When All Else Fails, Add a Tagline: A Movie News Roundup

Thu
May 28 2009 12:05pm

When All Else Fails, Add a Tagline: A Movie News Roundup

Wow, it has been another busy week in Hollywood. Whether studios are trying to dredge movie reboots out of the cinematic compost heap or filmmakers are stomping on the cultural spectrum of its source material, there’s never a dull moment in this machine. Check out the new, the notable, and the unimaginably frightening (hint: TRON).

- The first film stills of Avatar: The Last Airbender have been released, just in time for everyone to remember how ridiculous this casting is. So far we have a shot of Prince Zuko looking badass and a shot of Aang looking Caucasian.

- The official GI Joe poster has been released! Please note you can enjoy two horrible taglines, rather than just one! For those who don’t read Blurry-ese: “Evil Never Looked So Good” and “When All Else Fails, They Don't,” which made me laugh out loud when I read it, I'm not even going to pretend otherwise. Stop giving away the plot, poster!

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the newest movie properties to be in line for a reboot. Producers are all set to go, and it sounds like it’s been greenlit and will go forward even though Joss Whedon isn’t attached. See what happens when you praise the Star Trek movie too much?

- Box office receipts don’t lie: the Night at the Museum sequel vaulted right over Terminator: Salvation last weekend. McG, desperate to trick people into seeing his horrible movie, dropped the bomb about a super-secret alternate ending. He then played a handheld video of Lucy Liu washing a car in slow motion and ran away from further questions while the reviewer was still stunned and confused from the footage.

- In other news, the best movie announcement of our time: Piranha 3-D, apparently a real movie, is actually getting made. To make sure it’s as B-movie as it can possibly get, they are casting Gossip Girl’s Jessica Szohr (“The Girl No One Likes”); though her part is not finalized, chances are good that she will be Girl in Bikini Who Investigates Churning Water.

- Katee Sackhoff was seen buying handfuls of Daredevil comics featuring Typhoid Mary. Speculation is rampant that she must be researching the character because she’s in line for the role in a Daredevil reboot (see what happens?), since girls never read comics for fun.

- And for those of you looking for something that will chill you to your very core, click this link and know that this picture was taken on the set of Tron 2, and that nothing will ever be all right again.

1. UncrownedKing

view all by UncrownedKing | Thursday May 28, 2009 12:50pm EDT

No matter what happens, Ill be seeing Avatar. Hope they don't F that up

2. jasonhenninger

view all by jasonhenninger | Thursday May 28, 2009 12:52pm EDT

Buffy without Joss: Why, with a side-order of why and why sauce on the side.

People in Hollywood are allergic to new ideas.

3. sef

view all by sef | Thursday May 28, 2009 12:58pm EDT

The Tron 2 picture is not as bleak as you make it sound -- I saw a picture of Robert Downey Jr in his Iron Man costume, pre-sfx, and it looked... flat and plasticy. So I would expect that the pastel blue suit in that shot will get some computer modifications.

4. Adam from the Weirdside

Thursday May 28, 2009 01:09pm EDT

Animated things are animated for a reason. They'd look silly in real life! Plus you really can't do the stuff they do in cartoons in real life. Dragonball being made into a movie was ridiculous and I'm pretty sure Avatar will be too.

5. aedifica

view all by aedifica | Thursday May 28, 2009 01:23pm EDT

Connie Willis's book Remake is looking more and more plausible all the time. Scary.

6. UncrownedKing

view all by UncrownedKing | Thursday May 28, 2009 01:46pm EDT

If they took Dragonball and actually had asian people in it....(Goku is not White). Ok there was a lot of issues with it....Damn

God they are going to ruin it arnt they?

*whimper*

7. del

view all by del | Thursday May 28, 2009 02:51pm EDT

I don't think producers hate new ideas. I just think (as I said to Paul Cornell this weekend, namedrop) they really, really like reliably profitable intellectual property. And good characters are easier to own and milk for rent than good stories. So they get used and re-used long after the story would be better served by a fresh set of characters.

See the Star Trek movie, which I'm really surprised to see how out-of-step I am about. I reckon you could tell much better stories about Star Trek today by a) starting with a new set of characters, and b) starting with a new universe.

Firefly works better as a Mudd's eye view of the Federation than it ever would have done if it had starred Harry Mudd in the actual Federation.

8. Harry Connolly

Thursday May 28, 2009 05:21pm EDT

Are you sure that's Tron 2? Maybe it's the Megaforce reboot.

9. trinityvixen

view all by trinityvixen | Friday May 29, 2009 12:22am EDT

The G.I. Joe poster actively frightens me. I'm pretty sure that the Baronness' face is made of putty and was photographed shortly after someone yanked on a chunk of it. That said, even the hideous facial distortion can't compete with the front-and-center t-and-a next to overtly phallic swords. (The swords being held in arms that are too contorted to be either a) human or b) not broken.) That poster has the edge in worst posters for this year so far...

10. subwoofer

view all by subwoofer | Friday May 29, 2009 09:37am EDT

Avatar, Buffy sans Joss... wtf? Hollywood is coasting on vapors. Way too many movies being released that are shclock. Small wonder that something different... from India wins the oscar. If they reboot the Hulk... again... will be tremendously annoyed.

There are new ideas out there, it is just not getting to the people making movies. It's like TC in Tropic Thunder, they are catering to what they think they can spin to the masses. Couple that with a few big names to get people's attention and you have the average summer fare. Sigh.

11. higgins

view all by higgins | Friday May 29, 2009 06:37pm EDT

I hope they give Jay Maynard a cameo in Tron 2.0.

12. davidlev

view all by davidlev | Monday June 01, 2009 07:22am EDT

For those of you expressing despair about Buffy without Whedon...read the attached article. It'll be a Buffy movie that's a remake of the original movie...y'know, the silly embarrassing comedy with Luke Perry and Peewee Herman? I shudder to think of it. Also, none of the supporting cast from the TV show would appear in it.

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