With the events of San Diego Comic-Con fully upon us a few assets from upcoming movies and series premieres have started to appear online. For those of use who didn”t get to go to Comic-Con we can start appreciating all the highlights of the show bar the presentations. First to come to our attention is the poster above for Terminator Salvation (4).

It’s nice to see they are keeping to the old school way of making the terminator itself the prime focus of attention it would be nice to see a bit more about the film itself. The recently released teaser trailer was extremely light on useful footage, so it’s hard to make a judgement on the movie at this point. Unless there is more revealed with nighttime action sequences, as the future was shown in the first two movies then we might be stuck with Resident Evil 3 - The Terminator version. Nothing but sand and dust with occasional CGI action sequences.

Still, right now we have hope, and isn’t hope the whole point this early in the production process. We wish those working on the production the best of luck and hope McG provides a worthy addition to the franchise and a good film able to stand on it’s own.

Image sources: Edward Douglas c/o Comingsoon.net

This is only a friendly reminder that Stuffwelike let’s you know the news you need to know first. In relation to The Dark Knight movie we covered a story way back at the beginning of the year about how IMDB let the ending of The Dark Knight leak in a news story. Even though no other news website mentioned it, we did and if you look at it after watching the movie you will see how we were right on the button about SPOILER how the joker wouldn’t get killed off. For those of us who covered the story knowing a part of the ending was a real pain when watching the movie.

We can even guess how he would have been reintroduced during the next movie in the series as it would make sense taking prior Batman incarnations into account. After the end of Dark Knight he would have been taken into Arkham nuthouse where all Batman’s enemies are kept and then at the beginning of the next movie he would break out with the assistance of the new villain. Having the joker work as his sidekick, in a way.

First a confession, the writer of this piece does happen to be a currently working film critic so there is a little bias on my part. On IMDB there is a story about how newspaper critics that didn’t come out with The Dark Knight is the best movie ever made have been receiving hate mail in massive quantities. Not just small time reviewers but even those such as the critics for the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times.

One of the reviewers has even commented that “I’ve gotten 250 or 300 e-mails, almost all with the vilest, most abusive language you could possibly imagine. I was stunned. These people aren’t just discourteous. They’re insane.” The comments continued with “I write for an educated readership and usually the responses to my reviews are courteous and collegial,” he remarked. “But this was really ugly. It did feel like a mob.”

My two cents on this is by default for print published reviewers there are two default settings for comments. The first is that a no feedback policy is enabled between the editor and reviewer so they receive no feedback from the readership and thus feel no pressure beyond providing an honest opinion. The other option is to publish the reviewers email address and allow them to feel the full force of the readership. This is a negative in my opinion as comments made do leave a lasting impression and everything under the sun would receive a generic 3/5 as to not upset anyone one way or the other.

Cryptic Studios, the developer behind the Champions Online MMORPG has had a countdown timer on their website’s main page for several months now. On Monday the countdown expires and we get to see what they plan to announce.

There is one theory widely thought to be the truth around the net. Back in January, Perpetual Entertainment announced it was no longer developing Star Trek Online. Then their was talk about how all assets for the game they had worked on bar code had been transferred to a San Francisco development studio. Since that time nothing has been known about Star Trek Online other than this.

What did come around several months ago was the Cryptic Studios timer with it’s space background. Since they would need time to develop something to show it makes sense that Cryptic would work towards a grand announcement and in just a few days time we will finally get some answers. Given the less than great graphics and gameplay shown by Stargate Worlds recently perhaps Star Trek Online could be the last hope for serious TV sci-fi fans.

There was one element that was seen as a terrible idea when Perpetual was in charge for Trek and that was how larger starships would be static hubs online. We can only hope this has been removed and players can run free across the galaxy with whole starships filled with players.

Wallace & Gromit, two of my most favourite animated characters, will be converted into video game form by Telltale Games, the guys behind the great Sam & Max line of episodic adventure games. The series will be titled “Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures” which sounds like a pretty decent, yet generic title.

The game will work along the lines of Sam & Max, but knowing Wallace & Gromit, it should be an easy adaptation. It will also most likely involve a lot of building and zany contraptions. We still have no clear details on this game, but I’d expect it to be an adventure game. I mean seriously, you thought it would be a first person shooter?

