The Manhattan Projects #7 Review

Jonathan Hickman is known for cramming big ideas into all of his work. But if you want big ideas mixed with sadistic characters, copious bloodshed, and plenty of black humor, The Manhattan Projects is the place to turn. Issue #7 explores both the origins and the fruits of the new American/Soviet super-science partnership. If readers felt bad for poor Helmutt and his perpetual whipping boy status in issue #6, things don't get any better for the Nazi scientist-turned-Soviet science slave this time. With so many sadistic murderers and madmen on the payroll now, it's important that the series retain its focus on the "normal" guys like Helmutt and Richard Feynman. It says something when an ex-Nazi is one of the closest things a book has to a regular protagonist.

In many ways, issue #7 defines the ongoing status quo of the series and what the characters are actually building towards. Where does a secretive cartel of super-scientist go after committing alien genocide, anyway? Hickman answers that questions, and the implication is that these seven issues have only offered a taste of the wacky weirdness to come.

Nick Pitarra's art offers that blend of surreal imagery and distinct but exaggerated character designs the script calls for. Though Pitarra is able to provide some novel new imagery this month, my favorite visual element continues to be his depiction of Joseph Oppenheimer and his split personalities. One area this issue stumbles, however, is in the use of color. Previously, Jordie Bellaire has been able to deftly distinguish between past and present scenes, as well as among Soviet, American, and German characters, through calculated use of blue and red tones. This time, however, the colors change at random and do a poor job of differentiating the various talking heads.

The series looks to be growing ever more wild and gruesome in the coming issues, and that's exactly what I want from my alternate reality tales of science run amuck.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

Source : ign[dot]com

Supernatural Tackles Found Footage, LARPing and… Cartoons?

Spoilers for the Supernatural: Season 8 season premiere follow.

Supernatural returned last week, setting in place plenty of big new storylines for the show, as Sam and Dean were reunited after Dean’s year in purgatory. So what’s next for the Winchesters? Supernatural executive producers Robert Singer and Jeremy Carver discuss their plans for Season 8 – and beyond.

Flashbacks

There will be frequent flashbacks filling in more of what happened in the past year for Sam and Dean. “Not every episode, but where appropriate,” explained Singer, adding it would inform where “The boys’ headspace is in a given episode.”

Singer noted the flashbacks" allowed us to tell slightly different kind of stories.” When it comes to Sam and his newly revealed love interest, Emilia, he remarked, “Supernatural hasn’t spent, I think, a lot of time on relationship stories. This is a really nice mechanism to do that without imposing that on the forward momentum of these other stories that we’re telling.”

Noted Carver, “One thing we like particular about the first 13 [episodes] is the way we’re playing with perception… What happens as these brothers start to discover more about what they’ve done in the past year – and might those tables turn in terms of who has to answer for what?”

Sam

“Sam is keeping thoughts of this woman and this relationship to himself. It greatly informs where he is now at the beginning of the season. It represents something to him. It represents, essentially, another way – another life,” said Carver.

Carver, who returned to Supernatural in Season 8 in his new role as showrunner, after a couple of years away from the series, remarked, “The jumping off point, certainly when I came back to the show, was laid out by Bob [Singer] and Sera [Gamble]. You are truly alone. What does that mean? What kind of impact does that have on somebody? How does that affect somebody after so many years?”

While comparisons are inevitable to how Dean had his own domestic life when Sam was in hell, the producers noted that the big difference was that Dean “Never felt comfortable” in that scenario and couldn’t put aside all of his Hunter past – still salting windows and such. But Sam, “found real solace and real comfort. The only thing that sort of got him back was yeah, they were responsible for Kevin. ‘If we can do the Kevin thing and get this done, I’m done.’”

As Carver put it, Sam’s experience gave him, “A taste of something he never had before, and it had a really profound effect on him.”

Dean

As Carver noted, Dean had “a bit of a surprising reaction” to Purgatory, which was brought up in the season premiere.

“The idea that it was ‘pure’ down there… I think one of the last things you’d expect going to a place that is so horrible - That someone might actually consider it a happy experience. You have to ask yourself, why do you think it’s happy? What is this thing inside himself that he connected to? This primal side? How will he deal with that topside?”

As for Dean’s new friend Benny and how they became so chummy, Carver said, “It’s something we’ll see in those flashbacks. Hopefully the intriguing question that the premiere asks is, you see this warmness, but when they meet you see this reserve and general distrust. How did they get from that to that embrace? That’s what the flashbacks are telling us.”

Benny

As mentioned above, a big new player introduced in the season premiere is Benny, and Carver noted that as the season continues, “We use Benny as that thing that is representative of Dean in purgatory.”

