A classic of 90s action cinema, Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall was full of delightful incongruous images. Arnold Schwarzenegger pulling a golf ball-sized tracking device from his nostril, or beating the hell out of clueless goons while wearing a lumberjack shirt.

And yet, as insanely brilliant as Total Recall was, Verhoeven and Schwarzenegger's film drove colossal tank tracks over Philip K. Dick's original short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, using the slight material as a launch pad for a sprawling space opera with only distant echoes of the author's paranoia-ridden questioning of reality.

The news that Len Wiseman is set to remake Total Recall has filled many fans of the original with consternation, and it's certainly true that Verhoeven's film doesn't need to be rehashed. Few directors could match the original film's manic pace and joyous sense of the absurd and it's difficult to imagine a Hollywood studio giving the go-ahead to such a violent big-budget film.

However, in an interview with Collider, producer Neal Moritz has suggested that Len Wiseman's Total Recall will be anything but a mere remake. In fact, much of what Moritz says about the picture is extremely positive. For one thing, he insists that the new film will remain "closer" to Dick's short story.

Moritz also confirms that Colin Farrell will be playing the lead role in the film, which is itself a significant indicator of where Wiseman's film will be headed. Far from the muscle-bound warrior presented in Verhoeven's movie, the protagonist in We Can Remember It For You Wholesale is an ordinary, somewhat meek everyman called Douglas Quail. The casting of Farrell would certainly fit Dick's writing better than Schwarzenegger ever could.

While the new Total Recall is likely to be closer to Dick's story in terms of tone, Wiseman's film will nevertheless retain the epic sweep of Verhoeven's 90s adaptation, with Moritz describing the film as "bigger in scope" than Battle: Los Angeles.

"I think the world that Len Wiseman is creating is incredible," Moritz said. "It's a real world, a real future world, where the cities have just gotten so overcrowded that the cities are just built up, up, up, up. It's just everything I see on the movie, every pre-vis I see on the movie, every conceptual drawing on this movie that I see just makes me more and more excited. We're playing it like a real world, but there's all these technological advancements to the real world, and it's just really, it's cool."

Moritz also hints at a "great twist" at the end of the film, and talks rather enigmatically about the fact that it won't "go to space", but instead, "there's something that takes us from one side of the planet to another that's really interesting."

That the new Total Recall will at least attempt to be its own film rather than a warmed-over remake is, at least for us, quite encouraging. It's worth noting, too, that while Total Recall has been described as a major "tentpole" picture, it won't be shot in 3D ("We decided that it would be too much," says Moritz), a further sign, perhaps, that the film won't be a mere cash-in on a much loved name.

Total Recall is set to commence shooting on 15 May in Toronto. And while some question marks still remain (not least due to the fact that Wiseman hasn't yet directed a genuinely great movie), we're cautiously optimistic that he can create a new slant on We Can Remember It For You Wholesale that complements Paul Verhoeven's 90s action classic instead of merely detracting from it.

Collider

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Are you a small time crook whose recent job was foiled by a superhero, resulting in a highly characteristic disfigurement? Was the love of your life killed in an experiment gone awry during which a costumed vigilante intervened?

No matter how misguided or just plain wrong your grudge may be, if you want revenge on a superhero, mayor of a city, or even the entire world, you've come to the right place.

These tips and points to consider will aid you in whatever maniacal scheme you happen to be plotting and help avoid the well worn path of failure that has been trodden by so many of your villainous peers...

Forget the costume

Turning a hideous disfigurement to your advantage should always be applauded. Basing your entire persona on the fact that your nose was chewed off by feral badgers, however, should not. Just because you have been driven to the very brink of insanity by grief or industrial chemicals doesn't mean you have to dress like it.

Imagine if you were a superhero. When capturing criminals would you go after a normal, everyday thug, or the guy with the crazy laugh who is dressed like all of the village people?

Why not get plastic surgery and dress like a librarian? You can keep your insane hatred burning away on the inside, but look like a normal person on the surface. Blend into the crowds and when the opportunity arises, work your devious scheme to bring your nemesis to their knees. And if you really need a chilling super villain identity you can call yourself 'The Librarian', as long as no-one is listening.

Getting started

It goes without saying that the first obstacle to your criminal endeavours will probably be money. Armoured trousers, personalised weapons and trained attack voles do not grow on trees. You need cash and fast.

Your first instinct will be to perform a daring heist at midday on the largest bank in the city. As the surrounding block swarms with police, reporters, gawpers and superheroes, yourself and your IQ-challenged goons will escape from the rooftops in a getaway helicopter with your hideous visage emblazoned across the side.

Although this is a great way to obtain a lot of money relatively quickly, think of the downsides: massive publicity, definite superhero involvement, police interference and your face on every news station in the developed world. While these might be ideal conditions for launching your own fragrance or line of furry underwear, they are in no way going to make the growth of your crime empire any easier.

Why not try Internet fraud? If Nigerian princes can do it, then why can't you? Re-inventing yourself as a multi-millionaire vole farmer who has to get his millions out of communist controlled Madeuponia is relatively easy to set up, but the returns can be huge.

While you're at it, why not sell entirely imaginary Viagra and other performance-enhancing drugs to fat businessmen who don't really know what an Internet is.

With the whole world to scam, use your imagination. The possibilities are endless.

Location, location, location

Every super villain needs somewhere to hang their gaudily-coloured and highly technological hat, and you're no different. Abandoned zoos, circuses and theme parks might be readily available and suitably creepy potential sites for your operations, but they are also highly conspicuous and easily infiltrated by your heroic opposite.

If you decide to go down the executive villain route and get yourself a fancy office building, try to resist the temptation to give your front company an evil sounding name. Killers Inc, Death Ltd or Armageddon International might sound cool, but do you really need the attention?

Try to choose something that sounds benign and uninteresting. Curtains International, The National Institute for Vole Research or Consolidated Galvanised Rubber are all good choices.

Whatever you name your company, try pick the logo that will adorn the front of your building carefully. Keep the tigers, swords, guns and sharp pointy bits to a minimum.

Goons: a user's guide

Every super villain needs goons to pull off smaller jobs, make the tea, feed the aforementioned voles etc. But your choice of hood could mean the difference between life and death.

Give the prospective hoodlum an application form. If it comes back five hours later, completed in crayon and spelled with pictures, they will probably do more harm than good. If the form has actual words on it move them forward to the next round.

Now we've weeded out the ones who can't work spoons, it's time to get rid of the clever ones, as they will just try to take over at some point. Look for qualifications. If they've got any, they should go straight on the 'no' pile.

The ideal goon should be unswervingly loyal, have the ability to shoot straight and be intelligent enough to hold the right end of the gun without the ambition to point it at you.

Do you really need the world?

No doubt, at some point on your super villain 'to do' list right between 'need more milk' and 'mutated vole army?' will be 'take over the world'.

It seems like a plan with no drawbacks living in gold covered palaces, billions of subjects cowering at your every bellow, all the foie gras stuffed pandas you could ever eat. What more could you possibly want?

But before you unleash your politician and monarchy seeking missiles, just consider the downside. People, whether you care or not, need stuff. New roads, healthcare, coat hangers, submarines. The list is endless. Leaving them to it isn‘t an option, because they will eventually lead a revolution and there are six billion of them. You wouldn‘t have a grub in a vole pit's chance of survival. Ruling over them isn't an option, because there are six billion of them, even with your most loyal and least mentally-challenged goons by your side, you still can't hope to manage them all.

Finally, depending on just how unstable you might be, you could consider killing them all, but what's the point? You'd just be a lonely person in a shiny castle with no-one to stuff your pandas.

Keep it simple super villain

Okay, so you now have the money, the headquarters and the manpower, but do you have a plan? Of course you do. You're a super villain. It probably involves fake alien spacecraft, thermonuclear devices and lots and lots of voles.

Whatever your goal is, does it need to be that complicated? If you really want to get revenge on a superhero, do you absolutely need to convince them of an alien invasion, nuclear war or biblical-style vole infestation?

Most superheroes will turn up if you rob a post office, so why bother with a 10 year plan, just so you can tie them up, point at them and laugh.

Remember, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And if your plan has more components than Rube Goldberg's toaster, something will definitely go awry.

Super villain team-ups

Had an offer from a fellow super villain about a prospective partnership? Think carefully before you take them up on it.

