Star Wars: Episode VII cast announcement

Hold on to your Jedi robes and stormtrooper helmets - the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII has been announced.

A release on the official Star Wars website has listed a variety of actors including Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong), John Boyega (Attack the Block, Law and Order: UK), Daisy Ridley (Silent Witness, Toast of London), Adam Driver (Girls, Lincoln), Oscar Isaac (Sucker Punch, Robin Hood), Domnhall Gleeson (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, True Grit), and Max von Sydow (The Exorcist, Minority Report).

These new faces will be working alongside Star Wars veterans Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker.

"We are so excited to finally share the cast of Star Wars: Episode VII. It is both thrilling and surreal to watch the beloved original cast and these brilliant new performers come together to bring this world to life, once again," said director J.J. Abrams. "We start shooting in a couple of weeks, and everyone is doing their best to make the fans proud."

Seeing talented actors like Max von Sydow and Andy Serkis on the cast list has done a lot to reassure many fans (myself included) that Episode VII will be the great Star Wars film we've been waiting for.

Some recent Star Wars rumors suggest that Harrison Ford's fan favourite Han Solo will have a leading role, Max von Sydow will be playing the villain, and the film's subtitle will be "The Ancient Fear." At this point it's difficult to tell what's fact or speculation, but Abrams will surely keep our wait interesting with more teasers and casting information.

Episode VII is set to open worldwide on December 18, 2015.

Review: The Amazing Spider-Man 2

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 received harsh reviews despite being a solid Spider-Man film.

I'm not sure what critics wanted.

I almost skipped out on this film, despite being a huge Spider-Man fan, simply because of the harsh ratings this film was receiving.

I'm glad I didn't.

To be fair, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is not a genre game-changer. It doesn't chart brand new horizons for comic book films.

But it stands alone as the better of the two post-reboot films, certainly. It stays true the the comic book roots of the franchise. And the plot development actually leaves the viewer in the position of wanting more.

The film pits Spider-Man/Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) against awkward electrical engineer-turned-spark plug Max Dillon/Electro (Jamie Foxx). Garfield turns in much the same performance as in the first film, although he is faced with more emotionally charged scenes in which he does an adequate job. Foxx is his usual brilliant self, although the pre-Electro character of Max Dillon was a bit over the top for my tastes. This could easily be the writing and not any of Foxx's doing, though.

Gwen Stacy, played by Emma Stone, is developed into a more independent character than the first film. Stone's portrayal of Stacy was good, but the efforts to make her more complex were middling. Sally Field's portrayal of Aunt May is solid - if anything, she could have used more screen time.

Dane DeHaan almost steals the show as Harry Osborne.

The real surprise for me was Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborne. I missed DeHaan's previous work in Chronicle, which I will now be forced to go back and watch.

DeHaan absolutely kills this role. He oozes the trademark Osborne combination of confidence, anger and instability. There's absolutely no comparison between him and James Franco, who played Osborne in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films. DeHaan clearly understands the character and he just blows the performance away.

The best part is that despite Osborne's villain status, he faces issues of his own that make you want to cheer for him, even if just a little bit. And given the film's set-up for a future standalone Sinister Six spinoff, I'm looking forward to more of DeHaan's work in the future.

The film itself is not perfect, as I mentioned before. One of the criticisms that I tend to agree with is that the sub-plot regarding Peter's parents, and their connection to the project that turned him into Spider-Man, is overly long and has no real impact on the main plot. This is especially disconcerting because the film actually opens with a flashback dealing with this sub-plot.

Besides a moment of realization, nothing is really gained from a plot perspective. Spidey still has to fight the villains and he gains no advantage from his discovery. It felt more like the writers really wanted to get the plot out of the way before the next film.

Electro, played by Jamie Foxx, is based on the character
from Marvel's Ultimate universe.

Besides this, I thought the film was fairly well-constructed. One criticism I thought was unfair was a comparison to the dreadful Spider-Man 3: too many villains.

There are basically two villains, who work together at one point. Is that too many? They both have their own motivations and reasons for hating Spidey. They both try to harm him in their own way. He has to adopt different strategies to defeat both.

I don't understand how two is too many. It doesn't significantly draw out the film, nor is it the part of the plot most eligible for pruning (I'd argue the parents plot or some of the Gwen Stacy plot could have been cut, honestly). Rhino is not part of the main plot, does not complicate the plot, nor is he encountered until the credits are about to roll, so I can't count him as a villain here.

