THR is reporting that the man who leaked Wolverine a month before the release date has been found and arrested:

Gilberto Sanchez was arrested at his Bronx, New York home this morning and is expected to go before a magistrate judge later today on charges of violating federal copyright law. According to the FBI, the 47-year-old man was indicted by a Los Angeles federal grand jury last week. A copy of the unsealed grand jury indictment indicates that Sanchez uploaded the film to file sharing network Megaupload.com under an alias. Information on how Sanchez allegedly obtained the feature film is still yet unknown. He faces up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Though Wolverine was a box office smash, the studio still claims this leak caused damages.

Meanwhile, it seems that the law has been kinder to Samantha Tumpach, 22, who was charged with criminal use of a motion picture exhibition facility after she got busted recording parts of New Moon in Rosemont, IL. She got off pretty easy, seeing as she had only recorded about two scenes, and was actually taping a birthday party that was taking place inside the theater and not the actual movie itself. The New Moon scandal went straight to the top. Director Chris Weitz eventually defended Tumpach's actions.

And that's justice, Hollywood style.

Speculative fiction is full of stories about people who've lost their identity – AMC just gave us a dreamlike remake of The Prisoner in which Number Six forgets who he really is, and Dollhouse returns Friday with more mind-erasing fun. But it's weird to see the trope of "fighting for selfhood" merged with that action-movie staple, the entertaining killing spree.

Recently, I was re-watching chunks of X-Men: Origins: Wolverine and thinking about that movie's insane body-count — both before and after Logan starts trying to regain his elusive humanity. In Wolverine, the mutant known as Logan is caught between his bestial nature and his dignity as an individual. For a hundred-odd years, he is a slaughter machine for the military, and then he joins a super-secret mutant taskforce. But in mid-atrocity, he suddenly starts questioning orders, and then he goes… rogue. (No, he doesn't bleach part of his hair and start talking in a Southern-girl voice. He just wanders off the reservation.)

The point is, Wolverine is just as much of a killing machine after he starts asserting that he's not just part of the machine, or not just an animal. He never makes the connection between the sacredness of his own personhood, and the sacredness of human life in general. I get that you have to fight for your freedom sometimes, but the movie makes a big point of showing Wolverine killing when he could just as easily disable his opponents — one of the movie's few great fuck-yeah moments involves cold-blooded murder. (Sure, he's killing scumbags. But he was just as much of a scumbag twenty minutes earlier.)

Likewise, Terminator Salvation (newly on DVD) gives us Sam Worthington's tormented cyborg Marcus, who discovers that he's basically a reanimated corpse with metal parts — and he makes the choice to be human, slaughtering several of John Connor's men in the process. (During his heroic escape from the resistance compound.) But it's okay, because Marcus' emergent selfhood is more important than any sense of self all of those dead people might have possessed. (Actually, I might need to — shudder — rewatch this sequence. I know a bunch of the rebels die, but some of them die due to hydrobots that attack afterwards. Does Marcus actually kill anybody directly, or just cause their deaths by tearing apart their security?)

And then, of course, there's District 9, in which Wikus also fights to regain his humanity — by putting on a battlesuit and shredding people with alien weapons. This film at least subverts this trope a bit, by having Wikus use alien weaponry that he's only able to use because he's losing his humanity — and the film doesn't exactly reward Wikus for his mass murder.

This odd combination — the hero who devalues human life in the process of exalting his own — has been around for ages, but seems to be on the rise. RoboCop and the Universal Soldier movies give us cyborg heroes who struggle to re-humanize while killing lots of other humans. Michael Bay (surprise!) gave us The Island, in which a clone grown as an organ donor kills his "original" self, along with a number of other people, on the way to becoming a full-fledged person.

For almost as long as there have been action movies, there's been the high body count: watching a Rambo movie in the 1980s, you don't stop and think that everyone of these bodies flopping to the ground is another person who won't come home to his/her family. It's one of the conventions of action movies that we accept that this carnage isn't really happening – even as the movie expects us to suspend our disbelief about a guy falling out of a helicopter on fire and surviving, it asks us to maintain full disbelief that mass murder is taking place in front of us.

On some level, too, we stop thinking that those people dying in front of us are really people – especially in a movie with tons of bad CG (like Wolverine). We can watch the corpses piling up because we know they're not human.

But the action-movie body count and the "search for identity" plot are great separately — I love a good John Woo bloodbath — but they sit uneasily together. The more people we see your cyborg or mutant kill — and the more casually they're killed — the less we can identify with our hero's quest for selfhood. The whole thing starts to feel more like a first-person shooter, and the main character more like a video-game avatar, rather than an individual who Deserves Human Rights and all that stuff.

If life is so cheap, then who really cares about Logan's quest for self? Not to pick on Wolverine, but these questions keep coming back as you watch the movie, as if they have a mutant healing factor.

How do you square the contrast, between the hero's inalienable uniqueness and everyone else's disposability? Maybe it's because Our Hero is a Nietzschean ubermensh, whose will to power makes his individuality more precious than everyone else's? What do you think?

Fall is officially in full effect, which means the big bad summer sci-fi season is over! Now, personally, I set my bar so impossibly high that no film could ever come close to pleasing me unless our lord and saviour Michael Bay himself were to direct it. But perhaps some of you plebs are able to enjoy lesser entertainment - though I fail to see how you can watch anything beyond those low brows of yours. So, now that we've had a little while to absorb and reflect the entertainment we've witnessed, what really was a disaster? So, enjoy a mini "clip-show" to refresh your memory and then vote on what was truly a disaster!


WATCHMEN:



DOLLHOUSE:



TERMINATOR SALVATION:



BSG FINALE:



STAR TREK:



X-MEN ORIGINS - WOLVERINE:



TRANSFORMERS-REVENGE OF THE FALLEN:



GI JOE:



SUMMER GLAU:



DISTRICT 9:



OTHER:



Now go vote... and argue!!!