Let‘s say that Peking Duck, the exotic mistress of martial arts with the power to bewitch wildfowl, approaches you with a plan. There are a few considerations to take before you shake on an agreement:

Who's the boss?

Super villains are an egotistical lot and don‘t look kindly on taking orders. Putting two together could be a recipe for disaster. Get the pecking order sorted or there will be feathers and bits of vole covering every available surface before you know it.

What's the plan?

Make sure there's just one plan. Imagine you've just landed your fake spaceship in the city centre and the animatronic alien vole is shambling down the gangplank when another alien craft shows up two minutes later with a cybernetic duck monster. You wouldn't know where to put your face.

Who kills the super hero?

You both want revenge. Superheroes do a lot of meddling and you both have a grudge. So, who delivers the final death blow? Play scissors, paper, stone, flip a coin, draw straws. Anything! Just make sure that there's no argument when the time comes or there will be another vole/duck smackdown before you know it. And plenty of opportunities for your target to escape.

Whatever you do, never trust them. They will stab you in the back the second they can profit from it. After all, that's what you were going to do, isn't it?

Don't explain your plan

Let's assume your plan went off without a hitch. Your archenemy is finally powerless and lies prostrate at your feet. As an attempt to best your foe intellectually as well as physically, you'll be tempted to explain your entire scheme to the smallest detail.

Please don't. You're just giving them the time they desperately need to draw their strength or break free and throw you into a facility, from which you will easily escape to start the whole process over again.

Good luck!

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Liam Neeson is proving himself an adept and very watchable action lead these days, most notably in the recent hit Taken, to which a sequel is on the way. But first up for him is his incoming new movie Unknown, co-starring January Jones, Diane Kruger and Frank Langella.

Unknown follows the story of Neeson's Doctor Harris, who wakes up after a car accident only to discover that someone else has taken his identity, and his wife doesn't recognise who he is.

Based on the book Out Of My Head by Didier van Cauwelaert, Unknown then follows Neeson's character as he tries to sort it all out.

And as you can see from the UK exclusive poster for the film that we have here, Mr Neeson has that 'not to be messed with' face on him, that served him so well throughout Taken.

The film arrives in the UK on Friday 25th February.

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In 2011 Starz, the studio behind Spartacus: Blood And Sand and Pillars Of The Earth, will take us back to the Dark Ages in its take on the Arthurian legend. Despite the BBC's renewing Merlin for a fourth season, TV bosses clearly think there is room for another Arthurian series with Camelot.

The series, which will get an initial 10 episode season, will star Jamie Campbell Bower as Arthur, Joseph Fiennes as Merlin, Eva Green as the sorceress Morgan, Tamsin Egerton as Guinevere, Claire Forlani as Igraine and Peter Mooney as Kay. James Purefoy and Clive Standen also star as King Lot and Gawain.

Starz has released the series' official description, saying,

"In the wake of King Uther's sudden death, chaos threatens to engulf Britain. When the sorcerer Merlin has visions of a dark future, he installs the young and impetuous Arthur, Uther's unknown son and heir, who has been raised from birth as a commoner. But Arthur's cold and ambitious half sister Morgan will fight him to the bitter end, summoning unnatural forces to claim the crown in this epic battle for control. These are dark times indeed for the new King, with Guinevere being the only shining light in Arthur's harsh world. Faced with profound moral decisions, and the challenge of uniting a kingdom broken by war and steeped in deception, Arthur will be tested beyond imagination. Forget everything you think you know ... this is the story of Camelot that has never been told before."

You can almost guarantee Camelot will have more sex and violence than Merlin...

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It's taken quite a while to get this far, that's fair to say. But finally, the long-delayed shoot of The Hobbit is set to begin in February.

The Hobbit is, as you probably know, set to split into two films, both being helmed by Peter Jackson, and shot at the same time in New Zealand over the coming year. And once Martin Freeman had been announced as Bilbo Baggins, the main cast had pretty much fallen into place.

The last pieces of the jigsaw are gradually being put into place now, ahead of the marathon shoot of the films. And it's now, finally, been confirmed that Sir Ian McKellen will definitely return as Gandalf, while Andy Serkis is back as Gollum.

Ian Holm is believed to be in negotiations to play the older Bilbo Baggins, too.

Furthermore, following the financial mire that MGM found itself in that led to the delay in production, we understand that Warner Bros is now stumping up the full $500m budget for the films, and taking the lion's share of the distribution rights as a result. This is good timing for Warner Bros, as the Harry Potter franchise, which has kept its balance sheet in fine fettle, ends this year. And that means that, for 2012 and 2013 at least, The Hobbit can now attempt to fill that gap.

Expect the few remaining casting gaps to be filled in the next few weeks, and then let the shoot begin...

The Hollywood Reporter

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Signs that the shoot of the Alien prequel might just be edging a lot closer comes with the news this morning that Charlize Theron could be in line to take the female lead in the project.

Vulture is reporting that Theron has backed away from a potential role in Clint Eastwood's upcoming biopic of J Edgar Hoover, where she was linked with the role of Hoover's secretary, Helen Gandy. And Theron's availability has apparently alerted 20th Century Fox, which Vulture reports "is working overtime to re-jigger its planned prequel to Ridley Scott's Alien" in an effort to get Theron on board.

Ridley Scott is keen for Noomi Rapace to take the lead female role in the film, Elizabeth Shaw. But Fox is reportedly nervous about the profile of Rapace, who is best known for playing Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish films of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trilogy. That said, Rapace is currently shooting Sherlock Holmes 2 with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law, which is due out at the end of the year.

However, for the role of Vickers, described as "a fortysomething, tough-but-sexy crewmember", Fox is seemingly leaning towards Theron, whereas Scott has previously pushed for Michelle Yeoh in the role.

Vulture reports that the role of Vickers is being rewritten so that "it's larger and befitting, if not of Theron, then at least of someone of Theron's stature".

Theron is set to receive the script this week, and a decision is expected shortly.

Read more on all of this over at Vulture, right here.

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Currently shooting ahead of its release next summer, the reboot of the cinematic Spider-Man franchise has added another member of cast to its roster.

C Thomas Howell is the latest to sign up, and Entertainment Weekly reports that the actor is set to play the role of Ray. Which Ray this is hasn't been clarified, but speculation suggests it's Ray Cooper, the father of Carlie Cooper, a girlfriend of Peter Parker in the comics. That doesn't sound particularly plausible to us, so we'll just go with a mysterious Ray for the time being.

Meanwhile, Stan Lee has been dropping hints about his usual cameo in the film. The news came via his Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/therealstanlee, where Lee revealed that he'd had a phone call from producer Avi Arad about what his role would be.

"Avi told me my cameo is all set for Spidey 4, and when he described it, I realized it's the best, most unusual one yet!", Lee tweeted, adding "I wish I could tell you what my cameo is, but that would kill the surprise. But I'll tell you this much-I'm finally in an action scene!".

What do you reckon? Will Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man save Stan Lee from the clutches of Rhys Ifans? We'll find out in the summer of 2012...

Entertainment Weekly

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It was towards the end of last year that we last caught a story of an alleged The Dark Knight Rises script leak. Which, given that the screenplay is more than likely being held in whatever Warner Bros' security equivalent of Fort Knox is, always struck us as unlikely.

While the key actors in the film are likely to have their copy of the screenplay now, even those are likely to be surrounded by massive security precautions. Warner Bros, and Christopher Nolan, have played details of the recent Batman films close to their chests, and things aren't likely to be different with The Dark Knight Rises.

And yet, Script Flags is arguing that the latest supposed screenplay leak might have something more to it. As the site writes, "if it is fake, its the best fake we have ever come across."

Just for the record, we'd still be amazed if it was the real thing.

Script Flags reports that the script in its possession is dated October 2010, 165 pages long, and states it's written by Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer, with a story by Christopher Nolan.

In the script itself, and you might want to look away on the very off chance that this is the real deal, characters include Talia al Ghul, Deadshot, The Black Mask and Hugo Strange (under the name of Edward Nashton, for some reason. Script Flags wonders if this is an amalgam of The Riddler and Hugo Strange). And it takes place in a Gotham City where Batman has a reconstructed Batcave, Wayne Enterprises is facing a lawsuit, Lucius Fox is having to turn against Bruce Wayne, and Batman himself has become something of a myth.

What the script doesn't have is "a clear female villain", and it's known that Christopher Nolan has been hunting for two female leads for the project. Given that the script is dated October, and the final draft was completed in January, there would still be wiggle room there.

