7/12/10

Oh no! - it's another Marvel movies site relocation!!

Considering that this here blog about the upcoming Marvel movies is only a few months old, what I am about to say here probably will seem rather self centered and inpulsive, yet I have to say it:  this is likely the last post that I will be making to this site.

  What?  Seriously? Already?

  Yeah, already.  When I made the decision to stop posting to my previous Captain America movie blog, it was because I had decided to focus on the overall subject of the future Marvel movies, instead of just the single movie franchises/projects individually with separate sites. Of course that is why we ended up here, right? That should have been that, so to speak; it should have been enough to be here and to carry on posting about Cap, Shellhead and any other Marvel movie character that strikes my fancy, however, soon after launching this new site I realized that starting a new blogger blog on a broader scope was not enough: I realized that I was also ready to move on to going the self-hosted route with my site and to try having a Marvel movies site that did not exist at the whim of a free blog provider.  At the same time, I have seen enough of the Wordpress platform to realize that it offers some freedom of choice that I would like to try for myself, so considering these two facts, it seemed that the answer or solution to my quandary would be to take the plunge and try a self hosted site.  Since in my mind I have decide that at some point this is going to happen, I figured that it would be better to do this sooner rather than later even thought this site was in its most fledgling of stages.  I guess this just means that anyone who followed me over here from my Captain America Movie Update site will have the chance to keep playing 'follow the blogger', lol.  Since the focus of the new(est) site will be the same as here, there should be no jarring differences, except for a minor change of the title, from Marvel Zombie Movie Patrol, to Marvel Movies Zombie Patrol. (I know, I am weak and totally indecisive) 

  Okay, I am done with new site announcements for a looong time!  If you are still with me, the new site can be found at: http://marvelmovieszombiepatrol.com/  There you will find me prattling on about anything and everything to do with the Captain America movie and the other upcoming Marvel movies, and I promise that I will be staying there for a while...

7/2/10

Hoping that Marvel's future big guns will end up looking like a million dollars...

We seem to be getting close to the point when the upcoming Marvel movies, the future film projects, will be at the stage where they are ready to release teasers about what the main characters costumes will look like; Movies such as the upcoming Captain America movie and upcoming Thor movie will at some point be trying to increase fan interest in and the buzz level of these projects by giving us some official details about their main characters costumes. Right now we appear to already have some unofficial design info floating around that was supposedly leaked by someone linked with the studio and which was subsequently used as aguide to come up with some very intriguing character sketches of both the Captain America costume nd the Thor costume. Both are very well rendered and both could very well end up being quite close to the final version that we will see up on the big screen this time next year.





These design sketches have got me thinking. After giving it some thought, I have to say that for as much as I like the Thor outfitand the way it seems to suit the character from the comics, I am equally unexcited over what I have so far seen from the fan sketches for the supposed Captain America costume. The Thor outfit is faithful to the feel of the comic and has even incorporated some of the more recent costume changes to have been introduced into the regular book. Similarly, I feel that the Cap costume looks like it has attempted to incorporate (on some level)the more recent look to the Captain America costume, a look which has not particularly received a rousing positive reaction from fans over the few years of its existence. It has not been made clear to me yet if the Cap sketches are based on the look of his costume during the modern era portion of his story (ie the part of the movie that could be set in modern day) or if it is in fact supposed to be the look of the costume for the period portion of the drams set during WW II. If it is to be the latter, then it has way too much of a modern look and feel to it to be believable for a Second World War outfit.

So far, Marvel has got it right over all; the decisions that the studio has gone with for the look of its principle characters has mnostly paid off - I am obviously not the only one who loved the look of the Iron Man armor in the last two IM movies, right? I hope Marvel chooses the look of its future cornerstone movies well. We all know that they can do it, they have done it well before. Here's hoping that they keep their batting average up in the near future...

6/24/10

Will Marvel be faithful to it's Iconic imagery?