I also want to use this change in format to bring a little news. For a while now, I've been trying to bring you the best Disaster I can with the time that I have when not busy with other ventures. But, in less than two weeks, I will be welcoming a tiny disaster of my own into the world. So between that and other "official" work that I've been involved in, I will be having far less time to put together a weekly "This is a Disaster". So I am going to take a short hiatus.

I will return, I would just rather promise future greatness than deliver regular mediocrity.


I'll still be lurking around here doing the odd 'shop when time and inspiration meet. But if you want to see what work I'm up too check out my blog. I have big plans for ROACH, so continue to check there periodically. And if you are curious what the fuck I'm going to do with a baby, I just started a new blog that I will do my best to keep up with so follow along there.

Thanks for all your interest so far and I will return before you notice I'm gone.

-Garrison Dean

Variety reports that Jackman is in talks to star in Shawn Levy's movie, based upon a short story by I Am Legend author Richard Matheson, where a former boxer becomes a robot boxing promoter who discovers both a son he never knew he had as well as a seemingly-unbeatable robotic boxing champ.

While we have no doubt that Jackman will kill in the role, we're concerned that he's milking his Wolverine geek cred for all it's worth... and it's working. Suddenly, we're finding ourselves interested in the movie for the first time ever. Maybe it's us that need the intervention.

Jackman Tests Mettle with "Real Steel" [Variety]

Hancock 2:

So much for those reports that the sequel would focus on Jason Bateman's character developing his charity project, and working on his relationship with his superhuman wife. Bateman says he hasn't been contacted about being in the sequel, and it's implied that he may not be in it. (Of course, he may get a call next week, but it's still surprising.) [Collider]

Deadpool:

Rob Liefeld Twittered about his meeting with the producers of this spin-off film, including Lauren Shuler Donner. And Ryan Reynolds, to nobody's surprise, is on board. Also:

Deadpool movie checklist- DP in costume-check! Breaking 4th wall-check! Loads of killing-double check!

And he was excited to talk to the producers about the possibilities of featuring Cable in future X-films. [Twitter via Cinemablend]

The Box:

Here are a few more stills from Richard Kelly's Twilight Zone-esque movie set in the 1970s. [Sci Fi Scoop]

Planet 51:

A new poster for the movie about The Rock accidentally invading an alien planet. [Teaser-Trailer]

2012:

And here are some new stills from Roland Emmerich's latest disaster film. [Movies-Spoilers]

Dollhouse:

Fox released three clips from tomorrow night's season opener, "Vows." [Fox via Whedonesque]

Lost:

More set pics and reports — here's a pic of Jack and Kate at the LAX airport set, plus Claire looking very pregnant. And one pic shows the construction of an elaborate temple set, and another shows the construction of a "rugged rock face." One scene being filmed today involved three gunshots ringing out and a bunch of extras, many of them dressed in the distinctive garb of the Others, running out of the temple. More pics at the link. [Hawaii Weblog]

A source claims both Juliet and Sawyer get "closure" on the island in the season premiere. And the cab driver whom Kate car-jacks is played by David H. Lawrence XVII, the "puppet-master" from last season of Heroes. (And yes, the number 17 is really part of Lawrence's professional name.) [SpoilersLost]

Warehouse 13:

It's not too soon to talk about season two of this hit show, which will air in 2010. Producer Jack Kenny says he's already got some ideas about how to deal with the huge cliffhanger at the end of season one — Leena has been made into "some sort of sleeper agent" and we'll have to "unsleeper her" or use her to trap McPherson. We'll find out where Claudia went and what she's doing, whether trying to clear her name or find McPherson. And we'll deal with the apparent death of Artie.

And then in season two proper, we'll mix it up some more. We may see Pete and Artie go out on a mission together, or Myka and Artie. We'll explore the core foursome (Pete, Myka, Artie and Claudia) in greater detail. We'll find out more about Pete's past alcoholism and possible drug addiction, and the lingering effects of Claudia's instituationalization. And both Pete and Myka will date people — maybe we'll see more of Jeff Weaver, Joe Flannigan's character from "Elements," and Myka can date him. And we'll see their reactions to each other's dating. Also, Claudia will possibly date a "local kid in the town," and maybe Pete, Myka and Artie will have different reactions to him. And we'll see more of the Regents, but maybe not all of them — maybe they'll have a spokesperson.

Also, Kenny says he wants to do an episode about "Hitler's microphone." [iFMagazine]

FlashForward:

Speaking of recovering alcoholics, apparently FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) is one. And his nanny is a devout Christian, who's making out with her boyfriend on the couch when the "flash forward" happens — so she takes the "flash forward" as a sign of divine retribution. [NY Times]

The Benfords' daughter Charlie says "I had a bad dream. I dreamt that there are no more good days." (And that's where the episode's title comes from.) By the end of the first episode, we get our first hint as to who/what is responsible for the flash. [Boston Herald]

Sonya Walger's surgeon character, Olivia, is put out that the entire surgical team flops to the floor in the middle of an operation. And her fellow doctor Bryce, played by Zachary Knighton, has gone to a pier to contemplate suicide when the flash happens. [Washington Post]

Here's the official synopsis of episode four, "Black Swan":

Olivia struggles to accept Bryce's suggestion that a patient's flashforward holds the key to a correct diagnosis and treatment. Meanwhile, Demetri accuses Mark of waiting for the future he saw in his flashforward to come true without incident, while Mark feels Demetri is letting his fear of what he witnessed envelop his life; and Nicole returns to work as Mark and Olivia's daughter's baby-sitter, and discloses her shocking future vision - involving a murder.

