Comic-Con Roundup

Written by Jon Williams

Last week, the annual event that is Comic-Con International took place in San Diego, California. The four-day extravaganza allows fans, celebrities, and creators to come together in a celebration that generally centres on science fiction and fantasy but branches out to encompass all aspects of pop culture. As happens each year, there was plenty of news and buzz to come out of the many panels and presentations that made up this year’s convention.

Marvel is the biggest name in movies right now, and coming off the success of the blockbusters Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far from Home, there wasn’t much of a blueprint for where the franchise would go for “Phase Four” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That is no longer the case, as Marvel used Comic-Con as a platform to announce its slate for 2020 – 2021. In theatres, first up is the previously announced Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson along with David Harbour and Rachel Weisz. Then fans can look forward to The Eternals, a superhero ensemble that will include stars such as Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, and Richard Madden, in 2020. The following year will kick off with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, featuring a martial arts hero that has been a part of Marvel Comics since 1973 but has not yet made it onto the screen. Then comes Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, with Benedict Cumberbatch reprising his role from the 2017 film in what is being teased as Marvel’s first horror movie. Finally, there will be Thor: Love and Thunder, directed by Ragnarok’s Taika Waititi and with Natalie Portman returning to the franchise to become the goddess of thunder. And for television, there’s even more Marvel news. Familiar Avengers characters will come to the small screen in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan), WandaVision (Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), while What If…? will be an animated series that featuring Jeffrey Wright and a number of familiar voices as it explores alternate realities.

Marvel wasn’t the only beloved franchise to make waves at Comic-Con. Patrick Stewart’s return as the beloved character Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation was announced last year, but a new trailer provided the first extended look at the new series (simply titled Picard). The trailer contained some surprises, such as the return of other fan-favourite characters Data (played by Brent Spiner) and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), while the panel revealed that Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis would also be appearing in the show in their familiar roles from The Next Generation. While that was the biggest news, the panel also covered the upcoming third season of the acclaimed Star Trek: Discovery, as well as the upcoming series Lower Decks. Expected to premiere in 2020, the show will focus on lower-ranking officers on a non-vital starship, and will be the first Star Trek in animated form since The Animated Series furthered the adventures of the original crew from 1973 – 1975.

Horror had quite a presence at this year’s SDCC. The biggest release was probably the new trailer for It: Chapter 2, which comes to theatres on September 6. It’s the sequel to the 2017 blockbuster that became the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, and it picks up (more or less) 27 years after the first film left off. Both movies are based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, which is frequently cited as one of his best. Staying in the King family, it was announced that the show NOS4A2 (based on a novel by Joe Hill, King’s son) had been renewed for a second season. Hill also discussed the upcoming shows Locke & Key, adapted from a series of comics he created with artist Gabriel Rodriguez, and Creepshow, which is based on the 1982 movie written by King and directed by George Romero. That show will be produced by Greg Nicotero, who is most famous for The Walking Dead, which offered plenty of details for the original show and the spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, as well as a new show yet to come. There was also an interactive exhibit promoting the new season of American Horror Story and a trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

And still there’s more. Tom Cruise showed up to surprise the crowd with a trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, the long-awaited sequel to the high-flying 1986 hit. There was also a trailer for Cats, the upcoming movie version of the Andrew Lloyd Webster musical that will star Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, and Judi Dench, to name just a few. There was also a look at Terminator: Dark Fate, which will welcome James Cameron and Edward Furlong back to the franchise and pick up following Terminator 2, with the intervening installments being considered part of a different timeline. For TV, there was plenty of info on new shows The Dark Crystal, His Dark Materials, and Snowpiercer, as well as new seasons of Westworld, The Expanse, Rick and Morty, Preacher, and more.

Those are just the highlights of the shows, movies, and more that presented at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, and you can bet your patrons will be looking for all of these titles and their related media. Let us know what you’re looking forward to, and stay tuned to Midwest Tape for news on these and other exciting releases as they approach.

Patrick Stewart Returning to Star Trek

Written by Jon Williams

In an age of reboots and revivals, it takes a piece of seriously big news to command the attention of the pop culture landscape. That’s exactly what happened recently when first rumours started to swirl and then actual confirmation happened that Patrick Stewart would return to the role of Jean-Luc Picard in a new Star Trek series being developed. The series will explore the further adventures and later life of the beloved man who once commanded the bridge of the iconic starship Enterprise.

