The Start of Something

I’m starting to work on a new home project. Anytime you do such a thing, certain steps must occur.

DC officially announced this weekend that Michael Shannon is Zod in Zac Snyder’s “Man of Steel” movie. This should pretty much wrap up major casting announcements for the new Superman franchise as we now have Superman, Lois Lane, Jonathan & Martha Kent, and now a villain for the picture. I guess the only people of significance that haven’t been cast are Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor, but if they’re going to be announced, they should be announced soon. I really wasn’t expecting Zod to be the villain in this movie. We’d heard casting rumors about Ursa being cast, but I kind of expected that she would be the villain for the introductory movie and then Zod makes his triumphant return for a sequel. This is why I don’t work in Hollywood.

While not an official announcement from DC and Warner Bros, there are reports that Josh Pence will play Ra’s al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises. This does not mean that TDKR will be a resurrection of Ra’s story (well, it still could be…), but rather that there are supposed to be flashback scenes with a younger Ra’s. While this is interesting, flashbacks only work if there are characters who are flashing back on a memory that would then contain said character. As of yet, there’s nobody officially announced that would be such a character. There are rumors that Marion Cotillard is supposed to play Talia al Ghul, but that has never been confirmed. Comic Alliance seems to feel that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing Alberto Falcone, as has been rumored for a while, but again I never heard that as officially confirmed. What if instead of Falcone, JGL is the White Ghost, who was originally Ra’s son. This would also be an avenue for a flashback. Either way, the fact that Ra’s will appear in the movie at all is interesting and hopefully indicates a chance that we will see his full resurrection in all his Liam Neeson glory.