And some pics. [TV Overmind]

House:

In episode nine of this season, House tells someone he loves Cuddy. [EW]

True Blood:

And it's not too soon to talk season three of this show. Alan Ball says he's currently seeking someone to play Talbot, the "trophy husband" of the queer "vampire king of Mississippi" (played by Denis O'Hare). [EW]

Chuck:

Emmy winner Armand Assante guest stars as a Castro-esque dictator whom Casey has tried to assassinate numerous times. [EW]

Viktor Sakhay says that there will be more tension with the management at Buy More. And Lester will temporarily change something drastically about himself. [E! Online]

Sanctuary:

Here's a new trailer for season two of this Syfy show:

Smallville:

In his new quest to become the perfect hero, Clark is pretty icy to everyone, but especially to Chloe, for whom he refuses to go back in time and save Jimmy. But he does come to Lois in her hour of need. And Lois has sex on the brain — at least when she's sleeping. [TV Guide]

More on that: Lois has a scary/sexy dream sequence at the end of tomorrow night's season premiere, full of sweat, sex and blood. And death. And Jor-El tells Clark the reason he still can't fly is because he still thinks he's human. [E! Online]

We'll learn exactly where Lois went when she was missing for three weeks — and it'll look remarkably similar to the red dust storm sweeping over Sydney. [EW]

Here are two sneak peeks from tomorrow night's season opener:

Eastwick:

Rosanna Arquette will play Greta Noa, a New York gallery owner who's connected to Darryl Van Horne. She'll appear in two episodes, and there's more to her than we realize at first. [TV Guide Magazine]

MTV's Splash Page blog noticed that Tim Pocock, who played the young Cyclops in this summer's retro X-Men movie had left the following update on Twitter:

currently shooting Australian TV series till February 2010...then X-men first class ;)
If true, this is the first hint that Fox's much-discussed semi-reboot to the franchise — Following X-Men Origins: Wolverine continuity, but flashing back to before the first X-Men movie — will be shooting as early as next year, but with no announcement concerning director or stars of the movie, it's possible that Pocock may just be being hopeful with his tweet. We'll wait and see whether Fox sneaks any news out before the end of the year.

Deadgirl
What to do when you find a corpse chained to a table, and then discover that said corpse isn't actually dead? If nothing else, this dark comedy horror will make you realize that any answers you'd come up with to that question would be better than what happens here.

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor
Davids Tennant and Morrissey team up to take on Dervla Kirwan's villainous Miss Hartigan as the BBC mysteriously release last year's Christmas special after the already-out Planet Of The Dead special. Well, it is all time-travel, I guess...?

Primeval Vol. 2
The unintended end of the series can be found in this 3 disc box set that, despite the confusing title, actually contains the third season of the now-canceled show.

Sanctuary: The Complete First Season
See? This is how you name your DVD releases, clear and simple. Although, if they'd wanted to be completely descriptive, they would've called it The Complete First Season With Commentaries On All The Episodes, The Original Webisodes And Some Other Special Features. But that may have taken up too much room on the packaging.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Clone Commandos
A second selection of episodes from the first season of the Cartoon Network show that reminds people that, while war may be hell, Star Wars is just a pretty bad heck. Or perhaps a goshdarnit, at most.

X-Men Vol. 3: The Marvel Collection
X-Men Vol. 4: The Marvel Collection
Two more collections of episodes from the 1990s cartoon to remind people that, before there were X-Men movies that didn't match up to the Batman ones, there were X-Men cartoons that didn't match up to the Batman ones. But then again, I liked Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, so what do I know?

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Talking of X-Men movies, here's this summer's installment, allowing you to study the acting talents of Will-I-Am at your leisure. Also, with the ability to skip chapters, you can pretend that Gambit doesn't exist, which will immediately make the movie better.

Sept 22
Battle for Terra
It was the CGI movie you kept seeing trailers for, but don't actually remember seeing in theaters - and now it's out on DVD for you to ignore at home, too.

Clive Barker's Book Of Blood
Yes, yes; it was Books of Blood when the books were originally written, but times are hard for everyone, and movie didn't have the largest of budgets, so some cutbacks were inevitable (It's actually premiering on Syfy this week, for those who want a preview).

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto
If the idea of an animated movie based on a comic book about a superheroic masked wrestler created by Rob Zombie doesn't interest you, maybe the cast list - which includes Paul Giamatti, Rosario Dawson and Brian Posehn - will. Otherwise, we can't help you.

Scooby Doo: The Mystery Begins
Because, sometimes, you need a live action reboot of the Scooby Doo franchise by the man who directed the Flintstones live action movies. Of course, when we say "need," we may be using that word incorrectly. Nonetheless, this direct-to-DVD epic shows the first meeting of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scoob, and without the disturbing presence of either Sarah Michelle Gellar or Freddie Prinze Jr. So... potential win after all?

Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection Box Set
Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection Box Set
Paramount finds a new way to recycle the Star Trek movies with these new era-specific box sets. We look forward to the inevitable Star Trek: The Good Ones, You Know What We Mean box set within a year (Also: Am I the only one who was surprised to find out that there were four TNG movies, even though I've actually seen them all? I think I subconsciously try to pretend that Insurrection and Nemesis don't actually exist).

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: The Complete Second Season
Your chance to relive the only Terminator that mattered this year, despite that whole cancellation thing, with six discs full of episodes, commentaries and special features. Buy it in the hope that someone at Fox will change their mind when they see the sales figures.

Sept 29
Batman Collection: 4 Film Favorites Box Set
Those "film favorites" would be the Michael Keaton/Val Kilmer/George Clooney movies, by the way. It seems fair, because to add in either of the Chris Nolan-era movies - or even the 1966 Adam West one - would make any of these four seem somewhat lacking in comparison (Okay, maybe not Batman Returns).

Blade Collection: 4 Film Favorites Box Set
I know what you're thinking: "There were only three Blade movies, how can they have a 4 DVD box set?" The answer lies in including the pilot for the short-lived TV show in there, which seems like a slight cheat to me, but that's why I'm not a Warners Home Entertainment executive.

Hardware
Finally making it to DVD, Richard Stanley's 2000AD-inspired robot horror movie from 1990 finds a new, uncut and uncensored form to ensure that old-school fans will want to pick it up as well. If nothing else, how often do you see Iggy Pop and Lemmy in the same movie?