“I think you’ll see Benny playing a pretty important part both in his physical presence and his psychological presence. The idea of Benny is hanging over our brothers pretty heavily. He’s a guy who has a tremendous, tremendous bearing and he’s really working out wonderfully. He’s a really complex character and adds really interesting wrinkle to the brother’s relationship this year – how they deal with something like this.”

Season 7 hammered home the hardline stance Dean had with the supernatural – going so far as to kill Sam’s old friend, who he believed was inevitably a danger. So just what changed for Dean to make him let a dangerous creature like Benny go, and how might Sam react to discovering this? Said Carver, “I think that’s the question that comes front and center when you see Benny. That’s something that’s got to be confronted at some point and arcs out through the course of the season.”

Kevin

The Season 8 premiere also brought back Kevin, introduced at the end of Season 7, in a big way. Noted Carver, “We’ll learn more about how he personally feels about being a prophet and being involved in this mission that the brothers are a part of – the personal cost it has for him. And to see how his willingness or desire to do the job, how that rubs off on the boys. They’re all playing off each other and inextricably linked here.”

We’re also about to meet Kevin’s mom and Carver explained, “Putting aside the question of trust for a second, you could say Ms. Tran does something sort of interesting and sort of fun and it gives the boys, in an odd way, a bit of a mother figure that they haven’t had I a long time. It’s a fun dynamic and it can be a rather moving dynamic at times, also. It also gives you a fourth wheel on the car that you have to deal with…”

Friends and Foes

When it came to recurring characters in Season 8, Carver and Singer were still tightlipped on what role Bobby might play, despite Jim Beaver being part of the Supernatural panel at San Diego Comic-Con this summer.

What could they say about who we’ll see this season? Said Carver, “We’ll be seeing a healthy dose of Kevin. Crowley is set up to be somewhat of the boy’s main agonist. There’s Benny, there’s Emilia. There are some new angels that we’re introducing. Amanda Tapping is playing a fairly mysterious angel named Naomi.”

As for the big, “What happened to Castiel?” question, “We’ll be telling that story pretty steadily through the first seven or eight episodes. By episodes seven, eight you’ll start to get a really good idea of what happened in Purgatory to Cas.”

Hellgate

The premiere set up a big new mission for Sam and Dean - to actually close the gates of hell, once and for all. But if they accomplished that, would that mean all their enemies would be vanquished? Clarified Carver, “There’s so many other monsters in this universe. In the Supernatural universe, you’re thinking ‘I’ve eliminated a big chunk’ – but certainly not all.

As for how big a story arc this is establishing, Singer noted, “Jeremy’s hell-bent on multiple seasons.” Carver said the actual quest to close the hellgate story was a season-long arc, but added, “The questions that come up in this quest and the series of reveals and the series of discoveries are meant to start giving us underpinnings for questions and secrets and things that will be explored in future seasons.”

As for whether closing the hellgate to demons coming in and out would also affect human souls, Carver revealed, “That’s something that will be clarified later on – or dealt with.”

Future Highlights

Supernatural has a reputation for doing some rather unusual and noteworthy episodes. Looking ahead to some highlights this year, Carver said, “We’re doing one a little bit later that’s dealing with what happens when you find yourself living in a cartoon universe. That’s a lot of fun. It actually won’t be animated. It deals more with cartoon physics in the real world. We will be doing an episode that deals pretty heavily with the LARPing universe, different from the way we’ve dealt with in the past. Those are two really fun ones we have coming up.”

There is also a found footage episode, which Carver described as “pretty unlike any episode the show has ever done before. Said Singer, “You’re living in this found footage. The boys are bracketed on either side in the opening and at the very end, but for 95% you’re living in this found footage. [Sam and Dean] are in it, unknowingly. It’s crazy. It’s a really good episode. It’s very compelling and has some great guest stars.”

Carver said the setup was, “College kids dealing with a situation that goes pretty horribly awry” and that the episode was much more in line with “your Paranormal Activitys or your Blair Witch” than the Ghostfacers episodes. Added Signer, “Tonally, it’s a 180 degrees away from Ghostfacers.” As Carver noted this episode “ain’t for laughs.”

Carver also remarked, “I’m excited about episode five. We’re dealing with a good deal of flashbacks from Sam and from Dean. That’s a really meaty and emotional episode. It’s somewhat of a turning point for the boys, also.”

Supernatural airs Wednesdays at 9pm ET/PT on The CW.

Source : ign[dot]com

The Pros and Cons of a Hobbit Trilogy

Lord of the Rings fans have plenty of reason for excitement these days as this December will see the release of the first part of director Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Hobbit. However, in recent weeks rumors have been building that Jackson's duology had quietly expanded into a trilogy. Those rumors were confirmed yesterday when Jackson announced that he'll be adding one more Hobbit movie onto his already busy slate.

