Hollywoodscoop, the site that claimed Taylor Swift is the next Supergirl, now claims that Worthington and Reynolds are dying to dye their hair blond and visit planet Mongo.

Here's their summary of the Flash Gordon movie:

The role calls for Flash as a handsome polo player and Yale graduate, who travels to the planet Mongo, where it's discovered that the meteors are weapons devised by Ming the Merciless, evil ruler of Mongo.

First off, Worthington cannot do an American accent. Second Reynolds is already trying to convince the American public that he is, in fact, two separate comic book characters over a stretch of the next few years, Deadpool and Green Lantern. It would be absolute insanity to take on another iconic character, even if he wanted to do it.

So yeah... it's probably another fake rumor.

And here's your spoiler warning. Spoilers ahead!

So in Avatar, Jake Sully is a marine who's suffered a spinal injury (someone "blew a hole in my life," as he puts it) and his life is going nowhere. Until he gets a chance to go to the far-off Pandora and take his dead brother's place, piloting a genetically engineered "avatar." Built out of alien DNA, the avatar allows Sully to walk among the Na'Vi, the giant blue natives of Pandora, and look like one of them. Because Sully is a warrior, like the Na'Vi tribespeople, he finds acceptance in their ranks — even as he knows his fellow humans are preparing to relocate the Na'Vi by force, to get at a rich supply of a rare substance called Unobtanium.

As Jake learns to use his new alien body, leaping from treetops and clifftops, romancing the chief's sexy daughter (Zoe Saldana) and bonding with a flying dragon for life, you'll discover your new favorite escapist fantasy. Jake falls in love with the excitement and the nobility and yes, the biodiversity, of Pandora, and you're right there with him. Avatar's journey really does feel magical and transformative, for Jake and for the audience.

It's hard to imagine a movie where medium and story are so closely married. Even as Jake Sully climbs into a coffin and abandons his human body for a spry alien one, Cameron is hoping to pull you into his alien world to a much greater degree than the usual movie immersion. Cameron has spent untold millions of Fox's dollars to make you forget you're really in a movie theater, instead of on an alien planet. The whole exercise is a metaphor for the experience of watching any movie, with Cameron's camera lens represented by the beds that transfer people's minds into alien bodies.

And the film's 3-D, CG and motion-capture really are all they're cracked up to be. The scenes which look trifling on your little computer window become etched on your mind's eye, when you see them on the big screen in 3-D. The transition from live-action to animation feels like a costume change, and when live-action people are on the screen with CG characters, it's miles away from Roger Rabbit, or even from Andy Serkis' Gollum.

Cameron is clearly saying: Look what technology can do. It can tight-beam your consciousness into a totally foreign time and place. And just maybe, like Jake Sully, you'll find yourself going native.

There's only one problem with this notion, and it nearly wrecks an otherwise nearly perfect movie: The further we venture into Pandora's heart, the more unconvincing it is. At first, the forest moon is heart-breakingly beautiful and well-realized, and every weird creature on the planet stands out in its own way. When Jake gets chased by big dinosaur-like monsters, it's tons more thrilling than your standard Roland Emmerich/Michael Bay CG spectacle. But once Jake gets himself embedded among the alien Na'Vi people, the illusion starts to fall apart.

This is partly because once you're surrounded by Pandora's fantasy-land, it starts to get just a bit too pretty, and certainly too rich. About the time hundreds of glowing tree-spirits land on Jake's blue avatar body, the animation starts to feel a bit... cartoony.

But more than that, we never really see the Na'Vi as a convincing society — instead we see a ludicrous "noble savage" stereotype, that only gets cruder and more ridiculous the deeper into it we go. When Jake is only interacting with Saldana's character, Neytiri, their interaction feels natural enough. But once you're in the middle of a Na'Vi crowd scene, you have a harder time believing in these people. And that, in turn, may pull you right out of the movie.

Cameron has clearly thought endlessly about every aspect of this movie's worldbuilding, but it never seems to have occurred to him that populating his planet with Pocohontas/Tarzan ooga-booga people would be a mistake. The Na'Vi are animalistic and in tune with nature, and they're good-hearted in direct proportion to their simplicity. They worship a mystical world-mind and its messengers, magic happy tree spirits that connect them to their ancestors — through their magical native-people hair. (Their tree/ancestor religion turns out to have a scientific basis, to be fair.)

By the time the Na'Vi's matriarch is leading the whole tribe in a hippie ritual, with lots of swaying in front of the sacred tree, you'll be rolling your eyes so much, it may interfere with the 3-D stereoscopy.