Monsters Vs. Aliens
Dreamworks Animation's love letter to old school B-movies proved to be much better than expected when it was released in theaters earlier this year, and the DVD - with special features on the making of the movie, deleted scenes and, bizarrely, a Dreamworks Animation Video Jukebox - aims on taking even more advantage of the impressionable hearts, minds and wallets of kids of all ages.

The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection Box Set
25 discs of animated paranormal activity, as the entire five year run of the 1980s (and early '90s) cartoon (including Slimer spin-off) gets collected in this insanely comprehensive box set that also has twelve hours of special features. You may never have to leave the house again. Or, at least, not for a few weeks.

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
The latest DC animated movie adapts Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness' fun, over the top tale of President Lex Luthor trying to turn the world against our favorite superheroes, only to (a) go insane in the process and (b) lead to the creation of a giant Superman/Batman composite robot. If they've not changed too much, this could be the guilty pleasure of the fall.

Ultraman: The Complete Series
...Or, perhaps, it could be this: A 4 disc box set collecting all 39 episodes of the mid-60s Japanese TV show that brought the madness and production values of Godzilla movies to television on a weekly basis. Robot superheroes versus monsters courtesy of Eiji Tsuburaya? Works for me.

Like the movie preview, we've split this preview into months (and, inside those months, into weekly releases), but with releases still unconfirmed and unannounced, we've pushed November and December together. Don't worry; it'll make sense when you click on the links below.

September
October
November/December

Commenting that the sequel to this summer's X-Men Origins: Wolverine will be closer to Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's 1982 mini-series than the original movie was to comic continuity - In part because, according to the producer,

there was a lot of different source material, a lot of different legends in Victor Creed's relationship to Logan and Logan's background. There were some choices we had to make

- Donner talked about the potential longevity of the movie series:

There's enough comic book material to support [a long-running series]. If we were to make up our own story, which we've never talked about, personally I would do it with Chris Claremont. I would stick with the creator... Chris is writing an amazing series right now where Wolverine's killed, Storm is the villain. Sure, one day I'd love to [do] that.

Donner's referring to the alternate world series X-Men Forever, in which Wolverine dies in the second issue - just like Claremont always wanted:

I always planned to kill him [during Claremont's original 16-year run on the X-Men series], but The Powers That Be wouldn't allow me to walk down that story path. I am so glad that I can take the characters on this particular journey now. It allows for real growth and change, and exciting possibilities. Doors that were locked can now be opened. Unfortunately, the general consensus in comics is that a character's death means The End. It's my strong belief that through such an emotionally fraught event as one character's death, the characters, the storyline, and the concept find new regenerative power and can grow stronger, for the future.

But would Fox really kill off Hugh Jackman to refresh the X-Men movie franchise?

Gavin Hood and Lauren Schuler Donner Talk Wolverine Blu-ray and Sequel [Latino Review]

We know, we know: the Hollywood development cycle is a slow, lumbering beast. It can take anywhere from a couple years (for a "fast-track" project) to a decade for a movie to see the light of day. But given how many people were saying, this time last year, that The Dark Knight had changed everything, you'd expect there to be at least some films in development, if not in pre-production or actually filming.

And there don't seem to be any movies in "the pipeline" that seem consciously influenced by TDK. Here are a few possible contenders:

• Super-Max. Written by TDK co-writer David S. Goyer, this film has obvious elements in common with Knight. From the scraps we've gleaned, it's about the snotty trust-fund superhero Green Arrow, who gets sent to prison, probably for a crime he didn't commit. And he has to escape from the world's toughest, most advanced prison by teaming up with a host of DC Comics supervillains. Gritty dark action? Check. Moral ambiguity? Check. Heroes who cross the line? Pretty much. Too bad that every time we hear about this film, it sounds more and more like it's stuck in limbo.

• 

• Superman Returns (Again). Every time someone mentions doing another Superman movie in the wake of 2006's underwhelming Superman Returns, they say it'll feature a "dark" take on the Last Son Of Krypton, influenced by Christopher Nolan's take on Batman. Says Warner Bros. president Jeff Robinov, "We're going to go dark, to the extent that the character will allow." More recently, rumored Super-director James McTeigue said something similar. But this "darker" Man Of Steel movie is still stuck in limbo, and Warner Bros. execs told a courtroom that they don't see much box-office potential in another Superman movie. (Granted, they were trying to get out of having to pay Superman's creators' heirs tons of money for Hollywood rights.) In fact, when they talk about doing a "darker" Superman movie, it's usually said with an air of "Well, nobody really wants to make a Superman movie, but if you put a gun to our heads, we'd do a darker one." The confusing copyright situation with Superman means they have to start development on a new Superman film in the next few years, but assuming Warners gets more enthusiasm for the cinematic Man Of Steel again, they'll probably rediscover their love for his fun, escapist side.
• 
  
  
• The Fantastic Four. News sites started claiming last spring that Fox was considering rebooting this super-family series as a darker, "less bubble-gum" version. And now, just the other day, Fox announced it was definitely rebooting the Fantastic Four. On the other hand, they tapped the decidedly non-dark Akiva Goldsman (Batman And Robin, I Am Legend) to produce the new movie, and
  Michael Greene, writer for Smallville, Heroes and the upcoming Green Lantern movie, will write the script. I am having a hard time imagining that team creating a "dark" FF movie. Plus everyone assumes Fox's sudden interest in moving forward with Reed Richards & Co. was motivated by Disney's purchase of Marvel, and the fact that Disney reportedly wants to take back all of the Marvel properties' movie rights as soon as outside deals expire. If Fox wants to impress Disney, a misguided "dark" Fantastic Four doesn't seem a likely approach.
• 
  
  
  
• Shazam. It's hard to believe, but yes, they were talking about a dark Shazam movie in the wake of The Dark Knight. This is the story of a little boy who discovers a magic cave full of statues of the Deadly Sins, plus an old wizard who teaches him a magic world that will transform him into a big galoot whose nickname is The Big Red Cheese. And then he fights an evil mad-science worm with the help of a talking tiger. Actually, screenwriter John August and director Peter Segal wanted to do a fun, upbeat take on Shazam, but Warner Bros. wanted something more like The Dark Knight. So August rewrote his fun script to make it darker:

  This wasn't "Big, with super powers" anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn't the action-comedy I'd signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made.

