Anarchy ensues on the streets of Gotham City, at least that’s what we get out of the recent batch of videos coming from the set of The Dark Knight Rises, now filming in New York. Three videos showing different takes from what looks like an important scene in the movie found their way onto YouTube and thanks to IGN, we have them here for you. As always, if you want to go into The Dark Knight Rises spoiler-free, I recommend you skip this.

In the last video we see Batman going up against Bane in the middle of the street, surrounded by people beating the crap out of each other. SPOILER, if you ask me, it doesn’t seem like he’s winning that fight. Also, with so many extras on the set, this looks really expensive, not to mention they are filming on Wall Street no less. This could end up costing easily $250 million when done. But considering The Dark Knight made over $1 billion in box office receipts worldwide, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. spared no expenses on this one.

There’s also a video showing some photos of Batman and Bane from the set:

Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine and Liam Neeson. Set to open July 20th 2012, The Dark Knight Rises is easily one of the most highly anticipated movies of next year and videos like this only serve to send the hype meter into overdrive.

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After a somewhat long break we are back to superheroes. Last time around we were in 2008 looking at what was arguably the best year yet for the genre. Today we’ll look at a few comic book characters brought for the first time on the big screen, an original black hero, two sequels, a spin-off and a once considered impossible to adapt graphic novel. But first there’s a little something that must be done.

Before we get going I have to give Spider-Man 3 a second look just to clear some things. I understand very well that last time I came across way to harsh on Sam Raimi, blaming him for a lot more then he deserved blaming. What I didn’t mention was how Sony handled the project and how they forced Venom into Raimi’s story with a crowbar. This explains why the Symbiote plot was so underdeveloped and why it seemed shoehorned into the overall plot. Now I’m not saying Raimi is a saint, he could have handled certain plot points a lot better and his direction was all over the place compared to previous entries. Throwing that to the side, I blame Sony and only Sony for how Spider-Man 4 was handled (read cancelled) and I have to be honest, if it wasn’t for Mark Webb (500 Days of Summer) directing The Amazing Spider-Man, I would not be interested in that reboot.

Back to 2008, we start with Wanted, the Mark Miller comic turned big budget movie starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman. This isn’t your typical superhero but the dude can curve bullets and he fights a secret worldwide assassin organization, so you could say he qualifies to be in here. Wanted made $134.5 million in North America and $341.6 million worldwide. A sequel has been considered and then dropped but there’s still a chance we might get Wanted 2 in the future.

Released on the 2nd of July 2008 starring Will Smith, Hancock became the first original superhero movie to hit big. It made $227.9 million in North American and $624.3 million worldwide, mostly thanks to the huge drawing power of its star, Will Smith. Hancock 2 is categorized as being in development on IMDB for a 2013 proposed release.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army came out on July 11th 2008. You see, the original Hellboy (2004), while loved by fans, wasn’t a particularly big hit grossing only $99.3 million worldwide on a $66 million budget, so Sony dropped it. Few years later, Universal stepped in and gave Guillermo del Toro $85 million to make the sequel fans expected. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army was well received by just about everyone but, turns out releasing just a week before the most hotly anticipated title of the year isn’t a good idea, even more so when said title is also a superhero movie. With $160.3 million worldwide Hellboy 2 didn’t cover its budget so the 3rd planned entry is now on hold. Unfortunately with time passing by so fast and Ron Perlman (Hellboy) not getting any younger (61), not to mention Guillermo del Toro being so busy with other projects, Hellboy 3 is starting to look like a pipe dream.