Although he had already been acting for many years, many people, especially in the United States, had their first exposure to Stewart when Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted in 1987. That show breathed new life into a popular franchise that, nevertheless, had been off television for nearly twenty years. It worked; the show ran for seven seasons and then, like the original series before it, spawned several big-screen adventures, with Stewart continuing to lead the cast from the show. All in all, he ended up portraying Jean-Luc Picard for fifteen years. It’s been sixteen years since the last time, in the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis, and fans are eager to see what has become of the intrepid captain in the meantime—just as Stewart is himself, calling the opportunity to return “…an unexpected but delightful surprise.” Although he was initially skeptical of performing in a sci-fi television show, he eventually came to appreciate the reach the show had and the impact it had on fans’ lives.

Seeming to confirm his initial skepticism, though, for a time the popularity of Star Trek: The Next Generation hindered him from landing other roles, as filmmakers felt that having “Captain Picard” show up in their project would distract the audience. Stewart finally got around this by jumping into a similar part in another sci-fi franchise. In 2000’s X-Men, he portrayed for the first time Professor Charles Xavier, who runs a school to teach youngsters with freakish abilities (called “mutants”) how to control and use them responsibly. As with Star Trek, the role lingered, with Stewart playing Professor Xavier in a total of seven movies, most recently (and for the final time) in 2017’s critically acclaimed Logan.

Despite the typecasting, Stewart’s talent has won out, allowing him to carve out quite a nice and well-rounded acting career for himself. Prior to Star Trek he had roles in such films as Hennessy, his 1975 film debut, Excalibur, and Dune. He showed off his comedic side as King Richard in the 1993 spoof Robin Hood: Men in Tights, just before his Star Trek role jumped to the big screen in Generations. On television, he has brought a number of literary and theatrical classics to life, including I, Claudius, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Hamlet, and Macbeth, to name just a few. And with his deep, distinctive voice, it’s no surprise that he’s also done quite a bit of voice acting. He recently had a memorable role in The Emoji Movie, and has also lent his voice to such favourites as The Prince of Egypt, Chicken Little, and Gnomeo & Juliet. He maintains a recurring role on the long-running animated series American Dad!, and his association with creator Seth MacFarlane led to him serving as the narrator for both Ted and Ted 2. He also narrated the Tim Burton classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Patrick Stewart is an actor whose performances are always incredible, and the news that he’s returning to Star Trek is sure to put his work in the spotlight as never before. Make sure you have The Next Generation shows and movies on your shelves for patrons to discover or relive, and SmartBrowse his name on our website to see a full list of what we have to offer from his impressive career. And for more Star Trek, be sure to pre-order the first season of Discovery, available in November, before the second season premieres in early 2019.

Star Trek Turns 50

Written by Jon Williams

Space.

The final frontier.

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.

Its five-year mission:

To explore strange new worlds.

To seek out new life and new civilizations.

To boldly go where no man has gone before.

Those now-familiar words were first heard on September 6, 1956, when the very first episode of the original Star Trek television show made its debut. In the fifty years since, Star Trek has become a true touchstone, with phrases like “live long and prosper” and “beam me up, Scotty” making their way into the cultural lexicon. The show made stars of its primary cast members (William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, and Walter Koenig), and has spawned numerous spinoffs, a movie franchise (including a reboot), and much more.

It seems hard to believe now, but that first Star Trek show ran for just three seasons, as it didn’t become a true hit until it was syndicated and shown in reruns. At that point, the original 79 episodes just weren’t quite enough, so, in 1973, the show was revived for an animated series that brought back all the original actors to voice their roles. Although it was also short-lived (spanning 22 episodes), it was well-received, even winning a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Series.

As the animated series wound down, Star Trek was at something of a crossroads. There was a demand for more, but it was unclear exactly what form it would take. Plans went into motion for a new television series, to be titled Phase II, but numerous problems eventually forced those plans to be scrapped. Instead, encouraged by the success that science fiction films were finding at the box office, Star Trek producers instead revived earlier plans to bring the Enterprise crew to the big screen. Those efforts paid off with 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, again reuniting all the original cast members in their familiar roles.

The success of that movie spawned a franchise that would run for five more films featuring the beloved original cast. They were: The Wrath of Khan (1982), The Search for Spock (1984), The Voyage Home (1986), The Final Frontier (1989), and The Undiscovered Country (1991). It was with this last movie that Captain Kirk’s iconic line of “where no man has gone before” was updated to “where no one has gone before,” eliminating the gender-biased and (in a galaxy filled with aliens) species-biased language in keeping with the franchise’s ideals of equality.

That was when Captain Kirk first spoke those words, but it was not the first time Star Trek fans had heard them that way. In September of 1987, Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on television, set 100 years after the adventures of the original series and bringing a new cast (Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Denise Crosby, and Wil Wheaton) to the bridge of the Enterprise. Highly popular, this series ran for seven seasons and made its own eventual jump to the big screen. 1994’s Generations bridged the gap, starring the entire Next Generation cast and featuring several members of the original cast as well, in a story that saw Patrick Stewart’s Captain Picard team up with William Shatner’s Captain Kirk. The Next Generation cast then stayed in theatres for three more movies on their own: First Contact (1996), Insurrection (1998), and Nemesis (2002).

