Nick Nadel's Tuesday column examines the increasingly busy intersection between comic books and the movies.
Let's step into an alternate summer movie reality for a moment, shall we? It's the first week of May 2008, and audiences are primed for Iron Man. Its star, a veteran actor who is no stranger to controversy, promotes the film on Oprah and even announces a new website celebrating his two decades in film. Flash forward to the premiere: On screen, a military Humvee rumbles through the Afghan desert. Cut to inside, and we see millionaire playboy Tony Stark... portrayed by...Tom Cruise?? No!!!
Yep, it almost happened. And on that disturbing note, let's take a look at some of the reasons why A-listers should be kept as far away as possible from superhero roles.
They BringToo Much Baggage Take Tom, for instance. Cruise circled Iron Man for years, drawn to the playboy-turned-hero character. (And no doubt, drawn to yet another role where he could obscure his famous face. Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky, anyone?) Sure, the film might have worked if Tommy Boy had been cast. Perhaps the Cruise from Magnoliamight have shown up... but chances are, this risky project with a quirky director would have morphed into a Tom Cruise Vehicle. (Dude overshadowed Spielberg on War of the Worlds, Favreau wouldn't have stood a chance.) And with Cruise comes more explosions and more noise. Before you could say "Pepper Potts," Iron Man would've become yet another bloated summer junk-a-thon. And the hype! Think Iron Man is being shoved down your throat now? Imagine the paparazzi photos of Katie and Suri on set, the Us Weekly reports of Tom insisting that Stark's suit be Xenu-powered. Sure, it's not like Downey didn't bring his own baggage to the table. But he certainly didn't bring Tom Cruise's jetloads of baggage.
IDW Publishing, the company behind some of the most interesting licensed scifi comic books going (and also, uh, Ghost Whisperer), just announced plans to publish a Galaxy Quest mini-series. All well and good, but how about a sequel?
With even moderately successful franchises getting a sequel or a reboot these days, it's surprising that a film with so much built up goodwill has yet to garner a follow-up. Both Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver have expressed interest in revisiting their characters. So why the hold-up?
The likely reason is that the cast members are all just too busy now to get their schedules to line-up. Allen, Weaver, and Alan Rickman all have major film careers; Tony Shalhoub has Monk; Sam Rockwell is an indie film star. Even Justin Long (Brandon) and Missi Pyle (Laliari) have seen their profiles rise since the film's 1999 debut. Still, reuniting the original cast (and director Dean Parisot) would be a goldmine in this day and age of big budget effects-driven comedies. And since studios are all about a recognizable brand, it seems like a no-brainer. Fingers crossed that the comic leads to an onscreen reunion.
We've been privileged to have a pretty good run of comic book movies lately, and this summer's Incredible Hulk and Iron Man movies look set to continue the tradition. But with Marvel having set up a new production company, will these films cross-over with each other? Scuttlebutt says yes: Rumor has it that Samuel L. Jackson, at least, will appear as Nick Fury in the new Iron Man movie.
But according to Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr, Tony Stark will also be making an appearance in The Hulk:
It happens to be a scene where I basically approach [William Hurt's character, General Ross], and we may be considering going into some sort of limited partnership together... I don't want to give too much away -- but he's in disrepair at the time I find him. It was really fun seeing him play this really powerful character who's half in the bag.
Call me a geek, but it sounds like this takes place at the end, General Ross has been beaten up by the Hulk, and Stark approaches him about the possibility of Hulkbuster Armor.
Are you ready for the Andromeda Strain, a disease of extraterrestrial origin threatening to destroy all life on Earth? Are you prepared for the impossibly sexy, sultry and multi-ethnic scientists ready to fight that threat... sexy, sultry and multiethnic scientists such as Erin McCormack, Christa Miller, Ricky Schroder, Andre Braugher and Daniel Dae Kim? And are you ready for a two-night, two-part television event filmed entirely in slow motion thanks to the producing skills of Misters Tony and Ridley Scott?
I hope so! It's coming to your television screens soon, courtesy of A&E. Based on the novel by Michael Crichton and, of course, remaking the 1971 version, here's the plot:
If pulp fiction is the literature of the subliterate, comic books are the pulp fiction of the illiterate. That's not an accident, of course -- pulp fiction evolved into comics, so that nowadays, it only exists between the pages of a superhero adventure. Our only acquaintance with the pulp fiction of old is through reprint volumes or discarded pulps (sold for 50 cents each, shivering with small, blood-red spiders) at used book stores.
But DC hasn't forgotten its origins. Eleven years ago, in 1997 (am I so old?), DC featured pulp-style painted covers over the course of the summer and christened the event "Pulp Heroes." This event single-handedly redeemed DC's summer of '97: This was the same summer, for the record, that Superman lost his powers and became "electric"... one of the stupidest decisions in modern comics history.
Over at Super Punch, they have a gallery of the covers up. The art is wonderful, particularly the covers by Glen Orbik. I surely can't be the only fan out there who wishes all comics came with covers like this.
