It was reported a few weeks ago, and mentioned on the Big Shiny Podcast, that Megan Fox had been cast as April O’Neil for Michael Bay’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles explosion-a-thon.

Now, the four heroes in a half shell have been cast as well.

Alan Ritchson, Pete Ploszek, Jeremy Howard, and Noel Fisher have all been tapped to play Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo respectively according to Deadline.

Deadline also had this to say,

Now, the turtles in the original movies were kind of interchangeable, stuffed into those cheesy costumes, but this is supposed to be a more sophisticated Avatar-like approach.

First off, I would like to note that I take issue with “those cheesy costumes”. I watch the original TMNT film at minimum once a year, and those costumes, even decades later, hold up incredibly well. It isn’t until the subsequent films that the costume quality falls a bit, and even then the only ones that I really think are poorly done are from the third film . . . but I digress.

I’m curious to see exactly what is meant by an “Avatar-like approach” to the motion-capture performance these actors will be participating in. Does this mean some of the actors’ features will be somehow incorporated into the turtles so it can somewhat be determined that “Oh, that’s Alan Ritchson from Blue Mountain State playing Raphael!” – which would be kind of weird; or is it more or less speaking of body language portrayal? The latter seems to make the most sense – unless they give the turtles a more “humanized” look, in which case, be ready for TMNT fans to riot in the streets.

I don’t hide the fact that I am less-than-thrilled with what I am hearing about this new TMNT film thus far. Michael Bay’s involvement has be incredibly doubtful, and the decision to cast Megan Fox as “the female lead” (come on, it’s April) made me groan. I am on the fence about Jonathan Liebesman, despite the popular opinion, I quite enjoyed Battle Los Angeles, but Wrath of the Titans was the worst film I have seen in a long time. However, nothing about this casting of the turtles has me terribly worried, I am actually happy they avoided “big name” actors and went with some relatively unknowns – hopefully it pans out well in the voice and motion-capture departments.

Ninja Turtles is shooting for a June 6, 2014 release, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m sure no matter how this film turns out my curiosity will begrudgingly drag me to the theater opening day.

You can follow Arse-bot and all the pointless thoughts he puts out into the interwebs on Twitter @Arse_bot

Dust off that box full of old video game cartridges and get ready for a trip back to your childhood. The RetroN 5 is about to be your new best friend. This console will play all your old NES, SNES, GBA, Sega, and Famicon games. It will also probably play your Game Boy Color and Game Boy games in the Game Boy Advanced slot. It has two ports for your old school controllers (you’ll use SNES or NES for your Game Boy) but it also comes with 2 wireless bluetooth controllers should you want to use those. Along with playing your old games Hyperkin has made it so they will upscale to 720p without that weird blurry look. You’ll also have the option to render the sound at a higher quality and remap buttons on the wireless controllers. The RetroN 5 comes with HDMI and old style AV ports in case you feel like hooking it up to your old TV. Pricing and a release date haven’t been announced yet but it seems they will be aiming for under $100 and July 2013. So get busy searching through the boxes in your basement or perusing stores trying to find those games you love.

via Slashdot

James Mangold took to twitter to release this six second sizzle reel from The Wolverine. It goes by so fast, I’m not even sure of what I saw.

Tomorrow we get 20 seconds. Wednesday, a full and proper teaser trailer.

 An abridged version of this interview, as well as an exclusive behind the scenes clip from the making of Enterprise appeared on The Huffington Post. 

Scott Bakula is one of the few actors who has been a part of my geek fandoms for as long as I can remember. As a kid, Quantum Leap was one of my first science fiction obsessions outside of Star Wars. As a life-long Star Trek fan, his casting as Captain Jonathan Archer on Enterprise made me extremely happy. For the first two seasons of the show (when I was able to find it on television) I watched religiously, then it vanished mysteriously from  my area. With the release of the Blu-ray this week, I’ve been able to revisit the show and it’s actually better than I remember it, and I remembered loving it.

For the occasion of the Blu-ray release, I was able to speak to Scott Bakula about his time as Captain in what has been one of the most enjoyable and pleasant conversations in my time as an interviewer.

Bryan Young: With the re-release of Enterprise, it’s been over 10 years since it started and almost 10 since it ended and I’m wondering how differently you look at it now than when you started?

Scott Bakula: It was a good experience for me when we shot it. We were all disappointed that we were off the air after four years, but at the same time, given all the political machinations that went on during our four years, we were lucky to get the four years we did on network television, which was a first. Here we are, we went off the air, here we are 8 years later and I just keep bumping into more and more people at the few conventions that I go to and so many people have discovered the show in the last several years since we were off the air. They’re so excited to see me because there’s not a lot of press going on about Enterprise, so they have lots of questions. We were kind of out of it, so this re-issue is gonna be fantastic. It’ll bring us back into the limelight and give more people a chance to discover us. With the Blu-ray, you’ll really see the great creative work that was done on the show.

