This week we get a shot of pure silly with the movie Pixels, and a whole new take on Space Invaders. I am still debating if this one needs the big screen or would be just as good streaming on a tablet, but however I see it I am looking forward to it.
When the Suicide Squad movie comes out next year it should put quite a different spin on the whole Superhero film experience. After all, these are the bad guys. Sort of. We had a video taste of this team in Arrow, with a limited collection of the powered, and it looks like they expanded on the theme quite nicely for the big screen. While they are quite recent to video production, the print version made its first appearance in 1959, and transmuted into its current form and structure in 1987, finally becoming the modern version of itself on 2011. I will be in the theater for this one when it gets released in August of 2016.
The pick this week is obviously the latest release from Marvel, Ant-Man. It brings everybody’s favorite mad scientist, Dr. Hank Pym, to the big screen for the first time, although interestingly enough they chose a story in which Hank wasn’t the Ant-Man himself. Since Dr. Pym was a founding member of The Avengers, there will be some serious Avengers connectivity here, although it will be interesting to see where they go with it. After all, in different guises he was both a Super Hero and Super Villain, as his mind got warped by the mental changes induced by his various super-suites. One of the risks of being a true Mad Scientist, after all.
While that one is my first choice, there is a second movie I feel compelled to see this weekend. Mr. Holmes has Ian McKellen as a retired Sherlock Holmes grappling with an unsolved case involving a beautiful woman. This looks like an good story with some quality acting and production values, and shares something with the first film; Marvel. McKellen plays Magneto, Robert Downey Jr plays Iron Man, and Benedict Cumberbatch will be playing Dr Strange for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and now all three of them have played the iconic Sherlock Holmes.
I love all the great new stuff Comic Con brings us each year, and this year has a bunch of good stuff. I am going to have to go back and re-watch the original TV series so I am ready for this one.
I love all the great new stuff Comic Con brings us each year…
Or, if you prefer, Samurai Cat The Movie; either way, a nice bit of silliness. Now I am just waiting for a Ninja Cat film to come attack them, to give it that true historical perspective. When the Japan Society in New York had a screening of this last year, they followed it up with the Edo Cat Party, and threw in free admission to their Life of Cats Exhibition. Sadly, I haven’t found this movie yet at any of my streaming services, although it looks like Netflix did have a license to stream it last year. But I still have more to search, including Funimation, Viz, and Daisuke, so there is still hope I might stumble across it.