Marvel Entertainment
Not to be outdone by the buzz coming out of the Warner Bros. panel for Wonder Woman, Marvel Studios wrapped up their Comic-Con International presentation today by bringing out Brie Larson and announcing she will be the studio’s new female superhero Captain Marvel.
The Room actress had been rumored to be up for the part for a while, but now she’s confirmed for the role. Marvel honcho Kevin Feige, who announced Larson as the newest member of the “Marvel family,” didn’t offer up any other details about when the film will be released, but it’s been in the works for quite some time with Guardians of the Galaxy writer Nicole Perlman and Inside Out scribe Meg LeFauve reportedly working on the script.
Comic-Con 2016: Behold, awesome women!
“Oh, my god,” Benedict Cumberbatch said at Marvel’s Hall H panel on Saturday evening, holding out his trembling hand. “I’ve got the Strange shake again.” And if the star of Doctor Strange—the studio’s upcoming first step into the magical side of the Marvel universe—could be so affected by seeing the trailer, then you might want to make sure you’re not operating any heavy machinery while you watch it. While some of the footage director Scott Derrickson showed has already appeared in the first Strange trailer, there’s a plenty of newness to pore over, from Baron Mordo’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) first speaking appearance to a lot more of big bad Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen)—and plenty of mind-bending (and map-bending) magic, courtesy of The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton). Don’t get too excited, though: You won’t be be able to visit Stephen Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum until November 4.
For those of you who went to see Star Trek Beyond this weekend and thought, “Man, this is great, but I miss watching episodic Star Trek on my couch…” we have something fun for you. During the franchise’s 50th anniversary panel at Comic-Con International today, Bryan Fuller—the Hannibal mastermind who is shepherding a new Trek series for CBS—officially revealed that show’s title: Star Trek: Discovery. The forthcoming show, which will air its pilot on CBS in January, is part of a new frontier for the network. After the premiere, the show will move to CBS’ All Access streaming service. On that platform, Fuller revealed during today’s Hall H panel, “we’re going to be telling stories like a novel, chapter by chapter.” Check out the new teaser for the show above and get ready to go beyond Beyond.
It’s telling that Warner Bros. started their massive Saturday-opening Comic-Con International Hall H panel by showing off Wonder Woman. Starring Gal Gadot as Diana Prince and directed by Monster mastermind Patty Jenkins, it’ll be the first major comic book adaptation to hit theaters with a female superhero in the modern (i.e. post-Iron Man) era. And everyone knows it.
“I feel so fortunate to be the person here in this window [for movies with female superheroes],” Jenkins said after being introduced by moderator Conan O’Brien and asked about the responsibility of taking on such an iconic character. “It feels like the best time to make this movie. So I’m psyched.”
There’s a lot riding on Wonder Woman’s shoulders—and there will likely be just as much misogynist criticism she’ll need to deflect with her bracelets. Luckily, as seen in the massive first trailer Jenkins showed, Diana Prince’s big cinematic debut won’t be a letdown. Dark, but not trying to be “gritty,” funny but not trying to be “cute,” Jenkins’ movie feels very aware of the fact that it needs to tell a smart story. In the trailer’s kicker, Diana asks what a secretary is. When she’s told that a secretary goes to where she’s told and does what she’s told, Wonder Woman responds: “the word where I come from, that’s called slavery.”
Yes, Wonder Woman has a message as much as Wonder Woman does. And Jenkins knows this. During her movie’s panel she noted that the world now has tragedies almost daily and “needs love and forgiveness.” Touchy-feely? Yes, but also, at a base level, true. In its simplest form, a Wonder Woman movie will be escapism. On a more highfalutin level, the fact that we’re finally getting a superhero movie led by a female character shows that, as crappy as things are, change is possible. (Am I high on Hall H fumes for saying that? Probably. But it feels true.)
