Marvel Studios Hall H Comic-Con 2013 Panel: Thor 2, Captain America 2, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Avengers 2

Silas Lesnick from Comingsoon.net live-blogged descriptions of each footage shown at the Marvel Studios panel at Hall H, San Diego Comic-Con 2013.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD
Footage Description

WOW! It looks like the most epic Game of Thrones battle you can imagine

Very, very practical-looking

The footage begins in the middle of a battlefield. The Warriors Three are among those fighting.

The rainbow bridge appears and Mjolnir comes through first.

It hits one of the opponent soldiers and Thor is right behind it.

He slams it against the Earth and soldiers go flying.

Sif saves Thor from a spear at the last second.

Over the hill a giant monster who looks like he’s made of clay approaches.

He’s huge and angry. Nearly 20 feet.

“I accept your surrender,” Thor grins.

The beast refuses and Thor smashes him to pieces with the hammmer.

“Anyone else?” Thor asks.

The Marvel logo comes up and we’re in London. Jane Foster is there and Thor arrives via the bridge.

“I gave you my word I would return for you,” he says.

We see Jane in Asgard, exploring the wonder of it all

There’s a brief, “Holy s–t” line from Kat Dennings as Thor and Jane vanish via the bridge.

Something is wrong in Asgard. There’s some sort of invisible bridge that has been discovered nearby.

Thor goes to Loki. He’s get in a prison cell with a big glass panel in front.

“After all this time, you come before me, brother?” says Loki, “Why? To mock?”

Thor says he needs Loki’s help.

We see a hand reach for a broken mask, I believe it’s Malekith.

“Your bravery will not relieve your pain,” a voice (I think Eccleston) says. “Your family and your world will be extinguished.”

Loki sets off with Thor, Jane, Sif and the Warriors Three for a mission.

Jane looks at a monitor and says something about the fabric of reality being torn apart.

Sif tells Loki that if he betrays Thor, she’ll kill him.

Jane marches right up and slaps Loki in the face.

“That was for New York!” she says.

“I like her,” Loki grins.

There’s a final shot of Thor on the ground, hurt, with Loki standing over him.

He kicks Thor directly in the face.

Thor reaches for his hammer, but Loki kicks his hand away.

The logo comes up. It looks amazing!

*

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
Footage Description

We open in an elevator. Cap is inside, looking out the glass window. I think we’re in DC.

We see him from behind. He’s got the shield on his back like a backpack.

He turns as more people (Frank Grillo among them) get on.

His uniform is new. It looks a lot like the US Agent costume.

The music is moody, like The Hunt For Red October.

Cap looks Grillo up and down. He senses something isn’t right.

More people get on. Cap keeps looking at them. He notices many of them are armed.

More and more get on with each floor. The elevator is packed.

Cap takes another look at their guns.

Before we get started,” he says, “Does anyone want to get out?”

Grillo says something about it “not being personal” and a fight breaks out.

It’s a massive fight, mostly shot from above, in the confined space. Cap takes out every single guy.

He kicks his shield, flipping it into his hand as he exits.

The Marvel logo comes up. We see Robert Redford in an office.

He saying that he joined SHIELD to protect the world.

“To build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down,” he says. “And that makes enemies.”

We see the Helicarrier flying. Lots of Black Widow action.

Fury shaking hands with Redford.

Fury is talking to Cap.

“I thought the punishment usually came after the crime,” Cap tells him.

We see Mackie running from a futuristic helicopter. He leaps off a building and we see the Falcon wings come out!

Cap on his motorcycle, fighting the helicopter.

The helicarrier falling out of the sky in flames.

The final shot is Cap’s shield on the ground, A metal hand reaches down to pick it up, revealing the Winter Soldier.

*

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
Footage Description

Star-Lord gets arrested, disappointed they don’t know his name.

We see him being booked on a prison ship and John C. Reilly reading off the passenger manifest.

Drax, all practical

Gamora (Zoe looks AMAZING), also practical.

She’s described as “Thanos’ adopted daughter by Reilly”

Rocket Racoon, just called “Rocket”

No word on the voice. But he’s feisty. He spits as his name gets read.

Groot, who is all CGI and has to lean down for his mug shot.

Reilly calls him a “personal houseplant slash muscle”

I AM GROOT

Then Star Lord, who very slowly does a jack-in-the-box flipping off Reilly.

When he finishes, he mocks surprise. “Oh,” he says ,”I’m sorry. I didn’t know how that machine worked.”

As he’s getting booked, he’s very angry about a guard taking his headphones and listening to them.

“They call themselves the ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’,” Reilly says, rolling his eyes.

“What a bunch of a-holes,” says the guard behind Reilly.

The logo comes up with “Hooked on a Feeling” playing over it.

*

THE AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

This is revealed to be the title for the sequel of Marvel’s The Avengers by Joss Whedon.

Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero

If you care about the Pacific Rim movie, you should also care about the comic book: Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero by Travis Beacham. Read the review.

Thanks for Mako Mori

Dear Travis Beacham & Guillermo del Toro,

Thank you for Mako Mori.

Sincerely yours,
Me

*

Mako Mori is one of my favorite movie characters of all time.

 

 

The way GdT and Beacham made her a kick-ass heroine without making her a sex object is just fantastic. Also, the way you write about her is exquisite – her somewhat platonic relationship with Raleigh Becket is wonderful, although in my heart I do believe they did fall in love with each other.

