By visiting our site, you agree to our privacy policy regarding cookies, tracking statistics, etc.

Home Blog Page 49

NYCC 2019: Interview with Chandra Free on ‘Machina Corpse’

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Machina Corpse
Mock up of First Offerings- Pages from Lonely, BK & 1983. Image Credit: Machina Corpse

Machina Corpse is a company that aims to publish all means of spooky, weird, horror, and dark humor things, that just don’t fit within mainstream comics.

As a special NYCC 2019 feature, we got to chat with comics artist and writer, Chandra Free, creator of ‘The God Machine’ graphic novel.

Chandra talked a bit about the journey of both creating and breaking into comics, and shared with The Workprint, details about ‘Machina Corpse’, a Kickstarter campaigned publishing company Chandra’s co-creating with fellow creator, Stephen Emond.

It was a privilege and a delight to talk with Chandra, especially as, due to both of our very busy comic con schedules, we had to reschedule this interview until just after the actual con.

Thankfully, we were able to talk and it was a blast learning about Chandra’s history, including our shared love of Serena Valentino, and learning about some of the amazing goals of the ‘Machina Corpse Unearthed’ Kickstarter. You can read our full chat below.

 

Can you talk a bit about yourself and your longstanding history in comics? How you broke into the industry and what the journey has been like?

I’m Chandra Free, and I’ve been in the comics industry since the mid-2000s. I’ve been on numerous titles, but I’m most known for my own original graphic novel, The God Machine. My most recent comic I was an artist on was one of the stories in John Carpenter’s Tales for a Halloween Night VOL 5.

I first broke into the industry by doing fan art for my favorite writer, Serena Valentino, and she asked me to be her artist on one of her books. It never went anywhere but she posted my sample art online and that got the attention of Drew Rausch who brought me on to do the coloring for his book, Sullengrey. That was my first gig in the industry, and while I was doing that I pitched my book The God Machine at New York Comic-con 2007, and I immediately had interest! I would end up signing a contract with Archaia that very same year!

The journey from there has been a long one. It’s had its ups and downs, but probably my most favorite over the decade and a half is meeting so many colleagues who have become dear friends, and dare I say, family? When you work in an industry where it’s typically just you alone in your house, it’s really something to have these connections. Not only that but the fans have reminded me why I do all this. They have told me their stories about how my work has touched them and I’m forever grateful. Even some of my fans have become my family too, and that is worth its own weight in gold.

 

As someone who worked in mental health for years, I really dig that you put efforts to incorporate personal character psychology into your art. Can you talk a bit about the process you use for your pieces?

Since I was a little girl I have always been fascinated with human behavior, including my own. I never understood why I would cry for no reason or why I would fret over death of myself and others. It wouldn’t be until I was in my teens that I became diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This would inform my perspective into my art, tapping into the sadness I knew, and what I saw in others. My first work, God Machine, dealt with a young man grieving and experiencing situational depression. All those feelings and characters that surround him have been people I’ve seen in my own life, what I’ve been through, and what I know of psychology through studying while I was in college. I am so deeply engrossed in the world of mental health, and now more than ever, the sexuality and identity of everyone, including myself.

 

I like how you’re taking initiative and creating your own publishing company. Can you talk a bit about the Machina Corpse Kickstarter and its mission goal?

Machina Corpse is a company that aims to publish all means of spooky, weird, horror, dark humor, and things that just don’t fit within mainstream comics. Our first Kickstarter is all about kicking off the company and making our first comic book, FIRST OFFERINGS, a title that has 12 pages of comics by me and 12 pages of comics by my business partner, Stephen Emond, plus 12 pages of behind the scenes material and comics!

Our mission is to eventually open up and publish others who are diverse in their voices, and can tell dark twisted tales that come from the heart, even if that heart is black as the night! Though one of my big things that we’re looking for is that it has to be artful and different. An example is I don’t want to see realism or a typical comic book style. There are companies already doing that, and I want us to bring to the table something that is rarely seen in comics.

 

You mention creator-driven spooky comics in the Kickstarter. Is there a difference between spooky and just outright horror in terms of target audience?

We aim to do it all in the “spooky” genres- which includes horror and even slice-of-life supernatural books! Really it all comes down to the spirit of all things Halloween. It can be goofy, it can be ethereal, it can be downright serious and full of dread. I think people of all ages can relate to that darkness that makes the blood boil, or even just fascinates us. Teens and older readers are certainly gonna dig what we have to offer. We haven’t considered children’s spooky books just yet, but I wouldn’t rule that out either for a future something down the pipeline.

 

Can you pitch to any comic creators out there, why Machina Corpse is worth pledging towards and why it would be a good fit for their endeavors?

We’re looking to really entice the weirder, darker, more out-there ideas that traditional publishing may pass on and really want to tap into those intimate passion projects every creator has, that they want to publish with minimal interference, auteur-level works. What is it you always wanted to make but thought, ‘no, I couldn’t..”? That’s what we want to look at.

 

‘Lonely, BK’ seems like a very cool slice-of-life comic depicting a bit about what it’s like to live in NYC. Especially as a queer person. Can you talk about this project attached to this Kickstarter? What it’s about and what should the audience expect when reading it?

One of the things I set out to do with Lonely, BK is that I wanted to tell an authentic story that was close to myself as an adult, what I see around me, and amp it up with monsters to take it to that next level. From bad dates that end in gory messes, to non-binary drag queens that cast magical spells on stage, and queer ghosts haunting the L train! (I mean, if you’re from Brooklyn or New York, you’ve probably haunted the L train yourself many times! Haha.)

The big thing is that I wanted queer characters in this story and people of color. Why? Because we’re all family and representation matters. Sure, you might not be a ghost or a vampire, but these characters are going through real situations and emotions, it doesn’t take away their humanity or their identity, they just happen to be spooky creatures of the night! The great thing about comics is that we can cast ourselves as the sexy vampire, or the demon mistress with a white snake as a pet or maybe we feel like a ghost that goes unseen largely by everybody.

Also the comic is steeped in feminism, and self-growth in a world that dictates that we need others to validate ourselves. In FIRST OFFERINGS we get a glimpse of that larger story as we follow Seline and her typical night in Bushwick, Brooklyn. She’s a vampire that just doesn’t understand why she’s alone, she just happens to murder her all her dates, but whatever.

I chose Bushwick in particular because it’s such a weird place in Brooklyn. Full of street art, weirdos, culture, and odd building scapes. It’s a place I’ve spent a lot of time in, lived there for a hot minute as the kids say, and I am oddly attracted to it, and I bring all of that to Seline’s character, her love of Brooklyn and the city through my eyes.

 

I hear ‘God Machine’ is moving to Machina Corpse. Can you talk a bit about that and the journey you’ve had with your first creator-owned comic over the years?

Oh my gosh! What a long trip this has been since God Machine was first published in late 2010 by Archaia. After I was with Archaia I brought it to Titan Comics. Good people there, but we just never got it off the ground to print again. However, about 2 months ago, I got the rights back from Titan and The God Machine is now mine to do whatever I want. Why not bring it to Stephen and I’s company? It fits the mold perfectly with its spooky aesthetic, its gothy nature, and dark humor.

The plan is that after Machina Corpse puts out Lonely, BK and Stephen Emond’s Have Heart graphic novels, that we will re-release volume 1 of God Machine, then comic books from volume 2 to follow. I’m really excited because it’s been a decade and people have been waiting all this time! The world of God Machine has been in my head for so long that I couldn’t see myself not continuing it. I was made to do more.

 

Where Can People Find your work?

Spookychan.com

@spookychan on twitter/instagram

facebook.com/TheChandraFree

 

Can you leave a message of inspiration for those seeking to create their own comics? Something you’d wish you could tell your younger self in preparation for their journey ahead?

You can do anything, in any style you want, just let it come from the heart, and don’t try to be anything but your authentic self in your comics. -Oh, and learn perspective.

 

Is there anything else you’d like to plug or promote?

Just the Machina Corpse: Unearthed Kickstarter over at machinacorpse.com!

 

Supernatural: “Raising Hell” Review

By
Norton
-
0
Supernatural -- "Raising Hell" -- Pictured (L-R): Lane Davies as Francis Tumblety and Osric Chau as Kevin Tran -- Photo: Colin Bentley/The CW -- © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

It’s the final countdown and episode two of Season fifteen is filling in a bit more of the gaps we’ll be dealing with on our run to the end of this series.

The dilemma from the first episode hasn’t changed – our boys are trying to expel a fuckton of souls from the town Jack (demon Jack) jerry rigged as a trap. As we observed last episode, Dean called in Rowena for back-up. She shows up, along with Arthur Ketch, and they have some weird sexual chemistry. Besides the old witch and the British bastard flirting like teenagers, the main plot of this adventure revolves around the ghost of Jack the Ripper aka Francis Tumblety (Lane Davies) getting all the other ghosts on board for a breakout while the townspeople grow restless (and reckless) about being kicked out of their home. Surprise, surprise, Demon Jack’s ward won’t hold forever, in fact it’s fading fast (because, of course), also he can’t strengthen it (because, of course), so enter Rowena to bail the boys out as usual. Dean’s got a plan at least, she built a bomb when they fought Amara powered by souls, all she needs to do is build another bomb and they can suck all the souls up, easy peasy right? Wrong. Her soul sucking crystal comes to be though it’s nowhere near as power as the one she created the first time around (which makes sense since she reminds them it took a lot out of her to pull that off). Still, a ghost vacuum is a ghost vacuum and they definitely use it when the time comes. Problem solved, yes? Nope. Again, it’s not as powerful as the original so it can only suck up a few souls at a time, not to mention we don’t know the ultimate capacity of the thing (assuming it has one). Also it’s looking like this town keeps getting soul refills – wtf?

Along with our main plot there’s two subplots that bear mentioning: Firstly, Kevin Tran is back! Kind of…also, God’s a dick and lied. Secondly, whatever “quality time” Amara and God spent together did not end well.

Kevin’s storyline is bittersweet (let’s face it that’s the main kind of sweet you’re gonna get on this show). It’s a great reappearance except for the small kink of him being one of the billions expelled from Hell. Yep! God lied. He didn’t send Kevin to Heaven like he promised, instead he banished our favorite former prophet to the firey underworld – why? Kevin doesn’t say. What do we know? That without God’s intervention there’s no way Kevin’s getting into Heaven. Looks like once you go to Hell, Heaven won’t take you. It’s interesting to note that the boys don’t fight this as much as they might have in the past – there’s a reason for this, I think, and we’ll get to it, but the more logical explanation may simply be that the actor who plays Kevin, Osric Chau, only wanted to return for a single episode. He has options – go back to Hell or get set free as a ghost doomed to inevitably go mad. Kevin’s not down for a lifetime of undeserved torture, he’d rather take his chances with madness. DJ does him a solid and opens a hole in the barrier for Kevin to vamoose. It’s meant to be a sad farewell, but I’ll be honest I like the kid’s odds. Bobby turned evil because he was holding onto his hatred for Dick Roman (James Patrick Stuart) killing him, Kevin doesn’t have that kind of baggage that I remember – he made peace with Sam killing him. Though, I guess he could hold a grudge against God.

Speaking of God (Rob Benedict)…we discover, he’s not doing so well. We open on a shot of Amara (Emily Swallow) in Reno getting a lovely massage, when God weirdly interrupts it. He’s clearly unwelcomed, but why? What happened on their bonding trip that made Amara run off to Reno??? This might be the reason God just happened to be around when the whole Jack ordeal went down, without the family getaway as a distraction, he got bored and decided to stick his hands back in the action. Clearly, he didn’t like what was going down because it led to him killing Jack and kicking off the Apocalypse, but that’s old hat. New hat is that God didn’t leave that confrontation with the Winchester’s scot free. When Sam shot him with the equalizer “bullet” he took the hit, we now get to see the aftermath. His injury looks a lot like Sam’s, which leads me to believe God and Sam Winchester are tied. Exactly how is a bit of a mystery but what we learn from God and Amara’s interaction is that God is trapped. He’s not nearly as powerful as he used to be, and he can’t leave our Earth. He’s trying to convince Amara to go on another family trip, but she sees right through him. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Amara is happy to offer up a freezing bowl of gazpacho before ditching him.

Lastly, a little soapboxing if you will…

Sam, Dean, and Castiel just accept Kevin’s banishment from Heaven. In earlier seasons they would have hardcore fought the law, but there’s two issues now. One is that they discovered God was pulling the strings the whole time and are feeling super worthless. What does it all mean!? If I didn’t make those choices, am I even real!? What’s the point!? Ug. I’ve never been a fan of existentialism and that hasn’t changed. Sam and Dean found out about God back in Season 4. Season 5 is all about how they don’t have a choice! Didn’t we cover this shit already!?

This brings me to point number Two: When you’re 15 seasons in, you start to give up. It’s just a fact. The reason I believe most shows should end by seven seasons is because there just aren’t enough storylines. Even in an idea as interesting as the supernatural or theology for dummies, there’s a limit. There’s a point of diminishing returns. And it shows.

There’s a line towards the back half of this episode where Castiel bemoans his inability to heal someone and Sam replies, “You’re probably just tired, we all are.” Ain’t that the truth! Most shows that go over ten seasons are ensembles. This means that the actors who started them usually aren’t around when they end. They move on, explore other projects, play other roles, but Supernatural has the disadvantage of being a two lead (occasionally three since Misha joined back in Season 4) show. This means that Jensen and Jared are essentially trapped. They play the same parts over and over for years and years. This has two distinct side effects: that the fan (and I mean the die-hard superfans) association of Jaren, Misha, and Jensen with their characters grows stronger and stronger (making breaking away from this show to do other projects difficult), and that the actors get bored and tired. Sam, Dean, and Castiel not fighting for Kevin’s immortal soul might mean that they have bigger fish to fry, or that Osric Chau only wanted to cameo for the final season of the series, or that they’ll circle back and find a miracle cure by episode 20, but I think it’s a reflection on how tired Jensen, Jared, and Misha are. It might be fun to play these characters, but I think a lyric from Cypress Hill’s “Rap Superstar” sums it up best: “It’s a fun job but it’s still a job.”

Happy retirement boys!

NYCC 2019: Interview with Peter Hogan, Creator of ‘Resident Alien’

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Dark Horse Resident Alien
Image Credit: Dark Horse

We got to interview Peter Hogan, creator of the Resident Alien comic, about how he felt about his graphic novel turned SYFY TV series.

At NYCC 2019, the Workprint got to cover everything about Resident Alien. Including the chance to visit the enthusiastic panel, conduct interviews with the cast and crew of Resident Alien, and even as a special treat, were invited to the Dark Horse booth, where I got to get a chance to talk with the original comics creator, Peter Hogan, for a one-on-one about his series.

A longstanding comics veteran, Peter started as the editor for the British Comic Book Magazine Revolver, and is well-known for his work on ‘2000 A.D.‘ and ‘The Sandman Presents: Love Street‘.

Peter was more than excited to share his thoughts about his comic series, including its upcoming TV Adaptation.

What inspired you to create this series?

PETER HOGAN: It really came out the fact that Steve Parkhouse, the artist on this, we’d worked together before and I wanted to work with him again. I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said something to do with Aliens… and it kind of just flowed from that.

 

Your setting takes place in a very small town. Why did you choose to focus on the people and community there?

HOGAN: The thinking was this was somebody who’d want to hide away from the world as much as possible because he crash-landed and he is just trying to keep a low profile. As the comic begins, he’s been doing that for a few years until the local doctor dies and the police rope him in to look at the dead body, which happens in the TV version as well.

He slowly gets sucked back into it. I figured he’d pick somewhere in the middle of nowhere rather than downtown Manhattan.

 

What were some of the noticeable changes you think between the TV show and Comic?

HOGAN: Well, they’ve kind of done their own thing. There’s bits of the comic that’s in there, and bit’s where they’ve come up with an alternate version. It’s not entirely faithful but it is very enjoyable. We may end up people who like one and not the other, or people who may end up liking both. We’ll see.

 

How do you feel about Alan Tudyk’s performance as the main character?

HOGAN: I think he’s wonderful. I think it’s perfect casting. I’m very pleased.

 

What about the visual differences between having a human actor versus the alien?

HOGAN: I think Chris thought about having him as an alien all the time. It would’ve meant somebody spending four hours in makeup every day, and also, I think it might’ve been confusing for a TV audience. Also, it’s easier to identify with a human actor.

In the comic, I thought about changing with a human actor back and forth, but no that’ll be confusing. It would work on TV but not the comic. Also, in the comic, having him as an alien all the time was A. intriguing to me because everyone around him treats him like an ordinary human being. But the advantage, even when you got a quiet, domestic, dare I say even boring scene, you’ve got an alien on every page. Which makes it intriguing.

 

In the comic, you delve into more of the spiritual elements and native American backstory?

HOGAN: I think they’re going to get to that in the forthcoming episodes. I talked to Chris about it last night and there’ll definitely be a bit of that going around later.

 

How do you feel about the comedic beats? It seems they’ve added a lot of comedy?

HOGAN: Well, I think there’s comedy in the comic, it’s just a little… gentler. But I think it works well. It’s not entirely comedy. The drama is still there and there’s quite a lot of different layers going on.

 

The big change I noticed, was the main character and his motivations being on Earth. How did you feel about that?

HOGAN: I understand why they did it. In the comic, I think one of the big strengths’ readers related to was that here you had an alien who wasn’t here to abduct or kill people. None of the usual alien tropes. He was just a nice guy who was stuck on Earth and I think people really related to that.

In TV, to get people interested, they’re more used to the idea of a character going on a journey, that kind of arc playing out over a season. So that’s why they’ve gone for it. I don’t object to it particularly. It’s just one of the things I accepted. Any adaption isn’t going to be one-hundred percent faithful I’m just glad they’ve done an enjoyable take.

 

Given your background in comics, what do you think was different about this approach to the story compared to some of your other previous work?

HOGAN: I kind of didn’t really pay attention to what anyone else was doing. Mike Richardson at Darkhorse fell in love with it, thank God, and kind of pretty much allowed me to do what I wanted. So I think it’s kind of its own thing and the people that discovered it prior to the TV show happening seem to like.

So now, hopefully, it’s going to get a bigger audience.

 

Could you give any final words of advice to somebody trying to break into comics?

HOGAN: Do a lot of reading… and not necessarily comics. I look at comics and I think the same thing is true now that was true 20-30 years ago. You got people drawing on the same material as inspiration. They’ll watch the same movies, read the same comics. But it’s all kind of recycles the same stuff. I think if you read other things or watch artier movies, you’ll come up with something that’s a bit more different.

And that’s probably something that’ll separate you from the herd. Something that’ll do you some favors in the long term.

Resident Alien
Image Credit: Dark Horse

‘Resident Alien’ is created by Dark Horse comics. You can buy the series here

https://digital.darkhorse.com/series/199/resident-alien

NYCC 2019 Interview: A Look Back at ‘Batman Beyond’ with the Cast and Crew

By
Jad Kaado
-
0
Photo Courtesy of Cinema Blend

Batman Beyond fans rejoice! A remastered edition of the original series now available on digital platforms and will be released on Blu-ray in a box set, containing a slick exclusive metallic Terry McGinnis Batman Funko pop, on October 29th.

New York Comic Con brought back the cast and production team of Batman Beyond, including with actors Kevin Conroy, Will Friedle, Lauren Tom, director James Tucker, casting director, Andrea Romano, and writer-producer, Alan Burnett, to discuss their experiences with the show, and it’s legacy within the DCU, as well as pop culture in general.

I find this to be particularly exciting as this is one of those shows that should be getting more a lot more attention due to the impact that it’s left in the Batman Legacy, as well as pushing creative and thought-provoking boundaries that animation and comic fans weren’t really exploring at that time en masse.  For example, the show revived a well-established concept and brought it into a new world that was essentially created from scratch.

The show also questioned what “Batman” really was as a character and proved that you can revisit a story through a different lens to create a new vision and new themes to explore, while also preserving (and adapting) the legacy and history of the characters.

Batman Beyond was one of the first shows to really challenge my preconceived notions on what art was, especially with animation and superheroes. Initially, when the show was released, I wasn’t fond of the idea of having a Batman separate from Bruce Wayne.  My teenage angst questioned how could Batman not be Bruce Wayne?! Well, the showed answered.  And it answered very well.

This reporter was able to sit in the press room, prior to the panel, and listen to co-creator and writer-producer, Alan Burnett (of Hanna-Barbera, Disney, and DC fame), discuss the impetus behind Batman Beyond.

