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How the Deadpool 2 Reshoots Saved X-Force

The new Deadpool 2 released this morning, and the footage seems to confirm how the reshoots fixed one of the biggest problem with the movie when it tested in front of audiences last month.

I got a lot of crap from Deadpool fans on the internet when I said I heard a disappointing reaction to the movie, and one of the huge problems was how X-Force was originally wasted in the movie.

In that version, all of X-Force died when they jumped out of that airplane. They were thrown away for dumb gag deaths. It’s also basically the same joke they did in MacGruber. The context is that Rusty is on that prison bus and Deadpool assembles X-Force to save him from Cable.

Originally only Deadpool and Domino make it to the bus, but the new trailer shows that at least Bedlam and Shatterstar make it to the ground as well, when they originally were killed off by botched landings.

Even with the original version, the X-Force movie could’ve still happened thanks to what happens in the end of this movie, but killing them off as gags still would’ve pissed off fans. So if the reshoots did change that part by allowing them to survive, it fixes one of the big problems people had with it. On the other hand, if the trailer is being deceptively edited to make it look like they survive only to still die in the gag deaths; then that’s going to backfire.

There’s still a refrigerator-sized Alien 3-style plot issue that the reshoots probably didn’t change, but at least it looks like they were smart and fixed the problem with how X-Force was originally completely wasted in Deadpool 2.

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Rumor: Solo: A Star Wars Tickets On Sale May 4th

I may be spending most of my time over on MCU Cosmic these days, but I’ve still be keeping an eye on Star Wars and DC stuff. Today I’ve heard a rumor that Solo: A Star Wars Story tickets will indeed be going on sale Friday, May 4th.

No duh. That’s been rumored for a while, but I’ve heard it from two of the big theater chains so far and that gives it some weight. I haven’t yet seen the proof from any other chains that normally leaks online, but apparently an email has been sent out to managers of at least two of the big US chains alerting them to plan for May 4th.

Usually actual instructions will be sent to the theater about a week in advance with the date schedule including what day they need their showtimes programmed for the ticket sales and then details of the opening night festivities, etc. Once those instructions go out they normally will leak and that will make it easier to confirm if this rumor is true or not.

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Introducing MCU Cosmic!

This morning I decided to launch a new website focused on Marvel movies called MCU Cosmic.

The site will cover all things with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but with Phase 4 heading into a more cosmic direction that’s the inspiration I took for the theme. We’re going to get some very exciting things with Phase 4 and the unexpected places Marvel is going to take us, so strap yourselves in and I’ll do my best to keep you informed.

I’ve been doing this website thing for twenty years now. From small sites hosted in the early days of the web, I went and ran IGN DVD for nearly four years before moving into the gaming industry and working at places such as Sony Online Entertainment on Star Wars Galaxies and Blizzard on World of Warcraft. After SWG shut down, a friend launched a site called Furious Fanboys, which I ran for years until it was sold to an investment firm.

That’s why I run my own blog and the new site. I aim to keep both independent and aren’t aiming to build something that I’ll just sell off to some faceless company that will turn it into a click farm. I’m doing this as a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and one who’s very exited about the cosmic places the movies are headed.

This blog will still exist for anything that doesn’t fit on MCU Cosmic.

Note, the site is only soft-launched right now. The official launch, with a big Phase 4 reveal, is this coming Monday the 9th of April!

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There’s a Fake X-Men: Dark Phoenix Plot Spoiler Being Spread Around…

Following the recent delay of X-Men: Dark Phoenix to February of next year, there’s now a bogus plot spoiler being spread around that is fooling a lot of people on Twitter and low-end film sites into believing it’s real.

The movie did recently have a test screening back in February and a source of mine did attend it, so I was able to show them the spoiler being spread to verify if it was real or not. It does get a couple plot points correct, but those have been out there online for a while. Everything else seems to be made up to flesh out small bits they may have heard.

My source has asked me to not share specific plot points, and I agree that after the Deadpool 2 blow-up I won’t do that. But I will say some vague things that plot spoiler got very wrong. They get some of the big spoilers incorrect, naming the wrong characters in events in the movie. They also got a lot of big things incorrect involving the X-Men themselves, and the entire ending of the movie is completely different than how the spoiler describes. They also gave the villains a much bigger role than they have in the real movie. It’s like they heard simple spoilers naming a place and a character, and extrapolated a story around that.