When I remember how she looked up eagerly to her mentor and surrogate father, Stacker Pentecost, during Raleigh’s trials in the movie, I couldn’t stop smiling because she was so adorable. Even more fantastic is the way she corrected Raleigh when he told her that she didn’t have to obey Stacker’s orders. “It’s not obedience, Mr. Becket; it’s respect” is a line that will stay with me forever. It is Mako who makes both Raleigh and Stacker such awesome characters, because they both treat her with the same respect that she shows them.

And when I read in Tales Of Year Zero that Stacker adopted her, and how they stood embracing Tamsin Sevier like a family of three, the tears just won’t stop. Because then it made Mako’s “Goodbye, sensei” in the movie all the more poignant.

Poetic is also how I would describe Mako’s appearance. She’s not sexy, she’s not cutesy, she’s just Mako. The image of little Mako wearing blue coat and holding her red shoe is powerful. Del Toro said that the shoe represented her heart, something she lost (because the shoe was off her feet) because she lost her family from the Kaiju attack. She grew up to be a restrained and closed off woman, represented by the way she wore the all black and the umbrella in her first scene in the movie. Only when she joined Raleigh in the drift did their colors blend and mix, thus signifying Mako finding her heart once again.

This is too sweet for words. I don’t know how GdT and Beacham did it but they did. Pacific Rim is an all-out action movie that’s big and noisy but it has such a big heart in the form of Mako Mori. I wish more filmmakers would make movies this way!

The Lady Robot

Pacific Rim is officially one of my Top 3 movies of 2013.

The leading Jaeger, Gipsy Danger, is apparently “a lady”. Stacker Pentecost calls it “the lady” (“we can clear the path, for the lady”, he says and it sounds all the more wonderful coming from him because he’s played by Idris Elba and Idris Elba is an absolute gentleman). Raleigh Becket refers to her as “she”. And The Lady Robot is definitely the hero of the movie.

Gipsy Danger is piloted by Raleigh, but he’s not as important as Mako Mori, who is another awesome lady in the movie.

It’s even better to have 2 leading ladies who absolutely surpass all the other dudes in terms of awesomeness than 10 female characters that are just decorations.

WHY DO I NOT HAVE MY OWN JAEGER TO PILOT ALREADY?

Pacific Rim: A Reaction

Just came back from the screening and I am frankly baffled.

I am baffled by the hate that some people have for Pacific Rim. I’ve seen it before in the internet. People calling this movie stupid and noisy and comparing it to Transformers. I understand that yes, people have different tastes and some people’s tastes don’t run to robot movies with sea monsters in it. But, this time around, I’m just not getting the reason behind the negativity. It’s like I don’t understand either how some people can be so hateful toward The Hobbit. To criticize a movie, that’s good. We could all use some criticism in our lives… but to hate a movie? Gee. Do the haters have nothing else to do?

The thing with Pacific Rim is that yeah, it’s super huge and metallic and shiny and noisy, but it’s also so much fun. It’s like when you eat a particularly delicious meal or find money in your pocket that you’ve forgotten you put there a long time ago. It’s a movie that gives you a rush, makes your heart beat a little faster and internally cheer at the movie heroism of it all.

There are robots – or, more accurately, Jaegers – that mimic the personalities of their pilots. There’s the rowdy Australian Jaeger, Striker Eureka, and then there’s the stiff Russian Jaeger, Cherno Alpha. You’ve got the small but ambitious Chinese Jaeger, Crimson Typhoon, and the underdog star of the ocean, Gipsy Danger. And the names! Even the names give me a rush! They go pow pow pow, bang boom bam, rip-that-Kaiju-apart-mofos! One’s got a sword and the other has knife-shaped arms. Then Idris Elba goes “we are cancelling the apocalypse!” and the words are not just a gimmicky tagline – it’s a moment achieved through the build-up of his character’s journey that feels so rewarding at the end.

It’s like, DEAR ZACK SNYDER, THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD UP A MOVIE AND MAKE THE ENDING WORK.

And also, DEAR MICHAEL BAY, THIS IS HOW YOU MAKE A ROBOT MOVIE.

(I’m actually a fan of the Transformers movies and I don’t hate them like most people do. But Pacific Rim is just on another level.)

The movie is geeky, yes, and non-geeks (or, rather, non-otaku) will probably not get it. But not getting it is no reason to hate. Or maybe it is. Because ignorance breeds hatred, most of the time, and that’s a problem many people seem to have with Pacific Rim. But personally, I feel that even if I hadn’t grown up with Neon Genesis Evangelion or Mobile Suit Gundam (I certainly didn’t like kaiju movies when I was a kid), or any kind of otaku (and J-pop) stuff from Japan, I still would’ve the film. I would appreciate its ability to make me forget the woes of the world for 131 minutes and its genuine effort at giving us an original script that doesn’t come from a book, a comic book, a previously made movie, a TV series, a radio show or a theater play.

Or maybe I’m just that big of a GdT fan. Hm.

Really, though, this is Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro saying, “Hey, kids, don’t plagiarize… but get inspired.” (Very similar to what Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer did with the very first Pirates movie.) It’s all about honoring the idea that inspired you, not copying what others have done before you. I can only wish I had an imagination like that.

What I’m trying to say is: keep an open mind and try it out. Of course, if you don’t like robots and monsters, don’t go for it… but don’t hate. Is that so hard to do?

The cast of @PacificRim canceling the apocalypse on the red carpet at the premiere. pic.twitter.com/oZnf2k63lb

— Legendary (@Legendary) July 10, 2013