Month: January 2019

In the year 2000, when M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable hit theaters, comic book movies were barely a thing. Unbreakable was the young director’s follow-up to the sensational Sixth Sense, and going in, it wasn’t clear what the movie was. That it turned out to be a low key superhero movie with a villain obsessed with comic books made it, in retrospect, way ahead of its time. Glass has the opposite problem: It’s overtly a comic book movie, but one for people who have never read a comic book. It feels hopelessly behind the times.

Glass is the follow-up to 2016’s Split, itself a surprise Unbreakable sequel, which wasn’t revealed until the extremely meta signature Shyamalan twist of Bruce Willis appearing in the movie’s final scene. Two decades ago, Unbreakable followed Willis’s David Dunn as he slowly discovered his own incredible strength and invulnerability, with plenty of encouragement from Samuel L. Jackson’s fragile but maniacally intelligent Elijah Price, AKA Mr. Glass. Split introduced a third super-powered individual, James McAvoy’s Kevin Wendell Crumb, or “The Horde,” a collection of split personalities who actually change the character’s physical state and abilities as they vie for control of his body.

Glass brings the whole thing together: After an exciting opening act of Dunn, who the internet has dubbed “The Overseer,” hunting The Horde before he kills more girls, all three main characters wind up in a very comic booky asylum. They’re overseen by Sarah Paulson’s new character, Dr. Ellie Staple, who’s designed special cells with the two newcomers in mind: David’s can fill with water, which renders him weak, and Kevin’s is equipped with bright strobe lights that force a personality change. Elijah, on the other hand, has been there for some time, heavily sedated 24/7. The setting makes for some wonderful tension throughout the movie, and it feels appropriately oppressive.

But that’s basically it. Almost the entire runtime is spent at this single location, as Dr. Staple works to convince all three that their powers are the imagined results of childhood traumas and frontal lobe injuries. This drama is well-acted (especially by McAvoy, who once again plays about a dozen distinct characters) and often deftly written, but it drags on way too long. Somewhere in the middle, you’re liable to experience a sinking feeling that this is going to be the whole movie, and you’re right.

Besides that, there’s another problem with this structure: As the audience, we’ve seen the evidence. We don’t need convincing. We know that Shyamalan isn’t about to undo two movies’ worth of build-up, so we wind up waiting most of Glass for the other shoe to drop. And when it finally does, it’s wildly anti-climactic, as the audience falls victim to one of Mr. Glass’s misdirects: The movie very deliberately leads us to believe the final showdown is going to be much more exciting than it actually is. What a twist?

Glass is weirdly self-conscious about being a superhero movie inspired by comic books. The three main characters’ bit players come along with them, including Dunn’s son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark, the same actor from Unbreakable), Elijah’s mother (Charlayne Woodard, also from Unbreakable), and Split’s Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), who originally bonded with some of The Horde’s personalities while being held hostage by others. They spend their time in the B-plot “discovering” things about comic books that everybody already knows. Each page they turn corresponds with some non-revelation about the bare bones basic structure of comic book stories, like the fact that a character’s parents are usually important to their origin story. We honestly didn’t need multiple scenes of wide-eyed page-flipping to figure that out, but we got it nonetheless.

Shyamalan takes some liberties with comic book culture in general, particularly in the script, which sometimes verges on terrible. “Have you ever been to a comics convention?” an exasperated Dr. Staple asks the assembled side characters as she attempts to convince them they’re all delusional. One especially irksome quirk has multiple characters, but especially Mr. Glass, constantly explaining the structure of events as they unfold, just in case the audience forgets for one second that this is playing out like a very basic comic book. “This is the part where they would draw you looking surprised,” or “Now the main characters have assembled!”

It’s grating, and it feels like Shyamalan understands comic books only on a theoretical level, grasping their basic structures and what makes them appealing, but having never actually read any himself. He has characters refer multiple times to “limited edition comic books, where the hero and the villain have a showdown,” which makes no sense on multiple levels. His staged comic book shop has two sections in the back labeled “Heroes” and “Villains,” and if you don’t realize what an organizational nightmare that would be, well, maybe the rest of this won’t bother you either.

But even if that’s the case, Glass isn’t the movie it should have been. There are hints of it early on, before the film takes a left turn and spends the rest of its stay focusing on all the wrong things. Like most of Shyamalan’s movies, Glass is well directed and scored, and there are moments of brilliance and tension throughout. But when the twist is literally that the climax won’t actually be as exciting as you’ve been led to believe, it’s impossible not to feel disappointed.

Marvel is keeping tight-lipped on many major plot points in Avengers: Endgame, but it appears the car manufacturer Audi may have inadvertently revealed who attempts to rescue Iron Man from space.

Spoiler warning: potential spoilers for Avengers: Endgame ahead.

As reported by CBR, at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, Audi is presenting an “in-car VR experience” which integrates car movement with what is being displayed on a VR headset in the backseat. The experience, officially called Marvel’s Avengers: Rocket’s Rescue Run, was developed by Disney Games and Interactive Experiences. It has the movements of the Audi translated as a spaceship’s movements being piloted through an asteroid field by Rocket Raccoon.

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Although the popular Star Wars Rebels finished last year, fans of the franchise’s animated output still have much to look forward to. A new season of the much-loved Clones Wars is being made for Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+, and ahead of that, we have the return of Star Wars Resistance this month. A new trailer for the second half of Season 1 has now been released.

Resistance is set before the movie The Force Awakens, and focuses on a young pilot named Kaz, who is recruited by the Resistance to take on a top-secret mission to infiltrate the First Order. This new trailer reveals that the upcoming episodes will contain various links to The Force Awakens, with a reference to Starkiller Base and appearances from General Leia, Poe Dameron, General Hux, and shots of Kylo Ren’s shuttle. Check it out below:

Star Wars Resistance returns to the Disney Channel on January 13. The studio has also confirmed that the show will return for a second season.

Resistance was created by Dave Filoni, who oversaw both Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. When it was first announced last year, Filoni spoke about his inspirations. “The idea for [the show] came out of my interest in World War II aircraft and fighter pilots,” he said. “My grandfather was a pilot and my uncle flew and restored planes, so that’s been a big influence on me. There’s a long history of high-speed racing in Star Wars, and I think we’ve captured that sense of excitement in an anime-inspired style, which is something the entire team has been wanting to do for a long time.”

As for The Clone Wars, Season 7 will premiere on Disney+, and will also be overseen by Filoni. The show seemingly ended with a short sixth season on Netflix in 2014, with many of the storylines incomplete.

Filoni will also direct an episode of The Mandalorian, the live-action Star Wars show that is currently in production and is also set to premiere on Disney+. The show is being produced by Jungle Book director Jon Favreau, and other directors include Thor Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi and Jurassic World star Bryce Dallas Howard. None of these shows have a release date, but Disney+ is expected to launch later this year.

Following the success of the All In pay-per-view event, it was clear that independent wrestlers Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks weren’t kidding around when they said they wanted to “change the world.” Following that show in September, there were rumblings that the trio was prepared to launch its own wrestling company.

Now, after partnering with Jacksonville Jaguars owners Tony Khan and Shahid Khan, their vision is becoming a reality. All Elite Wrestling, which was formally announced on January 1, has revealed its initial roster of stars, and it’s loaded with some very interesting names in the pro wrestling industry–including a couple notable faces from WWE.

While AEW’s first major event, Double or Nothing, won’t happen until May 25, we can’t help but get excited about all of the match possibilities, given the talent involved. There are obviously going to be more names announced leading up to the company’s debut, but thus far this is a pretty incredible crew of men and woman.

As you look ahead to Double or Nothing and think about what AEW would mean to the world of professional wrestling, take a look at everyone announced for the roster so far. Then sound off in the comments about who you’d like to see join Cody and the Bucks in this new company.

“Hangman” Adam Page

Image credit: Ring of Honor

Brandi Rhodes

Image credit: Being the Elite

Dr. Britt Baker D.M.D.

Image credit: Being the Elite

Chris Jericho

Image credit: WWE

Christopher Daniels

Image credit: Ring of Honor

Cody

Image credit: Ring of Honor

Frankie Kazarian

Image credit: Ring of Honor

“The Bad Boy” Joey Janela

Image credit: Being the Elite

Matt Jackson

Image credit: Ring of Honor

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

Image credit: Being the Elite

The OWE Roster

Names from OWE announced as participating include Cima and the Good Heart stable.

Image credit: OWE

Pac

Image credit: WWE

Penelope Ford

Image credit: Being the Elite

Scorpio Sky

Image credit: Being the Elite

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’s mission statement is basically right there in its title. Whereas Amazing Spider-Man continues to serve as the flagship, continuity-defining Spider-Man comic, this spinoff series is more concerned with exploring the smaller day-to-day struggles of Peter Parker and his supporting cast. It’s enough to question how much Marvel actually needs a book like this when there’s been so much emphasis on restoring Peter to a more traditional status quo in the pages of ASM lately. But with a creative team this talented, what more reason do you need?

Much like with its predecessor, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, the creative team is the main selling point. Writer Tom Taylor is the main who took a premise as inherently unappetizing as “evil, tyrannical Superman” and gave us the shockingly good Injustice: Gods Among Us tie-in comic. This series reunites Taylor with one of his All-New Wolverine collaborators, artist Juann Cabal. The result is every bit as good as you’d expect.

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