But much as we're interested in The Dark Knight Rises, and much as we're interested in the increasing rise of seemingly fake screenplays, we don't hold out much hope that most of the above is on the level.

It's still interesting, though, and if you do crave further details on it, then head over to Script Flags, right here.

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When we come to the end of 2011, see if we don't look back on January 7th as The Day When Movie Titles Lied. Last Friday, a menagerie of misnomers flooded into cinemas.

The Next Three Days is a film which takes place prior to the titular 72 hour span. 127 Hours only lasts 93 minutes. Season Of The Witch, without spoiling anything, is also a misnomer. And into this maelstrom of benevolent false advertising comes It's Kind Of A Funny Story. Because it's really not.

That's not to say it is a bad story. It's just not exactly the type of film you'd expect with that title, and Zach Galifianakis amongst the credits. Keir Gilchrist is Craig, a suicidal teenager who seeks help at a mental institution on a Sunday morning, hoping that all of his problems can be solved in time for school on Monday morning.

This fundamental misunderstanding of how mental health aid works leads to Craig inadvertently committing himself for a minimum stay of five days. Suffering from stress vomiting in addition to his serious self-esteem issues, Craig comes to put his problems in perspective as he meets various fellow patients over the course of his stay.

In his role as one of these patients, the most interesting thing about It's Kind Of A Funny Story is that it's something of a graduation for Zach Galifianakis. He ditches the man-child shtick in between Todd Phillips films to play a proper dramatic role for a change. He acquits himself pretty well.

We're not talking as good as Jim Carrey in The Truman Show, or Steve Carell in Little Miss Sunshine, but he shows he has ability to dramatically work the makeshift mentor role. This, alongside a different kind of mental fragility, the kind that doesn't necessarily inspire audiences to create Facebook groups named after his every line of dialogue, makes for interesting viewing.

The case with many of these films that involve the protagonist finding themselves and putting their problems into perspective, is that the eventual catharsis isn't worth the effort it took to get there. Case in point, Eat Pray Love, and other recent much-maligned features along the same lines. There's a danger of all the introspective gubbins actually alienating the audience in the final analysis, if we can't actually relate to all of the prognosticating.

For his part, Gilchrist holds interest throughout in his portrayal of the troubled Craig. It's especially worthy of mention when you consider how staid the elements in play actually seem. Look at the romantic side of the proceedings. The object of his affections is his best friend's girlfriend, and she starts showing an interest just as he finds a connection with a ‘there all along' female patient, played nicely by Emma Roberts.

However, whenever Craig sits down to do something recreational with his fellow patients, the film has this tendency to suddenly explode into life. In one instance, he begins drawing mind maps and his imagined architecture becomes an animated panoramic through a city made of watercolours and pencil. Later, we get a musical number, Queen and David Bowie's Under Pressure.

Such non-sequiturs are largely there to distract from the fact that it's kind of an adequate story rather than a funny one. There are jokes in here, but nothing that particularly made me laugh. Some of it made me smile, but there's really nothing except the initial incredulous mirth that comes whenever a film like this suddenly bursts into a musical number.

It's Kind Of A Funny Story is the kind of film that does have an audience, but it's not as good as others in the quirky indie comedy subset it inhabits, like Little Miss Sunshine or Juno or (500) Days Of Summer, the level to which I think this one aspires. By all accounts, it's a disappointment that it comes from the directors of Half-Nelson, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who've demonstrated more capability in previous works.

I doubt it's going to linger in my memory for longer than a week, but it grew on me a little while I was watching it. It had to at some point, because it feels a lot longer than its 101 minutes. It's certainly not the outright boring and awful mush of self-indulgence I was led to expect by certain reviews, but it only has the earnest acting efforts of Gilchrist, Roberts and Galifianakis to rescue it from obsolescence.

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Over the last few years, comic book videogames have become big business again. If you don’t believe me, just look at some of 2011’s most hotly anticipated games. Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. DC Universe Online. Batman: Arkham City. All based on comics.

But what makes a good comic book adaptation? In this article, we take a look at some of the best and worst games based on comics, and ask what it was that made them work (or not), analysing what challenges must be overcome when adapting superheroes to a playable medium, and – hopefully – pointing you in the direction of a few games worth playing too.

In a nice act of symmetry, the first ever comic to videogame adaptation actually starred the first proper superhero. Superman was released for the Atari 2600 in 1978, the same year as the Richard Donner film. You could be forgiven for being underwhelmed by its looks, but be fair - the Atari didn’t have many pixels to work with, and it still looks like Superman (if you squint a lot).

Okay, you’re probably not convinced, but looks aside, the game is actually fondly remembered. Why? Because despite its limited resources, it actually managed to capture what being Superman was like. For a start, it replicated the character’s freedom, which saw him able to move through the city in four directions and enter a limited number of buildings (including the Daily Planet) in what was effectively an open world, although on heavily restricted by the technology of the time.

The game’s rather cute mechanics required the player to move their Clark Kent sprite into a phonebox in order to transform into Superman, and the gameplay itself was actually quite varied, requiring you to first reassemble a bridge Lex Luthor had stolen, then track down Luthor and his goons, and finally transform back into Clark Kent and return to work.

Perhaps the reason Superman for the Atari is so well-liked is because it succeeded where so many superhero games have failed since – they remembered to adapt the source material, rather than plug the characters into a generic setting. You didn’t just play as Superman – you assumed his role, protecting the city and apprehending the crooks, actually delivering them to jail rather than just punching them until they disappeared.

You might have only had access to two of Superman’s powers (X-Ray vision and flight) but with only 4K of memory at its disposal, Superman was actually a worthy inheritor of the name.

Of course, it’s fairly damning that the challenge of bringing Superman to gaming never quite reached such charming heights again. Although the 1988 Superman arcade game looked great (and included an awesome surprise in its two-player mode, where player two appeared as Superman Red) it was an utterly unoriginal side-scrolling beat ‘em up which took little advantage of either the protagonist or its setting.

The 1992 16-bit Superman game for the SNES/Mega Drive didn’t even let you fly (what?!) while the 1999 Superman 64 game is frequently cited as one of the worst adaptations of all time.

In the meantime, technology and gamers’ expectations were evolving. Spider-Man, who up until the 00s barely had a game worth playing to his name (anyone who fondly remembers Maximum Carnage is advised to go back and actually play it, then admit rose-tinted hindsight), was finally granted something great with 2005’s Ultimate Spider-Man, a game that combined the open-world mechanics of the recent Spider-Man 2 movie adaptation game with a story written by celebrated comic book writer, Brian Bendis.

The results were spectacular fun, allowing gamers to roam around the Marvel New York, saving citizens, fighting super-villains, or just having fun climbing up buildings. Despite the character appearing in numerous games since, none have managed to adapt Spider-Man and his world so faithfully or enjoyably.

The success of this open-world approach (also seen in Hulk: Ultimate Destruction) did not go unnoticed, and in 2006’s Superman Returns, developers attempted to break the Superman videogame curse and return to the idea of players assuming Superman’s role. But even though the ideas look good on paper: a free-roaming city, randomised side-missions and – for the first time – an attempt to model Superman’s invincibility (the “health” bar referred to the damage inflicted on Metropolis, rather than Superman), it wasn’t enough to overcome the curse. Poor graphics, repetitive gameplay and an underwhelming story meant that it received poor reviews. The character has stayed away from consoles since.

The idea of assuming the role of the characters is, it seems, one that crops up in all of the truly great comic book videogames. 1988’s Batman: The Caped Crusader offered players two stories to play through, presenting each screen as a comic book 'panel' and emphasising exploration and detection over combat. Compared to the subsequent efforts throughout the 90s and 00s – a rash of movie and cartoon licensed versions which quickly nose-dived in quality and stayed there – they were inspired.

Funnily, though, it wasn’t until the licenses stopped piggy-backing on other media and returned to the source that we got one of the best licensed games ever – 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. Given free rein to adapt and translate Batman’s entire canon into a game, it gave you options for playing the game using your fighting, stealth and detective skills, allowed access to all manner of gadgets and traversal options, from a cape glider to a grappling hook, and then on top of all that, it gave you a story that made you care – not just about Batman, but about his villains. If every other comic adaptation could remain as faithful to its source material, fans would never have reason to complain again.

