Divergent’s Maggie Q is sort of a secret weapon: while not a huge movie star in the traditional sense, she has amassed a pile of credits that speak not just to her acting ability but her action abilities as well. At a time when younger actresses like Divergent star Shailene Woodley and Jennifer Lawrence are proving that women can lead action-oriented franchises, Maggie Q has been quietly paving the way with turns in Mission: Impossible III, Priest and the TV series Nikita.

In Divergent, Maggie plays Tori, a senior member of the Dauntless faction who acts as reluctant protector and mentor to Woodley’s Tris. It is Tori who gives Tris the psychological test to determine which faction she is best suited for and discovers that Tris is “divergent” and suited for more than one faction. This stirs up past memories for Tori that are too terrible to contemplate and lead her to hide Tris’ secret despite the danger in doing so (she also plays a crucial role in the sequel, Insurgent).

Maggie (who will next be seen in a new detective drama from The Following creator Kevin Williamson) sat down with Den Of Geek to talk about playing Tori, mixing it up with director Neil Burger and the new wave of female action stars.

Den Of Geek: Knowing yourself, what faction do you think you would be?

Maggie Q: I definitely, I mean I think the casting was pretty bang on. I think that I’m definitely rooted in Dauntless in terms of the bravery and the skill and the physicality and all that. I mean it’s definitely a part of who I am. But I wouldn’t say that any of the factions are all encompassing, you know. Mekhi Phifer and I have been on a tour together and we’ve been talking about when people ask, well what would you really be. I’m like, “Well I think I’d be divergent.” Because aren’t we all in some sense? So I think that would be me more than anything. I don’t think defining yourself in one category is healthy, which is the analogy that we’re trying to make in this movie.

What appealed to you about Tori? Was it the fact that she’s got this toughness to her?

Well, I like the fact that her toughness -- you know, a lot of times I think what people don’t really realize about people who are “tough” is that it is normally born out of circumstance, you know. It’s not because they want or are choosing to be, it’s because they have to be. They’ve been put in a situation where that toughness or that wall or that, you know, leathery outside has been built because of things they’ve experienced, been through or had to survive. That’s definitely where it roots from in Tori, you know. She’s got a lot of pain behind why she doesn’t want anything to do with this girl. Yes, she doesn’t want this girl in her periphery and she doesn’t want her problems being put on her plate. But at the same time I think even facing a divergent again in her life is a real and true source of pain for her because of what actually happened to her brother when his divergence came out. And it’s not something that she wants to see again. It’s not something she wants to be involved in. But more than that it’s not something she wants to relive. And I think those reasons are genuine when understanding her coldness towards this girl. It’s not just one level. It’s not just one layer of coldness. It’s not just sort of like, "well I don’t like you so I don’t want you in my sight." So it was interesting trying to find that path with her.

You definitely get the sense that Tori has a history.

Absolutely.

How much of that did you get out of the script? Did you maybe talk to Veronica or go back to the book to learn more?

You know, I wasn’t one of the actors that talked to Veronica during this actually. I know a lot of the actors, she was there on set and they were able to reference their back stories with her on any given day and she would give them a little more about what she thought. I sort of created my own origin story in my head. That’s something I do with a character study too. So there’s that. I think for this character in particular the adaptation was pretty close to the book which was good.

And how did you and Neil work together?

Neil was a real source of challenge for me and I mean that in a positive way on the film because, you know, as an actor or any creative person, you have an idea of where you want to go or an idea of how you see things. And the reason there’s directors and writers and other actors is because we all see things very differently. So I try not to get married to things in my head but there’s things that I want to express in a certain way that Neil saw very differently. So we had good head butting in that I really respected the fact that he didn’t come at all from where I was coming from and he wanted something very different. And so then the compromise begins. Compromise sounds like a negative word but actually for us it was very positive because you have to compromise. I mean that’s how a successful relationship actually ends up working. So we did have a lot of back and forth about what his ideas were and what mine were. The movie turned out so well that I actually now, in seeing the film, can really in a different way appreciate where Neil was coming from and how, in some circumstances, I do feel creatively I was justified. And in others I feel that he was.

Can you give me an example of something you differed on?

Okay. One of the biggest was how unwilling a mentor Tori was. In the beginning he wanted a real hardness that was, I think -- I didn’t want the hardness to be off-putting from the get-go. I wanted you to know that this person was tough. I wanted you to know that she had her reasons or suspect that she had he reasons. But I didn’t want it to just read cold. I was just like, “Neil, dude, I mean I realize that you think that that is going to read more than one note but I don’t think it is.” And he’s like, “No, it is because we’re going to be moving into this space.” So we kind of went back and forth with how far to go in her expression. What makes a more stoic character interesting is you being able to watch them and understand that there is a push and a pull between what you know their feeling and what you know they’re not totally expressing. I think that gives you a hunger for the person, because you’re like, "I know there’s more to offer here and I know there’s something that you’re not saying to us. And I can feel that you want to express that but it’s not coming out and you have your reasons." But we want to know why.

Is that a function of maybe not showing all the cards for a character because she’s going to be in the next movie as well?

No, no. It’s not even a logistical thing like that. It’s more of -- If I met you right away and we sat down and you said, “Hi, I’m so and so.” And I said, “I’m Maggie," and I start rattling off about everything that’s happened to me in my life and how hard it was...there might be some legitimacy issues in your mind where you’re like wow, I just met you. I don’t really need to know all of that. I feel like the time in which it takes you to open up and the strength with which it takes you to open up is the way in which you’ve dealt and seen and done things in your life. You think about war vets and you think about people who’ve seen things or been through tragic events or loss or whatever it may be. They’re very hard to talk about, you know, they’re extremely difficult to express because the pain is real. And I think when the pain is very real it should take time and there has to be a trust built before you actually reveal a little bit. That’s why you don’t see Tori actually talking to Tris about what happened to her brother until sort of the end. And then she basically goes through the facts. She’s still business. She’s still, “Listen, this is what went down.” She doesn’t even get into the emotion of it. That’s going to happen in the second one.

So have you read ahead?

I know what happens in the second one. But with the adaptations, you know, we take an artistic license with them depending on what works or doesn't work on the screen. They’ll pump things up or bring things down or whatever. However best they can tell a story on screen is the way they’re going to adapt the book. It doesn’t have to be exact. So I don’t like to get married to the book because if you do and you get very attached to it and then you get the screenplay and each point that you wished was expressed in the way that you wanted them expressed is not there, you get a little disappointed. So I like to do things backwards. I like to read the screenplay first, know what they’re focusing on and then root back into the book and really find what it is that I can carry over into the screenplay.

You’ve got a rep as an action star.

I do. Bad rep (laughs).

And now we’ve got this film with a female lead. There's The Hunger Games, of course, and there’s a new 300 movie out with two strong female parts. Do you feel any sense of change happening in the industry as far as that goes?

It’s interesting because the real birth of the strong female was in the 1970s. I mean that’s really when we kind of went “Whoa.” At that time it was a lot more fantasy-based but it was still strong. I think unfortunately that sort of was our way in and the strong women ranged from Linda Carter to Emma Peel. What happened in the 1990s with Sigourney and Linda Hamilton and all these people is we started to become rooted in reality and that these women in reality could actually be physically strong, intellectually strong, spiritually strong and all this sort of stuff. So we kind of moved into more reality-based heroes which I thought was really cool and I thought that those women were leaders at that time in actually getting that done on film. So now we’re really, really moving into more opportunity in that space that we built off from the 1990s -- we’re moving to a space that’s undeniable.

So now when they’re casting, they’re doing things in film that they weren’t doing before. It’s just like ethnically diverse casting now. Women in power positions, more ethnically diverse...all that stuff’s happening because without it we’re not being realistic. So I think it’s a really good opportunity for women now. I like this character in particular and what I love about what Shailene did and what they did with this script which is not like any other young adult book thing that’s come out yet is that I see her strength in this film when she’s most vulnerable. When she’s admitting, "I don’t know if this is me...I don’t know if this is the right decision." I think that takes more strength than it does to kick someone’s ass or shoot a gun or do any of that stuff. It's a strong female example that I’m really proud of and I’m really excited about Shailene representing that.

Read our review of Divergenthere.

Read our interview with Divergentdirector, Neil Burger, here.

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Sometimes, as seems to be the case with every Marvel movie, lots of actors are linked with a role, in what seems to amount to a public audition process. But there have been many instances in the past where someone has been offered the role in a comic book movie, often even signing the deal, yet it never came to pass.

So whilst this article isn't going to talk about those who got down to the shortlist, it will focus on the people who got the job as a comic book character, but never got to play them. Here we go...

Marlon Wayans - Robin

Hot off the success of the original Batman movie back in 1989, Warner Bros was planning to move ahead quickly with a sequel. Plans to shoot it at Pinewood in 1990 were shelved though, as instead the studio awaited the return of Tim Burton to the director's chair, who'd gone off to make Edward Scissorhands.

In the interim though, Warner Bros got busy. Wesley Strick was one of those who took a stab at the screenplay, and his version of what was then Batman 2 had Robin featuring in it. Warner Bros was keen on the idea, even going so far as to cast Marlon Wayans in the role.

Wayans got to the stage of signing up for the film, having a costume fitting, and being optioned for a sequel. But when Tim Burton came back to the project, he was no fan of the character of Robin. Daniel Waters' subsequent script removed him, and the idea was then to save Robin for Batman 3.

That plan would come to fruition, but by that stage, Tim Burton had moved on, and Joel Schumacher was in as director. His favoured choice for the Boy Wonder was Chris O'Donnell, who would take on the role in both Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Wayans would never get to play the role, and hasn't been in a major comic book movie since either.

Annette Bening - Catwoman

Still on Batman Returns, someone else who got cast in the film was Annette Bening. She won the role of Catwoman, off the back of her excellent work in The Grifters, which Tim Burton had seen and was impressed by. She beat quite a field too, with everyone from Cher and Madonna through to Susan Sarandon and Bridget Fonda apparently competing for the role.

Yet Burton's Batman movies had a problem with their lead female roles. Sean Young was originally set to play Vicki Vale in 1989's Batman, but a riding injury forced her to pass, and Kim Basinger took on the part. In the case of Catwoman, Bening discovered she was pregnant, and thus had to relinquish the role. Michelle Pfeiffer subsequently met up with Tim Burton, and he gave her the part instead (for more money than Bening would had cost).

