Defending the Universe on Film
BY DERYA SONER (MBG/IV)
a_soner@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Well, I haven't been writing about trivial topics recently, but with all the long-awaited superhero movies coming up, I couldn't resist, so here they are…
Thor will be the first superhero movie to arrive with a scheduled release date of April 29. The Norse warrior god of thunder, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is cast out of the realm of Asgard by Odin (Anthony Hopkins) to live with humans on Earth. Thor soon starts to enjoy Earth, with the help of the beautiful Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and becomes one of its defenders. From what I can tell from the trailer, the plot might be a little thin, but a movie featuring Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins will be hard to pass up.
X-Men: First Class arrives June 3 and seems to have an intelligent plot telling the story behind how two allies, Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, become enemies as they evolved into Professor X and Magneto. The young Professor Xavier will be portrayed by James McAvoy, whom you might know from Wanted. I'm thinking X-Men: First Class will be the best of the superhero movies arriving this year; the others are much more hyped but this one will probably have a plot that has a lot more psychological depth to it.
Green Lantern is arriving July 29 and features Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern. Blake Lively, whom you might know as Serena from Gossip Girl, will be portraying the love interest who will probably turn out to be an evil femme fatale. Mark Strong, the bad guy from Sherlock Holmes, will be playing, well, the bad guy.
Captain America: The First Avenger will be here September 2. This movie wouldn't be of too much interest to me if Aussie Hugo Weaving, who showed an amazing performance as V in V for Vendetta and as Agent Smith in The Matrix, hadn't joined the cast as the bad guy.
Moving on to 2012 releases, The Avengers arrives May 4, 2012, featuring many of the Marvel heroes together: Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Mark Ruffalo as The Hulk, as well as Thor and Captain America. Robert Downey Jr. was pretty excited when he announced the cast of The Avengers at Comic Con last year, so we'll just have to wait and see what all the hype is about.
The Dark Knight Rises, the third movie of the Batman series directed by Christopher Nolan and featuring Christian Bale as the caped crusader, arrives in 2012 as well. New additions to the cast will be Anne Hathaway as Catwoman (yeah!), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a serial killer, which will be very interesting to see after we've seen him in such innocent characters in Inception and 500 Days of Summer. The rest of the cast, which was so amazing in The Dark Knight, is the same with Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine. We will of course miss the late Heath Ledger who won a posthumous best-supporting Oscar for his chilling portrayal of The Joker.
Superman: Man of Steel also arrives in 2012, featuring Henry Cavill from The Tudors as Superman, and (drumrolls please), Kevin Costner as his father! Amy Adams, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Fighter, will be portraying Superman's love, Lois Lane. Although Superman was the first superhero (debuting in DC Comics in 1932), and is probably the most popular one, he hadn't been represented too successfully in Hollywood lately, perhaps since the 1980s movies featuring Christopher Reeve. Fans I hope this movie will break new ground and will be followed with several great sequels, just like the recent Batman movies.
The Amazing Spider-Man will be another superhero arrival of 2012, and will take the whole story of Spider-Man from the beginning again, for some reason. Andrew Garfield, whom you might recognize from The Social Network, will be the new Spider-Man.
Justice League: Mortal, featuring all the superheroes of the DC Universe together: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Arrow, Aquaman, etc., will hopefully arrive in 2013, and a Wonder Woman movie will hopefully be here in 2015.
Enjoy!