  But then Warners pulled the plug on the Shazam movie altogether — remember how I said the enthusiasm for "dark" stories often seems to coincide with a lack of enthusiasm for making the movies at all? And now Shazam is back on track, with Bill Birch writing and comics scribe Geoff Johns pitching in. Says Variety, "The studio is now looking to go back to the original DC Comics source material for inspiration." Going back to the original comics source material is slang for "not fucking it up with a dark reimagining."

So what happened? There are a few theories.

Watchmen happened. You could argue that The Dark Knight changed everything, and then Watchmen changed it all back. Zack Snyder's movie version of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' classic graphic novel was everything the studios were saying they wanted: dark, controversial, morally gray, challenging — and it didn't resonate that well with audiences. It had a so-so opening weekend, followed by a steep drop-off. (Sample headline from the L.A. Times: "Watchmen is going largely unwatched.")

Another "dark" movie that came out this summer, Terminator Salvation, did similarly badly. (It wasn't strictly a superhero film, but it had superhero-ish themes, and starred Bruce Wayne himself, Christian Bale.) And while Frank Miller's The Spirit was more goofy than dark, it did have a noir-ish look to it and was the handiwork of the original "Dark Knight" reinventer.

Meanwhile, movies like G.I. Joe and Wolverine, which were fluffy and bubbly and only challenged you to avoid giggling at their ridiculous dialogue and acting, did great. Audiences didn't suddenly stop liking braindead fun just because they liked one smart, bleak movie.

Also, the economy happened. Suddenly, people were hurting and depressed, and there were a spate of news stories saying that people in an economic shitstorm want upbeat, happy films. They want escapism and a pick-me-up, not a dreadful reminder that life is full of no-win situations and suffering. Whether that theory is true or not, it's one that seems to have a lot of currency in Hollywood.

And finally, looking back through those articles where execs are saying "I want a dark Shazam! I want a dark Dazzler! America needs a dark Howard The Duck!", I can't help noticing that this is usually accompanied by a lack of enthusiasm for whatever superheroic properties they're discussing. Sure, superheroes are big right now, but not every superhero movie is a huge hit, and characters like Superman and the Fantastic Four have fallen squarely into the second or third tier of big-screen spandex-flexers in the past decade or so.

Execs cast about for ways to make those lame fillies run again, and the "dark" thing is one of the ideas they hit on. But at this point, nobody seems to think "dark" is a cure-all for tired superheroes. At least, let's hope not.

Nature Abhors A Superhero Vacuum (But Apparently Abhors Wolverine Even More)
After last year's crunch of The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Hancock (and you could arguably throw in Speed Racer in there, as well), this summer was remarkably clear of superheroes, if you ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine (as most who've seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine are probably prone to do). But, even as Hollywood collectively recovered from last year's superpowered orgy and looked around the nostalgiascape to see if there were alternatives, we couldn't help but notice that some of the movies this summer seemed like superhero movies anyway. GI Joe, with your battlesuits and superhero team dynamic, we're looking at you.

It didn't hurt that Joe, like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and Star Trek, had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, as well as larger than life stakes and days to be saved - oh, and action set pieces during which the day-saving takes place. Yes, none of these films featured people with actual superpowers (aside from Spock's mind-melding, but come on), but in almost every other respect, they were superhero movies... and all the more successful for it.

Moral Ambiguity Isn't What We're Looking For, After All?
And what of Wolverine? Or pre-summer release Watchmen, for that matter...? Why weren't they Dark Knight-style colossuses (colossi?), striding across the box office landscape? Possibly for the same reason that Terminator Salvation disappointed: Because they were ill-considered, non-sensical pieces of filmmaking that considered style more important than substa - No, wait, I mean, "because neither offered any comfort to the viewer" (Okay, maybe a little of the former, too). Yes, Wolverine "won" at the end of his movie, but it was a shitty victory that still made him look like an easy dupe who'd been used and abused by The Powers That Be. Watchmen's (and, for that matter, Terminator Salvation's) victory was even more ambiguous. And maybe, Dark Knight aside - and who's to say that that movie won't continue to seem more and more like a fluke in terms of hyper-popularity as time goes on - that's just not what audiences are looking for from their blockbusters?

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reviews
GI Joe wasn't screened for mainstream critics ahead of its release - which, considering the harshness of some of the reviews, seems like a sensible plan - and had a more successful opening than most expected. In interviews, Joe director Stephen Sommers cited the success of the badly-reviewed Transformers 2 as the reason why some movies don't need reviews any more:

I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant here, they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. `Transformers 2' got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?

There is no way that the people behind other blockbuster movies - especially the ones that know that they're unlikely to get good reviews - aren't going to look at this and consider doing the same thing. It's not that critics have "criticized themselves into irrelevancy," but that studios are finally realizing that mass audiences have never, really, cared that much about them.

(Re)Birth Of The Alternative Mainstream
That said, what are we to make of critical darlings District 9, Cold Souls and Moon? Clearly, the great reviews mattered here - although, in D9's case, possibly not as much as Peter Jackson's name and an advertising campaign that's been going on for more than a year - drawing attention to smaller films that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Some are using these movies as a case for SF cinema "rediscover[ing] its brains, heart and soul," and there's definitely an argument to be made there... but there's an equally strong one to be made, I think, for these movies to be used as evidence for the need for SF cinema to be used as a vehicle for new voices wanting to exercise their imaginations and engage audiences before they get ground down by industry politics and pretention. It's not that big a step from Being John Malkovich to the rest of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze's movie careers, after all.

By the end of this summer movie season, it feels as if cinema has fragmented: There are the critic-proof (and unnecessarily-reviewed) blockbusters that fit into our nostalgic take on what stories should be, with good guys and bad guys and evil losing in the end, there are the intellectual, playful, indie darlings, and then there're movies that try and straddle the two and fail at the box office (Although, as ever, "failure" is a moving target; Watchmen must have easily made its money back by now, and if not, will do so with the "Ultimate Edition" DVD at the end of the year). Maybe next year, Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 will shake things up a little. Here's hoping.

