Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron - Trailer 3

At this point, I don't think I need to say jack shit about Avengers 2: Age of Ultron. It comes out on May 1st and that day is taking way too fucking long to get here. But Marvel released another trailer today. It revealed more juicy bits that should make fans everywhere squee. And I'm pretty sure Disney's accountants will be squeeing the most when all is said and done. Now sequels can be hit or miss. For every Dark Knight there are more Matrix Reloadeds. But that's not going to stop this movie from being the bigger than my dick at the Playboy Mansion. Enjoy!



Am I just really fucking high or was that the Soul Gem in Vision's head at the end? I'm just going to say I'm high and see for myself when the movie comes out. Nuff said!

New Avengers Trailer Arrives - Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron Trailer 2

We've seen one trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron. It was awesome enough to make me want to run down my street naked thanking the gods that I have something this awesome to look forward to in 2015. Unfortunately, the sheriff of my neighborhood is a humorless pussy and some asshole killjoy passed some law about indecent exposure. I don't know. All I do know is that a second trailer has come out and I've got an aching desire to test those indecent exposure laws again. Nuff said!

Avengers Movie News: Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch Joining the Cast?

I know this isn't a site people go to for movie news. This is a site where people go to so they can see a semi-functioning drunk review comics. But every so often, some news comes along that I feel is worth reporting because it is either so big that it deserves to be reported on no matter how drunk I am or it's just so WTF that it must be brought up. This is the latter.

Spinoff: Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch Confirmed for Avengers 2

In case there was any doubt that writer/director Joss Whedon was referring to Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch last week when he teased there’s “a brother-sister act” in The Avengers 2, we now have confirmation.

According to Entertainment Weekly, an unnamed source states the twin children of Magneto will indeed join Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Marvel’s 2015 sequel. When the question was posed to studio President Kevin Feige, he would only say, “I’m not confirming or denying. The draft could change six months from now.”

Of course, that does confirm Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appear in Whedon’s first take on the script, which the writer acknowledged is “an evolution, and that goes on in editing,  it goes on all through shooting and it never stops. [...] You do come to a point where you all agree, OK … I’ve got these two characters — my two favorite characters from the comic book, a brother-sister act, they’re in the movie, that’s exciting — you lock certain things in. But then, there’s a certain fluidity …”

Judging by Whedon’s enthusiasm, it seems likely Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch will be among those things locked in throughout the development process.

While Fox owns the film rights to the X-Men franchise, Feige indicated in April 2012 that, presumably because of the characters’ long histories with the Avengers — they joined the team within a year of their introduction as X-Men villains — Marvel could use Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch as well.

“It’s a little complicated,” he said, “but if they [Fox] want to use them in the X-Men movie they could, [but] if we want to use them in The Avengers movie, we could.”

The Avengers 2 opens May 1, 2015.

Make no mistake. Avengers 2 has the capacity to set a standard of awesome that would make the universe shit itself. Marvel Studios has a wealth of characters and history to draw from, even with many characters belonging to other studios (fuck you, Fox and Sony). Yet they're risking multiple orgasms from lawyers by bringing in Quicksilver and the fucking Scarlett Witch? Two characters who for the past decade are best known for fucking things up with the Avengers rather than helping them? And then there's the incest. By Odin's divine shit, the fucking incest.

The image this panel burns in your mind will never go away. EVER.

How the fuck did someone wake up one day at Marvel studios and say, "Gee, you know what would be awesome? Putting two characters with incestuous tendencies and a knack for fucking up reality in our biggest franchise!" Anyone who said that should have either been fired or drug tested.

Now I have nothing against Quicksilver and the Scarlett Witch. I understand they have a history with the Avengers. But throwing them in a movie where lawyers make sure that the X-men (which Fox has the rights to) never dare touch Marvel's greedy hands just seems needlessly complicated when there are already a long list of Avengers characters to explore.

