Yesterday was Marvel day here a GeekTyrant. Nearly every news post was from or related to the Marvel Event. The announcement of nine movies in Marvel's phase 3, the casting of Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther plus concept art, and then a full 19 minute Q&A with producer Kevin Feige were blowing our minds with all the great movies we have to look forward to.

Disney/Marvel sent us photos of the event that are much sharper and larger than the tweets we all saw yesterday. Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans put up their fists and then rock-paper-scissors over who gets Black Panther. We also have lots of photos of movie logo model Kevin Feige.

Make sure to check out the extended trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron that features the Avengers having a party and the team attempting to lift Thor's hammer.

Our Halloween episode of GeekTyrant VS is out, and it's our craziest and silliest episode yet! Our teams get in a debate over which horror hand character is better: Thing from The Addams Family or Ash's severed hand from Evil Dead 2. Now, here's the kicker that takes this episode to the extreme… the arguments are made by the hands of the team members. As ridiculous as this episode is, the teams do make some solid arguments, and this turned out to be an incredibly entertaining and fun episode, so I hope you enjoy it! Check out the video and let us know what your favorite horror movie hand is. To catch up on all of our previous episodes, click here.

We've already posted interviews with Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, and Mark Ruffalo as they discussed Joss Whedon's Avengers Age of Ultron and their characters in that movie. We also got some huge Marvel movie news yesterday when the studio announced their exciting line-up of films through 2019! But, now it's time to see what Robert Downey Jr. has to say about Age of Ultron and his character Tony Stark. He begins by talking about his first initial reaction to getting the script from Whedon.

"Well, first of all, he’s a good writer, so I always tend to think generally speaking, 'Is this a movie I wanna see?' ‘cause all the fine points are gonna get worked out. At this point, as the Mayor of Marvel (laughter), there’s gonna be so many squeaky wheels along the way. Many of them practical and others just, you know, creative departures or differences or whatever. So to me, this kinda started with the third Iron Man which is like, 'All right, I’m gonna read the script. Who wrote it?' 'Shane Black.' 'I like it.' This time I think that from jump I thought, “Wow, this is really what Avengers: Age of Ultron should be. (I hadn’t figured it out beforehand) But I was done with the first draft and I said, 'Cool, I like it.' Kevin was like, 'Wait, what did you just say?' (laughter) I’m sure there was a bunch of iterations and things that changed over time. Then I read the second and then the third draft, and he’s continuing to write even as we’re setting up shots he’s going, 'I know what I want it to be or bringing back in a line that was in the first draft or whatever.' You’d think was like the ingredients to that salad dressing that makes girls go into labor. I guess it is."

When asked where Tony Stark is in his life in Age of Ultron, and how he's playing the character as he progresses, Downey responds,

"Well, I would counterpoint that by saying that I thought that the third Iron Man was about him transcending his dependence on the merits of continuing to wear your wound. And I thought that that was kind of what Shane and I thought was the real win. Was that he throws that thing that had become a dependency away because… that was the question I was always asking is, 'Why doesn’t he get those shards out? It’s dangerous.' So it kinda reminds me of like all that stuff, particularly as you get a little older or if you have any existential queries whatsoever. It’s like, 'Why aren’t I dealing with that which is going to destroy me any second anyway?' And then the armor was kind of an extension of that. Also, there was just so many suits, but I think he realizes that tweaking and making all the suits in the world which is what he has been doing still didn’t work for that thing of his, that tour of duty that left him a little PTSD. So his focus is more on how can we make it so that there’s no problem to begin with. That there’s a bouncer at our planet’s rope. That’s the big idea."

Whedon talked about how one of the big themes of this next Avengers movie is being destroyed by power. Downey Jr. discusses how that applies to Tony in the story.

"I mean honestly I think it’s probably that thematically I think it’s the best thing Joss decided to go after, you know what I mean? It’s a very kinda typical gung-ho western iconic thing to be like, 'There’s nothing wrong with me. Now let’s begin.' It’s kind of like an objective introspection at the whole idea. I think he always thinks about it. Like he says, 'All right, let me just pretend I’m being pro-offered this narrative at first glance. What do I think? All right, they’re nuts.' He’s doing a bit of the Noam Chomsky approach Avengers in retrospect which I think is healthy, and I think it also just opens up a whole other avenue of creativity for it, you know. That’s what I really notice is there’s a lot of dots that could have connected a certain way, but because there’s that theme of, “Could it be that we’re the problem and therefore a bad guy? If you wanna call it. I can’t really say there’s a bad guy. It’s hard to call Jimmy Spader a bad guy, but he’s scary and he’s bright and hurting and all that, but his thought is, 'I see what’s wrong here. And guess what? It’s y’all.'”