I think I speak for all of us when I admit to a philosophical sympathy with Mr. David Icke: I, too, believe that our world leaders have been replaced by an evil race of reptilian extraterrestrials. Reptoids, dinosauroids, lizardfolk, Republicans... whatever you want to call them, there's no doubt in my mind that they are silently accruing power with the slither of a bifurcated tongue, waiting for the moment when they can tear off their plasticky human faces and reveal the unholy visage beneath.
Why am I so convinced? Dude, I saw Kenneth Johnson's V as a kid, the NBC miniseries detailing just such an alien invasion. Did anyone walk away from that thinking face-ripping reptilians weren't walking among us? Raise your hand and I will call you a liar, sir.
Leaping straight from one bad idea (The Bionic Woman, ahem) to another, producer David Eick has now announced that he is going to adapt P.D. James' novel Children of Men into a regular series.
Sometimes Hollywood just bites. As you might recall, Alfonso Cuaron loosely adapted a film based on that novel in 2006, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore as infertile survivors in a barren London post-apocalypse in which a new child hasn't been born for the last twenty years. It's a genre-defying masterpiece, exactly as long as it needs to be, every shot and line perfect. So obviously it requires weekly extrapolation to dilute the effect.
"Hello, this is Arthur Clarke, speaking to you from my home... beyond the grave."
Well, not really. But this YouTube video does, indeed, feature the great man himself addressing his legions of fans across the globe on his 90th birthday. Dressed in a nylon jogging suit (and curiously fascinated with pastel colors), Clarke talks about the past, present and future in his distinctive gravelly voice.
Of course, Clarke puts a wry smile on his mortality: "As I try to survive on 15 hours of sleep a day, I have plenty of time to enjoy vivid dreams, and being completely wheelchaired does not stop my mind from roaming the universe."
And neither, hopefully, will the mere happenstance of being dead. Good luck, Arthur! We'll miss you.
With the death of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury inherits the title of most important living sci-fi writer. But let's not let the title get to his head: As this commercial for Sunsweet Prunes makes clears, he's certainly done his share of non-visionary whoring in pursuit of bowel regularity.
What did sci-fi fandom look like before the Internet? Hard to believe, but there was such a thing: Isolated islands of enthusiasm around which huddled cro-magnon conclaves of science fiction fans, warmed by the flickering fire of their communal passions. In the days before video and YouTube, these guys filmed home-movie remakes of films that they'd seen only a handful of times in the theaters, just so they could hook up their 16mm projectors in their garage and relive their favorite stories again and again. They communicated with other groups of fans through fan clubs. And before sci-fi blogs, they published crude and primitive but remarkably ornate fanzines as the literature of their cults.
Over at WFMU's Beware of the Blog, they've posted an enormous gallery of old sci-fi fanzine covers. There's a few hundred here, so the page will take time to load, but it'll be worth it -- fanzines dedicated to Logan's Run, Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Dark Shadow and more.
What astonishes me is how lovingly, intricately wrought the cover illustrations are, almost as a rule. Also, at least a couple (such as this one) indicate that sci-fi slash was a well evolved artform even before the advent of the Internet.
We've been privileged to have a pretty good run of comic book movies lately, and this summer's Incredible Hulk and Iron Man movies look set to continue the tradition. But with Marvel having set up a new production company, will these films cross-over with each other? Scuttlebutt says yes: Rumor has it that Samuel L. Jackson, at least, will appear as Nick Fury in the new Iron Man movie.
Are you ready for the Andromeda Strain, a disease of extraterrestrial origin threatening to destroy all life on Earth? Are you prepared for the impossibly sexy, sultry and multi-ethnic scientists ready to fight that threat... sexy, sultry and multiethnic scientists such as Erin McCormack, Christa Miller, Ricky Schroder, Andre Braugher and Daniel Dae Kim? And are you ready for a two-night, two-part television event filmed entirely in slow motion thanks to the producing skills of Misters Tony and Ridley Scott?
If pulp fiction is the literature of the subliterate, comic books are the pulp fiction of the illiterate. That's not an accident, of course -- pulp fiction evolved into comics, so that nowadays, it only exists between the pages of a superhero adventure. Our only acquaintance with the pulp fiction of old is through reprint volumes or discarded pulps (sold for 50 cents each, shivering with small, blood-red spiders) at used book stores.
I think I speak for all of us when I admit to a philosophical sympathy with 
What did sci-fi fandom look like before the Internet? Hard to believe, but there was such a thing: Isolated islands of enthusiasm around which huddled cro-magnon conclaves of science fiction fans, warmed by the flickering fire of their communal passions. In the days before video and YouTube, these guys filmed home-movie remakes of films that they'd seen only a handful of times in the theaters, just so they could hook up their 16mm projectors in their garage and relive their favorite stories again and again. They communicated with other groups of fans through fan clubs. And before sci-fi blogs, they published crude and primitive but remarkably ornate fanzines as the literature of their cults.
