film / tv / substack / social media / lists / web / celeb / pajiba love / misc / about / cbr
film / tv / substack / web / celeb

AAoUHulkbuster.jpg

Science Fiction Thursday 7-17-2014

By Cindy Davis | Marvel Movies | July 17, 2014 |

By Cindy Davis | Marvel Movies | July 17, 2014 |


Welcome to this week’s edition of Science Fiction Thursday, now with less SLW because he’s “on vacation,” aka in Siberia conducting some sort of global warming experiment that causes massive craters (probably).


Did you watch Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain on FX this week? I caught it a day late, but enjoyed it quite a bit. My first impression is: Creepy with a capital C. And Walder Frey David Bradley is brilliant, as always. It’s kind of funny because there’s a new role reversal in my house; I’m a Song of Ice and Fire reader, while the mister isn’t — he’s read The Strain (I haven’t), and he’s already complaining about the series vs. book differences…I’m all, “Shut up, I like it!” Apparently a lot of stuff is going down way early, and/or some things are over-explained for the non-readers. (On the plus side for the mister, I think I’ll just shut up about GoT from now on.)

Here’s a cool featurette with Del Toro, executive producer, Carlton Cuse and others, talking about the series vision, as well as a coming-this-season trailer :


The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has contracted for the development of the XS-1 Experimental Spaceplane, an unmanned satellite-launching aircraft that can be reused, thereby reducing the current cost of putting new satellites in place (“hundreds of millions of dollars”); the XS-1 is expected to cost less than 5 million a flight. Still NO WORD on personal flying machines. Come the fork on!


This week, Kevin Feige (head of Marvel Studios) screened two minutes of Avengers: Age of Ultron and he talked up the Avengers Tower, and Tony Stark’s Hulkbuster armour:

“”Last time we saw Stark Tower, from The Avengers, it had gotten beat up a little bit thanks to Hulk and thanks to Loki and the Chituari, and Pepper and Tony were standing over a table looking at plans” he explained. “That’s where we pulled out and all the letters had fallen away except the ‘A’ in Stark. So what they were doing was retro-fitting for The Avengers. And that’s what we see in this next film.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone - for people who are following along. S.H.I.E.L.D. was disbanded and brought down at the end of The Winter Soldier because it turned out to not be the best organisation ever. So Tony’s bank-rolling The Avengers now. And he’s bank-rolling their headquarters. So it’s now Avengers Tower.

“Tony designed it so in addition to a hanger for a brand-new Quinjet, laboratories, places where he can build and store his Iron Man suits, there are I believe two bars. Beautiful multiple space living rooms which are perfect for parties and social gatherings. But it’s a primary location in the film this time around.”

(About a scene with Stark in his Hulbuster armour):

“There are a lot of scenes that you should be getting excited about…That is certainly one of them. I think I said a long time ago when Joss [Whedon] first did his six-page or 10-page outline for Avengers, there was a lot of work and the movie’s adapted quite a bit since then, but there were like six or seven signature things just in that. I said ‘Joss, even if we don’t do anything else. Just do these seven things, that’s enough for the movie. Now let’s get to work and put it all together.’ Those things are in the movie and are amazing, of which that sequence is one.” (via IGN)


Finally, I stumbled upon this cool and trippy trailer for Dan Bush’s The Reconstruction of William Zero, starring Conal Byrne, Amy Seimetz, and The Walking Dead’s Melissa McBride. It totally sucked me in, and I can’t wait to find out if he’s a clone, or an android, or maybe even, SLW.


Cindy Davis, (Twitter) is not at all romantic, and the adopted descendent of too many nations to list.