July 18th 2008, the day The Dark Knight opened in theaters. Now for those living under a rock, this is the sequel to 2005′s Batman Begins, the fantastic reboot of the cape crusader handled by the brilliant mind of Christopher Nolan. Now Batman Begins made $372.7 million worldwide, a good number, certainly not enough to prepare us for how big The Dark Knight would become. I won’t make a big deal out of it but the untimely death of Heath Ledger (28 at the time), playing the Joker in the movie, turned more then a few heads and ears. But it was the movie that kept building hype and if Spider-Man 3 taught us anything, hugely anticipated popular superhero movies can become extremely popular at the box office. The Dark Knight was no different, grossing $158.4 million opening weekend, a new record at the time (second today). It generated $533.3 million in North America becoming the 2nd highest grosser ever (3rd today) and by far the biggest superhero movie (a title it still holds). The Dark Knight made over $1 billion worldwide (4th movie to ever get there) turning Batman in Warner’s biggest moneymaker and going as far as having them move Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (that was set to open in November 2008) to summer 2009 just so they had a big movie the following year, since they already had their fill for 2008. The Dark Knight Rises, followup to this, will open in July 2012.

As you might remember, 2008 started bad for superhero movies with the godawful Superhero Movie. It was only fitting that it would end on that same note with The Spirit. This is a movie I can only describe in so many words and those would be: REALLY BAD. The Spirit made only $39 million worldwide, so a massive disappointment on all accounts.

Watchmen, the highly anticipated big screen adaptation of the most celebrated graphic novel ever, came out in March 2009 under the direction of Zack Snyder of 300 fame. Thought by many to be impossible to adapt, making Watchmen was anything but an easy task. When it finally came out, the movie was appreciated for a lot of things it did (or tried to do) but not nearly as much as I think it deserved. For anyone interested in a more complex, brainy, superhero flick, I definitely recommend you watch this. It gets a lot more hate then it should, blue penis aside. A 163 minute R-rated superhero movie is not what you would call commercial so Watchmen only made $185.2 million worldwide on a $130 million budget. Warner were not too happy about that.

In May 2009 it was time for Fox to dust off that old X-Men license once again with a spin-off titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The movie tells the story of Wolverine and how he became the character we knew in the X-Men movie trilogy. Arguably the most popular of the X-Men, this was the obvious choice for a spin-off and it payed off, at least financially since fans didn’t particularly enjoy this one all that much. On a budget of $150 million, X-Men Origins: Wolverine made $373 million worldwide and a sequel simply titled The Wolverine is planned for sometime in 2013 (and yes, I am well aware they are not calling it a proper sequel).

Finally on today’s order is Kick-Ass, a weird yet awesome flick based again on a Mark Miller (Wanted) comic. Coming out in April 2010, just before the big summer craziness, Kick-Ass had a lot of internet hype that unfortunately didn’t translate into big numbers at the box office. It made only $96.1 million worldwide on a $30 million budget, so at least it made back some money. The idea of a sequel has been thrown around but so far nothing is certain.

We started in 1978 and we’re already in 2010, now there’s just one more part left to go and I promise it won’t take as long as this one. Until then, if you’ve missed any of the previous parts, you can check them right here in the links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7 and Part 8.

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Star Trek 2 won’t begin filming until next year but Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof and Roberto Orci have been working on the script with the aim of turning in a “pretty good draft” to the studio by the end of the year. No plot details are known at the moment, but in a recent interview Lindelof said all the right things by comparing Star Trek 2 to The Dark Knight.

From E! (via Screenrant):

“We’re looking at a movie like The Dark Knight, which went one step beyond Batman Begins… It was really about something, and at the same time it was a superhero movie. We don’t want to abandon all the things that made the first movie work…but we also really want the movie to thematically resonate.”

Zoe Saldana, Chris Pine, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, Zachary Quinto, Anton Yelchin and John Cho are all expected to return, and while J.J Abrams is expected to sit in the directors chair once again it has not yet been confirmed.

Paramount has set a release date for June 29, 2012,

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As I type Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland currently sits at $980 million worldwide, with $600+ million coming from overseas. It has overtaken all of the Harry Potter films and is just $20 million away from crossing the $1 billion mark, and overtaking The Dark Knight‘s $1,001,921,825 in the process.

Obviously 3D ticket prices had a huge impact on Wonderland‘s gross and if you take inflation into account it wouldn’t be in the top 10, but based on gross alone it may end up joining Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in the $1 billion club.

