Good news for people who like watching movies about people getting superpowers: 2016 is going to bring at least two more of them to the screen. Elsewhere, enjoy the greatest casting news that sadly wasn't actually real, the team-up that won't be, and a welcome sign that maybe the *Fantastic Four'*s greatest villain didn't like their movie just as much as you. Dear reader, it's that time again: the time when you catch up on the highlights of the last seven days in superhero movie news.
With the movie currently shooting in Nepal, Latino-Review shared what it claimed were plot details about Marvel's Doctor Strange. Although what the site shared was essentially the character's canonical comic book origin: Stephen Strange is a brilliant, arrogant surgeon whose hands get damaged in an accident which leaves him searching for something to replace medicine in his life, only for him to discover magic. The twists this time around? The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) doesn't want to teach him, and there's a portal to another dimension that's been open since the late 1960s ... which apparently no one has noticed in the earlier Marvel movies.
Why this is super: Why mess with a classic? There's nothing wrong with the origin of Doctor Strange, so it's nice to know that things will be staying traditional in the 2016 movie, even if the prospect of another origin story is a little exhausting. Didn't we decide we'd had enough origins by now?
The difference between Deadpool and Fox's other X-Men characters isn't that Deadpool can do an amazing Wolverine impersonation, nor that he's pansexual, according to the movie's director. Nope, it's that he has an origin story that's not just "And then I hit puberty, and bam: superpowers!" Deadpool's creation, you see, comes at the hands of Angel Dust (Gina Carano) and Ajax (Ed Skrein). And as Carano revealed in an interview, they spend the movie "torturing Deadpool and creating him and making him... in a way, saving his life." She continued: "I know we’re considered the bad ones, but in a way we’re saving his life and turning him into Deadpool. So, me and Ajax get to really create Deadpool, which that just gives me goosebumps." Finally, a superhero movie that's an origin story!
Why this is villainy: Seriously, one of the great things about the X-Men movies is that they didn't bother with origin stories. Why is this happening?!?
Earlier this week it looked like the award for Most Unexpected Casting News of All was going to go to the rumor that Mariah Carey was in talks to voice Commissioner Gordon in the 2017 Lego Batman movie. But then it turned out that initial reports were half-wrong; she is actually going to be playing Gotham City's mayor, instead. So then that became the Most Unexpected Casting News of All. Either way, it's fantastic. And hey, maybe she can moonlight as part-time mayor, part-time police chief? That could work out, right?
Why this is super: OK, so mayor isn't quite as big a role in a Batman movie as Commissioner Gordon, but still: Mariah Carey? The cast list for this movie is kind of ridiculous, in a good way. Does this mean she'll do the theme song? If that's not already on the agenda, can we get that on the agenda?
Tough luck, DC fans who hoped that *The Flash'*s TV multiversal adventures could lead to a connection to the DC movie universe; producer Charles Roven told Collider that the 2018 Flash feature film has "a different Flash in a different universe. We're gonna try to stay in our universe and they're gonna be staying, I think, in their universe, and hopefully the audiences will embrace both. I think they can."
Why this is super: We're big fans of DC's multiverse, but trying to mix Grant Gustin (TV's Flash) and Ezra Miller (the man cast for the movie version) together is the kind of thing that's as likely to confuse and upset audiences as thrill them. Not everything has to be connected. And who's to say what state the TV Flash will be in by the time the movie's ready for release, anyway?
Doom, it turns out, understands why the people are displeased with Fantastic Four. "The fans aren't wrong," actor Toby Kebbel, who played the latest cinematic version of Victor Von Doom in this summer's Fantastic Four, told IGN. "I thought that the film was going to go well, it didn't turn out that the fans felt that way. So... the reaction is honest, and I can appreciate that honesty." Asked what he learned from working on Fantastic Four, he said, "When I see something I don't agree with, to voice that immediately... I think it's vitally important that, if there's a problem on set, that's it's voiced and we solve it there."
Why this is super: It'll be a while before we get the tell-all oral history of Fantastic Four—although, really, how great will that be when it finally arrives?—but let's consider this the first sign that people are perhaps getting more willing to admit that the project was kind of a disaster even while it was being filmed. Trouble on set? Agreeing with fans that the movie wasn't that good? Let the next shoe to drop be Jamie Bell admitting that all of his scenes were CGI'd, including the ones where he wasn't the Thing.