And the shoulders carrying this are the very capable ones of Gal Gadot. For those who don’t remember, last year at Comic-Con she stood up for a young boy who wanted to wear a Wonder Woman T-shirt—something that a fan brought up during her Q&A sessino today. For those who don’t remember Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (why would you?), she was that film’s savior. When her solo film drops next summer, she might save that, too. Judging by her performance in both the movie’s first trailer and its panel, it’s a responsibility she’ll wear well.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be given the opportunity to play this character,” she said this morning. “Knowing how many people care for this character, I do feel that responsibility. … to portray this character in a way that everyone can relate to.”
Details about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them have trickled out through J.K. Rowling’s background stories on Pottermore over the past few months—but until the new trailer debuted in Hall H today, the arc of the plot was still a bit of a mystery. Now it’s clear that Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) smuggles magical creatures into America, where they manage to escape. Scamander seeks to recapture the beasts—which he believes are at risk of getting hurt by humans, “the most vicious creatures on the planet.” He gets help from Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a witch who works for the Magical Congress of the United States of America, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a “No-Maj” (apparently American English for Muggle). The trailer also reveals more about Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), an villainous-seeming auror tracking Scamander—which is a good turn for a job description fans of the Potter series will associate with high honor. There’s also a line in voiceover from Credence (Ezra Miller), the son of an extremist who wants to kill all wizards and witches, that seems like the overall story this planned trilogy will depict. With the return to J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world imminent this November, it’s no wonder the trailer ends with Dan Fogler’s lamenting the same thing that will be on every fan’s mind after seeing it: “I want to be a wizard.”
If you liked Gareth Edwards’ take on Godzilla, then you’re going to love Legendary’s new King Kong movie. The first full trailer for Kong: Skull Island dropped during the Warner Bros. panel in Hall H today, and it’s a lot of smoky battle scenes and thunderous music to underline that man cannot contend with ancient, powerful beasts.
This version of the story is set in the 1970s—all those helicopters give off a distinctly Apocalypse Now vibe—when a group of soldiers (including Tom Hiddleston), a war photographer (Brie Larson), and others on a “survey trip” come across King Kong’s territory. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer) has an embarrassment of actorly riches to work with, from Oscar-winner Larson, Hiddleston, and Samuel L. Jackson to John Goodman, Toby Kebbell, and John C. Reilly—who goes unseen in the trailer, but gets the great voiceover line, “You don’t go into someone’s house unless you’re picking a fight.” Perhaps bust, it’s not yet another version bent on replicating classic Hollywood nostalgia for the giant lovestruck ape. The updated setting and star-studded cast are good enough reasons to get exited for when Skull Island hits theaters next March.
During the Comic-Con International presentation for his Suicide Squad movie today, director David Ayer said that he “wanted to make a film that looked like a comic book.” If he wanted something that looks beautiful, messy, and hilarious, he succeeded. Following the movie’s Hall H panel today, the cast and director—all in attendance—presented the teaser above and it shows off all of the brutality, humor, and action Ayer dropped into his film, as well as some as-yet-unseen footage. So yeah, you should probably watch it now.
“I’m looking for warriors,” Bruce Wayne says in the just-released first look look at next year’s Justice League, the superhero-stuffed adventure that brings together some of the biggest names in the DC Universe. And judging by the action on display in this Comic-Con International preview footage, Wayne (Ben Affleck) is going to find what he’s looking for: the clips give our first extended glimpses at Jason Momoa as Aquaman, the mostly silent (but waaaay deadly-looking) sea-brawler; Ezra Miller as Barry Allen, a.k.a. the hot-footed speedster the Flash; and Ray Fisher as the mysterious, techno-enhanced Cyborg. Wayne will need all of them—along with the already-recruited Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot)—to bring his vision of Justice to the world. But will the other wants to play along? “I’m in!” Allen exclaims after Wayne gives him the pitch. We can certainly relate.
Pause at: :22 for a first look as Momoa’s Aquaman; 1:31 to see a pre-Flash Barry Allen dodge a Batarang; 2:14 for Cyborg.
