Can we talk about? - Fan service getting out of control.

By Martyn Conterio [Total Film magazine, October 2024 issue]

‘Get away from her, you bitch.’ Great line. Actually, it's iconic. But when it's uttered towards the end of Alien: Romulus, you won't believe your ears. Same goes for the other memorable bits cribbed directly from Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens. Because it's not just dialogue: there are shots replicated, moments revisited from the series (and video game Alien: Isolation) and one familiar actor from the franchise is brought back from the dead with VFX.

In such instances, does fan service start to feel like a snake eating its own tail? Say what you like about the various merits (or lack thereof) of anything after Aliens, but each film had a distinct identity. Alien movies should aspire to be more than fan fiction.

Audiences have always gotten a kick out of movies referencing other movies (they were doing it as far back as the silent era). But fan service is a relatively new phenomenon linked to properties such as the MCU, the DCEU and Star Wars. A savvy, geek-literate audience now demands Easter eggs and callbacks in every film, every show, and acts vocally disappointed when those treats fail to materialise to their satisfaction.

‘A SAVVY, GEEK-LITERATE AUDIENCE NOW DEMANDS CALLBACKS IN EVERY FILM, EVERY SHOW’ f0026-03 Fury Road: fan service done right (ALAMY) Still, fan service can be creative. George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road provided a laundry list of nods to the original Mad Max trilogy: it just didn't shout about it. And the nostalgia factor worked too - primarily because it was Miller's own creation, not somebody else's.

The recent Deadpool & Wolverine is another film stuffed to the gills with scenes designed to cause whooping, hollering, and ‘amagawd’ reactions in the auditorium. Meanwhile, 2023's The Flash is a comic-book spectacle that delivered fan service up the wazoo. Did we really need Michael Keaton returning as Batman? Or a CGI Nicolas Cage as Superman (in reference to Tim Burton's abandoned 1990s project)?

How can a blockbuster film stand any chance of becoming a potentially beloved classic on its own terms? A line must be drawn between heartfelt homage and unnecessary (and lazy) nostalgia.

We all love these characters, these franchises, but it's how they're served creatively that matters the most.

Stolen from Empire magazine, October 2024. This short piece is written by the magazines editor.

"The trailers I remember most fondly are the ones that tantalise"

NICK DE SEMLYEN ON THE FADING ART OF MAKING MOVIE PREVIEWS THRILLING

IN 1996, BACK when I was a teenage Empire reader, I eagerly pawed open the gift that came with issue 80: a videotape containing "an hour's worth of the best trailers of the year". Popping the cassette into my cumbersome VHS machine, I devoured the teasers for Toy Story, Heat, Broken Arrow, Loch Ness and more. It didn't matter if some of the films looked a bit lame

who greenlit a meet-up between Ted Danson and a water-monster?

because in my book, movie trailers were great. They sizzled with promise, splicing together thrilling and funny moments, fizzed up with clever editing and judicious deployment of Voiceover Man.

Flash forward to 2024, and my love of movie trailers has dwindled. In fact, I even sometimes find myself jettisoning out of them midway through. Partly, admittedly, it's because they're just so accessible now

you can't go on social media without running across a teaser or two, let alone the infinite array you can find on YouTube. Partly it's because of the deeply annoying trend of trailers starting with their own three-second mini-teaser, ruining the best bits. But mostly it's because they are frequently happy to give the house away. They just keep going and going and going, throwing expensive money shots at you that will consequently be less dazzling when you see them on a cinema screen.

Take the marketing for Speak No Evil (pictured above), the new remake of a 2022 Danish horror film. Over almost three minutes, the trailer rattles through the film chronologically, blithely revealing twists, turns and huge moments. Would it not have been more effective to just tease the unease, to hint at the darkness behind James McAvoy's eyes without roughly 120 seconds of him going full fruit-loop? Or there's the trailer for Gladiator II. Rather than trust that the sight of Paul Mescal facing down a rhino will get people into cinemas (if that won't, what will?), it throws so much ancient Rome at you that you end up dazed. "Brevity is a great charm of eloquence," said legendary Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. I reckon he had a point.

The trailers I remember most fondly are the ones that tantalise, that give you a vibe without spoon-feeding you a plot. Like the genius one for Terminator 2 that whisks us through the infernal machinery of a robot-factory. Or the one for 1998's Godzilla, which sees the giant lizard total a T-Rex skeleton in a glorious example of inter-studio passive-aggression (The Lost World: Jurassic Park was in cinemas when the teaser dropped). The art of trailer-making is still alive

the promo for Longlegs is an outstanding mood-piece that gave little away

but they too often feel mechanical and desperate, rather than bold and ingenious. It's time to make teasers that tease again.

