Trailer Friday

One thing that helps a tiring week a bit more enjoyable is finding new trailers on YouTube. I am sure I am not the only movie fan that at the end of the day will type "trailer 2016" and come across a few trailers that for movies you are either already excited about or ones you didn't even know were coming out next week.




Morgan

Despite the fact that I do love superhero/comic book films, it does seem lately that it's our only outlet nowadays for action or Sci-Fi movies. Fortunately there are still original movies still trying to come out and the one that has me intrigue the most is Morgan. From what I can understand, this film involves a corporate troubleshooter having to meet with a genetically created human Morgan and decide whether she a threat. This only the second trailer released so there isn't really anything new that you wouldn't find in the first trailer.


Death Note Light Up the New World

To celebrate its anniversary, Death Note has made a resurgence in the media realm. With a new TV drama, the American adaption finally in motion, and a new sequel for there film series that was released 10 years ago. Light Up the New World takes places in present days after the events of the first two films and like the franchise itself, Death Notes are making a come back. With six death notes appear on earth, it is up to L's apparent successor to track them and a new Kira down before it's too late.




Guardians

Its seems that Russia is trying to cash in on the success of superhero movies in the west with the Guardians. Like the Death Note trailer this is the debut of the English trailer for the film. The trailer suggest it is about a team of either genetically created or enhanced humans who have to come together to fight an ancient threat. After seeing and loving the movie Night watch (which is considered to be Russia first high budget blockbuster, I have been waiting to see more European films take a crack at a Hollywood style film. And while I wasn't too impressed with what I saw before, this new trailer has me intrigued.


Rings

Samara returns and has upgraded her cursed video for the modern age as it seems she has converted her video to an MP4 and uploaded it online for new naïve victims to view. This one caught my interest because I had no idea there was a new one being made. Most likely because I don't pay to close attention to horror movies. Either way, finding out this movie is coming out is a somewhat nice surprise.


That's it for this week. Hopefully and surely there will be more to come so this can be a weekly thing.

Suicide Squad: The Expectations of Outsiders

One of the top summer films I was looking forward to was released a few weeks ago and with along with rumors of cut scenes, supposed multiple cuts, and early bad reviews, reception has become pretty mixed. If you were to ask me though, despite some flaws, this film did a good job at what I was hoping the film would do. Present these known baddies in as more than just criminals and use there known tropes and quirks as a means to separate itself from other superhero films.

These characters have a heart(well not all of them)

It can be argued that after the series Seinfeld, jerk ass characters became the norm for a lot of characters. several series and characters such as Archer, Deadpool, and even Rick and Morty have became popular for their use of characters that aren't the typical good guys that you see such action series and instead people who love to break the rules, swear, and show us how great it is to be a jerk. As interesting as these kind of characters were when I first discovered them, I got bored of it really fast. Eventually it just felt like all they had to make a jerk-ass anti-hero was kill a guy, make a vulgar pun or joke, and people loved it. Either that or make the jerk characters have so much insecurities and inner turmoil that they become a bummer like Bojack Horseman. Which is why it became a concern with me when it came to this movie. After all, a movie involving DC's most well known and popular villains for a wide audience was DC chance to cash in on this trope. Fortunately, that wasn't so much the case with Suicide Squad. While the beginning of the film and even trailers focused on the snarky and humor side of these characters, by the time they entered Mid Way City for their first mission became a different story. As the story goes on, the fast-like humor is drop as the characters start to warm up to each other and even visibly show actual. The film also makes an attempt to show that these guys don't necessary want to or even like to be villains but are because of bad choices leading them to a dark hole that is hard to get out of or because society treating them like such outsiders to a point that the feel that their purpose in life is to be the bad guy.

With several other that would rather glamorizing jerk like tendencies, it was nice and even a bit heartwarming to see characters to show that they have a heart that slowly grows throughout the film.


Magick


The Number one thing that got me looking forward to this movie and is still my number one thing about it was the use of the supernatural and magick. When it comes to a lot of superhero movies, heroes are mostly pit against adversary that are basically their superpower doppelganger. Krptonian vs Kryptonian, Super Soldier vs Super Soldier, Iron Man vs yet another business man in a tech suit. Even when we get villain that is different from the hero it tends to be someone who's powers are either otherworldly or science based. It seems that a lot of superheroes films tend to shy away from using elements that are fantasy based. Things such as the Mandarin rings are non-existence in his film debut and even Thor's magic aesthetic in films has been changed to have more of a sci-fi feel to it. This is probably the first movie since Hellboy that I have seen a comic book movie use occult magic played straight within a film and not only that have it faced against characters who have no real experience with the supernatural. It is this that makes the movie stand out pretty well against most superhero films as of late.(At least until Dr Strange comes out I'm sure)

Harley Quinn

I was never a huge fan of Harley Quinn.  For the longest time and kinda even now she is just known for being the Joker's girlfriend which can make her feel like a one note character. It's because of that I really had no interest in attempting to see more of here out side of here debut in Batman: The Animated Series. Since she was included in this movie, I had no choice but to see this character again. But to be honest I'm glad they included her because I felt this was a good opportunity to see the character in a different light and not tied too much to the Joker. In the end I think it work out well. As many can tell she no longer has too much of here clown aesthetic and to extent neither does the Joker. I think this was a good way to have two characters who are a couple able to two still be recognize as different people, similar to how parents stop dressing their set of twins in the same clothes.

