Ok, so it actually leaked a couple of days ago, but last night saw the new trailer for Star Trek hit apple.com in glorious HD, allowing us to get our first proper look at the film.
I’m officially getting excited now, and more annoyed than ever that its been held back until next summer. Its a great trailer, and I must admit, while a lot of attention has (rightly) been given to the near-perfect casting of Zachary Quinto as Spock, I’m really liking the look of Chris Pine as Kirk. If you’d asked me a year ago I’d have probably been very dubious about a new Trek film recasting the classic roles (although don’t get me wrong, from a mass market point of view, I very much understand the reasons for doing so), but I think this could really work. If I have any complaints, its that I would’ve liked to see a bit more of Karl Urban’s McCoy in the trailer (and Simon Pegg’s Scotty), but really, the focus had to be on Kirk and Spock for the first trailer, so I’m hoping to see more of them in later trailers (heck, we’ve still got about 6 months of hype that’s only just starting).
As predicted, the brief glimpses of the new Enterprise we get look good. And I love that shot of Kirk finding the half-constructed ship and looking up at it. That’s pretty iconic. I think the bridge is looking a lot better as well. I’m still not completely sold on the style, but at least its recognisable in terms of its layout.
The design side of things of the new Star Trek film has come across as a bit of a mixed bag so far. I love the fact that the uniforms are very true to the 60s original, but I’m not sure about the bridge of the Enterprise seen in the same promo shots (although unlike some, I don’t have a hard-and-fast “hate it” opinion yet. I need to see more of it).
With the advent of the new Enterprise hitting the net last night, it seems to capture this “mixed bag” concept well. There’s a lot to like in the new design. Its recognisably the Enterprise, and the saucer seems to be lifted from the motion picture refit (Ent-A) which is a good thing. I like how it seems to have retained the turbine-type-things in the nacelles from the original, and the deflector looks like its a raised dish (again, like the original) but with the blow lighting of the refit, which I think looks quite neat.
However, the mammoth vent-things on the nacelles (which meet the pylons) really ruin the look of it for me. Granted, this is just one shot, and it’ll probably look better in motion, and in other promo shots, but they look too much like something added to make it look different. Changing the slope of the neck joining the saucer and engineering sections doesn’t bother me as much, and the pylons now sit right at the back of engineering as a result. To me, the whole engineering section doesn’t quite work in terms of its lines.
Of course, for me, they never bettered the movie refit design anyway
I imagine though, that following the first trailer and seeing shots of the new Enterprise in action, I’ll decide it looks really cool afterall
Today saw the release of the first trailer for the big screen adaptation of Watchmen. Possibly the finest trade paperback/comic series ever. You can view the trailer on Apple’s website here.
I’m still unsure about this one. Just because its such a dense story, that I wonder how well it’ll translate to a 2 hour movie. Granted V For Vendetta was adapted well (although I did have my issues with it, and I imagine the purists ripped it apart), so it can be done.
Going from the trailer, there’s certainly a lot of attention gone into the visual feel of the film. There’s a good screencap/comic comparison here.
I’m looking forward to seeing more about this film. It could go either way, but its such a good read, I’m really hoping the film does well.
So, I was reading online about the new Street Fighter 2 film, and about Kristin Kreuk’s (Lana in Smallville) casting as Chun Li, and someone posted a link to this Youtube video.
I really love this kind of time-lapse stuff, and it really makes me wish I was that artistic, or knew my way around photoshop half as well.
For anyone who doesn’t know who she is and needs the reference, here’s the first official picture from the film:
Well, as a treat to myself following my IT disaster, and since I was in the shops buying a fresh copy of Oblivion anyway, I picked up the Iron Man movie game.
Ok, so I know. Its a movie tie-in. Possibly the only thing that tends to be worse is a movie tie-in to a video game. However, I found this one to be a lot of fun.
While it borrows from the film plot, the game embellishes it a lot with elements from the comics. Of course, if it had more strictly followed the plot of the movie, there wouldn’t have been as many chances for big fight scenes, but this allows the game to have its own identity.
