Disney Infinity 3.0: Star Wars Official Pic Leaked

     Lately I've been playing a LOT of Disney Infinity on the PS4, getting it loaded on my Android phone and obsessing over all the possibilities of what's to come.  I've seen over the last few months tons of rumors, art, and leaked information such as the Mulan character- but what has me the most captivated is the Star Wars rumors.  Obviously, as Star Wars is in a resurgence of popularity, Disney would most certainly like to capitalize on that with the Infinity game.  It would work just as well as the Marvel heavy 2.0 series so it makes sense both financially, and for sheer entertainment value.

     Now a German retailer has leaked not just a picture of the box set, but a rough date and price as well.  This particular set is the 3.0 starter playset with Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano from Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series.  It should be of note that there are numerous other characters shown on the box, that will presumably become playable toys to purchase separately.  The retailer's website listed the release date as August 15 and price range as $67-79 with the set being released on PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and the Wii U.

     I recall hearing about the Star Wars hints late last year, and am extremely excited for this.  Not to mention the fact I've seen videos of Star Wars lightsabers and landspeeders popping up in the Infinity Toy Boxes already...
     Now we play the waiting game until Disney Interactive publishes an official announcement.

     One last thing, the official Disney Infinity Twitter account tweeted this gem in German, which translates into Yoda's highly recognizable speech pattern- "Patience you must have."  A sly and clever response to the leak!

Geduld du haben must

— Disney Infinity (@DisneyInfinity) April 30, 2015

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Brian Tee is the New Shredder

     After hearing the recent TMNT2 news about Tyler Perry being cast as Baxter Stockman my hopes were a bit down.  Especially since it followed on the heels of the announcement that Arrow's Stephen Amell was going to be playing fan-favorite Casey Jones.  Something about Perry just doesn't fit the role, he seems to be perpetually miscast except in his own Madea films.  He just hasn't shown himself to be a good actor.  Whereas Amell is alright, nothing special, but good enough to be a plausible cast.

     Granted, as most of my thoughts are, I'll really wait to see them in action before being too judgemental, who knows- maybe Perry will knock it out of the park with this role.  I just always pictured someone like Deon Cole from Black-ish.  He has the both the look of someone that exudes intelligence, and also has a wonderful sense of comedic timing.

     Now, we get news that the Shredder himself has been recast, and it sounds awesome to me.  Brian Tee has gotten the role.  He's been in The Wolverine, a couple episodes of Grimm, and he was also in the decent, but very short-lived series Mortal Kombat: Legacy as Liu Kang.  From what little I've seen of him, he's already a much better actor than both Tyler Perry and Megan Fox combined.  This is the news that is keeping me following the film with higher hopes than the last one.

     Brian Tee is taking over the role from Tohoru Masamune who played him in the first new installment of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot.  I just hope Platinum Dunes producers like Michael Bay don't try and pull a TMNT 2: The Secret of the Ooze.  That was one horrendous movie and effectively crushed the hopes of any good TMNT films in its near future.

     In other good TMNT 2 related news Earth to Echo director David Green is on board, with script writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec returning.  Earth to Echo was very well directed, and although it was a very predictable movie, it was still quite well done.  I'm still not sold on the script writers, but I'll still give them another chance.

     Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 is set to arrive in theaters June 3rd, 2016.

     Source [ Variety ]

X-Men: Apocalypse: First Pic of Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler

BAMF!

     We finally get a good look at Bryan Singer's new young version of Nightrawler for X-Men: Apocalypse, and I'm fairly happy with it.  The only thing I don't like is the stupid hair in a style that looks too modern to fit in the 1980's era this film is allegedly taking place in.

Batman: Arkham Knight: All Who Follow You Trailer And Thoughts

     The newest trailer for the highly anticipated Batman: Arkham Knight has a lot of little interesting things to make it better than the average trailer.