With the final Harry Potter movies set to be released in 3D they will likely overtake Wonderland, and if Batman 3 gets made in 3D it might have a shot too, but until then i’m sure Disney will be eagerly watching the numbers to see how Alice in Wonderland fares over the next few weeks.

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Iron Man 2 blasts onto 4380 theaters this weekend in what is the largest wide opening ever. This is the only movie opening wide (who would have the guts to take on this two thousand pound gorilla anyway) and the expectations are way out there.

After opening to over $100 million from 53 markets around the world last weekend, experts are joggling figures that go as high as The Dark Knight‘s record opening weekend from 2 years ago, $158.4 million. I personally have my expectations a little lower, about $25-$30 million less to be more exact. I wish it would score more then $140 million but as it is I don’t see that happening. Going for a $130-$135 million opening and I hope in a few hours when the first numbers come out, I will be proven wrong and it will be higher then a certain vampire movie that managed $142.8 million little over 5 months ago, enough for the 3rd highest opening ever in North America (Spider-Man 3 is in second place with $151.1 million).

Now how higher could it go after the initial weekend, well it depends on how well people embrace this movie, and with the competition left this month, I don’t see Iron Man 2 getting a multiplier bigger then Iron Man 1. A multiplier is the total gross of a movie divided by the opening weekend. So say a movie opened with $100 million and made $300 million, that means it had a multiplier of 3. So with that number in mind, if Iron Man 2 opens with $130-$135 million, it could potentially go on to gross around $400 million or more just in North America, add to that another 350-400 from around the world and Paramount has a movie that could potentially go as high as $800 million worldwide, that’s a good $220 million more then the first one.

After seeing it over the week, I can see that while it may not be as fresh and overall great as the first one, it is still a good summer blockbuster, a fun movie that will leaving you wanting more (read Iron Man 3).

Anyway, the summer has officially started at the box office and you can expect interesting stuff happening in the next months thanks to some high profile movies that are getting ever so close to us with each passing day (I will be all over Prince of Persia when it comes out and if it sucks, well, then I guess I will have to hurt someone or something, probably an inanimate object since I’m not the violent type).

1. Iron Man 2 (Par) $135 million (NEW)
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street (WB) $10 million ($49.2M)
3. How to Train Your Dragon (Par/DW) $7 million ($201.3M)
4. Date Night (Fox) $5.5 million ($81M)
5. The Back-Up Plan (CBS) $4 million ($29M)

How far do you think Iron Man 2 can go both in North America and Worldwide?

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As some of you may know, Avatar was released on DVD and Blu-ray yesterday (April 22nd aka Earth Day) and it seems to have done rather well. 20th Century Fox announced today that Avatar sold 1.5 million Blu-ray units on its first day of release, breaking the record of 600,000 units held by The Dark Knight since 2008.

Fox expect to sell well over 4 million combined Blu-ray and DVD units of the movie in total, which may or may not include the release of the extended and 3D versions later this year.

If you don’t want to wait until November for the special edition, then you can buy Avatar via these links:

Avatar [Blu-ray] | Avatar [DVD]

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Now here’s something to get excited about! Warner Bros. has reportedly sealed the deal for Christopher Nolan to return to the director’s chair for his rabidly-anticipated sequel to The Dark Knight. As if that weren’t good news enough, the A-list director is going to take on a “godfather” role to the Superman film franchise, overseeing the development of a fresh vision of The Man of Steel.

Deadline.com brings the report, and they try to make clear that Nolan is not attached to write or direct the new Superman incarnation, which WILL NOT be a followup to Bryan Singer’s 2006 Superman Returns. The studio is trusting Nolan to guide the movie into a new direction, and just in the nick of time – legal battles have been ongoing regarding the rights to Superman and as of right now, they expire at Warner Bros. and return to the heirs of creators Siegel and Shuster in 2013. This means that the studio has to get moving if they plan to meet that deadline, and I can’t imagine a better show of support for this franchise than bringing Nolan on board.