Ariel Zambelich
Comic-Con International is full of Star Trek lovers (Trekkers), Dr. Who aficionados (Whovians), and My Little Pony enthusiasts (Bronies). But with so many fandoms present at the event, it can be hard to know how to refer to your fellow attendees. Here’s a handy guide to some of the most oft-used fan-nicknames you’ll hear at Hall H:
Supernatural — Sup-Natsies
Jurassic Park — Jurassholes
Thor — Norseissists
Archie — Weatherbeasts
Aquaman — Tridentists
South Park — Stan-Stans
Machete — Stanny Trejos
HBO’s Westworld — Ain’t-Yul Retentives
Gotham — Wayniacs
Son of Zorn— Zorndogs
Batman v Superman — Zack Snyder Bozack Ryderz
Bob’s Burgers — Burgermeisters
Jessica Jones — Jonestowners
Game of Thrones — Hodorks
Lucifer — Beelzebubbas
Bates Motel — Chronic MasterBatesers
We knew we’d get plenty of DC-related intel at Warner Brothers’ Comic-Con panel today, and we’re happy to report that our most-hoped-for bit did indeed come to pass: Director Patty Jenkins revealed the first full trailer for Wonder Woman. “It feels like the best time to make this movie,” Jenkins said while discussing the long-overdue rise of female superheroes in movies, “so I’m psyched.” And after seeing the trailer, we second that emotion. Gal Gadot as Diana had already shown up—and stolen scenes—in Batman v Superman, but this is the starring role that shows why we were waiting for Gadot. From her exchanges with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) to her golden lasso-work, it’s shaping up to be a fine debut for one of the cornerstones of the Justice League.
Pause at: :46 for a concealed sword; :54 for a mysterious masked woman; 1:13 for Diana’s invisible jet. (What, you can’t see it?)
The Shame Nun’s Backup Bell
Shalamar
The Beyonder
Ann Coulter
Kazaam
The Fun Lovin’ Criminals
Kraven the Hunger
Mike Pennsatucky
Instagram Thinkfluencer
Meredith McIver
Greasy Bear
Fred, the Jawa who Inserts Himself in Every Non-Fred-Related Conversation
Ralph Malph
Bread Sonja, the Paleo Avenger
Don Bluth
Ray Parker, Sr.
The Thang
Twitter Egg
Powers Boothe
Reince Priebus
The Prince Rebus
Chronic the Hemp Hog
Yor
Dolphin Girl
Gordon Jump
Kvetchy Smurf
Khaleezi-e
Admiral William Stockdale
Vape Ape
The first season of iZombie built to a big final battle sequence at a butcher shop called Meat Cute (pun 1!). The second season of iZombie built to a big final battle sequence where energy drink company Max Rager (pun 2!) was purchased by Fillmore Graves Enterprises (pun 3!), and then a full-scale zombie outbreak took place. But according to creators Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero-Wright at the show’s Comic-Con panel, the upcoming third season will break that cycle.
At the end of season two, Liv Moore (Rose McIver) discovered that there are many more zombies out in the world, and they’re preparing for an all-out war against humanity. The upcoming third season will be about Liv choosing a side: humans or zombies. She decides to start the post-zombie rampage period of her life by laying all cards on the table with her friends; how they react, Thomas and Ruggiero-Wright said, will form the crux of the season’s conflict.
Other things we learned from the panel:
• Blaine’s (David Anders) cold, abusive dad Angus DeBeers (Robert Knepper)—last seen being tortured with Les Misérables before an extended absence—will make a not-so-triumphant return as a frozen corpse in the basement of Blaine’s funeral home.
• Peyton (Aly Michalka) will now be a series regular. Her love triangle with Ravi and Blaine will also continue.
• Mr. Boss (Kit Boss), the Seattle crime lord from season two, won’t show up in the early goings of season three. Thomas says Boss might return later in the season, but he’s not part of the first arc.