Is anyone out there really going to argue in a sober state of mind that Quicksilver and the Scarlett Witch are bigger names than Miss Marvel, Black Panther, Wasp, Ant Man, or She-Hulk? There is way too much fucking material for Marvel to work with on a movie this big so they have no fucking excuse. Now don't get me wrong. I am going to be among those waiting in line to see Avengers 2, but it won't be for Quicksilver and the Scarlett fucking Witch. If decades down the line Marvel has sodomized enough lawyers to get the X-men rights back from Fox, I would fully support a bigger crossover. But not like this. Nuff said!

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore - Marve + Anime = Awesome

Some things just go together perfectly. Peanut butter and jelly. Chicken wings and beer. Fake boobs and porn stars. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Some of these combinations are obvious to anyone who ever smoked too much weed and got the munchies or skilled enough to use internet porn. But a combination like Marvel and anime? That's one of those combinations that doesn't immediately come to mind. But when you think about it you're like, "Holy fuck! Why didn't I think of that?! I'm either smoking too much weed or not smoking enough!"

That was the feeling I got after watching Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. This neatly packaged little direct-to-Blu-Ray feature really didn't generate much fanfare. It didn't have Rorbert Downey Jr. and Gweneth Paltrow whoring themselves to the Hollywood elites at the behest of studio heads in need of more cocaine money. It was just a simple anime feature, courtesy of an ongoing partnership between Madhouse and Marvel. On its own, it doesn't sound like it's worth breaking out your best vodka. But when you look at the details, you'll either end up drooling with a raging boner or you'll be pissed off to no end that nobody did this sooner.

Here are the basics. This story takes place within the framework of the Avengers movies. It appears to take place either before Avengers or it could take place after. It has the Sam Jackson version of Nick Fury, Black Widow, and Hawkeye. It also has James Rhodes, aka War Machine. It even has a guest star in the Punisher, a guy who hasn't been relevant in the Marvel movies since Tom Jane failed miserably at making a decent Punisher movie and ended up doing a show about being a male prostitute. That's a lot of fucking star power from the outset. But it doesn't rely on star power alone.

Although with anyone looking like Sam Jackson, it probably could.

The story is well thought out. It introduces a new, very anime-ish version of Technovore. It isn't just some hulking monster that eats technology that probably came from Bill Gates's worst nightmare that didn't involve watching Steve Jobs bang his wife. It's actually a creature born from events that began in the first Iron Man movie.

Say what you want about Obidiah Stane and Iron Monger. Yes, he was a somewhat shitty villain for the first movie, but he served his purpose well. But we find out in this movie that he left behind a son that he treated like shit. And like so many others kids with daddy issues, he decides he's going to scheme ways to fuck over the world for denying him a decent childhood. But unlike most kids with daddy issues, he actually has a way to do that. That way is Technovore.

It's not just Iron Man versus some evil twisted kid. This is anime. Unlike us drunken westerners, the Japanese actually put some effort into telling a deeper story. I know that sounds strange to us Americans. It's like not putting steak sauce on our steak. But it actually works better at establishing a sense of drama and emotion that you won't see on any of the Saturday morning cartoons we're all used to. I'm not saying there isn't a place for a more basic kind of animated entertainment. I'm just saying it's nice to have an outlet that actually feels like it's meant for people with hair on their chest and/or vagina.

The story has plenty of gripping moments, like War Machine being seriously injured and Iron Man having to reason with an obviously disturbed kid. But one other thing anime loves to do is throw in violent action that can be pretty gruesome, even when it doesn't involve tentacle rape. When shit starts blowing up here in this feature, people actually die. Blood is actually shed. It's not like that watered down shit you see on the action cartoons aired on Disney XD. This is visceral shit and it feels so good.

Not only is the violence more detailed, but the style of animation is more refined. There's greater depth to each image. It's an anime made for adults. That means the characters talk like adults and the cleavage of the women isn't obscured like some Iranian censorship plot. Pepper Potts is in a bikini at one point and looks absolutely bonerific. And Black Widow in anime form looks every bit as hot as Scarlett Johanssen. I've always said that cartoons need more boobs. It sucks that we have to rely on the Japanese to give it to us in our cartoons, but it doesn't make the boners any less satisfying.

