Marvel Update: Friday Aug 30th 2013

As we now know, James Spader has been cast to play the mechanical villain Ultron in the next Avengers movie, according to a Thursday announcement from Marvel. If you're not a huge Avengers follower, that may leave you wondering who Ultron is and then who the smiling purple guy at the end of the first Avengers movie was. Wired.com has a nice little synopsis as to who Ultron is, and as for Thanos, who was featured in the credits of The Avengers, he may not be the villain of the next Avengers movie (although he's supposed to be in Avengers 3), but he's still going to play a role in the Phase 2 Marvel films. Kevin Fiege, godfather and supervising emperor of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, said in an interview with Empire that Thanos will be involved in Guardians of the Galaxy:

"We’ve already said that Thanos plays a part in it and is a character in it. That in and of itself should tell you [Guardians] is connected to the other worlds. Ronan The Accuser (Lee Pace) is very much the main bad guy. And Thanos is lurking above it all. You will learn more about Thanos in Guardians, for sure. Certainly you’ll get more than the one turn-around-and-smirk. You’ll get much more than that."

DC Update: Friday Aug 30th 2013

The internet is still reeling from hearing that Ben Affleck is going to be Batman in the Man of Steel sequel. The news has been circling the drain of internet conversation since the news was broken a week ago, with some (alright, tons) crying out in protest and others waiting hopefully for the Oscar winning actor and director to do a good job. Affleck has garnered support for his position as the new caped crusader from all sorts of people: Matt Damon (of course), Joss Whedon, former Batmen Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton and Adam West. The film is set to film in Michigan, according to The Hollywood Reporter, beginning next year.

James Spader To Play Avengers Villain Ultron

James Spader has been cast to play (or voice?) the mechanical villain Ultron in the next Avengers movie, according to an announcement from Marvel. The film is to be released May 1 of 2015, and will feature the Marvel heroes once again teaming up to battle for the fate of Earth.
Spader is an Emmy Award winning actor for his work in TV series such as The Practice and Boston Legal. He also appeared more recently in the second to last season of The Office.

(Non)Marvel Movie Guide: X-Men, Spider-Man and the Fantastic 4

There are some Marvel Comics' films not under the banner of the young and ambitious Marvel Studios' Marvel Cinematic Universe that kicked off with Iron Man in 2008. Some properties, such as Daredevil, Elektra, Ghostrider, Punisher and Blade, have reverted back to the waiting arms of Marvel and away from outside studios that produced their films in the past. Rights to the character of Namor the Sub-Mariner are still held by Universal, but no known film project is underway.

The names left outside of Marvel Studio's universe are Spider-Man, the X-Men, and Fantastic 4. While it's easy to list the three and count them on one hand, these are no small properties, which is why they continue to be held onto by the other movie studios. Sony Pictures holds the rights to Spider-man while Fox holds control of all things X-Men and Fantastic 4. Spider-Man recently experienced an 'Amazing' reboot (to be followed by a star-studded sequel) after Sam Raimi's Spider-Man Trilogy came to an end in 2007. Spider-Man is a very popular Marvel character and one that garners a ton of merchandising money for Marvel, so it is definitely a film series to keep track of.

The larger properties of Fantastic 4 and X-Men belong to Fox. The Fantastic 4 had two not-so-fantastic films back in 2005 and 2007, and recently there's been a buzz about a future reboot for the series that could include a tie in to the established X-Men universe. It is that larger universe of the X-Men that requires a little breakdown. Spanning several films that encompass many story lines, the X-Men Cinematic Universe does not have the continuity that its Marvel counterpart holds. It can be confusing and conflicting, so with that in mind, here is a guide to the X-Men movies, a film series that may be home to the next Fantastic 4 films as well:

Avengers Movie Timeline Guide

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is an ever growing one. With that in mind, here is a guide to the Marvel Studios series films:

1. Iron Man (2008)
Billionaire weapons manufacturer Tony Stark finds himself at odds with both his death dealing enterprise and his debaucherous, alienating lifestyle. He is forced to make life changing, and saving, decisions that throw him into the new identity of Iron Man.
The film both marked the emergence of Marvel Studios and Robert Downey Jr.'s launch into stardom with a new generation of movie goers. It showed that Marvel was taking control of its film endeavors, no longer relying on outside studios to bring characters to the screen, and also hinted at more to come.


2. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Dr. Bruce Banner transforms himself, by way of a gamma radiation experiment, into a hulking green monster. Triggered into the uncontrollable hulking form by anger and stressful situations, Banner flees the country while the US Army tries to both control and replicate the results of Dr. Banner's experiment.
Following the huge success of Iron Man, the film offered both an expansion to the Marvel movie universe as well as a welcome replacement to Hulk from 2003. Edward Norton delivered a compelling performance, and director Louis Leterrier did a better job than previous efforts at balancing the Hulk's potential to be more of a monster movie than a superhero flick, although some still were disappointed at the films efforts. A cameo by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark solidified the new films' shared continuity.

Pirates 5 has a name

The Pirates of the Caribbean film series has long been rumored to hold a fifth chapter, and more money, for Disney and star Johnny Depp. It would now seem that that ship is beginning to sail, as the title to the fifth film was revealed to be Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales in an exclusive interview with This Is Infamous.
Speculate all you want as to whether this will be a movie worth watching, but for now we at least know the poor bugger's name. Yo Ho Ho.

Ben Affleck is going to be Batman.

So, Ben Affleck is going to be Batman in the Man of Steel sequel. That's about it. That's all it needs to be, because that's news enough. If this is the first you've heard of it, then either this blog is a lot cooler than I thought, or you need to get out more.

Any doubt that DC's new strain of films is divorced from the continuity of the Dark Knight trilogy should be erased now.

Also, everyone's going to be thinking this, but the last man in tights that Affleck played was in Daredevil in 2003, so...
Here's a link to a copy of the official press release: http://goo.gl/DRnmJx