Paul Rudd as Ant-Man is a Brilliant Choice
I still don’t know if this is 100% confirmed by Marvel yet or not, but big time trade publications like Variety and the Hollywood Reporter have announced that Paul Rudd is wrapping up negotiations to play the star of Marvel’s Ant-Man film in 2015. This is fantastic news! Paul Rudd has been the rumored front runner for the role for a few months now, but this is starting to sound gloriously official.
I am fully behind this casting. Honestly, since I first heard Paul Rudd was up for the role, I immediately couldn’t picture anybody else. He’s got the charm, he’s got the comedic chops, but he can also be devastatingly serious with the right material. Plus, just picture him as the underdog class clown in The Avengers cast. He’d be a different kind of funny than Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark, while still being able to hold his own and with a unique place in that court of heroes – even if the timing of the movies wouldn’t put him on the team until Avengers 3 in 2018.
Plus the prospect of Paul Rudd working with Ant-Man director Edgar Wright is all kinds of exciting.
Of course, we don’t yet know who Rudd will play. There have been several Ant-Men over the years, though the leading contenders are probably the original, Hank Pym, a super scientist who invented the shrinking technology, and Scott Lang, a single dad who once stole Pym’s Ant-Man equipment, but had a change of heart and used it for good. We don’t yet know which character is going to be in the movie, but I think Rudd could play either one.
If you can’t tell, I am very excited by this casting. Very excited.
Everything Wrong With the Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Finally, after a couple of weeks, the Cinema Sins people have done all three Lord of the Rings movies! They’re just as much fun as you could have hoped!
Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
Return of the King
The Internet can be such a fun place sometimes. We’ll probably do it all again next year when The Hobbit: There and Back Again comes out!
My 6 Favorite Things of 2013
Welp, 2013 is over, and I don’t think I accomplished any of my stated goals for the year. I’m still fat, I’m still broke and I still haven’t been discovered by the comic book industry and handed the reigns of Spider-Man. But why dwell on the negatives when 2013 was arguably a pretty great year all around? At least when it comes to geeky stuff!
I don’t normally do these sorts of lists because I have a terrible memory and I don’t know what I was enjoying last week, let alone last March. But I wanted to see if I could pull this off, because there were a lot of great things this year, and I’m a member of the Internet, so of course I’ve got to do one of these lists. They’ll withdraw my membership card if I don’t, right?
Join me after the jump for my six favorite things in pop culture from 2013. And please feel free to share your own favorite things in the comments below!
2013: The Year of Iceman
Websites across the Internet are all doing their year-end wrap-ups right about now, and while mine is coming, I wanted to first take a special moment to praise the standout comic book character of the year: Iceman!
There were a ton of great comics released this year, and I’m sure everyone has their favorites, but I don’t think any comic book character had a better year than this frigid freedom fighter!
I have always been a huge Iceman fan, and there have been times when the character was just flat-out ignored for some reason or another. But ever since the early 00s, Iceman has been a tried and true background member of the X-Men. And all of that hard work and effort paid off in spades this year. Iceman appears in almost half of the various X-books, and while he’s usually still just a background supporting character, he has become the go-to guy for light-hearted humor and character.
The X-Men are serious business, but Iceman always keeps things chill.
Join me after the jump for some of Iceman’s finest moments this year!
Review: Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #2
When this issue came out on Wednesday, writer Brian Michael Bendis made a plea to reviewers on the Internet not to spoil the ending. And as much as I want to follow his wishes, the ending is the only thing in this issue worth talking about. Plus, it’s been a few days now, and I don’t think Bendis reads my blog (but if he does, ‘Hi!’). I’ll spoil it when we get to it, just know that the ending says a lot about Cataclysm, and not in any way that I like.
Based on this issue, it looks like Cataclysm is probably changing whatever plans Bendis had for Miles Morales’ story. And that’s a damn shame.
Comic Rating: 7/10 – Good.
Of course, this is still a Bendis-penned Ultimate Spider-Man comic, so it’s still entertaining. But this issue is one big generic tie-in fest. Nobody in the world of Ultimate Spider-Man is going to stop Galactus, so this would be an opportunity to show Miles and his cast responding to the end of the world. It’s like that, in a way, but not in any sort of meaningful way. There’s nothing overly touching or very deep in the issue. It all just kind of happens.
Fortunately, the characters remain entertaining and worthwhile. We also get flashbacks to what they were all doing during the last Ultimate Universe catastrophe in Ultimatum, not that any of them were doing anything very interesting. But then was anybody doing anything interesting in Ultimatum?
As I’ve said before, Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man is just too good to be interrupted by a story like Cataclysm. This issue is my evidence why.