One of the other things that I found interesting was how he responded to a question about Tony's relationship with Ultron.

"I always read this as the concept that every impulse starts off as a positive impulse. Even impulse to kill starts off as an impulse to change, to rail against, to challenge the authority of in a very direct and permanent solution to a temporary problem kinda way. I think because Tony’s solution is what becomes the problem in a way that’s really kinda interesting and also ties in to the Vision. Again that to me was… there was a Rubik’s Cube to how not to make these things happen. (By) Act Three, you’re just going I really hope you like Acts One and Two, because now we’re just gonna do all this stuff. I think it was the same thing in 'Iron Man 3'–Act. Three was the strongest act. I think that this is really gunning for that sort of thing, because, you know, I love movies. I love these kinds of movies, so I feel like I’m just a very tolerant kind of consumer with these things. But I also feel like the half-life of, if you noticed just how flooded the market is becoming and likely to become potentially even more so, I think that there has to be a bit of a transcendence of formula. And so without giving too much away I think and why I generally just kinda like stamped it when the first draft came in ‘cause I thought, 'Oh wow, it didn’t fall into that trap.' And I read the last page and I got chills for a reason I definitely can’t explain. (laughter) But there’s a lot of new talent coming in, you know. With Aaron Taylor Johnson and obviously Lizzie Olsen. Just even seeing Paul Bettany within a thousand miles of the set where we’re shooting is just like, 'Wow. This is gonna be really cool.'"

There's a lot of other stuff that you can read in the full interview. But these are the more interesting aspects of it. Tony Stark is a really interesting and complex character, and as these movies continue he's going to get even more complex. Especially since he plays a major role in dividing the Avengers team. Damn, these movies are to to just get better and better. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Frozen are mashed together in these 13 photos, and the results are fairly impressive. Chris Evans' large Captain America frame has been reduced to match Anna's much smaller build. Elsa is Black Widow, but the impressive part is the composting on the hair, which is so hard to do. A few more mashups are Hans as the Winter Soldier, Kristoff as Nick Fury, and The Duke of Weselton as Alexander Pierce.

The source site is in Korean so I'm not sure who the creator of the mashup is because Google Translate is no help.

Source: DC Inside — Via MTV

AMC has hired a director to take on The Walking Dead companion series they are developing. Adam Davidson will direct the pilot episode and help develop this separate story that will follow a different group of survivors. Davidson is a very talented individual who won an Oscar in 1991 for a short film he directed called "The Lunch Date." Since then has worked on a ton of high profile TV series such as Community, Fringe, True Blood, Rome, Dexter, Deadwood, and Lost. He's not a new face around AMC either, as he's worked with them on shows such a as Turn: Washington’s Spies, Low Winter Sun, and Hell on Wheels. The guy is more than qualified to take on this new Walking Dead series.

The new show will be set in the same zombie world as the current TV series, but it will feature a whole new group of characters residing in a different part of the country. It also won't include any characters or plotlines from Robert Kirkman’s currently existing comic series. There has been a rumor that the series will be a prequel that would chronicle the early days of the epidemic and the effort to contain it, but there's still no confirmation of that.

The characters for the show have previously been revealed, and they include:

SEAN CABRERA | A Latino male in his early 40s, Sean is a good man trying to do right by everyone in his life.

CODY CABRERA | Sean’s whip-smart and rebellious teenage son. Known as the angriest kid in town.

NANCY TOMPKINS | A thirtysomething single mom to two kids, Nancy looks like the girl next door, but there’s an edge to her.

NICK TOMPKINS | Nancy’s screwed up teenage son. He’s too old to stay home, too scared to flee.

ASHLEY TOMPKINS | Nancy’s mostly level-headed teenage daughter. Her ambition is in direct proportion to her older brother’s failures. She loves her mom but it’s time to get out of Dodge.

ANDREA CHAPMAN | A somewhat wilted flower child, fortysomething Andrea — yep, another Andrea! — has retreated to the outskirts of the city to recover after a horrible marriage.

Dave Erickson (Marco Polo) co-created the new Walking Dead series and co-wrote the pilot with Kirkman. I can only imagine that it will be just as good and intense as the original series. 