That’s not the only formula for a good comic book game, of course. When Capcom took the X-Men and placed them in their own fighting game, Children Of The Atom, the success led to a slew of successors – X-Men Vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes, and the ultimate expression, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, one of the best examples of a 2D fighting game ever, the pinnacle of its genre.

So, given that superheroes don’t (just) spend their time beating the hell out of one another, what was it that made these games succeed where superhero beat ‘em ups failed?

In short, it was two things: Variety and personality. By giving players access to a wide range of favourites, then giving each one their own unique voices, animations and moves, Capcom could please almost everyone, almost all of the time. The same formula was exploited by the X-Men Legends/Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games, which were positively overflowing with fan-pleasing characters, stories and references, and universally praised as a result, despite simplistic, formulaic gameplay.

Occasionally, you can float a decent comic book game on its writing alone. Although Sam & Max Hit The Road, the 1993 Lucasarts adventure game, was ludicrously difficult and functionally identical to a huge number of existing Lucasarts adventures, the anarchic humour of the protagonists meant players remained glued to every line, no matter how unimportant to the plot it seemed.

Similarly, the 2005 Punisher game adapted ludicrously brutal set pieces from Garth Ennis’ Welcome Back Frank to inject the character with some originality in a medium as dominated by grim, gun-toting marine types as comics are by superheroes. The games themselves weren’t that different from their contemporaries – except that they offered memorable, character-based moments unique to their source material.

In any case, it’s clear that as long as there are comic books, there are going to be adaptations, and as long as there are adaptations, the majority are going to be rushed, uninspired and generic affairs.

The best comic book games are those that focus on unique mechanics and solid, character-centric storytelling – it’s almost as if a good comic book game needs to be, above all else, a good game. Will 2011’s offering deliver such a beast? Time will tell...

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I can’t be the only person who’s hopelessly excited by the 3DS. Quite apart from the marvellous possibilities that a new iteration of the DS with more processing grunt affords, the console also has one of the most exciting launch line-ups of any in recent memory.

And as the 3DS’ March launch draws ever closer (Nintendo will be announcing the official European and North American release dates on 19 January), a steady stream of fresh news and information has appeared.

That both the 3DS and its games will have a higher price point than the outgoing DS is of little surprise, given that development costs will have risen as studios tap into the newer technology the console provides. The word is that, in Japan, 3DS games will cost 1000 yen more than they did for the standard DS RRP of 4,800 yen – in UK money, that’s almost £45, bringing the handheld’s games into the same ballpark as a big-screen console title.

The console itself will reportedly cost around 25,000 yen at launch, which will probably equate to around £200 by the time it reaches UK shores.

Pricing aside, there’s been much discussion over the new handheld’s battery life. All that extra processing power has to come from somewhere, and playing a 3DS game will suck the life out of the handheld’s power cell within five hours or less. Playing an old DS game will extend that battery life to around five to eight hours, while charging the device back up again will take just over three hours.

It’s also emerged that playing a game with the console’s 3D perspective enabled will also have an impact – and not just on battery life. Bringing the added dimension to the screen will have a subtly noticeable effect on a game’s framerate according to Siliconera – the brawler Dead Or Alive Dimensions, for example, will run at a silky 60 frames per second in 2D, but adjust the 3DS’ slider to add depth to the action, and you’ll see the frame rate reduce by half.

30 frames per second is still perfectly respectable rate, however, and it’s unlikely that this reduction in performance will significantly affect the way the game handles – or at least, we hope it doesn’t.

More hardware news: the 3DS also has a pedometer lurking inside it. In line with Nintendo’s burgeoning desire to get gamers off the couch, their new handheld will register how much users have been walking around, and will award things called Game Coins depending on how many steps you’ve taken. The Coins can be used to unlock additional content for your games – a clever idea, though we wonder how many people will simply leave their 3DS sitting on a spinning washing machine in order to earn extra currency without leaving the house.

Elsewhere, we’ve also discovered another piece of news that, while unsurprising, is more than a little disappointing – 3DS games will be region-locked. It’s a blow to lovers of import games everywhere – not least Japanese game nerds like myself, who find that many of the best Nintendo games are seldom released outside their native country. 

On a more cheerful note, Nintendo has announced the 3DS’ Japanese launch line-up, which includes: Professor Layton And The Mask Of Miracle, Ridge Racer 3D, Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Puzzle Bobble 3D, Winning Eleven Soccer 3D (also known as Pro Evolution Soccer), Nintendogs + Cats, Samurai Warriors: Chronicle and Battle of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D.

The months that follow will see an entire wave of further releases, some of which are genuinely exciting – Dead Or Alive Dimensions, Pilotwings Resort, Resident Evil 3D The Mercenaries and The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D are ones that caught our eye.

We’ll more than likely discover the 3DS’ European launch line-up on 19 January, when we’ll also learn the console’s exact release date in the US and UK. Ridge Racer 3D and Street Fighter IV 3D are at the top of our wishlist, though we’re a little sad that, due to the handheld’s region lock, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get to play any of the various fishing games, or sample the marvellous-sounding delights of Surprise! Tobidasu! Magic Pen. Shame.

By way of consolation, here’s some footage from the forthcoming Paper Mario 3DS, which looks absolutely enchanting.

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Do I really exist? To you, dear reader, am I anything more than a pair of hands and a keyboard? Maybe you imagine me as a wispy being who lives only to review the second volume of Mike Carey and Peter Gross' The Unwritten.

The value of this shoe gazing waffle is dubious, but it's the kind of literary introspection that reading The Unwritten inspires. Every story beat is an intellectual prod at the place and purpose of fiction in our social consciousness. I'm doing it again. It's impossible to talk about this comic without grasping for the most pretentious locution in your lexicon.

This probably paints an unfairly snobby picture of The Unwritten, which keeps its analysis at a cerebral, but approachable level. Lest we forget, there's a perfectly functional and occasionally gripping story rumbling along in the foreground.

Holding all the flighty concepts in place are the travails of Tom Taylor, whose fictional doppelganger is the star of a series of Harry Potter-esque novels penned by his father. His universe is like a reverse Truman Show. Instead of the world revolving around the pretence that he is a real man, thousands of people believe Tom to be an imaginary character come to life.

The Unwritten's narrative toys with this idea, hinting heavily that there may be more truth to the "made flesh" concept than meets the eye. Carey shows his skill as a writer by realising how obvious a twist that must be to the reader. So, rather than dialling back the allusions, he ramps them up, putting us in the tantalising position of being almost convinced, but intriguingly unsure.

Despite a potentially indulgent premise, The Unwritten sports an action-packed narrative. A mysterious evil cabal wants Tom dead and his missing dad is talking to Lizzie Hexam through the pages of a book. It's not really clear what any of this means, but, along with a confusing map and a magic doorknob, we're on the hunt for answers together.

At the beginning of Vol. 2, Tom is transferred to prison after being falsely accused of the murderous rampage that concluded Vol. 1, and the penitentiary's downtrodden prison governor shares the spotlight in the first half of the book. His kids are Tommy Taylor obsessives and he is conflicted. Reading his offspring a bedtime story is cathartic, but it only increases the risk that they will discover the ‘truth' about their idol.

It seems almost cheeky for Carey to spend a whole issue revisiting previous story sections from the governor's perspective, but his bravery is vindicated. Aside from adding a welcome layer of context to the denouement, it's hard not to see Carey and Gross' decision to depict the same episodes with altered mise en scène as a commentary on the mutable nature of fiction, a study of how the interpretation of a story changes with each reading.

Perhaps they didn't intend this at all, but the brilliance of The Unwritten's premise is that it invites the reader to pontificate on every subtlety.

In a book with such a huge focus on the written word, it's easy for art to seem like an afterthought. Peter Gross' rendering of everyday settings is functional, if not exciting, as are his depictions of each character. At times he is a little too vague, particularly in the facial expressions of the lead players. Tom et al lack definition and, by extension, expression. It says something that the most emotive face in the entire book belongs to an incidental horse on the second page.

When the focus shifts to a grey alternate universe created by the Nazi bastardisation of Jud Süß, Gross begins to flourish. He seems more at home with the creepy fantastical imagery, and his climactic creature (which looks as if it was spawned by an unholy union between the Third Reich and the smoke monster from Lost) had me twisting the book around to get a better look. It's a shame that the story falters at this point, as the narrative takes a backseat to literary musings. It's enough to keep you ticking along, but the book never really recovers from the powerful emotional hit that concludes its first half.