Collider speculates that there might be some further negotiations made in order to secure sequel rights for the studio (let’s be real – why would they jump-start this franchise without plans to make more?), and suggest perhaps Nolan will bring a grittier approach to Metropolis. Personally, I think Nolan accepted this job because of the property’s colossal differences with his Batman franchise. I don’t think we’re going to see a dimly lit, dark adaptation of Superman – I think Nolan knows the clean world of Metropolis is different from anything he’s ever done and is looking forward to seeing if he can contribute to such a world instead of conforming everything to his already-established style.

As for Batman, Nolan is finishing up Inception for a July release while his brother (and frequent co-writer) Jonathan and colleague David Goyer are tackling the writing duties on the newest adventures of the Caped Crusader. Deadline emphasizes that Superman 3.0 is in the earliest stages of development, and with Batman 3 barely in the script phase – the writing team just “cracked” the idea for the story – we won’t be seeing either of these properties on the big screen for at least a couple of years. But it’s great to know that forward momentum is being made, as Nolan’s involvement bodes extremely well for both franchises.

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It’s still the weekend and there’s still no worthy news so here’s another cool fan trailer. It’s from the same guy who made The Incredible Hulk vs. Wolverine, but this time Batman faces off against Blade, defying not only studio rights but also comic book worlds.

You can see more videos like this on YouTube user silverlightsaber’s account by clicking here!

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When watching Batman ride through the streets of Gotham in The Dark Knight did you ever look at his suit and think to yourself “I want one”? Well now you can, as Warner Bros. have announced that an official Dark Knight motorcycle suit will be available to purchase in the near future!

From SHH:

Conveying the strength, elegance and awesome power of The Dark Knight, UD Replicas – the officially licensed division of Universal Designs Ltd. – has begun production on a replica Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit, and orders are being taken at the company’s website, UDReplicas.com.

Produced under license from Warner Bros. Consumer Products on behalf of DC Comics, the Universal Designs Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit is a stunning recreation of one of the most iconic movie costumes of all time. The Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit comprises a full-leather jacket that includes lightweight interior lining, as well as molded-leather and Kevlar armor sections; pants that include heavy-duty, four-way stretch Spandex inserts and CE-approved armor; authentic gloves and boots that replicate the amazing on-screen design.

Each Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit can be customized to fit sizes ranging from XXS to XXL. Orders can be placed exclusively at UDReplicas.com, and each Dark Knight Motorcycle Suit retails for $998 U.S. (or $1,149 CDN for orders placed in Canada, United Kingdom and Australia). A maximum of 1,000 Dark Knight Motorcycle Suits will be created.

If you can afford the suit then all you’ll need is a cape and you’ll have the perfect Batman costume.

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The Hurt Locker is a war movie, no doubt. But war movies come in many shapes and sizes, since the only criteria is that the movie be about war or be about a particular war. Good Morning Vietnam? Still a war movie. Lions for Lambs? War movie.

Movies about the Iraq War haven’t been doing so well at the box office in recent years. It might have been because the American Government was making their own policy horror film and facing that reality on our free time was not the movie-going public’s idea of entertainment. Or maybe those movies just didn’t know how to approach the subject matter.

When I know I’m strapping in for a war movie, there are some things I have come to expect:

1) War is confusing, so there will inevitably be a scene where key information about what’s happening is withheld from you.

2) The people who serve our country are heroes, so except a character with strong moral fiber.

3) There will probably be a character who wasn’t expecting the realism of life or death situations. This character will break down in a battle situation, adding tension because he’s obviously not doing his job.

4) There will be a “What does it all mean?” scene or discussion which usually ends with something like: “War Is Hell.”

The Hurt Locker doesn’t fail to meet these criteria, though some of the above four points are hit harder than others, but what makes it different from other war movies is that it’s primarily set in combat, and that it might be the best superhero movie to come out this year.

The Hurt Locker was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose diverse career thus far includes vampires in Near Dark, surfers in Point Break, and the only movie poster I own but refuse to put up on my wall, the dismal submarine flick, K19: Widowmaker. She shot the movie on Super 16mm film, mostly handheld, in Jordan from a script by Iraq reporter Mark Boal. As a result, this film drops you into combat and keeps you there for the duration. The tension is immediately cranked up from the first scene where we learn that things explode and kill people.

