Two Bits United By Anger
The Incredible Hulk
Much like Iron Man, I’ve got nothing to say that hasn’t been said. I thought it was fantastic, everything I wanted in a Hulk film, and with a really consistant tone to the previous cinematic Marvel U film. There’s so much potential here for an Avengers series, and I’m pretty excited about that. In comments here not too long ago, the possibility of the Hulk being the bad guy in the Avengers film was mentioned. I’m not sure that’s quite what will happen (the theme of this film was the possibility of the Hulk being a hero, after all), but the Stark cameo could suggest that they’re putting a team together and they either want the Hulk to join, or they want to take him down. If I was to make a guess, I’d say the Avengers film will have the team hunting the Hulk in Act One, only for them to need him in the climactic battle.
The other thing I wanted to mention was the shot of the cylinder holding the Super Soldier serum that shows is labelled “Weapon Plus”. I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere (but then again, I wouldn’t have because I’ve been avoiding spoilers), but wasn’t this Grant Morrison’s name for the various iterations of Weapon X, in that Wolverine was part of the Super Soldier programme’s 10th (”X”) generation? A sneaky connection to the contractually isolated mutant movies is pretty cool, but then the whole film is packed full of injokes.
Roundtable
Brian K. Vaughan has apparently sold a film script for a huge amount of dosh that deals with a resurrected Merlin trying to gather a group of modern-day knights in order to, and this is the quote from Aint It Cool News, “defend England against a magical foe.” Hmm, yes. Defend England. Of course.
I’m a big fan of Vaughan. And I’m sure the script is brilliant; it’s already being described as having a Ghostbusters style vibe. It’s a great concept, as modern-day knights are, of course, athletes and businessmen and actors, not exactly dark age warrior material.
Some of you may remember a post a little while back about my problem with adaptations of Arthurian legends (here, in fact). What it amounts to is cultural theft, willful ignorance on the part of writers and film producers regarding the Welsh origins of these myths. Look, I know it’s a dumb thing to annoyed about, really I do. In fact, I may be about the only person who does get irritated by this. But it really, down to my bones, pisses me off.
Put it this way: imagine a hugely successful series of books and films based on Native American legends (or, for that matter, African legends, or Chinese legends, or whatever), jam packed full of Native American characters, yet these characters were never once played by, or referred to as, Native Americans. In fact, every character is played by a white American, and the very tales themselves are attributed to the colonists.
Well, that would be an ignorant thing to do, wouldn’t it?
