Far be it from us to make any ‘hammer time’ jokes at this point, but Thor really is shaping up to be our favourite movie of the year. God only knows if Brannagh can make any of this seem even remotely realistic, but to be honest who gives a shit? Giants, hammers, an eight foot tall killer space robot and Natalie Portman. That’s how you make a movie my friends!

Slashing The Seats knows bugger-all about sport, but this Sunday’s Superbowl between.. oh, I don’t know, the Arizona Mongooses and the New York Serengeti Gazelles… did cough up a few interesting bits and pieces. Not, unfortunately another Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction (although we did notice that Christina agulera missed out a whole verse of a certain national anthem -top work there Chris), but rather a bunch of trailers for this summers biggest movies!
While Pirates of the carribean 4 made a strong showing, STS is way more dorky than you, so here’s some new sneak peeks at Marvel’s mighty Avengers -Thor and old wingnut himself -Cdaptain America!

Tired of driving that clapped out Ford Rocket-submarine you got back in ‘82? Maybe it’s time to consider an upgrade…possibly to something like: The S.H.I.E.L.D Helicarrier!

Once MArvel get’s done with Thor and Captain America, those two bstions of four colour freedom are set to team up with Iron Man to fight ‘a threat no single super hero could vanquish’ in Joss Wheedon’s The Avengers. Marvel’s super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D organisation (led by the one-eyed Samual L. Jackson, will also have a major part to play as the hero’s ‘handlers’, which means they’ll need a pretty nifty base of operations -seen here in this leaked design by movie artist George Hull.

Hammer Time!

Ahead of this weekend’s San Diego Comicon, Marvel has decided to sneak out some images from upcoming superheroic blockbusters Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger – and they look pretty awesome!
Previously released screenshots show Thor is staying fairly close to his current Earth 616 look (wiki it non-fanboys!), and it’s pleasing to see that his half-brother Loki, the Norse god of mischief, will be keeping his iconic horned helmet on the big screen.

Cap meanwhile get’s a more realistic chainmail-free look obviously based on his appearance in the company’s ‘Ultimates’ comics line. The Ultimates has already proven a rich seam for Marvel’s movie division, influencing everything from Iron Man’s beard to The Hulk’s helicopter drop, meaning we can hopefully expect a surprisingly grim, if over the top take on the star spangled avenger.

What better place than the vast temple of Mammon men refer to as London’s Westfield shopping centre to settle in and check out a movie about a billionaire show-off. Make no mistake, Iron Man 2 is all about the bling.

Unfortunately, it isn’t really about anything else.

Where the first movie gave us a former hellraiser as a cocky, likeable..er..hellraiser, here we get to see all the bits we hate about rich guys like that. All the dazzle, all the showing off -in short, all the style over substance…

Back in 2008, Iron Man continued down the path mapped out by the X-Men and Spider-Man movies (We’ll ignore the Fantastic Four for now) and did what fans had been telling studios to do all along; Read the comic and stop trying to change it. There’s a reason these characters have remained popular for 40 years.
Favreau did a great job transferring Tony Stark’s flawed, egotistical super hero to the screen – lack of credible villain aside – Iron Man is a great movie. Unfortunately the director has possibly taken too many notes when watching Sam Raimi’s Spidey flicks, following the rocky route set by Spider-Man 3 and trying to cram way too much of that four-decade long continuity into the 2 hour running time, with borderline disastrous results.

I’m sorry guys, but after all the hype, all the great looking trailers, and all the shots of Scarlett Johanssen’s bottom, this is a massive disappointment.

With large chunks of screen time taken up by the enlarged cast, there’s a lack of focus on Stark himself, often leaving a muddled and confusing mess flashing in front of your eyeballs. While the newly sex-changed Whiplash (seriously -his comic book alter ego was an amazonian lesbian terrorist…) looks great, Mickey Rourke seems to have reverted to default, showing none of the villainous, downbeat charm that worked so well in Spun or The Wrestler, while even the always value for money Sam Rockwell struggles to make an impact as rival industrialist Justin Hammer. It’s not that he doesn’t work hard, but he’s written in such broad strokes that he seems..well…like a comic-book villain.

For Downey Jnr there’s some room to manoeuvre; a subplot about his technology affecting his health could be interesting -although it’s a cowardly get-out when you consider the alcoholism storyline it stems from – but is only alluded to before the focus whips off to check out James Rhodes in his new War Machine armour, or Hammer’s monstrous military models. Stark fails to engage the way he did previously, and is far less likeable because of it.

Sure, there’s plenty of explosions, but the editing and distinct lack of anything approaching characterisation means the whole thing suffers from a huge case of the Transformers halfway through. Yes, it’s cool to watch guys in super-suits blow shit up. What isn’t so cool is that you quickly realise you don’t know who’s in what suit or why they exploding things, and then you stop giving a crap.
It’s just too much. Look at the bad guys;

Hammer -Industrialist. Wants the armour to make money and is a bit jealous of Stark. Fair enough, but it hardly seems like motivation for murdering hundreds of people does it?