On the art front, it should be noted that Yuko Shimizu's covers are inspired. Her striking work is reminiscent of Katsushika Hokusai, revelling in minute details and sharp simple colours.

Volume 2 ends, as did its predecessor, with an aside. Mike Carey claims that the model for Taylor's angst is Christopher Milne, son of A.A. and inspiration for Christopher Robin. In a neat reference, we're treated to a foul-mouthed hare stuffed into a Winnie The Pooh-style yarn. It's a great conceit for a single shot narrative and the change to watercolour storybook art is perfect.

Sadly, Vol. 2 doesn't really fix the main flaw with The Unwritten's first trade release, the lack of a really great story. As interesting as the beard-scratching subtext is, you're never going to be turning the page with sweaty hands, anxious to read Mike Carey's next philosophical nugget.

The Unwritten is in constant flux between ideas, adventure, and visuals. At no point do these three spheres collide symphoniously, but there are hints of possible brilliance to come. All in all, it's enough to make me eager for the next book, if not with bated breath, then at least with an eyebrow cocked.

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A skint, over-worked Metropolitan Police Force takes time to ask a 'consulting detective' to help them solve the case of a collection of people seemingly being forced to commit suicide. A strangely 'white' working class East End of London is being terrorised by a pair of men claiming to be the result of Ronnie Kray's desire to continue the Kray dynasty, and are killing those men who turned Queen's evidence to nail the brothers in 1969.

A detective who has already been suspected of trying to murder a suspect is allowed to conduct interviews without the presence of another officer, solicitor etc. He is also followed by a beguiling, but evil beauty who obviously killed her parents, but due to her astounding intelligence and guile, has got away with it.

All of this is a world away from PC Stamp chasing suspected drug dealers through a grimy South London estate, or Jack Regan kicking a blagger in the nuts and declaring him to be 'nicked'.

What has happened to police dramas in the past year or so? Sherlock, Whitechapel and Luther have all been successful new series, and yet they are so far away from actual policing that, at times, they border on science fiction.

As a viewing nation, we have gone from wanting to watch the reassuring authority of Dixon of Dock Green, Regan and Carter or Sergeant Bob Cryer trying to keep order at Sun Hill, to our detectives being almost mythical, the worlds they inhabit nonsensical, but at the same time oh so familiar.

To me, the roots in this shift lie squarely at the feet of the creators of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes. Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham managed to create weekly police procedurals that took place in a world that we weren't even sure existed. We didn't know if the leading characters were alive or dead, figments of the imagination of a comatose detective, or some other elaborate prank being played on us all. But still, we invested our time in the stories.

Was Alex Drake in her fictionalised 1981, trying to find the murderer of prostitutes, any less enthralling than Jill Gascoigne doing the same thing in the gritty The Gentle Touch, set in the real 1981?

No, because the key to a good detective story is that human beings like to work things out for themselves.

It doesn't matter if it's a crime committed on Mars in the year 2184, or in Peckham in 2010. As long as there's a baddy, a victim and someone to uncover the truth, that's all people are interested in. They can be the detective in their heads.

They can hit their foreheads when Sherlock points something out that's been obvious from the beginning. They can imagine that the Krays, who created such a myth and a legend around them, didn't just die sad and lonely old, incarcerated men, but instead saved their sperm to try and maintain their dynasty. (I'm wondering if the next series starring Rupert Penry-Jones will be called Berlin, where he goes to Germany to investigate a funny looking little man with black hair and a moustache who was made by a sperm donor, and now has the urge to commit genocide).

Unlike John Luther, we know who the killer is, but we can watch Luther using his genius to work it out.

We're living in the most austere times since the seventies, and people want a little fantasy in their lives. Who wants to watch The Bill when all it does is represent our own miserable society, and the poor overworked police who have to deal with it, when we can have Sherlock Holmes working with Lestrade to stop Moriarty from blowing people up, by solving a series of bizarre crimes?

Even the very gritty Thorne, recently seen on Sky1, used elaborate flashbacks where DI Thorne was watching his younger self confronting a killer.

Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes gave us the chance to come out of ourselves for a while and get lost in the illusion, and has now created a trend. People are starting to get bored with reality, and I'm just wondering how long it is before Shameless is replaced by an updated version of Dynasty, and EastEnders by a remake of Blake's 7!

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Regular readers of the site may already be familiar with my Disney nerd status, and thus I was never going to turn down the chance to spend 20 minutes face to face with legendary composer, Alan Menken.

Menken's work spans theatre (Little Shop Of Horrors, Sister Act) and screen (The Little Mermaid, Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, Hunchback and more), and we got to touch on all of those as we sat down to chat about his latest project, the music to the film Tangled.

Are my ears deceiving me, or did you sneak a music cue from Beauty And The Beast right near the beginning of Tangled?

It might be there inadvertently! There is one thing that is advertent, which is somewhere in the film, but I won't tell you where. Oh, I will tell you where! I'll give you a clue.

There's a two-measure, big swell, that is basically the same, I don't know if it's the same key, but it's right out of Enchanted. It's in the film, and it's almost in an analogous spot from the spot in Enchanted.

I've followed your scores for a long time. I'm going score specifically, because I think we talk about the songs a lot. But they never seem to make the round-up albums!

In Disney-lore, for some reason, the scores never quite get appreciated to the same degree, and yet you walk around a Disneyland theme park, and it's the music people hum to that's the universal thing. Is that how you see it?

Well, the job when you write film underscore is to be ignored. That comes with the gig, no question about it.

Even if you look at the songs, when we talk about appreciating them, we tend to delve into the lyrics. Yet, the lyrics change from country to country as they're translated, but the music itself is steadfast. There's no cultural variation there. The foundation, thus, has to be the music, possibly ahead of the animation, even?

Well, you're hitting a point... one of my contentions has always been that, when you write a musical, or songs for something dramatic, you should be able to come to the dramatic moment and just play the music, without any words, and have at least seventy-five percent of the meaning of that song communicated just by the choice of the music.

The thing that intrigues me about your work is that it's across so many different collaborations and tones. You take your work on Hunchback Of Notre Dame, which goes to some really dark places, for instance. Presumably, the differing collaborations work very well for you?

Yeah. Most of my collaborations, certainly post-Howard Ashman but even with Howard, are music first.

Before I met any of these collaborators, I was a lyricist, and a good one. When I write the music for any of my songs, I write as a composer-lyricist in my head. I know whether or not I'm writing the words in my head or not. I know the conversation. I know what is going on dramatically, and I know what my pre-conceptions.

So, I guess the answer here is that, in a sense, I can function as a common denominator dramatically, because I have a sense of what I want dramatically.

Are you not tempted to take on the lyrics for one of these films? That must be a temptation?

Yeah, that's a temptation. I have. After Howard died, I wrote some of the songs for Aladdin. But the problem is that a) writing lyrics is far more time consuming, and b) there's a lot of nit-picky stuff that happens that I frankly don't have the patience for.

I've been blessed by having wonderful lyricists. Whatever I gain from writing lyrics, I feel I lose a little bit for the musical aspect by having that lyrical burden on me. But when I'm liberated from worrying about the words, frankly, I feel I'm a better composer.

You clearly have a lot of fun picking the over-arching theme of the film. Is that your first decision?

No. In the case of Tangled, it was a B-section of When Will My Life Begin, the theme that I use. [at which point Mr Menken starts singing the theme out loud] That really was not the major part of any song, because I couldn't use [he sings another bit here]. And one of the big themes I use when the lanterns in the film are going up is taking from the up-tempo section of [the track] Kingdom Dance. [sings loudly again. He is more tuneful than your interviewer]. I just go, "What can I use? what can I use? Oh, I'll use that!"

And at the end of the day, it adds up to a score, thank goodness. The only music that I really had that was centrally in a song and centrally in the theme of the movie was I See The Light. And also, I've got to say that, to their credit, they were very, very gun-shy about thematic material in the score. They really wanted to minimise it.

So, we minimised it. I really had to pick my spots to bring theme in.

Your music in this as well, and you can trace this back to The Little Mermaid, if not further, is doing the heavy lifting. It's doing the distillation of the storytelling. It's condensing lots of really important things about character, such as in the opening song. It feels like you're putting across 10, 20 pages of screenplay in a song?

Two goals. One is, is there a compelling song moment here? And when I say compelling, it's not just what the text of the song is, it's the 'I get it' factor.