Jared Leto Went Method on Set of 'Tron: Ares' While Playing "Big Rockstar," Says Co-Star Jeff Bridges

During an appearance on SiriusXM's 'Literally! With Rob Lowe,' the veteran actor opened up on his experience rejoining the 'Tron' franchise opposite Leto and how he navigated his Method ways.

September 19, 2024

Jared Leto's Method acting ways on everything from Suicide Squad to Morbius have generated so much attention that when Jeff Bridges reported for work on Tron: Ares, he didn't quite know what to expect.

"I hadn't met him before. I'm saying, 'What's it gonna be like?' because he was also a producer of the show, big fan of the original, working on it for 10 years. I came in, and you know how each set has a different vibe?" Bridges asked Rob Lowe during an appearance on his podcast series, SiriusXM's Literally! With Rob Lowe. "There was an interesting vibe on this. I said, 'How's Jared? How's he working?' 'He's all right. You know, we call him Ares, you know, so he goes by his name,' and I said, 'Oh, that's interesting.'"

The Disney tentpole

a follow-up to the 1982 seminal science-fiction film Tron and the 2010 sequel, Tron: Legacy

stars Leto as Ares, a computer program sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission to introduce artificial intelligence beings to humans. Bridges has been a part of the entire franchise by playing video game designer Kevin Flynn. Tron: Ares, directed by Maleficent: Mistress of Evil's Joachim Ronning, features a cast that also includes Greta Lee, Evan Peters, Hasan Minhaj, Jodie Turner-Smith, Arturo Castro, Cameron Monaghan and Gillian Anderson.

The subject of Method acting came up as Lowe detailed what he's like on set and how it's similar to Bridges' approach. "You, I know, are like me of the school of actor where we show up and do it. There's not a lot of artifice around the edges. We've done whatever work we need to do, we're doing it in the quiet of our own privacy, so I can go and be Rob, and we can talk about the Lakers or whatever, and they can say, 'five minutes,' and we come to the set, and we do it, and then when they cut, we go, 'Hey, you know, I went to a great Mexican restaurant last night,'" he explained. "Then, there's Jared Leto, who, you know, when Jared played the Joker, I have a friend who played his best friend. He was Mr. J the whole time."

Bridges continued the thought by saying that both ways of doing it can "work beautifully," though when he showed up on Tron: Ares, he wasn't sure how to play it. "His name was Ares in the show, and I ended up going, 'Hey Air, what's happening man?'" he explained. "And I say, 'Is it OK if I call you Air?' And he says, 'Yeah, sure you can.' Then we got loose, and it was just wonderful. I mean, we jammed, you know?"

He nodded to the music in the film, prompting Lowe to confirm that Leto's character is also a rockstar. "Big rockstar, man," he confirmed. "I won't tell you 'cause we get into some music stuff in the show, and it's quite good. He's wonderful in the part though, and I'm so happy to be a part [of it]."

Playing a rockstar isn't that much of a stretch for Leto, the longtime frontman of Thirty Seconds to Mars. The band kicked off its Seasons Tour earlier this year, on March 14, in Santiago, Chile, at Lollapalooza. Dates continue through the end of the year before wrapping in Dubai on Dec. 12. Most recently, they just finished a series of shows in Australia before performing in Singapore this weekend.

Tron: Ares is due for release on Oct. 10, 2025. Bridges joined Leto, Lee and Peters onstage at D23 last month to tease what's to come. "Technology and AI is omnipresent in our lives," Bridges offered during his remarks. "What a perfect time to revisit this world. Or, have this world visit us, because that's what happens in this movie."

The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day continue to stand the test of time as some of the finest sci-fi action movies ever made. However, the subsequent sequels always felt like they were trying (and failing) to recapture that lightning in a bottle. James Cameron revealed last year that he's been working on his own secret Terminator project, and while speaking with Empire for the 40th anniversary of the original movie, he dropped a big hint at what it could look like. TL;DR: Don't expect to see any familiar characters or iconography.

"This is the moment when you jettison everything that is specific to the last 40 years of Terminator, but you live by those principles," Cameron said, explaining that the franchise needs to move past its iconic characters. "You get too inside it, and then you lose a new audience because the new audience care much less about that stuff than you think they do. That's the danger, obviously, with Avatar as well, but I think we've proven that we have something for new audiences."

This means no T-800, no Sarah Connor, and no John Connor. Stripping away these elements would take the franchise back to its bones: humans vs machines, and that's just what Cameron wants. "You've got powerless main characters, essentially, fighting for their lives, who get no support from existing power structures, and have to circumvent them but somehow maintain a moral compass. And then you throw AI into the mix," Cameron teased. "Those principles are sound principles for storytelling today, right? So I have no doubt that subsequent Terminator films will not only be possible, but they'll kick ass. But this is the moment where you jettison all the specific iconography."