You'll NEVER see a shot like this on the Disney Channel.

That's not to say that the story is without flaws. Probably the most glaring flaw (and possibly the only flaw) of Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is the pace of the story. It feels rushed and underdeveloped at times. After the first attack by Technovore, SHIELD spends most of the movie just hunting down Tony Stark. He wasn't behind it. They don't even accuse him of being involved. But for some reason Nick Fury thinks it's necessary to treat Iron Man like a criminal. It makes no god damn sense and it really never feels right. While it does make for some great action scenes and nice boob shots for Black Widow, it lacks the refinement that would otherwise make this story truly awesome.

Even with this flaw, Iron Man: Rise of Technovore is an amazing achievement. It is a neat little package that perfectly demonstrates how anime and Marvel can work. It tells a great story, has some awesome animation, and captures the same energy that made the Avengers movie a historic achievement in awesome. If I had to score this like I would a comic, I would give it a 4.5 out of 5. Even if you don't like cartoons and only watch the movies because the comics are too damn confusing, you'll find a lot to love about this. When you finish watching it, you'll have the urge to visit Marvel's main office, slap the first person you see across the face, and yell, "What the fuck are you waiting for?! Make more Marvel anime!" That's perfectly normal. Nuff said!

Avengers: The Movie - Assembling Awesome

There are very few things in this world that are worth waiting five years for. This is America. Usually, if we have to wait for more than a day we tend to say, "Fuck it, I'm going to a bar." For shit we're stuck waiting for, we tend to get easily distracted if we have to wait more than a year. This is a country where you could find the cure for cancer and solve world poverty, yet you will be completely forgotten the next day if news breaks that one of the Kardashians is in rehab. Yet as ADD as this country is, there is some shit we'll gladly wait for. The Avengers movie is a movie that's been building up hype for five fucking years ever since Sam Jackson had a brief two-minute part at the end of the Iron Man movie and after the fucking credits no less. Well now it's finally here and is really worth the wait? Well after having just seen it and after having endured my share of distractions over the past five years (most of them coming from titty bars), I can safely say that yes. It was so fucking worth it!

There's only so much I can do to dissect a two hour movie and explain all the ways in which it is awesome. I'll try to squeeze in as many as possible, but how much explanation do you really need? If you've seen the trailers, you've seen a good chunk of what it can deliver. Like most trailers, it tries to squeeze in as much as the good stuff as possible. The good stuff is usually shit that explodes, shit that laments over impending doom, and shit that has tits or a nice ass. The Avengers trailer is no different. Don't believe me? Look at the trailer and tell me I'm wrong.

But the trailer only tells one half of the story. I know, it's shocking...a heavily hyped movie that offers more depth than what you see in the trailer. But it's true. That big battle scene from the trailer was only the culmination of a story that hit the ground running and ran so fucking hard that if it had nipples they would be bleeding like a porn star after running 10 consecutive marathons. If you've been following the other Marvel movies such as Iron Man, Iron Man II, Thor, the Incredible Hulk (the new one and not the one that involved killer poodles), and Captain America then you'll see the story flow seamlessly. Even if you didn't see those movies (and welcome back from whatever cave in Mars you've been in for five years if you haven't), it's a very understandable story.

It boils down to a little something you could probably fit in your glove box. SHIELD is working with a new and potentially limitless source of power from a tiny little glowing cube called Tesseract, or the cosmic cube if you know anything about anything about Marvel comics. Following the events of Thor, Erik Selvig, the physicist who was grossly outshined by Natalie Portman, has been helping SHIELD tap it. Well that turns out to be a horrible fucking idea because during a test, it opens up a gateway that allows Loki to emerge. Despite being thrown off the Bifrost Bridge by Thor, he's as alive as a cockroach in a crack den and understandably pissed. Since he lost his chance to be king of Asgard, he'll settle for enslaving the Earth and ravaging it in the same way stoners ravage a bag of Doritos. I can think of some much better ways to cope with defeat, but none of them are nearly as awesome.