Bryan: As a fan watching at the time, it was very frustrating because the show was changing stations and networks in the middle of the run and it was hard to find to find in some areas even.

Scott: It was muddy waters for a lot of it. It was the best laid plans in the beginning and then so many things happened beyond any of our control. Often times, you just had to put your head down and do your work and then you let the business stuff take care of itself.

Bryan: How does the experience of stepping into Star Trek differ for you than stuff like say, I can’t imagine you doing a lot of convention appearances for Men of a Certain Age.

Scott: <laughs> No. The good news is that I had a lot of experience with this with Quantum Leap before Star Trek. Although the convention thing wasn’t as insanely prevalent as it is since I got involved with Star Trek. But I knew the fan, I understood the the sci-fi fan. I had a pretty healthy understanding of that before Star Trek, so, it’s been a great relationship. I appreciate the fans, I appreciate the support, I appreciate the longevity of the support, and the intelligence of the support is something I’ve enjoyed. Stepping into it was daunting but it’s a unique environment to step into. Men of a Certain Age had its own uniqueness, certainly, but everybody gets that when the TV shuts off that that show is over for the week. With any kind of sci-fi, the imagination continues and the world exists and you create that in your own mind and it lives in you. The first time I saw 2001 on this huge screen in the 60s, I’ll just never forget and that’s a big difference, I think.

Bryan: Were you a fan of the Star Trek franchise before you stepped in?

Scott: I was. The original show, with my age and the timing of things, I fell in love with the original show with Kirk and Spock and Bones and those folks when I was in college and it was in reruns. It was every night at 11 o’clock. Everyone would pile into one room and watch that show and I completely was sucked into it.

Bryan: I imagine you were pleased then by the nod to Archer in the new Abrams Star Trek?

Scott: That was a huge surprise. I had no idea it was coming. So much so that I had to turn to my kids and say, “Did I just hear… what? They were talking about what? My dog? Did I hear that?” And they shushed me. They said, “Shut up, Dad, the movie’s on.”

I had to come out of the movie and make a few phone calls and ask other people and they said, “Oh, yeah, you made it. You made it in the movie, the dog and you.” So, I thought Abrams did a beautiful job of that and it was fantastic. Those actors are great.

Bryan: With Enterprise, with your experience being the Captain, did you go through and compare your experience to, say Kirk, or did you try to stay away from all that stuff? It sounds like you were already aware of it and sucked into it, but did you try to stay out of it since you were the “first” captain?

Scott: Because we were 100 years before, I tried to stay as little involved with that as possible. It was so I could create my own, good or bad. I felt that there was a certain freedom that was given us and given me, by being 100 years earlier, and so I chose to just wall off all that other stuff. I’d certainly seen them, but I didn’t dive into every episode and watch again. I thought, let’s not do that, let’s just treat this as fresh and brand new as we possibly can.

Bryan: As you left Enterprise, and I think long before it’s time, what was the experience of that show teach as you move on to new projects?

Scott: Unfortunately, it’s me being the older guy on the show and working with all the younger actors, it reaffirmed the notion of how you can never count on anything in our business. We started that show and everyone was like, “Oh, man, you guys are gonna go 7 years, that’s how it goes, that’s the way it’s gonna be.” And I just remember thinking to myself and telling some people, “Don’t count on it. It’s a different world.” We were on network television, which no franchise had been on, it had all been syndicated which is a completely different animal. And we were on a new network that was just discovering itself and it doesn’t even exist anymore. There were so many variables and it reaffirmed to me that in our business you have to enjoy the work when you’re getting the work, which isn’t a given, and be smart about what your expectations are, and to stay in the moment. Do as good as work as you possibly can every day, and the other stuff takes care of itself.

Bryan: If Enterprise had continued or if it had gotten a movie, where would you have liked to see Archer go?

Scott: Well, the plan had always been, before we had to slap in this truncated ending of my exploits and the ship’s exploits, would finally lead us to the creation of the Federation. From day one, that was Archer’s path. He didn’t know that’s where he was going to end up, but I knew that because we talked about it. That was going to be Archer’s mission in life, to be instrumental in putting the Federation together. And that would have been with the folks we gathered over the years, they would have also been instrumental, but they never got there. And so here we are.

Bryan: As you look back to Enterprise, is there a particular story or moment or something that you did with Captain Archer that you did that sticks with you today as something you’re particularly proud of?