Arnold Schwarzenegger has already said that he's done with the franchise, and I can't say I blame him. The last three installments (Terminator: Salvation, Terminator: Genisys, and Terminator: Dark Fate) were each meant to kick-start a new trilogy, but they all underperformed. Taking things back to basics, without any of the baggage of the previous movies, might be the best way to go.

Kevin Smith reveals how and why KillRoy Was Here became an NFT release

======================================================================

Two years after his horror anthology KillRoy Was Here received an NFT release, Kevin Smith has revealed exactly how and why that happened

By Cody Hamman

September 16th 2024, 9:14am

Two years have passed since Kevin Smith's horror anthology KillRoy Was Here made its way out into the world as an NFT -- and to this day, the only people who have seen the movie are those who have either bought the NFT, been given access to one of the NFTs, or attended a special screening. Which means so few people have seen KillRoy Was Here, it could almost be described as Smith's "lost movie." Now, while speaking to Entertainment Weekly and promoting his new film The 4:30 Movie, Smith has revealed exactly how and why the movie became an NFT release.

Directed by Smith from a script he wrote with Andy McElfresh, KillRoy Was Here was made on a minuscule budget as a project with film students at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. The movie is a throwback anthology horror film featuring a creature that kills evil adults at the behest of victimized kids. The creature at the heart of the story is KillRoy, inspired by the "Kilroy was here" graffiti that became popular during World War II, showing a long-nosed man peeking over a fence. In this case, KillRoy started out as a Florida man named Roy Huggins, who was a soldier in the Vietnam War, not World War II, and when he was captured by enemy soldiers he got loose, killed a whole lot of people, and cannibalized one of the corpses. He had to be locked up in a mental institution, and when the place caught on fire Roy was left to burn. Now he's a supernatural being who stalks the Florida swamps, and his burns have left him looking a lot like that figure in the Kilroy graffiti. They say he has a psychic connection to kids, and if someone says his name three times he'll show up with his machete and start hacking away at anyone who has wronged a child.

The cast includes Harley Quinn Smith, Jason Mewes, Chris Jericho, Betty Aberlin, Ralph Garman, Daisy McElfresh, and Justin Kucsulain.

Smith told Entertainment Weekly, "We made this movie KillRoy Was Here with the kids at the Ringling College of Art and Design. I wound up with possession of the movie. When it was all done, I had this movie; perfectly watchable, Creepshow type of movie. So I reached out to Shudder and I was like, 'Hey man, you guys wanna run this? It's a Kevin Smith original, kind of horror movie. 30 grand.' That was it. Shudder was like, 'This is terrible. This isn't good enough for Shudder.' Then our producer on the movie, David (Shapiro), he goes, 'I met with this company, they are interested in buying a movie to release as an NFT. The first movie to release as an NFT, and what they wanna do is use it to showcase their blockchain technology.' And I was like, 'Oh, all right.' Perhaps this is another version of indie film, this is a new playground to go play in. Company paid us over a million dollars. I made a million dollars off of this movie. 'Not good enough for Shudder.'" Now, with that explanation, the whole NFT release strategy finally makes sense.

KillRoy Was Here may not meet up to Shudder's standards, but here's hoping more of Smith's fans will have the chance to see the movie eventually.

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has revealed that writer Akiva Goldsman has put the finishing touches on the script for the sequel to 2005’s “Hellblazer” comic-to-film adaptation “Constantine”. Talk of the sequel has swirled around for many years but picked up steam almost two years ago exactly when it was announced actor Keanu Reeves and director […]

I really want this one to happen. I know there's a lot of hate for the original film, as it differs quite a lot from the original comic. Thing is, I never read or saw the comic, so I saw the film unaware of its origins and totally loved it!

The movie, which was supposed to be given a theatrical release back in September 2022, is now set to be released through the Max streaming service on October 3rd.

I was excited to see this game get released on Game Pass, as I loved the original and SnowRunner. However, after putting several hours in, I get this weird sense that the physics have been changed somehow. It certainly doesn't feel the same as SnowRunner. Anyone else?

House Of Gucci star Jared Leto is in line to play Skeletor in the He-Man movie, Masters Of The Universe. More on the casting rumour here:

Kevin Smith's best film since Chasing Amy is a heartfelt ode to teenage love, summer movies, and the 1980s.

I was really taken in by the trailer and have high hopes for this one.

Another disaster for Lionsgate and just three weeks after release.