If you want to read the full thing it’s in this Reddit thread here and archived here. Be aware that some of the plot points in that are close to correct, as such they are spoilers, but the overall plot is pretty much fan fiction…

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix & New Mutants Delayed Until After Disney Will Potentially Own X-Men

This morning Fox delayed X-Men: Dark Phoenix to February (from November) and once again delayed New Mutants; this time to August of 2019. And I’ll be surprised if we see either of them in a theater at this point as 2019 is after the Disney/Fox deal will potentially close. That would mean by the time X-Men: Dark Phoenix‘s release date arrives, the X-Men would be under the control of Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is rumored to feature the Skrulls as the film’s main villains. One month after its release is Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel, which will feature the Marvel Cinematic Universe introduction of the Skrulls. If Kevin Feige has control of the X-Men by then, do you really think he’d put up with an X-Men movie (featuring the Skrulls) releasing in theaters one month before the MCU introduction of the famous aliens? Probably not.

I never wrote anything about what I’ve heard about Dark Phoenix, especially after the Deadpool 2 blow-up, but I’ve actually heard decent things. A source who saw it felt it was about the middle of the road for X-Men movies. Much better than Apocalypse in their opinion, but not quite as great as Days of Future Past. They considered it a “B” from that they saw a little over a month ago.

As for New Mutants, I told you all months ago what the reshoots really were. They want the tone to be closer to It or Stranger Things. But now that the movie is delayed again, which will put it nearly two years after its first trailer in October 2017, I doubt we’ll even see it in theaters by then. They’ll probably put it (and maybe Dark Phoenix) on Hulu.

That would mean that Deadpool 2 would be the final Fox X-Men movie…

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Batman Ninja Review

To be perfectly honest with you, I really wasn’t paying much attention to Batman Ninja. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t watch any of the trailers or footage before seeing the movie this weekend. I knew it was a Batman anime with character designs from the creator of Afro Samurai, but that was about it. Boy was I in for a ridiculous surprise.

The story of Batman Ninja starts in the present day where Batman and Catwoman are at Arkham Aslyum where Gorilla Grodd is setting off a device he created. It ends up sending Batman, as well as five of his villains and most of the Bat-family back to Feudal Japan. There the Joker rules one part of the country, while The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Two-Face, and Deathstoke rule over the rest of it and the five are vying for control of Japan. Batman, for some reason, arrives two years later than everyone else and immediately sets out to stop the Joker using the best Batmobile ever (seriously it’s awesome).

After a big setback, he joins forces with a Bat ninja clan who also has Damian, Jason, Tim, and Dick in their ranks. Batman learns the way of the ninja to become Ninja Batman.

One of my friends commented at the end of the movie how it’s simultaneously the best and worst Batman movie ever. This movie takes the craziness that the 60’s Batman series had, quadruples it, and sets it in the modern status quo for Batman where his son is Robin. I can not stress to you how absolutely insane this movie is. Imagine the craziest Batman anime you can think of, with all of the crazy anime tropes (no not those, this is a PG-13 movie), and even then it wouldn’t match how nuts this gets. It’s an escalating level of crazy, just when you think it can’t go any more insane…it does.

It really may not be for everyone, but all day after seeing it I could only think about how I couldn’t wait to see it again. It’s absolutely the most unique Batman story ever put to screen, and it’s one that internet is probably going to meme to death. The character designs will also inspire some pretty awesome cosplay at the big conventions, and I expect to see some Batman Ninja cosplayers in San Diego this July (I really love Deathstroke’s design in this).

Even if they don’t like anime, every Batman fan at least should see Batman Ninja once. If only to say they’ve seen the most insane take on Batman and his villains in the history of the character.

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James Wan Defends Aquaman From Negative ‘Fabricated Distractions’

A few hours ago Aquaman director James Wan came out in a series of Tweets defending the movie against negativity that was spreading around the internet after a false rumor about a teaser trailer at WonderCon didn’t materialize. As the Internet tends to do, conspiracy theories started that Aquaman was a “mess” and that evil Warner Brothers was meddling and holding back Wan in order to “Justice League” the movie.

Thankfully Arthur has a director like Wan to speak up and try to shut up the internet conspiracy theories. He says he normally won’t do this sort of thing to fake negative distractions, but hopefully he will as the false narrative about Aquaman is just beginning.

To be fair, the person who started the rumor, Mario-F. Robles, apologized:

If you’re curious when the first trailer will come, Hall H at San Diego Comic Con looks like the most logical spot. That would be Saturday, July 21st, 2018.

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Is Aquaman a ‘Mess’ or Terrible Right Now?

This weekend there are a lot of sensational stories springing up because writers are selectively quoting Forbes’ Mark Hughes and comments he made on the Superhero News YouTube show about Aquaman. On the show, and speaking of the test screening Warner held for Aquaman back in February, Hughes said: “The conversations about the Aquaman test screening, I’ll say, some people heard positive. We were just talking about this topic minutes ago. Some people heard positive things. Me, personally, I’ll go ahead and just say: Honestly, I’ve heard some negative things. I think there are some issues to be resolved. There are some things to be worked out with Aquaman.”

