you can check out at the top left of this piece.

The trailer? Well, you can check that out after the jump. Spoiler alert: it does not feature Glenn Danzig. To see Glenn, you’ll need to follow him on Twitter to see either where he’s playing, or where he’s jingling a Dunkin Donuts cup for spare change, and will likely call Wolverine a homo for you in exchange for a Marlboro Light.

Don’t Start None; Won’t Be None – Hey, Kids! First 10 Minutes Of Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Ok, here’s the thing – I maintain, and will continue to maintain, that Chris Evans has never been, nor will ever be, better in a comic book movie than his turn as Jensen in 2010’s The Losers. Now, while I might have been in the minority in that respect, check out the infamous Don’t Stop Believing scene from that movie and then get back to me.

I’ll wait.

No, seriously. I’ll wait.

Ok, so, now that you’ve seen that…HOLY SHIT THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THE NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE…HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!11!!!!!!1

Ok, then. So.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens April 4, 2014 here in the good ol’ US of A, where, if you are very good in life, you can be repeatedly lapped by Steve Rogers and then given cybernetic weaponized flight armor for your troubles.

Now, more importantly, bonus material.