The big question now is whether this announcement is cause for further excitement or concern. Does one novel really need three movies to be properly adapted? Will audiences tolerate having to wait an extra year for the saga of Bilbo Baggins to wrap up? In this feature, we explore some of the pros and cons to lending the trilogy treatment to The Hobbit, as well as the storytelling choices Jackson will have to contend with as he prepares to commence shooting additional footage next year.

How to Break Up the Trilogy

One of the first questions to arise after yesterday's announcement was “How are they going to divide the three movies?” The adaptation process was much more straightforward with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each book became the source for one movie. With The Hobbit, however, one single book is being split into three discrete chunks. And given that The Hobbit is significantly shorter than any of the three LotR novels, many are worried that this story will be stretched too thin.

Obviously, plenty of material will need to be added, which will be discussed at greater length in the other sections. But simply in terms of dividing the book as neatly and elegantly as possible into three parts, Jackson may be in a better position than he was with a duology. Much like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there isn't an ideal halfway mark in the book. A duology is stuck either ending the first half on a weak note without a major conflict to usher the movie to its climax, or cramming a disproportionate amount of material into one film or the other. In the case of Deathly Hallows, the writers took the latter approach. The majority of the book was adapted in Part 1, while the final battle between Harry and Voldemort was greatly expanded to fill out Part 2.

But again, a three movie format puts The Hobbit in a better position. We picture the first movie hitting its climax with the battle in the Misty Mountains and Bilbo's fateful meeting with Gollum. As far as we can tell, none of the material seen in the first trailer is set beyond this point anyway. The second movie can explore the company's continued journey through the wilderness, their meeting with Beorn, and their hard trek through Mirkwood Forest. The climax of Part 2 would simultaneously center around Bilbo and the dwarves' escape from the Wood Elves and Gandalf's battle with the Necromancer in Dol Goldur. From there, the third and final chapter could focus on the arrival at the Lonely Mountain, the Battle of the Five Armies, and Bilbo's journey home.

Another option would be to retain the duology format and tackle a completely separate slate of material in the third movie. Part 3 could take place in between the Hobbit movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, bridging the gap between the two and exploring the events of that 50-year period. However, this option doesn't seem likely. Jackson has noted that an additional two months of filming will be required next year to complete the trilogy. While that's no small amount of extra footage, it doesn't seem adequate to craft an entirely new movie.

More Gandalf

Though set many decades before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit includes a number of familiar faces for fans to latch onto. Aside from Martin Freeman's younger, less worldly Bilbo Baggins, the most significant returning character is Gandalf. Once again, this elderly wizard arrives at Bag End to usher its owner on a long, strange, and life-altering journey.

Gandalf serves as a guide and protector for Bilbo and the dwarves in the early leg of their journey. However, he practically drops out of the story after a certain point, not returning until the climax of the book to lend his trademark timely assistance in battle.

One possible benefit to expanding the adaptation into a trilogy is that it allows Jackson to focus much more attention on Gandalf's exploits. The book is fairly cryptic about what those exploits involve, only revealing that Gandalf had concerns of his own and that he was locked in a battle with the Necromancer of Dol Goldur even as Bilbo and friends were escaping captivity in another part of Mirkwood Forest. With the movie, we'd like to see a more parallel storytelling approach taken. Rather than frame the entire story from Bilbo's point of view, Gandalf's adventures can serve as a counterpoint.

Luckily, we're not too worried about a lack of source material to inspire Gandalf's scenes. While The Hobbit itself might not have spent much time on Gandalf's side adventures, Tolkien's appendices and unfinished stories shed much more light on this material. In particular, the story “The Quest of Erebor” from Tolkien's Unfinished Tales casts the events of The Hobbit in a new light. There, Gandalf recounts his desire to eliminate Smaug the dragon as a potential ally to Sauron and his true reasons for wanting to include Bilbo in Thorin's traveling party. This tale acts as a more serious counterpoint to Bilbo's own recollections.

What does concern us is that the movie might take too many liberties with Gandalf in order to make him a more identifiable character. For instance, some of the footage in the first trailer seems to suggest that Gandalf and Galadriel have some sort of deeper bond, which is certainly not corroborated by anything Tolkien ever wrote. Bilbo should be the everyman hero of the movies, while Gandalf is Middle-earth's larger-than-life defender.

Revealing the Necromancer

As mentioned, Gandalf's conflict with the Necromancer of Dol Goldur forms a significant part of the conflict in The Hobbit, even though readers never experience the battle firsthand. But who is the Necromancer, and why is Gandalf so concerned with him?