Nicolas Cage - Superman

It's no longer Batman, but we're still talking Tim Burton here, with one of the most infamous pieces of comic book casting that never ultimately came to light. Had all gone to the original plan, Tim Burton would have rebooted the Superman franchise in the 1990s, with Superman Lives. This was a project so now steeped in comic book movie folklore that a documentary is being made about. You can find details of that here.

Nicolas Cage signed up to play the role of Clark Kent/Superman in the movie, pocketing $20m for his trouble on a pay-or-play contract (which meant that even if the movie didn't get made, he got his moolah). He went in for extensive costume tests, many of which have subsequently appeared online.

Burton fought for Cage, arguing that he could being something different to the role, specifically that he could make Clark Kent and Superman feel like two characters that people wouldn't immediately visually link.

But then Warner Bros got cold feet. With the bill heading north of $100m for the negative, at one point nearly touching $200m - and this was the mid-1990s too - the studio eventually decided it was too rich a deal. It put Superman Lives on hold, and when Tim Burton departed in April 1998 to go and make Sleepy Hollow instead, the project was all but dead.

Warner Bros spent around $30m on the film eventually, with little more than those leaked Cage photos to show for it. Cage, a lifelong comic book fan, would eventually take on the role of Ghost Rider instead. We're coming to him again later a little bit further down this list too...

Armie Hammer - Batman

Of the many abandoned attempts to bring Batman to the big screen, one of them was being shepherded by Mad Max director George Miller. Back in 2007, he even got to the stage of casting for his project, Justice League. This would, as you might assume, have been an assembling of DC comic book heroes in one movie. And one of those heroes would have been Batman.

Miller got quite far down the road with the project, before it was kiboshed by matters out of his hands. The writers' strike of 2008, and a change in the Australian tax rebate incentive programme, changed the financial dynamics of Justice League. Warner Bros would instead press ahead with Christopher Nolan on a Batman reboot.

However, Miller had already cast Armie Hammer as his Batman. The same Armie Hammer who came to prominence in The Social Network, and then took on the title role in The Lone Ranger. Hammer has since admitted that the version of Justice League that Miller was planning wouldn't have had the violent edge of Zack Snyder's Man Of Steel. He's also distanced himself from taking on the role of Batman in any future movie project.

Adam Brody - The Flash and Megan Gale - Wonder Woman

Talking of Miller's Justice League movie, he'd already cast a couple of other people in the roles of comic book heroes. Specifically, Adam Brody was signed up to play The Flash, and Megan Gales was set to be Wonder Woman. Those two pieces of casting went south when the project was put into turnaround.

John Malkovich - The Vulture

Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4 would have been a hugely expensive movie. Sony got close to giving him the go-ahead to make the film in 2009, and it got to the stage where casting conversations were taking place.

So much so in fact that in January 2010, word leaked out that John Malkovich had been cast as The Vulture in Spider-Man 4. The actor himself confirmed the role on Italian television, following rumours that had popped up a few weeks before. Furthermore, Dylan Baker - who had sat patiently through two Raimi movies as Dr Curt Connors - would have possibly got his moment as The Lizard in Spider-Man 4.

But the seeds to this one falling apart had been long sown. Raimi clashed with Sony on Spider-Man 3, resulting in a film that neither party was particularly happy with. And as the budget ballooned for what would have been Spider-Man 4, Sony blinked. It called the film off, Raimi departed, and the studio ordered a full reboot, leading to 2012's The Amazing Spider-Man.

With that decision went two comic book movie villain performances we'll now never see: Baker's Lizard, and Malkovich's Vulture. Both could have been really rather good, too...

Dougray Scott - Wolverine

When he appears on screen this summer as Wolverine in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Hugh Jackman will join a small string of actors who have played the same role in seven different films (with a further Wolverine sequel to come). But that he landed the role at all had an element of fate to it.

Jackman wasn't the first choice for the role of Wolverine, and in fact another actor got offered the role first. That man? Dougray Scott, who was in the midst of work on Mission: Impossible 2. Mission: Impossible 2 was already behind schedule (the film had already been delayed a lot due to substantive overruns on Cruise's previous project, Eyes Wide Shut). As such, Scott had to complete his villanous duties on Mission: Impossible, and director Bryan Singer would instead take a chance on a then-relatively unknown Hugh Jackman for his Wolverine. Had M:I 2 been on time? Things most likely would have been very different...

Anthony Hopkins - Jor-El

By the mid-2000s it was Bryan Singer, off the back of his success with the opening pair of X-Men movies, that got the nod to reboot Superman, with Superman Returns. However, before Singer was attached, the project for a time was in the hands of Brett Ratner.

Ratner was on board for quite a while, to the point where he cast Anthony Hopkins (who he'd worked with on Red Dragon) in the role of Superman's natural father, Jor-El. Hopkins himself has since admitted as much, telling MTV that "I was going to do the movie with Brett, and I don't know what happened". He added that politics had its part to play, and that "I think Brett was out of line with something and they said thank you very much. I never heard from Brett since then but I was all set to it".

Singer in the end would, with the help of computer trickery, reuse Marlon Brando in the role instead. Hopkins eventually got his comic book movie moment when Kenneth Branagh cast him in Thor.

Jim Caviezel - Cyclops

Still perhaps best known for his portrayal of Jesus in Mel Gibson's brutal The Passion Of The Christ, Jim Caviezel (who comes out of the recent Escape Plan really rather well) was the original choice to play Cyclops in the first X-Men movie.

The role eventually got taken by James Marsden, but the only reason that Caviezel dropped out in the end was down to the old problem of scheduling difficulties. He had to quit the role when it was realised that production would clash with another movie he was committed to, the underrated Frequency.

Tom Cruise - Iron Man

Tom Cruise never fully signed on the dotted line to play Iron Man, but it was no secret he was involved in the project for some time. The actor was not only set to star as Tony Stark in the movie, but also produce it. And Marvel's Kevin Feige admitted as much at the time, revealing that discussions had been ongoing for a number of years.

Cruise eventually dropped out of the project though, saying back in 2004 that "as it was lining up, it just didn't feel to me like it was going to work". With Cruise departing the project, Kevin Feige would ultimately recruit Jon Favreau to direct Iron Man, and he in turn cast Robert Downey Jr in the lead role. Cruise, to date, hasn't taken a comic book character on.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - Doctor Octopus

Once upon a time, it was James Cameron who was battling to get a Spider-Man movie made. This was pre-Titanic and Avatar, and Cameron was facing a lengthy battle in the first place just to get access to the rights for a Spider-Man picture.

Cameron was intending to use Doctor Octopus as the villain in his Spider-Man film, and he'd talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger - then at the height of his Arnold Schwarzenegger powers - to take on the role. Arnie was in discussions for the role, but ultimately Cameron couldn't agree with the studio as for a direction to take the movie. He parted ways, and several years later, it would be Sam Raimi - with the help of Alfred Molina - who brought a film to the screen with Doc Oc in it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - Sgt Rock

Arnie did go on to play a comic book character, with his peerless performance as Mr Freeze in Batman & Robin. But as well as Doctor Octopus, he was attached for a time to play Sgt Rock. This was in the late 80s and early 90s, when a film of Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert's World War II infantry officer was being strongly mooted.

Published by DC, over time we learned that Sgt Rock was a very American, very able soldier. A terrific shot, able to survive more damage than Arnie did in the film Eraser, it was nonetheless something of a puzzle that he'd be played by an Austrian. Nonetheless, several screenplays were developed. At one stage, Bruce Willis was linked with the role too.

But it was Schwarzenegger who was attached, eventually dropping out as assorted attempts to mount the film failed. Talk continues of there one day being a Sgt Rock film, but Arnie's chance of taking the role now is non-existent.

Michael Biehn - Spider-Man

We're back to James Cameron's Spider-Man project again here. It was around 1994 when it finally looked as if he might be getting the project motoring, and at that stage, he'd settled on his webslinger too. Regular collaborator Michael Biehn, whose career best work came in Cameron's The Terminator and Aliens, was set to play Spider-Man/Peter Parker.

However, at that stage the film that Cameron was looking to make was a tricky, technically demanding one, to the point where it wasn't going to happen. Cameron instead chose to make True Lies, and his Spider-Man project ultimately fell apart, taking Biehn's interpretation of Spider-Man with it.

Billy Dee Williams - Harvey Two-Face

Tim Burton persuaded Billy Dee Williams - still best known as Lando, of course - to take on the small role of Harvey Dent in his 1989 Batman movie. You don't need to be an expert in the history of Batman to know that Dent goes on to become Harvey Two-Face, and the story goes that Williams took the role on the assumption that he'd follow that transformation through.

Furthermore, it seems that Williams signed a pay-or-play contract to that effect, locking him in for the role, unless Warner Bros paid him his fee anyway. That, ultimately, is what the studio chose to do as well. When it became clear that Tim Burton wouldn't be back for Batman 3, Joel Schumacher was hired, and he opted to take Harvey Two-Face in a different direction for Batman Forever. Williams apparently wasn't too enamoured anyway with the idea of Two-Face ultimately playing second fiddle to The Riddler in that movie. Tommy Lee Jones thus took over the role of Dent/Two-Face, and Williams got his cheque anyway.

Incidentally, rumours also suggest that Mel Gibson was offered the role of Two-Face, but couldn't accept it due to clashes with the production of Braveheart.

Terrence Howard - War Machine

When the first Iron Man film was released, taking on the role of James 'Rhodey' Rhodes was Terrence Howard. The plan was that he'd move on to play War Machine in Iron Man 2, but that was before things went sour.

Lots has been said and written about Marvel and director Jon Favreau's decision to recast the role for Iron Man 2. Allegations flew around that Howard hadn't been the easiest to work with, and that Favreau hadn't been happy with the performance anyway. Howard, in return, has placed the blame firmly at the door of Robert Downey Jr for him not being able to wear the War Machine suit. In Howards' words, "it turns out that the person that I helped become Iron Man, when it was time to re-up for the second one, took the money that was supposed to go to me and pushed me out".

Don Cheadle took on the role from Iron Man 2 onwards, getting to take on the War Machine and Iron Patriot suits since...