      The first thing I noticed is the transformation from Batwing to Batmobile at the 1:00 mark.  A very intriguing development, does this mean we'll get to fly the Batwng as well?  Then I saw what looked to be a lot of Riddler bots, the return of Azrael wearing the same colors as the Arkham Knight and the military men, and the most notable addition- the secondary characters working with Batman in a dual play mode.  So far Catwoman, Nightwing, Robin, and Azrael have all been confirmed to be in the game here and the cast is expanding greatly.  I just hope they find a way to squeeze in Mr. Freeze again in a small, but meaningful cameo.
     As for the "Dual Play" stuff, I really can't tell whether this will be single player alternating between characters, two players working together, or just a simple added combo maneuver with the extra characters nearby.  We'll get to know soon enough, I'm personally hoping for some alternate in game characters instead of only being able to use them in challenge maps.

     Batman: Arkham Knight will hit PS4, XBox One, and PC on June 23.

Suicide Squad's Joker: First Full Official Pic of Jared Leto

     Suicide Squad director David Ayer has posted the first full picture of Jared Leto as the Joker for his character's 75th anniversary.  It is a hell of a change from the past incarnations of the character, with a single purple glove, loads of tattoos, and most notably the metal teeth.
     I find it very intriguing that the direction is so dramatically different from any previous cinematic depictions.  I'm not 100% sold on this look, but I have faith that Leto's acting can pull it off.  In the past I was wary of some choices made, such as Heath Ledger- but that turned out phenomenally- so I'll give this a chance.

The Suicide Squad wishes you a Happy Anniversary Mr. J! #Joker75 #SuicideSquad @WarnerBrosEnt @DCComics pic.twitter.com/LZXz0x947Q
— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) April 25, 2015

Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice First Trailer and Thoughts

     It's been a few days since the full trailer hit the internet and I wanted to really digest it before coming on here to comment about it.  It's much better than my original, restrained optimism had hoped for and really builds the light and dark sides of the two icons up, creating a great divide.  That is exactly how it should be.  This trailer is, in my opinion, already far better than Man of Steel.

     On the light side you've got the hope of salvation through Superman.  An alien that wants only to help people, but in his path we get the realists that see the destruction and cost he has wrought on the world in that effort.  People like the scientists talking about his controversial position, and Lex Luthor using the fact that he might be a devil from above, killing not out of want, but out of accident.  Lex is using that fear of the unknown- a strange man from space doing impossible feats- to great effect.  He's probably going to use it as a lever to cause a mass public revolt against the "False God."  He's turning peoples reverential worship to outright hate.  He's essentially saying Superman is becoming a threat to human safety, not the extraterrestrial messiah some believe him to be.

“That’s how it starts. The fever. The rage. The feeling of powerlessness that turns good men… cruel.” -Alfred Pennyworth

     Opposite of this we have the dark of Batman.  In the trailer it shows clips of Superman looking down from above people, and in one of the cases, it's overwhelmingly bright which contrasts nicely with all the dark shots of Batman.  Residing in shadows he seems to exude the same initial thought of Lex- Superman may have started a hero, but with the soldiers surrounding him, he's become something worse.  If you note the soldiers, they all have his "S" insignia on their shoulders and are bowing to him.  Hope, at least in his Kryptonian symbology, has been weaponized.
     To me this looks like Batman has taken it upon himself as the man needed to bring Superman down- to essentiall ground him back to the Earth and remind him what he stands for.  Of course, I must also add that the end of the trailer is straight out of Frank Miller's tremendous The Dark Knight Returns run.  Because I've judged Zack Snyder's direction quite harshly in the past (flashy looks over substance) I must say, he's done that scene perfect justice.  And the eerie Batman voice...  absolutely amazing.

"Tell Me, do you bleed?  You will."

     "Maybe he's just a guy tying to do the right things..."  
          "But we know better now, don't we?"