As it turns out, the Necromancer is none other than Sauron, the shadowy villain who threatened Middle Earth throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy. At this stage in Tolkien's timeline, Sauron is still physically weak and working to consolidate the power he lost in his war with the Last Alliance. Centuries before the events of The Hobbit, Sauron arrived in Mirkwood as “a shadow of fear” and established his fortress at Dol Goldur. It took many years for Gandalf to discover with certainty that the Necromancer and Sauron were one and the same, and more still for him to marshal allies such as Saruman, Elrond, and Galadriel to help him drive Sauron out of the region. As the Lord of the Rings movies showed us, those efforts proved to be too little, too late.

If the movies are to show an increased focus on Gandalf relative to the book, then it stands to reason we'll see more of the Necromancer as well. This creates an interesting challenge for Jackson. Sauron is a very vaguely defined villain throughout Tolkien's writing. In his finished works, Sauron is never more than a looming, faceless threat. Even the LotR movies broke with tradition by actually showing viewers what Sauron looked like. How much further should Jackson break with tradition? Will we see what the Necromancer looks like before his full power has returned? Will he actually speak to Gandalf and the members of the White Council? Will he have a distinct personality?

The possibilities are intriguing, but there's plenty of room for error in shining too much of a spotlight on the villain. Sauron is a villain who is defined by his mystique. The fact that he's such a vague, unseen presence in Tolkien's stories is part of his charm. By molding Sauron into more of a distinct character, Jackson runs the risk of destroying that charm. Like the Joker's origin in The Dark Knight, some things are better left unknown.

Tying the Franchise Together

The residents of Middle-earth tend to live longer than your average, contemporary human. The benefit there is that, even though these movies take place decades before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, many of our old favorites are perfectly capable of stopping by to make cameo appearances. Besides Gandalf, we know that characters like Galadriel, Elrond, and Legolas will be appearing in The Hobbit. Meanwhile, Elijah Wood and Ian Holm will be reprising their roles as Frodo Baggins and an elderly Bilbo, respectvely, in a series of framing sequences set in the period of the LotR movies.

More Hobbit movies means more room for these sorts of cameos and nods to the previous films. And naturally, this can be a good or bad thing depending on how Jackson chooses to handle the material. Our inner continuity nerd loves the idea of additional nods to these ancillary characters. And with the need to expand the plot of the Hobbit to legitimately fill three movies, this sort of material may be the best option. Rather than invent new obstacles for Bilbo and the dwarves to overcome, new scenes exploring the role of characters such as Galadriel may make for more elegant additions.

But again, we worry about the direction some of these scenes might take. There's always room for missteps when you veer too far from the source material. On the other hand, we'd rather see Jackson err on the side of experimentation than deliver three movies of painstaking, rigid adherence to the source material. The same people who made fun of the LotR movies for featuring nothing but people walking would have an absolute field day.

Jackson has specifically noted a desire to explore some of the material laid out in the appendices to The Return of the King. This material explores various tidbits of Middle-earth history in the years leading up to and following the LotR novels, including Aragorn's hunt for Gollum. Jackson actually mentioned said hunt as one piece of material he'd like to explore in the movies. However, that hunt occurs during the early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn himself is a mere boy during the events of The Hobbit. Does this mean that the Bilbo/Frodo framing segments are just the tip of the iceberg as far as Jackson's approach to shifting chronology?

We hope not. At the end of the day, there needs to be a distinction between The Hobbit trilogy and the LotR trilogy. These three new movies have to be able to stand on their own in addition to serving as worthy prequels. Too much emphasis on bridging the gap is only going to drag down the story. The worst case scenario is that the third Hobbit film wraps up the conflict with Smaug midway through and devotes the remainder to building the groundwork for Fellowship. We don't want a Return of the King-style, rapid-fire series of endings. We want a rousing climax followed by a brief, purposeful wrap-up.

The Future of the Franchise

Reactions to the news about The Hobbit becoming a trilogy have been mixed. Many fans have taken heart that Jackson seems motivated by his love for the franchise and his desire to tell the best story possible, rather than studio pressure. Other cynics remain convinced that Warner Bros. arranged the move in order to fill the void left by now completed, lucrative franchises like Harry Potter and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.

In the end, the motivations behind the decision matter less than the execution. For better or worse, Jackson's handling of the Hobbit trilogy will determine the ongoing future of Middle-earth in Hollywood. Will casual audiences maintain an interest in this story all the way through Christmas 2014? Is a year too long to wait in between each installment?

Jackson's relative success in handling the ancillary characters and adding story material not found within The Hobbit itself will determine how well suited Tolkien's stories are for further exploration. Can the movies still succeed when they explore less well-defined characters and conflicts? Jackson' success with adding to and filling out the story of The Hobbit could pave the way for even more movies devoted to further expanding Middle-earth. We'd love to see movies devoted to the first war against Sauron, key events from The Silmarillion, or even an actual sequel to Lord of the Rings. But first fans need proof that it's possible for a movie to do justice to the franchise by venturing into more unfamiliar territory.

Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and various other IGN channels. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.

Source : ign[dot]com