Some people complained of pacing, but I was never really bored. It felt a lot like a series of issues of Spider-Man: he doesn't just fight villains. He has a set of responsibilities, a support network that he continually places in danger by fighting crime, and the mundane grind of daily survival, including paying the bills.

And when I think about it that way, I understand why some of the critics may have been disappointed. Spider-Man, despite his extraordinary powers, has always really been an ordinary person. Those struggles are part of who he is, and a large part of what has made the character interesting. And if they came into the film expecting high-flying superhero antics like The Avengers, then they were never going to be satisfied anyways.

Star Wars canon purge is not the end

"Incredulous question: Eliminate me? Surely you jest, master."

It was if millions of fans cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

As the new films approached, Disney and Lucasfilm set out back in January to define what elements of the Star Wars expanded universe would remain canon going forward. The expanded universe is basically everything outside of the films: books, video games, comics, etc. If something fictional is "canon", it is "the material accepted as 'official' in a fictional universe."

Or, as my brother put it in a recent discussion, canon "is how real the fake is."

Well, turns out almost nothing remains canon after the Order 66-scale purge. The only media that remain canon are the six main films, the Clone Wars series, and the upcoming Rebels series.

This was announced about a week ago, and since then, there has been an outpouring of emotion from Star Wars fans via social media. Anyone who has read expanded universe material has a favourite storyline, so the disappointment was palpable.

Some will be more impacted than others. True, none remain canon. But if you loved anything post-Return of the Jedi, you can assume it will be incompatible with the new films.

Others, like my favourites, remain safely out of reach of the new films, even if deemed non-canon.

The entire Knights of the Old Republic plotline (including the comics,  KOTOR II and SWTOR) is so heavily insulated from the rest of the Star Wars universe that its status as non-canon means almost nothing to me. I already sort of assumed it wasn't, but I also didn't care because of how amazing it was.

Xizor - a dangerous opponent.

Another one of my favourites is Shadows of the Empire. This takes place between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and deals with the Rebels' search for Han and Vader's search for Luke. In the middle of it all is Prince Xizor, the scheming head of  intergalactic criminal organization Black Sun. Xizor's vendetta against Vader causes him to jump into the Skywalker sweepstakes with both feet, resulting in a power struggle for the Emperor's favour.

But is this really the end of the Star Wars expanded universe?

In a practical sense, maybe. Some EU books will continue to be published under the Star Wars Legends imprint. But many will likely only be available in digital form moving forward.

From another standpoint though, it's the beginning of a solid, unified canon that has the potential to remain consistent going forward.

The old stories will stay with us. Hell, you can pretend they're just an alternate timeline if you want, like Star Wars: Infinities was.

Yeah... I'm pretty sure that didn't happen.

And I'll add that a lot of the background information will likely remain mostly-valid. For example, Falleen is mentioned in Clone Wars - maybe Xizor is still around. Lucasfilm and Disney have also stated that there will be references to some of the EU.

I'm not going to pretend that the purge doesn't make me a little disappointed, because it does. But what it lets Lucasfilm and Disney do could be an incredible opportunity to not only keep old fans, but continue to recruit new ones.

In essence, the expanded universe has been struck down. Let's hope that canon becomes more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

The first photo from the Warcraft film's set

From Empire magazine. Image from BuzzHub.

The most recent issue of Empire featured a solitary image taken on the set of the upcoming Warcraft film. The folks over at BuzzHub scanned and uploaded the page above.

The actual scene depicted isn't described, but I'm guessing that it takes place in the Cathedral of Light or in Stormwind Keep. Check out the floor pattern and what appears to be the seal of Stormwind in the background in the above image, and then compare that to the screenshot of the in-game cathedral below.

It's a pretty small shot, so who knows, but we do know that Stormwind is going to be a location in the film.

In any case, it's great that we're seeing on-set stuff. Hopefully we'll get more glances soon enough.

Peter Jackson confirms renaming of third Hobbit film

On Thursday morning, Peter Jackson announced via Facebook that the name of the third Hobbit film would be changed.

The movie was slated to be called The Hobbit: There and Back Again, but the change was made after Jackson and crew decided that Bilbo Baggins, the plucky protagonist of the film, was essentially "already there" after the second film.

"We decided to keep an open mind until a cut of the film was ready to look at. We reached that point last week, and after viewing the movie, we all agreed there is now one title that feels completely appropriate," Jackson said.

The title?

"And so: "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" it is," Jackson confirmed.

Jackson also teased that we should be getting a lot more information about the film in the coming months and mentioned that the extended cut of the second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug, will contain almost 25 minutes more screen time than the theatrical release.