Comic-Con 2012 has come and gone, but the annual gathering of geeks has left plenty of footage in its wake. Right before the convention began, the first trailer for director Sam Raimi’s upcoming fantasy adventure Oz: The Great and Powerful hit, promising plenty of visual splendor. As shooting wraps for sci-fi thriller After Earth – starring Will Smith and his son Jaden – Columbia Pictures has released a viral video that serves as a setup and back story to this dystopian tale that finds Earth in ruin (again).
Wish we had Thomas Jane back as The Punisher? Well an “unofficial” short (of course courtesy of Comic-Con) starring the man himself and Hellboy’s Ron Perlman has been released, showcasing all the bad-guy dispatching we could hope for. Last off is the first clip for thriller sequel Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, which sees the return of the malformed, disfigured nurses from the original. Afraid of hospitals? This clip won’t help.
Oz: The Great and Powerful
Alice in Wonderland 2.0 is here in the form of Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful, a pseudo-prequel to the 1939 classic that seems to adhere closely to both the original in setup and to Tim Burton’s 2010 blockbuster in aesthetics. In “Great and Powerful”, a morally-questionable magician (and future ruler of the Emerald City)
The only thing really keeping my interest in this project at all it the involvement of Raimi and three stellar ladies who round out the principle cast: Mila Kunis, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz. Other than that it looks like an attempt to cash in on the renewed popularity in the fairy tale/fantasy genre all while stripping away some of the mystery and magic of The Wizard of Oz in the process. Although it’s still early on and I have faith that Raimi wouldn’t attach himself to an inferior product, I’ll need to see a lot more dazzle before I go skipping down the yellow brick road again.
After Earth
Showing its love for Facebook’s timeline setup, this first viral video for M. Night Shamylan’s After Earth gives us the chronological events that will eventually leave to the devastation of our dear planet. The importance of the “Raige” family name is also highlighted (the military mind who shipped off some of Earth’s inhabitants to another, more inhabitable world). This likely refers to the distant ancestors of Will Smith’s Cypher Raige and Jaden Smith’s Kitai Raige, the protagonists of our sci-fi tale who crash-land on our long-abandoned planet. We haven’t seen any footage yet, so this viral peek is all we get thus far to gauge if Shyamalan will be able to pull himself out of the dung-heap he’s created for himself.
The Punisher
“What’s the difference between justice and punishment?” asks Tomas Jane’s Frank Castle. Personally, I couldn’t care less as long as he’s allowed to bludgeon the ever-loving-shit out of baddies the way he does in this Comic-Con short. I warn you, this is an extremely graphic video with plenty of gore and bone-breaking (but if you were a fan of 2004’s The Punisher you should feel right at home). The Punisher is one Marvel property that just can’t seem to catch a break and certainly doesn’t look to now after the reboot in 2008 flopped badly. Even if this is all we get from the skull-wearing vigilante, my blood lust is momentarily satisfied.
Silent Hill: Revelation 3D
The original Silent Hill from back in 2006 was a heavily flawed but often disturbingly effective adaptation of the video game that benefited from the use of large sets and gorgeous, grotesque, creature design. Six years on, Sony has opted to create a follow-up and thanks to Comic-Con, we have a first look at Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. This time around, the visit to the ghost town will center on a new character from the Silent Hill 3 video game, though it appears as if characters from the original are returning in some capacity as well. Nobody really asked for a sequel (especially so long after the first), but at least fans of the game have something to look forward to.