“We felt a very big responsibility to make a show that Batman fans could really sneer at. So, we took our time to get things right and we always felt like we were taking a chance, but it always felt good when we were making it,” said Burnett. “So, when the show finally got on television and the fans liked it, we were relieved then and happy.  And the characters appear in other shows and it had its own comic book. And really, he [Terry McGinnis] seems to be a part of the Batman legend.”

Burnett continued to discuss his writing experiences with the show, such as how he did not really on writing bibles through the production, and a specific type of a writing trope to avoid in television. The video of the interview is available at the bottom of the article.

The Workprint asked Burnett if the show was inspired by any specific piece of literature or art form in it’s creation, to which he replied: “Can’t say there was. We weren’t thinking about [anything specific], we were thinking about the kid who wants to become a part of a samurai group and just sitting outside the doorway waiting for the master to accept him. That was sort our image in the beginning, but it wasn’t based on any stories, we just made it up as we went along, we really did.”

It’s always fascinating to see different approaches to the creation of a complex show that contains so many elements from an artistic perspective.  For example, James Tucker, Emmy Award Winning Director for the Batman Beyond episode “Egg Baby,” as well as his work in Justice League and Batman: The Brave the Bold, provided what influenced the production team that he was working within during the creation of the show.

“Terry [has] more in common with Spider-Man 2099, he owes a lot to that comic book. Even though its weird, we were thinking of Spider-Man during the show, but we weren’t thinking of that Spider-Man [2099], which would have been a natural Spider-Man to think of but there’s a lot of similarities but not once did we look at that comic book and go, it’s so weird, Classic Spider-Man was our template” stated Tucker.

However, storytelling was not the only aspect of what made Batman Beyond such a fantastic show.  In order to ensure that there was chemistry between the actors, as well as the production team, famed casting director, Andrea Romano, shed some light on her process that lead to her choices in her career. Romano is known for her work on Batman The Animated Series, Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Avatar the Last Air Bender, The Legend of Korra, and SpongeBob to name a few.

“I think of casting like a party…who do I want to invite? Who’s going to have fun together? Who’s going to bring something to the party? Not just sit there and take, do the job and leave,” said Romano.

Being able to recognize creative talent and work ethic is an important balance to work towards to, which Andrea Romano has clearly mastered and is reflected in her reputation.

In response to a question on Friedle’s casting, Romano elaborated on her techniques and what she did with Will Friedle, after immediately knowing that she was going to cast him.

“That’s the number one thing I needed was a good actor. Kevin [Conroy] was already established. We already knew he was going to play Bruce Wayne. I had to get an actor as good as Kevin,” said Romano.

“So, I’ve already seen his [Friedle] on-camera acting and then brought him in to audition by himself, I just gave him a copy that had just his words, and it was strong and good, and he followed my direction, she continued. “Then I auditioned Will with Kevin together in a room, is a fun call back, to make sure that they had some sort of energy together.”

Will Friedle, famously know for his role as Terry McGinnis and work in Kim Possible and childhood masterpiece Boy Meets World, talked about how much of a guiding hand that Andrea Romano was towards him, especially since this was his first voice-over acting job for this type of production.

Friedle recounts “It was my first animated series so I just jumping into that role was a little crazy and sitting next to Kevin Conroy, and when we did Return of the Joker, sitting between Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill was a little daunting. But when you got somebody like Andrea Romano at the wheel, it made everything a hell of a lot better.”

The Workprint was able to get further insight into the acting process from Kevin Conroy, the voice of Bruce Wayne and Batman from, pretty much, the DC Universe and the upcoming cross-over episodes for the CW’s Arrow-verse “Crisis on Infinite Earth.”  Conroy divulged his perspective on what is it like playing the same character from starting with vocal performances to live-action television.

“When you do a voice performance, voice acting is acting. People always think that it’s somehow different from acting, it’s not. It’s acting. You’re portraying a full character, you’re creating a full character, but you only have your voice to tell the full story,” he said.

Conroy continued: “To be suddenly doing this on camera, you then have to be aware of the cameraman and the lightening. There’s a physicality to it. When you’re in a sound booth, you can just live in your own imagination. There’s a liberation to it because no one is watching you.”

Kevin Conroy then shared anecdotes on his experiences of his first time auditioning for Batman and how he approached it as an acting exercise when he realized that he was not familiar with the overall corpus of Batman literature.

He also discussed working with both Andrea Romano and Will Friedle, and how they both had enough chemistry with each other to the point where it positively impacted the production of Batman Beyond. Conroy recalled that both he and Will were the “constants” of the show and that they had a shared responsibility to newcomers by “putting them at ease and make everyone realize that it was ok to screw up.” Both anecdotes are discussed more in detail in the video located at the bottom of this article.

Conroy placed importance on research and professional decorum when approaching a production like Batman Beyond. Most people tend to forget that Conroy came from a theatrical background as a graduate of Juilliard School, where he once roomed with the legendary Robin Williams.

The Workprint asked Conroy about what he picked up from his experiences as a graduate of Juilliard and being Robin Williams’ friend that he still carries with him in his performances today.

“Batman is a Shakespearean character, and that’s why I think it was so fateful to get it, you know. That’s absolutely what trained me to do it,” stated Conroy.

He carried on: “And Robin [Williams], he taught me to be, I was always jealous of his ability to make a fool of himself, to risk all, to dare to fail. I always heard that phrase, Dare to Fail. You can’t be great unless your willing to fail. But I never was able to do so. I was always with my Catholic upbringing, too scared to fail. I wanted to be the good boy. Robin taught me you don’t always have to be perfect. You can dare to fail. And that’s what I learned from Robin.”

Batman Beyond, with its dark storytelling, fantastic animation, and high-quality cast and production crew, is a modern example of an animation series daring to fail. All the writers, producers, directors, and actors took a risk to create something new and unique, something daring that would challenge both audiences and artists, as well as leave a long-lasting and pertinent impact on the legacy of Batman.

Prodigal Son: Designer Complicity Review

By
Norton
-
0
Malcolm and a very dead model

Malcolm got the first two episodes, Mom is getting the third and fourth, but it looks like it will soon be Ainsley’s turn at bat! She shows up in this episode a lot more than the previous three and even gets to close! So, they’re saying there’s a chance!

Episode four is entitled “Designer Complicity” and it opens up on our usual starter of Malcolm as a kid. He’s headed towards that damned box, seeing that damned girl, and of course getting scolded by his damned mother. Last episode left us with the question: How much did Jessica Whitly know??? We don’t have to wait terribly long for an answer, even if it might be a lie. But first…

The serial killer subplot is pretty simple: Someone’s got a stalker! Initially, we’re led to believe the deceased is the object of some erotomaniac’s affections. Poor Tatiana, all she wanted to do was be an Instagram influencer and now she’s blue, covered in sequins, and dead in a tub. Her death is staged to be a recreation of the outdoor photo shoot that launched her “career”, the architect of which is a man named Axel. Axel is her ex, and he gives Malcolm pause when his reaction to learning of her last pose is fear. Not sadness or surprise, but fear. Why would Axel be afraid? Enough about that, there’s a red herring to follow! Since Occam’s Razor points us to Tatiana being the target, Malcolm and company chase down a solid lead by the name of Roger (Daniel London) – he’s a paparazzo who loved Tatiana but didn’t have the delusion she loved him back. He does however provide a much-needed perspective which allows Malcolm to conclude Axel is the one with the stalker. Tatiana was killed because she wanted to break up with him, Roger got hit by a car for taking pictures that would expose Axel, and it’s only a matter of time before another person is knocked-off. Luckily, Axel has a show, unluckily it’s the last time he’ll be in the city for a while, so they obviously have to go RIGHT NOW. But…we don’t have a warrant, no probable cause, still…it’s Malcolm and co! We’re not gonna let a silly thing like the law stop us! And though we’re led to believe Malcolm goes rogue on this sting operation, we learn he didn’t, and the cops were waiting for him to spring the trap the whole time. Yay! Another killer caught. Which leads us back to our real story.

Jessica and Malcolm’s relationship isn’t the best right now – he thinks she lied to him about knowing his dad was a serial killer. Malcolm’s solution is very direct: I’m good at telling when people are lying, let me see the interview tapes from the night my dad was arrested. I’ll know if my mom knew. He asks Gil who rightfully denies him. When Jessica later drops by his apartment, she complains about how horrid it was to see Martin in jail (and yes, shippers, it’s clear she’s still got the hots for him). Malcolm doesn’t care, all he wants to know is if she knew. We find out that Martin agreed to take the favorite son off his visitor list (which seems to displease Malcolm weirdly enough), and we get to see a Dynasty-level slap after said son keeps pushing his mom to tell him the truth. She caps things off with a lovely guilt dig about how Dad is a serial killer but somehow, she’s still the Monster. Nice!

Later we see Ainsley come visit mom, unsurprisingly all Jessica wants to whine about is how her and Malcolm had a terrible fight. “Biblical”. Seriously, lady? Ug, it’s really starting to piss me off how Ainsley gets treated, or rather, mistreated in this series. It’s like the fucking Brady Bunch, everything is Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm! Why doesn’t anyone give a shit about Jan!? Ah well, as hinted to earlier, this episode does show some promise that maybe our favorite non-red-headed step-child will get the spotlight soon. This interaction definitely leans that way with Ainsley finally sick of her mother’s bullshit obsession with dad and her brother. Though it is funny that when Jessica at last wants to talk with her daughter about her daughter, Ainsley just straight up leaves. Damn girl, if they throw you the ball and you don’t even play, you can’t really bitch about not being in the game! However, it appears the good doctor’s daughter is itching for an exclusive with her infamous dad. Finding out from Malcolm that Martin watches her broadcasts brings her a cautious optimism (she remarks dad only watches her to get to Malcolm). She closes out this episode by visiting The Surgeon in jail, and refers to him, appropriately enough, as Mr. Whitly – he of course insists she call him Dad. You know the saddest part? He’s genuinely happy to see her – and that’s probably the first time in this whole series someone is happy to see Ainsley. Le sigh.

Cutting back to Malcolm and Jessica’s storyline, it is resolved hazily (which is generally how this show seems to like to operate). See, Jessica is in her closet going through her clothes and happens upon…you guessed it! The red dress that Malcolm not only saw in his memories but mentioned in a confrontation with her previous to this scene. How convenient! OK, not really, but still. The red dress causes Jessica to have a flashback to that night (or maybe some other evening where she also wore the dress?) and a conversation her and Martin have. He’s been doing something, neither of them says it out loud, but we know Martin wishes it wasn’t a compulsion he had, and Jessica warns it will ruin them if he continues. Sounds a lot like serial killing to me, however, it could just as easily be a sex addiction or gambling! Stupid vagueness! Meanwhile, Gil gives Malcolm the interview tape and he sees a shell-shocked Jessica who admits to knowing…that her husband was up to something but she sincerely believed it was an affair. Judging by his tears and hand on the monitor, Malcolm believes her. He stalks her for a change and apologizes to her – they have a nice reconciliation.

A few other details in this episode of note: JT is a social media follower of the victim, this earns him a little bit of heat, but I honestly bring him up mostly for the awesome nickname he gives Malcolm: Sherlock Freud. For once Malcolm tries to initiate a flirtation with our favorite unprofessional M.E. Also, props to the set designers and make-up artists on this one – the girl in the tub, though dead, looks beautiful. Normally, I get real tired of the muted color look a lot of these newer shows seem hellbent on adopting, but for this particular episode, the atmospheres really work nicely. Finally, Malcolm’s therapist is not doing a good job – her patient breaks a glass in his hand and she just lets him walk out (granted she’s a child psychiatrist and shouldn’t even be seeing him, but that’s a whole other can of worms). If he doesn’t wind up institutionalized by the end of this season, I’ll be amazed.

‘The Purge’ Interview: Paola Nuñez Discusses Esme’s Discovery into the NFFA’s Secret

By
Bilal Mian
-
0
THE PURGE -- "This Is Not A Test" Episode 201 -- Pictured: Paola Nuñez as Esme Carmona -- (Photo by: Alfonso Bresciani/USA Network)

The world of The Purge may seem like a chaotic mess, but there rules behind the madness.

Season two of The Purge on USA Network takes a deeper look at the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA) by introducing us to Esme Carmona (Paola Nuñez), a surveillance expert who monitors Purge night to ensure everyone is following the rules while murdering and robbing each other.

At New York Comic-Con, The Workprint was able to sit down with Paola Nuñez to discuss Esme’s journey across season two, her ties to the mysterious Purge night death, and how everything Esme knows may be a lie.

You play quite an interesting character. Esme works for the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA). Can you tell us a little bit about your character?

Nuñez: My character is Esme,  Esmeralda Carmona. She’s a believer of the system, the rules. She believes that the NFFA works and she works for surveillance. This is a department that works not only throughout Purge night, but it works during the whole year and it means that we’re watching you. The government is watching you just to make sure you behave and to have the proof if you commit a crime. To pursue whatever has to be pursued in order to maintain the peace in this society. 

That’s where she belongs. The reason that Esme got into working for the NFFA was because she had a really traumatic experience with her family and now she’s looking for something to save her. Then she found that she’s good at this, she’s needed and she becomes really skilled at this. As we discover throughout the episodes, she finds a big secret that the NFFA is hiding. She feels betrayed by the system and that’s when everything changes for her, so she decides to change paths. 

What can you tell us of Esme’s relationship with her coworkers and the woman she knew that dies during the Purge?

Nuñez: What we wanted to do with the first episode with Esme is that Esme’s been there for awhile and Vivian was a new ingredient, a newbie so Esme has to teach her, make her feel comfortable but they’re not friends still. She’s just a new element in the department and you know Vivian respects Esme, she’s probably heard a lot about Esmeralda. We wanted to make Esme the best of the whole department, she’s been there forever and everyone goes and asks her questions how to do stuff and whatever. She has the know how so she’s a really trusted employee. 

So that’s why it makes it more interesting when she wants to rebel against the NFFA because no one would expect that. The interesting thing about what she discovers is that not only is Drew Addams someone she knew from the past, but she also discovers the fact that something is wrong. The way that she was purged is not right. And so it’s not only that she knew this person, is that the way that it is done she feels that there’s something off. That’s why she wants to pursue and to dig in to see what she found. 

Since she’s been part of the process for awhile she knows if something sticks out.

Nuñez: Yea, she can see the red flags, Drew Addams for her is definitely a red flag but she also doesn’t want to be discovered by anyone else because she knows her job in the NFFA surveillance department is just to tag people. She’s not supposed to get involved and if you know someone who is being purged you’re not supposed to get involved, you’re not supposed to do anything else, the only thing you’re supposed to do is to tag that person and that’s it.

Do you see Esme interacting with the other stories or a standalone that’s a part of overall world building? 

Nuñez: She interacts with one of the other stories, they collapse and if that’s a way of saying it. But only one story and it’s really interesting but that’s like the second half of the season.

Do you have your own Purge plan in place?

Nuñez: I have my own Purge list! No, I always think about who would deserve it. I don’t know if I would do it, but you can also see in this season that you can actually hire people to do it if you don’t want to get your hands dirty. 

Joel Allen Opens Up on Ben’s Dark Journey in Season 2 of ‘The Purge’

By
Bilal Mian
-
0
THE PURGE -- "This Is Not A Test" Episode 201 -- Pictured: (l-r) Joel Allen as Ben, Matt Shively as Turner -- (Photo by: Alfonso Bresciani/USA Network)

The sirens have rung and for Ben, this particular Purge will change the course of this life.

The season two premiere of The Purge found Ben out with his frat brother out on Purge night. A quick journey to Suicide Bridge to snap a picture for initiation goes awry when Ben decides to help a woman tied up inside a building. Ben quickly finds himself trapped with the woman as an attacker attempts to take both of their lives. Ben manages to kill his captor, but his freedom comes with a great mental toll.

At New York Comic-Con, I was able to sit down with Joel Allen to discuss his journey of playing Ben and what we could expect from his character’s upcoming journey.

The journey for playing Ben was dark for Allen. What happened to Ben on Purge night, will not stay contained to Purge night. Ben’s mental state will spiral. “You have to dance with the devil a bit for a character like this,” Allen remarked.

“Ben is really an average dude with really average grades,” Allen says. “There’s nothing that stands out about him. This is his first Purge, it wasn’t explicitly stated in the episode, but it is his first Purge and he is pretty anti-Purge as are most of the people in his life. It’s kind of an initiation thing for being a part of this fraternity that you need to go out and take a picture at Suicide Bridge.”

Allen finds Ben to be a focal point for the audience. “The whole point of the character to me was to be a surrogate, a conduit for the audience because he is such a broad stroke of a paintbrush that we all kind of relate to the character so much. You really feel like, “Well, what would I do if I was in that situation on my first Purge.”

Ben’s relationship with his frat brother, who left him behind on Purge night, will continue to develop over the season. “That storyline with the two of us is the most compelling throughout the show, at least within my storyline,” said Allen. “All the other relationships I have with other characters, they are a little more brief or don’t dig in quite as much. He is kind of the bad guy. Ben is a guy who is a victim of circumstance. Turner, he’s the villain, but we’re going to see a different side of him very soon in a few episodes. He’s also sympathetic and that was something important for all of us involved. You want to be able to sympathize with all these characters instead of villainizing everybody or a few. It makes him more compelling than unsettling if you could understand someone’s actions instead of just ‘here’s this gore porn.’”

The Purge Season 2 premieres on USA October 15 at 9/8c.

‘The Purge’ Executive Producers Tackle “What Happens After The Purge” With Season 2

By
Bilal Mian
-
1
NEW YORK COMIC CON -- "The Purge S2 Screening & Panel" -- Pictured: (l-r) Paola Nunez; Krystal Ziv, Executive Producer, The Purge; James Roland, Executive Producer, Writer, The Purge -- (Photo by: Astrid Stawiarz/USA Network)

At New York Comic-Con The Purge cast and crew debuted the season two premiere to convention-goers and followed it up with a Q&A. Franchise creator, James DeMonaco, discussed how one specific fan question drove the narrative this season – “What happens after the Purge?”

Based on the film franchise, The Purge is an annual 12-hour period during which all criminal activity, including murder, is made legal. The films have tackled different Purges, but never what happens after.

Season two of The Purge will change that by bookending the season with two Purges and following four different stories in-between the two violent nights.

NEW YORK COMIC CON — “The Purge S2 Screening & Panel” — Pictured: (l-r) Krystal Ziv, Executive Producer, The Purge; James Roland, Executive Producer, Writer, The Purge — (Photo by: Astrid Stawiarz/USA Network)

After the panel, I was able to sit down with Executive Producers Krystal Houghton Ziv and James Roland to discuss the upcoming season and what viewers and fans can expect from the latest season of The Purge.

“The Purge forces the issue of ‘what would you do’ and we get to play a lot with that in this season,” said Roland. “It’s not just people out for money or greed or whatever. There is a lot of things that could happen in life that might change where your world or apropos is depending on context.”

This season is bookmarked by a Purge at the beginning and one at the end. You evaluate what happens the morning after. How did you decide the journey to go down this path?

Roland – I think it was James DeMonaco’s idea. He always wanted to do something in between Purges, and we were tasked with figuring out what that would look like. The first thing you do is sit down and brainstorm all of the ideas. That’s essentially conversations between your friends, after seeing one of the movies, or if you look at Reddit threads and stuff like it. It’s people going, “Ooo, what if this happened or if this happened.”

Then you throw all of that on the table and you’re like how do we make stories out of this. It’s one thing to talk about it, but it is another to make something exciting out of it.

A lot of it is dealing with the psychological ramifications was the big thing that unlocked it for us. It’s so easy to say, “I just killed somebody I saw. I solved the problem.” Humans aren’t built that way. We have guilt and shame for a reason. We got to explore that a lot.

Ziv – At the end of The Purge movies when the sirens go off it’s such a relief, but for our show it has to be the opposite. Whatever was going on is now still terrible. Just because it is not Purge night you’re still dealing with it. We did initially talk about starting right after Purge ended, but ultimately we decided we wanted to see a little bit of this previous Purge and what everyone went through.

THE PURGE — “This Is Not A Test” Episode 201 — Pictured: Derek Luke as Marcus — (Photo by: Alfonso Bresciani/USA Network)

This season you’re telling four stories. How did you come up with each?

Ziv – We wanted people to relate and buy into our characters early on. There is always something about each of them. Ben doesn’t want to be out tonight and gets caught in the most horrific situation and you’re like “Yea, I wouldn’t want to be out tonight, but I have dumb friends that take me out to do dumb things.”