Nicolas Cage - The Scarecrow

Cage again! This time, he was lined up for Joel Schumacher's third Batman film. This would have seen him take on the role of The Scarecrow in what was said to be called Batman Triumphant.

Whether this one got as far as a firm deal being put in place is unclear, but what is more certain is that Batman & Robin derailed any chance of it happening at all. Whilst the film opened strongly, its box office since collapsed (albeit still grossing over $200m worldwide), and the movie was quickly derided as one of the worst blockbusters in living memory. That reputation has not been shaken off.

Schumacher, who at the time was alternating Batman movies and John Grisham adaptations for Warner Bros, abandoned his plan for Batman Triumphant. When the Scarecrow would eventually appear on screen, in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins back in 2005, it would be Cillian Murphy who took on the role.

The latest trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Pastis a bleak affair, but it showcases just how much higher the stakes are than in previous X-Men movies. What does it show us? We get a good look at Quicksilver, a cool shot of Colossus armoring up, and, perhaps most importantly, we learn that Sentinels come in all shapes and sizes...and that there will be no shortage of them on display.

In terms of sheer scale, X-Men: Days of Future Past certainly appears to bury its predecessors. Watch the new trailer here!

Here's the latest official description of X-Men: Days of Future Past courtesy of Fox:

The ultimate X-Men ensemble fights a war for the survival of the species across two time periods in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The beloved characters from the original X-Men film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from X-Men: First Class, in an epic battle that must change the past -- to save our future.

X-Men: Days of Future Past is Directed by Bryan Singer, starring Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Halle Berry and Peter Dinklage. It hits theaters on May 23.

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In 1986, producer/director Lloyd Kaufman took on any number of profound social ills as only he could in  his now-classic cult hit Class of Nuke ‘Em High, in which the nuclear waste leaking from a nearby power plant leaves the halls of Tromaville High teeming with mutants, cretins, and giant slugs.  Critics would compare the film to Rock’n’Roll High School, Class of 1984, and Blackboard Jungle, but with more splatter effects and boobs.

In the years that followed Kaufman further solidified his legendary status as both low-budget auteur and activist by confronting other important issues in the likes of Terror Firmer, Poultrygeist, and the Toxic Avenger sequels. Now, almost three decades later, perhaps after realizing the original didn’t lead to any widespread changes in the nuclear industry or how we protect our food supply, Kaufman has once again brought his twisted, even deeply disturbed social consciousness back to the same contaminated hallways and classrooms in a sequel, Return to Nuke ‘Em High, Vol. 1. Not only have things not improved at Tromaville High, but almost 30 years later there are other problems to deal with too, like bullying, blogging, and that damn glee club.

For the past month Kaufman and the Troma Team have been touring the film around the country, and on March 27th they’ll be in attendance for a midnight premiere at Williamsburg’s Nighthawk Cinema. Following the screening Kaufman along with members of the cast and crew will be holding a Q&A session, and after that they’ll stick around even longer to sign autographs, pose for pictures, and sell lots and lots of merchandise. There’ll be an encore midnight screening the following night, but you’re on your own for that one.

Tickets now available at the box office and online.   Nitehawk Cinema

136 Metropolitan Ave

Brooklyn, New York 11249

http://www.nitehawkcinema.com/

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After that epically entertaining trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past that dropped earlier this morning, 20^th Century Fox had the Internet community abuzz with flights of Sentinels and a seemingly doomed Ororo Munroe. But the studio and director Bryan Singer are not done there, as they have also now unveiled this classy, throwback poster for the film, which shows that incredibly, Mystique is now nearly as big a character in X-mythos as the guy with claws. Then again, it probably helps when she is played by Jennifer Lawrence.

X-Men: Days of Future Past opens on May 23, 2014. Directed by Bryan Singer, the man who launched the cinematic X-franchise, it will not only reunite the all-important X-Men trinity of Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ian McKellen, but it will also team them up with their younger X-Men: First Class counterparts like Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and James McAvoy. And that's just the start! Plenty of old X-Men favorites, including Shawn Ashmore's Iceman and Ellen Page’s Kitty Pryde are back for this one, too. Whatever X-Men: Days of Future Past may turn out to be, it probably won't be dull!

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Not unlike when Marvel Studios commissioned Paolo Rivera to design a 1940s styled Captain America: The First Avenger poster that would have done Roosevelt’s War Department proud, the comic book artist has been brought aboard again by Marvel to ink a poster with more than a few shades of 1970s marketing to it.

Floating heads not withstanding, this is quite a trip back to 1970s thrillers like Three Days of the Condor (1975) and The Sting (1973). While this Captain America sequel is actually set in modern times, the presence of co-star Robert Redford certainly gives it the air of a throwback. And that is great thing.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier stars Chris Evans, Anthony Mackie, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson, and its own winter comes April 4, 2014 in the U.S.

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Say hello to my new little friend. Universal announced that they hired the director of the films No and Tony Manero to bring the new remake of Scarface to the big screen.

Never underestimate the other guy’s greed. Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín is talking with Universal Pictures and Marc Shmuger's Global Produce about directing the new Scarface movie.

The basic story of Scarface will stay the same as the 1932 Howard Hughes/Howard Hawk film that starred Paul Muni and 1983 Brian De Palma version that starred Al Pacino. Immigrant boy makes good by being bad. But the new wave of immigrant will flow into Los Angeles from Mexico like so much cocaine.

The screenplay for Scarface was written by Two-time Oscar nominee Paul Attanasio, who wrote Donnie Brasco, which starred Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.

The movie will be produced by Marc Shmuger along with Marty Bregman, who produced the 1983 movie.

The studio says Tony will be played by an authentic, bilingual and bicultural Latino. Tony’s last name won't be Camonte or Montana. The role could go to Oscar Isaac, Edgar Ramirez, Michael Pena or a complete unknown.

The 1932 Scarface was a co-directed by Howard Hawks and Richard Rosson. It starred Paul Muni and Howard Hughes as a player in the film business. It is a classic. The 1983 Scarface was directed by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone, who took Al Pacino’s Tony Manero out of Italy and made him Cuban.

David Yates, who directed Harry Potter, had been in talks to remake the film, but he’s remaking Tarzan.

SOURCE: THE WRAP

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several days, but now we finally have the actual stars taking part in the madness with our first clear look at Marvel Studios’ and Joss Whedon’s iteration of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch as played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, respectively. We also can see in the photos (compliments of ComingSoon) what may be Hawkeye’s (Jeremy Renner) first encounter with the not-quite-mutant sibling tag-team.

Avengers: Age of Ultron reunites Joss Whedon with the original cast of the Avengers, including Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Bruce “the Hulk” Banner (Mark Ruffalo). The film also will introduce new superheroes Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) when the team faces a new threat in the robotic guise of the villainous Ultron (James Spader).

Avengers: Age of Ultron opens May 1, 2015.

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Many men have played the part of Hercules in the past, but have they enjoyed the touch of destiny that actor Dwayne Johnson seems to indicate he has? After all, the actor who plays the Greek demigod in this year’s Brett Ratner-directed Hercules revealed the impressive poster and official image reveal of himself in the title role with the caption: “Become the man you were supposed to be.”

Based on the Radical Studios graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars, Hercules finds the legendary hero (Johnson) on his own personal odyssey after committing an unforgivable sin. Hercules travels ancient Greece as a mercenary for hire with a fellowship of fighters until he is beseeched to help the ruler of Thrace and his lovely daughter to overthrow a warlord. Hercules will have to embrace his divinity once more.

Hercules, also starring Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Joseph Fiennes, John Hurt, and Rebecca Ferguson,opens July 25, 2014.

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Remember that announcement a few days ago about 20^th Century Fox setting March 4, 2016 as the release date of an untitled Ridley Scott film? Turns out we now know what that movie is.

It’s Prometheus 2.

That will be the director’s next project, which he’ll start working on as soon as he finishes his current one, Exodus.

That’s not all. Scott has brought in screenwriter Michael Green, who recently completed a script for Scott’s Blade Runner movie, to rewrite Jack Paglen’s first draft. The good news is that Scott must be happy with Green’s Blade Runner script if he asked the writer to stick around and work on Prometheus 2; the bad news is that Blade Runner now gets pushed farther into the future.

A Prometheus sequel has been part of the conversation even before the first movie came out, but the lukewarm public and critical response to the film seemed to defuse the idea of finding out what happened when Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the android David’s head (Michael Fassbender) took off in that ship for the Engineers’ homeworld. Despite the sense that Prometheus underperformed, it did haul in $400 worldwide – enough to convince Fox to let Scott move forward with a sequel.

Where exactly the story will lead is unknown at this point, but Green’ s script will apparently involve multiple Davids and will be more “alien-y,” meaning more like the earlier films in the Alien franchise and less like its immediate predecessor.

Whatever Scott and Green have up their sleeves – and there’s a good chance the title will change from Prometheus 2 as well – we now know that, one way or another, the Prometheus tale will be continued on March 4, 2016.

Source: The Wrap

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In 1974 the film rights to Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction novel Dune were purchased from Apjac, the production company of late Planet of the Apes producer Arthur P. Jacobs, by a French group led by producer Michel Seydoux. The man chosen to adapt the epic and complex novel to the screen was Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who had set a new standard for surreal, experimental cinema with Fando y Lis, El Topoand The Holy Mountain. Jodorowsky spent two years developing his vision of the film, which he saw as a project that would change not just cinema, but human consciousness.

To achieve his ambitious vision, he enlisted artists Jean “Moebius” Giraud and H.R. Giger to help design Dune, hired future Alien writer Dan O’Bannon to supervise the visual effects, chased Pink Floyd to score the film and cast Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali and David Carradine in key roles. Yet with all the pre-production done and Jodorowsky ready to bring Dune to the screen, the financial backing for the movie pulled out and Jodorowsky’s Dune ceased to exist.

Or did it? In his new documentary, Jodorowsky’s Dune(out now in limited release), director Frank Pavich makes the case that the iconoclastic filmmaker’s Dune is alive and well – just not in the traditional sense. Through interviews with Jodorowsky himself, Seydoux, Giger and others involved in the film, along with contemporary filmmakers and critics, Pavich suggests that Jodorowsky’s Dune exists in not just the surviving amount of pre-production material itself (some of it brought to life in Pavich’s film via animation) but in the way the project influenced and impacted the artists involved in the movie, their subsequent projects, and sci-fi cinema as a whole.

