The LEGO Group has released a selection of new products from its Marvel Super Heroes and DC Super Heroes lines, featuring three Spidey-centric Marvel sets, and two Classic Batman Villain sets; check them out here…
76057 LEGO MARVEL Super Heroes, Spider-Man: Web Warriors Ultimate Bridge Battle (RRP: £89.99)
Swing into a bridge battle zone and team up with Spider-Man, Spider-Girl and Scarlet Spider to defeat Green Protect Aunt May from Green Goblin, who has a flaming pumpkin bomb and a Goblin Glider with stud shooters, along with Kraven the Hunter and Scorpion’s venomous tail! Press the bridge’s flag to launch a net to trap the villains, or launch a Super Hero from the side of the bridge and swing into action to save the day! The set includes a bridge section, trap door, web prison, Goblin Glider, taxi, police ATV and a Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, Scarlet Spider, Aunt May, Scorpion, Kraven the Hunter and a Green Goblin Minifigure.
Stage a street battle scene as Spider-Man and Ghost Rider join forces against Hobgoblin. Dodge the Goblin Glider’s missiles and flaming pumpkin bomb, and use Ghost Rider’s fire chain to catch the evil demon. Knock Hobgoblin off his Goblin Glider or the top of the traffic light with Spider-Man’s Super Jumper! The set includes a Ghost Rider Bike, Goblin Glider, traffic light model and a Spider-Man, Hobgoblin and Ghost Rider Minifigure.
Rescue White Tiger from the Octo-Bot’s slippery tentacles! Doc Ock is wading through the water in his weaponized Octo-Bot and has taken White Tiger prisoner in one of the tentacles! Steer Captain Stacy’s speedboat with Spider-Man surfing in on his web surfboard tow and rescue her! Watch out for Vulture nosediving through the air and fend off his attacking claws. The set comes complete with Doc Ock’s Octo-Bot, police speedboat and a Spider-Man, Doc Ock, Vulture, White Tiger and a Captain Stacy Minifigure.
Help Red Hood™ and Katana™ stop the monstrous Killer Croc™ and evil Captain Boomerang™ from destroying Gotham City. Roll the Bat-Tank into action and fire the 6-stud shooter against Killer Croc’s Battle Chomper. Drop bombs from the tank or deploy the ram weapon to crush Batman’s enemies. Manoeuvre the motorbike out of reach of the Battle Chomper’s movable tail and chomping teeth, and dodge the vehicle’s flying boomerangs.
The set includes Batman’s Bat-Tank, Killer Croc’s Battle Chomper, Red Hood’s motorbike and a Batman™, Red Hood™, Captain Boomerang™ and a Katana™ minifigure plus a Killer Croc™ big figure.
76054 Batman™: Scarecrow™ Harvest of Fear (RRP: £59.99)
Stop Scarecrow™ and Killer Moth™ spreading fear on the outskirts of Gotham City with Gas Mask Batman’s Batcopter, featuring an opening minifigure cockpit, four pop-out stud shooters and a six-blade spinning rotor. Team up with Blue Beetle™ in an aerial battle to protect the frightened farmer. Evade the harvester’s rotating cutters and detachable fear gas stud shooter, and prevent the villains capturing the farmer in its fear gas tank.
The set comes complete with Batman’s Batcopter, Scarecrow’s harvester, tractor and a Gas Mask Batman™, Blue Beetle™, Scarecrow™, Killer Moth™ and farmer minifigure.
Amazing Spider-Man in Civil War II, ‘Timely Comics: Doctor Strange,’ and a full list from Marvel Comics.
Marvel releases a new Spider-Man comic on June 8 (photo via Flickr/Barbara Williams)
Marvel Comicsreleased twenty-two comics on June 8 (including 3Timely Comicsone-shot reprints) and nine trade paperbacks. Two new Civil War IItitles debuted today, including Amazing Spider-Manand Gods of War.Comics released todaywith characters currently in theMCUincluded Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredeviland Guardians of the Galaxy, among others.
