comic con-tinuity

Cleaning up from Comic-Con, just as long as we can officially stop falling back on the crutch of calling it a geek fest. That’s getting kinda old, wouldn’t you think?

The Iron Man 2 trailer isn’t available over the Internet yet, but it debuted at CC yesterday. Standard reaction from the stars, lots of “We’re great!”s and “Just wait til you see the finished product!”s but my favorite is Robert Downey Jr. basically saying Mickey Rourke is a nutjob. Which is totally true, everyone knows it. But to hear RDJ (why hasn’t that nickname caught on?) call anyone a looney, well, you just know that guy belongs in the Crazy Hall of Fame. Maybe we should start one of those. The inaugural class could be Rourke, RDJ, Britney Spears, the members of Motley Crue and in the Marriage Wing, Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston. Tell me you wouldn’t show up for that induction ceremony.

This is why I’ve always thought DC Comics is a Mickey Mouse operation compared to Marvel. Even though it’s been almost 10 years since X-Men hit at the box office and the studios bought up all the rights to comics they could get their grubby little hands on — Miramax optioned Bluntman and Chronic — DC still doesn’t have a definitive lineup for its comic properties. Even though I don’t necessarily want to see any of them if they ever got their act together, major Marvel characters are kicking the tar out of major DC characters. Marvel has gotten X-Men, Spider-Man, The Hulk (twice), The Fantastic Four and Iron Man to the big screen and have definitive, rock-solid plans for a whole slew of others. DC nailed Batman, but fumbled on Superman and only has Green Lantern in the pipeline. That’s just silly and it’s bad business. On the bright side, you could say the company is taking its time and making sure the projects for Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are letter perfect. But it sounds like the company has just screwed things up royal in their quest to capitalize on the comic craze.

Now we know who’s going to be in the upcoming Avengers movie — and Hulk is conspicuously absent, although people from Hulk universe will be in, whatever that means. She-Hulk maybe? But maybe Marvel is getting the message — we just don’t want to see Hulk in the movies. Tried twice, failed twice, maybe it just doesn’t translate. I can see why the first one failed, it was a little weird, with the giant dogs and everything. But the second one worked pretty well, I thought. Still, people didn’t show up. Maybe it’s just time to retire the big green guy.

We’ve gone from CC being only about comics to it being about comics and movies to now being about comics, movies and TV shows. Shows like 24 are huge there, and we know now that Jack Bauer isn’t dead — duh — but he’s living in peace with Kim and his granddaughter. I’m sure something is going to happen to ruin that. I’m also an instant fan of Flash Forward, I just like the way it looks.

It’s not coincidence that the weekend that CC is held, nothing that would even remotely be considered a “geek” film got a release and a family movie got #1. Looks like Hollywood learned its lesson when X-Files bombed last year on this weekend. Surprised that Pottah fell that much, apparently it was an event film that you had to see first weekend. Normally, Pottah movies still have some momentum a month later, but not anymore. Good, when I go to see it next week, no one will be there.

Since it’s over now, we can safely assume Avatar is going to be the hit of the winter, people are going to go absolutely bonkers for the final season of Lost and Johnny Depp may be the most popular actor on the planet. Not quite sure how that happened.

That’s enough CC news.

We still don’t know why Wes Anderson has decided to make an animated movie. There just doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason and it’s depriving the world of regular, ol’ fashioned Wes Anderson awesomeness. Then again, he hasn’t been the same since he and Owen Wilson stopped writing scripts together so maybe this will somehow work out. Can’t see it happening though. I just want him to make movies like Rushmore and The Royal Tenebaums forever.

It’s a weird endorsement when Ben Silverman leaves NBC and stocks at the company he’s going to rise, but stocks rise too at GE, which owns NBC. Kinda like, “hey, we think you’ll do great at your new job, but man, you stunk at your last job.” That’s actually a pretty good assessment. No one wanted Silverman to be head of NBC in the first place, and for the two years he’s been there, he’s heard nothing but his death sentence. While no one watches NBC anymore — a bad thing — the Peacock still has some of the best shows on TV and its Thursday comedy block is my highlight of the week. Plus, he kept Friday Night Lights on the air when most everyone else would have canceled it years ago. For that, I’m thankful. but don’t let the door hit you in the butt, Ben. 

So they didn’t totally steal my idea of the MOVIE MUSIC BEATDOWN, but they’re close. And I’ve mentioned songs like this a couple times around these parts. So I’m gonna go ahead and say yes, the AV Club partially stole my idea. Give them credit — the Rock and Roll Part 2 reference is something I never would have thought of. And I’m glad they finally say it started getting popular at sporting events in the late 70s, because I always claim it started getting popular when the Red Barons started in Scranton in 1989. That was the first time I heard the song, during Barons’ rallies, and the next thing I knew, it was being played everywhere. My friends and I swore the Barons started it, but I guess they didn’t.

As long as we’re talking about the MOVIE MUSIC BEATDOWN, make sure you vote in the poll on the right as to which song you’d like to see discussed Wednesday.