The issue with how people are reporting that quote is that they’re cutting off his first sentence so they can craft their “DC movie is bad” narrative, because that sort of thing gets you clicks and attention. But what about the negative he’s talking about? Well since he didn’t specify here’s what seems to be one of the issues right now and it’s something that’s fixed in the nine months leading up to the movie:

According to the information my source who saw it provided; the version they tested in February was about two and a half-hours long, and that’s even with what looks like a sequence cut out. So it could use a little trimming. I’m not talking about a Justice League hatchet job to get it down to two hours, but there are some things here and there that might trim 10-15 minutes (some of the Orm stuff could probably be trimmed down, for example). Also, due to that sequence that was cut, the transition from Act 1 to Act 2 is a little jarring; I’ve had people ask me how they get from point A to point B in the story. There are set photos of Aquaman and Mera out there of a shot that doesn’t exist in the movie that was shown, but it fits between two existing scenes based on their costumes. So a short insert could probably fix that issue without having to do a long explanatory sequence.

And of course there are the scheduled reshoots and pickups every movie does, and thanks to Justice League and this “Aquaman is a mess” narrative some web sites are trying to craft already (like they did with Wonder Woman), they will immediately jump on the first mention of additional shooting in an attempt to further their narrative. But those scheduled reshoots, if they even happen, will allow Wan to fix the issues the movie currently has and put out an even better movie in December.

If you’re not adverse to spoilers and want to know how Aquaman plays out, you can via the links below. My source who saw the movie detailed it to me because they wanted to try to get ahead of the suffocating negativity online that seems to surround every DC movie, and that even happened with Wonder Woman before launch. So this way people can judge for themselves if Aquaman is negative or bad, and it’s also going to be cool in December to look back and see what changed between now and then. Also, the description is missing a huge (and I mean really huge) part of the story from the last third of the movie that I intentionally omitted in order to preserve the surprise of that “twist” in December. So if you want to know the whole thing you’ll need to see the movie in theaters.

This is Aquaman (all have spoilers):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

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Aquaman – The Trench & The King of Atlantis (Spoilers)

Aquaman Spoiler Policy: Aquaman isn’t out until December and the movie is so good it’ll represent the start of a new era for the DCEU with films such as Shazam and Wonder Woman 2 following. As such the movie doesn’t deserve to be completely spoiled ten months out from release. People should be able enjoy Wan’s underwater epic on the big screen without knowing everything about it prior to release. That’s why this far out I won’t be touching some of the big story reveals in the third act, and may not even do it closer to release.

That said, people have been asking for more details so I will be posting some details about the movie and how it plays out. Please be considerate of people who want to avoid spoilers when sharing this information on social media. Also please be aware that this information comes from an unfinished version of the movie and some of this may not make it into the final film.

NOTE: This update will cover the third act, but deliberately leaves out a HUGE part of that movie in order to preserve the surprise and the ending. This is NOT all that is in the last third of Aquaman. You’ll need to see the movie in December to discover the very cool missing piece.

After Arthur awakes on the boat, he and Mera make their way to the Trench during a thunderstorm at night. The Trench monsters attack the boat (they look just like the comics versions), and they discover they’re sensitive to light so they use that to fight them off. They swim down, their light illuminates whole columns covered with Trench monsters, and they discover a vortex like the one that protects Atlantis but much bigger. As they go through it they’re separated, Mera is knocked out, and some pretty cool things happen that I will not detail here.

As those cool things play out, they learn that the vortex in the Trench is one-way and you can’t leave without the Trident. The good news is, it’s close. It’s guarded by a giant kraken-like creature. I showed my source a picture of Topo from the comics, and they said that’s what it looks like. So it likely is Topo and we’ll call the creature that for the purposes of this.

Topo guards the Trident of Atlan and will only allow the true King of Atlantis to retrieve it. He finds King Atlan’s skeleton in holding the Trident while Topo’s tentacles attack him. Arthur hears a voice in his head about how Topo has guarded the trident for eons against false kings, and no half-breed will claim it. Arthur says he doesn’t want it for himself, he needs it to safe his friends, and if that’s not enough to make him worthy “screw you!” Topo seems shocked that Arthur can hear him, so he lets him take the Trident.

Aquaman returns to Mera with the Trident in hand, and wearing his classic comic book costume (gold tunic, green pants, green gauntlets). He’s now ready to face Orm and reclaim the Throne of Atlantis!

