Comic-Con Trailers (Justice League, and Thor)

So I have never been to Comic-Con. It is something that I think I've always wanted to experience, but I've never had the availability to do it. I usually have work or something in the middle of it so it's not really available to me. This year especially, I have really only experienced the results of Comic-Con through what is publically released. There's a lot of news that comes out about comic book movies at these panels and presentations but you're required to go and read about it. Unfortunately, unless a trailer is released or there is leaked footage online, something I didn't see too much of this year, I just didn't have the time to read about what happened at comic-con.

I also have been behind in my reviews. I have a review for The Flash Season 3 coming up along with a couple of movies. I need to catch up on that. However, I did want to do a quick (if possible) post on the trailers that I did see come out of comic-con and what they mean for the respective universes.

I'll start with Marvel.

So the last Marvel movie that I saw was Doctor Strange. I have still not seen either Guardians of the Galaxy 2 or Spider-man: Homecoming. I'm hoping that that will change soon but the reality is, I'm just not overly excited about Marvel as a whole right now.

There are some great looking movies coming out in the future.

I guess that they did show some footage for Black Panther at Comic-Con but since it was not released to the public, I have no knowledge of it or what it looks like.

The trailer that came out a month or so back for Black Panther looks phenomenal and it is a movie that I feel will be different from the run of the mill Marvel movies I have come to expect. And while I haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy 2 or Spider-man Homecoming, to me they didn't feel new at all. They didn't feel like much was going to be at stake and I wasn't totally sure if they were going to have any kind of huge impact on the cinematic universe.

I'll remind you that I haven't seen either of them so I don't know if that's true or not. But at least with Black Panther, it feels like something different and I'm in for some new superhero badassery.

Enter Thor: Ragnarok.

Ragnarok is a film that I don't think a lot of people had high expectations for before the first trailer. Now with the newest trailer, it's showing a lot of different places, alien worlds, team ups between Thor, Loki, Hulk, and Tessa Thompson's character Valkerie.

You know how I mentioned that Black Panther was something different than the formula that every Marvel seemed to overuse? Ragnarok seems to be breaking from the mold as well and trying to do something different. The style is a lot of fun, it seems to be a pretty comedy driven movie, especially considering the subject of Ragnarok which is the end of all things in the universe.

And Cate Blanchett's Hela looks phenomenal. I'm hoping that she provides a great villain for the film and she continues to be a presence, especially since her character could substitute the character of Death who Thanos is in love with in the comics.

I am still skeptical of Ragnarok due to the very nature of Thor and how he has always been the least popular of the mainstream Avengers. While Hawkeye is the most useless, I don't know anybody who would say that Thor is anywhere near their favorite Avenger and his previous standalone outings are proof of that. Ragnarok seems to see the character lean into the weirdness and wackiness of the character of Thor and it looks very exciting.

The trailer shows off a lot of things to be excited about. The formation of the buddy team with Thor and The Hulk. The additions of Valkerie (it's always good to get a female hero in the mix) and the return of Loki all coming together to fight Hela and M16 wielding Karl Urban. The humor in the trailer was great. The tone and the scenes with Hulk actually talking in sentences make for some really funny humor. Obviously Bruce Banner somehow ends up on a different planet which is pretty different from the place we saw him last in Avengers: Age of Ultron so how he made his way to Asgard will be fun to explore.

Then we get this cool looking poster where the cast of Infinity War seems to be coming together and everyone has a little bit of a different looking coming into the culmination of all the Marvel movies up until now. And this poster doesn't show Captain Marvel and the role she will have in the film as well as her future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But what it does show besides Captain America with a beard and Scarlet Witch with Silver hair are the guys at the bottom in the center. Based on this and the toys that have come out, those seem to be the henchmen of Thanos and it only adds to the threat that our beloved heroes need to face in this final show down.

Besides that... it is some cool artwork.

Before I move on to DC and their treasure trove of awesome. I will say that I was not at Comic-Con so I'm not going to say who won it or not. I have heard that Marvel won due to pure amount of content, but DC won the best trailer. Based on the trailers I have seen... yes I would agree.

Now of course I'm probably biased towards DC since the Justice League has been something I've been waiting years for. But I have had my doubts about this franchise actually getting their shit together.

Despite the success of Wonder Woman, I am honestly still a little worried about Justice League.

2016 was not a good year for DC and one good movie does not mean that they're on track yet. It does not mean that they will be able to recover from the honestly horrible decisions made in the last two films. There are still a lot of basic story elements that will make it very difficult for...

Um... is that Aquaman riding a parademon from the sky like a freaking air surf board?

This movie looks awesome. 

There was honestly just so much to like in this trailer. The Flash's humor, the emphasis in the trailers changing to how much of a badass Wonder Woman is, the fact that Cyborg doesn't look as much like a CGI dumpster fire, the whole rock band roadie look Aquaman has got going on. The action, the humor, even the freaking lighting makes this movie seem like it is not going to be the dark downer that Batman v Superman, Suicide Squad, and yeah I'll admit it, even Man of Steel could be at times. 

This movie looks fun, it looks like an adventure, and it doesn't have to imitate Marvel to do it. 