It’s a fascinating concept, an inspiring story of creativity and a terrific documentary, and Den Of Geek was more than pleased to speak with Pavich by phone about his Jodorowsky’s Dune.

Den Of Geek: What came first for you in this? Were you a Dune fan or a Jodorowsky fan first?

Frank Pavich: I came to it from the Jodorowsky side of the things. I knew his work for years. I'd been a fan of him for years. So then when I heard that he had this kind of lost film -- he's got several films which he tried to make but never actually succeeded fully. But never have I heard of a story of an unmade film that was so completely realized. Do you know what I mean? Usually there's a couple of screenplay drafts or maybe it was an actor attached or an actor wish list but I've never seen an unmade film that on paper was completely realized from the first scene to the last scene. Everything was storyboarded: every sequence; every bit of action; every movement; every bit of dialogue; all the costumes; the vehicles; it was fully cast; it had amazing soundtrack musicians involved. I've never heard of anything like that. And the fact that it was going to be a Jodorowsky film even made it that much more exciting so it was just thrilling to learn that for the first time.

What fascinated you about the idea of this unmade film, and how did that fascination turn into the idea to make your own film about it?

I think just when you hear about the wild cast of characters that he had, it's just no way you could kind of not be interested in it, I don't think. But then what’s also so interesting is the influence that it had out into the world. I don't even think we were fully aware of that until we were well into production and well into looking at the art book and stuff like that. But it's not just -– what makes it interesting to us is not the fact that it's just this unmade film, but it's an unmade film that kind of exists in the public consciousness. You see aspects of it in so many other films. Films that we've all seen. Like who do you know that has never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark? I don't think it's possible to find anyone in the U.S. that has not seen that movie, Alien or any of these other films so those ideas are still out there and continue to appear in new films. It's quite an amazing feat.

Was there a sort of a personal angle to this for you in the sense that this is your first full-length feature after years of developing other projects that didn't see fruition? Was there sort of that personal sort of relevance to you in a way?

I think on both on a conscious level and on an unconscious level. As he talks about in the film, you know, just the idea of having this ambition and just never taking no and just chasing your dreams and all this stuff that he firmly believes in, that was the way that I was approaching this film without even being aware of it at the time. Just like he was going to go throughout every restaurant in Paris to go find Orson Welles because Orson Welles was the perfect person for that role in this film, I knew that I had to search out Alejandro Jodorowsky. He had no more contact or knowledge of Orson Welles that I did with him. What made me think that I would ever be able to get in contact with someone like him and meet with him face-to-face and to tell him that I want to make this film and to actually make the film? It's just too incredible, but I guess on some level I was kind of following his methodology and the way that he makes his films and the way that he tried to make his Dune.

Was it actually difficult to get hold of Jodorowsky?

It took a while. As he says in the film, when he was looking for Moebius, how am I going to find this person? There was no Internet back then. But luckily I had the Internet. So it was definitely easier for me than it was for him in a lot of ways. But still it was difficult. I eventually found an agent that he had in Spain. So I sent an email to his agent and I said is it true that you represent Alejandro Jodorowsky? And if so I'm looking to speak with him. I would love to speak with him about possibly making a documentary about his experiences with Dune. And then a few weeks later, I woke up one morning and there was an email, an unread message from Alejandro Jodorowsky himself, which is terrifying to wake up to. Can you imagine? I didn't want to open it the whole week. I just left it unread because I was too scared -- what if it was him telling me, "Get out of here kid" or something? What if it was him crushing my dreams? I wanted to at least live for another week pretending that I would be able to make this film and pretending that I would be able to meet him.

So the week passed and then I finally had the guts to open it up. And I opened the message and it was a short message from him just saying, "I understand you're looking for me. I live in Paris. And if you want to speak to me about this project you need to come to Paris and we need to meet face-to-face." Which was fantastic. So I got an email from him an invitation to come and see him in person. How are you going to beat that? I went right away to Paris to go and meet with him. And to this day, all these years later, he's never asked who I was or what kind of projects I had done in the past. He never cared about that. He's a good reader of people and I think that for whatever reason he thought that I would tell the story properly, I would tell the story with respect and I like to think that maybe he saw in me that I was another spiritual warrior perhaps. And that I was destined to kind of do this film. Or maybe he saw just that kind of blind ambition that he has when he's making his projects. But whatever it was that he saw he was very accommodating and agreed to work together on it.

Meeting with him in person and sitting down to interview him, what kind of impression does he make?

I mean the first time it was incredibly intimidating walking into this apartment of this guy who's not even a human being. He's like a myth. Does Alejandro Jodorowsky really exist? Does the guy that made El Topo and Holy Mountain actually breathe the same air that we do? Does he bleed red blood? How is this possible that I was admitted into his apartment and was seated? Then a minute or two later he came shuffling into the room. It was the guy. It was the real live guy and it was an incredible moment to get there to meet him. And it was wonderful. It was a short meeting the first time but I kind of made my case as to why I was the person to do this film. And he was very accommodating. He's a wonderful, incredibly giving, incredibly gifted human being.

He eventually gave you complete access to his materials and the script and the famous book that we see in the film? (The mammoth book is the complete production breakdown for Dune, including script, storyboards, production and costume designs and more.)

Oh, definitely, although that wasn't offered on that first day for sure. We were seated in these two chairs were facing each other and in between us there was an ottoman. And on the ottoman he placed that Dune book, but he had it placed facing him. So I wasn't invited to look into it and I think it was just his way of teasing me a little bit to see what I would do. But there it was within reaching distance, within my grasp but I still couldn't quite grasp it yet, which was hilarious. But then as we got into production then everything was open to us completely. He said whatever we need was ours. (Producer) Michel Seydoux said whatever we need was ours. Everybody was completely supportive of the project, H.R. Giger, everybody. Once we had Jodorowsky involved it was quite easy to get the other people involved because they all love him so much that as soon as you can say I'm telling the story with the full involvement of Alejandro they were jumping at the chance to be able to tell their story because they all had a wonderful experience working on this project and they're all very grateful to Jodorowsky for seeing something in them that nobody else had at that time. So they were all thrilled to be involved. Just thrilled.

I was going to ask you specifically about getting hold of Giger because he also seems like this kind of myth living in a castle in Switzerland somewhere...

No, again he was completely thrilled. He is so incredibly accommodating and the people that he works with are so incredibly accommodating in giving us all this artwork. We had all his Dune artwork and we were working with it for a couple of years as we were editing and animating...We filmed in his museum. You know, he's got a museum in Gruyeres and we filmed there. And when we were done with the interview as we were wrapping up was when the museum was closing and the museum personnel gave us the keys. They were like, "Okay, when you're done just be sure to turn off the lights and lock the doors and we'll be at the café across the street, just bring me the keys." Fantastic. This is H.R. Giger. This is not the some joke. This is like the man, the guy, the myth as well so it was some crazy experiences like that, completely unexpected.

Did you try to get in touch with anyone from Pink Floyd about their possible involvement in Dune?

You know, we thought about it and we reached out a little bit but then at a certain point it kind of comes down a little bit to too many voices in the film. I've never been a fan of a 90-minute documentary with 90 different interviewees and you don't even know who you're looking at after a while because everybody's flying past so rapidly. So we just wanted to keep it to a very limited number of participants, like the core, core people. I definitely would not have passed up an opportunity to speak with any of them, but it just wasn't in the cards.

In your opinion was Jodorowsky's Dune actually filmable? Could it have been made? Jodorowsky envisioned this as a 12-hour film on an astronomical-for-its-time budget of $15 million...

Even the producer says it was "estimated" at 15 because who really knew what it was going to be. It was going to be as long as it was going to be and it was going to cost whatever it was going to cost. It was just going to be what it was going to be. I wonder what it would be like because looking at the technology, looking at all these things, how would they have crafted it? But it's also kind of the evolution of the project. It started as the novel and then Jodorowsky went into his castle for two months and wrote the screenplay. And then once he got his team of spiritual warriors, then they started crafting all the storyboards. And if you compare the screenplay, the actual script, to that book of artwork and storyboards they're very different. Many, many changes, many ideas evolved in the translation from script to artwork. So I'm sure that once again on set the film would have been dictated by some of the realities of the situation and it would have evolved once again. Jodorowsky talks about these little miracles. He calls them little miracles that happen when you're on the set. And sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad. Sometimes they work for you and sometimes you need to find a way around them to make something new. So I think there would've been maybe different then what he had put down on paper, but it still would have been a unique Jodorowsky-ean vision.

Do you think science fiction cinema would be different today if his Dune had come out and not Star Wars?

Think about it. We know what this timeline looks like when Dune was not completed. But those ideas still got out there and, you know, the fact is that Star Wars was completed. Now let's say that Jodorowsky's Dune did make it up onto the big screen. And let's say that it was a huge success, it proved everybody wrong and it was the biggest movie of that year. What would that have meant? Would these studio money people have taken a look at more avant-garde cinema and more auteur voices like his and seen value in them and seen the moneymaking value in them, because that's really what they care about? So maybe we would have seen more big budgeted, interesting, artistic art-house style films -- you know, more unique voices being given more chances as opposed to the kind of committee methodology of filmmaking.

And then on the flipside, what if Jodorowsky's vision of Dune had made it to the big screen and been a disaster? Let's say it was the biggest disaster in the history of mankind and it completely sunk a studio. It put thousands of people out of work. I mean think of the worst case scenario. What would happen? Because right after that or at that time more or less there was George Lucas and Gary Kurtz making Star Wars and they were making it for 20th Century Fox. And 20th Century Fox was not supportive of the film. They thought it was silly. They thought it was stupid. So if Jodorowsky's big budget science-fiction space opera had collapsed in a financial disaster I'm sure that Fox would have taken that opportunity the next day to go and pull the plug on Star Wars and we never would've had Star Wars. And without Star Wars where do you end up? What kind of films come after that without that blockbuster mentality, without these sequels, without these franchises? And if Jodorowsky's Dune would have been completed, then perhaps Alien would not have been completed, at least in the same way. And if Alien's not completed in the same way then maybe that wouldn't be successful. And then if that's not successful you don't get Aliens and Alien 3. And then you don't get the early films of David Fincher or James Cameron who all started out in that franchise. So it's really like everything that we know completely changes, completely for better or for worse. It's really an interesting set of parallel universes.