Armed with a special staff given to him by a shadowy alien figure that claims command of the Chitauri, he takes control of Dr. Selvig and Hawkeye to steal the Tesseract. Like Loki, they seem interested in taking the Tesseract and will gladly help Loki sucker punch the planet Earth to get it. Now why an advanced alien species is stupid enough to trust the god of mischief is beyond me, but I guess being an advanced alien species must get pretty fucking boring. Maybe they should focus some of that alien know-how on better weed, but that's their problem. With the most powerful relic on the planet in the hands of a disgruntled god, Nick Fury (the Sam Jackson Fury and not the David Hasselhoff Fury) starts assembling the Avengers. He enlists help from Captain America, whose only way of coping with this crazy modern world of iphones and internet porn by hitting a punching bag, and Tony Stark while he's in between cocktails. He even gets Black Widow to take a break from crushing Russian gangsters with her legs to recruit Bruce Banner. No one mentions how Bruce suddenly turned from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo, but like the Ashley Olson's eating disorder it's just not shit they like to talk about. The important part is Banner says yes and he agrees to help.

Seriously, who would say no to this?

What follows for a good chunk of the movie is the Avengers basically bickering and getting along about as well as Pat Robertson in a gay bar. It certainly doesn't help when Thor drops in looking to bring his wayward brother to justice for usurping the throne of Asgard, but it makes for a pretty awesome fight scene with Iron Man and Captain America. It doesn't sound too interesting on the surface, dedicating a good chunk of a big budget movie to just having a bunch of superheroes with overly bloated egos argue about whose dick is big enough to screw Loki over. But Joss Whedon makes this shit work. When you think about it, beings this powerful probably should clash. It would be even more disturbing if they all just got along, went out for beers, and took turns hitting on waitress. They're not exactly a team that was trained to work together. They were essentially cobbled together because Nick Fury was in over his head and didn't know how the fuck to handle shit that involves a renegade Asgardian god. The interpersonal dynamics really help flesh each character out. Some that really haven't been fleshed out like Black Widow and Hawkeye get some much needed backstory. It makes things all the more satisfying when shit starts to get heavy.

And yes, it does get pretty fucking heavy. Loki isn't just content with stealing from SHIELD. He needs some extra rare materials to make the Tesseract open the gate he needs to let the Chitauri in so he can grab a drink and watch them fuck up the planet. To do that, he uses his control over Hawkeye and a few tricks that involve pretending to surrender so he can further fuck with the Avengers. Along the way he helps expose a mystery that really twists the dynamics of the movie and of SHIELD in general. It turns out that they weren't researching the Tesseract to tap it's unlimited energy to give every man, woman, and child on Earth free electricity and cell phones that don't die out in the middle of a Mardi Gras wet T-shirt contest (still haven't forgiven Samsung for that). They were going to take a page right out of the Red Skull's playbook in Captain America and use it to make weapons. For reasons that are entirely understandable, the Avengers have a problem with this and Nick Fury doesn't apologize for it.

What? You didn't see me winking when I said I would use it for peace?

This secret threatens to undermine the whole order that SHIELD is trying to maintain in defending the world. To be fair, Nick Fury does offer a pretty valid reason. In previous movies like Thor, alien visitors and gods with way too much fucking time on their hands pretty much decimated an entire town. Granted it was in New Mexico and few outside of a few cattle rancher lobbyists gave a shit, it showed just how woefully unequipped they were. So why not develop the kind of doomsday weapons that tell guys like Loki and the Red Skull "You really want to piece of this, motherfucker?" Even if his reasons are valid, the Avengers aren't too keen on trusting a guy who only has one good eye and a shitty poker face. So when shit goes down, they decide to strike out on their own and end Loki's shit themselves.