Telltale will be really working on this one to give it the clay look. Hell, I didn’t think the screenshot you see above was CG! It’d be really nice to interact with Wallace & Gromit in their native medium! Interestingly, while the claymation in Wallace & Gromit is pretty simple, Telltale is still working hard on it:

“Clay presents a challenge if you really get into the detail of it. For example, adding fingerprints in a medium where there aren’t any is one of the discussions of how far we should go with the game’s detail.”

No idea on the whens and whats of this game, but a good guess would be that the game wouldn’t come around anywhere this year.

Movie video game tie-ins aren’t news, but what Warner Bros. is trying to go with them is. Warner has announced that they will be experimenting with downloadable tie-in games for Watchmen and two are already in the works!

The first will be around the release of the movie (i.e. March 2009), while the second will arrive shortly after the DVD release. What’s more, if these two games end up successful, Warner will go ahead with further episodes.

Seeing the sorry fate of movie-based video games was probably what spurred Warner into action. The downloadable format means that the game will be shorter and more appealing to the fans. According to Warner, this model will end up better at pleasing fans and critics, which is definitely going to be a tough task.

Interestingly, the source article at Variety also says that if the series ends up successfull, there might even be future pics tie-ins with the games. We’re not sure if a downloadable series can get that successful, so we’re just gonna go with a “Yeah, right” for now.

Right now we know that the first game will be released for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. It will be developed by Danish developer Deadline Games. I checked out their Wikipedia entry and I don’t see any titles ringing any bells. The game will feature Rorshach and Nite Owl battling crime.

This would mean that the game is something of a prequel to Watchmen, where a close friendship between Rorshach and Nite Owl as crimefighting buddies is hinted at. Would be great to see this in the form of a video game, but again, we’re totally not sure if this is gonna work.

If The Dark Knight is to win any awards it’s that, it is the most internet hyped films of the year. Much like the villain Two Face, the film itself has its good and bad sides.

The Good:

Heath Ledger (The Joker) and Aaron Eckhart (Two Face) are great villains. Heath’s performance isn’t Oscar worthy. In fact the Two Face character itself is much more rounded than Joker. You feel for Eckhart and understand why he goes to the “dark side.” Where as with The Joker, he’s just evil because he can be evil. Yippee.

The vehicle based action scenes, or any action scenes without the Batman suit are great. Batman himself is still stiff because of his suit. It isn’t as bad as Batman Begins, but any time you can’t see the action that’s occurring, that’s movie magic. It’s a way for filmmakers to bring upon an illusion that something really cool is going on.

One “important” character dies in this film. I won’t spoil who, but damn it’s so satisfying to see that person die. I think that’s a positive thing because that person really brought down the film. He/She looked ugly and I don’t think it was a the makeup.

The Bad:

That being said the better parts of the film are when the villains are on screen. But wait, isn’t this film called The Dark Knight? Isn’t that Batman? Oh right Batman is a one sided character. He’s two sided if you count Bruce Wayne. Bruce isn’t a charming “wealthy young man about town.” Whereas Tony Stark has his good looks and fun jokes, Bruce is morbid. He’s just one of the many rich dudes that everyone hates in the real world. Why he is even Batman is never really explored in this film. He’s Batman because he can be Batman. Is that really a good explanation? Sounds similar to why The Joker is evil explanation. Yawn.

Batman in this film is pretty evil. Killing dogs, enemies, and attacking SWAT! Oh right, I forgot Batman works alone…

At the end of the day, this films screams out I have no heart. There is no core to this film that makes it really worthwhile for movie goers. There isn’t anything that sucks people into the world and spits them out. Gotham is a dull and dreary place. Why any film goer would want to escape into this world beats the hell out of me! While Tim Burton’s Gotham was dark, it had a character to it.  Christoper Nolan’s Gotham doesn’t.

Where’s the story? Much like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight doesn’t have a appealing story. It’s an adventure without the mystery, intrigue, and fun that all super hero films need. When a film has to explain what’s going on multiple times throughout the film, that’s not a good thing.

Conclusion:

This film ain’t for kids. Fanboys have already eaten it up. If this film was cut down to maybe 2 hours, it might have been better. I won’t be watching this film again, but thanks for the memories.

Let me know your thoughts! Leave a comment below.