And then without the success of Alien you don't have a Blade Runner potentially because Ridley Scott doesn't have the leverage to do that.

And where does Blade Runner come from? We don't even talk about in the film but during Jodorowsky's Dune obviously that's when Moebius and Dan O'Bannon met and together they wrote a comic book called The Long Tomorrow. And if you look at The Long Tomorrow it is exactly the production design from Blade Runner. Exactly. It is that world. Moebius and Dan O'Bannon showed that to Ridley Scott and he thought it was fantastic. And then he and Syd Mead kind of ran off with it and made it into reality with Blade Runner. And what science fiction films are more influential than Alien and Blade Runner? I mean all these worlds directly lead back to Jodorowsky and his project of Dune. It's just really astounding. It's just really incredible.

In the end, your film is incredibly optimistic it's all about  the idea that you have to try to do something, and that trying to do something is better than not doing it at all, which I think is probably the basis for all art in a sense.

There's so many limitations put on all of us by the real world and by real world realities. Why would we ever want to limit ourselves? You should never tell yourself no because everybody else is going to tell you no anyway. And if you tell yourself no then you'll never do anything. You just have to keep moving forward, keep trying. And it's not about the success that you envision. It's not about the failure that you think it might be. Nothing is going to turn out exactly the way you think it's going to be, but everything has its value. Everything has its value and you learn from the process, you learn from the end result and everything has a reason. There's intrinsic value in the entire process of whatever it is you're doing, whether it's making a movie, whether it's writing this article. Whatever it is, you come out as a different person. In making this film I get to share this vision with the world. I get to speak on the phone and meet people like you who I probably would never meet otherwise. It's all fantastic and every day you learn more and more.

It's like (Jodorowsky) says in the film, the mind is like the universe and every day your mind's expanding just like the universe is expanding because your experiences are expanding. You're meeting new people. You're thinking of new ideas, new creations. And it all depends on your perspective. You can be miserable. You can go, "Oh, I didn't make my film or it didn't come out the way I wanted it to and everything sucks," or "Hey it's fantastic. Hollywood used my group. Isn't that amazing? Look at Giger, look at his career. Look at Chris Foss. Look at Moebius. Look at Dan O'Bannon, that's incredible." And that's the only way to be. That's the only way that you can live otherwise you'll shrivel up and die. There's a reason that Jodorowsky is 85 years old but comes across as a young man, because he has that youthful spirit, that positivity which really means so much.

Have you seen his latest film (La danze de la realidad/The Dance of Reality)?

Oh, I've seen it several times. It's amazing. The film is incredible. If you haven't seen it yet it's totally amazing. And you can see there's a sequence in the new film, which also comes from Dune. You can see a similarity from one of the scenes that we animated to one in his new film. So he's still taking those ideas that he's struggling to get out into the universe and putting them out in the universe. It's amazing.

We had the David Lynch version, we had the SyFy Channel miniseries and then recently Peter Berg (Lone Survivor) was trying to do a new theatrical version and that went belly up. Do you think there's a definitive version of Dune that can be made?

I wonder at this point. I mean I think there is the Lynch version, which is the really unique vision of it. Then there's the SyFy one, which I have not seen the SyFy one but a lot of people like it and people say it's a very true page to screen adaptation. So I guess that kind of satisfies the people looking for that. But I mean what would the next version be? Is it possible? Can you tell that massive story in a film version? I mean maybe it would have to be a miniseries or an HBO type series or a Netflix series or something like that. But those are difficult because so many of those ideas have been taken, I think, already -- not just from Jodorowsky's version but from the novel. I mean would Star Wars have opened up on the desert planet of Tatooine if Dune was not based on the desert planet of Arrakis? Probably not. And then people say, "I've seen this before." It kind of happened with John Carter.

So I don't know if Dune could ever been made again. It's interesting because people also make fun of Jodorowsky too and it's like of course you couldn't make this film. Who's going to make a 20-hour –- nobody wants to watch 20 hours. He said recently the public, the viewers, they have an urge to see longer stories. This whole idea of short attention spans was maybe not completely true. People binge watch series on Netflix or on DVD and they watch a season of a TV show, which is anywhere between 12 and 20 hours, exactly as long as he was thinking his Dune might be. How many Harry Potter movies were there? Seven, nine? We've already had two Hunger Games films and six Star Wars films and people want to see these longer more involved tales in these universes that exist within each of these stories. So once again it's an example of how I think he was ahead of the times.

Are there any other great unmade films, sci-fi or otherwise, that fascinate you in this way?

There are lots of great unmade projects of course, but nothing that really captured my interest like this, nothing that I know of that lives beyond that unmade project. If this was just an unmade project, who would really care? But it's an unmade project that lives, that still exists. You can see in so many places. It's like Kubrick's Napoleon. People consider Kubrick's Napoleon to be the greatest film never made. But I disagree. I think it's Jodorowsky's Dune because it has the power to keep living. Kubrick's Napoleon was fascinating, looking at all his research, it's an amazing thing, but does it go beyond that? Did it still get out into the universe? Jodorowsky's Dune is so powerful that it can't be contained in that book. It has to get out there.

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At this point, the genesis of the Hollywood Noah’s Ark adaptation is almost as famous as the biblical flood narrative itself: A legendary director takes on one of the Bible’s most famous Old Testament stories from Genesis, one with an angry God, an angrier flood, and a lot of requisite special effects that are essential to pull off the proper disaster. The movie is big, the movie is controversial, and the movie costs so much that the studio is demanding multiple edits of the picture for the most effective commercial appeal.

I’m of course talking about Noah’s Ark, the 1928 early talkie directed by Michael Curtiz, the man who would go on to make such Hollywood masterpieces as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1942), and White Christmas (1954). As all good stories find themselves passed on from one generation to the next, it is almost shocking that save for the ridiculous The Bible:In the Beginning… (1966), there has not been another big budget go at Noah and his majestic ark until this weekend’s Noah. Of course, despite the controversy surrounding the already infamous director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan) and his over-budgeted take of the Bible story, as well as Ari Handel’s graphic novel, it ultimately remains a tale as old as the movies. Long before Russell Crowe’s Noah had a vision of God and a whole lot of H2O, burgeoning Californian studios were also seeing the signs, golden calves or otherwise.

Frankly, compared to the drama Curtiz’s Noah underwent—three extras drowned during the shooting of the flood scenes (John Wayne was also an extra that day on set), talking scenes needing to be reshot after the success of The Jazz Singer, and that Warner Brothers ended up cutting over half an hour out of the film following an anemic premiere—the complaints that Aronofsky’s approach to the material is not biblical enough or that he has spiced up the story by making a minor Genesis character (Tubal-cain) into a villainous, war-faring Ray Winstone, seem quaint. In fact, it is par for the course, because like Noah, we’re not at the end of a movie’s release—we’re at the dawn of the Biblical Epic’s resurrection.

Given the large number of faith-oriented moviegoers in the U.S. alone, a vocal demographic that has risen in cultural prominence since the 2000 presidential election, it feels somewhat belated that the studio system has come back around to the Bible. And by that, I do not mean the History Channel and Mark Burnett re-cutting their Bible miniseries for the umpteenth time for a quick, if impressive, cash grab at movie theaters in February. No, the studios are finally cashing in on at least a certain type of Bible story in a way that has not been seen in decades. Hit or miss, Paramount and Aronofsky’s Noah has opened the floodgates for others to pursue likely less controversial tactics in their biblical passion plays. After all, later this year, Ridley Scott of Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven will be tackling the story of Moses for the 21^st century in 20^th Century Fox’s Exodus. Casting Christian Bale at the height of movie stardom in the role of another orphaned hero who will not give up on his people will likely pay off in dividends for its Christmas and Hanukkah timed release. And Lionsgate is finally getting their Passion of the Christ prequel, Mary, off the ground. That picture is to feature Ben Kingsley as King Herod and was going to include Peter O’Toole in the role of a wise man before his passing. Of course, as successful as the 2004 Mel Gibson New Testament movie is, there is a reason why a prequel to that would be extremely difficult to execute.

It seems that we are on the cusp of the Biblical Epic’s second coming, and honestly, it is surprising that it took so long. For the last 35 years, American cinema (for better or worse) has been built around cultivating a tentpole system that offers heavy spectacle in the summer to finance the prestige in the winter. The advent of the internet, smartphones, truly brilliant television, and a myriad of other competitive distractions has accelerated this system’s growth and urgency, which in the last 10 years could be summed up as a plethora of superhero movies, a few micro-budgeted horror flicks, and a little left over to finance the distribution of someone else’s already completed and audience-friendly picture. As the genre du jour of the last decade—fantastical stories of caped and robed men doing miraculous things for the betterment of mankind—are mostly being consolidated either at Disney or Warner Bros., the rest of the studios are forced to look for another brand with instant name recognition and mass-market appeal. Consider that the first film ever shot in CinemaScope, the widescreen format that would forever change the way people watched movies and even the shapes of their television sets, was 1953’s pious howler The Robe. Not unlike when Hollywood turned to the Good Book during the first decade of television’s popularity, the time has come again for Tinsletown to find religion.

And it is a perfect marriage, despite the always vocally displeased religious leaders who view the supposed modern day Sodom and Gomorrah as an unworthy outlet for the sacred texts. In general, whatever misgivings artistic license creates to the most faithful, the Bible is a perfect excuse for the congregation to soak in some big screen entertainment. Indeed, despite the teachings of the book being ever so devout and insistently well intentioned, both the Old Testament and the New are crawling with sex, violence, and the other vices that Hollywood movies are normally denounced for under any other secular circumstance. For those worried about sinfully smutty entertainment, Bible-themed movies allow one to embrace those inclinations sin-free.

The aforementioned The Passion of the Christ made $370 million at the 2004 U.S. box office (only $3 million behind Spider-Man 2), and that was largely thanks to church leaders encouraging congregations to see the movie, even booking tickets for worshippers, children included, embracing a film that Roger Ebert called the most violent he’d ever seen, and far exceeding the graphic nature of previously denounced hot button pictures like Pulp Fiction, The Matrix, and Gibson’s very own Braveheart. Yet, that movie is far and beyond the norm of most Biblical Epics, which besides usually being in English, can offer more mainstream enticements than 120 minutes of flogging and impalement.