With Marcus, he’s living a regular life at home doing the things we all probably imagine doing. Just laying low and even he can’t escape it.

Ryan is really wish fulfillment.

Roland – Ryan is a lot of wish fulfillment because he’s not hurting anybody. You see him in the first episode not willing to kill the guards. He’s not an angel. We get into that in later episodes. He really is that wish fulfillment aspect.

Esme is someone that works for the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA), but she’s not a bad person. If you think about politics and government, there has got to people higher up that know damn well what the ramifications of their actions are. Does that mean the mailman who is working for the government is evil? Does it mean every cop who is trying to do their job is evil? Not everyone can be. It became a study of that. Can someone do things really bad for the right reasons? The most interesting journey to take that character on is, “What if they started to realize what the ramifications of their actions were?” What would you do in that situation?

Is there redemption for a person who takes part in the Purge?

Roland – That is something we definitely play with this season. Whether they achieve or not is another question.

Ziv – When you do something, “can you go back,” is part of it too. Some people can, some people can’t.

Roland – Keep in mind with the characters you see in the first episode, there are ramifications to the Purge we saw in that episode. These are characters who lived a long time before this episode. There are other Purges in their past that we’ll get to delve into as well. There are darker secrets we haven’t seen yet.

THE PURGE — “This Is Not A Test” Episode 201 — Pictured: Paola Nuñez as Esme Carmona — (Photo by: Alfonso Bresciani/USA Network)

When it comes to world-building how much room do you have to play with the Series’ Bible?

Ziv – A fair amount just because not a lot of rules have been set in stone. The things in the movies are the beginning of the Bible, but we realized that there is a lot stuff not. We get to call DeMonaco and be like, “Does this make sense to you? Is this how you think the NFFA would operate?” I do think we got to define a lot of parts.

Roland – That part was a lot of fun. That was weirdly the easiest part of the job because it was exciting and fun. Then you actually had to write the stories.

What lessons did you learn from the first season? Did this lead to changes in season two?

Ziv – We changed the look a lot.

Roland – We tried to make the Purge night scenes, and some of the scenes in the normal area, darker and a little bit scarier. Visually we changed the look a little bit. A lot more like Purge: Anarchy, which was the benchmark for the look of the movie franchise.

One thing we decided to play with earlier on was where in season one all of the flashbacks were off-Purge. Early on we said we’ll do the opposite. We have three episodes that follow that model where we really dig into the backstory of characters, but after that we felt like we were trying to push it. After we said screw it, lets not do that as much this season. We were not as beholden to a template if that makes sense. It opened up a lot of doors.

Ziv – We devoted one episode per character to a flashback, but the others are totally regular.

The Purge Season 2 premieres on USA October 15 at 9/8c.

NYCC 2019: Epic Teen Mayhem on ‘Daybreak’

By
Nicole C
-
0

High school is hard enough, but add in the apocalypse and you’ve got a recipe for epic mayhem. At this year’s New York Comic-Con, Netflix’s debuted the first episode of Daybreak, the teen post-apocalyptic series based on the graphic novel of the same name by Brian Ralph. The show follows Josh Wheeler as he navigates this new landscape trying to reunite with his lady love Sam Dean and along the way discovers a tribe of his own.

The Workprint had a chance to chat with cast members Matthew Broderick, Colin Ford, Austin Crute, Jeante Godlock, Gregory Kasyan, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Krysta Rodriguez, and Sophie Simnett as well as executive producers Aron Eli Coleite, Brad Peyton, and Jeff Fierson on all things Daybreak.

The series goes back and forth to show audiences life before and after the massive explosion that triggers Armageddon, but a big part of the story focuses on the different factions that currently inhabit the world of Glendale. Various typical high school groups as the jocks, the cheerleaders, the gamers, the science nerds, and others were all represented on the show, albeit taken to a whole new level. It’s a bit Mad Max, Lord of The Flies, and Ferris Bueller all rolled into one entertainingly binge-able series. While new gangs are also brought into the show, it’s all about finding your tribe and how all these groups click together in this new dystopian reality.

Taking inspiration from cult classic Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, the producers sought to give audiences horror, humor, and heart as touchpoints because if they could make someone scared, laugh, and cry in a single hour of television then they’ve accomplished their mission. When the trio brought this mindset into the writer’s room, they were able to realize this vision through via differing point of view of various characters. Daybreak aims to constantly surprise viewers with shifting perspectives. The producers explained that almost every single episode felt like rewriting a pilot and reinventing the language of the series. They wanted each character to pop and have a compelling narrative while making the stakes as real as possible with humor and optimism still present.

Part of the appeal for some individuals on the show is that high school may have sucked for them, but now they have been given a chance to completely reinvent themselves. For instance, Wesley Fists (Austin Crute) goes from jock to a samurai pacifist. Crute teases that we don’t really know what happened to create that drastic change in his character, but he ends up becoming friends with individuals you would never have expected him to have a relationship with. Meanwhile, Mona Lisa (Jeante Godlock) who had been the only girl on the football team, now enjoys the position of second in command of the jocks (with Turbo Bro Jock as their wordless leader). She holds an authoritative bad ass role within their community and had taken charge when previously she had just been there pre-end of the world. The actor adds that her character represents a strong female presence within her tribe.

“When she says jump, you say how high?” said Godlock.

The cast of Netflix’s Daybreak at NYCC 2019 (The Workprint/Nicole C)

Meanwhile, Eli Cardashyan (Gregory Kasyan) undergoes his own transformation from bullied kid to king of the mall after the bomb explodes. Previously because his family wasn’t as well off as others, he was picked on for having knock off items (think Pike instead of Nike). Now he has everything he could have dreamed off and turns the tables on those who once made his life a living hell.

“Unlike the typical dystopian futures that we’ve seen in movies and television, this is actually the best thing that ever happened to these teenagers, “ Coleite said, “All the adults are gone or they’ve turned into monsters. This is an opportunity for the kids to make their own world.”

Colin Ford who plays lead Josh Wheeler, explains how his character went from an average guy in school into the best version of himself. Josh wants to just fit in and while his friends may view him as a natural leader, he wouldn’t describe himself as such. When the apocalypse arrives, he just wants to find his girlfriend Sam and live the most epic life he can. Sophie Simnett (who plays Sam) adds that despite the circumstances of the apocalypse, Josh’s basic need to be accepted hasn’t changed.

“It takes people to say hey we’re here, we want to be part of your family for him to be like, oh this could be home for me,” said Ford.

The show’s allegory is that high school is hellish and it’s like surviving the apocalypse. The producers aim to take everyone on a ride where we don’t know where the story is going while displaying growth and unexpected twists and turns. “You can’t guess what’s going to happen on the show. It’s so bonkers and every character’s journey just goes in a way that we had no idea. We were getting the scripts while filming and going to each other, have you read episode eight yet, did you know that happens, this is crazy!” said Simnett, “It’s nice to know that each character gets their own story told in different episodes so that’s definitely something to look forward to.”

But what is a dystopian series without zombies? Daybreak has their own unique spin on the undead creatures called ghoulies. For a yet to be determined reason,  mainly only adults were affected and now they say the last ridiculous thought they had such as “I really need to get off Facebook because it’s so toxic.” However, don’t underestimate the ghoulies because they are fast and deadly.

“You never know what might happen to someone if they get bit by a ghoulie,” Ford said.

Well we can all certainly look forward to finding out!

Watch the trailer now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P9U41e75tE

Daybreak streams on Netflix October 24.

NYCC 2019 – ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’ Interview with screenwriter Mairghread Scott

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0
Wonder Woman bloodlines
Copyright belongs to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Screenwriter Mairghread Scott discusses the storytelling of the new animated Wonder Woman movie, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines at NYCC 2019.  

In discussing the recent DC Animated Original Movie, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, the storytellers behind the solo feature came to the famed New York Comic-Con to provide insight on the latest incarnation of arguably the most famous female superhero, Wonder Woman, the Princess of Themyscira.

The Workprint sat down with Mairghread Scott, screenwriter of Bloodlines, in a roundtable interview. She has 20 writer credits to her name, ranging from screenwriter to story consultant. This is her second time writing for the character of Wonder Woman. 

The movie has a cast of mostly female characters. Was this intentional?

Well, it wasn’t necessarily intentional. We knew we wanted to write a Wonder Woman movie. I was a writer that had experience writing Wonder Woman and also writing animation, and I really love the character. Because I had written for Wonder Woman on Justice League Action as well, they were like “hey, you have a history with this character,” and I have a really close personal connection to her; she’s my girl. They were like “what would you do?” and I was like “this is what I would do!” A lot of our storyline is based off the Rucka/Johnson run, and we wanted to use a lot of characters from that, and I also wanted to nod to the villains that had been in the live-action movie as well. So that just ended up rounding out our cast, and it ended up being a lot of ladies, but I think more importantly, it’s a lot of stories about Aries, it’s a lot of stories about Zeus that I felt like these are villains still or maybe got a little less spotlight that we could still like tell some interesting stories for fans.  

So Rucka/Johnson, you mean more the “Day in the Life” from the early 2000’s and what she’s doing when she’s not in the Justice League?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They have a very grounded view, and they gave her a specific point-of-view of that ancient world mindset in a modern setting. And also, she has such a great sense of duty, of understanding that protecting innocents costs things, it costs yourself, you have to risk things in a fight, and I really wanted to bring that weight. But Wonder Woman isn’t just being naive. You can sometimes have with superheroes the feeling that “Well nothing is ever going to kill me so of course I’ll jump in to the bullet.” Well, that makes the bullet not have much impact because you’re not risking anything. So it was important for me to really dial-up. One of the reasons we have so many villains is I really wanted it to start to feel like, “No, there is a real risk for me to do this, and I’m going to do it anyway.” Because I feel like that’s a real heroic moment, is when you can lose, and you stand up anyway because it’s the right thing to do.

What do you think is the biggest challenge writing Wonder Woman as a character?

That’s unfair because I really like writing Wonder Woman. It easy to really fall into the “I’m from the Ancient World, and none of this thing makes sense anymore.” It’s like really? You want to keep that balance of she’s a smart person, she gets how things work, she doesn’t know how everything in this culture works. So trying to keep her feeling like an intelligent, capable, adaptable hero while still also showing she is a little bit fish out of water is kind of a balance you got to walk.   

Three years ago, they talked about Wonder Woman being bisexual. As a writer, was this something you wanted to explore?

I’ve always thought of Wonder Woman as bisexual because in the comics I came up with, she was bisexual, and I’m bisexual. It’s not necessarily a huge part of the storyline just because I don’t tend to write a lot of romance. Like this is an action movie, this is a hero story, so there are romantic elements. But at least in my mind, Diana’s bi until I’m not allowed to say that. 

Were there any pieces of writing or any works at all that inspired how you went about writing her character?

Yeah, like I said, I really love the Rucka/Johnson run so I really tried to pull a lot for that because that was one of my favorite runs of her. I also try to pull in some of the Bronze Age Wonder Woman, some of the live-action, in terms of tone because I feel like a lot of our audience, that was going to be their first version of Wonder Woman cinematically. So, we are in canon with the other DC animated movies, but I wanted it to be that, if you’ve only ever seen the live-action movie, she didn’t feel like a totally different person. And she’s not that far from the DC Animated Movie, but I wanted to try and bridge that and make that feel like it was a nice mash-up. So like those were sort of the three sources I was trying to pull from. But you kind of want to put your own spin on it.  

Specifically, Gal Gadot, are there any inspirations or things you took from her?

Yeah, she did such a good job of giving Wonder Woman a gentleness, like just an unapologetic gentleness. You know that thing when she sees a baby for the first time, and she’s like “aw baby!” It’s like yeah you’ve never seen a baby before, “oh my god, that’s so cool.” She had such an open-heartedness that I really liked. I think it’s really easy to make Wonder Woman “female thor” or really push her to be as brutal as she can be, so she feels like she stepped out of 300 or something like that. She really does have that open(ness), she’s from a Utopian society or a society trying to build a Utopia so I really didn’t want to lose that feeling that she genuinely is a gentle-hearted person. 

In the trailers, there is a quote about the prophecy of a Themysciran going to protect the world of Men. Do you feel like Wonder Woman feels like she is being dictated to do that or is this something that she wants herself to fulfill?

I think it’s not so much a “Wonder Woman vs Fate” where Wonder Woman feels shackled to her destiny; it’s more like “this is supposed to happen, and this is the circumstances right? So now we are going to do this. I’m going to do this. I’m stepping up to the plate.” And her mom doesn’t want to risk and lose her only daughter. It’s like, No. You saw in the trailer, she says “Man’s world is past saving. I’m not losing you to that forever.” And it’s sort of that interesting thing of like, what happens when your parents have taught you these lessons all your life about what to do and how to behave and what’s important, and then when the rubber hits the road, things change. It’s a real different thing that someone someday is going to have to go out and defend Man’s world vs You, your daughter is going to have to do that. So I really wanted to kind of play with that idealism vs realism. 

Looking at what’s happening in Hollywood, is there more freedom and opportunities to write stories about women superheroes?

I mean, there’s definitely, and look, I remember starting writing and having people be like “we shouldn’t have a girl, A girl, on the team, because it will tank toy sales” I remember. I remember being in a meeting once where they said “we’ll differentiate our female characters by their cup sizes.” So, yeah, things are better. They’re not great, that’s a pretty low bar, but I think it’s more, the more interesting change is that I’m sort of in the first generation that grew up with anime, grew with the idea that animation was not just for kids, and I think you’re really starting to see the rise of adult-oriented animation because of that. And you’re starting to see animation do really different things and reach different audiences and become more a medium that tells stories that you can’t produce in live-action for less than a 100 million dollars instead of just a thing that we give to kids. So that’s been really exciting, and being a part of a group of people writing animation now, we grew up wanting to write animation. It’s not just “oh we couldn’t make it in something else, this is a kind of things we are doing to get by.” We love these brands, and we are trying to bring an art to these brands. Now that everything that has been in cartoon culture is now in pop culture, and everything that’s been in comic culture is now pop culture, there is a level of respect for the material that I think wasn’t there before from the outside world. 

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is available on digital today. A physical release on 4K Combo Pack & Blu-ray Combo Pack will release on October 22.

Here’s the trailer for Wonder Woman: Bloodlines:

‘Pivot’ Book Review: Darkly Liberating

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Pivot L.C. Barlow

Pivot, by Author L.C. Barlow, is a paranormal horror fantasy story about life, death, growing up, and feeling trapped in-between.

When I first started this book, I thought the initial chapters were disturbing and uncomfortable, written in the point of view of a seven-year-old with a focus on only one thing: what it feels like for an innocent child to commit an act of murder.

I had to put it down because I was ill-prepared for this level of horror. Thankfully, after I picked it up again, I was relieved to see how much of this eases away. How it was less about murder, which has a bit of a transversal property between life and death in the story, and more about the one teaching murder, the maniacal mentor, Cyrus Hyper.

Cyrus is a man with dark ambitions. He has a mysterious vial capable of reviving the dead and a red velvet box that mysteriously eats away the color of all life. The box also grants him a special ability that makes leaving his cult rather… difficult.

By mid-point, I realized I needed to shift my expectations as this was less of a horror story than it was one about fantasy. What’s great about ‘Pivot’, is that it works, either way, thanks to the authenticity of its lead character, Jack. Her intriguing growth through the traumatic experiences of being raised in a world of death and magic.

Jack is a girl brought into the fold of a cult at the age of seven. She is adopted and raised by Cyrus Harper, a crazed yet cunning mentor with mysterious abilities.

Cyrus uses Jack, along with his extraordinary gifts, to try and achieve his dreams of transcendence.

He homeschools her, along with his son Alex, to be key members of his organization. Jack is personally raised to be Cyrus’ weapon of death, seeing her pivot from murderer to full-on assassin over time, including routine combat training and weapons usage. He teaches Jack not only the art of the kill but also, how to manipulate people and fester the seeds of dependency — all unhealthy lessons to teach a child.

They say novelists need to throw your protagonists through the wringer, and in the ten years the story takes place in, Jack has been through hell, normalized it, and made it her own — all while still preserving that small spark of humanity in the process, I’d like to call: hope.

Jack is a beautifully flawed person. A sentimental character who is comfortable committing terrible acts. Though it eats away at her, and we see it fester in her later addictions. Yet, like all good stories of growth, everything changes. Especially by the book’s midpoint, when a mysterious gift is bestowed upon her.

This is where the story shines and reveals not all is what it seems. Uncovering a type of horror, yet also beauty, from beneath. What’s neat, is that it coincides with the growth between Jack and her relationship with Roland, a somewhat parental figure and fellow Cyrus follower, who is served as Jack’s first murder victim.

Though I’ll let the story explain that one for itself. Which brings me to my next point: the cliffhangers are good in this story. They’re solid conflicts and page-turners, which is nice in a world of creepy murderers and cultish sycophants.

All of this is why ‘Pivot’ is a surprising gem. Initially tense but worth the journey. A story that doesn’t shy away from its lead and how she transcends her traumatic upbringing.

My only negative comment was I couldn’t tell Jack was a girl for the initial chapters. Though I think this was intentional. Also, one character, Alex, has little going on that resolved his storyline for me. Though this might be brought up again in the sequels.

You can purchase a copy of ‘Pivot’ Here

Amazon

Barnes&Noble

IndieBound

Audible

 

Or read more about author L.C. Barlow below

Publishers Weekly Review

Readers’ Favorite Review

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

 

NYCC 2019: ‘Resident Alien’ looks like SYFY’s Newest Hit

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Resident Alien cast

The SYFY pilot debut of ‘Resident Alien’ was well-received during their panel at New York Comic Con 2019. Here’s the scoop on everything about the upcoming series.

“Enjoy watching me crash yet another spaceship!” said actor Alan Tudyk, jokingly referring to his longstanding career of portraying spaceship pilots, before running the pilot clip.

Between Firefly and Star Wars: Rogue One, Tudyk is a beloved actor of Science Fiction. Whether it be live-action, voice-over, or even his own series based on and set about the convention circuit, Alan Tudyk is a big deal at cons and he’s promoted at NYCC almost every year since it’s beginning.

This is why his leading role as ‘Harry, the alien’ for SYFY’s ‘Resident Alien’ was met with nothing shy of stellar applause. The series was well-received and is oddly, one of Tudyk’s most human roles to date.

A dramatic comedy set in a science fiction universe, ‘Resident Alien’ stars Alan Tudyk, as an alien who after crash landing on Earth, takes on the identity of small-town Colorado doctor, Harry Vanderspeigle, in order to hide amongst humans.

Harry is a quiet doctor the town knows little about, except that he ran a pathology lab at Rutgers. Which is why he is inconveniently tasked to aid in a police investigation, as he’s the only doctor in town. Harry slowly has to deal with the moral dilemma of his secret mission to Earth – ultimately asking, “Are human beings worth saving?”

The series is show run by longtime Family Guy veteran, Chris Sheridan, and is based on the Darkhorse comic by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse.

The Workprint had a chance to talk with the actors and showrunner behind Resident Alien. You can watch the full interviews, in order, below.

Alan Tudyk – “Harry”

What was your first reaction when you received the script to play Harry?

When I first read the script, I liked it very much. It’s a drama that has a lot of human issues happening in this small town. A lot of people dealing with real life problems. Though, with an alien in the middle of it who’s trying to figure out what it’s like to be human and how to play it off. It’s dramatic but also funny.

Did you read the comics?

I didn’t until I read the script. Then I read the comics. But once those storylines started to veer off, I put them down, and just focused on the script that we had. Creating THAT Harry.

What was your approach to making this character more unique?

I’m kind of a boring actor. I get my script and look at what’s in the script, and go alright, I can bring life to this!

You know his body. How he walks and moves in his body are not quite certain yet. Things don’t move smoothly. That type of stuff, I have seen in some things… but I dunno. This guy… also wants to kill children and squish a man’s brain because it feels good?!

It’s an exciting character to play and I haven’t seen that much odd humor in an alien in a while.

Is there a way you approach your physical and voice work differently?

Voiceover is really easy. Making funny voices and acting it. Anything is possible, it just comes out of the imagination. You can do so many takes. It’s inexpensive to do. That stuff’s a blast. There’re different ways to play (a voiceover role). Sometimes you lead the animator and sometimes they lead you. You can make sounds they animate later into things they hadn’t even assumed.

First time I learned that was in Wreck-It-Ralph, with King Candy. Just making sounds as they took noise and made it into a fun play.

