Exclusive Interview With Len Wein & Chris Claremont

Chris Claremont is one of the X-Men's most prominent writers, and Len Wein is one of the co-creators of Wolverine.

TMT had the opportunity to take part in a round table interview as well as an exclusive interview with Len and Chris at this weekend’s Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. You can read the exclusive interview below.

Len, Why is Wolverine from Canada?

No reason in particular, I just threw a dart at the map in landed in Canada, I said fuck it, he's from there. No, what really happened was, at that time x-men comics weren't selling in the states, but was selling in a lot of other country's, and the marketing people at Marvel decided hey lets make the characters from all these different locations to help boost the sales. The problem was, they didn't tell us where they were selling, so we just made the different characters wolverine included from wherever we felt like.

Claremont, your known for writing very strong female heroes, which is your favorite to write?

I've known them all so long how do you pick favorites, I could say I love this about storm or so and so is very cool for this. There really is no way I could narrow it down to just one character, I love writing all of them, for different reasons.

Len, How did creating Nightcrawler come about?

The thing about Nightcrawler is he started out just as a visual. We had a bunch of characters drawn up, that hadn't been developed yet. We wanted him to be the nicest guy on the team as well as the most Christian, partly just due to the fact that he looks like a very demonic character. We also thought it would be great for him to be best friends with Wolverine, just to really throw people off. Sometimes we would do ridiculous things just for the fun of it, no story arch, no plan, just for fun.

As far as Nightcrawler's ethnicity and his origin, that relates back to the Marketing people wanting every hero to be ethnically diverse and from all over the world.

What kind of decision making goes into killing off a character?

In some cases it's just a lazy writer, someone who doesn't care about that character. I'll notice someone is killing off a character, and I'll ask them why, they tell me because I hate them, so I say don't use that character anymore. One writer may hate a character they're writing and want to kill them off, but that doesn't mean that when they're done someone else isn't going to come along and love that character, but look now that character is dead.

Other times we'll plan to kill someone off right from the start. It can be for different reasons, they're popularity starts to fade off, or it serves a story arch that may last several months or years. A lot of factors are usually taken into consideration before killing someone off.

Back in the day, Marvel said if they're dead they stay dead, but now you can kill a character today and bring them back next week.

Len, What was your involvement with the X-Men animated series from the 90's?

I worked as a writer as well as director for a short period of time. I know that I worked on at least three or four episodes, but I was actually credited and paid for five (laughs).

What are your opinions on the Marvel Live Action films?

I loved Iron Man, can't wait for the sequel, and I liked most of the X-Men films. I always thought the casting was amazing. I mean Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry, for Wolverine and Storm were great. They got the heights right for Wolverine and Storm, except in reverse (laughs).

When Lauren Shuler Donner cast Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, that's when you could tell she'd earned her money, that casting was brilliant!

Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man, how many people heard this and thought, yes this is the guy. Another situation with amazing casting.

What do you think about Hollywood's current infatuation with comic book movies?

It all has to do with the studio executives. Their number one job is to keep their job. They pick books and characters that people will know, and then hire actors that at the same time are "hot", and if the movie fails, they can say how could I have known this would fail.

It's plausible denial ability!

Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo Coverage

The Calgary Entertainment & Comic Expo is a showcase for just a few of those obsessive, shared loves. Comic aficionados, of course, have a place centre stage, but with the recent influx of blockbuster superhero movies and the $2 billion acquisition of comic giant Marvel by Disney, it’s getting harder to argue that comics live on the fringes. And why should they?

This year’s expo featured writers and artists who’ve made the genre such an explosive force, from the X-Men’s Chris Claremont who was one of a few people we were able to get an Exclusive Interview with, to Bruce Timm the co-creator  of Batman: The Animated Series as well as several other DC comic's related properties was also in attendance, and TMT had a chance to sit down with him one on one, to discuss his next project Batman: Under the Red Hood, what's next for him and much more. Scott Morse Known mostly for his stand alone graphic novels, is now working for Pixar Animation, curently on Cars 2. TMT was also able to sit down with scott for an Exclusive Interview.

All of the TMT Exclusive Interviews from the expo can be read HERE.

The Highlight of the show for everyone, was likely the appearance from the nearly retired Leonard Nimoy. He was officially welcomed to the city by our Mayor Dave Bronconnier, who actually told him to use the force. As hilarious as it was, I don't think Dave will be getting the vote from any local fanboys this next election.

Other "Big Name" guests in attendance included Billy Dee Williams, Malcom McDowell, Brent Spiner, and Peter Facinelli.

This being the 5th annual event hosted in Calgary was said to be the biggest yet. Last years Expo had over 10,000 guests in attendance, and they're looking to grow the event even more for next year.