(When I mentioned the term "forest moon" a little while ago, it may have created an association in your mind. That association was not entirely unintentional.)

In a way, Cameron's strengths work against him a little bit here. The humans' world feels completely lived-in. Pandora's soldiers could have stepped right out of the first reel of Aliens. Cameron is in love with all of the toys, from the Huey-helicopter-inspired flying machines to the "avatar" chambers. His human characters are mostly well-worn archetypes, from the weaselly evil corporate guy (Giovanni Ribisi, channeling Aliens' Paul Reiser) to Stephen Lang's brutal Col. Quaritch (bringing the George C. Scott) to Sigourney Weaver's tough scientist with a heart of gold. The human world isn't as original as Pandora, but it feels a lot more fully inhabited. The contrast doesn't do the dragon-riding, hissing, deeply spiritual tree people any favors.

It's likely that if the Na'Vi felt as real as the human society — if you could feel the dirt under your fingernails after a day's bow-hunting and chafe under the patriarchal tribal leadership — then the escapism of running off to join the clan might not seem as alluring. In his earlier movies, Cameron never had to try and make us fall in love with Skynet, or the Alien queen. So it's not surprising that he stumbles when he tries to create an "other" that's lovable rather than scary.

The movie's other big problem is somewhat related: It gets preachy about environmentalism, to an extent that may grate on your nerves. Early on, when Jake is learning about the nature-loving ways of the Na'Vi, he grumbles that he hopes this "tree-hugger crap" won't be on the final exam. And it totally is.

But like I said, Avatar is otherwise a nearly perfect movie. (It's up to you whether stereotypical native peoples or eco-lectures are a deal-breaker.) As an action-adventure movie, it's vastly superior to pretty much any you've seen in the past few years. As science fiction, it's thrilling, because it's pro-exploration and its most unambiguously heroic character is Weaver's character, Dr. Grace Augustine. It shouldn't feel so refreshing, to have a smart, heroic scientist whose scientific explanations are cool and important to the movie, but it is. Weaver has lost none of her fire, and is a joy to watch.

Sam Worthington, as Jake, does a great job of selling his slow transformation from cynical wise-ass human to a warrior of the Na'Vi people, without overplaying it. Worthington has that rare gift, of seeming totally down-to-Earth even when he's in the middle of a totally outlandish scene, and it keeps him completely relatable even as he's embracing a totally alien culture. He really does carry the movie, in both his human and alien bodies.

And you have to admire a movie whose central message is that only by becoming a wholly artificial life form can you touch something true and natural. This contradiction is at the heart of the movie — a luddite fable made with technology so advanced, Cameron had to create it from scratch.

Cameron deliberately avoids any of the usual cop-outs you'd see with this kind of story. The natives know from the first time they lay eyes on Jake that he's a "dream walker" (their word for alien meat-puppets operated by sleeping humans. And they call humans the "sky people.") When they come to accept Jake as one of them, it's with the knowledge that he's actually a tiny pink-skin in a tank somewhere. And the movie's arc isn't the standard one, of Jake realizing that he's "really" a human and should stop trying to pretend to be one of the aliens. Rather, becoming a genetically engineered, and hence synthetic, creature allows Jake to discover who he really is.

So, to sum up, everything you've heard or thought about Avatar is true. It's one of the most vivid, visceral movies you've ever seen. It's cheesy enough for ten Swiss villages. It's James Cameron delivering an action thrill ride, at the top of his game. It's a schlocky Dances With Wolves rip-off. It will transform the way you think about movies forever.

American Crime, based upon an as-yet-unpublished comic created by current Punisher writer (and Fear Agent creator) Rick Remender, takes place in a future America that has devolved into chaos after the announcement of a government plan to roll out mind control technology to eradicate any unlawful thoughts. Worthington will play a safecracker brought on board a heist planned for just before the mind control begins.

The comic launches in January; Remender told Mania.com that announcements about the movie's director, writer and other cast members will be forthcoming.

Worthington Signs on for American Crime [Mania]

Give the video a few minutes to download, to see the new footage.

Avatar will be out December 18th.

[Via LG]

So now that you've seen it, what do you think? Worth creating a huge public apocalypse and humiliating poor Moon Bloodgood over? I didn't think so either.

