Pete Messum Reviews...

'SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY' Wait...this movie's not been delayed until December? Despite the general news cycle and buzz in the run up to this film's release being pretty darn negative - the original director duo being fired, hasty re-shoots, actors even dropping out, even a new editor, and the (admittedly small, but vocal) backlash to ' Star Wars: The Last Jedi ' - we finally got a first-look teaser trailer for ' Solo: A Star Wars Story '. In fact, we got three: a Superbowl TV spot, a full-length teaser trailer and a selection of character posters! What's surprising is more how the film doesn't look nearly as exciting as it perhaps should. The colour palette is surprisingly dull, while the colour grading and general picture looks very flat and grey, more in line with ' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ' than either of the last two "saga" films or even Marvel's intergalactic outings. Alden Ehrenreich looks like a surprisingly ...

I am writing this a few short hours before a new Justice League trailer drops. I'm not sure whether I should actually watch it - will it just spoil the third act of the movie? Am I that bothered? I'm not too sure. Regardless, I just wanted to set the scene of this piece. Several days ago, a news story broke that the so-called "DC Extended Universe" wasn't actually officially called that, and - depending on which article one read - either didn't have a name (in which case, surely you'd just stick with that name) or it had a different name (one that DC and WB didn't want to share for whatever reason). For some reason, I instantly had flashbacks to that whole "Dark Universe" announcement from Universal a few months ago. It just sort of came out with the release of The Mummy, after everyone had been calling it the "New Universal Monsters" franchise. If it wasn't clear beforehand, DC and Warner Bros don't really have a definiti...

Next in this series of editorials, I thought it'd be fun to tackle the X-Men Universe, produced by Twentieth Century Fox. As part of Marvel's film deals in the 1990's, Fox gained the film rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four and Daredevil, and thus in 2000 we got X-Men (2000) directed by Bryan Singer. While not regarded as a classic, the film was surprisingly successful at the time and gained a sequel in X-Men 2 (or X2: X-Men United in the States) in 2003, followed by the infamous Ben Affleck-led Daredevil film; a Fantastic Four movie and Elektra spin-off in 2005; and then X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006, which marked a significant turning point. While their other Marvel projects hadn't taken off, The Last Stand marked the first disliked X-Men movie, and when Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) failed to reach the success Fox were hoping for, Matthew Vaughn was brought in for a soft-reboot with X-Men: First Class ...

Somewhere along the line I fully intend to produce a full-length essay on the current situation of audio-visual superhero fiction, because at the moment the sub-genre (because ultimately that's what it is) is so prevalent in our media that escaping either their popularity or influence is almost impossibly difficult. Whether trailers for the latest Marvel movies are trending on social media, or there's a huge posters adorning buses, billboards and cinemas, or trailers and TV spots either just before a film you want to see, or even between a programme you want to watch. Big-budget Hollywood blockbusters generally have this kind of influence (Blade Runner 2049 being the latest to ratchet up its marketing here in the UK), but superhero movies have seemingly changed the entire cinematic and to a certain extent television landscape in such a way that people are either rejoicing or just completely fed up with the whole thing. Such an analysis into what has now become a staple of 21...