The next Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo will be April 30- May 1st, 2011.

New Clip 'NIghtmare on Elm Street'

Shockoptillyoudrop released the latest clip from A Nightmare on Elm Street is here. This time, it's Katie Cassidy who's having a run-in with Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley).

This is a huge improvement over what we saw in the last clip. If this is a sign as to what we should expect, then I'm in. Freddy needs to be scary, not Rorschach burnt to a crisp.

"new" ninja turtles look revealed?

If you remember the last we heard of the Ninja Turtles franchise, Nickelodeon bought out the global rights to the series and unveiled their plans for a new CG animated series and live-action film – both for 2012.

Before that Peter laird, one of the original creators told MTV:

“The basic idea, as I understand it, is to do an all live action shoot, with actors and stuntmen in full Turtle suits,” explained Peter Laird, co-creator of the original comic series, to MTV News. “To add expressiveness to the Turtles’ faces which would be difficult if not impossible to get with animatronics and/or puppetry, there would be ‘face replacement,’ with CGI Turtle faces superimposed on the live action performers’ heads.”

That was the last we heard from the new TMNT "Batman Begins" style reboot back in August 2009. This new movie, coming to theaters in 2011 from Legendary Pictures, will be closer to the original comic, according to TMNT co-creator Peter Laird.

Now Latinoreview has got their hands on what looks to be the design for the "new" Ninja Turtles.

The thing about this design is it would work more for the Batman Begins-inspired reboot from Legendary Pictures, then it would for something I'd expect out of Nickelodeon. Which makes me really wonder, what's going on with the Turtles Franchise if this is in fact a "real" design.

Is Nickelodeon working with legendary pictures now to bring the best of both worlds together? Nothing has been confirmed nor denied from anyone at this point, but I'm sure with this picture making its way online, we can expect at the very least a denial from one if not both parties presumably involved at this point.

What do you think, is this what you were expecting the new turtles to look like? Or are you disappointed like me, they decided not to go back to the original Jim Henson designs from the original Live Action films. Well at least the first one that is.

Two New Clips 'Iron Man 2'

The third and fourth clips for Iron Man 2 are now online, You can watch them in the players below.

The more I see for this movie, the better I think it will be. It might not match The Dark Knight in terms of story, but I'm sure it will be a close battle for popularity and box office. I'd expect to see some very big numbers from Iron Man 2 when it opens on May 7th.

Check back to TMT in May for our official Iron Man 2 review.

Marveling At The Past - Blade II (2002)

“Oh I get it; you’ve been training for two years to take me down and now here I am.  Oooooh, so exciting isn’t it?” 

Yes its exciting Blade but it’s not very interesting.  While Guillermo Del Toro undeniably brings energy and creativity to the vampire hunter’s second film, there is so little character development or thematic material to get your teeth into (excuse the terrible pun).  As per the law of diminishing returns, the first film does such a great job of introducing writer David Goyer’s reconceived notion of the modern vampire, how they operate, how Blade can defeat them, and how he is able to combat the nocturnal weaknesses within him that there seems to be little new ground to break.

I understand the film has its fans but, luckily for me, there seems to be a divisive split between fans of the first film who dismiss all that has followed it and those who believe the series didn’t find its footing until ‘Blade II’.  I do applaud the filmmakers for not making a carbon copy of the first in any way.  While Norrington’s film is brooding, desolate and insane, Del Toro’s is fast, fun and completely hollow.  Due to the fact that chasing monsters in sewer tunnels is never something that has held my attention and, following on from my piece on the first film, the return of the Whistler character is so quickly and nonsensically resolved, I find myself watching what amounts to a typical action movie.

For me, the film goes downhill from about the five minute mark.  As soon as the opening credits finish, we immediately cut to Blade chasing some boring Euro-trash vampires through corridors accompanied by some ear piercing thumping which passes for a score.  Well shot though the action is, the mindless drudgery of it goes on for another ten minutes before Blade uncovers Whistler’s body.  That is ten minutes wasted on Blade fighting the kind of boring goons that you can find in any action film.

I would have much preferred a complete overhaul of the first act of the film, following straight on from the opening scene at the blood bank where our villain Nomak has been revealed as an evolutionary new species of vampire which feeds on both humans and his own.  After the credits, Blade opens the door on that very same place not too long after Nomak’s attack.  Instead of a house of vampires waiting to be cleaned out, Blade finds halls and corridors littered with the blood and corpses of his immortal enemies.  The scene sets one of the principal themes of the film; of your enemies not being who you thought they were.  As Blade begins his latest quest, everything he thought he knew about whom to trust and who to drive a stake through is turned on its head. 