The action picks up in the caves in Afghanistan. Tony’s already been captured and has just finished building his Mark 1 suit. Level 1 is a tutorial to the basics of moving around as you escape from your captors. Level 2 finds Tony back at Stark Industries. He’s announced (as in the film) that he’s no longer going to manufacture weapons. However at this point we deviate from the film. Angered by the lack of new weapons, one of Tony’s biggest customers, the Maggia stage a raid on his warehouses for any remaining supplies. Fortunately Tony’s in the area conducting flight tests on his new Mark 2 Iron Man suit.
Level 3 introduces the Mark 3 suit from the movie, which remains the default armour for the rest of the game. Further levels explore Tony ridding the Maggia of his weapons (which reminded me a lot of the Armour Wars), meanwhile Obidiah is revealed to be in league with AIM, and is working with them to reverse engineer the remains of Tony’s Mark 1 armour (again, similar to the movie).
The game uses this plot to introduce more armoured enemies. The Titanium Man turns up, as one of AIM’s first attempts to duplicate the armour, and further levels see Tony trying to shut down AIM’s operation, before learning of Obidiah’s involvement and confronting him in his Iron Monger armour.
The graphics are great. The movie suits are well captured, with the flaps in the Mark 2 and 3 suits used for flight captured, and there’s a small element of free roaming as you fly around levels dispatching villains, although this is still fairly linear, with fixed objectives, compared to say, Spider-Man 2, where you could happily ignore the missions and spend all your time web-slinging around New York (heck, that was the best part of the game).
At your command you get a variety of weapons including the trademark repulsors and uni-beam, along with the more regular missles and gattling gun. Through use of these different weapons you can slowly level each up, gaining new varients, or boosting the stats of the existing weapon.
The great thing though, is the unlockable armours. As you complete certain levels, you’ll unlock different armours you can use when replaying missions. There’s 6 available on the PC, with the first 3 being the movie suits. From their they’ve included 3 classic suits from the comics: the original tin can from Iron Man’s first appearance, his classic 70s red-and-gold armour, and, a personal favourite, the silver centurion armour. I’m always a sucker for this kind of thing and its great fun attacking Maggia’s Flying Fortress in the Silver Centurion suit.
The game’s probably not going to win many awards, but I found it a lot of fun. The graphics are great, the story’s had a bit of effort put in, and there’s certainly a kick to be had flying around as Iron Man, laying waste to AIM’s evil beekeepers with your repulsors.
I’ve put together a quick gameplay video showing off the different suits of armour and a couple of the levels in the game. Enjoy
That was easily one of the best comic book movies to date. Robert Downey Jnr *is* Tony Stark in the way that Christopher Reeve was Superman. The film wisely kept itself centred around his performance as we see his decadent lifestyle (the scene on the private plane was a classic), followed by his drive to correct his mistakes.
The script stays faithful to the tone of the comics while chopping and changing some elements to work as an origin story. Obidiah Stane is reinvented as a life-long friend of Tony’s father, who runs Stark International alongside Tony. This change works well, as the character stays true to his comics-self, while the changing of his relationship to Tony allows them to spend time on other parts of the film.
The key thing about this film though, is that its fun. There were so many sequences where I was killing myself laughing (the scene on the private plane, the various boot-jet tests). But the humour doesn’t undercut the characters. There’s a great balance going on between the humour, the character work, and the action.
Largely for the great quote about Star Trek being in the same league as Transformers. As a long-time Transformers geek, it warms my heart to hear it mentioned in that way
As for the movie delay? Well, when I heard about it, I hoped that it meant some post-writers-strike reshoots. JJ Abrahams has been quoted saying that there were scenes whose dialogue he would’ve liked to have changed, but couldn’t because of the strike, so delaying the film by 5/6 months would’ve seemed like a good idea to go back and tweak it. However, from the studio quote, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Personally, I don’t quite get the summer-blockbuster excuse. Christmas seems perfectly acceptable as a release time for such minor franchises as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and James Bond.
Bet James Bond wishes he was in the same league as Transformers.
Ok, so it actually leaked a couple of days ago, but last night saw the new trailer for Star Trek hit apple.com in glorious HD, allowing us to get our first proper look at the film.
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