Also I may be one of the few that is glad that the alleged extended Joker scenes were cut. While I understand that the Joker should be in the film due the fact that he is responsible for the creation of Harley's path to villainy, I don't think we need to be reminded that the two are in an on-off relationship in great detail yet again . And I said before, the less Joker, the more Harley has the chance to shine and develop into someone that is more than just girl-Joker.

Expectations
Is seems that the theme of this movie was expectations, Society of this films world only expect the worst of the Squad the same way some expected the worst from this film because of how different they are. But both the characters and this film showed that they there differences is what made them stand out from the rest and became the strong point for the film and characters.

Digimon Pre Adventure Part 1

After the recent new trailers of both, the third Tri movie and Digimon Universe series being released, along with the announcement of Joshua Seth returning for the Tri dubbed movie, along with the dubbed release soon upon upon us, it's no surprise that I doing another post about Digimon. Digimon Adventure was what put Digimon on the map in terms of the popular children's franchise back then. But the anime wasn't the first attempt at trying to reach a mass appeal. What some may not know is that there were several material that were created that eventually led to the creation of the anime. Some well known and liked among the fans and some still a bit obscure.


                                  

Before Adventures, the first Digimon merchandise release was the Digimon v-pet that I'm sure most people know about by this point. The v-pet was created by Bandai to basically market a Tamagotchi leaned more towards the boy demographic. Along with taking care of your pet, you also had to pinned them against others in order for them to grow. As for as I know, only the first version came to the States. Up to 6 versions were released in japan along with several others as the franchise grew such as the Pendulum series. Most Digimon fans already know about the pets, but one of the more interesting things that doesn't seem to get much attention was the visual materials and manga that were created to promote them

The First Manga

The first one we will talk about is the booklet known as Digital Monster: I'll be the Digimon King. This was a guide book for the digimon v-pet  that came out on 1997. Besides it being one of the early materials, the thing in this book worth mentioning about is the illustrations. On the back of the book you can see early designs for the champion level digimon on the v-pets. These designs vary from resembling what the digimon look now to looking like there not even in the same franchise. My personal two favorite are the designs for Greymon and Devimon. Greymon the furthest from how he usually looks. His blue skin and grey horns actually makes look a lot like Veedramon, and is apparently the inspiration for Veedramons creation. Devimon also looks pretty different. For someone who is known to have a more scary and menacing appearance, this design is a pretty different contrast.

Here he has more of a chibi like body and come as more mischievous than menacing, reminds me more of Impmon or even Demidevimon. Along with the digimon, we get some of the early cast of humans companions. There are two boys(one blues, the other red) and a girl with yellow hair. Inside the book there is also a manga and a strange illustration of the cast dressed in sentai-like suits. Unfortunately I can't find a translation of the manga, but from the looks of it the manga is meant to be a tutorial on how to fight and take care of your v-pet.

C'mon Digimon

Next we have the manga C'mon Digimon also illustrated by Tenya Yabuno. This one shot manga came out around the same time the Digmon King guide was released and like that booklet featured a lot of what was to come of the Digimon franchise. The story was set in a world were instead of the digital world, digimon only existed in the v-pets where like the real life v-pets, people fought one another in order to raise the best digimon. One of the best digimon player is a character named Shinchiro Josaki who with his digimon Deathmon has not only beaten the competition but is somehow able to adsorb his opponents data and use for its own. The only hope the kids have is our main hero Kentouro Kamon and his digimon Bun. As mentioned earlier, this manga offered a lot for what was to come for the manga. This one of the first fully fledged out story for the franchise and even gave us an early deciption of what the hero Tai Kamiya will look like in the form of Kamon. Also unlike the anime series, the manga focuses more on promoting the v-pets merchandise something quite a few more digimon manga would continue to due when a new one was released.

V-Tamer

Next is probably the most well known and popular digimon manga: V-tamers. V-tamers is when we get our first introduction to the character Tai before he even made his apparence in the Adventures anime, that is if you lived in Japan as the  manga didn't really reach stateside until the show was pretty well known. This series focused on Tai(who I sometimes refer to as his japanese name Taichi to differentiate the two) who is instead of spending his time at summer camp before the adventure begins, is at a digimon v-pet tournament where his digimon is rejected for being considered a glitch digimon. Soon he his transported to the digiworld where he meets his partner, Zeromaru( a Veedramon instead of an Agumon) and Gabumon. Together they are ordered by a Holyangemon to stop an impeding doom that is about to plague the digital world and along the way meets other tamers and familiar faces. This is probably the first series where the concept of the digital world comes into play. Before this, the idea was that digimon only lived in the v-pets, that explores more of the idea of digimon living in a parallel world. Another thing that I thought was intresting was that this manga also gave us the idea of digimon having individual names( such as Gabu the Gabumon) something that is rarely explored in the digimon franchise. The manga is one the longest running digimon manga, and even continued well after the end of Digimon Adventure, leading to this Taichi to have crossovers with other goggled heroes such as Davis from 02 and Takuya from Frontier.

If any Digimon fans or even manga fans haven't read this manga yet, I highly recommend it. It is the first Digimon material to introduce a lot of digimon concepts that we come to know later in Adventures while having a lot of ideas that make it it's own thing.

To Be Continued
That about concludes part 1 of Pre-Adventures, were I covered the manga material that came before adventures. Look forward to the next Parts were I covered one of the first Digimon game and pilot that led to the adventure anime.