Entry Level Geek: Rumors, Leads, and First Looks

The next few years will bring us the possibility of some of the greatest Superhero movies of all time, or it will all be an enormous letdown. Whether they turn out to be successes or flops, we’ll have to wait and see, but with all of them coming out within 2 years of each other, this leads to many rumors and possibilities floating around. So this is an exciting time for fans of these franchises. Comic-Con just wrapped up, so LOTS of details are being released about all these movies, so we have plenty to cover, let’s not waste anymore time.

We’ve got our first look at Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern! Cinematical says:

One of the more interesting things about Reynolds and this Green Lantern costume is that the entire get-up is being created with computers and placed on Reynolds after the fact. If you’ve seen images of Reynolds on set, the guy is covered in all sorts of dots and whatnot (see an image here) so that they can work their movie magic in post-production and provide the guy with his magic superhero suit. Will this help or hurt the production in the end? That we don’t know … yet.

I just don’t really get into the Green Lantern as a character, seems like one of the dumber superheros to me. The guy just puts on a ring and can become things… I guess it’s not the lamest idea for a super dude, but it doesn’t trip my trigger. I love Ryan Reynolds though, so I’m looking forward to the movie anyway. Some great tidbits about the movie after the jump with possible spoilers, plus info on Superman, Batman, Captain America… and more.

Warner Bros. released some more details about the Green Lantern moive *possible spoilers*:

The image that we saw of Green Lantern on the cover of EW is still a work in progress. From the neck down is basically what we see in the film. The CGI is still not finished in the image.

The mask was obviously photoshopped in. The real mask will be a physical mask and not look like it’s been painted on his face.

25 alien Green Lanterns, each with a different energy signature, were designed for major and minor roles in the movie.

The film will mostly be based mainly Secret Origins.

A key-scene in the film will feature all the 3,600 Green Lanterns!

Parallax’s origin is different from the comics.

Fans of Sinestro will be happy to know that the mustache is untouched. It’s thin and divided into the corners of his mouth

Writers have already outlined ideas for the second and the third movie, which include Sinestro’s downfall; The Sinestro Corps War; the destruction of Coast City; Hal Jordan becoming Parallax and etc.

One of the main alien Green Lanterns is a completelly original character and his design was created by Ivan Reis.

Superman is getting rebooted, let’s face it, Superman Returns just wasn’t very good. Superman is DC’s flagship character, they need his movies to be at least somewhat successful. It helps that they have Batman doing so well, otherwise they wouldn’t have much going for themselves. Smallville has worked fairly well for about 4 or 5 years of it’s decade on TV, so a live action Superman can work, it just needs everything to fit just so. There’s a rumor that we might have a potential director for the first film, and that Zachary Levi (Chuck) is auditioning for the role. At first I’m not in love with that idea, but the more I think about it, the better and better it sounds. Chuck basically IS Clark Kent, and Levi is terrific in that role, so maybe that would work out after all.

io9 has a list of domain names that Warner Bros. recently registered. These could be possibilities for viral marketing websites, or maybe they’re tied to the next Batman video game. Whatever the case, there are some interesting names in the list. I’m just excited that Inception is finally out and now Christopher Nolan can turn his attention to the next Batman movie, which will start production in April 2011. If it is able to come anywhere close to The Dark Knight, this is a trilogy that will blow people’s minds considering the success rate of superhero movies previous to Batman Begins.

While on the subject of Batman, you can file this one into the ‘please, oh please be true’ rumor category: Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Riddler in Batman 3? I really think the Riddler is the perfect villain to cast to help people to move on from Heath Ledger’s Joker, and Gordon-Levitt is a terrific actor that could pull it off. Plus, he just worked with Nolan on Inception, and both sides seemed to really enjoy the time together. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this one comes true.

What you’re looking at is a picture of Chris Evans, Captain America, and a fan made poster of him in the suit. I’m still not sold on the idea of Evans as Captain America. Then again, I hated the idea of Heath Ledger as the Joker, and that turned out to be my favorite character in any movie ever. I hope he can pull it off, but I don’t understand why Marvel is totally ditching the Fantastic 4, Evans was such a great Johnny Storm (aka Human Torch), why eliminate the chance of them ever showing up in an Avengers movie? Of course, they’ve already recast Rhodey in the Iron Man franchise, and are doing the same with the Hulk, so why not? Director Joe Johnston had some details on how they are treating this silver screen version of Steve Rogers:

We’re sort of putting a slightly different spin on Steve Rogers, He’s a guy that wants to serve his country, but he’s not a flag-waver. We’re reinterpreting, sort of, what the comic book version of Steve Rogers was.

He’s just a good person. We make a point of that in the script: Don’t change who you are once you go from Steve Rogers to this super-soldier, you have to stay who you are inside, that’s really what’s important more than your strength and everything. It’ll be interesting and fun to put a different spin on the character and one that the fans are really going to appreciate.”

…it’s also the idea that this is not about America so much as it is about the spirit of doing the right thing. It’s an international cast and an international story. It’s about what makes America great and what make the rest of the world great too.

Here’s the first look at the cast (the human cast that is) of AMC’s highly anticipated zombie show, ‘The Walking Dead,’ based on the best-selling comic book series by Robert Kirkman and is set to premiere in October. Back in June, show creator Frank Darabont described his show, “This is a story about a group of people trying to survive difficult-to-impossible circumstances. They need to figure out how to survive it, but they also need to figure out how to survive each other… We hope to do for zombies what ‘Mad Men’ has done for advertising.” If you’d like to have a look at some of the zombies to see two outstanding pictures (warning, it’s graphic) then click here.

Here’s the first picture of Thor and his hammer. Chris Hemsworth will be playing the superhero/god in the 2011 movie. This is probably the superhero movie I’m least looking forward to, but let’s be honest, the guy is going to end up in the Avengers movie, so I’m going to be seeing it.

According to GeekTyrant.com, it looks like Kevin Bacon’s villainous role in the upcoming X-Men: First Class is possibly going to be Sebastian Shaw, a mutant who possesses the ability to absorb kinetic energy and transform it into raw strength. He’s the leader of the New York branch of the Hellfire Club, which has an exclusive secret society bent on world domination, although to the public, he’s a legitimate businessman and ordinary human. He once funded the mutant-hunting Sentinel program to keep it under his thumb. To read more about the character click here.

In other news from GeekTyrant.com, Zach Snyder has started working on a script for Xerxes, a prequel/sequel to his hit 300.  Although not yet signed to direct this one, Snyder is confidant that a deal will get done. Here’s what he has to say about the movie:

This movie follows Themistocles and the Battle of Artemisium, which coincidentally happens on the exact same three days as the Battle of Thermopylae [which was the basis of ‘300’], This one starts off with a quick retelling of the why of the Persian wars. It starts off at the Battle of Marathon and then it goes back to Themistocles  finding out that Persians are invading again. and off we go over to learn a little bit about why Xerxes is the way he is.

Darius [the Persian king and father of Xerxes] gets wounded at Marathon and he’s super cool and like a great guy. Even the Greeks are like, ‘Darius is awesome.’ After Darius dies, Xerxes is so distraught, but Darius had told him, ‘Don’t attack the Greeks, only a god can punish the Greeks.’  So that’s when he calls his mystics and wizards and says, ‘Make me a god so I can avenge my father.’

And in closing, now that we have officially have our new Spider-Man for the franchises reboot, filmcritic.com has some interesting ideas to fill out the rest of the cast, and here’s a fantastic list of villain possibilities put together on Listal by user Exclusive_Henrik.