While X-Men: Apocalypseis still in theaters, magazines being published by Marvel on June 8 with characters tangentially-related to theX-Menmovie franchise include All-New X-Men#10 and multipleDeadpooltitles, including two comics and two TPs. Two Star Warstitles were published by Marvel today, including Star Wars: Poe Dameron#3 and Darth Vader#21.
Below are quick recaps andreviewsof twoJune 8releases, followed by a complete list of Marvel Comics releases for Wednesday. Comics reviewed includeCivil War II: The Amazing Spider-Man(#1 of 4) and Timely Comics: Doctor Strange(a one-shot reprint of Doctor Strange#1-3).
Civil War II: The Amazing Spider-Man#1
Rated: T+
Spider-Man has returned to New York City as the Inhumans are bringing Ulysses (a youngInhumanwith the ability to predict the future) to apply for an internship at Parker Industries. Ulysses is young (not yet old enough to have graduated college) and still needs to be trained to fight. He helps Spider-Man prevent a double homicide and take down four Vulturions (a wink toWeb of Spider-Man#1, circa 1985, when they first appeared in Marvel Comics). As Spidey and Ulysses discuss the possibility of the young Inhuman joiningS.H.I.E.L.D.some day to help predict the outcome of experimental weapons and medicines, Ulysses lets him know that one of the current Parker Industries employees (Clayton Cole, formerly Clash) would soon be turning on Spider-Man. Readers also get a glimpse of a flying car that Peter’s company is developing, as well as a reminder that theGreen Goblinhas been reformed at Parker Industries. If you were a fan of Peter Parker in Captain America: Civil War, don’t expect the Spider-Man of the Civil War IIcomics to bare any sort of resemblance.
Timely Comics: Doctor Strange#1
Rated: T+
As someone who got into comics after getting into theMarvel Cinematic Universe, this one-shot reprint of Doctor Strange#1-3 (2015) served as a great way to familiarize myself with the eponymous character of the next MCU movie. For the uninitiated, Dr. Stephen Strange is a former-surgeon-turned-sorcerer whose specialty involves battling the evil forces of thenetherworld. It’s a touch of the fantastical that makes Doctor Strange feel closer to Thor than Captain America or Iron Man. It’s hard to beat a 3-in-1 magazine for $3.
Overwatch is great and all, but I’ve got Trails of Cold Steel to catch up on.
See, I’m only up to Chapter 4 of Falcom’s excellent (but slow-paced) JRPG, and I’ve gotta crank through the rest of the game in time for E3. There’s apparently a big twist at the end, and there’s no way to avoid being spoiled if I want to play the demo of Cold Steel 2 at the convention. That gives me about two weeks to get it done, which seems doable.
I’ll also be playing Final Fantasy XIV, poking around in Wild Arms 3, and continuing my quest to win MVP in NBA 2K16.
And, OK, fine, I’ll probably slip in some Overwatch too. What about you guys?
“As we approached our final deadlines, we realized that some key moments needed extra polish to bring them up to our standards,” director Sean Murray wrote on the PlayStation Blog this evening. “I have had to make the tough choice to delay the game for a few weeks to allow us to deliver something special.”
It’s been a wild past few days in the No Man’s Sky community, filled with everything from nonsensical speculation to social media witch hunts to death threats sent my way for reporting on the delay. Now it’s finally official.
Some people had hoped, after months of hype and the pedigree of director Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code), that Warcraft might break the long and storied Curse Of Bad Video Game Movies. I have some sad news for those people. Maybe video game adaptations were just never meant to be.
Warcraft, which comes out June 10, is a whirlwind of CGI effects and snazzy costumes that never quite coalesces into a watchable film. Longtime fans of the series might get a kick out of seeing the likes of Medivh (Ben Foster) and Durotan (Toby Kebbell) played by Hollywood actors, but it’s tough to get invested in a movie that feels so soulless. Warcraft has very few redeeming qualities. The performances are mediocre, the writing is full of cliches, and the editing is confusing when it’s trying to be clever. (Both the orcs and humans speak real-life English, but the movie attempts to persuade us, by means of a clumsy transition halfway through the film, that the orcs are actually speaking their own language. It’s not very good.)