In this show, it’s what you get on the day. Don’t screw it up because that’s it.

What do you think was the most challenging thing about playing Harry?

Not being human. His feelings… he processes things differently and there are times where it takes a little more energy to stay in that heightened place. He lives inside of himself a little more. Overall, he’s kind of always in the spotlight. There’s a little bit of that, “What’s going to happen next?” Sense all times.

Chris Sheridan – Executive Producer

What drew you to this project?

In a week, it’ll be four years since Amblin first sent me the comic. They asked if I would be interested in adapting this into TV and I absolutely fell in love with the writing and characters. I jumped on it right away.

I don’t know why it took so long to get made. I started in October and broke out the pitch and sold it in August. Then I started working on the script with the network and ended up turning in the first draft to USA a year later. Every step took a long time. We shot the pilot last October; I just didn’t realize it would take this long. Still would’ve done it. I loved it.

At the time I was working part-time on Family Guy anyway. I was looking for a show to work on and this fell in my lap and I fell in love with it.

What is it like to go from contributing writer on Family to full-on Showrunner of this series?

It’s running a different kind of world. 2004-2009 I co-ran Family Guy with David Goodman and Seth MacFarlane, but coming into this world from animation, I stepped into something I was not prepared for.

I mean… there’s the big-budget stuff, visual effects. It was a huge world I stepped into. I learned a lot from the pilot. Spent the last six months, working with writers and coming up with more storylines. 9 more episodes are being made atop of the pilot.

How is this Writer’s Room Different compared to Family Guy?

Family Guy is largely a bunch of guys sitting around throwing food at each other making fart jokes. This was a wonderfully diverse crew. Group of people. Every room is different. Because there’s more dramatic stuff we’re doing this year, we really got into each other’s backstories and bonded. In June, the writers and I went to Alien Con in LA because we are taking Harry and Asta to an Alien Convention at some point this season. Which is gonna be fun. It was a good group of writers this year.

Will every episode be a murder procedural like in the comic?

Taking time to do that took time away from exploring the characters. Basically, that murder story that happens in the beginning, I stretched it out for the whole season as the first town story. It’s a great way to get to know people in town. How they’re reacting to it, and other things that happen along the way. I tried to keep as much as I could but because it’s a different genre, I had to change some stuff.

I did add the thing about Harry’s mission. Because on TV, to sort of exist in this current landscape, I feel the need for a character to move towards a definite role. I knew I could have him do that and instill obstacles and provide conflict for the characters.

Like in this, I had to take over a guy’s body. Creating a situation after a while… where he realizes he picked the wrong body to take over. Especially as the season progresses.

Why did you pick Alan to play Harry?

We saw 100-115 different actors from all over the world. Alan was the very last guy to come in. We always had amazing actors come in, but something was always off. It wasn’t until Alan auditioned when I realized, that’s what it is.

He had this incredible way of feeling removed… but there’s this inherent humanity in him that you feel something behind it. I don’t think you can learn that as an actor. It’s just a part of who he is.

Corey Reynolds “Sheriff Mike”

Can we talk about Sheriff Mike and that scene in the pilot?!

That was a thing we came up with on the fly. Chris, Dave, and I were making a joke: I think this guy should have a talent, something really obscure he’s good at. So, I started doing it for them and they loved it. I don’t know how familiar you are with this but that never happens. You don’t shoot a pilot and then write a new scene on the spot. It was a cool sense of collaboration. Fortunately, Chris and David thought it was a solid choice to make.

Did you always want to go into screen acting?

The honest answer is, during the course of my career, I started off performing at theme parks. When I was working at theme parks, everyone was talking about getting jobs on cruise ships. When I was working on cruise ships, everyone started talking about doing theatre. So I came off the ships and starred some regionals. Even got casted in hairspray. Then when you’re on Broadway, television is what everyone is talking about next. Then movies.

For me, I always tried to do what felt good and I’ve been blessed enough that I’ve been able to make those choices and they worked out for me. I think it was more of the natural progression of where things are going.

It was more about searching for new itches to scratch. When I was doing theatre, I didn’t have the chops for screen acting. So that was the challenge. And then TV chops, slightly different than movie chops, but that became the challenge. It’s all about what feels like the next challenge I’d like to undertake.

What about this role did you feel like was a challenge that you wanted to take on?

Letting go and walking into the room and not being afraid to do something weird. I think it’s always easier to play it safe. When I read for this character, it became clear to me this was special and unique. I was laughing out loud (at the script) the whole time.

So, when I went in to read, I basically just decided I wasn’t going to be afraid of looking ridiculous. I gave Mike this hardcore twang, had him be hyper, and improvised a little. It just worked.

What’s your approach to Sheriff Mike?

When I first booked it, I read a few of the comics but I also wanted to be surprised at how the story evolves. I don’t think we’re mirroring the comics. Chris is going into different directions. I wanted to be surprised. If the reaction to the pilot is any indicator, I think the show’s going to do really well.

Sara Tomko “Asta”

Did you read the comics?

No. To be fair, I never read a comic book before. Any graphic novel or comic book series of any kind. Closest I’ve ever gotten was Miyazaki. Spirited away is one of my favorite films.

As far as reading it, I never thought about picking one up. So, it was a great excuse to try something out for the first time and I’m glad I did. It’s really well written and created. The art is so stunning. I also love how the emotional intent pops out of the page which showcases a great writer, and I think Chris was able to take that and run with it for the script.

What was it you liked about the script?

When I read it, my first instinct was this felt like Battlestar Galactica. Starbuck is my girl! Is this my opportunity to be ‘Starbucky?’ It’s not in space, but story wise, if a story’s good enough, you can put any genre on it.

For this story, it just so happens there’s an alien in this town. But it really comes down to this humanity, these people, this small-town kind of drama murder mystery that’s happening and this relatability about just what it is to be human. How awkward that can be. That part of the storytelling is what fueled me, and so I thought this could be really something quite extraordinary.

I’ve loved sci-fi for a long time. I got my start on Syfy. My indie films at the very beginning of my career aired on Syfy. It’s always been a special network for me. So to have this happen full circle was amazing.

Also, I’m just excited to see the fans, as they reacted today. I feel like they’re going to have the same reaction when the whole show comes out. I think it’s going to elevate SYFY to a whole new level that’s how strong I feel about the story.

How did you prepare as Asta?

My boyfriend and I really talked about the spirituality of Asta the night before. What it means to portray a woman trying to get her power back. We did a lot of work on movement and just tried to figure out what was going on in a deeper layer. She’s so guarded in front of people. There’s something behind her eyes constantly trying to figure something out. She’s not trusting of many people and there’s got to be lots of layers of mistrust to get to that, but you can’t show all your cards at once. She has to act like she owns the room even if she feels insecure.

I walked out of the audition not even remember what I did. Which just goes to show how naturally close her and I really are.

Talking about your character’s spirituality how do you feel representing a native American character?

I’m so honored. My favorite thing about Asta is that she’s a mix and so am I. It’s the first time I got to play a role I can truly be all I am. I do have native heritage but I’m not a citizen. I think it’s important, especially now, to be upfront with who you are.

Chris and I talked about this for a long time. We wanted to showcase what’s true and beautiful and right about the Native American community, but also, be honest about who I am.

That I’m a mix. I can’t just check just one box, and neither can Asta. That’s what makes us feel like an outsider. When I vote I check the other box. I don’t know where I fit in, but I think there’s a lot of people who feel that way. It’s easy to check a box but what about those who don’t have a box to check, what does it mean to us, and where do we fit in?

I think that’s relatable and we decided to go with what was best and go with my mixed heritage. She’s not sure who she is. She’s raised by the Native American community but she’s still not sure what that means to her. I’m just honored I get to represent who I am and that the writers were willing to work with me because I think it’s important.

Resident Alien will premiere in 2020 on SYFY. 

 

 

Supernatural: Back and to the Future – The Start of the Final Season Review

By
Norton
-
0
Sam, Dean, and Castiel deal with a zombie hoarde, sort of...
From left to right: Misha Collins, Jared Padalecki, and Jensen Ackles

I guess if you’re going to change things up, why not do it on Season 15? This episode opens up with the usual “The Road So Far” recap but with a different song in the background (Bob Seger’s “Famous Final Scene”) – not a huge fan of change, however the new ditty does provide a kind of amusing juxtaposition once we return to the present with Sam, Dean, and Castiel fighting a horde of zombies. Well, not zombies, souls from Hell that found good enough corpses care of the cemetery where God released them after he killed Jack. Team Free Will, carrying Jack’s corpse, reach sanctuary in an empty crypt, but then they’re stuck. There’s seemingly no way out until a demon takes possession of Jack’s body.

Demon Jack (Belphegor, but I’m gonna call him DJ for short) is by far my favorite element of this premiere and given my less than enthused reception of actual Jack this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But, aside from the introduction of my favorite Jack, DJ also has a connection to Sam and Dean – turns out he goes way back and recalls Dean from his stint in Hell as a tormentor (remember that’s how the first seal was broken). This gives me promise that our present season will indeed tie into my favorite season (5)!

DJ isn’t like most of the demons Sam and Dean have come across, he’s not interested in making deals or hurting people above ground. He’s your average worker drone in Hell who enjoyed his job and isn’t happy all the souls are gone. He wants things put right just as much as Team Free Will does – twinsies! OK, not really, but still…

DJ uses a spell in the crypt to provide an escape for Team Free Will, but the bad news is that all those souls are now out, free to haunt the surrounding areas. All in total? 3 billion souls escaped from Hell, though this episode only shows us a handful (the Woman in White (Shanae Tomasevich), John Wayne Gacy, and Bloody Mary (Jovanna Burke) to name a few). It’s, in truth, a pretty weak premiere. Once the immediate set up is established there’s nothing new happening. Sam, Dean, and Castiel go to a nearby town to evacuate it once learning that DJ can enact a barrier about a mile wide to trap any souls in that range – a temporary stop-gap while they try to figure out how to get all those souls back into Hell. People die, ghosts are shot with rock-salt, and the survivors of our haunted town get to play a game of tag for their life (the boundary line of the spell is obviously safe!).

Aside from the usual Supernatural hijinks – a mix of false threats and laid-back humor – this episode does show a few kernels of promise. As mentioned DJ has an indirect tie to Dean, we also learn from him that all the doors in Hell opened including Lucifer’s cage (that explains why half-brother Adam is coming back), and an interaction between Castiel and Sam reveals ole Sammy isn’t quite right after taking a bullet from the “Equalizer” – the gun God provided the boys to kill Jack. Exactly how these tidbits will factor into this season is something of a mystery though there’s a good chance Sam’s wound and Adam’s (read: Michael’s) return are bound to be heavy hitters.

An additional curiosity surrounds DJ himself: who is Belphegor, really? We’ve seen angels lie about their identity to get the boys to work with them (looking at you Gareel and Metatron) is it possible Belphegor is a larger figure than we’re aware of? Initially, I wondered if it wasn’t Lucifer himself (despite the Empty), but he’s never showed much patience when it comes to deception. Another clue is how old Belphegor is hinted at being – he’s amazed by the attractiveness of people (making mention of the monolith scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey as how it was when he was alive), any demon that old can’t possibly be some lightweight. I really hope DJ turns out to be a VERY significant figure!

We end the episode with most of the townspeople safe and evacuated (sorry Sherriff (Sean Tyson), but at least we have a heart for the sacrifice! And RIP sleepover girls), Sam showing Dean his God-level injury, and a delightful call-back shot to the pilot care-of baby’s trunk. We also know what the mission of this season is: Get rid of God. Sam argues that Apocalypse Michael was right, God treats the world as an experiment. He diverts from AM’s viewpoint since he doesn’t want to destroy the world God is fucking with, rather, take God out of the picture entirely, have true free will. Is it possible? Will Sam and Dean become new gods??? Or maybe Castiel will give it another, less evil, shot. I’m interested in seeing where this is going, though I definitely have some predictions:

  1. Jack will become the new God – we saw Death (ala Billie) talking to him in the Empty, plus, as much as I love DJ I know this show isn’t going to keep Lucifer’s real son dead for long
  2. Castiel will become the new head angel – promotion to Archangel status here he comes!
  3. Sam and Dean will die and get to finally live happily ever after in a special Heaven with their Mom, Dad, and Adam (let’s face it he’s not likely to survive all this), or, at the very least, Mom and Dad.

NYCC 2019 – ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’ Interview with actresses Courtenay Taylor and Mozhan Marno

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0
Copyright belongs to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is DC’s newest animated film. At New York Comic Con, actresses, Courtenay Taylor and Mozhan Marno, shared their thoughts with the press about their roles in the feature. 

To discuss the recent Wonder Woman animated original, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, the talents behind the solo feature came to the famed New York Comic-Con to chat about their contribution to the Wonder Woman Rogue Gallery.

The Workprint sat down with Courtenay Taylor and Mozhan Marno. Taylor is a voice-acting veteran, sporting an acting resume with 169 credits in tv, film, and video games. Marno has acted in television, such as The Affair and Madame Secretary, and video games, but this is her first role in an animated film.  

How is the real world affecting the frequency of women characters?

Taylor: Donald Trump is our president, so it gave us something to be mad about. No, it definitely. I think this is just another example of women’s stories or female-driven stories both behind the camera and in front of the camera and in front of the mic are gaining a lot more traction and interest. And I think that it’s really awesome to have this have so much female energy both in the good characters and the bad characters. That was really exciting and I think that’s indicative of what people want to see that for so long it’s been male-driven story-lines. And so now, to see that you can actually have an exciting story-line that engaging for everyone, not just for girls, but for everyone, and have it filtered through a woman’s lens. It’s exciting, women just tell stories differently, both through writing, directing so there’s a whole mine of good stuff that the surface is just getting scratched, we’re just getting started. 

What’s your favorite thing about your respective characters?

Marno: I think mine, she’s sort of tickled by things that are about putting people in difficult situations, and she finds joy in that. It’s kind of fun to play somebody who’s that manipulative and power-hungry.

Taylor: I loved Doctor Poison before this, and I wanted to see more of her character. So I’m still waiting for her standalone origins story. I was just excited to give her a little more dimension than I’ve seen, and I really would like to see her deal laid out. Hopefully, this will lead somewhere in that direction. I think what I would really like to see in the world of superhero storytelling is more origins stories for the villains. I want to know about that. Let’s do it! Doctor Poison: Bloodlines. I want to see more feature-length movies. Hopefully, that’s starting, and I would like to see it in animated stuff too and be able to push these characters out because they’re interesting. Just because you have a bad attitude or bad press doesn’t mean you’re not super interesting. And yeah, I’m excited to see the Joker and see how it turns out.

What can you say are the challenges and fun parts of this movie?

Taylor: I have played bad characters, voice wise, for a long time. That I get to actually play both sides of the field in really heroic characters and also really some villains. I play a lot of people who are struggling with the light and the dark so I love that tension, that sort of teetering where you’re not really sure where they’re going to go. Obviously, Doctor Poison, you’re pretty sure where she’s going to go, but to bring that humanity and pain that I think she feels to this party.

Marno: I don’t do a lot of voice work, so that’s different. It’s a totally different process, and you’re alone in a recording studio with a director but not with any other actors so you have to generate the whole thing: you have to generate the scenario and the relationship with the other character and hear the other lines in your head and respond to something that’s not there. It’s a completely different process.

Taylor: I’m famous for hitting my head on the microphone. So I’m a very physical voice actor so I’ve been doing it for a long time, and people are always like, “really? Twenty years in and you’re still hitting your head on the mic?” and I’m like “uh, sorry.” They are starting to use head mics, which is nice because then you can just move around. Yeah, I think that challenge is the reverse for me, coming from a voice acting background, that there are actually people.

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is available on digital today. A physical release on 4K Combo Pack & Blu-ray Combo Pack will release on October 22.

Here’s the trailer for Wonder Woman: Bloodlines:

NYCC 2019 Interview: Marie Avgeropoulos Discusses Playing Silver Swan in ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0
Copyright belongs to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is the newest DC animated film. At New York Comic-Con, actress, Marie Avgeropoulos, answered questions about her and her character. 

Discussing the recent Wonder Woman animated original, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, the talent behind the solo feature came to the famed New York Comic-Con to delve into the latest incarnation of arguably the most famous female superhero, Wonder Woman, the Princess of Themyscira.

The Workprint sat down with Marie Avgeropoulos, star of the Emmy-nominated The 100, chats about her first voice-over role in a roundtable interview.  

What can you tell us about your character, Silver Swan?

That she’s the best. I can tell you a few things about her without spoiling this evening’s premiere. It’s my very first animated feature I’ve ever done in my life so I’m really honored to tell such a kickass story, like Wonder Woman: Bloodlines. And you’ll see different stages of Silver Swan, where she starts off as young Vanessa, so I got to play her in the adolescent version until she goes to high school and becomes gothic and pissed off at her mom and resentful, as we do when we are teenage girls, and then the complicated relationship that she has with Diana. Diana quickly becomes the favorite child in the household, and, of course, that doesn’t make Vanessa happy. So to see the animosity between these two characters, especially as they grow into women, is really interesting, and I can’t wait for you guys to see it unfold. 

What are some of the biggest challenges that you experienced doing an animated film for the first time?

One of the most challenging things for me was I did it completely Han Solo, by that I mean you’re in the booth by myself, and today’s the first time I’ve actually ever met any of the cast. So it’s really awesome to see how individually we all made our mark in this movie and how it’s all come together, and it’s such a fantastic project. I’ve seen it. You guys are going to freak out, it’s really good. Made with a lot of love.  

What do you like about voice-acting as opposed to on-camera acting? A lot of actors love the freedom it gives them. How did you find the process?

I found the process totally different, such because I’ve never really done it before. And you’re right, you do get a lot more freedom because the cartoon doesn’t even exist yet. You’re just making things up into a microphone and going off a script and making it your own. And then, you do a second pass at it when then they’ve created the character, and you’ve seen it.  And now you’re matching up, you know, you’re syncing up the flats they call it, that’s the technical term, from what I was told. So, yeah, it’s a weird process because you are alone doing it, but it’s incredibly freeing and liberating all at once, it’s both. 

Do you see yourself relating to your character?

Yeah, I definitely can relate. I was gothic in high school at one point. I wore a dog collar around my neck, that happened, as if I just said that out loud. Yep, that happened. I can relate to being that rebellious, teenage girl; I was her at one point.  I’m like “did the writers know that? Like how did they, is this a coincidence? Weird” And I appreciate how she can take bravery, even in the face of fear, and still move forward. I think that’s a pretty solid message to send out there to woman, to anyone really. 

Would you like to act in a live-action version?

Would I like to do that? Absolutely. Oh my god, that would be amazing. I’m just so happy to be apart of this project, and I know the fans are just so incredibly loyal, and yeah. I hope I didn’t let them down.  

What did you think about Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman?

Oh, yeah, she did an amazing job. Gal Gadot is just, wow, I totally look up to her, and she really, really hit a home run with that character that she played and how she portrayed it. Hands down. 

Were you familiar with the comic book characters at all before you dived into this?

Yes (mouths no). No, I did do some research for sure, because I wanted to know for sure what kind of headspace I was getting into and know a little bit of the background. But I definitely appreciated the fact that i could make the character my own, so I didn’t want to go too far into that direction and really put a part of me into Silver Swan as well. 

After playing a villain in and in your role on the 100, is there anything you like about playing a villain more than a hero?

I mean the best version of playing a villain is when you get to become a hero while doing it. Who doesn’t want to be both? But I do find myself play a villain a lot, I don’t know what that says about me. But anyways. It’s always fun to play different variations of them and how they decide to overcome their own obstacles and especially learning how to sword and doing all kinds of stuff like that isn’t a bad thing to do at work either.

Do you see yourself doing more animated features?

I would love to do more animated features after this. Yeah. Apparently, people like the deep raspy voice, who knew? 

Is there anything you can tease about the final season of the 100? 

Well, it’s the last season of the 100, I can tease that. Pretty sure everyone knows. It’s going to be a very wild ride, lots of twists and turns, and things that the fans are definitely not expecting for sure. You’re going to see another version of Octavia, again, which is incredibly exciting, because she’s always evolving, and that’s what I really love about her. She doesn’t bore me. 

Where do you say Silver Swan ranks on the list of characters that you’ve played?

Oof. I mean, I would love to see Blodreina and Silver Swan get in a fight. I wonder who would win. The fact that silver swan could fly I think she’s got the upper hand a little. That’s what I think. But it would be entertaining.

How do you like the Comic-Con experience and connecting with your fans?