To refresh your memory, back in February, McG made Bloodgood stand up (fully clothed) in front of a crowd of Wondercon fans and shouted, "Who wants to see Moon's boobs?" until the crowd roared. McG explained that the studio wanted to cut Bloodgood's topless scene, to keep the movie PG-13. In the roundtables afterwards, they talked up the scene and how great it was:

Afterwards, at the roundtable, McG told us he saw Moon's breasts as expressing the human softness that's what we're fighting the machines for, and they're like the opposite of the hard machine world, but on the other hand maybe it's just a gratuitous juvenile scene that drags down an otherwise serious movie, and that's what he's debating with the studio right now. And Moon herself told reporters the scene is very tasteful and she felt very comfortable with it. And the scene is about knowing you could die soon and wanting to be close to another person, without any barriers in the way. Including clothing.

Did you get all of that from the above clip? No? Then you're obviously an ingrate, who cannot appreciate the subtleties of McG's film-making process. In any case, I'm probably the last person who would object to a little gratuitious nudity or extra trashiness — especially in an already cheesy apocalyptic film, where it mixes in with the shouting and the ridiculous stunts and the nonsensical dialogue. In fact, if Christian Bale had spent the entire movie nude, it might have been the one thing that would have salvaged his performance. But especially after having seen the rest of the film, the auteur-ish temper tantrums over this brief snippet of "Moon's boobs," and the grandiose boob exegeses seem a bit overplayed. Just a tad.

In and interview with Sam Worthington on the set of his new picture, The Clash of The Titans, Worthington addressed the terrible hype that surrounded his last picture, Terminator Salvation and told Hitfix:

It's kind of humbling the way they described your performance against Christian's, but we have no control over that. We just have try and do the best character we can do at that time. And I can nitpick with the best of them, man, and go down the list of things I saw on IMDB where they found holes in it and go, 'You are f***ing right. If there was a big ten-ton robot coming outside that gas station, surely we would f***ing hear it!' And I missed that! So I go, 'I gotta be a bit better when I'm looking through my scripts!' So that kind of raises my games a bit, cause I feel like an idiot for not saying it to McG.

It's refreshing to see Worthington addressing the film's gigantic issues in a no-nonsense way, responding honestly to Internet chatter instead of blinding himself in a "It's them, not me" kind of way.

Worthington also goes on to address the Avatar naysayers explaining that you have to see the James Cameron film in an IMAX, not on your laptop. Read the entire interview over at Hitfix

Worthington plays Marcus Wright, a mysterious character who gets executed in the 1990s and then wakes up — naked — in the scary warzone of 2018. And yes, if you've seen the recent trailers and clips that have been released, you'll already know that Wright, himself, is an experimental cyborg. We asked him about playing a half-man, half-machine, all-badass character.

What was the toughest thing filming for Terminator

Because it is so physical and it is action orientated, I think the toughest thing is trying to find a sense of grit and gravity and weight in your performance, that actually isn't just kind of being overshadowed by all the explosions and the action. You've got to bring out — for want of a better word — the heart of this character. I think the hardest thing was making sure that I was on the right track and that it wasn't melodramatic.

Was there a lot of makeup or CG going on with your look?

It's been, depending on how un-repaired we were. Anywhere from four to six hours where they do the outline and then paint you blue so you look like a Cirque du Soleil Terminator. But that wasn't a hard one. You're sitting there for six hours. I would pity the poor guys doing it. They're the ones having to work for six hours. I just have to sit there, and they make you look good.

Are you worried Marcus [your character] won't be back for the next movie?

Well, we only made one movie, and we set out to make Terminator Salvation. You're not really thinking of five and six and seven and eight and nine, so you're just trying to make the best movie you can at that time.

Are you signed on for the next movie?

Me? No.

Do you think Marcus should, or could, come back?

Well, I've got an idea. I dunno. They don't know it yet. I'll tell McG during this junket. In my head, it's crazy, it's unbelievable. We'll figure it out. The good thing is we've got the luxury of time travel, which was introduced in the first and the second one, so who knows? It depends if people want Marcus to come back. That's the other thing.

How many different endings did you shoot?

We discussed about three or four, I think, depending on the day and what sat well with all the actors and the people involved, depending on which one we went with. But I know we discussed a hell of a lot of endings.

Have you met Arnold yet?

I haven't met him yet. Hopefully I'll meet him this week (at the junket).

What's your favorite Arnold movie?

Pumping Iron, I love. I think he's in top form in that isn't he? Lou Ferrigno fucking turns him up, doesn't he? Don't want to bring that up though, do I?

This is a very intense movie with lots physical stunts. Were you ever scared?

No. It's making movies, you just dive into the world. I'm pretty lucky, you do things that you don't normally get to do, like kiss beautiful women and jump off an exploding building. And you try to do as much as you can because that's part of the fun.

Were the action sequences in Terminator more organic than in Avatar?