This isn’t a movie about situations, this isn’t a movie about message, this is a movie about waking up every day knowing that things explode and kill people, and this is a fact. The uncertainty each day revolves around swimming against the tide, hoping that whatever happens in your corner of the war, it isn’t you that dies.

Enter Jeremy Renner in the role of Staff Sergeant William James. James is brought in to serve as team leader for the three-person EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team. He’s the guy that straps on the suit and does the work that gets himself ‘sploded. This is your superhero this summer. He is Mavrick before Goose, and even when you think the guy is going to have a Goose moment and start doubting his cocky attitude and impeccable talent, Jeremy Renner refuses to let the character crack. When he shows up, he scares the living shit out of Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) by not using the robot to find the IED (Improvised Explosive Device) reported somewhere down the street. James just suits up and goes for it. Later, he’ll take off his gigantic not-quite-bomb proof suit to defuse a bomb because if he’s going to die, he’d rather be comfortable.

He’s introduced as the bad ass wild man and continues to be such through the film. There is no doubt that Sgt. James is actually a hot shot, diffusing over 800 bombs and still staying alive. Even when the EOD gets pinned down by sniper fire, James proves himself as a capable leader when explosives aren’t involved. The great thing about a war movie is that you can introduce a character like James, a character who is unquestionably good at what he does – the hero of the story – and still have us fear for his life in every scene because…well, because it’s Iraq not Gotham, God dammit.

Last summer, we had Bruce Wayne asking the big questions, questions about a hero’s place in society and the power of one man on the side of good or evil making a difference; since The Dark Knight has divided superhero movies into two different camps: fantasy-escapism or realism-escapism, where does that leave real superheros in the real world?

Make no mistake, Sgt. James is a superhero. And I’m not saying that because I’m too chickenshit myself to enlist. As Winston Zedmore would say: he has the tools, he has the talent. He’s also a person addicted to the drug of war, and since we’re not talking about a sniper or a SEAL, he’s not placed in a situation where he has to kill on someone else’s orders or make a tactical decision that could turn the tides. All Sgt. James does throughout the whole film is try to save lives, sometimes in a very-real explosion type of way and other times in a more psychological manner.

So, much like Batman, the question that is the most interesting throughout the film is how this changes a person, how it affects them. While Sgt. Sanborn’s will to live practically oozes out his pores and Specialist Eldridge’s fear of death becomes his story purpose, Sgt. James still tries to save lives the only way he knows how. And these attempts aren’t always successful, but in a good superhero story, they never are.

The Hurt Locker as a war movie falls on the exact opposite of the Iraq spectrum as Jarhead. That film was suppose to create the ennui of war in the viewers, and sort of succeeded for better or for worse. The Hurt Locker doesn’t give you a lot of time to breathe, even using a (pardon the seemingly bomb related reference) ticking clock of this particular team’s deployment to move the story towards its conclusion. Kathryn Bigelow knows action, and this is an action movie on its surface.

However, it’s Jeremy Renner who shines in this film as Sgt. James. If I was only reading the dialogue on the page of the script, I would think James was almost too perfect, possibly insane. When he pulls saved bomb-parts out from under his bunk, mementos from things that almost killed him, I was afraid the scene would go all Speed on me with a speech about how a bomb is a beautiful thing that is meant to explode. What really happened was a Renner moment, where the character’s struggle to stay super, to not just become another confused hero who found himself in a war movie. The flaws in Sgt. James are never spoken, they’re acted, and when the film comes to a close, Renner’s performance suddenly rushes at your memory, revealing itself to be the center of the film, a center that is handled very quietly and very deliberately. And you just don’t see that kind of character work in summer films these days.

The Hurt Locker can currently be seen by those of you in New York and Los Angeles that have nifty art-house theaters, cinemas that are slowly getting pushed out of the summer months when everyone else is letting summer tent pole movies take their hard earned recession money.

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