Week 5: April 8th ~ April 15th: CinemaCon News! :

Hello all! Contrasting these last few weeks, this week was a huge movie news week, with Marvel week on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the first screenings of Civil War, and of course, CinemaCon. There was even more stuff this week than I could fill here, but I tried to stuff as much as possible.





James Cameron and his Early Planning

If you were a huge fan of the 2009 James Cameron film, Avatar, and are ready for more films about Pandora, well here's something to make you happy. At CinemaCon, Cameron announced Avatar 2, 3, 4, and 5. Yeah, you read that right. The first Avatar came out in 2009, so it has been about seven years since it's release. Cameron assures us that he has been devoting all his time to Avatar 2, which he continuously pushes the release date back a year. The first release date he announced was in December 2015. And then it was pushed back to 2016. Then to 2017. It currently sits at December 2018. Just to say how long of a wait that is, I saw the first Avatar when I was nine years old. If Cameron doesn't change this date, I won't see the sequel until I graduate high school. 

It's become kind of a cool thing to hate on Avatar these past few years, and I never really understood it. The film got nothing but praise after it's release, and it was very well deserved. It is a visual masterpiece, although it may have a very archetype-esque plot. In the end, I do enjoy Avatar, and I am intrigued with the idea of more, even though it looks like more will release in the distant future. One thing that many people don't think about regarding this, is that we are getting a franchise, that is completely original. It has been a while since I can remember that a franchise is not based off of a comic book, book, TV show, old film, cartoon, etc. Cameron is a masterful story teller, as he proved with the first two Terminator films, Aliens, Titanic, and Avatar. This guy is a class act of a director, and if he needs nine years to make Avatar 2, let him be.


Spider-Man: Homecoming

This also was announced at CinemaCon, at Sony's presentation, by Tom Holland himself. The title "Spider-Man: Homecoming" was leaked a week back, when Sony purchased it's URL, along with a few other Spider-Man possible titles. Now I kind of have mixed feelings about this title. Homecoming is traditionally a high school dance, and executives at Marvel and Sony have said they want it to feel like a very "high school" centric film. But, Marvel is a bit smarter than have their title be as explicit as that. It likely has a deeper meaning than just a dance that Peter goes to, and we won't learn that until we see the film, but I could be wrong. If it is just about a dance, then this is kind of stupid in my opinion. 

Michael Keaton as a Spider-Man Villain
Although this is just a rumor, it is very likely. Marvel have never cast an A-list actor as a villain, the closest being Tom Hiddleston or Jeff Bridges. Similarly, Marvel is notorious for having poorly written and rushed villains, with the exception of Loki. The fact that they are getting an Oscar-nominated actor for this role, is a big sign that they are going to actually write this guy pretty well. As for which villain he will play, well, I think there are really only two different guys who he can play at his age. Vulture and Mysterio. Vulture is probably the more likely outcome, but I would prefer Mysterio. With the Vulture, it is hard to contain his cannibalistic character into a PG-13 film, so I would rather not see a toned down version of him. Mysterio is a visual effects artist, who uses illusions and tricks to perform crimes, and I think that that's something that we haven't seen in a Spider-Man film yet. Either way, if this rumor is true, I don't have many doubts that Spider-Man: Homecoming will have an excellent villain. 


AMC Theaters and Texting
Texting at the movies ruins the experience and should absolutely never be allowed. The fact that AMC is considering this appalls me, and I am glad they have chosen not to.