At the start of her career, icy blonde Lana Turner made her name by playing demure good girls, a bemusing feat in retrospect given her taste in men, and an ability to knock them dead. While that visage of virtue came crashing down when she played the femme fatale in 1946’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, she maintained a certain level of mainstream accessibility until her private life cut sharply into the headlines. This is probably why she was cast in 1955’s The Prodigal, a Hollywood expansion on the New Testament parable found in the Gospel of Luke. A rather short and sweet story about the wayward son returning home to his father’s non-judging arms, the MGM picture turned it into a vision of lustful seduction when a pagan priestess, who does not appear in the Bible, named Samarra (Turner) convinces the younger son Micah to waste his inheritance on the local Pagan cult who die in fire and brimstone. Not unlike creating a villain in Aronofsky’s Noah that undoubtedly will be in need of smiting before the end credits, the inclusion of a popular female movie star, and the sex she might sell, is a staple of almost any successful Hollywood movie, be she Scarlett O’Hara or Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. And it still may work, as seen in Noah’s most recent trailer, which is introduced by current Hollywood sweetheart Emma Watson, before it cuts to her character of Ila, Noah’s adopted daughter, frolicking in the woods with Shem (Douglas Booth), Noah’s genetic son. But they aren’t playing like brothers and sisters.

As with the violence associated in most biblical tales, the appearance of women in the Bible, not the most feminist of books, has been expanded into many theatrical tickets sales for decades. It’s worth noting that John the Baptist is one of the New Testament’s greatest heroes. He foretold the Christ’s arrival before the messiah appeared and is believed to be the man who baptized Jesus Christ as an early follower of his teachings. And yet, while appearing in many films, including in one as biblical triple-threat Charlton Heston with The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), there is not a single movie named after pious John or his journeys. Conversely, Salome, the woman believed to order John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter after an erotic dance performed for father King Herod’s court, has had at least six films made where she is the titular star. It is a remarkable achievement when she is not even actually named in the Bible as the female dancer who ordered John’s head à la carte, but like the myth of Mary Magdalene being a prostitute, many know the story of the devilishly dangerous succubus named Salome.

In fact, she was a box office draw when she got the glam treatment as played by Rita Hayworth in 1953’s Salome. Based on the 1891 Oscar Wilde play of the same name, the auburn-haired star, who turned Gilda into a classic simply with the suggestive flick of a glove off her wrist, played Salome as a tragic heroine, one whose sexy “Dance of the Seven Veils” was performed to save John the Baptist’s life! It may not have been scripture, but it was a hit, just like the movie that inspired it, Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949), a picture that turned Delilah’s (Hedy Lemarr) seductive manipulation of Hebrew judge Samson into an epic love story, and the biggest hit of that year.

Like the binary role of women in counterculture’s film noir movement, as well as mainstream Hollywood’s big budget Westerns, the post-war Bible films depicted the fairer sex in one of two roles: the virtuous good girl that the hero should end up with (but usually doesn’t in noir) and the tempestuous siren selling pleasure on a silver plate. Whether it is Nefretiri (Anne Baxter) in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), an Egyptian queen who never appears to know Moses in the Old Testament’s Book of Exodus, or Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward in David and Bathsheba (Darryl Zanuck’s 1951 rebuttal to Samson and Delilah), Hollywood’s biggest Biblical Epics had a habit of extrapolating minor or non-existent characters into the most popular films of yesteryear. The importance of this is that it reveals the Bible as a treasure trove of storied material that audiences once, and likely would again, get behind as it indulges in behavior that certain moviegoers would otherwise avoid or condemn. It is especially paramount in adapting New Testament stories, because unlike 2014’s big budget Noah and Exodus stories, “the greatest story ever told,” is one of the hardest to sell to mainstream moviegoers.

The most successful and easily the best film to derive from the New Testament is the 1959 remake of Ben-Hur. The biggest selling American novel of the late 19^th century, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1880) was written by former American Civil War Union General Lew Wallace and is an extravagant literary rationalization for becoming a follower of Christ (with a healthy dose of The Count of Monte Cristo thrown in). And William Wyler’s 1959 vision of the film is a stunning realization of that story with Charlton Heston at his most earnest as Judah Ben-Hur, a marble statue given something approximating life and a deep well of stoic charisma by the silverscreen icon. Betrayed by a boyhood friend, Heston’s Jewish prince is sentenced to death on the high seas as a slave for the Roman Empire with only a helping hand given by a passing carpenter holding a divine cup of water. Ben-Hur’s story of revenge, redemption, and transcendence follows that of Jesus Christ from his Sermon on the Mount to finally his crucifixion on the vacillating and complicit order of Pontius Pilate (a wonderfully effete performance by Frank Thring). The movie did boffo box office and won a record 11 Academy Awards. And like the earlier 1925 silent Ben-Hur, everyone only remembers the dazzling chariot chase where Ben-Hur defeats his vengeful nemesis Messala (Stephen Boyd) in staggering 70mm photography.

It is a prime example of adapting “A Tale of the Christ” without ever having to fully show his face. While the Christian Messiah has been a popular subject for moviemaking ever since From the Manger to the Cross (1912), the first-ever Jesus movie and one of the first feature-length films, his story has also been one usually deferred to in favor of Old Testament cinema. The first Hollywood account of the carpenter from Nazareth was Intolerance (1917), a production overseen by the woefully wrong messenger, D.W. Griffith. As the filmmaker responsible for the KKK renaissance of the 1920s with his cinematic opus Birth of a Nation (1915), Griffith tried to make it a point that he wasn’t that racist with Intolerance, a three-and-a-half hour epic that intercuts between four moments of “historic” intolerance, including the crucifying of Jesus Christ. After the script was labeled Anti-Semitic by certain Jewish groups, Griffith found himself changing the slant of the film to place emphasis on Romans for the execution of Christ. The movie was a financial flop and marked the subject as a matter that future filmmakers would largely choose to avoid (or to hit-up with a whip in the most medieval of ways in Gibson’s 2004 case).

Indeed, the Biblical Epic was on its way out in the 1960s, but two of the most high-profile flops in the genre were King of Kings (1961) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). The first of which was Nicholas Ray’s ham-fisted remake of the equally stuffy Cecil B. DeMille 1927 silent movie of the same name. The prospect of Ray, a filmmaker best known for early realist pieces like Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and hard-hitting noir that hit even too hard for star Humphrey Bogart with In a Lonely Place (1950), making an earnest Jesus picture sounded like a bad idea from the word go. This is a man who blacklisted his ex-wife Gloria Grahame after he found her in bed with his 13-year-old son from another marriage. And the general consensus ultimately agreed about this woeful material choice when King of Kings had a not-so-kingly box office and critical response. The Greatest Story faired a little better creatively as directed by George Stevens and an uncredited David Lean. Importing Swedish acting heavyweight Max von Sydow, still only eight years out from his star-turn in The Seventh Seal, to play Jesus was a creative coup too. The picture also featured Heston in his biblical hat trick. Nonetheless, the movie was a financial flop that nearly sank United Artists as its biggest misfire…until Heaven’s Gate finished the job in 1980, sending UA into the corporate afterlife of MGM’s celestial arms.

Secular moviegoers and Christians alike delight in tales stemming from the New Testament, but like an Easter Day celebration, many would prefer it without the Jesus-themed sermon. The 1953 box office juggernaut The Robe introduced audiences to CinemaScope in a big way by proving that television was not the end-all-be-all, and that Jesus is a moneymaker, in literal passing. Following the hand-offs of the robe Jesus wore on the day of his execution, like in Ben-Hur, Christ is mostly an off-screen presence. After Richard Burton’s Marcellus Gallio, a Roman tribute and ladies man, wins Christ’s robe in a dice game, he finds himself drawn to save virtuous good girl genre trope Jean Simmons from the evils of her betrothed Caligula (Jay Robinson) and also from Roman paganism since they both convert to Christianity by the film’s end. Rather than the teachings of what Christ promised, moviegoers have long preferred a focus on what Jesus proposed humanity not to do. The biggest New Testament stories are therefore the ones that focus on the might, as well as hedonism, of the Roman Empire.

Besides Ben-Hur, the biggest New Testament movie likely remains Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross, a 1932 pre-Code epic about devout early Christians and the lions that ate them. In Emperor Nero’s (Charles Laughton) Rome, DeMille could tease audiences with every imaginable salacious pagan fantasy. Scandalously lurid with its gladiatorial fights, Christian-devouring lions, lesbian dances, implied orgies, monkey-Christian fondling, and a naked Claudette Colbert taking a barely-obscured bath, the movie is cited as one of the most notorious 1930s Hollywood horrors that led to the Hays Code in 1934 (and the later censoring of The Sign of the Cross). But since DeMille ended the tale with Roman patrician Marcus Superbus (Fredric March) falling in love with a young Christian girl (Elissa Landi), who he then chooses to die with in the lion’s pit, the movie had audience approval from the less stiff moviegoers, thereby cementing DeMille as the go-to Biblical Epic director.

When looking at the vast expanse of cinema’s Biblical Epic genre, DeMille’s name ascends higher than any not called Yahweh. Born in 1881 to an Episcopalian lay minister from North Carolina and a Sephardic Jewish mother of German heritage, DeMille’s parents shared a love for drama and theatre. All of those values were instilled in DeMille at a young age, as he later credited attending an Episcopal church in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey as the location where he dreamed of dramatizing the Book of Exodus, leading to two separate films called The Ten Commandments. Becoming a stage actor in 1900 and one of Hollywood’s earliest pioneer directors by 1914, DeMille would go on to carve out an immortal niche in Hollywood for larger than life epics, many with more than a hint of his religious upbringing: The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments again in 1956. As much the progenitor of the silent film trope (along with Griffith’s Intolerance) of pairing a contemporary story with a biblical one, therein sneaking in the sermon most vividly as seen with his first Ten Commandments, DeMille could be argued as the one who ushered in the Biblical Epic at its peak in the 1950s.