What is the conceit of the song? Is it funny? Do we get it because it's ironic and funny? Or is it touching? If it's going to be exciting, why is it exciting? And also, is it a clear genre? Do people understand what the song is, so that you're helped by that.

Distill it down to all of that, it will naturally soak up a lot of the thematic material around it, just because of the concept of the song.

Arguably, the crucial part of job, though, is choosing when to be silent?

Yeah.

In terms of composition, that's arguably one of the most overlooked skills?

[Laughs] Yeah. And the directors are not shy about recommending that!

What you seem to have with the directors on Tangled is coming back to the ethos of Disney in the late 80s, early 90s. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard are young, very driven, and seem almost fearless.

Yet, you're in a very different position now to how you were back in the time of The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast. You have a far more extensive backlog of credits and experience. So, how does the mechanic change for you? Presumably, the directors are respectful of your work?

Respectful, yeah. And we're separated by at least 20 years of age. People want to establish their own ground. So, when you bring in the sort of ‘old master', that can be a little bit daunted. So, on the one hand they're respectful, and on the other they go, "No, Alan. We don't want that, we want this." And there are times I have to go [zips mouth].

There's a place in the movie where I had a concept for the score. We had initially had a song for the character Flynn. Where he sang a sea shanty. He was singing about what he wanted in his life and his father used to sing him this lullaby. So, it's a lusty sea shanty, then he sings it wistfully, and then later on, she sings it to him in a tender way. And the song got cut. Okay, fine.

But when we meet Flynn, I said I can almost see this being a Robin Hood moment and really going for that swashbuckling, big, thematic chase. And so, I wrote the cut that way, and the directors said, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. No, no, no, no, no, no, no."

There was a lot of nervousness, and there was a temptation to get defensive and say, "Guys, this is what we talked about." Sorry, I'll try it again...!

Do you think Disney, and animated films in general, have been scared off musicals?

Disney as a company, you mean?

Disney as a film company. Certainly the way that animation has gone.

Yes.

There seems a fear. Lots of films had songs for the sake of it for a while, but we went through a spate of animated films with two or three music CDs for little reason. Do you think we're getting the anti-reaction now?

Yes, yes. The way I see it is that there's a wide spectrum of what a musical is. At one end of the spectrum you could say is Hunchback and Beauty And The Beast. At the other end of the spectrum, and I'm talking Disney musicals now, you could say Tarzan and Emperor's New Groove, which are basically pop-driven. And then there's all the stuff in between.

And at any given part of the process, they're going to be going, "We want this. No, we want that. No, that. We want that."

So, it's always navigating what kind of musical is this. And frankly, Tangled is certainly far from your classic break into song musical. It's essentially an action-adventure, romantic comedy with songs. If people respond to the songs, it could become a musical. That could happen. At the same time, it could almost be something that exists without songs.

There is, at Disney, always a constant questioning about what is a musical. Musicals can be very dangerous. Because a) they're expensive, and b) they either respond to them and it's big, or they respond to them not at all.

Going even broader than Disney, hasn't the art of movie music been diluted by celebrity? Even with action adventure films, the score is so far down the list now, instead it seems part of the commercial package is to get ten rock songs on and make an album.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

We're in danger of losing an art. In Tangled, we have a proper score, a different score, one with its own identity. Yet, for you as a composer, watching what's happened with movies, you're doing stage musicals and theatre now. Presumably, there must be a reason for that?

I came from theatre, of course. But yes, right now, I have nothing in the pipeline for Disney.

Nothing at all?

No. Snow Queen is not happening. That could turn around like that.

The film version of the Beauty And The Beast Broadway musical?

That was canned.

So, nothing?

I'm on [stage musicals] Sister Act, Leap Of Faith. I'm developing a musical. An MGM-RKO idea.

From scratch?

Yeah. It's an original idea I'm working on, with David Zippel.

With Disney, whether there's going to be a sequel to Enchanted? Right now? No.

Would you like there to be? You're not a sequel person, really.

I've never had a sequel. That's true.

I don't know what's going to be. But honestly, I'm fine with or without there being more!

And with that, sadly, our time was up. Alan Menken, thank you very much!

Tangled is released in the UK on 28th January. Check back shortly, as we've got an  interview with the directors, the film's producer, and another chat with animator Glen Keane to bring to you, too.

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He's in a mood, and if you so much as mention the beard, he'll hit you with his magic hammer. It's Thor, and the latest teaser poster to appear (this one bound for French audiences) shows Chris Hemsworth in character as the god of thunder himself.

A subtle variation on the first poster that arrived at the end of last year, this one again displaying Thor's flowing red cloak and generously proportioned hammer. It's our theory that it's not really a hammer at all, but a novelty lunchbox. At the very least, a Thor hammer lunchbox would make a fantastic piece of merchandise. You could easily fit a round of sandwiches in there, and maybe a tin of pop and some crisps if it had compartments of the requisite size. If anyone from Marvel's reading this, we thought of it first.

Thor's due in UK cinemas on 29 April 2011, with the film arriving across the pond in the US on 6 May.

Coming Soon

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Warning: lots of spoilers ahead. We've labelled the name of the film we're talking about in the sub-headers, rather than the characters themselves, to help you avoid stumbling upon something you didn't want to know...

LETHAL WEAPON 2

It's a film that's cropped up a few times in recent weeks on the site, but perhaps the most interesting thing about Lethal Weapon 2 was that it was supposed to mark the end of Mel Gibson's Riggs character. As it stood, it instead marked the moment where Riggs went from a man on the edge to part of a comedy double act.

However, the original plan, when Riggs is shot in the film, was that he'd die. That was what writer Shane Black had intended to happen, and he reportedly left the project when he was overruled on the matter.

There's some argument over whether the scene where Riggs died was actually filmed (a body bag sequence has been rumoured), but as it turned out, the ending was ultimately changed to allow Riggs to walk away at the end of the film, and to prepare for the blockbuster hits that would become Lethal Weapon 3 and Lethal Weapon 4.

You do wonder, if Riggs had died in Lethal Weapon 2, whether an already-liked film would be talked about now in even more favourable terms. Even accepting Patsy Kensit. 

ROCKY V

There's very little to redeem Rocky V, however you look at it, and perhaps in this case it's best that Sylvester Stallone didn't follow through with his planned original ending for the film. For the idea here was that Rocky V would be a darker piece, where Balboa, struggling from the impact of his fight with Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, would pass away at the end of it.

If the original plan had been adhered to, then it would be the fight with Tommy Gunn at the end of the film that would have seen the end of Rocky Balboa. A fairly limp way to go, when you consider who he'd fought in the film before.

Stallone, ultimately, had similar thoughts once production had begun, thinking that Rocky shouldn't die in a fight in the street. Instead, he survived, and Rocky Balboa, the sixth movie, turned out to be a far more fitting end to the series.

SCREAM

I distinctly remember watching Scream for the very first time and thinking that the character of Dewey was a certainty for the chop. Appreciating it didn't necessarily fit the rules of the horror movie that Scream was following, David Arquette's character still wasn't one that I'd have expected to make it intact to the end of the original trilogy. And yet, he did.

But in the original script? Dewey was supposed to die. As it turned out, too, that was the plan even after production started, with director Wes Craven shooting the scene where he met his demise. However, to be on the safe side, Craven also shot a scene where he survived, and it was that that made it into the finished movie.

Dewey will next be seen trying to brave his way through 2011's Scream 4...

BATMAN

Now granted, Alexander Knox wasn't a major character in Tim Burton's film of Batman, back in 1989. Yet, as played by Robert Wuhl, he was an important one, working alongside Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger) to try and uncover the mystery behind the Bat. However, would the character have been more memorable had The Joker killed him in the denouement of the movie?

That was, as it happens, the original plan. However, as Robert Wuhl himself revealed many years later, they "liked [my] character so much that they decided to let me live". That said, Knox didn't appear in the sequel, Batman Returns, although Vicki Vale was mentioned once in the film.

THE FOX AND THE HOUND/LADY AND THE TRAMP

Considering that Disney hasn't been shy about killing characters in its films in the past - Bambi's mother, for starters, and more recently, Mufasa in The Lion King - it's perhaps surprising that it was reticent to do so in The Fox And The Hound.

Hardly vintage Disney, to be fair, the film featured hunting dog, Chief, who has an argument on a railroad track and is seemingly done for. And in the original screenplay, that was, indeed, the plan. It's the death of Chief that's supposed to drive a wedge between Copper and Todd, the fox and the hound of the title.