The fundamental flaw in Warcraft is the same flaw we find in most video game movies: It takes itself too seriously. These games are set in a world full of in-jokes and surreal humor, one that’s inhabited by a race of giant panda bears because the developers at Blizzard really liked one of their own April Fool’s jokes. Even when the Warcraft games get dark, and they do get dark, they’ve always been adept at having fun with their players. The film does no such thing. If only this movie had the charm of a Warcraft unit who’s been clicked too many times.
In case you’re curious: I’ve played through all three main Warcraft games and went on a WoW kick back in 2005. I was the guy at the screening who knew who Thrall was and who most certainly recognized that the creature who popped up for a second in that one swamp was a murloc. I could tell you the difference between a Death Knight and a Lich King and I have many fond memories of destroying fools with my Night Elf army. So I should be the ideal target audience for a movie like Warcraft, one that tries to turn the story of the First War between orcs and humans into a summer blockbuster.
Yet I just couldn’t buy in. Maybe the premise was flawed from the start. Warcraft opens with a shot of the vicious orc Horde, all teeth and screams, as it introduces us to Durotan and his pregnant wife. In just a few minutes we’re zipping through so many cities—Ironforge, Stormwind, Dalaran—that even for a Warcraft buff it might be tough to keep things straight. Rather than give some breathing room to Durotan and his human counterpart, Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), Warcraft insists on introducing character after character, none of them pleasant. There’s Callan (Burkely Duffield), Lothar’s plot device of a son. There’s the bumbling mage Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer), who is far more interesting in the games. There’s the Guardian Medivh, whose motives and actions are never quite clear. There’s a king, a queen, some knights. There are a bunch of orcs who get a lot of screen time that could’ve gone toward actual character development. There are too many characters, too many subplots, and not nearly enough reasons to care about them all.
And then there’s Garona (Paula Patton), whose fangs are so utterly silly that they often distract from her performance, which is just as ridiculous. Warcraft devotes many minutes to Garona: her enslavement at the hands of her own people; her snarling threats; her unconvincing romantic trist with the main character. Her character, a half-orc, half-human* warrior who seems destined to bring peace to the two races, is poorly crafted and kind of a drag to watch. A stronger actress could have helped made Garona more compelling, but with so many factors working against her, even that might not have worked. She is unabashedly dull.
Even the nasty warlock Gul’dan (Daniel Wu), easily the most compelling character in the film, never quite lives up to his video game pedigree. He spends most of his time draining the souls out of his prisoners’ bodies, which is fun to watch, but he never feels threatening. The stakes are never really there. Warcraft spends very little time trying to convince the audience why anyone should care that Gul’dan and his orcs are invading the world of humans, or why it even matters.
Rather than tapping into the goofy core that makes a game like World of Warcraft interesting, the Warcraft movie aims for grittiness, missing the mark quite a bit. It just doesn’t work. The lore is too campy. This is a world where a mage’s most popular spell transforms his enemies into sheep, yet Warcraft acts as if it’s a green-screen version of Game of Thrones. At my theater, the biggest laughs came not from the occasional bouts of slapstick comedy but from the miserable archmages of Dalaran, whose CGI-enhanced eyes look especially absurd when you’re supposed to take them seriously.
I had hoped Warcraft would at a minimum be entertaining, but really, I’ve had more enjoyable two-hour sessions wiping on Molten Core. At least the armor looks good.
There was a time when the X-Men franchise was one of the biggest around. The original X-Men opened with the fifth-biggest opening weekend of all time back in 2000 ($54 million) and the biggest non-sequel debut ever back in the day. When X2: X-Men United opened with $85m back in May of 2003, it was the fourth-biggest opening weekend of all time. When X-Men: The Last Stand debuted on this weekend back in 2006, it snagged the second-biggest single day of all time with a $45m Friday and ended up with just the fifth $100m debut ever and the fourth-top Fri-Sun opening weekend of all time.