When Samson and Delilah became the biggest hit of 1949, the scale and pageantry associated with a Cecil B. DeMille movie became synonymous with the Bible. In the first age of television’s vast invasion of popular consciousness, it was the widescreen Biblical Epics, along with Westerns and Musicals, that stood tallest in theatrical Hollywood’s desperation for mass entertainment attention. Movies got bigger, longer, and more visually decadent than Rome’s bread and circuses. The biggest New Testament films took a page from DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross by focusing on everything but that Cross until the obligatory come to Jesus finale, and the Old Testament movies got bigger and bawdier. But none were bigger than The Ten Commandments in 1956.

The two films that mark the height of the genre, sharing the same star and only three years of separation, could not be more different. While Ben-Hur was a big screen spectacle meant to exhilarate with populist entertainment—like Chariot races and mutinous battles on the high seas, shot in gorgeously bright colors that reveled in the Roman exterior sunlight as much as the earthy browns of the film’s Libyan locations—The Ten Commandments was a darker and almost apocalyptic movie that dived right into DeMille’s reading of the Gospels. Unlike William Wyler, who later said Ben-Hur was meant to be a thinking man’s biblical [i.e. Cecil B. DeMille] movie, DeMille painstakingly observed what he thought was true to the scripture that marked his first Biblical Epic, and now his last. Despite being shot on location in Egypt and Mount Sinai, DeMille’s second Ten Commandments is a dark, ominous film filled with stylized lighting for an ancient world long gone, struck away by each lightning strike thrown from the Creator. Well past the third hour mark, when Moses comes down from the mountain to see that his followers have made a mockery of God by worshipping a golden idol, the film takes on disastrous proportions far greater than any parting of the Red Sea.

Intended to be DeMille’s final masterpiece, the movie feels like a stark judgment on human failure, even if DeMille sees every frame as nothing short of incredible achievement. Casting his previous collaborator Charlton Heston of The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) as Moses, DeMille made public comparisons between the actor’s physique and righteousness with Michelangelo’s marble likeness of the Hebrew chain-breaker. In fact, that was his introduction to the film with his 10-minute trailer dedicated to showing off fidelity to the material that he is introducing. It is also likely why he served as the omnipresent narrator bearing witness to this tale of Jewish liberation. One could almost wish he also dubbed himself over Anne Baxter’s line readings as well.

Revisiting The Ten Commandments with sound, color, and Heston was meant to be DeMille’s final magnum opus on this mortal coil, which became a reality when the director died of a heart attack three years later. And as he passed, so too did his genre of choice.

In the decade of Vietnam, civil rights, and Woodstock, the stories that once offered a sense of stability and moral fortitude became increasingly dated and out of touch for the boomer generation. Beyond the encroachment of television, the Biblical Epic like the mythic Western offered a comforting parable for the supposedly war-weary generation that won WWII. Tired of combat and modern horrors, Hollywood’s biggest budgets were dedicated to either completely obscuring reality’s strife or placing the lens on “good versus evil” and “us versus them.” White hats and black hats, American GIs and Nazis, or Christians and Romans, it was always at least partially about reminding audiences of moral certainty. DeMille even compared Moses’ struggle against Ramesses II and the Egyptians as the fight of freedom-lovers everywhere against the tyranny of communism. However, after that supposed struggle sank Americans into a needless war in Southeast Asia, one that was costing the next generation thousands of lives, the parents’ entertainments and diversions—including Westerns, Musicals, and the Biblical Epic—became more than passé; they were offensive. The Italian-American collaboration of The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966), which attempted to recount the entire Book of Genesis through pretty European things gallivanting around the Garden of Eden and director John Huston humbly casting himself as Noah, the savior of humanity during the Great Flood, proved to be an even greater flop.

The naturalism ushered in by Marlon Brando, James Dean, and the plethora of other graduates from Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio made the noble strutting of Heston, DeMille’s Michelangelo statue, seem antiquated. By the time The Greatest Story Ever Told nearly capsized UA, younger moviegoers were deserting Hollywood tropes in droves. Ironically, Greatest Story’s Jesus Christ, the eternally wizened and world-weary Max von Sydow, would have far better luck at bringing moviegoers to Jesus in the ensuing decade by scaring the Hell out of them. Playing old and decrepit again while still in his youth, von Sydow was The Exorcist in the 1973 religious horror movie directed by the notoriously agnostic William Friedkin. Modern, cold, and disturbingly naturalized in its presentation of demonic activity within the confines of everyday Georgetown, the movie earned $400 million worldwide despite its hard, hard R-rating. In the stripped down, insistently authentic era of the film school generation that ruled the roost in imploded 1970s Hollywood, this is as far as serious religious filmmaking would go.

And yet…that brief shining moment of auteurism running Hollywood has long ended. Somewhere between the release of Star Wars in 1977 and UA finally going under with the beautifully boring Heaven’s Gate in 1980, the studio system bounced back by demonizing creativity in favor of the reliably recognizable blockbuster. And what could be more recognized than the Bible?

So, here we are again, on the cusp of what appears to be the first biblical blockbuster of the modern era. And unlike the gospels of Marvel, DC, or George Lucas, these are characters that have no licensing and copyright fees. The only major intervening Hollywood Bible studies since the reemergence of a (corporate) studio business model were Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Gibson’s Passion project. Those both broke the unwritten rule of filming Christ’s story that goes back to the heyday of Griffith, yet even the latter still proved to be a box office juggernaut despite no major studio financing and being performed entirely in Aramaic and Latin.

An English-spoken Old Testament tale with movie stars like Russell Crowe and starlets like Emma Watson is so out of Cecil B. DeMille’s playbook that Anthony Hopkins may as well be doing a Charlton Heston impersonation. New CGI creatures and Tubal-cain may not be in “Noah’s Ark,” but such minor fine print details haven’t silenced the choir in the past from hallelujah-ing over the inconsistencies; I expect them to be just as loud as ever in an era where golden, red, blue, and green idols of every stripe are worshipped each summer by moviegoers making their annual pilgrimage to the next masked avenger movie. And if Aronofsky’s mind, the place where Natalie Portman turning into a giant dancing swan made perfect sense, is a little too warped for the congregation, Scott and Bale will be there next Sunday to deliver a fresh sermon. Soon, many more studios might be counting their blessings.

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I am nothing if not an objective, dispassionate observer, borderline Spock-like in my capacity to ruthlessly apply cold rationality and irrefutable logic to dissections of popular culture. So when I call Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie* not just one of the finest entertainment experiences of all time, but a poignant exploration of the meaning of heroism and identity in an increasingly alienating and unfamiliar world (i.e. the 1990s), you can be sure that I am operating without bias.

I have no agenda, no axe to grind. My judgement is not impaired by the rosy tint of childhood memories, emotional connections or nostalgic associations; and even if I had been seven years old when this film came out, and an absolute Power Rangers fanatic, and had been walking through London with my dad, and spotted a cinema showing it, and almost combusted with excitement when my dad said we could go and see it, why would that have any bearing on my ability to analyse it now, as a grown human in my mid-20s? What does it matter if, for example, I had been more excited about the appearance of free movie-related toys in my cereal than I had been about my last set of Christmas presents? Who are you to judge me?

No one, that’s who. So - children, adults and teenagers (preferably with attitude), gather round, don your colour-coordinated outfits, power up your all-encompassing platitudes about believing in yourself, and let’s jump outta this plane.

Together.

“Smells like… teenagers.”

Picture the scene. It’s 1995. Halfway through the 1990s. Ten years previously, Marty McFly travelled back to the future. Ten years later, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith would finally draw a curtain on the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Suffice it to say, we’re halfway through a 20-year period in which very little happened that was good, or at all. Bill Clinton supported Oasis at Knebworth with a set of free jazz. Sunny Delight arrived in the UK, and was later renamed SunnyD.

Another beloved TV series, Tom And Jerry, got the film treatment (Tom And Jerry: The Movie), except this adaptation was godawful rubbish, mostly because the titular duo conversed like people, and before you say they talked in the TV show sometimes let me pre-empt you by shouting NOT LIKE THIS THEY DIDN’T and violently slamming the door on any further debate on the subject.

Enter the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. The heroes we needed right then, if not the ones we deserved, although I definitely deserved them. The series premiered in America in 1993 and concerned five (later six) teenagers granted incredible powers, snazzy colour-coded spandex suits and giant battle robots by Zordon, an extraterrestrial head who lived in another dimension (or something) and was assisted by a hyperactive robot given to exclamations of “aye-yi-yi-yi-yi”, which was rarely helpful. Together, the five (later six) Rangers, along with their dinosaur-themed (later animal-themed, and later who cares because I stopped watching) robots (or Zords), fought terrible (in more ways than one) monsters sent by the evil Rita Repulsa (and later her boss / arch-nemesis / husband / body horror nightmare Lord Zedd). It’s exactly as good as it sounds, i.e. brilliant.

The series always maintained a certain tacky charm, not least because most of the fight scenes (in fact, pretty much any scene in which the Rangers had their helmets on or piloted their Zords) were pinched from Japanese sentai series like Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger. These shows were a goldmine for production company Saban Entertainment, as all they had to do was shoot linking scenes with American actors and splice them (often awkwardly) together with footage recycled from elsewhere.

When the movie came about, however, there was to be none of this recycling business. Having made approximately ninety bajillion dollars through the series and related merchandise, Saban Entertainment and distributor 20th Century Fox pulled out all the stops when assembling the feature film, and for all its flaws (it has few, if any), it is undeniable that the film looked good on the big screen. From the sweet re-designed non-spandex suits to the re-recorded theme song, this was no cheaply thrown-together feature-length episode. This was a movie, damn it.

Morphenomenal!

So why is it great, you ask? Well, that suggests that you haven’t watched it. In which case you should go and watch it now. Except that if you didn’t watch it when you were younger, you may come to it with too much pre-existing bias, and will therefore be unable to appreciate it objectively. So maybe you shouldn’t watch it.

So why is it great, you ask? Or, to be more accurate, why is it morphenomenal? Well, it starts with a skydiving sequence soundtracked by the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ cover of Stevie Wonder’s Higher Ground, featuring some of the most face-chewingly righteous slap bass in the history of ever. Actually, before that it has an epic expository narration that adds a real mythic weight to proceedings. Then it has skydiving and slap bass. Boom. If my seven-year-old mind was blown, how exactly could anyone else’s mind not be?