In the actual film, Blade is brought to the headquarters of the ruling vampire nation and is simply told about Nomak and this new species called the Reapers and what they can do.  A similarly expository scene introduces ‘The Bloodpack’, the A-Team of vampires if you will, who have been training for two years for the sole purpose of hunting down Blade.  It just seems to me that the rules of ‘show and tell’ work much better in a comic book movie if you show instead of tell.  So imagine, as Blade investigates the clinic and crawls over vampires with their throats torn out, those same corpses suddenly reform as Reapers and spring to life.  Just as Blade is facing the overwhelming odds of an enemy he’s never faced before and doesn’t know how to kill, the Bloodpack arrive on scene to even the odds.  Weakened from their need to feed, the Reapers have their fill of combat and disperse leaving Blade alone with the hunters and, despite their orders to go after Nomak, the more volatile members of the Bloodpack cannot resist the opportunity to take on Blade instead, though this eventually leads to a ceasefire.  Like I say; show instead of tell.  Rather than telling us about these new characters, we get to see them in action and figure things out for ourselves.

Having exhausted his arsenal on the Reapers, Blade is in no condition to fight a team specifically trained to kill him.  A smarter person would escape but Blade isn’t going anywhere.  After two years of searching, he has found Whistler and as the Bloodpack surround Blade, he keeps his back to the tank of blood containing his surrogate father, like an animal protecting its young.  After Blade locates Whistler in the film, there is a lot to enjoy about the initial distrust between the two and how, even after a dues ex machina is used to cure his vampirism, there is still the lingering feeling that it hasn’t worked.  I just wish that had turned out to be the case.

Having Whistler remain a vampire would have accomplished three things for me.  Firstly, it would retain the emotional resonance of his death scene in the first film.  As it turns out in ‘Blade II’, the detox thingy injection used to cure his condition actually does work and Whistler is his old self again as if nothing happened by about the 20 minute mark.  It always feels cheap to me when death has no consequences.  Even when they brought Spock back to life in ‘Star Trek III’, they made sure Kirk paid the price for it by losing his command, his ship and his son.  Secondly, by finishing Whistler’s arc in the second film we would be spared the utter pointlessness of his presence in ‘Blade Trinity’.  Finally, we could have removed the completely unnecessary romantic sub-plot between Blade and Nyssa (daughter of vampire overlord Eli Damaskinos) in order to focus on the climax of the relationship between Blade and Whistler, of father and son.

If there is a theme buried under all tunnel chases, nightclubs and throat ripping in ‘Blade II’, it seems to be about fathers and sons.  The film does have an intriguing dynamic between Damaskinos and the head Reaper Nomak, who turns out to be his son; a genetically engineered attempt to create the perfect vampire.  In Nomak we have a character that becomes a mirror image of Blade.  He too is a unique anomaly among his race.  He too is very hard to kill.  And he too is on a mission of retribution to kill his father (don’t forget that Deacon Frost practically was Blade’s father in the first film).  Damaskinos says himself that family ties mean nothing next to the preservation of his species. 

I would have loved to have seen that relationship mirrored between Blade and Whistler.  Whether his mind has become warped due to his mutation or because he genuinely believes it, Whistler is tired of fighting the war against vampires and wants it to end as quickly as possible.  To that end, he is willing and able to trap Blade so his body can be harvested and studied to create daywalkers and end the vulnerability of the species.  His love for Blade wins out in the end and Whistler helps his son win the day but by the end he chooses suicide rather than the vampire slayer’s sword.  Instead of an out of place death scene for Nyssa, disintegrating in Blade’s arms as the sun rises on a new day, Whistler says a final goodbye and walks into the morning light to his death with head held high.

I understand that ‘Blade II' is just an action film and its creative villains, colorful action and the way it made the character even cooler than he was in the first film was enough for a lot of fans.  All I think it needed was re-tooling of certain scenes, more focus on character and a stronger theme to make it click.  It wasn’t until the third film that things became overwhelmingly bad enough for everyone to agree on the flaws, and unfortunately I have no choice but to revisit the horror of ‘Blade Trinity’ in a few weeks time.  Don’t be afraid to join me.  We can lick our wounds together.

"Twilight Saga: Eclipse" Trailer

I've read all of the Twilight books and for the life of me I couldn't remember a thing that happened in Eclipse.  That's how good that book was, or at least, that's how good a job I did trying to block out all memory of reading it.

But watching the trailer for the newest film in this annoying popular vampire series brought the story back to me a little bit  - the 'real' vampire Victoria, still furious over the death of her lover at the hands of Edward, creates a vampire army set to invade the town of Forks, and most importantly, to kill Bella. 

The best part about this isn't that the town's vampires and werewolves have to join forces to fight them, it's the sense that we might all get a break from Edward and Jacob's endless squabbling over who loves Bella more.  Although in the book, that's what they spend that entire battle scene doing anyway.  Sigh.