Once everything is in place, Loki uses Tony Stark's own massive building that would easily compensate for even the smallest of dicks to open a portal. From there, the Chitauri hit New York almost as hard as the news about Tim Tebow being traded to the Jets. What follows is the kind of epic battle scene that Michael Bay probably jerks off to every night. It's even more satisfying than the previews imply, mostly because the movie dedicated so much time to setting up the dynamics between the Avengers. Plus, it's funny as hell to see the Hulk slam Loki around like a rag doll. Seeing it in 3D makes it all the more engaging. You couldn't ask for a better drawn out battle scene if Joss Whedon himself offered to pack your neighbor's garage with C4 and offered you a front row seat before blowing it up. It's the Avengers taking on an alien hoard and every moment is so immensely satisfying that if it were a hooker, Bill Gates would go bankrupt if he paid by the hour.

Overall, there's so much to love about this movie that I would need several blogs to list it all. Comic book movies have had their ups and downs over the years. Men like Joel Shumacher and Brett Ratner have tried their best to completely destroy the genre, but Joss Whedon and all the fine folk at Marvel have done a great job of giving those douche-bags the finger and showing them how you make a kick ass comic book movie. Watching the Avengers, it should give fans a true appreciation of how far we've come. And I'm not just talking about the five years of movies that built up the continuity that culminated in this one. A lot has happened since the days when comic movies were underfunded and not taken seriously. Now with this movie, it feels like the genre can finally spit on the critics and flex it's muscle.

We've come so far.

The Avengers isn't a perfect movie, but no movie is perfect no matter how many shots of Scarlett Johanssen's ass it tries to squeeze in. Some people will find some shit to be disappointed in. I personally thought it was bullshit when they killed Agent Coulson, but there is simply too much to love about this movie. It is the epitome of comic book excellence. For a long time, Marvel has been playing catch-up with DC since they had great movies like Superman all the way back in the 70s. Now with Avengers, they can finally say they have one-upped their asses and they are now the new standards in awesome. It is a great power for them to bear and hopefully they understand the responsibility of what they've done here. They can easily fall into the same trap as the Wolverine Origins and Superman Returns of the world, but with Avengers they have shown that they can do this shit right and do it well. I give the Avengers a perfect 5 out of 5. If there's even one cell of your body that enjoys comic movies, action movies, thrillers, or just shit that assaults your senses with weapons grade awesome then the Avengers is a movie you must see before you consider your life complete. Nuff said!

Captain America - Patriotic Awesome

It's been a damn good year for Marvel's movie division. As I blogged earlier this year, Thor was a godly orgy of awesome complete with Natalie Portman's ass to make it all the more sweet. This movie, like Iron Man before it, is assembling a massive load of C4 caliber awesome to help build up the impending nuclear blast of pants-shitting awesome that is the Avengers movie. But like any self-respecting Marvel fan knows, you can't have the Avengers without Captain America. That's where Marvel's Captain America: The First Avenger movie comes in.

Now this movie wasn't without controversy and some of it was fairly warranted. The man who got the role of Steve Rogers, Chris Evans, is no stranger to Marvel movies. He also played Johnny Storm in the two maligned Fantastic Four movies, two movies that despite solid visuals had about as much depth as a two-year-old's fingerpainting. I've yet to see both movies fully sober and Chris Evan's flat performance was only the 5th thing wrong with that movie. But unlike some fans, I believe in second chances so I gave Chris Evans the benefit of the doubt with Captain America.

The movie starts out in the present with a scene all Cap fans should be familiar with. SHIELD, having too much free time and money on their hands, search an arctic wasteland for ruins of something deemed more precious than gold or the Grateful Dead's secret stash. They end up finding Captain America encased in ice and from here, we go from the present to the past. This is where most of the movie takes place, but it's not just one big flashback. If anything, the present is the prelude. The real meat of the story takes place in the 1940s where Steve Rogers is a sickly kid from Brooklyn and everyone else is busy shitting their pants over the prospect of Nazis taking over the world.