McQuarrie, whose short list of writing credits doesn't include his work on X-Men (He worked on the movie with Bryan Singer, but refused official credit because he felt the final movie was closer to David Hayter's script than his own), signed on to write the second solo Wolverine movie following discussions about plot and direction with Hugh Jackman and producers, which - if rumors and Jackman's many statements on the subject are to be believed - seem to focus on the idea of "Let's turn Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's classic 1980s mini-series with all the ninja stuff into a movie."

We're hoping that that's exactly what the movie ends up being, and that it becomes a success; not only does Wolverine deserve a good movie, but we're always holding out hope that follow-up mini-series Kitty Pryde and Wolverine will end up as the third movie. We want our spunky Jewish teenagers getting brainwashed into Ninja Assassins on the big screen, dammit.

McQuarrie to pen 'Wolverine' sequel [Hollywood Reporter]

The movie leaked late Friday and early Saturday this weekend, brightening some Independence Days for Watchmen-obsessed fans but barely unnoticed by the world at large - BleedingCool.com aside, especially compared to the shitstorm caused by the X-Men Origins: Wolverine leak in March. So why the lack of outrage?

One possibility is that, extra footage aside, everyone who wants to have seen Watchmen has seen it already; unlike Wolverine, it's a relatively known - and unsuccessful - quantity by now. Yes, it's a new version of the movie, but still: while the extended Director's Cut may be grounded in rumors of being more satisfactory to disappointed fans of the book, it's also much more of a niche product than not only Wolverine but the original Watchmen release; it's being aimed at those who have already seen and enjoyed the movie in theaters, and those people are more likely to want to see the HD version and extras on disc, as opposed to a torrented bootleg.

It's also much less of a story than the Wolverine leak; Wolverine's leaked print was unfinished and the source of much (faux) intrigue - Where had it come from? Was it an attempt to sabotage the movie's box office? What did it tell us about the movie? Can you see where the reshoots may have been inserted, or why it needed them in the first place? and so on - whereas this is... well, a leaked DVD re-edit, at heart. There are multiple breaks in security where it could've come from, and much less possibility that internal strife will be revealed by what you can see. Not only that, of course, but it's worth noting that Wolverine was a first... this is just "another" leak, by comparison.

(Let's not forget that Fox made the Wolverine leak into an even bigger story with their reactions, whether it was hastily telling everyone that the finished version contained extra footage or hastily condemning anyone who downloaded it. This leak, by comparison, has been met with silence from Warner Bros. so far.)

Alternatively, it's possible that not that many people knew about it, as it broke over the holiday weekend. It'll be interesting to see if it gains more infamy and popularity over the course of the next few days.

Boutte writes in his blog:

I liked this version of Deadpool and wish it had made it into the movie but it was very early on in development and the character's face had to be seen

He also has early concept art of Sabretooth that looks a bit more bad-ass and less campy than the version we saw in the film.

And separately, concept artist Jerad S. Merantz posted his own concept art for Weapon X (who turned out to be a verison of Deadpool in the movie) plus Beak and the Blob. Again, it's quite a bit more striking and bizarre than what ended up on screen, as is so often the case with concept art.

Here are Boutte's early designs for Deadpool and Sabretooth, plus Merantz's images of Beak and Weapon X. More pics at the links.

[Modus Maleficum and Jerad S. Merantz, via Mania]

The latest version of the claim comes from the attorney representing former Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, who's apparently planning to file a wrongful termination lawsuit against Fox for his dismissal after writing a column admitting downloading the leaked movie earlier this year. The lawyer, Martin Garbus, is not only bizarrely claiming that scientologists are actually behind Friedman's firing, but that Murdoch was accidentally responsible for the leak, according to a report in the NY Daily News:

According to Garbus, the leak of "Wolverine" onto the Web traced back to Murdoch asking the studio to make him a DVD copy of the unfinished movie. "Apparently, someone made another copy for themselves," says Garbus.

There is, however, another version of the rumor going around, according to Nikki Finke:

This is different from the rumor as I heard it: that Murdoch was anxious to bring the film on board his yacht and asked 20th Century Fox to make a copy for him. But then Murdoch had outside people do it, and that's how the film leaked onto the web.

Either way, Murdoch is allegedly quasi-responsible for taking the unfinished work print outside of its secure, post-production environment. If true, we can't wait to hear how Fox spins this... or whether the investigation into the leak suddenly, and quietly, just goes away.

Fox's axed man blames Scientologists [NY Daily News], Claims: Murdoch Caused 'Wolverine' Piracy? [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

The Guardian reports that Salvation made £6.94 million in its first weekend, topping Wolverine's previous 2009 record of £6.66 million. This despite both movies receiving equally bad reviews in the UK as they did in the US, so it's not as if they gained some extra credibility and/or quality on the trip across the Atlantic. So what's going on?

It's not as if the UK is so science fiction-starved that they'll go see anything; yes, Doctor Who is having a half-year off, but British audiences have just finished new seasons of Ashes To Ashes and Primeval and have Torchwood returning in little over a month. Perhaps, then, the subject matter of the movies have just captured the British imagination more readily than they have the American. While US audiences shied away from the American dystopia of Terminator and evil-military of Wolverine for reasons of events still in recent memory, British audiences have more distance on those concepts - and, perhaps, more eagerness to see America get trashed. Perhaps they see it as karmic payback for the international upset caused by the Bush administration.

(This idea - that non-American audiences may be more in tune with things going wrong for Americans in movies, because they're (a) not living in America, currently trying to continue the Obama-sque feelings of optimism, change and hope despite economic meltdown and coming to terms with what the War On Terror did to the country's moral certainty and (b) instead looking for some sense of international schadenfreude because of said War On Terror and resulting unintended political diplomacy mishaps - may even explain Terminator Salvation's international box office almost matching its entire US take in its first weekend.)