Source: Deadline

In the spirit of Halloween, artist Jeff Victor created a new "Evolution" art character series. In his signature style he gives us several vampires that we've seen in the movies over the years. I've been a huge fan of vampires since I was a kid. I even did a Growing Up Geek editorial on it. I've always thought the creepiest vampire ever was in Nosferatu, I have yet to see a vampire beat that. Here's what Jeff had to say about his piece:

"Happy Halloween everyone! For a spooky treat, I wanted to track the progression of how vampires have evolved in films from the terrifyingly ratlike Nosferatu to the near-superhero Dracula of this year's Dracula Untold. Vampires have often bounced between comedy and horror, and I tried to represent as many different iterations of this as possible. How did I do? Which movie vampires would you have included?"

What movie vampire do you think is the creepiest? 

Thanks to Entertainment Weekly we have our first official look at Terminator: Genisys. It comes in the form of two covers that they released for the magazine, and they feature Emilia Clark as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Jason Clarke as John Connor, and Matt Smith as they will appear in the upcoming sci-fi adventure film. We also have a description of the story for you that you can check out below:

Terminator: Genisys starts in 2029, when the Future War is raging and a group of human rebels has the evil artificial-intelligence system Skynet on the ropes. John Connor (Clarke) is the leader of the resistance, and Kyle Reese (Courtney) is his loyal soldier, raised in the ruins of post apocalyptic California. As in the original film, Connor sends Reese back to 1984 to save Connor’s mother, Sarah (Clarke), from a Terminator programmed to kill her so that she won’t ever give birth to John. But what Reese finds on the other side is nothing like he expected.

The report offers up addition details on the story that some of you might consider to be SPOILERS, so be careful if you decide to read this next part, which deals with a twist in the movie:

"Sarah Connor isn’t the innocent she was when Linda Hamilton first sported feathered hair and acid-washed jeans in the role. Nor is she Hamilton’s steely zero body-fat warrior in 1991’s T2. Rather, the mother of humanity’s messiah was orphaned by a Terminator at age 9. Since then, she’s been raised by (brace yourself) Schwarzenegger’s Terminator—an older T-800 she calls “Pops”—who is programmed to guard rather than to kill. As a result, Sarah is a highly trained antisocial recluse who’s great with a sniper rifle but not so skilled at the nuances of human emotion."

Whoa! I didn't see that coming! That's a big surprise, and I really do love that concept of a Terminator raising Connor. Producer David Ellison explains,

“Since she was 9 years old, she has been told everything that was supposed to happen. But Sarah fundamentally rejects that destiny. She says, ‘That’s not what I want to do.’ It’s her decision that drives the story in a very different direction.”

Damn, this could actually be a really good movie. Creator James Cameron thinks it has a good chance of being great. In fact, this whole concept was probably his big contribution to the movie. So far I like what I've heard about the story and what I've seen, so let's see what happens. Former Doctor Who star Matt Smith plays an ally of John Connor and he said this about the movie:

“It’s like going on tour again if you’re Pink Floyd—the audience always wants to hear some of the old songs. There are enough nods to the past that people will feel satisfied.”

That's what I think the fans are hoping for. 

In the spirit of Star Wars awesomeness, Hot Toys is starting to roll out some high-end Star Wars collectible action figures. They started off with Han Solo and Chewbacca, which you can check out here. Now they've revealed a set of 1/6th Stormtroopers that they will be releasing. These are the most detailed Stormtroopers that the company has created, and they are based on the designs of the original film, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Here are the details:

After the official reveal of Hot Toys’ first wave of high-end Star Wars collectible figures featuring the infamous smuggler Han Solo and his best friend Chewbacca which were well-received by fans, we are moving the spotlight to the Galactic Empire for this new wave!

Today Hot Toys is thrilled to present the 1/6th scale collectible figures set of fans’ favorite faceless enforcer of the Galactic Empire - Stormtrooper!

The highly-accurate collectible figures are specially crafted based on the image of Stormtrooper in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope featuring bodies with two different heights just like how these non-clone soldiers appear in the film, meticulously crafted Stormtrooper armor and helmet, detailed weapons, and a specially designed figure stand. 

This collectible set will exclusively include an additional heavy blaster and a mouse droid as bonus accessories.

Star Wars fanatics don’t pass up on the opportunity to add these troops to your imperial army!

Thanks to Empire, we have our first look at the upcoming Monty Python reunion film called Absolutely Anything. Simon Pegg stars in the film, and we have several photos featuring the actor in some silly looking situations. This is a sci-fi themed comedy that was directed by Terry Jones, who explains the story, saying,

“It’s about a man called Neil, a teacher in a sink secondary school, who gets given magic powers by aliens. He can make anything happen, [but] he doesn't realise it until his colleague says, ‘What would you do if you could do anything?’ and Neil responds with, ‘I'd make an alien spaceship hit class 4C and vaporise them.’ Then there's an explosion in the school, and they run to 4C’s classroom, open the door and there's a vast hole in the ground.”