The great tonal change that came in this trailer gives off the idea that these guys are heroes. They are working to save people, something that has been distinctly missing in previous movies (sans Wonder Woman). They do have a line where they say that Superman didn't just save people but he brought out the best in them. I am someone who actually will defend Man of Steel and Batman v Superman to a certain extent, but the fact of the matter is, I didn't get that from Superman that much. 

I actually just thought of this but follow me here. It is pretty much confirmed that Superman will appear in the film. If you've been following the news of Justice League at all, you'll know that they had to extend the shooting for the film by a couple months and because of this they need to CGI Henry Cavill's mustache he's growing for Mission Impossible 6. Besides the fact that that is hilarious and is going to be on my mind every time he's on screen, it does confirm that Superman is going to be in the film and at certain points will have a CGI upper lip. 

Now the trailer does allude to that. 

At the end of the trailer, Alfred sees someone who we do not see and he says, they said you'd come, let's hope you're not too late. 

Everyone assumes that this is Superman and it probably is. I have heard some theories that it is Supergirl and as much as I'd be interested in something like that, I think it's too early and I don't want this movie to get bogged down with the Supergirl storyline as well. 

However, while Superman will no doubt come back in the present day, I'm wondering if he will also be shown in a flashback or two. 

I get the feeling that the creative minds at DC have recognized that maybe they didn't show as many scenes of Superman actually saving people as they could have. What if to set up the premise, they have flashbacks to prior to Superman's death and actually show him saving people. This would allow for the movie to focus mainly on the members of the Justice League who have showed up predominately, leave the Superman cameo for the end, and allow for a little bit of background and show people that the Man of Steel was the symbol of truth, justice, and the American way of life, we just didn't see it that much. I think it would provide some context and foreshadowing when he ultimately does come back, it's something that the audience has been waiting for. 

I am already suspecting that the movie is going to have some flashbacks. Piecing together some of the footage of Steppenwolf with the footage of the larger battle scenes with Amazonians riding on horseback, I can guess that they're probably going to have a flashback explaining the origin of Steppenwolf in this film, so why not have a couple of flashbacks to give Superman a little bit of context and maybe he can be a symbol that every member of the Justice League saw and was inspired by. 

Is it going to happen? I don't know, probably not. It's honestly a point of the movie that I am very nervous for because they already kind of botched Superman by killing him in the first place so I'm not sure what to think yet.

But speaking of Steppenwolf... he looks awesome!

We actually don't get a full shot of the villain, but we do see him and his axe having appearances and even little skirmishes in Themiscyra and Atlantis. With his army of parademons and his awesome look, I have high hopes for this villain. I foresee DC taking a page from Marvel and focusing more on their heroes than the villain, but that doesn't mean that he won't be good. 

I think the part of Steppenwolf that everyone loved though was his voiceover where he says that this world is left defenseless because we don't have any Kryptonians anymore... or any LANTERNS!

I don't think that Hal Jordan or any of the Lanterns are going to show up in this movie, but the very mention of them got people like myself really excited. 

There are plans to make a Green Lantern Corp movie in the near future. I'm not totally sure what the plot of that movie will be but apart of me wants them to show Steppenwolf killing Ryan Reynold's Hal Jordan and that leads him to proclaiming that there are no more Lanterns. As mediocre of a film that is and how much it really doesn't need to be apart of this cinematic universe, I feel like it would be a really funny way to connect the two.

I still don't think we're going to see any Lanterns in this film, but it gets me and a lot of other people excited.

And that's pretty much all there is to talk about Justice League. I have to keep reminding myself that I've been in this position before where I have been excited for a DC film and have been disappointed, but this movie continues to dish out some really great footage and I'm excited for it.

The other news that came out of DC was an announcement of future DC films that are coming out. Now I have learned to kind of take these lists with a grain of salt because a couple years back DC did the same thing. They had this long list of films from Wonder Woman, Green Lantern Corp, Shazaam, The Flash, and that list they put out was not totally accurate. I'm going to guess that this list is still pretty inaccurate, but here are some of the films that they said are on the docket for DC.

Aquaman (2018)
Shazaam and Wonder Woman 2 (2019)
Cyborg and Green Lantern Corp (2020)

Along with that they announced Suicide Squad 2 was happening as well as The Batman directed by Matt Reeves, Batgirl directed by Joss Whedon, an untitled Nightwing film, a Gotham City Sirens Film, Justice League Dark, and of course the Flash movie would be titled Flashpoint and follow the Flashpoint storyline.

If you read my Flash Season 3 review, I mentioned that I wanted to talk about the future of Flash movies and it's mainly because of this choice. There is A LOT to unpack with this direction choice. So much that I do need to do it in a totally different post. Whether it's a good idea or not, I need to discuss the repercussions of this choice because it could change everything.

I actually think above everything else, this was the most radical choice of everything that DC stated in their comic-con presentation.

But overall, I was very excited by all the news that I heard from Comic-Con 2017. Is there anything I missed? Is there anything that was really worth talking about and I didn't think it was that important. Where do you see the DC cinematic universe going? Do you like the choices being made? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. So Ready Player One was one of the trailers that Warner Brothers dropped that wasn't apart of the DC presentation. It's not really a movie I've really been looking forward to and I can't say I'm overly excited for it right now... but there are some cool things in this trailer and it's worth checking out. Enjoy!