Caddickisms

Lots of news and some rumors hitting the net lately… here are the best of the bunch for Sci-Fi and comics lovers:

The next Stargate SG-1 film titled Stargate: Continuum now has a July 29 DVD release date.

Marvel has announced that Iron Man 2 has been confirmed for release in 2010, in addition to a movie about Thor. Also reported: the Avengers and Captain America (with Matthew McConaughey as the lead?) in 2011.

Also announced by Marvel: an Ant Man movie, though the timeline for the film is unknown. (This is where they start to lose me… Ant Man? Seriously? I think they’re stretching to reach a mainstream audience with that one. My guess is his popularity in the Avengers movie will determine if this one really gets made.)

Iron Man, Tony Stark, will make a cameo in The Incredible Hulk.

Superman: Man of Steel will now not be delayed due to the “Justice League of America” film but is geared up for a 2009 release with Brandon Routh back as Superman.

Both Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Dark Knight will run over 140 minutes. In fact, The Dark Knight may run close to three hours.

Speaking of The Dark Knight, director Christopher Nolan has signed on for a third Batman feature, and Christian Bale has expressed interest as well. Details of plot are even starting to circulate - apparently the film will focus on Two-Face and may introduce Robin, following the plot of the graphic novels “The Long Halloween” and “Dark Victory” for a rough outline.

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I was really hoping this movie would be better than it was. Alas, it wasn’t.

After a promising beginning, dealing with the “death” of Captain America, and setting up some multi-decade intrigue, the movie’s plot devolved into nothing more than, “here’s a character, here’s his/her power, he/she isn’t a team player, now everybody get together and fight something.”

They did attempt a small bit of character development, especially with Captain America and Bruce Banner/Hulk, but it was really not handled well. And the villains were not developed at all! With the promising set-up in the World War II setting, there was a lot of mystery surrounding these guys. The writers obviously wanted to do something with it, but either couldn’t figure it out, or it got cut completely out of the movie. Early on, one character even asks, “Why are they still here?” and the response is all we ever get about it: “We don’t know.” That’s it.

The real answer, of course, is so the good guys have someone to fight. But that’s not really helpful, plot-wise.

It’s a shame, because reading about some of these same characters in the current Marvel “Civil War” event in the comic books, it’s obvious that there is a lot of excellent character development and interesting story to draw from. It’s really disappointing that they chose to make this release so unsatisfyingly formulaic. I’ve seen better story arcs in many of the Marvel cartoons (like the X-Men and Spiderman cartoons that aired on U.S. TV in the 1990’s).

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