The final season of The Next Generation aired in 1994, but that was far from the end of Star Trek on television. Before it ended, in 1993, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured an ensemble cast as the crew of a space station in a contested region. Then, beginning in 1995, came Star Trek: Voyager, which followed a new ship and crew helmed by Kate Mulgrew’s Captain Janeway, trying to make their way home to Earth after being stranded on the other side of the galaxy. Like The Next Generation, both of these series ran for seven seasons. In 2001, after Voyager’s conclusion, Star Trek: Enterprise made its debut, starring Scott Bakula as the captain of the very first Federation starship to be named Enterprise, in a prequel to everything that had some before.

And of course there is the new movie series. In 2009, after a 7-year absence from theatres following Nemesis, Star Trek returned to the big screen in a reboot from J.J. Abrams starring a new cast (Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, John Cho, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, and the late Anton Yelchin) in the roles of the original crew, with Leonard Nimoy appearing as an older Spock in a nod to the alternate timelines the different casts now occupy. That was followed up in 2013 with Star Trek Into Darkness, and earlier this year with Star Trek Beyond.

All of this, and still Star Trek fans have plenty to look forward to. In addition to a fourth film with the new cast, there is also a new TV series in the works. Slated to debut in January, Star Trek: Discovery will detail the adventures of a new ship and crew in the ten years previous to the events of the original series. And of course, the TV series and movies are just a part of what the Star Trek franchise has to offer. SmartBrowse on our website for music scores and audiobooks, and you can also direct patrons to hoopla digital for Star Trek comics, audiobooks, and other novelties. Also, keep an eye out for a special Star Trek 50th anniversary flyer along with our September catalog mailing.

The Voyages of the Starship Enterprise

Written by Jon Williams

Despite the fact that the solstice is still over a month away, the summer movie season is in full swing with Iron Man 3 opening last weekend, The Great Gatsby this weekend, and Star Trek Into Darkness coming to theatres next week.

The Star Trek phenomenon began in 1966 with the original television series starring William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, George Takei, Walter Koenig, and James Doohan as the intrepid crew of the Starship Enterprise. Set in the 2260s, the series dealt with the crew’s adventures as they explore the galaxy in the name of the United Federation of Planets.

Creator Gene Roddenberry’s original series ran for three seasons, totaling 79 episodes (80 if you count the series pilot, which was originally rejected by NBC and went unaired until 1988). That wasn’t enough to satisfy fans, though, and it was followed up with an animated series in 1973. This show featured the voices of the original cast in the same roles, and ran for two seasons.

At that point, the small screen was no longer big enough for the further voyages of the Enterprise. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was the series’ first foray onto the silver screen in 1979. It was followed by five sequels (released every 2-3 years and culminating in 1991) that featured Captain Kirk and his original crew.

As it turned out, even this wasn’t enough for Star Trek fans. So, in 1987, the franchise spun off with an entirely new television series. Star Trek: The Next Generation starred Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Marina Sirtis, Michael Dorn, Denise Crosby, and Wil Wheaton as the Enterprise’s new crew, set about a century after the original.

The Next Generation was well received by both critics and fans, and it received a longer run than the original series, spanning seven seasons and 178 episodes. It also carried on into a theatrical run, beginning with the film Generations, which released soon after the series finale in 1994. William Shatner, James Doohan, and Walter Koenig reprised their roles from the original crew as a means of passing the torch to the new crew. Three other films were made featuring the Next Generation crew.

Following The Next Generation, three more television series were set in the Star Trek universe. Beginning in 1993, Deep Space Nine was set concurrently with The Next Generation, and took place aboard a space station orbiting the planet Bajor. Voyager, which premiered in 1995, deals with a different Federation starship returning home to Earth from 75,000 light years away. Then, 2001 brought Enterprise, a prequel series detailing humanity’s first voyages into interstellar space.

As popular as these series have been, nothing has captured Trek fans’ imaginations in quite the same way as the original crew. That set the stage for 2009’s theatrical reboot, featuring a time-travel plot that allowed the familiar characters to be brought back with new actors portraying them. Star Trek Into Darkness will pick up where that film left off, as the second adventure for the “new” crew of the Enterprise.

With the new film coming into theatres, Trek fever is sure to be at an all-time high. Make sure you have plenty of Star Trek series and movies on your shelves for patrons to enjoy. SmartBrowse ‘Star Trek’ on our website for a complete selection of films and TV seasons on DVD and Blu-ray.