However, reportedly due to concerns from some of the crew working on the film, the decision to kill Chief was reversed, echoing a similar decision that was made with the character of Trusty in Lady And The Tramp decades earlier. In that instance, Walt Disney himself vetoed the death of the character at the end of the film, worried about repeating the reaction to the aforementioned Bambi.

FIRST BLOOD

Sylvester Stallone has a thing for resurrecting characters that were once upon a time supposed to die. (There was supposed to be a death in The Expendables, but a character was reprieved.)

In the book upon which the first Rambo film was based, John Rambo dies at the end. It's a logical ending to the story, too, to be fair, but Stallone, sniffing a major action franchise, opted to keep him alive instead, choosing for Rambo to turn himself in instead. That said, the decision wasn't made at the start, as the sequence where Rambo dies was shot.

Still, three sequels and lots of money later, Stallone probably thinks he made the right decision there. Here's that original ending, though...

RETURN OF THE JEDI

There's been quite a bit of chatter about this in recent years, but the crux of it is this: Han Solo, as played by Harrison Ford, was not supposed to make it to the end of Return Of The Jedi. He was instead, apparently, supposed to die in the raid on the Death Star.

One strand of thinking, it should be noted, is that it was never the intention of George Lucas to kill Solo off. Instead, the urging came more from Harrison Ford himself, and writer Lawrence Kasdan.

However, an interview given by A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back producer, Gary Kurtz, throws a different light on it.

Kurtz and Lucas parted company after Empire, over dissatisfaction with the direction the story was going. And as Kurtz told the L.A. Times earlier this year, "The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base. George then decided he didn't want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason."

Instead, as you more than likely know, Solo survived, got the girl, and the credits rolled. But the tone of the ending would have been a lot more bittersweet had one of the franchise's main heroic characters been defeated...

FULL METAL JACKET

It's Private Pyle's death that marks the turning point of Stanley Kubrick's penultimate film, Full Metal Jacket. For me, and many others, the astounding first half, ending with Pyle's suicide, is the peak of the movie, and offers something that the second half never has a chance of living up to (good as it is).

However, as Matthew Modine wrote in the book, Full Metal Diary, it was actually his character, Joker, that was supposed to die. The suggestion came from Modine himself, though, that Joker should live, leaving his character the one to see things through to the end, and to be the one to see firsthand just how savage and brutal the war proved to be.

TRUE ROMANCE

One of Tony Scott's finest films, and one of Quentin Tarantino's finest scripts, True Romance is, staggeringly, 18 years old this year, but it remains something really quite special.

Released in the aftermath of the success of Tarantino's debut feature, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance gave Christian Slater a prime role as Clarence. And, at the end of the film Clarence is reunited with Alabama, and when we see them last, they are on a beach with their son.

However, that's not how things were originally supposed to be. Tarantino's original script had Clarence meeting his maker at the end, leaving Alabama driving off, claiming that she didn't really care about him anyway.

Tony Scott shot two endings to the film, but went with the one where Clarence lives. And Tarantino has subsequently agreed he made the right choice, with the caveat that, if he'd directed the film himself, he'd have gone with the original ending, given that the tone of his film would have been different to Scott's interpretation.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

It's pretty well known that the theatrically-screened ending to the low budget horror hit Paranormal Activity wasn't the one in the original cut of the film put together by director Oren Peli. However, when Paramount picked up the film, the ending changed to the one where Katie throws Micah's body at the camera. Micah dies, Katie survives.

But certainly in the original cut of the film, Katie dies too. In that ending, Micah doesn't go upstairs, and we see Katie return to the bedroom, brandishing a knife and covered in blood. Eventually, after a bit of faff, the police show up, Katie stumbles down the stairs with the knife, the police fire, and up pops a title card that dedicates the film to the two characters.

As things stand, therefore, and with Paranormal Activity 3 heading to production, Katie is still alive and kicking... 

Also:

The character of Spock wasn't originally set to be resurrected when he carked it in Star Trek II, but the third film was ultimately devoted to bringing him back to life.

Meanwhile, in The Butterfly Effect, the ending you get depends on which cut of the film you watch. We won't spoil it here, but the director's cut is a very different beast to the theatrical release...

Also, we're indebted to @@revoltingross on Twitter for reminding us that Gizmo wasn't supposed to get to the end of Gremlins. The original plan was for him to turn into Stripe.

See Also:

• 10 surprise deaths in blockbuster movies
• Top 10 ‘They had it coming’ movie deaths

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This article contains a spoiler for the film, The Fugitive.

For some reason, Barry Norman's review of the 1993 big screen take on The Fugitive has always stuck in my mind. While praising the film (which would go on to snare a Best Picture Oscar nomination), Norman argued that it would be even more interesting were the main roles reversed. Thus, for Tommy Lee Jones to play Richard Kimble, the man on the run, and for Harrison Ford to be leading the team chasing him.

And you know what? Barry Norman was right. Because, with very few exceptions, when you cast a movie star in a role, even a criminal of sorts, there are certain conventions that fall into place.

One of the best examples I can think of to illustrate this is Sylvester Stallone in the movie Lock Up. Here, the script went to great lengths to convince us that Stallone is wrongfully imprisoned and innocent of everything. Because, after all, he's a movie star, and movie stars have to, while not be utterly purer than pure, still be very firmly on the side of good.

I don't think I'm spoilering much by suggesting that most of us saw the eventual resolution of The Fugitive some way off, and there was never any danger of Harrison Ford's character being guilty of murder. Even if we hadn't seen the TV series it was based on.

For my money, cinema offers few treats better than an edge-of-the-seat thriller. Yet, a movie star-driven thriller feels the same in some ways, to me as a series of novels featuring the same main character. You know that, ultimately, there's some hidden ring of invulnerability, or an infinite lives cheat, or there's a moral line, that they won't cross. There are exceptions, granted, but I'd still wager this is the norm.

And thrillers need suspense to work. Granted, for suspense to be generated, you don't need the main central character to have a degree of moral ambiguity to them. But it certainly helps.

That's what makes exploring lower budget thrillers a treat. I'm not necessarily talking bargain basement films, either, rather the low- to mid-range budgeted films that save money by not casting a Tom Cruise, or a Jim Carrey, or a Julia Roberts. Because what comes with that price tag of a superstar is a removal of some of a film's mystery.

Accepting that the shelves of DVD stores are littered with fairly crappy cheap thrillers, and appreciating that the presence of a movie star doesn't automatically rob a film of its thrills, there are still cheaper movies that work so much better for having a mid-range cast.

Take David Twohy's A Perfect Getaway. I stumbled across this recently, and enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. Its trick, apart from a solid script and direction from Twohy, was that it had several characters who could have been the foe of the piece. And because the casting offered no clues as to who was what, you had six or seven characters on whom to cast suspicion. And that's the real benefit of not having a full-out star on board.

I can think of other thrillers where that's the case, too, where a less starry cast allows the morals of pretty much all of a film's characters to be far more blurry.

Take the likes of A Simple Plan, One False Move, Christopher Nolan's Memento, David Fincher's Seven (made when Brad Pitt's star wasn't as bright as it was right now, although I do get the impression that Pitt would have little trouble tackling a more complex lead role in a thriller), Sea Of Love, The Usual Suspects, John Cusack in Identity, and perhaps even Copycat. I'm not arguing that every one of those film is a masterpiece (although a few of them are), but their casting choices really aid the end product in every case.

There are, I should note, exceptions to every rule. And lest we forget, Alfred Hitchcock used to use the expectation that came with a star to destabilise his audience, by killing said star's character off nice and early. Once he'd done that, you figure that anyone is for the high jump.

Yet, few people want to take such risks with star names now, and that means that, if you're looking for an interesting modern thriller, you might just need to search the shelves a little more than usual.

For while the blockbuster sausage machine will give you Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code (raking in over $700m worldwide at the box office) something like A Perfect Getaway gets unfairly overlooked as a result (with $22m in the bank from its worldwide cinematic run). But I know which one sticks in my mind.

And while it's far from a masterpiece, there's at least some risk with A Perfect Getaway that you might be still guessing what's going to happen after an hour, rather than predicting it all, and knowing from the off which character is safely excluded from any doubt.

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The history of TV superheroes has been a fairly potted one of late. Although shows like Buffy, Heroes and No Ordinary Family have brought superhero-inspired fiction to the screen, it's been a while since TV attempted to do its own, original superhero show without a spin on the concept. But that's what The Cape undeniably is: an irony-free, genre-embracing superhero show made entirely for TV.