They are more tangible on Terminator, you've got things blowing up around you. With motion capture, you try to get as much as you can but you're not going to get full-on explosions that fill the place with water. That sense of putting us in that gritty visual world helps the story along. You see us going through it so you think, "man these people are really in this war zone." Oh man they blow shit up all around us on Terminator, it's not hard to run faster. You get the hell out of there when things are gong bang, bang, bang.

Go see Worthington, the man who fears no robot, in Terminator Salvation on May 21st.

We got Sam to answer a few questions about the meaning behind Avatar at the Terminator Salvation press day, and found out not only that he auditioned for the part for 6 months, but what his opening line to Cameron was. He swears like a sailor and looks tough as hell. Of course, we're big fans.

Have you seen the Avatar footage yet?

I watched it before I went on Clash of The Titans.

Is it going to outdo Titanic?

Well its a totally different movie isn't it? One's about a boat, the other's about a planet. [Laughs]

Can you talk about what you've seen?

Well, Jim is very special. Especially with me and Zoe [Saldana], he would show us a lot as he was filming it. I have a very collaborative relationship with Jim. I consider him to be my best friend. Not only because of what he's offered me, but because of this world he's brought me into. But he backs me, as a man and as an actor. I think what he has done is pushing the boundaries of what going to a movie, and experiencing what the movies, [are] all about.

This isn't going to be the big end-all, be-all, but it is certainly going to show you motion-capture at its finest. Performance capture at its finest. 3D technology and computer animation and graphics at their best — and hopefully that starts a revolution.

How did you get involved with this project?

I auditioned, and put something on tape. A week later, they flew me in to meet him, and they told me to be on my best behavior, which I wasn't.

What did you do?

I just went in and said, "Look, I've got nothing to lose. Let's fucking get to work." And that's it. For six months you worked to get the job. It took 6 months for me and Jim to convince the studio that you can put an unknown actor — an untested actor to be honest — in a mega blockbuster. So for six months with Jim, we would do auditions for the studio. But it was more a sense of me getting to know this man, that you're going to be spending a year of your life with... It was about six months before we even started filming.

Some actors have think he is a very harsh taskmaster, or even a brutal taskmaster. What's you take on it?

He's all of that, and a genius. Probably the best acting director to work with, bar McG. Even though it's all technology, both of them have a real sensitivity towards character and actors. But yeah, just like any director should, he demands the bar [be set] really high. And if you don't come up to that, yeah, he'll bark. Good on him. If people don't come up to that in any job, you're not going to do it half-assed. He's extremely harsh, but in the best possible way, because he brings out the best of you.

All I've heard about is the motion capture of Avatar and how it's going to change everything, but I'm curious about the story, how does that speak to you?

With Jim it's always about story first, as I said, he's very direct. You can put all the bells and whistles you like on it, like with Terminator, but if it's not about revealing some of the human spirit... I can't see, people are going to chew him out. Jim's very in touch with personal relationships. What it means to be, especially in Avatar, what it means to be a man, I can take that from it. Help people who are affected by bullies. I think all those kind of themes and a sense of hope. If you say all that, and then surround it with great technology and fucking whiz-bang explosions, then you're on the path to making something people will remember when they leave the cinema.

Until Avatar comes out in December, you'll have to check out Worthington in his big killer robot debut in Terminator Salvation out May 21st.

According to "industry gossip" (which means: lots and lots of papers got excited about something they read, but can't remember where), Bale may be damaged goods after his on-tape melt down. This is the passage that everyone is quoting:

Industry gossip now suggests the rising Australian star could score the part of Batman in the third installment of the successful prequel franchise.

That could mean replacing Bale, his Terminator co-star and The Dark Knight lead, whose profile was damaged after his infamous "me, me, me" meltdown on the Terminator set, which recently hit the internet.

We scanned for the original source reporting and the closest we could get is News.com.au, who doesn't quote a source and doesn't have original reporting, so it sounds like they're just band-wagoning from somewhere else. So if you actually see where this lunacy was reported please point it out, but my guess it's pure rumor-mongering.

Forget the fact that Bale already has a contract with the WB for the next Batman, this rumor is absolutely absurd. I don't care if Bale was caught on camera lighting kittens on fire wrapped in an American flag, this man is still pretty untouchable. How's that? Because he made Warner Brothers a bazillion dollars playing Batman. Do you really think the WB would risk losing Dark Knight money over a silly tape that will be ancient history in a year or two?

