Outer Space, Cyborgs and Dragons

[iainjclark]

Things that share little in commmon except that I saw them recently:

The Phoenix has landed. The Mars probe, that is. That's a bit of a relief. Watching the video of everything it had to do on its descent I was a little sceptical¹.

Sadly this good fortune does not extend to the pair of 200 year old pistols allegedly forged from meteoric iron, whose extraterrestial heritage has been disproven. They still look pretty in their own right, though.

There's some kind of slick link here to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which looks to be having a good box office weekend despite a fairly mixed critical reception. We saw it yesterday, and I enjoyed it a lot while not really rating it as a great film. Certainly it was about as entertaining as Last Crusade, and nowhere near the level of godlike perfection that is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Meanwhile Iron Man continues to rake in the cash (almost certainly fuelled by my review).

Terminator 4, which still seems to be called Terminator Salvation despite recent suggestions to the contrary, has an official website with a good-looking bit of pre-production art. Frankly the only announcement so far that has made me feel positive about this trilogy is Christian Bale's involvement, but the concept of a post-apocalyptic trilogy is potentially a great one.

Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro webchat about The Hobbit and The Hobbit 2. Following my poll to scientifically determine the title of the second film ("Back in the Hobbit" being the clear winner), Del Toro kindly tells us: "not 'H2 Electric Boogaloo', that has been discarded." So that's a relief. In a further display of good sense he comments: "Smaug should not be 'the Dragon in the Hobbit movie' as if it was just 'another' creature in a Bestiary. Smaug should be 'The DRAGON' for all movies past and present." He also rates the dragon in Dragonslayer. If he were any more rightheaded he'd explode.

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¹ Obviously the evil Martians who shoot down our probes were too busy carving gigantic faces on the ground. Ahem.

Comments

[fba.livejournal.com]

KenshinIV What are the chances Ron Perlman will be voicing Smog?
Guillermo del Toro At this time the voice of Smaug is down to a very few choices in my head and I have a completely specific one, Ron has a good chance but I have other plans for RP... we will see...

Ohhh - he wants Pearlman for Beorn doesn't he?

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly. :-) Especially as he says how much he loves Beorn later in the chat.

[fba.livejournal.com]

I'm getting the impression that they won't cut much from The Hobbit - which is good as there were bits in LotR that they cut that I would have liked to have seen (though I can see why they cut them as they weren't integral to the story). Gandalf taking the dwarves to Beorn's house is one of my favourite bits of the book - so I'm glad he's enthusiastic about the character and seems to have good casting in mind.

[dalmeny]

I think your review of Iron Man is spot-on. I really enjoyed it, despite its many flaws.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Cheers. Yes, I really enjoyed the film. It's very strangely structured for a big commercial film, but as with Downey Jr. that's part of its charm. In fact I'd be hard-pressed to say how the sequel could possibly replicate the shambling charisma of this film.