I like the Comic-Con experience because you can see real-life reactions to the stuff that we usually do, sort of in your own bubble secluded on your set. Especially when they come dressed up as you, and they put all this time and effort into it. Today, we were on the autograph signing, and a gentleman came up to us with a real live turtle, with a Go-Pro strapped to it. You don’t see that every day. All kinds of different things you see here. 

Do you prefer the isolation of an audio booth or the make-up and costuming of the 100?

I definitely like being in the hair and make-up chair just because you get the chance to learn your dialogue for the rest of the day because that tattoo takes three hours to put on. I leave it on all week-long so I can sleep in later, and my white sheets look like they’ve had to some damage down to them by the end of the week because it just smears everywhere, but it’s worth it. It’s commitment.

Having not seen the movie, could you tell us if you think there is room for your character in any sequels?

I think so. I think it ends kind of open-ended. Did I just give something away that I didn’t die? Whoops.      

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is available on digital today. A physical release on 4K Combo Pack & Blu-ray Combo Pack will release on October 22.

Here’s the trailer for Wonder Woman: Bloodlines:

NYCC 2019 – ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’ Interview with Directors Justin Copeland and Sam Liu

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0
Copyright belongs to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is DC’s newest animated film. At New York Comic-Con, directors, Justin Copeland and Sam Liu, chatted with the press to discuss helming the Wonder Woman animated feature. 

Promoting the latest DC animated original, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, the creative minds behind the solo feature came to the famed New York Comic-Con to provide insight on the latest incarnation of arguably the most famous female superhero, Wonder Woman, the Princess of Themyscira.

The Workprint sat down with co-directors, Justin Copeland and Sam Liu. Copeland has been involved in the animation and art department of both Marvel and DC media since 2011. He directed Batman: Hush, the previous DC Animated Original Movie, and returns to direct this film. Sam Liu is a veteran of animation, with a resume dating back to 1997. He has credits in the animation department, art department work, and 31 directorial credits under his belt. 

Justin Copeland

Did the live-action movie have any impact on your movie?

I don’t know how much. I know that was a fun movie to watch, you know, and this has some similarities, just in the sense of her origin story, but this sort of stands on its own. It’s a pretty good story. I think in this one, we get to see a little bit more of her vulnerabilities, which I think makes people human. And I think that’s why some of the fans like her because the other guys are gods and they’re not weak, unless you prove it to them. But in this one, Wonder Woman makes herself vulnerable, which makes her more human. I think that’s what’s unique about ours.    

With this movie getting greenlit, did the whole Wonder Woman craze help?

Yeah, that’s been cool, and I think that more people are recognizing how cool the character is because she’s probably the most human out of all the DC superheroes. It doesn’t have anything to do with the level of strength she has; she allows herself to be put in situations that Superman can never enter into, and it gets her into trouble, but at the same time, you can see these really deep awesome qualities about her. But, you’re right, it does help trigger the overall greenlighting to screen as much as possible. 

How did Wonder Woman develop in this one from previous films?

I think just seeing her, in this one, she takes on more of a mentor role, which I think is cool; like Wonder Woman as a mentor to this young lady. Also, she makes mistakes, and there are like devastating, you know, and how does she recover from this. And her thing is “I’m going to recover by saying how weak I am, by saying that I need help and that I can’t do it.” We put her in a really tight spot, I can’t wait until you guy, you guys going to watch it? I think they do like a viewing here. Yeah, I’m interested to see what everyone thinks, and it’s like “how is she going to come out of this?” I think that Superman, you never have to ask that question, you know, it’s like “who else is going to die that he’s going to feel sorry for?” But, for her, it’s like man, she caused this and what’s she going to do? I think that that aspect is, (different from) those other movies (makes) this amazing. 

What are some of the challenges of directing animation?

Yeah, there’s a lot, and in this one, I was co-director with Sam. Sam Liu is like my mentor. We worked together on a lot of stuff. I was on Killing Joke, and then I’m moving my way up from there, with Sam kicking the crap out of me every step of the way. So when I was on this, I was wrapping up Hush, I directed Hush so they brought me on like “can you help out? Sam’ll be doing like a lot of other stuff,” and I’m like cool. And just knowing that I have more of a voice as a director rather than Sam’s head of story or a storyboard supervisor and saying “no, no, no, I feel like it should be like this” that was a huge challenge. But, also, staying on schedule, keeping everything on track, I didn’t get a whole lot of say on the story; the story was like done by the time I jumped on. So, wrangling all our storyboards together and saying, “here’s what we’re going to do,” but also sharing that voice with Sam. We had to be on the same page, and then staying on budget and schedule are always the two things. Those were the hardest parts, but a lot of fun. We had been putting together a crew since, oh these movies all melt together in my head, I think that right after Death of Superman, we were like “this is our crew going forward.” You know, then keeping everyone’s morale up, after Justice League vs The Fatal Five, have you guys seen that one? That was a lot of fun, I think it just came out a few weeks ago, but after that one, everyone was like “that was a really hard movie,” so I had to get everyone’s energy back up to do Hush, and right after Hush, we did this one. So those things are kind of difficult, you know, and when everyone’s tired “Hey guys, we are starting a really hardass Wonder Woman movie.” So those are some of the challenges.

What makes this movie special compared to the other ones you’ve worked on?

I think that everybody loves drawing her because she is a badass. She fights like, imagine a really super powerful Roman gladiator, that’s how she fights. She can do close-quarter combat, she fights with swords, she’s got a shield, she can fly so drawing her beating the hell out of people is a lot of fun. And then, like, her acting, she’s got a very beautiful face, we took, Phil Bourassa didn’t design this movie, but we kind of take our design cues from a lot of his stuff. So drawing her face is very beautiful, it’s a lot of fun and good. Everyone loves drawing her, and I love working with Rosario

One thing that caught my eye from the trailer was her costume. Thoughts?

Yeah, we changed it a little, didn’t we? Oh my god, that was one of the best days ever because (Steven) Choi, one of our character designers James was working with. James is a ridiculous character designer; he’s amazing, but all the designs were laid out in front of us, and all of her designs, I was like “Dude, I want all of these, I want to do all of these,” So it was a lot of fun, the little changes that we made, you know? We keep all the stuff in mind, a lot of it is economy for animation, we don’t want to put thousands of lines. Poor Bourassa, he will wear our animators down. I don’t know how they do Young Justice. He is like “I am not going to strip my quality so they can do it.” But we really had to think about lining economy in this movie just because we were so behind. A lot of the designs comes from that having to simplify but keep it beautiful. We took outlines and, man, it looks gorgeous. It looks really cool.

When it comes to those decisions, did one co-director have to make those calls?

Yes, sometimes. Like I said, James is very particular about his designs. Sometimes, I’ll be like, “James, in Act 2, she’s going to do this thing here, and then she’s fall and this thing breaks off. I don’t know if we can have that thing there, maybe we should do a (different) thing,” and he will go “Oh yeah, that’s right.” Because once I get the script, I dream about it. So, that’s sort of what our job as directors is to keep our brains on that, on those levels like, she’s going to do something or her costume, something is going to happen, she has to change it. Like Hush, he changes his costume. You got to keep that stuff in mind, but he (Liu) is going to get the last say on what her costume will be. It really hard when something breaks, we try not to laugh to hard, “we told you.” 

Were there any really fun, memorable moments?

Yeah, I brought in a scene where she’s in Themyscira, and she’s leaving, that was really fun. I built this gigantic 3D background for this area where they are, that was cool. Directing some of the fights, Jake Castorena, who directed Batman Ninja Turtles, he was one of our board artists. I love when I get to work with Jake because he is a monster fight choreographer, which that movie you could see. And he boarded this fight between Wonder Woman and Cheetah that was fan-dam-tastic.  It was amazing. I mean, it was a lot of stuff we had to take out, we’re like “we are not going to animate her hands going there, bro, there just not.” To work with him on that scene was a blast. When you get to like, “here, take this fight scene and go crazy,” to a lot of our (animators), Elsa Garagarza, she’s also a director, she boarded a lot of my fight scenes in Hush, all the Nightwing fight scenes, she did those in Hush. But she did a bunch of fight in here, that was cool. Act 3 in this movie is gigantic, it’s huge. That was a lot of fun, but it was equally as difficult, so the two parts, trying to figure it out, “how the hell are we going to do this?” And we made the giant character way too giant, had to go back in and shrink her down. That was hard as hell. It’s a lot of fun, but it’s equally as difficult. 

There is a scene that I saw that takes place in the Middle East. Can you share where it was?

Nope (laughs). No, we tried to keep it general. We tried to keep it “it’s in the Middle East.” That’s funny, we were doing the voice record with the actor, and this guy, he’s a like day player for voice. I wish I had his life because he comes in for 10 minutes and makes a ton of money. But when we were first recording it, Sam and I thought it was in South America, so he was doing this Latin accent, and James comes in and is like “No, it’s the Middle East,” and he immediately switched and did this Middle East (accent). He was sick, had the flu, did this Middle East accent, one or two takes for every one of his lines, and he was out. It was amazing. But we try to keep that non-descript because the location wasn’t really about the story, it was about what’s going on. But that scene is cool, and you’ll like that. I actually built the model that that place (was based on). I do a lot of the background designs, and I’ll hand them to the pros. These guys are a monster B team, but they love it when I’m on a movie because I’ll do the rough design then hand it over. But I didn’t base it off of anywhere, that’s how I know. 

Sam Liu

How was it like to work on this movie? Any favorite moments?

When I first heard that my next movie was going to be Wonder Woman movie, I had these ideas of what does that mean? What’s the, coming off the live-action movie? I think about what Lauren Montogermy did with her Wonder Woman thing, which are these big, isolated tales that a lot of it has to do with (*). In this case, this is in continuity movie, the James Tucker world thing, so when I first read it, it wasn’t quite exactly what in my fan brain was kind of expecting, but when I read it and talked to James about it, I think he wanted this movie to be a jumping-off point where it’s more like an introduction of Wonder Woman. Because this movie is almost like a movie that takes place between movies in the past. He wanted to set up his Wonder Woman in this world. The thing he had mentioned is that how, like with Batman and Superman, right, you all know when it’s Clark Kent, he has his group of people that are around him, right?

When it’s Superman, he has his people around him. Batman, these are his people, the Robins, all of the Catwomans, and all these mythology people. But then, even Bruce Wayne, the Alfreds, and the business side of the things he does. Wonder Woman kind of didn’t have that, right? Steve Trevor maybe that everybody knows of, but beyond that, there’s not a lot. Some people might know Etta Candy, not everyone knows them but even the Wonder Woman villains, not everyone is familiar with them, outside Cheetah maybe, right? So I think James wanted to tell a story that sort of brought in a lot of these more elements of her mythology as a superhero character together and so, on one hand, it’s an introduction plate of Wonder Woman and a lot of the bigger players in her mythology, i suppose, which hopefully will lead to other stories of her, so singular types of stories, but it’s more of a sort of a set-up thing, like here are the players in her life, in her role, and you get to know them more.

But the story itself I feel is smaller even though the parts of it are really epic, I think. If I had to break this story down, I think it’s a story of mothers and daughters. It’s more of an emotional kind of thing, because everyone knows how Wonder Woman going against Hippolyta, left Themyscira, she chose to basically go to Man’s World, deal with Man’s sort of like battles and stuff like that. So the story kind of deals with a little bit more of that happening, like she has this big fight with her mother, and her sort of feeling guilty about leaving and kind of stuff like that, “I’m not going to be accepted in Man’s (world).” It’s a thing where there’s another character, the Silver Swan character, which is going through a totally different thing, but it’s a thing with her and her mother, and Wonder Woman sort of being her mentor and feeling a little bit of an obligation that I need to sort of help guide this woman, she goes in a total wrong direction where she becomes a villain, and there’s a lot of guilt of a lot of things for her.

I don’t want to spoil it too much, but then there’s an event that happens where the direction of this girl kind of goes and her hoping for mother because it all leads back to Themyscira and she has to go back to her mother, so there’s a lot of things about being, in this case, a woman and going against your family, having the things that you were trying to impart, but then hoping you did the right thing, I suppose. So it’s a thing of like a, you know, the male version is obviously fathers and sons, I think it’s a daughters and mothers expectations of your family, your mother, and then trying to find your own voice, (*)  or what you want to do. And hopefully to proving to people that I made the right choice, or that type of thing. I think that’s the heart of it. 

Any inspiration from the live-action film, specifically the Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman?

I mean, there are influences obviously. There’s part of her outfit that she sort of starts with, that shows up in her thing. There’s definitely influences to it, but I think that kind of it. I don’t think we took any parts of the story or something like that. But there are points of reference.  

Do you feel there is any added person of working with a character like Wonder Woman?

Yeah, I do. I think a lot of it has to do with the climate of where it is, which I think is great, but there’s more of a gender or a racial awareness. But it’s difficult now though I think because I’ve had friends or people that I’ve worked with that have the best intentions, and then you try something but you might miss something or you misstep and then you get, you’re trying to do something else but then you get blamed for the thing you are trying to do. I’m not saying that’s wrong either because I think that if you’re going to say something, you need to say it correctly. 

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is available on digital today. A physical release on 4K Combo Pack & Blu-ray Combo Pack will release on October 22.

Here’s the trailer for Wonder Woman: Bloodlines:

NYCC 2019: ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’ Interview with Rosario Dawson

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0
Copyright belongs to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is DC’s latest animated film. At New York Comic-Con, actress, Rosario Dawson, sat down with the press to discuss playing Wonder Woman yet again. 

To promote the recent Wonder Woman animated original, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, Wonder Woman herself came to the famed New York Comic-Con to provide insight on the latest incarnation of arguably the most famous female superhero in comic book history.

The Workprint sat down with Rosario Dawson, the lead vocal talent, in a roundtable interview. The actress, comic book creator, and activist just finished her sixth time voicing the Themysciran. 

Was there anything from the live-action movie that you used or wanted to use?

No, I think it’s, I’ve been doing Wonder Woman now for a few years, and it’s been amazing. I think the folks who’ve been writing this character and promoting this character have in many ways, like a lot of the different iterations that have come forth from a lot of our iconic heroes have been really trying to explore how to modernize these stories so they can continue to be as compelling as they have been for generations, and I think that’s really beautiful. I mean, I got to work with Frank Miller, who’s very responsible for that, in taking the Dark Knight and taking Batman from Go-Go Gadget Belt Batman to someone a little more serious and exploring the psychological make-up of someone who does what he does.  I think even in this story, with Bloodlines, we’re going back to the origin story of Wonder Woman; Steve Trevor coming into Themyscira, her leaving and going to America, and being confronted with this new culture. But we’re also exploring in the sense (that) there’s a lot of female characters, it’s very female-centered, and really seeing the conflicts that arise just from, even with the best intentions, Wonder Woman’s mere presence, and just really grappling with the nuances and complexities of being someone who’s an ambassador and a dignitary and wants to put out that olive branch, but is also very willing to come out with that sword and fight. It’s an unusual kind of perspective in hero comics, and one that I’m grateful has been around for a long time and continues to be something that a lot of us actors get to, not so many of us actors actually, you know what I mean? It’s still a pretty small group but a few of us get the honor and privilege of being able to explore her, and it’s cool being able to do it in this generation. 

What were your thoughts on the Gal Gadot Wonder Woman? 

Yeah, what was amazing about it was that we’ve had the chance to bring her back into a forefront, and Gal was so incredible at it that it broke a bunch of records, and it continued to push for even more storytelling in that vein, and we’ve since had a lot of different characters that we’ve continued to explore that women have been able to embody. But I also still really feel like that’s been pushing in a lot of different spaces, and I’ll never put down (anyone). I remember when I first started voicing Wonder Woman, and people were like “Finally, we’re getting a Latina Wonder Woman,” and I’m like, “Lynda Carter was Latina.” You know, like I grew up with her, and I thought that was super awesome. It’s a different iteration of her, but it was very inspiring, nonetheless, and it meant a lot of my grandmother, my mom, and myself when I was a kid, and now to see that we can change what her outfit looks like, and we can change a bit more of what the perspective of which we are showing her, but it’s an evolution of the times, and I think Gal really represented that well, and I’m hoping that this film does as well. 

What’s the best part of playing Wonder Woman?

For me, because I’m not doing the physicality of it so much, except when I’m in the booth by myself with a fake sword, it’s all the whoops and hollers and as they call it “efforts” that I get to do, and the distinctions in her voice of what it sounds like to be smashed by a mythical creature or to be winded from battle in the skies to what the difference between a struggle run when she’s fighting and another one to when she’s actually in pain and hurt. It’s the kind of stuff I grew up watching a lot of awesome cartoons and animated films and the power of the voice and the pause or the tremble in your voice and what that can convey; it’s just incredible and it’s great to be apart of that because I try often to do that with a look when I’m on camera but when you don’t have that resource, how do you convey it, it’s an awesome and really fun challenge.    

How do you feel about the progression of her character?

Wonderful. I mean, I think it’s a character that will continue to have new iterations, you know? I imagine Wonder Woman 25 years from now and how different that Wonder Woman will be, and she’s a character that continues to exist in our modern world. So we can continue to adapt her because she’s not going to just age and die like the rest of us. She’s going to stick around, you know, like Captain America and different characters like that, or so you hope and think. So it’s just fun. You know, I voiced Lego Batgirl, and we got to poke fun at Batman. We’ve gotten in so far that we’ve gotten back around to just being like, “Dude, you’ve got so much money. Why are you fighting petty crime in a Batsuit? Go and pay for some stuff.” It’s great that we continue to get to go back and revisit why we’ve love these stories intergenerationally but also continue to push them to be interesting for us in the future and adapt them to a new world, and I think that’s a beautiful thing for us to have to do. You know, not taking anything for granted, and recognizing even an iconic character can be adapted and evolve and grow. People will criticize big tentpole movies and maybe they’re just entertaining, but look at all the community that’s brought from it. This transcends age, it transcends the gender spectrum, it transcends culture, it transcends borderlines, it’s intergenerational: my grandmother loved Wonder Woman. It keeps going. We have a touchstone like that to go back to revisit and challenge ourselves to what would you do in that situation and what it inspires in you is a really powerful tool.           

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is available on digital today. A physical release on 4K Combo Pack & Blu-ray Combo Pack will release on October 22.

Here’s the trailer for Wonder Woman: Bloodlines:

A Supernatural Summary: A Look Back at All 14 Seasons!

By
Norton
-
1
Supernatural

Gather ‘round my wayward sons (and daughters), it’s time for a tale we like to call Supernatural. Once upon a time (Sept. 13th, 2005 to be specific) there were two brothers: Sam and Dean Winchester, who had lost touch with each other until Dean (Jensen Ackles) broke into Sam’s (Jared Padalecki) college living quarters and revealed their father (John Winchester played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) had gone on a hunting trip and had not returned. Sam was less than thrilled to see his brother but agreed to team up “just to find dad”. Spoiler alert, they do not find their father by the end of the episode, and in fact, Sam’s super-hot girlfriend (The Orville’s Adrianne Palicki) winds up dying in the same way their mother (Mary Winchester played by Samantha Smith) did – which is shown in the episode’s opening flashback. Thus, kicks off the greatest American road trip/Scooby-Doo mystery of all time.

Now, it’s 14 years later and somehow Dean’s “baby” has not yet died, but a lot of other characters on the show have. As fans would say: let’s look at the road so far…Up until Season 3, Supernatural followed the pretty cookie-cutter playbook of your standard sci-fi/fantasy network show – it was a literal “Monster-of-the Week” type deal. Also, much like most sci-fi/fantasy network shows it had an overarching storyline that was designed to draw the viewer in and keep them coming back to see if dear old dad was ever actually found. He was, and he died, but then Sam became something of a demon, and Dean sold his soul to Hell, and well…everything hit the fan.

Supernatural — “Raising Hell” — Image Number: SN1503A_0285b.jpg — Pictured (L-R): Misha Collins as Castiel, Jared Padalecki as Sam and Jensen Ackles as Dean — Photo: Colin Bentley/The CW — © 2019 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

See, Dean’s banishment to Hell at the end of Season 3 leads to a doozy of a reveal in Season 4: Angels exist! Where have they been this whole time? Turns out they didn’t want to get their hands dirty until God took off and the Apocalypse became a real threat. And here’s when Supernatural really hit its stride. Season 4 establishes the foundation for the main lore of the series. Concepts like God, the different choirs of Angels, Milton’s depiction of Lucifer, and of course the Apocalypse ground the show in Judeo-Christian beliefs. But, even with this backbone, Supernatural remains flexible – allowing for other religious mythologies to make cameos (this happens more often in later seasons). Season 4 also introduces the characters of Castiel (Misha Collins) an angel who will eventually grow into a series regular and fan favorite, Adam Milligan (Jake Abel) revealed to be an illegitimate son of John Winchester who will play an important role in the upcoming Apocalypse storyline, and Chuck Shurley (Rob Benedict) a “prophet” who is later revealed to be SPOILER God – the main antagonist of the upcoming 15th season. It is a wonderful season and feeds perfectly into Season 5, which was supposed to be the final season.