That said, although The Cape is an original idea, the shadow of dark vigilantes like Batman and Spawn loom large over the pilot episode, in which Vince Faraday (apparently the city's last remaining good cop) is framed for murder and ‘killed', only to assume the identity of The Cape, his son's favourite superhero, to bring his enemies to justice.

The storytelling pays homage to the more pulpy pre-superheroes (think Batman, The Green Hornet and Dick Tracy), individuals who tackling street-level crooks and their bosses while dressed in a natty costume. In this case, the titular cape is woven from spider's silk, making it (we're assured) super-strong, ultra-lightweight and particularly prehensile. The rest of the tricks Faraday employs are literal stage illusions (though his ability to disappear in a cloud of smoke, like an illusionist, probably stretches reality a little too far).

Kicking off the series with a double-header, the pilot episode gives us the ‘origin' story, introduces Faraday's family, friends and nemesis (the traditional Evil Brit archetype, Chess) while episode two, Tarot, shows us how he plans to continue his war on crime, and how his family rebuilds their lives now he's gone.

With so much packed in, one thing you can't accuse The Cape of is being slow or ponderous. There's no Heroes-style arcing here. Both episodes stand alone as complete stories, but together, form a greater whole. Commendable stuff, given TV's current propensity to treat every season as a single, plodding 13/26-part story.

Although The Cape is thick with superhero shorthand borrowed from the Batman movies (when the circus gang robs a bank in comedy masks, you can't help but remember that The Dark Knight did it better), it nonetheless maintains a completely autonomous air in terms of its subject matter. There are no geeky references, no self-aware winks to the audience. It plays the genre completely straight (but not entirely humourlessly).

The temptation to camp things up must have been huge, particularly when Faraday encounters a group of Robin Hood-style circus performers who pass on the tools and knowledge he needs to become The Cape. But they manage to keep the tone just the right side of serious, even when Faraday is wrestling a midget combat expert.

Without references to fall back on, the show's geek credibility comes in the form of Summer Glau, who plays, well, that one character she always plays, quirky, intelligent, action-hacker. Think Sydney Bristow with fewer wigs (although she does don one in episode two). Fan-favourite Keith David plays Max, the circus ringleader who takes Faraday in after he's been framed and becomes his mentor. Finally, Vinnie "The Juggernaut" Jones features in episode one as a hench-villain, although, to be honest, his presence just reinforces the idea that all Brits are evil, something made doubly insulting by the fact that an Australian (who, let's be frank, is probably descended from actual British criminals) gets to play the hero!

Two episodes in, it's clear that the show is interested in building its own mythology, having already established three villains, a wide supporting cast and several public figures. The macro plot, which concerns Chess trying to gain control of Palm City's police force and public services in his alter ego as an evil billionaire (think of him as the Reverse Batman) is actually quite well thought out, and is gloriously distant from the time-travelling, world-ending nonsense that Heroes couldn't stay away from.

Although elements of the first episode are slightly ropey, from the low-budget CGI to the uninspired dialogue, the set pieces are actually quite good and the characters, while initially thin, are already growing into themselves by episode two.

Given a little time, The Cape might actually prove that superheroes don't have to be postmodern to be an effective storytelling tool. Between its retro charm and willingness to embrace and use the genre conventions, The Cape feels much fresher than it objectively is. There's no doubt that, were this an actual comic book launch, it would be instantly derivative, but on TV? It stands out as being rather unique. We'll find out next week whether it can keep that up or not.

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This review contains spoilers.

2.2 Serpent's Tooth

Our topic this week is the soul. Specifically, do Visitors have a soul, or is that just a human thing? When human emotions infect the visitors from spending too much time in their human skins, does that mean the skin contains elements of the soul, or that the soul is some kind of infection to our scaly green frenemies?

It's an interesting question for a show about space monsters who want to interbreed with us, but fortunately, the latest episode of V, Serpent's Tooth, also has a massive explosion to make up for all that deep thinking.

The Fifth Column is back and active once more. I don't mean the Fifth Column we know and follow weekly. I mean the other anonymous guys who also make up the anti-V resistance in other places throughout the world. Whoever they are, they're good at what they do. Twenty-nine suicide bombings at V healing centers happen all at the same time, sending Vs scattering and human authorities into a panic. Just what they wanted.

However, not just the authorities are having problems. Ryan, the Visitor turned human turned Visitor again, is finding himself in the age-old dilemma: what's good for himself, or what's good for his newfound people? Anna's got his baby, and she's even spray-painted some human skin on it in an attempt to further twist the knife in Ryan's belly. She's got him by the short hairs, and they both know it.

However, using the baby against Ryan is also reminding Anna of the soldiers she lost and her apparent inability to churn out any more eggs. I guess she used all her eggs in the swoop to create the soldiers? I'm not really sure I understand this one, but apparently she's out of baby juice, which means Lisa has suddenly gotten much more important, and the Visitor's nascent breeding program is picking up steam.

Since Lisa is entering her reproductive cycle and Anna is exiting hers, apparently there can be only one breeding queen at a time, which explains why Anna is having some trouble maintaining her control over herself (and possibly why Anna overthrew her own mother 15 years ago while Diana was on planet Earth).

Meanwhile, her beloved mother has complete control over herself after a long, long time alone with only her human skin and memories for comfort.

This week's episode has proven difficult to sum up in a few hundred words, if only because there was a whole lot of stuff going on. Anna and Diana, a nod to the original series' most famous moment, Ryan and Father Jack having some serious metaphysical discussions, Erica, Hobbes, and V traitor Agent Malik (Rekha Sharma) engaging in some cat and mouse in the hunt for the larger elements of the Fifth Column, and all kinds of other goodies involving the revived V doctor Joel and Lisa (who seems to hold up much better away from Tyler than with him). They're pulling out all the stops to save the show, it appears.

That said, even with all the different things going on, the show never felt rushed. It felt energetic, but it didn't feel frantic. Once again the show fails to have a director credit listed on its IMDB page and I don't remember who it said in the title crawl, but whoever did the work behind the camera really nailed the pacing for this episode bang on.

Last week might have been the best episode in recent memory, but this week was the most action-packed since the show's first episode. There was so much stuff going on that, for the first time in a long time, the show didn't drag in the slightest.

I have to say, I really like what the show has been doing lately. In the first season, the storylines were mostly singular, but now there are a lot of interesting dualities at play. Ryan and Father Jack Action Priest will be having a discussion about the soul, and at the same time Anna and Diana will be having a similar discussion about the soul from a different perspective.

The dual traitor FBI agents, Erica and her new V partner Malik, are also providing a lot of fun for the show, giving the two many near misses and one serious confrontation in this episode. It'll be interesting to see how this particular incident wraps up, especially considering how Anna deals with failure versus how the Fifth Column deal with Visitors. The fact that there are two different Fifth Columns will prove to be of crucial importance to the Fifth Column that we care about, as I imagine it'll keep the Visitors chasing a lot of guest stars and bit players rather than the mains.

Gregg Hurwitz is back behind the keyboard for Serpent's Tooth, and while last week's episode was good, this week's episode was much better. There's one thing you can say for Hurwitz. He likes to get things rolling and he doesn't like a lot of meetings around the Fifth Column coffee pot.

Everyone in this week's episode had something to do, and there was the barest minimum of Tyler and Lisa. They'll be more important in future episodes, I'm sure, but I actually like where Hurwitz and company are going with them. They should just promote Gregg Hurwitz to head writer and be done with it. He deserves it for the yeoman's work he's done in saving this show from itself.

I really like how the show has actually doubled back and made Father Jack Action Priest's job, being a priest, actually important. He's stopped being the Action Priest and has settled into being just a normal priest, and I really like what they're doing with him. He's conflicted, as any man of God would be, between his urge to fight the V and save humanity and to save humanity from its violent impulses. The fact that he spent most of the episode counseling Ryan was a wonderful use of his skills as a counselor and a great way to help play up Ryan's ‘torn between two worlds' status.

It's nice to see characters finding their appropriate niche within the Fifth Column without the show straying too far from the characters that should be central, Anna and Erica, the two mom-batants, with special guest referee, Diana.

Read our review of the season 2 opener, Red Rain, here.

US Correspondent Ron Hogan is in the mood for a good rat puree, possibly on toast. Yum! Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.

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