Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Let's talk DC, shall we? I saw Warner Bros' presentation at CinemaCon today which featured a huge amount of of their movies, from IT to Blade Runner 2049 and Dunkirk and closing strong with a look at their DC slate.
I'll write up the other stuff ASAP, but figured I'd put out the DC stuff first. Let's get going!
AQUAMAN
Jason Mamoa came out, air-guitaring to Smoke On The Water, to say that they haven't begun shooting Aquaman yet, so they can't bring any footage... you know, since there isn't any. He said that he was actually getting onto a plane tonight to head to Australia and begin shooting, but that he and James Wan wanted to bring something so they came up with a little sizzle reel of concept art.
The footage cut between Wan talking (rather excitedly, by the way) about his vision for Aquaman and a bunch of story art. The first thing he said was that one of the things he envisioned for this movie was creating a dogfight. From afar it looks like hundreds spaceships fighting, flying in formation, some getting destroyed in the chaos of battle but as you get closer you realize it's not space, but under water and it's not spaceships but people riding a shark or a dolphin or an octopus.
The art for this was nuts. Some great whites and hammerheads were shown, fitted with armor and Ben-Hur like constructs were on their back manned by an Atlantean.
Wan said that we will get Aquaman's backstory here. It is a bit of an origin story and he wanted audiences to get to experience Atlantis from the eyes of young Aquaman when he first experiences it. Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix was the background music for this montage, by the way, to give you an idea of the tone of the piece.
He also said that one of the more interesting parts of the movie visually was that everybody in Atlantis moves like Superman. They glide and float. Some art of groups of Atlanteans underwater underlined this...
Then we saw one piece of art that stuck with me: Aquaman standing on the forehead of a giant sea monster, easily Kraken-sized. Don't know exactly what it was, but it was very fishy and pissed off looking.
We'll see what they actually deliver, but the vibe of all this stuff was super fun. I hope Wan pulls it off.
WONDER WOMAN
We saw a good chunk of Wonder Woman. One of the longer scenes had Gal Gadot and Chris Pine on a small boat presumably sailing away from her homeland. They talk about the war and she desires to go to the heat of the battle because that's where she'd find Ares, who is surely responsible for this conflict. Pine says it's more complicated than that and Gadot smiles and says that the German people are just influenced by Ares and once he's defeated their minds will clear and they'll return to being good people. Simple as that!
Pine makes her up a bed at one end of the boat and then moves to the other, far less comfortable, end. Diana is puzzled by this. She asks if men do not sleep. Of course they do, he says. So she asks why he's not sleeping with her.
This leads to a bit of an awkward chat about marriage, all of which confounds Wonder Woman. She finally convinces him it's silly not to sleep in the same spot. He lays next to her and after an uncomfortable pause he asks “Have you really never met a man before?” Nope. “What about your father?” “I had no father. My mother sculpted me from clay and I was brought to life by Zeus.” Pine: “Well... that's neat.”
They fall asleep and wake up with London on the horizon. “It's hideous!” Wonder Woman exclaims.
Then things cut to the alleyway fight you've seen in the trailers, where she protects Steve from a bullet in a reverse Superman: The Movie move. There's a little more to it than what we've seen, but mostly it's her deflecting bullets with her bracelets and beating up the baffled thugs as Steve looks on. One tries to get away and she lassos his foot, tripping him up.
There was one more big wartime scene and this was both the most exciting and the most concerning footage I saw. It's in a war torn village and the Germans are dug in. Wonder Woman, in full costume, charges in, blocking gunfire with her shield and then jumping up to a second story window.
The action of this scene as she kicks the asses of the bad guys in close quarters was very CG heavy and had a ton of Zack Snyder-y ramps and super slo-mo slowdowns. It just felt kind of generic and it made me hope that this was indicative of every thing in the movie.
Some of the line delivery was a bit awkward, I didn't like some of the action stuff and the electric guitar main theme felt really out of place in the WW1 setting, but all of those nagging critiques were drowned out by the charisma and high production value on display.
JUSTICE LEAGUE
In a curious move Zack Snyder came out with almost his entire Justice League cast (minus Gadot), including Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Jason Momoa, Ezra Miller and Ray Fisher, but the only person to talk was Snyder who spoke in vague positive terms about his excitement for this movie and then they all shuffled off the stage.
The footage they showed was mostly the trailer, but we did get a little more. Three notable (but short) scenes, to be exact.
The first is Affleck's Bruce Wayne working on his giant troop transport that will eventually become the Justice League's ride. He's like a car mechanic on the underside of this huge ship in a massive hangar. Gal Gadot walks up, in civilian clothes, and without turning around he says “You know, I paid millions of dollars for this building's security.”
Gadot smiles and says “You got your money's worth. It took me almost a minute to disable it.”
The second short scene was an extension of a fight moment. It shows Wonder Woman falling down a long tunnel in slow motion, arm reaching out trying to grab her sword, but it's out of her reach. The Flash sees this and runs up the wall and taps the sword's point, pushing it towards her outstretched hand. As he does this lightning flashes all around. I assume this is the energy he creates from moving so fast.
Lastly there was a quick moment of Bruce Wayne and Barry Allen standing on a rooftop. The bat signal is on and Allen's eyes are huge. “Oh, awesome! Batsignal! That's your sign. That means we have to go now.” Bruce Wayne replies, dryly, “Yes, that's what that means.” Barry: “That's so cool!”
And that was it.
There you, DC fans. Now you have an idea of the cool stuff I got to see this afternoon. Some other CinemaCon goodies in the pipeline, folks. Stay tuned!
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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