Alternatively, there's always the possibility that the drearier British summers may have had something to do with it; as the Guardian notes,

As with all films currently in the market, Terminator Salvation benefited from dismal weather.

Perhaps that's the next big thing that Hollywood should hope for in the American market, instead of giant robots and old school superheroes; more rain.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen:

Michael Bay, showing he really does love giant robots, went to a convention called Bot-Con and showed off some footage. There was a clip of John Turturro and Sam's new college roommate standing in a construction zone. A group of construction vehicles surround them. Then you see Mixmaster's Decepticon symbol, and realize these are Constructicons! ZOMG! The Constructicons move closer together to form Devastator. And apparently you can tell that Scavenger has the ability to force the other Constructicons to form Devastator, whether they want to or not. Oh noes! (Apparently this is sort of like a movie that Scorpion does in Mortal Kombat?)

Meanwhile, Sam and Mikaela are running away from Rampage. Then Rampage starts chasing Sam's dad, so Sam jumps out in front of him to draw his attention away from his father. Sam says, "Wait, it's not them you want. It's this, the Matrix!" He waves an item, and keeps luring Rampage away, until Bumblebee shows up. The bots fight, with Bumblebee gaining the upper hand when Ravage joins the fight too. Ravage blasts Bumblebee with his hip cannons, and jumps on his back. Rampage lunges for Sam, but Bumblebee throws him to the ground. And then Bumblebee tears Ravage apart — meaning, hopefully, that we never have to keep track of the difference between Ravage and Rampage again. [Seibertron]

And here are some new pics from the film. [Celebutopia]

Star Trek 2:

This is barely a spoiler, but it's early days yet. Zoe Saldana hints that she'd quite like to see Uhura ditch Spock and get with Kirk in the next movie. She, of course, is not actually writing the script. [Trek Movie]

Deadpool:

Ryan Reynolds says early discussions with the studio are leaving him confident that they want the Deadpool solo film to be as close to the comic-book material as possible. He adds, "I will husk-fuck a herd of cattle to bring Wade Wilson to life as the real deal." And no, I don't know what that means either. Is it a corn thing? And he adds that there's no reason that a Deadpool movie would need to have much connection with the Wolverine movie, where he got decapitated. The biggest villain in a Deadpool movie will always be Deadpool, Reynolds says, and the movie should be pop-savvy and self-aware, like the comics. [IGN]

Thor:

British actor Tom Hiddleston talks Loki:

Loki's like a comic book version of Edmund in King Lear, but nastier. Loki's skilled in black magic and scorcery. He's a shape-shifter and has all sorts of super powers from the dark arts. He can turn clouds into dragons, things like that.

And he says Loki will have "a lean and hungry look, like Cassius in Julius Caesar. Physically, he can't be posing as Thor." (Did you get the impression this movie will be Shakespearean? I can't imagine how.) [IGN]

The Book Of Eli:

Sci Fi Wire visited the set of this post-apocalyptic thriller about a man named Eli (Denzel Washington) who has a world-saving book, and the small-town dictator named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who wants to take it away. They witnessed the filming of some scenes at the farmhouse of George and Martha (Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour) an old couple with a big secret.

Apparently, George and Martha's farmhouse is a two-storey dingy gray house, with dead trees encircled by tires. Towards the end of the movie, there's a shootout involving Eli, the old couple, and Solara (Mila Kunis). Eli is inside the farmhouse, and Carnegie is shooting at him to get his hands on the book. Eli tosses a Claymore mine out, which blows up a Cadillac and scatters bad-guy body parts on the lawn. Eli tosses out a second explosive, then Carnegie fires a rocket-powered grenade at the house, blowing part of it up.

Then George runs to a window and shoots his machine gun, killing two guys before he runs out of ammo and ejects his magazine. Carnegie yells "Cease fire! Cease fire!" and then we see Eli and Solara looking out the window. An armored truck backs up towards the house. It opens up in back to reveal sandbags and a man and a woman, seated at a massive gatling gun. Eli hits the floor and pulls Solara down with him, just as the gun tears into the house. [Sci Fi Wire]

Doctor Who:

It wouldn't be Monday without some batshit Who rumors. Someone posts that his/her aunt just recorded a brief scene for David Tennant's final episode, in which she played a Time Lord at some kind of trial. And Timothy Dalton was there! (Let's start a rumor that Dalton is the Valeyard! That would be kind of awesome!)

Meanwhile, there's also a rumor that the show is looking for a male companion to travel alongside Matt Smith and Karen Gillan for five or six episodes in 2010. Supposedly Sam Troughton auditioned for the role and didn't get it — but now it's narrowed down to Dean Kelly (who played Shakespeare in season three) and someone named Liam Boyle. As usual, these are just rumors, and should be taken with several salt mines' worth of grains of salt. [Doctor Who Forum]

Lost:

Matthew Fox (who supposedly knows something about how this show ends) says he's sure Jack will die at some point. But it'll be cool to see where Jack and Locke end up in the final moments of the series. [Lyly Ford]

Dollhouse:

Now that the show's established itself, you'll be seeing the show Joss always wanted to make, says Eliza Dushku. There are stories that the writers didn't get to tell in year one, that you'll be seeing in year two. And Echo may be showing off more specialized fighting techniques, for her different imprints. And she'll be spending more time with former Agent Ballard next season. [E! Online]

V:

A couple more promo pics of this remake of the 1980s classic. [SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

Our first promotional poster for season nine... and it still names Sam Witwer as a regular castmember. An oversight? Or a clue? [OSCK]

Chuck:

There will be some kind of internet presence, like webisodes, between now and when this show comes back in March 2010. (And it may come back sooner, if other stuff falls through.) As we mentioned, a new romantic interest will come between Chuck and Sarah. And there will be new characters, along with all the existing castmembers. Chuck will get more physical. The show's mythology will deepen, and the new season will not lack for romance. [Sci Fi Wire]

Stargate Universe:

The show's fourth episode, "Fire," written by co-creator Brad Wright, has been split into two episodes, "Darkness" and "Light." The episode was tightly plotted, but was running about 20 minutes overlength. And Wright had already cut a ton of scenes at the script stage for fear it would overrun. The expansion means the show's mid-season two parter, "Space" and "Divided," will be episodes 11 and 12 respectively. [Gateworld]

Heroes:

A writer Twittered a picture of the script for the fourth season opener. Apparently it contains scenes with HRG, Angela and faux-Nathan in Japan. Tracy is still at Kent Harper's apartment, and Angela wanders a city street. Also, Claire, HRG and "Annie" are on campus together. [Twitpic via SpoilerTV]

Also, the season opener will feature Prudence, a young girl who's odd-looking and was brought up in the carnival, and Ernie, an old carnie who's on his last legs. [SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Alasdair Wilkins.