Scott: Oh, boy. Um… There’s one epsiode where I, where we got into the whole Xindi arc, and it was in the third or fourth year, and I basically took one of our prisoners and almost killed him to get information from him. It was a cruel crossing of the line of what’s techincal and what’s correct and who we expect Archer to be and what we expect with certain behaviour to be from a Captain and it went way past that. I know the fans were very worried about that, but also very excited about that, because it just showed the seriousness of where we were and what we were trying to achieve and also the stress and pressure of it. I remember that as being a moment that shocked a lot of people.

 Scott Bakula can next be seen in Stephen Soderbergh’s Liberace film “Behind the Candelabra” on HBO. Enterprise hits Blu-ray this week.

This first appeared on the Huffington Post.

Grant Morrison killed Batman and Robin.

Batman came back, but it seems as though this Robin is dead for good. There have been a few different deaths of Batman’s greatest ally, but none have been as meaningful to one single writer as this one has. For those not following along, comics superstar Grant Morrison created Damian Wayne, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al’Ghul, who took to the role of Robin with arrogance and, in the end, humbly sacrificed himself as a hero.

By fans, he was hated at first, then loved, and now the tears over his death are many.

In honor of the passing of this most recent Robin, I was given the opportunity to talk to Grant Morrison about his landmark run with Batman and Robin.

Bryan Young: I’ve read that your original plan was to kill Damian after just four issues?

Grant Morrison: Yes, but it wouldn’t have worked after four issues because not only did most of the fans hate him, he was too snotty, he was too arrogant, his death wouldn’t have mattered a lot. But we’ve watched him develop for six years and it allowed us to really get into the character and see his willingness to change and I think when you watch someone’s willingness to change it allows you to identify with them a little more and it made a little more sense to kill him off once we made everyone love him. The best time to kill someone is when the whole world is in love with them!

BY: Why did you feel now was the time to kill him?

GM: It’s about resetting Batman’s status quo. For a long time Batman’s had a dead Robin in the cave and it’s always been a glass case with a costume in there and it’s the one Robin that Batman couldn’t save and it used to be Jason, but he’s come back to life but he’s still got that case in the Batcave.

BY: What made you decide that this was the best route to take for Batman comics?

GM: Well it seemed natural to the genesis of Batman, you know, a way to get to the roots of these characters and to the engine that makes them work. Batman is all about the death of his parents. So I kind of thought that Bruce Wayne, for all that he loves his parents, there must be parts of him that hates his father for not being Batman that night and saving everyone and there must be parts of him that hates his mother for leaving him alone in this bizarre and peculiar life, so what I did was base my entire run on this idea of the bad father, the bad mother, and the bad son.

And the bad father was Dr Hurt. And in the story the bad mother is Talia and the bad son is Damian, and he becomes a good son in the end but it’s too late and he dies because really what he represents is this whole twisted loss that’s at the heart of the Batman myth. But yeah, it was all based on that original idea about Batman watching his parents die and how that must have affected him and how it affects all his relationships and all his battles with villains, it’s all in there. So we just made it a bit more obvious by playing on, very specifically, is it a bad father, is it a bad mother? And here’s a bad little kid who becomes good, which is Batman’s story as well.

BY: It’s ironic, too, that if Damian had taken his mother’s training and been an assassin, he’d have killed that guy and would not be dead.

GM: Yeah, ’cause his mother wanted him to be a world conqueror, to be a tyrant, and the kid didn’t want that, the kid wanted to be a superhero, and that’s the tragedy, you know, the entire run is being based almost constantly on this sort of confrontation between parent and children. Even when Damian dies, and I don’t know if people have noticed, but the sword that kills him belongs to the very first known ancestor of the Waynes, it was used in Batman: Shadow of the Bat, in the 90s, so what we went back to, there’s a suit of armor in the case, and it’s Bruce Wayne’s earliest ancestor’s. That’s who kills the boy, and so there’s a lot of you know, you see him smashed against the Wayne “W” and the foyer of the Wayne tower and so it’s kind of very much about how these things play out over generations and how repetitive patterns play out of destructive patterns and it really never ends.

We want to make Batman driven by his vengeance again, and that drive to shoot him in to places where he does good for people, he helps people, he’s a superhero and I think that can never be forgotten. Batman turns grief into something positive every time.

If you want to read the issue where Robin meets his fate, be sure to pick up issue eight of Batman Incorporated. And don’t forget to read about the fallout of his death. The issues where the rest of the Bat family struggle with the loss of Damian have been, so far, heartbreaking in all the right ways.

After wrapping up his runs with Batman and Superman, Grant Morrison is next setting his sights on Wonder Woman for DC Comics. You can also check out previews of all the new Justice League Books from DC at Big Shiny Robot!

Bryan Young is an author and the editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot!

This week, we were grateful to have Sam Witwer and Jenna Busch join us on the Full of Sith podcast.