The extra-terrestrials who are in this spacecraft are being voiced by Jones and his buddies John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin. Robin Williams is also in the movie. The late actor lent his voice to Neil's dog, Dennis.

Apparently Neil comes to a fork in the road and must make a choice between his dog and the woman (Kate Beckinsale) he loves. As a fan of Pegg and the Monty Python gang, I can't wait to see this movie!

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote his upcoming film Horns. While on the show, Jimmy challenged the actor to rap the tongue-twisting Blackalicious song "Alphabet Aerobics." He completely crushes it! Apparently the actor is a huge fan of hip-hop, and he says that aspect about him surprises a lot of people. He also revealed that he likes to learn the words to songs like this, saying,

“I’ve always had kind of an obsession with memorizing the complicated lyrically, intricate and fast songs… It’s a disease.”

Watch him impressively tackle this craziness. 

Lionsgate has released the final trailer for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, and it's one of the more intense ones that I've seen. The trailer offers up some new intense footage. No matter what happens, Katniss is going to to make sure The Capitol is going to burn. In the trailer, she fiercely exclaims,

"I have a message for President Snow: If we burn, you burn with us".

I haven't read the final book, so I don't know what's going to happen. I've enjoyed the first two films, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes to an end. 

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, which finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in District 13 after she literally shatters the games forever. Under the leadership of President Coin (Julianne Moore) and the advice of her trusted friends, Katniss spreads her wings as she fights to save Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and a nation moved by her courage. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay by Danny Strong and Peter Craig and produced by Nina Jacobson’s Color Force in tandem with producer Jon Kilik. The novel on which the film is based is the third in a trilogy written by Suzanne Collins that has over 65 million copies in print in the U.S. alone.

The movie is set to be released on November 21st.

Here's a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film Psycho that we never saw coming. It's a recreation of the iconic shower sequence with a collection of shots carved in pumpkins. The jack-o'-lanterns were created by Yuliya Tsukerman, who then turned them into a stop-motion movie. The result in incredible, but I have to admit, there's some very eerie about watching this sequence play out on pumpkins. 

This Halloween, I set out to recreate the shower scene from Psycho using only carved pumpkins. "Psych-o-Lantern" is the result! Each frame was slashed, stabbed, and sliced out of a real pumpkin. For stills and more, visit yuliyatsukerman.com.

Via: Cheezburger

I don't know if you've been paying attention, but Netflix has been creating an incredible line up of series for us to watch, including Orange is the New Black, Hemlock Grove, and House of Cards. They are now moving into more epic storytelling with their upcoming new series Marco Polo. 

Apparently, Netflix spent $90 million on the first season, which consists of 10 episodes. You can definitely see where they spent that money in this trailer. They went all out on this series, and it looks absolutely stunning. Here's the synopsis:

Intrigue. Deception. Bloodshed. These are just some of the obstacles awaiting legendary explorer Marco Polo as he navigates the inner court of 13th century ruler, Kublai Khan. From the back alleys of Venice to the perilous Silk Road, from the opulence of the Imperial City to the battlefields of China, Marco Polo is an epic action-adventure, where cultures clash, blood is spilled, and lies are told...

Marco Polo was created by John Fusco, who is the writer of the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel. The first two episodes were directed by Kon-Tiki helmers Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg, and they also serve as executive producers. Also on board are Dan Minahan (Game of Thrones) and Harvey Weinstein as executive producers.

All ten episodes of Marco Polo will debut on Netflix Friday, December 12 at 12:01 AM Pacific time. I'm looking forward to a good long binge watch. 

GameSpot released a fascinating video essay that points out three ways that playing video games is good for us. What makes this legit is the fact that it's all backed up by scientific research. When I was growing up playing video games, I heard from a lot of people that it was a waste of time, and that it would rot my brain. On the contrary, it only made me more of an awesome and smarter individual, just like the rest of you who enjoy gaming.  

The three things that are discussed in detail in the video include: "Better Sensorimotor Skills," "Better at English," and "Mental Flexibility." Now no one can tell you that you're not bettering yourself because you play a lot of video games. Now I'm sure a lot of kids are going to show this to their parents as an excuse to play more video games. Sorry, parents. Science doesn't lie. 

The Star Wars: Battlefront series is one of my favorite games of all time. The third one in the series has had many false starts with multiple studios and was completely scrapped after Disney acquired LucasFilm.