• The writers gave McIver a list of close to 30 ideas of brains for Liv to eat during the upcoming season, with the stipulation that she was only allowed to veto one of the acquired side-effect skills. And yet, she noted, nobody mentioned to her that she’d be consuming a dominatrix brain. (That one drew a few whoops from the audience.)
• At some point, we’ll meet the woman at the CDC who fired Ravi—when she walks into the Seattle PD to ask for help with a case.
• Thomas and Ruggiero-Wright have assured McIver that unlike Liv’s last two paramours—Lowell in the first season, Drake in the second—the next time she has a love interest, he won’t get killed off.
More than 30 years ago, Carrie Henn was a 9-year-old living in London, where she’d just landed a big role in what would become one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time: James Cameron’s Aliens. In the 1986 smash, Henn starred as Newt, the soot-faced, wide-eyed orphan whose family has been wiped out by xenomorphs, and who develops a near-familial bond with Ripley, the creature-cratering heroine played by Sigourney Weaver. And if you thought that hanging around the set filled with multi-mouthed monsters (not to mention James Cameron) was scary for a young kid, you’re right—though, as it turns out, Hehn’s fears had nothing to do with her acid-drooling co-stars.
“I wasn’t nervous about being on set, because I knew everybody, and they were very friendly,” Henn said during a recent stop at the WIRED Cafe during Comic-Con International, where the film is celebrating its 30th anniversary. “The aliens were all my friends, wearing suits. I was actually most nervous about going to the cafeteria for lunch, because I had to go in-character as Newt, and I thought everybody would be staring at me. I didn’t have any concept that everybody else was going to be dressed up, too. My tutor actually gave me a big pair of sunglasses to wear when I went in. But it turned out not to be such a big thing.”
Henn had gotten the part after a meeting with Weaver, who’d flown on the Concorde to London to test out their on-screen chemistry. “I was excited, because I was like, “She was in Ghostbusters! How cool is this?”, Henn remembered. The slow-building Newt-Ripley relationship—they start off skeptical of one another, but eventually develop a de facto mother-daughter bond—has always been the heart of Aliens, culminating in the film’s most famous moment, in when Ripley, having finally tracked down the abducted Newt, confronts the Queen alien-turned-kidnapper and delivers one of the most delightfully bitchy lines in movie history.
According to Henn, who still keeps in touch with Weaver, the two actress’ bond was evident from the get-go. “Immediately, we hit it off,” she said. “She took me under her wings when we were filming, because I was so inexperienced. I can’t describe my relationship with her, because she’s more than just a friend—what you see on screen is genuinely how we feel about each other.”
Even though Henn was only 10 when Aliens was released, she has a vivid recall of her days on the set. Her favorite scene to shoot? The one in which Newt, stuck chest-high in water, is snatched up by a towering alien—a terrifying sequence, and one that gave most other 10-year-olds nightmares for years to come. But for Henn, it was mostly a chance to goof around. “The first assistant director had actually had someone stay there overnight, to make sure the water stayed warm,” she said. “But it was actually too warm for me, so I would sit up on bars on the side, and the alien and I would stay up there, kicking our feet in the water.”
Aliens would prove to be Henn’s only major acting role: By the time the film was released, she and her family had moved back to the United States, and she soon decided to pursue a career in education (she now teaches fourth grade in Northern California; occasionally, one of her students will bring in an Aliens DVD for her to sign). But she still finds time to visit conventions, and this spring, in celebration of Aliens Day, she watched the movie for the first time in nearly a decade. “It’s very weird, because I have a daughter who’s now the age I was when I made the movie, and she’s like my clone,” Henn said. “So as I’m watching it, it’s like watching my daughter up there.” Newt, there it is!
Brian Guido for Wired
Standing atop a building emblazoned with Superman’s iconic “S,” Bernard Chang is running down the history Batman’s cowl. The Batman Beyond artist started by using his hands to sculpt a model of Adam West’s mask from the 1960s, but now he’s moved on to the late ’80s.