Why? Well, because while Season 4 focuses on Sam, Dean, and the angels trying to prevent Lilith (played by both Katherine Boecher and Sierra McCormick) from breaking the last seal and releasing Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino, and briefly Bellamy Young and Jared Padalecki) from Hell, Season 5 deals with the fallout of their ultimate failure. The angels double down and fully commit to the idea of the Apocalypse – which Supernatural defines as the archangel Michael (played by both Jake Abel and Matt Cohen) doing battle with his baby brother Lucifer using Sam and Dean as their vessels (human host bodies). Because being used by Michael and Lucifer means one of them will kill the other, Sam and Dean are naturally not cool with this plan. One notable introduction this season is Crowley (Mark Sheppard) one of the all-time great antagonists of the series who will later become an ally. Season 5 covers the ideas of free will vs determinism, family obligation, and the life of one to save the many, all while peppering in the fun, tongue-in-cheek humor that Supernatural will keep dishing out well past its expiration date.

Seasons 4 and 5 are, in my opinion, the best ones of the series. I believe it’s because these are the only set of seasons with a very clear plan that plays out beautifully and ends sublimely. It’s even got a cliffhanger to set up for what should have never been a sixth season.

Ah, but Season 6 came, and then 7, and 8, all the way up till our present Season 15! Along the way we’ve seen the show really take full advantage of that biblical pandora’s box Season 4 opened:

  • In Season 6 we met Eve (portrayed by both Julia Maxwell and Samantha Smith) – Mother of All – monsters, that is. She’s itching to stretch her creative legs, and it does not bode well for Sam, Dean, or humanity as a whole.
  • Season 7 saw the boys fight God’s first creations the Leviathan. It does not end well.
  • Season 8 had Dean and Castiel spend some time in Purgatory before escaping, and then having Team Free Will try to close the gates of Hell once and for all (this led to Castiel unwittingly kicking every angel out of Heaven).
  • In Season 9 the boys tried to undo the closing of Heaven mess (which leads to a whole slew of angel-based problems with one Knight of Hell thrown in for good measure) and succeeded only to have Dean become a demon thanks to the Mark of Cain.
  • In Season 10 said mark was removed only to accidentally release The Darkness (Emily Swallow) onto the world.
  • Season 11 was a pointless fight against The Darkness (aka Amara – God’s older sister who was none too pleased about being locked away) which ended with God and Amara making nice (Amara specifically thanks Dean with a Mommy-back-from-the-dead gift) and leaving Earth to spend some quality time together.
  • Season 12 came back to a more grounded story when the boys traded blows with the British Men of Letters, but didn’t forget its biblical roots bringing back our old friend Lucifer (who managed to father a son – hi Jack!), and tested some theoretical physics theories with the discovery of an apocalypse alternate reality (which was way worse in depressing nature to the one glimpsed in “The End”).
  • Season 13 bounced between Apocalypse World and ours, revolving around Mary, Jack (Alexander Calvert), Castiel, and Lucifer, with Alternate Michael (Christian Keyes) in a final showdown against Prince of Hell Asmodeus (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) care of Dean Winchester’s meat-sack (their words, not mine).
  • Season 14 was mostly concerned with getting Michael out of Dean’s body, and Jack dying from the loss of his grace in the previous season; a matter which was resolved but left Jacky boy without a soul, Mary dead (care of soulless Jack), and God beyond pissed off at the Winchesters.

Which brings us to Season 15, where God appears to be fully intent on killing Sam and Dean along with the rest of the world. Finally, the actual apocalypse!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf-STGkqFRA

Now, fourteen years is a long time for a show to be on the air, and I would argue way too long (I believe the perfect length for any series is between 5 and 7 seasons max). But, to its credit, one of the reasons Supernatural has lasted 15 seasons is because it never pretends to be more than what it is. It also knows how to have fun. While the first five seasons are fairly serious (with season 4 kicking off the real core of what the show is), the next 10 contain some real gems.

See: “Frontierland”, “The French Mistake”, “Death’s Door”, “As Time Goes By”, “Bad Boys”, “Fan Fiction”, “Baby”, “Just My Imagination”, “Scoobynatural”, and “Lebanon” (the 300th episode of the show which reunites Sam, Dean, and Mary with patriarch John).

This is why I continued to watch even when I thought season 5’s finale should have been the series finale. Fun fact: It was supposed to be! Yes, as I mentioned earlier, Supernatural had a plan. A well-paced, finely acted, and perfectly executed five-season plan that ended with Sam (acting as Lucifer’s vessel) and Adam (the other, other Winchester acting as Michael’s vessel) locked in the Cage in Hell, and Dean free to live a hunter-free life. But, network execs want ratings and writers like to feed their families, so here we are facing Season 15.

Before concluding this recap, I’d like to point out some of my favorite storylines over the decade and a half of the series’ run, and some I wasn’t so thrilled about.

The Apocalypse: Once the show figured out what it wanted to do, the apocalypse storyline really started to take off. This is hands down my favorite storyline of the series, and, as mentioned earlier, it leads to the main mythology the show will follow for the rest of its run. You’ve got Zachariah (Kurt Fuller) fucking with the boys in his never-ending quest to get them to play their parts; Ruby (portrayed in Season 4 by Katie Cassidy, and Season 5 by Genevieve Cortese) fucking with Sam (literally and figuratively) to get him to kick off the whole shebang – mind you, the entire Sam drinking demon blood and having demon powers shtick seems to disappear when he gets pulled from the Cage, why? Not sure. That I know of the series never fully explains this; and the Archangels (Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, and Gabriel) taking center stage every chance they get! Anytime Gabriel is in the show – regardless of the storyline – he is a welcome breath of fresh air. Even Lucifer proves to be an unpredictable monster with layers, depth, and seething rage. Michael doesn’t have much of a personality in our world, but he’s plenty pissed in Apocalypse World. But overall: They are just awesome. This storyline introduces some of my favorite characters including Death (Julian Richings), Crowley, The Trickster/Loki/Gabriel (Richard Speight Jr.), and Ellen and Jo (Samantha Ferris and Alona Tal respectively). OK – so, Ellen and Jo are introduced in Season 2, but they SPOILER die honorable hunter deaths in service to the cause of preventing the Apocalypse which is why they deserve to be here.

The Men of Letters: It was interesting to think of the Winchesters as fantastic hunters, but that they are legacies in a much larger society of hunters is pretty nifty! This storyline also gave the production team an excuse to stop using random hotel rooms and set the boys in a central location, not to mention having a library of information at their disposal (even though they still wind up using the internet most of the time). Earlier in the series the only history we learn of the boys regards their direct Mom and Dad, but The Men of Letters storyline allows us a glimpse further up the family tree. Weird that it was John’s and not Mary’s (given her hunter heritage), but what can you do? Besides, the sorry excuse for a season that was 6, looked into Mary’s side of the family a little. Regardless, this storyline ties directly in with another one I enjoyed…

The Knights of Hell – specifically, Abaddon: Alaina Huffman plays a very kick-ass lady demon who presents the boys with a real challenge. As an added bonus, she gives Crowley a run for his money, which is always nice to see. She’s the one responsible for the near extinction of The Men of Letters, and the reason that Dean seeks out the First Blade, which leads to…

Mark of Cain: Hands down an awesome storyline that not only provides the usual Sam and Dean fighting against all odds to save one another from what should be inevitable doom, but also explores the truth of Able and Cain (Timothy Omundson). Also, also it introduces us to Rowena (Ruth Connell)! Crowley’s mom is an ancient and powerful witch brought in to try and remove the mark from Dean, but proves herself capable of great character development in the seasons that follow. In addition, this storyline marks (pun intended) the return of Charlie Bradbury (Felicia Day), an old friend who sadly doesn’t survive to see her efforts pay off.

The actual antichrist: Hi Jesse Turner (Gattlin Griffith), we miss you. Season 5 introduced the concept of the Anti-Christ in an episode entitled “I Believe the Children are Our Future”. My biggest disappointment was that once the season ended, and they go more into the religious lore, they never circled back to this. They went so far as to create Jack – Lucifer’s son, even though the episode explains that the A.C. isn’t the devil’s spawn as the bible tells. Ah well, would have been cool to see what Jesse looks like all grown up (though the fan wiki does point out that since Lucifer was killed Jesse might not have any powers, as the devil was the source of them).

Eve: The 6th season was split into two parts, one, was Sam returning from Hell and joining up with their grandfather (who was supposed to have died) Samuel Campbell (Mitch Pileggi) in a hunt for Alphas (of each monster kind, respectively). Sam’s missing soul is an interesting and reasonable story for the opening of the season but the second half where Eve – the Mother of All monsters – shows up feels ultimately like a step backwards. Purgatory, the Alphas, Eve trying to make new monsters (looking at you Jefferson Starships!), and Castiel working with Crowley; turning against Team Free Will in order to become God, no thanks! Not to mention this storyline leads to…

The Leviathan: The end of Season 6 sees Castiel going power-hungry. It backfires and releases beings from Purgatory known as The Leviathan – God’s first creations which are terrible monsters that just eat, and eat, and eat, and eat…you get the picture. It’s a storyline I was never a huge fan of, and the only real pay dirt here is Bobby Singer (Jim Beaver) SPOILER dying for the cause. We get to see Bobby’s backstory thanks to this detour, learn how even an honorable man like Bobby can turn into a vengeful spirit, and watch the boys finally deal directly with a huge loss in their lives. Plus, up until the stupid Apocalypse World storyline, Bobby stays dead once his spirit is released.

The War for Heaven: Any storyline involving the civil war between the angels is stupid to me. This is mostly because when angels finally show up in Supernatural, they are pretty fucking awesome. Yes, dicks to be sure, but powerful dicks with a clear agenda and no fucks given. These storylines do them no service. Oh look, angels are just like humans! Lost without God, and petty without Heaven. Ug. I’ve never been a fan of humans trying to humanize divine beings. The whole point is that they are DIVINE. If I wanted humans, I’d watch Desperate Housewives. The few bright spots in this mythological exploration are Kevin Tran (Osric Chau) and later on Donatello Redfield (Keith Szarabajka). Kevin becomes a fan favorite and an integral part of Team Free Will, while Donatello is just a bit of a nice joke thrown in for all the atheists watching. Anything having to do with Metatron (Curtis Armstrong) or that stupid time Sam was possessed by the angel Gadreel (Tahmoh Penikett) – lying and saying he’s Ezekiel is trash. Pure trash! In fact, it’s a dumpster fire that spreads and winds up SPOILER killing poor Kevin!

The Darkness: Can we all agree that this whole storyline was a complete waste of time? I mean…honestly, nothing against the idea of God having a sister (I think that’s pretty cool actually), but just the way this whole plot gets executed is stupid. The reveal that Chuck has been God this whole time is nice, and Amara’s anger at being screwed over by her little brother makes sense, but she’s still the first major celestial creature in the entire universe – you really think Sam and Dean can beat her!? Not to mention her weird relationship to Dean due to him inadvertently setting her free (which he doesn’t even do by the way, Rowena does!). Just no. And finally, this storyline bleeds into one of the WORST storylines in this series history…

The British Men of Letters: Mary Winchester is back, all is well, right? Nope! Because at the end of last season we found out about The British Men of Letters. I was thinking, ok…maybe we’re trying for spin off number 3 (since Bloodlines and Wayward Sisters clearly didn’t take), but no. No, they decided to fully commit to a British version of The Men of Letters who, for some unknown reason, only now deign coming to America as a necessary thing to do. This storyline almost broke me, I’m not gonna lie. It was so pointless and horrible – with Mary and Arthur Ketch (David Haydn-Jones), and let’s not forget Lady “Toni” Bevell (Elizabeth Blackmore), ug…it was just…ug. You might be noticing a pattern with the storylines I hate because the next one directly follows this one as well.

Apocalypse World and Jack: So, while all the British Men of Letters b.s. is going down, Lucifer is running around jumping from host to host, trying to find a good fit. In the process, he manages to father a son – hi, Jack! Jack’s birth leads to the discovery of Apocalypse World. A rift in space-time that envisions a version of Earth where Sam and Dean were never born and the Apocalypse happened. Michael fights and kills Lucifer but when God doesn’t return to pat him on the back for a job well done, he has a full-on meltdown and resolves to destroy the world to spite his absentee father. This does provide an interesting theory about how God might see the worlds he creates (drafts that he keeps abandoning in order to create more perfect versions) – it’s also a nifty explanation for the idea of parallel worlds! However, with that said, Apocalypse World is really just an excuse to bring back some friends from the dead – Hi Bobby, Kevin, and Charlie! Granted, they don’t all stay alive, and of course, they are slightly different versions of themselves, but still. Jack, is just an annoying storyline because of how been-there-done-that it is. The literal spawn of Satan turns out to be a pie-eyed innocent who doesn’t know his own strength and wants to be a good guy. One brother wants to kill him while the other wants to steer him in the right direction, why does this sound familiar? Oh right, because this was already done with Jesse Turner (see the section about the actual antichrist earlier)!

My hope is that Season 15 is a return to form for the show. An honorable send-up that gives the fans the finale they’ve been patiently waiting for. Who knows, maybe it’ll even circle back to some of those loose ends it never got around to clearing up: Jesse, Sam’s demon powers, how exactly Castiel got Sam out of the Cage, Amy Pond’s (Jewel Staite) son Jacob (Lyova Beckwitt) – see “The Girl Next Door”, Dean’s vampire bestie Benny Lafitte (Ty Olsson), and of course Adam – who is already confirmed to be appearing in the upcoming final season. Granted, finales are notoriously difficult. Add to that the fact this show already had a finale, and you’ve got quite the challenge.

Yes, fans can be cruel. They love, but they love intense, still, Supernatural has taught its fans to be lenient. To relax, have fun, and savor the journey. Most importantly, it’s taught the fans to remember that driver picks the music while shotgun shuts his cakehole, and let’s face it fellow naturalists…we’re just riding shotgun on this magical mystery road trip.

NYCC 2019: Marvel’s Avengers Has Stunning Gameplay in Every Single Way

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Marvel's Avengers Game
Photo Credit: Crystal Dynamics

Marvel’s Avengers is an Unfinished Masterpiece that’s Just Getting Started

At NYCC 2019, Crystal Dynamics debuted a demo of Marvel’s Avengers in its pre-alpha version. Suffice to say, the game was breathtaking and fun in every single way.

The game begins right in the thick of things, in what feels like the Avengers Battle of New York. The team is assembled on a bridge facing off against a menacing army threatening the city. In different intro segments specific per character, each with their own unique abilities, you get to play as Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Black Widow, in that order.

The event really gets you to embrace the best of what each team member has to offer. Without too many spoilers, the introduction ends in a catastrophe. One which splits The Avengers. Afterwards, a new superhero organizations, called AIM, takes over as the city’s protection and an unassuming Avenger’s fan, revealed to be Kamala Khan, looks on as a bystander in the distance.

I collaborated with fellow Workprint Writer, Bassam Kaado, in writing this article and together, we demoed the game on the PlayStation 4 and came up with collective thoughts about the gameplay.

Mechanics

Hands down, the best aspect of the game are the mechanics. With controls similar to the Spider-Man or Batman Arkham video games. The “square” button is used to quick attack, while the “triangle” button commands your power attacks. There’s even a “triangle and circle” command for one-hit takedowns.

Attacks build up energy, which triggers special “L1” button finishers unique per each character. Iron Man has his Uni-Beam, Black Widow executes her trademark movie Leg Flip, Thor rains Thunder, Captain America throws and bounces his Shield, and Hulk fires off a sonic wave when he Claps.

Characters

Thor – The God of Thunder was a treat to play, and he’s personally my favorite character. He was one of the few characters in recent memory that rewards you for electing to use a heavy attack as his brutal combination of lightning and hammer is devastating. Being able to use Mjolnir is a delight, due to the ability to throw the hammer and call it back at your convenience. The only concern was his inability to fly during the demo.

Iron Man – Tony Stark in any video games is a challenge, but the game seems to have done a great job with capturing his distinct ranged fighting style. He seems like the character out of the group that would require the most effort in getting down, and his flight felt a little awkward to steer in battle.

Bassam mentioned, while aiming, you must target your shots, which is a concern because the target is bigger than his ranged attack you need to shoot. It makes it difficult to properly aim and forced him to shy away from his repulsor beams.

I didn’t notice this, mostly because I was too busy having fun blasting everything in sight.

The Hulk – The Hulk is probably the most enjoyable character to play with and should be the number one choice for casual/new gamers wanting to try the game. As one would expect, his offense is focused on brute force and is easy to get down. You can grapple enemies and ragdoll them around to beat down opponents. You can also smash everything in sight, from tanks to cars, as Hulk jumps and smashes everything in sight, using his signature Hulk Smash.

Captain America – Cap is a great character to play, and he was Bassam’s favorite character to use. His controls are very intuitive to anyone familiar with 3rd person action games. His use of the shield provides a fun ranged attack that blends well with its defensive capabilities. His fighting style is fluid and allows you to get into a good rhythm while battling a multitude of villains. His character skin was also noticeably less chubby than in the original showcase, which fans initially complained about.

Black Widow – The famed double agent and stand-out female character of the Avengers plays very similar to Captain in her fluidity during combat. Being armed with guns, she has the easiest ranged attacks that matches really well with the rest of her fighting style. She is another character that is intuitive to anyone playing video games, as she is well-balanced in both ranged and melee attacks. She is also the fastest character in the game and the one you use to fight the big baddie of the demo, as she goes head-to-head with the villainous Taskmaster.

Story

Little is revealed as to the overall plot of the story, but what is confirmed is that you get to play as Kamala Khan and must help reassemble the Avengers after the incident.

The main story’s home base is established on an abandoned Shield Helicarrier, and every character obtained has unique unlockable skins spanning 80 years of Marvel history. Atop of that, each hero has unique abilities, with customization trees unique per character that can suit a large array of fighting styles from melee, to long-range, and even power attacking.

The game has Hero missions for the single-player campaign mode. With another, War Zone mission mode, for online multiplayer of up to four players. With AI assistance if someone drops out.

Final Take

The game is beautiful and does a great job of inserting you into the Marvel Universe as these characters. The only issue found was during the Iron Man segment where a glitch showed only the background during a playthrough. For a game that is in Pre-Alpha (with a current release date of May 2020), the game looks miles ahead of what one would expect, and Bassam and I are both anticipating the opportunity to pre-order.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Us4mJ2eME

You Can Play Marvel’s Avengers in May 2020

 

NYCC 2019 – ‘Wonder Woman: Bloodlines’ Interview with EP James Tucker

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is DC’s latest animated film. At New York Comic Con, Executive Producer, James Tucker, sat down with the press to discuss bringing a new Wonder Woman animated film to our screens.  

In promotion for the recent Wonder Woman animated original, Wonder Woman: Bloodlines, the creative minds behind the solo feature came to the famed New York Comic-Con to provide insight on the latest incarnation of arguably the most famous female superhero, Wonder Woman, the Princess of Themyscira.

The Workprint sat down with James Tucker, executive producer of Bloodlines and multiple films in the latest rounds of DC’s animated movies, in a roundtable interview. His history with DC goes back to the late 90’s with contributions ranging from character design and storyboarding to producing. 

Are you supposed to be in continuity with the recent DC live action films?

No, we are in continuity with our own continuity of the movies that we’ve been doing. So it’s [Wonder Woman: Bloodlines] not a sequel to the ‘09 Wonder Woman. It’s the Wonder Woman Rosario’s been playing since Throne of Atlantis, but we wanted to give her her own wedge of a story that takes place in the greater scheme of the continuity. Storywise, it connects to how Wonder Woman came to be in this continuity; it ties to Justice League: War a little bit; and it just shows more of what her life is when she’s not with the Justice League, which was something that was really important to me because the first Wonder Woman animation movie was pretty much an origin story. You didn’t get a lot of her supporting cast; you got a lot of the Amazon stuff, a little bit of Steve, but I wanted to show what was her life in Man’s world like. So this movie fills in a lot of that. That’s kind of what I wanted to do, to show kind of an example of what a Wonder Woman series would be like now. 