Orm asked Vulko for advice in the coming battle, and confronts him about his betrayal of raising Arthur. Orm tells him he always knew, and Vulko tells him that Arthur is already twice the king Orm is. Orm orders Vulko locked up “somewhere with a view”.

He then goes to the final kingdom of these shelled crab people. They fight off Orm and their king tells him they’ll never bow to him and how, “You had to put your armor on this morning – I WAS BORN IN MINE!” Orm prepares to kill the crap people king when suddenly the ground below them cracks open and Topo bursts out of the ocean floor…ridden by Arthur welding the Trident! Arthur leads the entire sea (including the creatures of the Trench) into battle against Orm as the Trident gives him the power to command the oceans.

Mera tells Arthur to continue to go after Orm, she’ll handle her father. She kisses him and he’s so dazed by it that he has to ask her what the plan is again. She finds Nereus and tells him that Arthur has the Trident. He orders his troops to stand down as Arthur is the true King. Orm really begins to freak out.

He and Arthur end up on the surface fighting on top of an Atlantean sub. Arthur uses the helicopter trident move Vulko taught him to shatter Orm’s trident, and…I’m not telling you any more about that. Explaining how the fight ends involves a spoiler I am not discussing here. You’ll need to see the movie in December.

I will say, Orm is not killed. DC doesn’t seem to want to throw away their villains anymore, likely to save them for a potential Legion of Doom.

In the end Vulko is freed by Mera and he orders Orm locked up “somewhere with a view”, as Arthur declares himself king and raises the Trident, “This is gonna be so much fun!”

The movie then has a very sweet ending with more voice over from Arthur (like at the beginning), but you’ll need to see it in December to see what I’m talking about…

Previous Stories on Aquaman (all have spoilers):
The Opening
Mera
Atlantis
Fight Night
Romancing the Trident
Manta Strikes

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Aquaman – Manta Strikes (Spoilers)

Aquaman Spoiler Policy: Aquaman isn’t out until December and the movie is so good it’ll represent the start of a new era for the DCEU with films such as Shazam and Wonder Woman 2 following. As such the movie doesn’t deserve to be completely spoiled ten months out from release. People should be able enjoy Wan’s underwater epic on the big screen without knowing everything about it prior to release. That’s why this far out I won’t be touching some of the big story reveals in the third act, and may not even do it closer to release.

That said, people have been asking for more details so I will be posting some details about the movie and how it plays out. Please be considerate of people who want to avoid spoilers when sharing this information on social media. Also please be aware that this information comes from an unfinished version of the movie and some of this may not make it into the final film.

After Arthur and Mera find out they need to head to Italy, Orm decides the two need to be killed. Mera’s father Nereus wants her brought back to him and Orm agrees. He goes and finds Manta, and gives him elite Atlanean armor only the best warriors get to use. He also gives him a prototype gun that charges with water, and at full charge it can level a skyscraper. Manta loves it, “That’s one hell of a supersoaker!” He paints his armor black and routes the gun through tubes that go through his comic-accurate helmet.

Arthur and Mera have more bonding time in Italy. She thinks a rose is food and eats it, to not make her feel bad Arthur eats one too. Mera finds a little girl tossing coins into a fountain and uses her power to make a water castle, and the girl loves it. She gives Mera a copy of the Pinocchio book, and she gets mad at Arthur for using a children’s book to save them (the whale part). He says he took it from the movie and didn’t even know there was a book.

Mera finds the spot their previous clue pointed them to, and use the coordinates to find two statues that inform them that in order to find the Trident…they’re going to need to go into The Trench.

Meanwhile underwater Orm, Nereus, and Vulko treat with the king of the “Fisherpeople”. He wants nothing of Orm’s plan. He feels that if they reveal themselves to the surface, it should be as teachers. Orm kills him and turns to the princess and orders her to prepare for battle.

Back in Italy, Manta strikes. This is a huge fight and chase scene. He brings soldiers along with him and one chases Mera as she runs along rooftops as he plows through the building below, keeping pace. Eventually Mera gets to a winery and uses her powers to make sharp blades out of the wine to take out the soldiers. Manta and Arthur fight. Manta hates Arthur for not saving his father, and stabs him with his grandfather’s knife. Arthur uses a ball and chain weapon to shatter Manta’s helm and send him over a cliff into the water below. It’s clear that Manta was not killed.

Arthur passes out from the knife wound as Mera finds him. Later he wakes up in a boat she stole and regrets not saving Manta’s father.

In the next update we’ll head into the Trench…

Previous Stories on Aquaman (all have spoilers):
The Opening
Mera
Atlantis
Fight Night
Romancing the Trident