There, we talked about many things, Star Wars chief among them. Sam and Jenna both recounted their first experiences discovering the world of Star Wars. In addition to his work on shows like Being Human, Battlestar Galactica, and Smallville, Sam has had a long and storied history with Star Wars, voicing Starkiller in The Force Unleashed, and Darth Maul and others on The Clone Wars. Jenna is a longtime geek journalist and co-host of Cocktails with Stan Lee.

While the talk mainly focused on Star Wars (Sam’s explanation of showing David Giuntoli from Grimm Star Wars for the first time ever is a must listen on its own, as is Jenna’s conversation about Stan Lee and Star Wars), we did do talk a bit about Being Human, the mythology of storytelling, and why things must have meaning.

It’s an interview I’m incredibly proud of and I hope you’ll enjoy listening to it as well. In fact I know you will. The reason I’ve hesitated posting the interview here on the site is that initial response was so high we crashed our servers for a couple of days so people were having a hard time listening to the episode, but that’s all fixed now.

You can directly download or listen to the interview here, or you can check out the Full of Sith website for more ways to listen, including iTunes, Stitcher, and others.

Here’s the official synopsis of the show:

Sam Witwer, the voice of Darth Maul and Starkiller, and Jenna Busch, writer on Fanhattan and co-host of Cocktails with Stan Lee, joined Mike, Bryan, and Consetta for an exhaustive conversation about their connection to Star Wars, Being Human, Stan Lee, and the proper viewing order of the films. This might be one of the most fascinating conversations we’ve ever had on Full of Sith!

Make sure you come back and let us know what you thought.

Back at Dragon*Con 2012, we had the opportunity to interview the redoubtable John Rhys-Davies. You’ll know him as Sallah from the Indiana Jones movies, Gimli from The Lord of the Rings, Kingpin from the early Marvel films, a Bond villain, Wing Commander, and a thousand other films, geek or otherwise.

The entire interview (along with the wonderful pictures taken by Scarlett Robotica) can be seen in the youtube video above. For those who want to put it on their iPod, Kill-tacular-tron will be getting it into the Big Shiny Robot! iTunes feed.

I have to tell you, there is nothing quite like having a conversation with John Rhys-Davies and have him break out into his deep belly-laugh. It’s infectious and puts a smile on your face. He’s just a bright and charming man.

Below are a few of my favorite highlights:

About Raiders of the Lost Ark:

John Rhys-Davies: Very early on, Steven called us together and said he wanted to film it very fast, partly because it’s his friend, George Lucas’ money, and he didn’t want to waste it, and also partly because he as a director needed to try something different, to shoot fast. He said, “We will print first and second takes, and some times we will print mistakes, but I’m hoping to get a freshness, and immediacy. We’ll throw the paint on the canvas and work it quickly before it dries and move on. For a story like this, if we do this, good things may happen.” And that smart man, Steven, was absolutely right; it was a blast to do. When I first read the script, my agent asked me what I thought and I said it was either going to be the biggest disaster of all time, or it might set a new fashion in filmmaking, but whatever, I want in.

Swank: Was it more or less challenging knowing you had to be on spot and nail it in only a few takes?

JRD: I was fairly young and innocent about this, as I’d mainly done stage work, so I didn’t know better. My job is to deliver what the director wants, to service the script and my fellow actors. To a greater or lesser extent, you do it, and if you’re lucky and do it consistently, then there’s another job. There’s no great career plan for most actors, we are more children of serendipity or blighted by disaster than we ever recognize. Any achievement of course is mine, fate has nothing to do with it!

It’s really an interview you just need to listen to, as well.

And one other note: he offered to take pictures with us and wrapped his arms around us. The first things he did was tickle us, subtly at first, then much more fiercely. You can see it in the photos:

This trailer looks great, even though it doesn’t quite feel like Star Trek to me. I want to see them exploring, not playing cops and robbers. But I’m sure this will have all of its moments and I’ll be stupid to have been wary at all.

Embedded in the trailer, over the adorable shot of Alice Even in her underwear, was a hidden link to a new poster for the film. Well played, Abrams. Well played.

On the other hand, did it look to anyone else like Benedict Cumberbatch took a page out of the Godfather 3 book?

Just sayin’.

Star Trek: Into Darkness comes out in May, at which point JJ Abrams will surely go into overdrive directing the next Star Wars picture.

We are just ten days away from the premiere of Season 3 of Game Of Thrones and they keep dropping trailers on us. This one has a bit more of Margaery Tyrell than we’ve seen so far but a lot of other stuff we have seen different parts of. I feel like we’re just getting different edits of the same footage but I like it. We keep getting a better view of things.

The official Star Wars site has their character bracket game going, and Big Shiny Robot tells you to vote Team Hondo or else. (more…)