You heard what it was like on set with the man - they let him do whatever the hell he wants, because he's Christian Bale. You think anyone would be originally this excited about Terminator Salvation, if Bale's name wasn't first attached to it? McG even admitted he rewrote the entire script just to get Bale to sign on. There is no way in hell they will take Batman away from Bale, it would be risking way too much. So just remember when you hear this out there today, it's most likely crap. In fact I'm willing to bet one robot tattoo, it's total bollocks.

First of all, you know that Christian Bale will nail the gritty reality that is John Connor in a world torn apart by robots. (He even grew a goatee!) But what they won't see coming is Sam Worthington playing Marcus, he's got the element of surprise, you don't know what to make of him. Worthington has beaucoup respect for his adversary Bale, which makes me want to root for him even more.

In the trailer that was played at Con, you get to see Marcus and Connor do a fantastic back and forth (pictured above). As far as I can tell they're both holding their own, but Marcus has totally unnerved Connor and you can see the man struggle to decide what to do, while Marcus tells Connor he doesn't give a fuck who he is. It's a tough call on who's better in this amazing game of angry bantering gay chicken, but I like that Marcus gets Connor so unhinged.

If the T4 spoilers are correct Worthington's role should eclipse the John Connor story, opening the door for Worthington to walk out of T4 as the biggest bad-ass the Terminator story line has ever seen. But of course McG denies that those spoilers are even remotely true.

I guess it will all come down to who will make you squee more when you see them punch a robot in the face.

So what have we learned from these silhouettes of Avatar? They have three toes, long hair, possibly cat ears (see small bumps on their heads). They have a tail (excellent!). They can control a massive bow and arrow and never eat — ever (look at that waist!). According to Marketsaw, these t-shirts were raffled off by actor Sam Worthington who stars as Jake Sully, a paralyzed marine who undergoes a medical procedure to live his life through his Avatar, a 10-foot tall blue alien. There is plenty of talk that this image is the silhouette of Zoe Saldana's alien love character, who in an interview with io9 told us that this lady will kick some serious ass. Zoe's character is totally alien and completely CG, and falls in love with Jake Sully.

[Marketsaw]

The future turns out to be different than the one John Connor was raised to believe in — and one factor behind the change in the time line is the appearance of a new character, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington). In one version of the movie's script, Marcus has a much larger role than John Connor. Marcus appears in the future with no memory and no friends, and his last memory is of being on death row. Connor has to figure out where Marcus is from: the future or the past? The two of them team up to set out on a final mission to completely destroy Skynet but they discover a terrible secret behind the possible destruction of the entire human race.

Right now principal photography is taking place in Albuquerque Studios and on location throughout New Mexico.

According to synopses released so far, Avatar is the story of an injured ex-marine who gets taken to an alien planet, the Avatar world. There, he's forced to help humans colonize it against his will. But he eventually rebels and helps to lead the aliens in their fight for freedom.

Weaver said a few times that she's not a supporting character in Avatar, but "the female lead." Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana may have the "romantic leads," but Weaver has just as big a part. On her character, she says:

[James Cameron] created a wonderful character for me. She's a lot like him — she's very impatient, she's very driven, she's got a big heart, she's very complicated and you see very different people in the human world and in the avatar world. It's a fantastic canvas for me to paint on.

Avatar is "gonna blow the mind of this industry," with its vivid emotions and 3-D motion-capture visuals using Cameron's own self-designed cameras, Weaver predicts. The story is about ecology and greed, but also about love and "becoming a man." (I don't think Weaver meant her character becomes a man. But you never know.) "It's a very dense piece of work," she adds.

Not only did Cameron design the new 3-D cameras used in Avatar, but he also designed the sets, the guns and a lot of the alien creatures we meet. So it's understandable that he's a bit impatient with people who can't see inside his head and understand his vision, Weaver insists. "He's operating the camera," she adds, possibly exaggerating, but maybe not. "Considering what he's taken on, he's quite angelic, actually."

Weaver has turned down a lot of not-that-compelling parts in science fiction movies, and she doesn't think she has that much of a following among science fiction fans. But she loves the genre, because it involves "doing the impossible."

Separately, Cameron wrote to Ain't It Cool News about the status of Avatar:

I'm in New Zealand right now, working on effects, while Steve Quale shoots some second unit. We've worked together a lot (he did the engine room scenes on "Titanic", plus co-directed "Aliens of the Deep" with me) and he's the only guy I trust to shoot stuff for me, especially in 3D. We still have a little performance capture work to do with Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana in March, when we get her back from Star Trek (she's Uhura — but of course you already knew that.) And we have a couple of days with Stephen Lang in April or May, to shoot his character's last scene, which is so technically difficult it will take us until then to figure out how to do it.

[Premiere Magazine, via Jenni]