     Those quotes could pertain to either hero, but used in this trailer they form a hell of a statement cutting both ways, and Snyder has done everything a great trailer should.  It teases and gives us a little of what we want, and then leaves us wanting so much more.  It has set up the ultimate light versus dark dichotomy between the two most well-known superheroes in history, and I must applaud this trailer's effort, for it is exemplary.

Zoolander 2: Hansel Thinks it's Great Billy Zane Will Return

     In a wonderful short video, Derek Zoolander and Hansel discus the greatness of Billy Zane returning for the sequel.  He's a pretty cool dude so this is good news.

Hansel has some #Zoolander2 news about @billyzane

A video posted by Ben Stiller (@benstiller) on Apr 20, 2015 at 6:56am PDT

Disney Infinity 3.0 Leak: Some Figures and Information

     It looks as if some of the upcoming packages and figures have been spilled out onto the web.  This isn't from an official Disney announcement, although rumors and pics of the Tron figures have been out there for quite a while, but the new wave has some interesting characters.  Olaf from Frozen, Sam and Quorra from Tron Legacy, Mulan (YES!), and even a couple characters from Pixar's upcoming film Inside Out.

     We finally have some fairly concrete proof of the Disney Infinity 3.0 lineup.  Out of respect for the series I'm only posting a part of the pic of the box, and not the whole images.  Disney Infinity's support team has been very quick and nice to me and I would like to keep it that way.

     Of course the first thing I noticed on the back of the Mulan package is the fact that like 2.0, series 3.0 will be incompatible with previous versions.  However, this fact won't be too bad if they make 3.0 able to play the older figures and playsets.  I would like more continued play with my old stuff, and not being able to play the Pirates of the Caribbean set on 2.0 is a large complaint.

     In addition I've been seeing tons of pics and hints of Disney focusing on Star Wars as the base series, where 2.0 had a Marvel theme.  I've seen potential figures, and tons of in game hints such as the iconic Star Wars lightsabers and landspeeders showing up in the Toybox games.  I just want to see many more playsets with campaigns and stories to play through.

     Anyways, speculation is that the series 3.0 products will be available with plenty of time for the upcoming Star Wars movie The Force Awakens to capitalize on sales well before Christmas.  Hopefully it'll be long before that though.

     Source [ Infinity Inquirer ] 

          [ EDIT: Disney Interactive has asked that Infinity Inquirer pull the article. ]

Ant-Man: Tiny Billboards!

     I have to say, I'm extremely impressed with the continual brilliance with Marvel Studios' handling of the upcoming Ant-Man film's marketing campaign.  First they had the ant-sized trailer, then they've been putting out ant-sized covers for the comics, and now they have tiny billboards popping up around Australia.

     These wonderfully detailed signs have been well-adhered for anti-theft, and apparently have LED lighting to be viewed in the night.  This is a great way to get some good mini-marketing done to bring awareness to the Ant-Man film, as it seems to not be fully tied to Avengers: Age of Ultron, despite being in the same cinematic universe.  Hopefully they keep up this level genius work!  Maybe they'll have some ant's-eye view camera videos on Vine or something in the future.  Or possibly a tie-in with Micro Machines for some super small action figures.  I'd personally like to see a side-scrolling video game for mobile devices, a tiny fighter in a giant world.  Keep it clever and interesting.

     Dear Marvel Studios, if you send me some of these, I will personally go out and place them around the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis) for you.

     Ant-Man will hit the big screen on July 17th.

     Source [ ScreenCrush ]

     For some of my other posts about [ Ant-Man ]

Jurassic World: Official Global Trailer & Some Thoughts

     With today's release of the long global trailer for Jurassic World, we get some more of the bigger story with the park.  There's the larger and smarter genetically modified dinosaur called the Indominus Rex one-upping a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a whole lot of death and pandemonium, and Chris Pratt leading a pack Velociraptors in what amounts to a prehistoric biker gang- and I'm pretty ok with all this.  Even if the story comes out a bit cliched, the visual feast looks to be a buffet for our summer viewing pleasure.

     Jurassic World releases on June 12th.