CNN is reporting on the American Medical Association Alliance's calls for all movies that feature characters who smoke to be automatically given an R-rating, so that extremely-impressionable youngsters won't start smoking in an attempt to copy their heroes. The chief example of a current movie featuring "gratuitous smoking"? Wolverine:

"Millions of children have been exposed to the main star of the film, Hugh Jackman, with a cigar in his mouth in various scenes," [AMAA President, Sandi] Frost said. "I'm willing to bet that not one child would have enjoyed that movie or Mr. Jackman's performance any less if he hadn't been smoking."

A spokesman for Twentieth Century Fox, the studio responsible for the Wolverine movie series, said Jackman's cigar was never lit and it was limited to just two scenes. In one scene, the cigar is shot out of his mouth, prompting Jackman's Wolverine character to suggest its loss would lead to clean living — an anti-smoking statement — the studio spokesman said. He said that while the Wolverine character has a cigar in his mouth in almost every panel of the comic book series, producers made "a conscious decision" to limit the cigar in the movie.

A "cigar in his mouth in almost every panel of the comic book series"? Someone should tell the Fox spokespeople to check with their partners before releasing statements; Marvel has infamously had a smoking ban in its comics for years, due to editor-in-chief Joe Quesada's father dying from lung cancer.

You may think that, with Wolverine having had terrible reviews and dying at the box office, the threat of the movie inciting a new cigar fad would be minimal, but think again; as the Hollywood Reporter's THR, Esq. blog revealed earlier this week, the movie has discovered a new life online and is, surprisingly, the most illegally-downloaded movie of the last week. So now we know: the real danger of the X-Men is that they'll teach children that smoking while torrenting movies is okay.

Group wants R rating for any film with smoking [CNN]

Why do the studios decide that scenes are strong enough to make it into movie trailers, but not strong enough to show up in the finished product? It's a mystery, but it shows how much last-minute editing and tweaking goes into movies nowadays. We're not the only ones to notice this — when I was almost done writing this post, I came across this discussion over at Cinematical.

Here are some examples from giant films of the past decade or so:

Incredible Hulk:

Star and co-writer Edward Norton famously clashed with Marvel over how long this movie should be, and a couple of scenes were featured prominently in the trailers but didn't make it into the theatrical release. There's this fireside chat between Bruce Banner and "Doc" Samson:

And then there's the whole opening sequence where Banner goes to Antarctica to try and kill himself, which supposedly includes a glimpse of Captain America's frozen body:

And also, the same trailer includes a bit where Bruce Banner argues with General Ross, saying there's only one thing that can fight the Abomination and "it's in me."

Terminator Salvation:

There seems to be a lot of stuff that was cut from the final print of the movie, where John Connor obsesses about how the future has been altered by all the time traveling in previous installments. "This is not the future my other warned me about," he says in one trailer.

In another trailer, his wife Kate says, "If you saved us in another future, you can save us in this one," or words to that effect. I get the impression all of Kate's stuff got cut out of the final print of the movie. That scene is included in this four-minute trailer:

Also, I can't remember Connor actually saying, "Win or lose, this war ends tonight" in the actual movie. Did he say that, and I just missed it?

We're also pretty sure that Connor putting his hand on his wife's pregnant stomach wasn't in the movie. (In fact her pregnancy hardly comes up at all.)

And there's a glimpse of a naked figure (or at least barelegged) reaching down and grabbing a Terminator's arm gun to blast the hell out of someone or something. Could that have been a rejected sequence featuring Arnie's T-800? I bet they shot a lot of stuff with Roland Kickinger, the bodybuilder whose naked body stood in for Arnie's:

Star Trek:

We know they filmed a decent amount of stuff for this movie, including some more of Kirk's childhood and the reasons he decided to trash that Corvette. But the main thing that shows up in the trailers is the birth of baby Spock:

There's also a sequence where Nero says "The wait is over," which is in a bunch of the trailers but not in the movie. I think this is right after he busts out of the Klingon prison.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine:

Actually, this doesn't seem like it would have been such a great scene, but one trailer includes a sequence where we meet Storm as a kid:

Wanted:

A poster at Cinematical says the whole great scene where James McAvoy asks Angelina Jolie "Are we gonna bond now?" and she says, "Would you like to?" isn't in the movie. I don't have the movie on DVD, and can't remember off-hand if they're right:

Armageddon:

As a commenter at Cinematical pointed out, the trailer for this film includes a whole inspirational speech from Bruce Willis, which never turns up in the movie:

I Am Legend:

This IMAX trailer (and some of the other trailers, I think) include some snippets of the film's original ending, which was replaced at the last minute. It's the bit where the plague mutant hisses right next to Will Smith's face, at around 2:20 in this video:

2046:

Another one the Cinematical commenters noticed. Apparently this film's trailers include a ton of futuristic scenes that aren't in the movie, including Maggie Cheung as a robot:

Reign Of Fire:

Annalee has been annoyed for years that this movie's trailer featured dragons fighting helicopters, but it didn't really happen in the movie:

True Lies:

And finally, reaching back quite a bit further, here's a trailer for True Lies that includes a number of scenes that aren't in the movie, or even in the DVD: