First Official Sneak Peek at Avengers: Age of Ultron

Entertainment Weekly continues to be a magazine in circulation, and they have landed the first official look at Avengers 2: Age of Ultron! I used to love that magazine in high school in the swinging late 90s. So good for them at this pretty awesome scoop. Check out this cover, with our first real look at Ultron himself!

 

He looks pretty gnarly. And Captain America and Iron Man look pretty cool too.

You can check out an early sneak peek at the Avengers 2 interview at their website. It gives a lot of details on the plot, so be careful of spoilers, and talks about a few of the new characters. You can check out a few pictures by clicking here, including an official look at Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, as well as a possible surprise superhero cameo. Or you can just wait for the actual magazine, because people still apparently buy those. Right now, I’m legitimately considering it.

The 6 Best of Hercules in Pop Culture

Hercules! Hercules! Hercules! That’s still a reference people get, right? Good. The Rock’s big Hercules movie comes out at the end of this month, and that’s reason enough to celebrate as far as I’m concerned! He’s the Rock! Doing Hercules! It’s kind of perfect, actually.

I’m torn as to whether or not the word ‘smackdown’ should be in this movie

I am a huge fan of Greek myths. I can still remember the Big Book of Greek Myths I used to devour from my middle school library. So seeing a big budget Hercules movie (that isn’t that earlier big budget Hercules movie from January) is kind of a treat. It’s the Rock fighting all the great Greek monsters. That alone should be pretty cool. And you know what else is pretty cool: the idea that people have been playing Hercules for centuries. This is a character that has existed since before the Roman Empire. How cool is it that we, as a society, are still telling the story of Hercules?

And why can we do that? Because nobody owns the rights to Hercules! Anybody can make a Hercules movie or cartoon or video game or comic book…and they have! Join me after the jump to check out the 6 greatest pop culture appearances of the Lion of Greece!

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Thor Becomes a Lady, the World Loses Its Mind

I love it when comic book storylines somehow become mainstream news. I love watching reporters or celebrities or whoever try to interpret something that probably doesn’t make any sense to them, but they’re being paid to promote it nonetheless. Like when Fox News freaked out about the death of Ultimate Spider-Man. Or when Fox News freaked out about the introduction of a half black, half Latino Spider-Man.

Today’s comic book news is that Marvel is going to tell a story about a female Thor. This was announced on The View, of all places, and it’s all over the Internet. Lady Thor is even trending on Facebook!

Still blonde

First of all, why the heck is Marvel using The View to announce anything? Is there really a big crossover audience? I think they’ve done it before, and while it may be a female-centric show, is that the only place they could think of to announce news about a female character? Why not package the announcement during Sex and the City reruns? There has to be a better way to reach women.

Second of all, who cares?! It’s a comic book storyline! It may be getting a new #1 issue, but it’s still just a single storyline that Marvel feels like doing. Why does this warrant mainstream news coverage?

Why the metal face mask?

I’ve felt pretty cynical about the world for a few years now. This sort of thing falls squarely in the whole ‘the mainstream news is distraction’ sort of conspiracy theory. Why bother reporting on important things when the news can talk about a comic book storyline? Or the search for a crashed airplane? Does any of this coverage talk about how awesome Jason Aaron’s Thor: God of Thunder has been? Did Whoopi Goldberg on The View tell people where, how and why they should start reading this Lady Thor comic? Or is this just an announcement for announcement’s sake?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely going to read the comic, because Jason Aaron’s Thor has been pretty amazing. But how weird is it that it’s getting this much attention? I wish the universe cared this much about comic books for real. But why not have reporters who actually understand comics talk about real comic book news instead of paying Whoopi Goldberg to read a press release?

Maybe then they could make jokes about Frog Thor or Horse Thor.

Or Valkyrie, who already is a blonde, female Thor.

Green Lantern Taken Down Yet Another Notch

The good folks at Screen Junkies have finally gotten around to doing an Honest Trailer for Green Lantern.

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. I feel like they could have done a lot, lot more with this wreck of a movie – which, I’ll admit, I liked after I first saw it. No, don’t go back and search for my original movie review. You won’t like what you see.

First Full Big Hero 6 Trailer!

The first real Big Hero 6 trailer hit the Internet today, and I managed to find a version of it on Youtube. Watch it quick before it’s taken down!

You can also watch it by clicking here and that’ll be fine.

I like it! The trailer focuses on Baymax and Hiro, which is fine, but you don’t get a very good look at the other character. Don’t worry, though, you can check out all the character posters to get a good look at them. The only complaint I have is that T.J. Miller is voicing Fredzilla. That’s the slacker guy who shouts from the back of the car. He’ been in everything lately, including both Transformers 4 and How to Train Your Dragon 2 this summer. So when I hear his voice, I don’t think ‘Fred’, I think ‘oh that guy’. That’s very distracting.

Otherwise, it looks good!