The new trailer, which premiered on Oprah Winfrey's show, looks to be correcting at least that issue from the books with promise of some decent fight sequences. Unfortunately some of the same endless bad dialogue still remains.

So, judge for yourself - will you go with Team Edward, Team Jacob, or Team Just-Let-It-End-Already?

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is set to open at regular theaters and IMAX on June 30th.

"Avatar" Sets DVD Sales Records

James Cameron continued his quest for world domination on Earth Day by shattering one-day sales records with the release of Avatar on DVD and blu-ray yesterday.

The film, which still ranks #12 on the regular box office charts (thanks to a mini re-release last weekend) was released in a bare-bones format which includes the movie and nothing else. 

Now one would assume with an extended edition of the film coming to theaters in August, and the inevitable double-dip release of that version coming to DVD/blu-ray in November that will actually include some special features (not to mention the eventual 3D blu-ray release), savvy consumers would hold off for a better edition of the DVD.

Nope, people seem to like their versions of Avatar any way they can get them.  According to Business Insider, The movie sold an impressive 4 million copies yesterday, just on its first day of release, making it already the year's top-selling DVD.

Of those 4 million copies, 1.5 million were sold on blu-ray, which breaks the The Dark Knight's first-day sales record of 600,000 in 2008. 

Fox is also reporting that retailers have sold out of 50% of their Avatar DVDs already. 

The reviews on the blu-ray version have been nothing short of spectacular (check out this one on BluRay.com, which said this edition of the film "raises the bar" for blu-ray quality), and Avatar has a huge fanbase, so it's not surprising that even this movie-only release is shattering records.  I've sworn not to get it until the special edition in the fall, but even I'm starting to get a little tempted it pick it up through one of the sales going on this week. (but then again, once November comes, what am I going to do with two Avatar blu-rays?!)

Has anyone else gotten their Avatar dvd/blu-ray yet?  Or are you waiting for the next release in November?

Mickey Rourke Playing Genghis Khan

The Orlando Sentinel talked to Iron Man 2 star Mickey Rourke, who revealed he will play Genghis Khan in a film written and to be directed by John Milius.

First up, Rourke mentioned that St. Vincent, with director Walter Hill, is "not gonna happen." What is, however, is the Tony Scott remake of the German crime film Potsdamer Platz.

"Yeah, we're doing that. Talking to Tony about a 'Hell's Angels' movie, too," Rourke said. "I've been working on a motorcycle gangs script for 20 years, so I hope that happens."

About Genghis Khan, Rourke said that he "read [Milius'] script and you know, the man is known for his tough writing. He wrote 'Conan' and 'Dirty Harry' and 'Apocalypse Now,' and it'll be interesting to see how he works behind the camera. I'm playing Genghis."

He added that it's a project "John wrote as a piece told from the son and grandson's point of view, how they saw this mythic figure from their family. You see him in flashbacks, back when he was in his mid-40s. And back then, being in your mid-40s was being REALLY old."

Rourke was told that filming will take place in parts of India and China and that he'll have to do horseback riding for the character. "I rode quite a bit, back in the day. The horseback riding won't be too much of a problem. I probably ride a horse better than I drive a car. There's going to be some archery from horseback called for that I have to do, so that'll be interesting, physically."

The actor explained his interest in the film. "Historically, if you read about the guy, he was a mystery. There's a lot of myths surrounding him, but also some true stories. Milius went through that in prepping this, so he'll be a fascinating character to play."

Ridley Scott Talks 'Alien Prequel'

Ridley Scott is currently doing press for his upcoming 'Robin Hood', in the process a lot of questions concerning the 'Alien Prequel' are being thrown at him, Scott says it's happening - a visual palette is being designed, concept art is being hashed out and a script is being finalized. But what's it about? Here are excerpts from MTV's interview.

"It's set in 2085, about 30 years before Sigourney [Weaver's character Ellen Ripley]. It's fundamentally about going out to find out 'Who the hell was that Space Jockey?' The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer's chair ... Our man [Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas] climbs up and says "There's been an explosion in his chest from the inside out — what was that?" I'm basically explaining who that Space Jockey — we call him the Space Jockey — I'm explaining who the space jockeys were ... [The film] is about the discussion of terraforming — taking planets and planetoids and balls of earth and trying to terraform, seed them with the possibilities of future life."

Scott says he'll be approaching H.R. Giger to talk creature designs in an effort to create something new because he feels, "The alien in a sense, as a shape, is worn out." Very interesting.

Also, sources tell ShockTillYouDrop that by the time the Fox Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set comes along at the end of this year, we could very well see a "sneak peek" of Scott's Alien prequel!