Movies

After the Avengers defeat the bad guys and the credits roll, who cleans up the mess? Who clears the debris, sweeps up the scraps, and collects all those bits and pieces of alien / mystical / foreign objects — you know, the stuff pedestrians probably shouldn’t get their hands on? Whether you’re a casual or more committed fan of the Marvel universe (or superheroes in general), you’ve likely pondered this very question. Spider-Man: Homecoming will finally give us an answer.

The suit makes the man, and that’s seldom more true than for the superhero set. Batman would be another joe-schmo billionaire industrialist without the arsenal of weaponry built into his armor, Iron Man would literally die without his hardware, and now we can add Peter Parker to the list of superheroes whose own clothes act as unofficial sidekick. In the latest trailer for upcoming threeboot Spider-Man: Homecoming, we get a glimpse of some nifty new modifications (courtesy of Stark Industries) to Spidey’s trademark red-and-blue spandex. A new generation’s Spider-Man needs some modern upgrades, and the latest iteration of the suit includes a detachable mini-drone and what I can only describe as “skintight suction technology.”

Who are the Justice League? The group is comprised of a bunch of different heroes in different combinations based on which comic arcs you’re reading at the time, but it always seems to have three core members: Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. Warner Bros. new Justice League movie didn’t feature the red-caped Kryptonian in this weekend’s trailer, and seems to be acting like he won’t be in the movie. Even Zack Snyder has been cagey about it.

March is Women’s History Month, and we’re looking at the history of Wonder Woman. As we all know, her first theatrical film is due out later this year. But what if it wasn’t her first? What if there had been as many onscreen Wonder Women as Batmen? So far we’ve imagined a Golden Age Wonder Woman movie, a Silver Age Wonder Girl movie, and a Bronze Age Diana Prince movie. For our final installment of the series, we're visiting the late 1980s, for post-Crisis Wonder Woman movie featuring the stars of that era.

A couple of significant things happened in Sony’s corner of the Marvel universe last week: The studio set a 2018 release date for a standalone Venom movie and hired a new screenwriter for its long-developing female-centric Spider-Man spinoff — two developments which seem to indicate that Sony is once again preparing to try their hand at building a Spidey cinematic universe. According to a new report, that’s exactly what’s happening, but things may be decidedly darker this time around.

With Ranger Station we're looking back with an in-depth guide to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, including its source material from the Japanese Super Sentai franchise in ComicsAlliance's Ranger Station! But this week we're taking on the brand-new Power Rangers movie relaunch, and hey... is anyone else suddenly really hungry for donuts?

The Americanized remake of anime classic Ghost in the Shell finally crashes into theaters this Friday, like a bodysuit-clad Scarlett Johansson bursting through a glass window, guns blazing. While Paramount has managed to delay advance reviews by cancelling many press screenings (which is, traditionally, a bad sign), that has done little to deter the fans’ many burning questions. What secrets are being hidden from Major Motoko Kusanagi, and by whom? What are the tactical advantages of clothes that appear to be made of shrink-wrap? Will the movie be racist, and if so, how racist is it going to be? Why is English trip-hop musician Tricky in the film? Truly, The Ghost in the Shell is rich with secrets.

You have savored the lovely new posters. You drooled over Michael Keaton’s Vulture and his handsome fur-collared jacket. Now get ready for the film’s full trailer, which will arrive online tomorrow, with this brief teaser of that trailer, as unveiled by the official Spider-Man: Homecoming Twitter account a short while ago.

USA Today recently ran a new interview with Jon Watts, director of the upcoming re-re-reboot Spider-Man: Homecoming, far in advance of the film’s July 7 release date. Watts got the chance to explain the fundamental differences between his foray into the Marvel universe and the films that came before, stating that the fundamental regular-guyness of Peter Parker will set him apart from the likes of Thor and Iron Man: “My whole approach for this movie is that we’ve seen the penthouse level of the (Marvel) universe. We’ve seen what it’s like to be a billionaire inventor and to be a Norse god. We’ve seen the very top of this world. But we’ve never seen what it’s like to be just a regular joe.”

Whether you choose to overlook the accusations of whitewashing levied against Paramount’s upcoming Ghost in the Shell movie is entirely up to you, but there are certainly some who are rooting for the film to open doors for other anime projects. Studios aren’t exactly hot-spots for innovative thinking; if Ghost in the Shell bombs next weekend, there will no-doubt be executives at Paramount who claim the only real lesson is that American audiences don’t like Anime. That would be a real blow to fans of the long-gestating adaptation of Akira, the seminal 1988 animated movie by Katsuhiro Otomo that has been an inspiration to countless science fiction movies and television shows that follow.