What was the motive behind using many female characters?

I wanted to use a lot of her Rogues Gallery that never makes it into these movies, because you see, it’s always Cheetah, she’s in it, but she has a deeper bench of Rogues that never really make it into the animation or live action, and I just wanted to correct that. So we kind of a “villains incorporated” plot in this that I think is really fun.

Do you find it challenging to balancing multiple villains in the story?

It depends. With her villains, because they are haven’t gotten a lot of attention, it’s kind of a cameo fest; this is kind of like Wonder Woman’s version of Hush a little bit because it’s kind of cameos. So we don’t delve into their backstories too deep because it’s not that kind of story, but I definitely think, had it been a series, all her villains are rich enough that you can really spend time with them and develop them. So I’m hoping, I don’t know if this movie will lead to a series necessarily in this continuity, but there should be a Wonder Woman animated series. And I think there is enough material there to really rival what we’ve done with BTAS (Batman: the Animated Series) or Superman: the Animated Series, Justice League. I mean, she’s been a part of a lot of things that never given her own focus. So I hope this movie kind of starts showing people beyond Themyscira and Cheetah that Wonder Woman has a life that we can build continuity around. 

So does this open doors for other Leaguers like Flash or Green Lantern to have their own films in this Universe?

Yeah, well Flashpoint Paradox was kind of a Flash-centered film, even though it wasn’t directly dealing with his life specifically. Aquaman has had a feature focus; Superman definitely has. Were it to go on, every character would get a focus, but that depends on Warner Home Video. If I was going into it like a comic book or there’s the main Justice League comic and then there are the offshoot books, but they’re all tied into each other somehow. So we definitely make mention of her life with the Justice League at this point so it’s connected. There will be a pay-off if you have been watching the other movies.

How do you think Bloodlines will affect the DC Animated Universe going forward?

I don’t know if it will affect it. I just hope it is one more thing that says, “Hey, Wonder Woman needs a series.” I don’t care about the rest of the Universe, as far as the movies, because that’s fine. I mean, we got this because the Wonder Woman live action was a big hit. So I was like “Yay,” and they don’t make us just make a movie of the live action movie; they just say “Make a Wonder Woman movie,” which is great because I’m like “Oh good, I can do stuff that hasn’t been done before, like I can use Doctor Cyber, I can use other villains that normally they don’t. This is about Silver Swan, and there is no way a live action movie would focus on Silver Swan before Cheetah. Anyway, so I’m hoping it leads to more of the women superheroes getting their chance to support a movie, and, luckily, live action is finally caught up. You have the Harley Birds of Prey movie, you got a Harley cartoon coming. So I think it’s changing, not as fast as it should, but it’s changing steadily. I would love to do more Wonder Woman movies. I mean, I  love the character. I think, like Superman and Batman, she’s a good jumping off point for the characters that may be less relevant so the next Wonder Woman movie, I can put in, you know, I love Rose and Thorn; they’re very obscure characters from way back when, but they’re really cool characters. So, things like that, where you use a main character, and this is what I’ve been doing with all these movies, is using the main character as a way to backdoor lesser known characters into that Universe and get them exposure that they wouldn’t get on their own. Hopefully, it just leads to more Wonder Woman everything, that’s what I would like. 

Does the movie explore Wonder Woman when she’s not fighting crime?

Pretty much, we set up where she’s been living, what happened to her when she first showed up on Man’s World. There’s nods to the [George] Perez Era of comics, there’s nods to the Greg Rucka run, we try to sample a little bit of the broad strokes of the best continuity that Wonder Woman has had in the comics, which is, admittedly, been spotty. But I think there’s enough in there you know we’ve read the comics. 

Wonder Woman: Bloodlines is available on digital today. A physical release on 4K Combo Pack & Blu-ray Combo Pack will release on October 22.

Here’s the trailer for Wonder Woman: Bloodlines:

 

Prodigal Son “Fear Response” Review

By
Norton
-
2
Prodigal Son, Fear Response
Jessica confronts her serial killer husband!

Congrats! We’ve reached the critical third episode of Prodigal Son. As I may have mentioned three episodes is generally what I give a new show to see if I want more. Why? Because by episode three most shows have a handle on the direction they want to go and how they want to get there. You’ve met most, if not all, of the series regulars, some of the reoccurring, and maybe even got a tease towards future additions to the cast. It’s a lot of pressure, so how does Prodigal Son hold up? Not bad. And considering it got picked up for a full season, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“Fear Response” opens up similar to the previous two episodes with a flashback to the night Martin gets arrested, but instead of focusing on Malcolm we pivot to Jessica Whitly. Now we see it’s 1998 and Jessica is visiting her newly incarcerated husband. He’s fully convinced nothing will change, he’ll be out in no time, everything’s fine! But she’s…well, feeling short-changed. There’s some interesting character development trying to happen here – and in a subsequent flashback later in this episode – which culminates in a present time confrontation between Jessica and Martin. See, up until now all we really know about Mommy Dearest is what we glean from those around her. Martin jokes about losing her as a positive, Ainsley feels used by her to spy on Malcolm, and Malcolm seems genuinely distrustful of her. But why? Who is Jessica Whitly?

We’ll come back to that, I promise, but first a brief recap of what else is going down in this episode. Our murder victim is a professor George Holston, he’s dead in the woods with white eyes, and a missing brain. Malcolm brings lollipops for everyone and as usual the ME is super into him (though he does finally seem to show a little interest in her). Malcolm then gets to geek out as the dead guy leads them to Dr. Elaine Brown (Sakina Jaffrey, I miss Timeless too!) whom he admires. Turns out her specialty is fear and she’s been doing some daddy level off-the-reservation experimentation (I say this because Martin even cites her work as inspiration for his own), and it resulted in one of her subjects going clinically insane. This isn’t hyperbole (a term mentioned in this episode coincidentally enough), a bad enough LSD trip can actually trigger latent schizophrenia! Our killer – one Dominic Render (Joseph Anthony Sudol) – did try to do the right thing and report Dr. Brown’s unethical behavior before settling on dosing his victims with LSD and removing their brains (really not doing the schizophrenic community any favors here), which all leads up to him breaking into the good doctor’s house (so hard not to type Doc Brown) to dose and kill her. Luckily, JT and Malcolm are staking out the place, and luckier still, Malcolm decides to go in and ask the shrink about repressed memories. Her suggestion? Take some chloroform! In the meantime, Malcolm will try and subdue Dominic only for it to end with Doc Brown (had to!) shooting him dead (Johnathan Crane – I mean, Dominic, not Malcolm).

Other things of note in this episode include the introduction of Malcolm’s shrink – Dr. Gabrielle Le Deux (Charlayne Woodard) – a child psychiatrist he insists on seeing despite being all grown up (can’t beat lollipops!). Jessica and Ainsley have it out about Malcolm and Martin – Ainsley angry that her mom never let her get to know her father and made her feel ashamed of who she is, Mom mad that Ainsley didn’t tell her Malcolm was seeing the dark patriarch (it’s getting pretty sad that whenever Ainsley appears on the show it’s NEVER about her, not really). Jessica makes a visit to proxy-dad Gil Arroyo and chides him for reintroducing Malcolm to Martin (with the added twist of it being Jessica who allowed her then 11-year-old son to visit his killer dad in jail). The fact that we don’t know what J.T.’s initials stand for! And of course, that cuckoo-bananas opening where Malcolm manages to night-terror his way through a huge window near his bed without a – falling to his death (yay, shackles!) or b – slicing his body open breaking the glass. Not to mention his mom’s completely non-plussed reaction to this. Seriously, she threatens a Panera in place of his living quarters if he doesn’t give her new keys (apparently, he decided to change the locks after she broke in, surprise).

Now, with those minor details out of the way it’s back to chew on the real fat of this episode: Jessica!

During the opening flashback we see a very different Mrs. Whitly than we’re use to. The look on Jessica’s face is raw, shocked, and confused – once again our subplot ties in with the title (though let’s be honest on this show the serial killer stuff is the real sub-plot) – this is her fear response. Clearly, she was expecting some marital difficulties (“Mother taught me that marriage is long, that a woman overlooks things, that she makes sacrifices”), but was serial killing one of them? It’s hard to tell. The initial snippet makes it obvious Jessica is disappointed at how things have turned out, but the vague way the conversation goes leaves the question of why? Is she unhappy Martin was sloppy and got caught by their son (bringing shame to a rich family)? Is she upset he wasn’t just some regular philandering husband? Later, we see another side of this flashback – a continuation – where Martin is speaking. Earlier, he showed no signs of distress as his position but the threat of losing his family does bring out the fight in him. And the teeth! He agrees that they had a good life, but then goes on to claim that it was because of what he did that she was allowed the best of him (“Men have tendencies. Needs. And I did what I had to in order to meet those needs, to keep me happy and provide you with the life you wanted.”).

Martin states that she knew what he was. She tells him she’ll never return, but since learning Malcolm is seeing him, she breaks her word and goes to visit him. Martin is weirdly happy to see her (given his numerous off the cuff “take-my-wife-please” jokes about her) even going so far as to flirt with her – to no avail of course. Jessica slips back into her wistful past-self for a minute, once again lamenting the life she thought they had and the one she lost, the one he cost her, but Martin isn’t content to let her rewrite history. He doesn’t like her saying the kids (read: Malcolm) are messed up solely because of him. She did something too. And that’s about the time we cut to Malcolm and his chloroform induced dreams wherein Mommy discovers him rooting around in dad’s business to her horror. Why is Jessica so mad? When he mentions a girl all she says is “That doesn’t concern you!” and to “Never speak of her again!”. But the nail is her saying “You have no idea what your father is capable of!” which heavily suggests she does.

Just how much she knows is a mystery for the next episode!

NYCC 2019: Harley Quinn Animated Series Leaves its Mark

By
Bassam Kaado
-
1

An exclusive NYCC 2019 screening shows everyone’s favorite Super Villain sidekick, Harley Quinn, finally step into her own spotlight.

At Madison Square Garden, DC held a panel to give fans a first look at several of their new upcoming shows. One episode that really stood out was the pilot of the new Harley Quinn animated series, starring Kaley Cuoco as the titular character. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5VfbFhsQgU

 

The Plot

Harley Quinn is upset by the lack of trust her partner, The Joker (Alan Tudyk), is giving her and that he is not letting her take charge. After a run-in with the Dark Knight (Diedrich Bader), Quinn is used as a distraction by the Joker to provide himself an escape. Harley is sent to Arkham Asylum, again, and is faced with evaluating her life and relationship with the Clown Prince.

The Cast

The cast did a tremendous job bringing the world of Gotham to life. It was easy to tell that Cuoco was having fun flexing her acting muscles and diving into the character. Her voice gave the right balance of delusion and childlike wonderment, making you invest in the villain. She is flanked by two veteran actors, who provide a great base to work off of, Lake Bell (who plays Poison Ivy) and Tudyk’s Joker. Both bring their own uniqueness and flair to their respective characters. Bader held his own as Batman, demonstrating his consistency as the anchor to all the surrounding madness. The two biggest surprises were Christopher Meloni as Commissioner Jim Gordon and J.B. Smooth as Frank, one of Poison Ivy’s plants. The two of them, hands down, got the best laughs and were always a joy to watch on screen. 

The Vision

The Harley Quinn writers made a strong choice in their tone and style, and they were rewarded with an entertaining product. The show is very, very, adult. Curses are littered throughout the episode, which was established early on when Harley shouts the “F-word” within the first few lines of dialogue. This was consistently reinforced with a beheading that led to a ventriloquist joke and an obscene amount of blood and guts. The writing team also does a fantastic job examining the characters and exploring the mental illnesses some of the characters possess. This led to multiple home runs in terms of character study and relationship dissection. 

The animation style did not leave much to the imagination. Any type of fighting or killing was shown in its full glory, as you are forced to sit with every drop of blood or exploding body part/organ. The character designs also present a great mix of homage and revamping. The costumes and looks of each character speak to their individual personalities while effectively reinforcing the tone. Plus, the emotions and expressions of each character complement the strength and talent of the voice-over cast. 

The Takeaway

Harley Quinn is a phenomenal ride, providing the loyal, adult DC fan base with a fun product accompanied by excellent storytelling and growth. It truly made me eager and excited to follow the show and root for Harley’s rise to the top in Gotham’s criminal underworld.

With all the wide variety of content, Harley Quinn is another reason to subscribe to DC Universe for its November 29th release. If you enjoy adult animation and wished Suicide Squad was better, this is the show for you. 

 

NYCC 2019: Castlevania Confirmed for Season 3

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Castlevania Netflix Season 2
Credit: Netflix

At NYCC 2019, Viz Media hosted a hasty panel about Castlevania on Netflix that was loaded with quick-fire questions and ended on a teaser clip of Season 3.

Castlevania on Netflix is one of the greatest game-to-television series of all time. An adaption of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse , the story follows the last Vampire Hunter of his clan, Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage), and his team up with the speaker and sorceress, Sypha (Alejandra Reynoso). Together, they reluctantly serve as heroes of Walachia, and in the process, awaken Dracula’s own son, the powerful vampire, Alucard (James Callis).

Determined to stop the bloodshed of Dracula’s army, the trio undergo trial and tribulation to find Dracula, fell his army of dead, and end his war of revenge against all of mankind.

The series is directed by Sam and Adam Deats, two brothers who are veteran directors and videogame story developers. It’s also written by the acclaimed Eisner award-winning writer, Warren Ellis.

Warren Ellis
Warren Ellis admits never playing the games helped his writing

The Castlevania Panel

Revealed during the panel, Ellis hadn’t played a videogame his entire life. Therefore, most of the Netflix adaptation are a mix of his original ideas set in the extensive lore filled universe established in the videogame. With special emphasis on creatures and combat by the creative team, as the Deats brothers confessed to allocating storyboards and concept art to various animation studios across the world. All of whom, collaborate on Castlevania.

If you’ve watched the show, you’ve likely taken away from the series its well-written drama, gory violence, and attention to detail. Yet, what’s rarely talked about is the comedy on the show. Which takes on a very Marvel approach to its dialogue.

This includes countless minutes of Belmont and Alucard bickering like two bitter elementary school rivals on the playground. Cursing at each other and consistently trying to one-up one another.

There are also plenty of moments of awkward comedy, such as when Sypha discovers great secrets of the Belmont family: an entire box of spells in the library dedicated to… penises.

The end of the panel revealed a funny teaser for Season 3, where Sypha exaggeratedly feigns and plays up how vulnerable and unfortunate she and Trevor are, as the couple drive a carriage along a forest filled with demons. Ones who are evidently stalking them. Unsurprisingly, Trevor sighs in dismay in the trailer, as it’s revealed this poor ruse is not the first time Sypha tried doing this with him.

This was the first real confirmation that the series has been picked up by Netflix for a third season. They also revealed a Season 2 Blu-Ray release in November.

The only drawback from the panel was that we were left uncertain as to whether or not Dracula would be featured next season. It would be a surprise given how the story had wrapped by Season 2’s end, though actor Graham McTavish seemed more than enthused about wanting to continue the iconic role.

 

You Can Watch Castlevania on Netflix

NYCC 2019: 5 Takeaways from the ‘Star Trek’ Universe Panel

By
Jad Kaado
-
0
(Image Credit: CBS All Access)

Fellow Star Trek fans* rejoice for 2020 is going to be a fantastic year for the Universe! The Workprint was able to attend the double Star Trek Universe panel at New York Comic-Con this past weekend. *(I ain’t sticking with the traditional labels here.)

The panel, which was attended by producers Michelle Paradise, Heather Kadin, and Alex Kurtzman, was divided in two, with the first including the cast of Discovery – Sonequa Martin-Green, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Anthony Rapp, Wilson Cruz, and a new cast member – David Ajala.

The second portion of the panel, for the new show Picard, introduced us to the cast, comprising of Sir Patrick Stewart, Isa Briones, Santiago Cabrera, Michelle Hurd, Allison Pill, Harry Treadway, and Evan Evagora. The panel also included producers Kurtzman and Paradise, along with Emily Culpepper, Michael Chabon, Kirsten Beyer and Akiva Goldsman in the discussion.

Both panels were very informative and contained new trailer footage for each show. (Which you can find at the bottom of the article along with the link to the recorded panel itself.)

In the meantime, though, I’m here to present to you with my 5 takeaways from the panel (after putting myself back together from the tearing excitement my inner geek went through during this weekend.)

1) The creators genuinely care about canon and continuity.

According to both Paradise and Kurtzman, the production team was very focused on not messing with the show’s timeline and keeping it in canon (relatively) to the rest of the Star Trek Universe (STU). “Canon is wildly important to us. We’re not trying to mess with canon. We’re not changing it. There’s no timeline adjustments, and the events of canon have absolutely informed everything that has happened in the future, but the future is not at all what they expected when they get to the other side,” Kurtzman assured the crowd.

Even though the showrunners stated that continuity is an important aspect of their production, they still want to bring in new and interesting concepts to Season 3 of Discovery, especially considering that the crew is now almost a thousand years into the future

Paradise iterated the importance of being “married to canon” but also stated that they wanted to take everything we’d expect about the STU, such as the Federation, and “put it in a blender” in order to continue developing the characters and the plot further, especially considering the unprecedented predicament the crew has found themselves within the timeline.

The concept of continuity also played an important part of the Picard discussion, which leads me to my second takeaway from the panel that…

2) The Picard series has been well thought out, with the 20-year gap since Nemesis filled in.

This is fantastic news, as this is probably the most anxious I’ve been as a fan in regards to a series being rebooted, or rather resurrected in this case.  See, in the world of Sci-Fi, especially Star Trek, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is a very important character; and sometimes stating less about an important pop cultural character is a lot better than stating more about their lives.  (See Solo: A Star Wars Story as an example.)

However, the Picard production team seemed intent on not wanting to fall into that trap, as the series will focus on a new story for the beloved captain turned retired admiral, while still showing respect to the already established history of the character.

Akiva Goldsman, one of the producers, discussed that they all kept the 20-year gap since Nemesis in mind and that there “will be hints” at that with a “natural evolution” of the characters presented within the show.

“Our big concern was that we did not want it, and especially Patrick did not want it, to be a TNG reunion show,” Heather Kadin stated “…and we only brought people back only if their story really mattered to the story we were telling.” She continued to talk about how the characters in the show will have “pivotal emotional stories” within the 10-episode story structure.

This is much appreciated on my end, from a writing perspective, because it shows that the production cares about having a solid story that will contain meaningful moments for characters that will drive the premise of the story and the course of their development within the overall universe.

3) The characters’ identities and relationships with each other will be challenged.

With both shows, the audience is going to find the crews in situations that they have not faced before.  That means that they will face conditions that are going to challenge their values and perspectives in their world.  These decisions and interactions that the characters make are going to be predicated on their past experiences and could fundamentally alter the way they interact with other crew members in those situations, or even for the rest of the story.

For example, in Discovery, Ensign Sylvia Tilly, played by the wonderful Mary Wiseman, is a character that has shown considerable growth within the show so far, and is probably a character that will be tested by the challenges that the Discovery crew will face in their precarious situation.

Wiseman mentioned that Tilly will have to make “big decisions,” that we’ll be seeing her “stepping into her own power,” and that “we’ll see why she gravitated towards people and why they gravitate towards her.”

This can also be seen with the inclusion of David Ajala as a new character, Cleveland “Book” Booker – a trader and pilot, whom Michael Burnham is going to use as a guide to explore the new future that she is propelled into.

In terms of the Picard series, there is a time gap that the story will take place in and, naturally, the Picard relationship with everyone and everything (Federation included) will be different.

One of the most intriguing points that came up during the Picard portion of the STU panel was from actor, Michelle Hurd (playing the character of Raffi Musiker), who stated that she “has a history” with Picard, as well as another “strong bond with another character” in the show.

Personally, I’m excited to see what Hurd meant by that comment, and regardless of what it ends up being, her character’s relationship with Picard will certainly have an effect on the Captain as he is navigating his way back from retirement into the final frontier of humankind.

4) Data may return as a character in Picard.

Okay! So this sounds like big news, but it was briefly hinted at twice in the trailers, including the new one, as well as what Picard cast member Allison Pill stated during the panel.

The trailer that came out a while ago had shown the (robo)body part remains of Data (famously played by Brent Spiner) in storage post-Nemesis, but the newly released footage in the current trailer shows Data appearing in a dream-like state to Picard, presumably as an omen indicating that something will happen in Picard’s future.