“What about Michael Keaton?” Chang says, as he starts reworking his model into the mask from the Tim Burton era. But he’s not using clay, or any other physical material. He’s doing it in VR. Standing on a small stage at Comic-Con International, wearing a Rift headset, Chang is using Oculus’ sculpture tool Medium—along with the company’s forthcoming Touch controllers—to create his sculpture in a virtual 3-D space.
He’s made a couple of nice-looking cowls in under 20 minutes, thanks to Medium’s various capabilities. He can, for example, use the “symmetry tool,” which mirrors everything he does to one side of Batman’s face onto the other, and zoom in and out on his creation. He also, as Medium’s project director Brian Sharp notes during the presentation, is able to some things “better in virtual reality than you can do with clay—like undo and redo.”
Medium wasn’t made specifically for comics artists like Chang—illustrators will probably have more fun with Oculus’ forthcoming Quill—but rather for anyone who just wants to make art in VR. The tools are simple and intuitive; just about anyone can learn it in under an hour.
“When I draw comics, I’m very traditional, it’s still pen and pencil on paper, but then I scan it in and then with a Wacom tablet I do some more drawing and finishes,” Chang says. “It’s very much the same [as working in Medium]. I could really see it being something that could be a lot of fun to play and toy with.”
And giving people something to toy with is the point. Sharp and his team at Oculus have been working on Medium for nearly two years—since not long after the company was acquired by Facebook—and while there could be commercial uses for Medium at some point, the hope is simply that it’s enjoyable enough that people will make stuff with it when the Touch controllers come out later this year.
“It’s important to us that professional artists like it, and that seems already to be true,” Sharp says. “But we also have to be able to give anyone a five-to-seven-minute demo and be able to use it. We’re trying to get rid of all the not-fun struggle to figure the software out so that people can worry about ‘oh, I just drew a little dog, now I want to draw a better dog next time.’ That’s what’s exciting.”
Yesterday’s panel at Comic-Con International for HBO’s Game of Thrones definitely had a lot of laughs for a conversation that spent so much time mourning characters that were killed off in Season 6. But nothing got as many LoLs as this gag reel which played as the cast and crew walked off the stage. Please do enjoy it now—it’s worth it just to watch Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) crack herself up.
Brian Guido for WIRED
There’s no official panel for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story at Comic-Con International this year, but attendees at one of the convention’s booth displays can get a sneak peek of a brand-new character from the film. He’s a mercenary fighter and a pilot, a guy who’s sworn to help take on the Empire.
His name? Umm…uh…before we tell you, we just want to check: Are you sure you want to know? Like, isn’t this technically a spoiler?
OK, fine. His name is … Two Tubes.
We know, we know: Maybe not the coolest-sounding name to come out of the galaxy that gave us such unforgettable monikers as Lobot and Greedo and Bib Fortuna. But as you can tell from the picture above, Two Tubes does indeed come equipped with two tubes, along with a low-fi-looking rifle, a sweet leather duster, and two ear-things that look a bit like horseshoe crab tails. A description for the character, who appeared alongside several other Rogue One costumes, reveals his back-story:
Edrio Two Tubes is a mercenary pilot who flies alongside his eggmate, Benthic. They share the nickname derived from the breathing apparatus that allows Tognath physiology to process oxygen atmospheres. Edrio’s native world of Yar Tonga was conquered and occupied by the Empire, forcing him to flee as a refugee. With a desire to strike back at the Empire, Edrio and Benthic have allied with Saw Gerrera.
In Rogue One, resistance leader Saw Gerrera is played by Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker, meaning Two Tubes will likely be seeing quite a bit of on-screen action. As for who’s playing the latest antihero in the Star Wars universe, that’s still not clear—but we’re sure he or she prepared for the role by listening to two Tubes songs. Talk to ya later!
View this article:
Room Actress Brie Larson Is Your New Captain Marvel