In these early parts of the movie, we don't get straight into the action. We actually get a glimpse into the kind of man that Steve Rogers really is. He's not some tragic figure who pisses and moans about everything. He's a guy who God slacked off on when crafting his body, but he doesn't let that stop him. He's willing to pick fights with guys who can kick his ass and he's willing to lie in order to get into the army to go fight the Nazis. He's basically the anti-George W. Bush.

One of the most powerful scenes in this area is when Professor Erskin, the man behind the super soldier formula, does a quick test to find his first specimen. He takes a grenade and throws it into a crowd of recruits. It's a bit of a dick move, but it makes a point. While all the other macho men tighten their assholes and adjust their panties, the sickly and weak Steve Rogers dives right on top of the grenade. I don't care who you are, but that shit takes balls and it proves more than anything that Steve Rogers is the man for the job.

So Steve gets his shot at the Super Soldier serum. And low and behold, it works. He becomes the strong, tough guy that used to beat the shit out of him. Except he doesn't let it go to his head. He uses his skills to chase after the goons from Hydra, who have secretly become the kind of force that Hitler could only have jerked off to in his sleep. They succeed in killing Professor Erskin, which pretty much puts Captain America on a collision course with these assholes that would dominate the rest of the movie.

At first, he doesn't get his shot. Rather than send him into the field to kick ass against the Nazis, the politician of the 40s show they're as shameless as the politicians of today. They send Cap on a PR campaign to beef up support for the war. They dress him up in what looks like the Captain America costume my old roommate wore to a Halloween party, which he later pissed in when he got drunk. But that's another story. Naturally, Steve Rogers doesn't care for this shit so when nobody is willing to throw him into the field, he throws himself into the field. With balls as tough as adamantium, he single-handedly frees over 400 prisoners from Hydra including his old buddy Bucky Barnes. This finally gets the point across. He's not a showman. He's a soldier and he's ready to kick some ass.

His chief opponent is the Red Skull, who throughout the movie is working to tap a power that if you stayed after the credits for the Thor movie you will recognize. Somehow, this guy got his hands on the fucking cosmic cube and is preparing to use it to sodomize the world on a level not seen since boy bands hit it big in the late 90s. There isn't much depth to the guy. He sees himself as a demigod, drunk with power. He doesn't get the same treatment that Steve Rogers gets in that we never find out what makes him tick. That's a bit of a shame because there's no denying that the son-of-a-bitch is motivated. He makes it a point to beat the shit out of Captain America any chance he gets. This is what leads to the big climax of the movie when Cap has to stop the Red Skull from bombing the entire eastern seaboard of the US with cosmic cube powered bombs.

It makes for a heroic finale, but the best parts happen when the credits stop rolling! Like with Thor and Iron Man, we get some extra scenes. However, this time it's a lot more than just a teaser. It's a full blown trailer for the Avengers movie! If you see this trailer and your brain is still intact, you're either comatose or dead! THAT'S how awesome it is.

So what can I say about Captain America overall? Well for one thing, it made me feel patriotic again. After a decade of George W. Bush, my love for America was ranked at about the same place as my love for my back scratcher. America doesn't give us a lot of reasons to love her these days, but Captain America epitomizes what makes America awesome. Chris Evans fully redeems himself from Fantastic Four. He depicts both the hero and the man with Steve Rogers. He leads a story that's full of action, personal drama, and depth. Moreover, the details in this movie closely connect with the other Marvel movies. Howard Stark shows up as does the cosmic cube and references to Norse mythology. It's a beautifully coherent and beautifully crafted story that sets the stage for the Avengers movie. For that, I can only say that Captain America accomplishes everything it set out to accomplish. For that, I give it a 5 out of 5. It's not quite as good as Thor, but it's within spitting distance! If you want to see the next step to the Avengers movie and get a sneak peak while you're at it, you owe it to yourself to see this movie! If you start agonizing over the prospect of waiting until next summer to see Avengers, then don't worry. That's to be expected! Nuff said.