The biggest hint, however, came from Allison Pill, where she briefly described her character, Dr. Agnes Jurati, as a robotics expert on the show. This led to thunderous applause from the audience as Pill grinned and did not say more about her character and what may possibly arise within the show.

5) Star Trek will continue to be a commentary on current socio-political and environmental issues.

This is the essence of what Star Trek is as a story and its role within the larger genre of Science Fiction.

One of the most prevalent misconceptions about Star Trek is that humanity is living in a Utopic state and period of time and that we all dream of achieving a Type 1 civilization.  This is incorrect, as Star Trek, like most Science Fiction and Fantasy, is really a commentary on the issues that humans face within their current lives, which can range from social problems to environmental dangers, to politics.

All the issues that we face today are heavily discussed in sci-fi, especially Star Trek, and are the driving force of what speculative fiction tries to achieve.

“We often talk about how Trek is a mirror that holds itself up to the world as it is, and we look around and we see a lot of disillusionment and a lot of confusion and a lot of disconnection. Many of the things we long for, hope, and understanding, compassion, and empathy, those things seem to be waning more and more, and Trek is the ultimate beacon of hope,” said Kurtzman.  “So, if you go into a future that doesn’t quite look like what you imagined it to be, Trek is always the anchor to bring you back to what’s possible, and to who we are at our best. We are looking to have something to say about the world as it is now reflected in the future that we present.”

Star Trek is one of those works of art that is known for addressing difficult notions that exist in society and providing philosophical, sociological, etc. lessons as a response to those issues.  To know that the cast and crew of both Discovery and Picard are in tune with how speculative fiction works is truly an assurance that the continuation of Trek into the future will be reflective of the values that the previous shows were built upon.

Anyways, Trek fans, those are the five important takeaways that I picked up on while attending the Star Trek Universe panel!

You can watch the new season three Star Trek Discovery trailer here, while also watching the highly anticipated (and extremely nerdgasmic) trailer to Star Trek: Picard here.

Also, if you’re a huge Star Trek geek like I am, I highly recommend watching the full STU Panel at NY Comic Con here, for it’s truly worth it!

Let us know what you think about the new trailers, about the panel, this article, or any of your thoughts about the Star Trek Universe in the comments below or through our social media accounts @theworkprint and @jadkaado!

NYCC 2019: “Big Mouth” Panel Provides Insights and Announcements

By
Bassam Kaado
-
0

The Netflix show delivered a fun and unique panel that matches its free spirit. 

If you haven’t seen Big Mouth, you are truly missing out. The smash-hit tackles real-life issues plaguing prepubescent teenagers as they face the troubles of puberty in an upbeat, interesting presentation. The panel did a great job replicating the vibe of this show, moving away from the typical panel setup to something more casual and intimate.

The panel began with a special, exclusive look at a Season 3 episode where the writers target a certain infamous state, keeping the audience in stitches throughout the nearly half-hour episode. 

Gracing the stage were creators Nick Kroll, Andrew Goldberg, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett; writers, Emily Altman and Jabouke Young White; and stars Jessi Klein and Jason Mantzoukas. Mantzoukas pulled double duty as the moderator of the panel, adding a personal aspect to the grouping. 

The panelists were relaxed and spent time reminiscing, even overcoming a broken chair. They talked about the revealed episode and the various inspirations they pulled from to write it and the show in general. This was followed by a long Q&A session, where they tried to answer as many questions as possible. 

Here are a few highlights:

  • The “Hormone World,” where the Department of Puberty resides, will be making a return.
  • The best advice for raising prepubescent boys is to just talk to them so the lines of communications are available. 
  • When writing, the creative minds of Big Mouth are conscious of potential kid viewers but do not let it dictate their choices.
  • Rick the Hormone Monster will also be making a return.
  • The show uses doctors and sex educators as consults to properly tell the stories. 

Three announcements:

  • The music of Big Mouth will be available soon in vinyl and Spotify.
  • Big Mouth has been renewed for three more seasons.
  • After season 5, a spin-off will premiere called Human Resources, which takes place in the “Hormone World” and explores the world of Big Mouth.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited for Big Mouth to return to Netflix.

 

NYCC 2019: 9 Things We Learned in the ‘Lost In Space’ Panel

By
Nicole C
-
0
LOST IN SPACE (Netflix)

Fans of Netflix’s Lost in Space were treated to a number of select scenes as well as the new teaser trailer for the upcoming season at New York Comic-Con this past weekend. In attendance were showrunner Zack Estrin and cast members Molly Parker (Maureen Robinson), Maxwell Jenkins (Will Robinson), Mina Sundwall (Penny Robinson), Taylor Russell (Judy Robinson), Ignacio Serricchio (Don West), and Parker Posey (June Harris/Dr. Smith).

First and foremost, it was revealed at the panel that the much awaited sophomore season would arrive on Netflix this coming December 24 to the delight of audiences in attendance. In addition, here are nine other important things were learned.

LOST IN SPACE (Netflix)
  • Season two starts seven months after the end of season one. We pick up with the group as a family again and this season is very much about growing up.
  • The Robot is a fierce protector, but this season he will be something completely different. The Robot and Will take very different paths this season.
  • The Jupiter will turn into a sailboat at some point.
  • JJ Feild joins the cast as Ben Adler, chief of advanced systems and artificial intelligence. He’s an academic contemporary of Maureen but has a lot in common with Will and the two become allies of sorts.
  • Dr. Smith and Maureen are the two sides of the same coin and they become much closer this season.
  • There are new aliens called Scarecrows.
  • Eventually the series will explore who created the robots and their origins.
  • Scope of season two is much larger with more creatures, planets, and bigger dangers.
  • More of the original Lost in Space cast will be appearing on the show.

Have a look at the first teaser trailer as well:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pdwBMPKUV3E

More on Lost in Space season two:

There’s more danger — and adventure — ahead for the Robinson family! With the Jupiter 2 stranded on a mysterious ocean planet without their beloved Robot, the Robinsons must work together, alongside the mischievous and manipulative Dr. Smith and the always charming Don West, to make it back to the Resolute and reunite with the other colonists. But they quickly find all is not as it seems. A series of incredible new threats and unexpected discoveries emerge as they look for the key to finding Robot and safe passage to Alpha Centauri. They will stop at nothing to keep their family safe… survival is a Robinson specialty after all.

The Netflix original series is produced by Legendary Television.

Lost in Space stars Toby Stephens, Molly Parker, Maxwell Jenkins, Mina Sundwall, Taylor Russell, Ignacio Serricchio and Parker Posey. Zack Estrin (showrunner), Kevin Burns, Jon Jashni, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless serve as executive producers.

NYCC 2019: Revisiting ‘Y The Last Man’ Panel and TV Update

By
Christian Angeles
-
0

What started as a childhood fantasy about the babysitter became a thoughtful comic about gender and a capuchin monkey. 

On Friday at NYCC, the Eisner-Award winning ‘Y The Last Man’ comic had a reunion panel looking back at the series. In attendance, was writer Brian K. Vaughn, artist Pia Guerra, and editor Heidi MacDonald, together again 17 years since the series debuted. Many secrets were revealed about the series’ origins, including how the story about an escape artist turned the last man in the entire world, was close to cancellation.

“One would say it didn’t release more as it had escaped,” said Vaughn during the panel about how close the series was from getting axed after its initial lukewarm reception. The trio revealed that in order to continue the comic needed to sell 50,000 copies at the time but were only able to reach 17,000. A large reason it avoided cancellation, was word of mouth, the internet, and fandom for a post 9/11 comic that surprisingly tackled a lot of gender issues for its time. Especially in regards to the gender gap in labor. With an emphasis on positions of science, engineering, and politics, in a world that was suddenly devoid of all men in those fields, and needed women to fill the roles. Heidi MacDonald took credit for showcasing the statistical discrepancy in issue one, which was a move that served as a great emotional turn for issue one.

The panel then praised Pia’s Guerra’s notable artwork to the series which was critical in the series success. Guerra’s work focused much on character emotions and facial expressions, something she worked on extensively with Brian acting the scenes out, but also keeping cognizant of tone. She revealed that After Y The Last Man, she’d taken time off from comics, though did occasional layout work and consulting. This, however, changed in 2016 after Donald Trump had become president and the world, according to Guerra, had changed. She then became a political cartoonist whose works you can see everywhere, though particularly, The New Yorker. She claimed that years of growing as a comic creator taught her how to narrow the scope all the way down to even single panels of political satire.

Finally, a big part of the story admittedly by the panel, was Yorick, a character Brian admitted to modeling partially after himself, and particularly, his interests with magic at the time.  Brian K. Vaughn expressed that writing the comic was a form of self-therapy. One showcased in Yorick’s journey, as in an ironically cathartic moment in the series, the escape artist confronts a bondage mistress who’s actually a secret agent. Their encounter forces him to confront his own suicidal ideations in a powerful moment that very much describes how the male Last Man on Earth fantasy can stem from personal depression, a lack of confidence, and even self-loathing.

“Yorick was a piece of shit but ends in a good place.” Brian K Vaughn

In a funny moment at the very beginning of the panel, Heidi brought up Brian’s inspiration for the series and the author admitted how the idea for the story began a long time ago, as a male fantasy about the babysitter he used to crush on. He admitted that after going to an all boy’s Catholic Highschool, and being an outsider most of his life, he thought would it be like if he was the only man left in the world with his babysitter? Thus, beginning a piece about a male fantasy that turned into a compelling story about gender.

One audience member even joked that possibly this is why the 355 love story happened. As she had basically played babysitter to Yorick throughout the entire series.

TV Development

Overall, the team was happy got to retain the rights to the story, as it had undergone several possible adaptive iterations, first as a movie and now a TV series meant to release on FX in 2020. Showrunner Eliza Clark was also well received by the trio who believe they’re leaving the story in capable hands for television.

The three also revealed that the story will be modernized and reflective of more modern issues. This includes keeping an ear to gender issues of the time and having a writer’s room that includes writers who are trans.

“I’m glad it took this long to get here as I think this is the version you guys deserve” Brian K Vaughn

NYCC 2019: ‘Resident Evil Project Resistance’ Shows Promise

By
Christian Angeles
-
0
Resident Evil Project Resistance Booth at Comic Con

With a demo available at New York Comic Con, Resident Evil Project Resistance is a beta version of what’s essentially Left 4 Dead meets an Escape The Room game.

For fans of the Resident Evil series, a mysterious new game development codenamed ‘Project Resistance’ was showcased back in early September. Little was known about the demo save that it was seemingly a co-op resident evil game much like Resident Evil Outbreak.

Thankfully, we at The Workprint were able to sit down and play as survivors through two rounds over at the well-decorated Capcom booth.

In Project Resistance, you get to play as one of five different roles. Four of whom are survivors, each with their own unique skills and abilities. Each meant to complement each other through cooperative gameplay. For example, some characters can observe traps or zombies others can’t, some serve as tanks against the Tyrant (Mr. X) better than others, and some can even drop an area-of-effect heal on the ground.

Resident Evil Project Resistance Character Roles

The survivor’s scenario is very escape-the-room, where the team needs to coordinate to get past zombies, solve puzzles, and find several keys to unlock the next exit point. The survivors also operate on an in-game timer that ends in a loss if it reaches zero. However, the further the survivor team progresses in solving puzzles and making it to the next room, the more time they’re given to finish the level.

At the same time, another human opponent, nicknamed the ‘Mastermind’, serves as the map’s antagonist in a similar fashion to the game Dead by Daylight. Though instead of controlling just one menacing monstrosity, the mastermind can selectively control the map’s zombies, as well utilize the area’s traps such as gun turrets. Their goal is to stop the survivors at any cost.

My Character I Played As

I got to play as the melee character, and though the learning curve was simple for a Resident Evil veteran such as myself, the controls felt a little stiff.

Surprisingly, there was no running throughout the map and the melee felt a tad clunky and aimless. Likewise, though item management is a key aspect of cooperative play, I had no idea how to coordinate or even exchange items as the controls didn’t seem forward. You can, however, find credits throughout the map to purchase items for yourself at supply stations. These stations hold weapons, ammo, and herbs usable by your player. All of which is important, because of one big surprise that I hadn’t anticipated: melee weapons break with usage over time.

My second playthrough I bought a backup bat after my first wooden stick had broken and I was left with just my fists, so it’s good to buy back up weapons regardless of your role.

Overall, Project Resistance worth checking out when you’re at NYCC this weekend. There were promising elements and very cool cameo zombies such as Mr. X, Lickers, and Zombie Dogs. Though if you can finagle it, try playing as ‘The Mastermind’ as it seems like the more interesting role.

NYCC 2019: ‘Emergence’ Promises Big Reveals Ahead

By
Nicole C
-
0
ABC's Emergence cast at New York Comic-Con 2019

The cast of ABC’s Emergence was at New York Comic-Con today and some lucky attendees were able to screen the third episode of this new sci-fi thriller series. While audiences were told not to spoil anything for other fans, there is a big reveal that shocked star Allison Tolman that I’m sure we all collectively can’t wait to find out about.

Emergence follows the story of a mysterious young girl found near the site of a plane crash by local sheriff Jo Evans, played by Tolman. Jo takes the girl in after discovering that Piper (whom she names) can’t remember anything about where she came from or who she is. Soon however, strange things begin to happen that seem unexplainable and sinister forces are after the sheriff’s new house guest. The first two episodes have already aired and we’ve seen some strange things with Piper exhibiting special abilities, a car that acts like a super magnet, disturbing corpse disposal, and a determined group with an unknown agenda. The show though also focuses on Jo’s family with her daughter Mia, father Ed, and ex-husband Alex, all of whom get tangled up in the events surrounding Piper.

The Workprint had a chance to catch up with the cast after their panel and where they continued to disclose how fast paced the show is, mindful of how the television landscape has changed in the age of binge watching. Owain Yeoman who plays journalist Benny Gallagher said, “We deliver answers very very quickly in this show, I know a lot of shows say that but once you see episode three I think you’ll agree. You know we don’t mess around, we respect the viewers, we don’t want to just draw this mystery out endlessly.”

“It doesn’t stop, I think three changes the landscape quite a bit in our show and then every episode after that it just grows and grows and gets bigger,” Robert Bailey Jr. (Chris Minetto) adds. We’re certainly hooked!

Watch the full interview with Yeoman and Bailey below as well as our interviews with Tolman, Alexa Swinton (Piper), Ashley Aufderheide (Mia Evans), Donald Faison (Alex Evans), Zabryna Guevara (Abby Fraiser) and Clancy Brown (Ed Sawyer).

 

Emergence airs Tuesdays 10/9 Central on ABC.

Prodigal Son Review: Annihilator

By
Norton
-
0
PRODIGAL SON: L-R: Tom Payne and Michael Sheen in the "Annihilator" episode of PRODIGAL SON airing Monday, Sept. 30 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. © 2019 FOX MEDIA LLC. Cr: Peter Kramer/ FOX.

I feel confident in saying that most people have thought about killing their relatives. I don’t mean it in a serious way, like you genuinely planned out the steps, timed out the access points, and wrote up a good suicide note or practiced your confession for when it all comes crashing down around you. I mean, family can be a pain in the ass and we’ve all thought about it. Monday night’s Prodigal Son features what is known as a “Family Annihilator” as the killer-of-the-week. A type of murderer who takes out whole families. Mostly the killer comes from inside the house (as it were), can have a number of motivations (though a lot of times it simply boils down to the male ego not being able to handle failing to support the family), and will likely commit suicide – or easily confess once caught. These killers can be ladies, though this episode sticks to the expected: a white male in his forties.

The case is explored easily enough. Malcolm goes to the crime scene, profiles the killer based on the victims left behind, helps the flirty M.E. Dr. Edrisa Guilfoyle not die by a snake, tracks down a missing heir who turns out didn’t want anything to do with the family (which results in Malcolm getting bit by a snake himself), and discovers an illegitimate son who desperately wanted into the family only to be callously rejected by the now-deceased patriarch. Said suspect tries to murder himself and his family only to be thwarted on all counts. Mixed in are growths in the relationships between Malcolm and his sister, Malcolm and his mother, Malcolm and his father, Malcolm and Dani Powell (the lady cop I initially thought might be a romantic possibility but now it’s looking more like the M.E. is playing that part), and of course flashbacks to 20 years ago. These, in particular, feel especially important – more so than the case itself – and there’s a good reason for that.

Being a new show, Prodigal Son needs to use its second showing as a means to solidify any progress made by its first and give the audience a glimpse into what direction the season is going. The pilot set up a piece of the puzzle – Malcolm as a kid, 20 years ago, calling the cops on his father. “Annihilator” sets up another – Malcolm as a kid, 20 years ago, discovering a woman’s body in a trunk in his father’s hobby room in the cellar. This memory expands, in stylized fashion, of course, to include a new scene of Martin putting a chloroform-soaked rag over his son’s mouth. We get a little more of the puzzle when we see a later dream/memory in which Martin has put Malcolm to bed, explained to his mother the boy was simply sleep-walking, and then giving him another dose of chloroform for good measure. But what does it ultimately mean? Was there a woman in the box? According to the majority of the episode both of Malcolm’s parents and his father-figure cop friend Gil Arroyo say “No.” Will it turn out Bright is crazy? Will it turn out his father fooled everyone and really did kill that poor girl? Or, will it turn out that Malcolm killed the girl (getting strong vibes this will definitely be the one they go with, even if it’s just a fake-out)? Gotta stay tuned to find out!

PRODIGAL SON: L-R: Frank Harts, Aurora Perrineau and Lou Diamond Phillips in the “Annihilator” episode of PRODIGAL SON airing Monday, Sept. 30 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. © 2019 FOX MEDIA LLC. Cr: Peter Kramer/ FOX.

Other aspects of this episode that deserve exploration:

The term Annihilator can also be applied to Martin Whitly. While the profile explains it as a person who physically murders families, metaphorically Martin fits the bill for destroying his own. During a conversation in his prison cell, Martin expresses that he can’t be an annihilator because he never killed out of love, though he does show an obvious admiration for this type of killer. Figuratively speaking though, Martin is every bit the annihilator. The actions of these individuals are not impulsive. Their plans, rage, and inevitable solutions build up over time. Martin’s crimes were not some random acts of cruelty, rather, he deliberately hid his true nature from those closest to him for years. Annihilators also, obviously, destroy families. Martin “destroys” his family, fracturing them from the head (hi patriarchy!) down.

Let’s address the elephant! Malcolm’s dad is a serial killer, isn’t that weird? Det. Tarmel, your thoughts? This scene sets up as if it’s going to go somewhere and then…doesn’t. All Tarmel asks is if it was weird for Malcolm to be raised by a serial killer. That’s it. That’s the whole scene!

SUPER thirsty dad! For a cold-blooded serial killer, Martin definitely can’t handle being ghosted by his son. Just one taste of contact turns him into a full-on phone stalker, leaving Malcolm several voice messages when he doesn’t get any response.

Snakes! Snakes provide a bit of backstory for Malcolm (he used to own some), a little comic relief (that Muppet fall when he’s bit at the animal smuggler’s place!), and of course a danger factor! Black Mambas, keep up the good work!

I’m slightly convinced that Malcolm might be gay. This is largely due to the fact that Tom Payne’s “Jesus” from The Walking Dead was gay, but also because so far in the series the topics of sex and relationships have been largely ignored. The pilot saw Malcolm’s mother broaching the subject of matchmaking, with him squirreling out of it via text save from Det. Arroyo. This episode stands out for two reasons – for one, the M.E. flirts heavily with Malcolm and he seems polite but noncommittal, yet later in a private conversation with Powell, Malcolm assures her he’s had lots of sex before. They might be avoiding the sex and relationship territory for a couple of reasons:

  1. It’s only the second episode! Jeeze…cool your jets, Norton! This is a procedural crime drama, even Law and Order waited years to give us any insight into the personal lives of their law and order officers. Also, let’s not forget, this might just not be that kind of show! Flirt yes, fuck no (pun intended).
  2. If he is gay, it would put him in a very small pool of show leads (hi Batwoman, and Instinct!) which means they might want to ease into the reveal – remember the big draw of this show is a profiler with a serial killer who is a father, if he happens to be gay, fine, but it’s not a publicity plug.
  3. Malcolm is a pretty fucked up character all around. Whether he winds up with Powell, the M.E., or an as yet unknown male character, the relationship will require a slow burn and a buttload of patience.

 

1...484950...123Page 49 of 123

Copyright © 2022 The Workprint