Author: Simon Andrews

Every so often, a film comes completely out of left field and manages to redefine an entire genre. With the majority of Hollywood financiers unwilling to take a risk on anything they don’t have complete faith in, these movies tend to come from foreign markets, but the money and cultural impact they achieve leaves a lasting impression on Tinseltown’s ways if thinking. In 2016, it was Train to Busan that grabbed hold of the traditional zombie-flick and slapped it senseless, and reports emerging this week have revealed that the visceral Korean horror movie will soon be getting a sequel.  Much…

Last April we bought you an article about some of the more savage reviews that had been meted out in relation to Deep Blue Sea 2. It’s fair to say that absolutely NO-ONE has had anything positive to say about the cult 1999 film’s unwanted sequel, and so the task fell to me to sit through the movie’s 90 minutes, and see if I could find anything at all that might improve the toxic 3/10 rating that it currently has on IMDB. Given the release of The Meg, we felt it was a worthwhile experiment. But first, a little bit…

You can pretty much use one hand to count the number of mistakes that Marvel Studios have made during the first decade of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Misfires like Iron Man 3 and Inhumans are of course quite hard to forget, and whilst the removal of Edgar Wright from directorial duties on the first Ant-Man movie remains a contentious issue, it pales into insignificance compared to last week’s very public sacking of James Gunn as director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It’s a move that has drawn universal criticism, but emerging reports in Hollywood this week suggest that…

Despite operating under intense scrutiny from the global media, and the unyielding gaze of an international fan community, Marvel somehow continually manages to keep their big MCU twists and cameos well under wraps. The only thing more surprising than the heart-rending conclusion of Avengers: Infinity War is the fact that literally nobody knew it was coming. And equally as shocking was the movie’s other surprise event, the return of missing super-villain Johann Schmidt – AKA The Red Skull), but just why did it take the company SEVEN years before they finally elected to bring him back? When the Hugo Weaving…

Whether you see it as a classic case of the law of diminishing returns, or the victim of a greater societal case of ‘Superhero Fatigue’, there’s no denying that the Netflix/Marvel alliance isn’t having it easy of late. With open hostility towards two of the shows involved (Luke Cage/Iron Fist), and the start of negative rumblings about a third (Jessica Jones), audience reactions are starting to cause a headache for the project’s show-runners. And to top it all off, one of Netflix’s executive team has now publicly announced there are no current plans for a second season of The Defenders.…

Marvel fans. If you like Spider-Man, and you like The Punisher, then you’re gonna LOVE Marvel’s latest ‘What If?’ solicitation. The company have a fine tradition of presenting wonderful and mind-bending tales, where the origin stories and pivotal events in the history of their most famous properties are toyed with, or cleverly skewed sideways by the writers. So brace yourself, and prepare to find out what happens when Peter Parker chooses a very different path in the wake of his Uncle Ben’s death. If you’re sat there reading this and thinking that these two iconic Marvel Comics characters make for…

If this year’s SDCC was notable for anything, it was for an overall lack of Marvel coverage. Other than some panels for Season 2 of Iron Fist, and the announcement that Marvel comics would be bringing back the Uncanny X-Men, it fell to Sony’s Venom movie to do the bulk of the heavy lifting for the comic book company. But if that sounds disappointing though, it really isn’t, because some of the details revealed by the assembled cast and crew have fueled speculation Venom has been created in order to bridge the gap between the Spider-Verse and the existing Marvel…

Every Marvel fan knows that the creative minds behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe lay the foundations and building blocks for their most spectacular plot reveals way in advance of the actual events taking place. With that truth in mind, the fact that next year’s Captain Marvel movie will feature legendary villains, The Skrulls, has got a significant part of the Marvel fan community wondering if we’ve already seen the shape-shifting bad guys in the MCU. One particular theory that’s doing the rounds st the moment is both exciting and worrisome in equal measure, and suggests that Thor may not be…

Even before the cinematic release of Infinity War back in April, the Internet was already saturated with speculation and theories about how the Avengers would bounce back from the aftermath of their apocalyptic confrontation with the Mad Titan. Leaked set photos from the set of Avengers 4 teased a narrative based heavily around time-travel, setting up an epic trip back through all of the key events in the previous MCU movies for the surviving heroes. That’s a truly mind-blowing concept, and one fan theory that’s doing the rounds online at the moment has suggested that this was the only successful option…

For fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this year’s San Diego Comic Con turned out to be something of a disappointment. As DC absolutely flooded social media with trailers for Aquaman, Shazam and Wonder Woman 1984, there were no promotional releases whatsoever for Captain Marvel or Avengers 4. In fact there was nothing MCU-related on show at all this year, leaving the company to instead promote its written publications, including the return of the Uncanny X-Men series. The Uncanny X-Men imprint is actually the original storyline for the famous mutant super-team, but has always been more commonly known across the industry…