In 2013, EA/DICE were tapped to bring a new iteration of Battlefront to PS4, Xbox One, and PC, completely skipping an entire generation of consoles. A teaser trailer shown at E3 2013 gave fans of the series a lot of hope. But with no ship date we had to wait and wonder.

EA has announced that the reductively titled Star Wars: Battlefront will be launching holiday 2015. Which, as many Star Wars fans know, is right around the release of Star Wars: Episode VII. DICE has previously confirmed that the game will feature events from the original trilogy. I'm hoping for at least one Episode VII inspired battle.

I'm bewildered and excited by this news. From what DICE has shown so far, the game looks fantastic.

H/T: IGN

This "collapsible belt-scooter" was made by product designer Ádám Török as a school graduation project. While I do find this nifty-looking gadget to be kind of neat, as a belt it’s not particularly stylish, and as a mode of transportation it looks extremely slow and unsafe — it appears to be steered from the rear and I don’t think the “handlebars” add any sort of stability. I’d much rather walk around with a skateboard in my hand or strapped to my backpack than having to explain why I have wheels sticking out of my ass. I won’t completely write it off, though, since I haven’t seen it in action. Apparently, he’s also working on a new prototype. I hope they can come up with something a little more functional, because being portable is meaningless if it isn’t practical (that goes for you, too, Travel Folding Footrest!)

Source: DesignBoom via Neatorama

While we wait to see what Danny Boyle does with his Steve Jobs movie with Christian Bale, here's the trailer to an amazing looking series that he developed, called Babylon. The police dramedy focuses on the London police department, which must deal with some bad public image concerns. To fix their problems, they bring in an outside PR person. The series stars James Nesbitt and Britt Marling, and here's a brief description of the story:

London’s police force is in need of a public image revamp. And Chief Constable Richard Miller, played by James Nesbitt, has found just the woman to do it…

American visionary from the world of new media Liz Garvey, played by Brit Marling, sets out to revolutionise the force’s PR department just as an outbreak of violence erupts.

Babylon was written by Peep Show creators Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, and it also stars Jill Halfpenny, Paterson Joseph, Bertie Carvel, and Adam Deacon. This is a six-part series, and it will premiere on the U.K.’s Channel 4 on November 13th. If you don't live in the U.K. and you really want to watch this series, I'm sure you have your ways of finding it. 

This short thriller has played at a slew of film festivals and won Best Horror Thriller at Comic-Con. It will gross you the hell out. Seriously, it is gross, although without being really graphic. It relies more on the power of suggestion to make you squirm. Called “Dog Food,” it was directed by Brian Crano, and stars Amanda Seyfried, who is maybe my favorite, and Cory Michael Smith, whom you may or may not recognize from Gotham (he plays Edward Nygma). David Craig (not Craig David) also stars.

"Dog Food" is about a hipster-ish ethical butcher in Brooklyn who receives threats from animal rights activists.* You’ll probably see things coming from a mile away, but the ending is a surprise. Like I said, it isn’t graphic, but there is a tiny bit of profanity that may make this NSFW without headphones.

*Parts of it reminded me a bit of an old This American Life episode, about animal rights activists who kidnapped a bunch of rabbits from a butcher, inadvertently leaving all the baby rabbits to starve to death.

Well damn, Square Enix sure knows how to make a trailer, don't they? While there are times that you can tell Final Fantasy Type-0 is a remaster from a previous console, the graphics still hold their own pretty well, and that sense of epicness that has been missing seems in full effect here. The war of nations theme is not novel by any stretch, but it definitely adds something if used correctly. Personally, I'm interested to see how the combat system feels with a controller in hand, as at first glance it appears more like FFXII, just with a bit more control. I for one am looking forward to getting some time with this come March 17th (on both PS4 and Xbox One), but you can catch the full trailer below, as well as some additional screens. With Type-0 and XV up to bat, Final Fantasy might have just regained some lost mojo, but we will have to wait and see.

If somebody told me an interesting fact like, “Hey, this the same house where that sexy group of teens was murdered exactly 30 years ago,” I would probably end my Halloween celebration early and make a beeline for the door. (Although, that’s probably the very thing the killer wants me to do… Scratch that plan. I’m gonna stay at that party and wander around the woods behind the house. Nothing bad ever happened out in nature at night during a full moon, right?) If you’re looking for some interesting facts that won’t have you on edge during the holiday celebration, Mental Floss’ John Green has you covered. In this episode of List Show, Green shares 26 not-so-scary facts about Halloween, like how the tradition of trick or treating started, what the original name for candy corn was, and why women used to put the apples they bobbed for under their pillows at night.

Thanks to Laughing Squid!