So if I seem overly harsh on what could be a $75-$85 million Fri-Mon debut, it’s because the franchise was once a god among insects. X-Men: Apocalypse had the fourth-lowest opening day out of nine X-Men films. Opening on the same weekend as two of the biggest entries, the ninth X-Men movie (and the sixth team-up X-Men movie) earned $26.4 million on Friday, including $8.2m in Thursday previews.
That means it did 31% of its Friday business on Thursday night, compared to Days of Future Past ($8.1 million Thursday/$35.5m Friday) which made 22% of its opening day business in previews.
Even with inflation and a 3D bump factored in, it had a smaller Friday than X2 ($31m), X-Men: The Last Stand ($45m), X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($34m), X-Men: Days of Future Past ($35m), and Deadpool ($47m). When you factor in the 3D bump, it arguably didn’t sell that many more tickets than X-Men: First Class ($21m back in 2011 in 2D).
We should acknowledge that Fox and Walt Disney chose to inexplicably go head-to-head this weekend, with Alice Through the Looking Glass opening yesterday as well. But X-Men: Days of Future Past had to contend with the second $38 million Fri-Mon weekend of Godzilla, which arguably played to the same demos, back in 2014. So that’s not in itself an excuse.
We should also note that this Bryan Singer trilogy capper received some miserable reviews and that it will be arguably the only comic book superhero movie this year that really wasn’t offering anything audiences hadn’t seen before. The last installment offered a superb gimmick: an adaptation of a fan-favorite time travel story that combined the First Class cast with the original trilogy participants.
This one was merely another sequel with the less popular newbies. Yes, they had Jennifer Lawrence as a proverbial action lead. They had Oscar Isaac fresh off The Force Awakens as the title baddie. They even had Olivia Munn as fan-favorite Psylocke. But, along with Alexandra Shipp as a younger Storm, these would-be “incentives” were mostly wasted in order to yet again focus on Michael Fassbender’s Magneto.
The reviews made this very clear, and if we make an argument that reviews matter for movies like this it’s when they affirm or deny that a given film offers the stuff you wanted to see. Or maybe the popularity of the X-Men franchise really is tied into how much Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine shows up with the team. That’s a scary thought, especially if Hugh Jackman really does choose to hang up the claws.
I will be honest, two years ago I expected a bigger debut for X-Men: Days of Future Past. The well-reviewed “Franchise All Stars to the Rescue” installment had ten years of inflation and a 3D bump on X-Men: The Last Stand. I also knew that the X-Men films have famously terrible legs, so I figured that it had to make the majority of whatever it was going to make on its opening weekend.
But while Days of Future Past did make less on its debut weekend than The Last Stand ($110.5 million vs. $122.8m), it was a slightly leggier blockbuster getting awfully close to the Brett Ratner film’s $234m domestic total. Moreover, that ten-year span and 3D bump paid off overseas, when the Bryan Singer film made an eye-popping $513m overseas for a $747m worldwide cume.
This from a franchise whose previous high was $457 million global. So when we look at that $26m opening day and some potentially grim domestic forecasts, there is a likely silver lining. First and foremost, Fox brought this latest installment in for around $178 million, which was a lot less than the $220 million-ish Days of Future Past. Second of all, the film could stand to make a lot less than the last installment in America if it continues to crush it overseas.
If the film plays like Days of Future Past over the weekend, we’re looking at a $68 million Fri-Sun/$83m Fri-Mon opening weekend. And then if it has the legs of that last movie domestically, it ends up with $173m domestic. As long as it still plays well overseas (it had $130m going into the weekend), no harm, no foul. But if it plays like The Last Stand, this could get ugly. It’ll be a $60m/$72m weekend and will end its domestic run with $137m.
Now we could mix-and-match those potential outcomes ($73 million weekend and a $151m U.S. total or an $83m weekend and a $156m domestic cume. Of course, if it makes another $400-$500m overseas this is almost trivia. But this will likely be a severe domestic downturn for a somewhat vital “Can the franchise thrive without Wolverine?” installment. We’ll know more tomorrow, but for the record it should be noted that Fox sold the heck out of this thing.