With the recent release of the second Iron Man movie, I have been thinking more about the depiction on screen of some well known Iconic Marvel artifacts; With the first Iron Man movie, we got abrief glimpse of what appeared to be Captain America's famous shield (or at least something that was intended to be a faithful replica of it). With the second Iron Man movie, we were given a further glimpse of the shield, this time in an apparent state of  disrepair, ie. half of it appeared to be missing. In addition, we got a very good glimpse of the Hammer of  Thor sitting on the edge of a crater out in what appeaerd to be somewhere in the middle of the American South West. The hammer had an interesting modern design to it.  I will admit that this surprised me somewhat since I had heard about this scene before seeing the movie and  I had an image in my mind of amore classic looking hammer - not one looking so 'modern' or so influenced in its design by science fiction.  The depiction of both the shiels and the hammer in Iron Man 2 bothered me in the sense that in both cases the items in question were both perceived as being iconic and established before the movie and yet someone had seen fit to go and show them in a much more modernist and future-tech depiction. 

  Similarly, the internet has recently revealed to those willing to look the likely costuming for both Captain America and Thor.  The Thor costume looks pretty close to the comic and so far so good, however the Cap costume looks like it is going to be very modern and influenced as much by the stereotypical 'super hero armor' as much as by the iconic character it is supposed to be the costume of.  Of coursethis might just be the costume designs for the character once he is established in the present, however I have some suspicions that this might in fact be a costume design for the period piece segments of the Cap movie. Afterall, the movie is supposedly going to be primarily set during the Second World War, so it is only natural that you would expect to be seeing costuming designs that represent that aspect of the film. Obviously I hope that what I have seen so far is not from the period parts of the film. Fingers crossed.

  Just to be fair, I should mention that at the same time I was quite pleased with the depiction of a number of different Marvel characters on ther big screen so far.  I thought that the look for Spider-Man was decent (and yes, I realize that Spider-Man was a Sony movie property and not developed by Marvel itself - just wanted to mention it) and so was the look for Doctor Octopus.  I thought that the X-Men were, for the most part, visually well translated for the screen.  I thought that both Iron Man and War Machine looked great on screen, with both being very faithful to their original source material while also introducing some original flair into the mix.  I thought that the Black widow's outfit was very faithfully rendered, too.(and of course it did not hurt that Scarlet Johansen was on hand to help fill it out)  Whiplash was so different from the comic character in his origins that I don't think that anyone would really expect the comic book version of the costume to make the  jump from comic page to the big screen.  I didn't really have any problems with the look of the Whiplash character as much as I was a bit confused by the lack of consistency in the character himself.

  All in all, I guess that the Marvel movies have shown a pretty good batting average in the adaption department, it's just that I am a bit concerned with some of the decisions that may be revealed to us within the next ten to twelve months.

   Again, fingers crossed.

6/21/10

A humourous look at the 'other kind' of Marvel Zombies out there...

I thought that it might be nifty to offer up something a bit more unusual but oh so very apropos to the name of this here blog, Marvel Movie Zombie Patrol. I recently came across a collection of reworked versions of the opening credits to some of the various Marvel Superheros cartoons of the 1960's. The collection consisted of a reworked - or as they called it, "reanimated" version of the opening scenes for the Thor cartoon, the Captain America cartoon, and the Fantastic Four cartoon. Unfortunately at this time there was no Spider-Man reanimated or Hulk reanimated at the time that I am posting this.

Anyway, I cannot for the life of me recall where I first came across these gems but I found them all on youtube and have set them up below this post for your viewing pleasure, so enjoy.








5/3/10

Thoughts of a Marvel (Movie) Zombie

Hello and welcome to this blog thing that Io have begun. My decision to start this up was not a quick one - heck no, I am someone that is usually guilty of procrastination more than doing things 'spur of the moment'. lol

No, instead this blog is the result of me discussing comic books and more specifically comic book-based movies with my friends on a regular basis and then later trying to recall the points of what we had talked about. After a while I started thinking that maybe a blog would be the best way to record or 'document' my thoughts on the upcoming comic book movies out there.

So why Marvel movies in particular? The answer to that one is pretty easy; for years I have been something of a fan of mainly the Marvel Comics line of comic books, to the point where sometimes I have been referred to by friends as a 'Marvel Zombie'. (a term often used to describe devoted fans of Marvel comic books)

So I will use this blog to put out there my thoughts on the barrage of Marvel comic book movies that will be coming to a movie theater near you in the next few years. Among the movies I am looking forward to and hope to discuss will be Iron Man II, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America, and the Avengers.

This should be fun.

Excelsior!