Then there’s the villain, Ivan Ooze, a purple sorceror played with sadistic, pantomimic glee by Paul Freeman. Yes, Belloq. I know, right? One of his first acts upon release from his 6,000-year imprisonment is to trap Rita and Zedd, the franchise’s nominal villains, in a snow globe, and while some might argue that he should have killed them, I feel it’s much more effective that he reduces them to ridiculous figures, embarrassing them in front of their minions. It instantly establishes a new status quo: this will not be a run-of-the-mill Power Rangers outing. The game has changed. Our heroes are up against a villain so uncompromising and badass that he imprisons the previous bad guys, then breaks into the Command Centre and BLOWS IT UP. Seriously. All of it. Zordon is left to die beneath a manky blanket, and the Rangers are left without power or hope. And that’s, like, 20 minutes or so into the film.

These are what we call stakes, people. Specifically, high ones.

At this point, it seems appropriate to bring Sartre into proceedings. John Paul Sartre was two parts Beatle, one part French magician, and he revolutionised the teachings of existentialism, a philosophy whose underlying point is that we shouldn't worry, because we mean nothing in and of ourselves, and therefore if we mean nothing, then there's nothing to worry about. In the wrong hands, this is a bleak and nihilistic philosophy, and at first the movie seems to wholeheartedly embrace its darker undertones, suggesting that without their powers, the Rangers’ lives are essentially meaningless - if a de-powered Ranger does unnecessary acrobatics in a forest, do they make a sound? This theme is initially presented as a study in futility, and the film does not retreat from its terrifying implications; and while Sartre's idea of 'meaning' may not have involved teleporting to a distant planet, meeting a hot witch in a green bikini and fighting a load of rock monsters to regain one's lost power (in a natty ninja ensemble, naturally), the parallels are undeniable.

Ultimately, in a sly satirical poke at some of Fred Nietzsche's more outré moments, the Rangers redefine their own existences by becoming supermen (and women) again, thoroughly inverting the Nietzschean archetype. We may be born without inherent meaning or essence, but we can make our own essence, find our own meaning. Zordon may have chosen the Power Rangers, implying some form of predestination or even a theistic interpretation of human purpose, but here they choose to fight, and to regain their abilities – abilities that, crucially, are exponentially more badass once they return to Earth to defeat Ivan Ooze. In its own way, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie is as pure a portrayal of Sartre's humanist existentialism as you could want.

Drop dead Fred

Now, in the interests of balance, I will address some of the movie’s flaws, which, while major, are still not major enough to derail it. In actual fact, the film has exactly one flaw: Fred Kelman.

Fred Kelman is the Rangers’ kid friend. He wears a backwards baseball cap, has daddy issues, and eventually leads the kids of Angel Grove to rise up against their zombiefied parents, first with an inspirational speech, then by driving a train, and finally by operating a fire hose. He’s also shit. And awful. And rubbish. He is the Scrappy Doo of this film. It's Godzooky. It's lil' Ani Skywalker. I hated him when I was seven, and I hate him now. After watching this film, who did I want to be when I played Power Rangers in the playground? Maybe the Red Ranger, although he was better when he was Jason. Maybe the Black Ranger, although he was definitely better when he was Zach. But more than likely Tommy, the White Ranger (don’t call him the White Power Ranger because it’s distinctly un-righteous).

Guess who I didn’t want to be? Fred Kelman, that’s who.

I'd rather be Bulk or Skull. Or Ernie, come to that, at least he makes a bangin' smoothie. In fact, if you could find me one child in the entire universe who wanted to be the Rangers’ cocky firehose-totin’ buddy, then I will happily beat them up, even if it means sacrificing the principles of fairness and not-being-a-bully that the Power Rangers taught me. Nobody wanted to be Fred. We didn’t need him. We’d already spent years with these superheroes. We loved them. It's not a stretch to say that we worshipped them. We did not need some kind of crowbarred-in audience identification figure. Fred stank of studio interference, of soulless, coke-snorting execs who think that children need to have children in films in order to like films. He represents everything that is wrong with the contemporary blockbuster movie paradigm; he precipitated its decline, in many ways. He is just the worst. He is worse than the trailer for the new Postman Pat film (although he’s probaby not as bad as the full film; I’ll never know, I ain’t watching it).

“It’s morphin’ time!”

Like all great stories, at its heart, Power Rangers is about fighting. Casablanca may be one of the greatest movies ever made, if not the greatest, but it’s not quite the greatest because it has no fighting.

Power Rangers, however, has loads of fighting, including a superbly atmospheric pre-morphing dust-up on a construction site; an even superblier atmospheric post-morphing slime-down in some dank underground place nearby; a crunchy ruckus on the shores of an alien ocean; the aforementioned rock monster melee; a CGI giant robot smack-fest as awesome as anything in Pacific Rim; and a climax in which the Megazord KNEES IVAN OOZE IN THE BALLS, SENDING HIM SPINNING INTO THE PATH OF A COMET TO DIE. I know, right?! No intergalactic prison for this villain. You fuck with the Power Rangers, your ass gets vaporised. Need I say more?

No. I need not.

Go go Power Rangers!

A cursory glance at the film’s Wikipedia page yields troubling results. It received 'a mixed reaction' from critics, apparently. Roger Ebert, in possibly the only misstep of his otherwise triumphant career, gave it one out of four stars. Caryn James of The New York Times said the film was “loud, headache-inducing and boring for adults, but that children would enjoy it”. Is that supposed to be negative? Also, why did The New York Times review this film?

Luckily, Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times redeems the discipline of film criticism, praising the “barrage of spectacular special effects, a slew of fantastic monsters, a ferociously funny villain – and, most important[ly], a refreshing lack of pretentiousness”. He’s obviously cool, and I’d like to hang out with him.

So there you have it. A near-flawless (I’m looking at you, Fred Kelman) cinematic adaptation of a kids’ favourite, which translated everything good about the show to the screen in a slick, exciting fashion and pumped the awesomeness into overdrive; a moving meditation on the power of power and the hero’s identity; a nuanced exploration of Sartrean dynamics; loads of cool fighting. In the words of Tommy Oliver, the White Ranger:

“8-ball, corner pocket!”

*while the series and film spell it Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, I have chosen to add an apostrophe to “morphin”. Why? BECAUSE APOSTROPHES ARE IMPORTANT, THAT’S WHY

Many men have played the part of Hercules in the past, but few have done so with so much conviction that their scream can induce the title to screech across the screen in fiery letters. Yes, Dwayne Johnson is Hercules in this summer’s new Brett Ratner-directed film, and he looks to be one for the ages as he dispenses justice to man and giant-lion-things alike!

Based on the Radical Studios graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars, Hercules finds the legendary hero (Johnson) on his own personal odyssey after committing an unforgivable sin. Hercules travels ancient Greece as a mercenary for hire with a fellowship of fighters until he is beseeched to help the ruler of Thrace and his lovely daughter to overthrow a warlord. Hercules will have to embrace his divinity once more.

Hercules, also starring Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Joseph Fiennes, John Hurt, and Rebecca Ferguson,opens July 25, 2014.

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Dying is easy, but war is Hell. And for better or worse, Tom Cruise’s Lt. Col. Bill Cage is going to experience both horrors over and over again until he can get things right in Edge of Tomorrow, a sci-fi alien invasion movie by way of Groundhog Day. Check out the new trailer for the high-concept summer actioner below.

In the future, an inexperienced military commander (Tom Cruise) must lead his men into a suicide mission of a battle…resulting in their instant deaths. But when Lt. Col. Bill Cage wakes up, he is alive and forced to relive the battle again. Each day brings a new challenge as he fights to stay alive. Also starring Emily Blunt as Special Forces officer Rita, the film is directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith).

Edge of Tomorrow will be released on June 6, 2014.

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Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has been rumored and/or linked with various DC Comics projects for some time. There were persistent Lobo rumors. He was on track to play Black Adam in a Shazamfilm (that will probably never materialize) at one point. And then in recent months, ol' Rocky has been stoking the fires of the internet about his plans to appear in a DC Comics superhero movie. He's still not telling us who it is, though.

Johnson told ComingSoon that he and DC Comics have been engaged in "ongoing discussions...for years about the right character." Yes, well, that brings us back to the Lobo rumor and the Black Adam connection...not to mention the Jon Stewart/Green Lantern scenario (more on that in a minute). But Mr. Johnson won't settle for just any DC Comics character, he has a pretty specific vision in mind, and that there are three essential qualities that the character must have in order to be portrayed by him.

"The first quality we were looking for is that he had to be extremely complex and have a lot going on and what that does for me as an actor and for the studio, just gives us space that we can explore his complexities. The other quality is that the character we were looking for had to be well known but never brought to life. That does, again as an actor, is that it gives me a little bit of space and it just gives me a chance to put an imprint into his personality with the set of tools that I can bring to the table and put a very unique twist on his personality but still pay homage to who he is. The third thing and most important is that he had to be a badass mother***ker and on a Superman level of power where he could throw down. In those three qualities, I'm happy we've found that character and right now we're out to a lot of writers."

So...that works. Since it sounds like we're not going to see anything resembling a Shazam movie anytime in the near future, we can eliminate Black Adam. At one point, it sounded like Green Lantern Jon Stewart was a possibility, based on some casual remarks made by Mr. Johnson, although that seems to be out, as well. Even though Jon Stewart is not Hal Jordan, Rock mooted that idea in a tweet with a fan this afternoon, since he considers Green Lantern to already have been done.

Green Lantern (John Stewart) and Black Adam are my fav superheroes, but GL's already been made and stamped. #RockTalk@CFitzyy

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) March 25, 2014

And then there's this...

Myself & DC have agreed on a character.. extremely complex, well known (but never played) and a pure BAD ASS MF;) #RockTalk .@ThomasEspin

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) March 25, 2014

A "well known (but never played)" character? A "pure BAD ASS" sounds like Lobo...but is Lobo really considered "well-known" outside of comic shops? For that matter, is Cyborg? "Well known" is a bit of a sticking point, as it would appear to refer to one of DC's core, heavily-licensed characters, like a Hawkman or an Aquaman (we're reasonably sure that the Smallvilleversions don't count). 

What's more, NONE of this points directly to Rock's involvement in Batman vs. Superman or a Justice League movie. Whatever Rock's mystery superhero movie is, it appears to be a solo film. Luckily, Rock is a chatty guy, so we'll probably hear more about this as he promotes his upcoming Herculesflick.

Thanks again to ComingSoon for the quotes.

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