Next up, Whiplash. Why does he hate Stark? God knows. And the director isn’t telling. Hell, he isn’t even telling us why Tony Stark is taking part in an F1 race when Whiplash attacks. I guess it just looked cool huh John?

Finally, there’s a senate committee -led by fucking Gary Shandling of all people – who want to steal his secrets as well. Basically, their motivation seems to be that they’re THE GODDAMNED US GOV’MENT BOY! And that’s it.

So; three unbelievable villains, two love interests, One under-developed sub-plot and some guff about War Machine to further confuse matters.

And of course about five minutes of actual footage showing Iron Man, the constant to-ing and fro-ing reducing the Golden Avenger to minor character status.

Seriously, he shows up four times -once at a hideously flag-waving Stark Expo, once for a poorly explained meeting with Nick Fury, and for a couple of battles- one with Whiplash, one mind-and-arse-numbingly extended one alongside War Machine.

To sum up; Marvel had greater creative control, the cast are all strong actors, and Favreau has always produced decent work in the past, so what went wrong remains a mystery, but it’s one that needs to be solved quickly if we’re to hold out hope for Joss Wheedon’s Avengers, or even Iron Man 3. This is all flash and bang, with none of the neat fanboy winks that fleshed out the original.

Strongly in need of a reboot, Iron Man 2 is as confused and disillusioned as its protagonist. With some judicious re-editing and an extended running time there’s hope come director’s cut time, but the suit needs some serious retooling if we’re expected to shell out to see old shell head a third time.

News wandering in from the depths of Variety this morning that king of 90’s geek-dom Joss Whedon is Marvel’s go-to guy for the upcoming big screen Avengers Movie. At first this sounded like internet rhubarb based on Whedon’s involvement in the on-again, off-again Wonder Woman project, but the Dollhouse director himself spoke up yesterday, claiming he was ‘wrapping up a deal’ with Marvel to tackle their biggest hitters.

Based on the classic Lee/Kirby strip, “The Avengers!” sees Captain America, Thor and Iron Man teaming up, and early script news reports that they’ll be following the comic to a tee by taking down none other than the rampaging Hulk. The house of ideas also took the prescient step of signing up the leading actors of those properties to a multi picture deal, meaning “The Avengers” would star Robert Downey Jr. (as Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Hemsworth (Thor) and Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury).While Smoochy himself, Ed Norton may also return as the Hulk.

It looks like script writer Zak Penn has been catching up on Marvel’s recent Avenger’s reboot “The Ultimates”, tying the continuity more closely into that timeline than the original Marvel universe (Earth 616 to us fanboys), but Whedon, who also wrote several issues of the company’s “Astonishing X-Men” series, is sure to want to give the screenplay a workover.

While Whedon has shown he’s got the writing chops for the gig, “Serenity” remains his sole big-screen directing credit – do you think he’s ready to tackle such a mega-budget action piece?

It seems that director Joe Johnston has been using his post-Wolfman time wisely, bypassing regional premieres in favour of homing in on a lead for The First Avenger: Captain America.
Chatting to Marvel.com, Johnston says he expects to announce a lead in the next fortnight.

“We need to cast it soon,” said Johnston. “We have a very short list, but we’re still juggling actors here. I’d say within the next couple of weeks we’ll have ourselves a Captain America, I hope.”

Sam Worthington was most recently linked to the star-spangled spandexer, but it’s unclear whether the grunting half-wall half SHOUTING ACTOR has made the shortlist. Tyrese still appears to be in the running for the role of proto-super soldier Isaiah Bradley.

Despite some shouting from fanboys – and speculation that the plot may include Marvel’s dodgy Brit-hero Union Jack – Johnston is still set on filming in the UK, which given the WWII period piece that’s been mooted, makes perfect sense, with Marvel’s head honcho Kevin Fiege claiming it will be
“One of the most international films we’ve done”. So Europe-wide Nazi-crushing super-carnage then – this can only be a good thing.

More rumblings from the heavens over at Marvel studios today, as Queen of Space/Hitman’s assistant Natalie Portman joins the impressive looking cast for Kenneth Branagh’s Thor movie as Thor’s Earthly love interest, nurse Jane Foster.

Portman adds her thesping weight to an odd ensemble, including former ‘Dancing With the Stars’ man Chris Hemsworth as the hammer wielding thunderer and the far more Shakespearian Tom Hiddleston as mischief-maker Loki.

Looking like it might be quite good, with Thor battling frost/fire giants in Asgard, before being banished to Earth for his arrogance. The Banisher? Why, father of the gods Odin of course, who if rumours are to be believed, will be bought to shouting, mountain climbing life by living beard Brian Blessed.