Movie News: The Wolverine, Kick-Ass 2 and Veronica Mars

          I’m back blogging, I know its been awhile since my last review and I know I’ve missed a lot since then so I’d like to try something new a bit of movie news and just general talking about movies.

The first thing I’d like to talk about is all the great trailers that have come out recently specifically trailers for The Wolverine and both Kick-Ass 2 trailers (the domestic(American) and international versions), both these movies look amazing, I’m a huge comic book movie fan and have been following both these films since I heard about them. And I'll be talking about the Veronica Mars movie.

          Let’s talk about The Wolverine first this is the kind of sequel to X Men (3) The Last Stand and X Men Origins Wolverine and potentially ties into X Men First Class, so yeah the fan boys will love trying to figure out the timeline and what’s canon and not, but for people who haven’t seen all the X Men films (read all the comics) it should be easy to follow and figure out on its own as a movie. It follows Wolverine/Logan (Hugh Jackman) after the events of The Last Stand as he comes to terms with everything that’s happened and trying to figure himself out in Japan, where he meets an old friend who’s live he’s saved and wishes to pay off him debt and offers to make Logan mortal. Now there are two versions of this trailer as well, a domestic and international version, the main difference is that the international version is more action orientated and that it ends with the tagline “When he’s at his most vulnerable, he’s at his most dangerous”, which sums up Wolverine brilliantly. At this point I should also mention that as of this film 20^th Century Fox will be tying their Marvel films (X Men and The Fantastic 4) together in a cinematic (shared) universe, in the same vain as Marvel has done with their Avengers films (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America) and this will be headed up by comic book writer Mark Millar. So what that means to both franchises is they could overlap and interact with one another and who knows potentially the Fox and Marvel universes could cross paths in upcoming films, who knows and just a quick mention that Sony own the rights to Spider Man so if all three companies interact with one another who knows what could happen. Ok you’ve either loved reading that or found it very boring but either way here’s a link to the trailer for The Wolverine The Wolverine International Trailer

Next up it’s the trailers for Kick-Ass 2, the domestic trailer focuses more of Kick-Ass

(Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Hit-Girl (Chloe Grace Mortez) joining together with a group of other superhero’s (inspired by Kick-Ass himself) including Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey) to face a bigger and badder enemy, an evil super villain team lead by Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin)’s character The Mother Fucker (the villain Red Mist from the first Kick-Ass). While the international trailer follows more Hit-Girls story and her adjusting to a normal life and the death of her father and then her becoming Hit-Girl again. Both versions however make it clear that this is going to be a great movie, if you haven’t seen the original I urge you to go out and get a copy if you can, be warned though it’s a violent film full of strong language throughout, but it’s also one of the funniest and most original Super hero films I’ve ever seen (or read). Here’s the links to both trailers, enjoy. Kick-Ass 2 International Trailer & Kick-Ass 2 Domestic Trailer

And lastly I’d like to mention The Veronica Mars movie. For those of you that don’t know Veronica Mars was a 2004 teen drama series revolving around the titular character initially in high school and then college moonlighting as a Private Investigator and is best known for being Kristen Bell’s break through role and is also somewhat of a cult classic. Unfortunately the series only lasted three seasons and was then cancelled, the series creator (Rob Thomas) then approached Warner Bros. with a script for a feature film which the opted not to produce, but they gave permission for Thomas to seek finance for the film himself. Now to the main point of this article, Thomas and Bell and the rest of the cast of the show took to KickStarter to raise the money for the film, the main reason I’d suspect that Warner Bros. passed on the film was because of the Niche cult following appeal of the series but that’s exactly what has successfully financed their film. So what I want to ask you is what cancelled TV show would you resurrect if you could in either a movie or follow up series, assuming money and studio cooperation were not an issue? Here’s the trailer for the KickStarter campaign if you want to check it out. Veronica Mars Movie

Opinions: How I Met Your Mother & other long running tv shows

          I remember when I first heard about How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM), I though what an interesting idea it was and when I saw my first episode I fell in love with the show, the characters were new and genuinely funny, which I quiet rare in sit-coms today. But as the seasons went on and we kept getting hinds and teases about who Ted’s wife (the mother) was I thought of how I’d do the reveal. So here’s what I would of done in season 8 of HIMYM, I would of just introduced the Mother. Now you might think that’s strange seems as though the whole premise of the show is how they met, but taking some liberties with that idea, who says the fall in love the first time them meet? So after introducing her I’d start her and Ted dating and then we’d get to know more about her and be introduced to her friends, this bits key to me and you’ll see why later. So season 8 ends maybe with Ted and the mother having a fight. Now instead of doing a season 9 straight away we have a season of How I Met Your Father, told from the mothers view with her and her friends and how she’s always in the same places as Ted and the gang have been but just keep missing each other and depending on how successful this series if there could be more seasons, maybe season 2 runs concurrently with season 9 of HIMYM. And lastly by season 10 I’d wrap up the story line and have Ted and The Mother marry.

          Now on to the second part of this opinion piece. Long running TV shows in general, as constantly happens TV shows run out of steam after about four to five seasons, this is generally because the original idea of the show has been exhausted and then the writers look to introduce new idea’s into the plot to extend the run of the show, in some cases this works brilliantly in most though it doesn’t. So in my opinion ten in the magic number of seasons for any TV show assuming it survived the slump after season four or five as generally after ten the show will have to jump the shark again, if not for story reasons then because of actors or writers wanting to move on. How many shows can you think of that would of benefit from ending early? Everyone’s favourite example is The Simpsons, “Wasn’t The Simpsons a great show?” and when it ends it will be very fondly remembered but as the seasons keep on coming they turn older viewers away. Anyway back to my point, great television shows know when to end, when to take their bow and move on to other projects, they know there is no point flogging a dead horse and know to wrap up existing story lines and plot points. But that’s just my opinion, I hope you agree, but if you don’t feel free to comment.

Opinions: Arrow (TV Series)

          For those of you who don’t know there’s a new television show called Arrow on Sky One (and The CW in America), based on the DC comic books character Green Arrow and here’s the secret part guy’s, it’s amazing. I feel DC and very smart at doing this small screen stuff as it really helps to build up the profile of lesser known characters and allow you time to get to know them and invest in them, it also allows you to introduce other characters and build a shared universe like what Marvel have done with their film franchises. It’s being made by a lot of the same people who made Smallville another DC television series that was amazing.

          This series feel like its taken a leaf from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and even Marvels approach of grounding everything in reality, which in my opinion helps you identify with the characters better. So who is this Green Arrow character I might hear you asking, well he’s one of DC’s better known main characters and I have to be completely honest I only ever knew of the character from references in and never knew his origin story, which is why I love this series so much it starts at the beginning and shows us how Oliver Queen the man becomes The Green Arrow.

          Now I can’t spoil too much I’m only 4 episodes in but the basic story is Oliver and his dad are on a boat trip and they crash, his father tells Oliver to right the family wrongs and shots himself in the head, this leaves Oliver trapped on an island for 5 years where he trains to become The Green Arrow. Once rescued his character is a billionaire playboy by day (cough, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, cough) but by night he is vigilante crime fighter The Green Arrow. Hopefully I’ve piqued your interest and you’ll want to go check out this series if not, well then fine, your loss.