Well, it’s December, and that means we’re neck-deep in the holiday season. But for true Star Wars fans, December may as well be Rogue One: A Star Wars Story month — there’s that much hype around this new movie, the first of Disney’s Star Wars spinoffs, which follows the unsung heroes who discovered the plans to destroy the Death Star ahead of the events of the 1977 film that started it all. We’ve gotten a ton of sneak peeks at the new movie and things were ramped up this week, with a new trailer on November 25, new footage of Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso kicking some ass on Jimmy Fallon, and on Friday, even more footage revealed in a live Twitter event. You might say we’ve hit Rogue One overload, but this is Star Wars, so you won’t — and neither will we. We’ll be discussing the new footage at length this week, and talk about why this film feels special, even though it’s not technically part of the main canon.
Speaking of teaser overload, Universal is hoping to manufacture some serious hype for its own megafranchise, which will begin with a reboot of one of its most popular movie monsters, The Mummy. The studio released a “trailer teaser” for the film this week. Not to be confused with a teaser trailer, a short trailer that gives a small peek at the movie in question, a trailer teaser is a sneak peek of the trailer itself. If that sounds a bit ridiculous, it is, but it’s also pretty common for today’s biggest blockbusters, and we have to say that this tiny hint of footage does look intriguing enough. Most interesting is the shot of the eyes of the Mummy (played by Sofia Boutella), which reveals dual irises for a chilling effect.
There’s not much else to see here, except Tom Cruise running around, and military helicopters flying over a desert landscape to remind us that, unlike the Brendan Fraser version, the reboot will take place in modern day. The Mummy‘s full trailer is set to appear on Sunday, and we’ll be chatting about whether or not a cinematic universe built around Universal’s monster properties is a good idea or not.
Elsewhere in the movie universe, it’s a bit of a dull week in theaters when it comes to new films. The only feature of note is Jackie, which is being praised for Natalie Portman’s stirring performance as Jackie Kennedy. Set just after the JFK assassination, the film will follow the dark days that followed through the eyes of the first lady. Other than that, we’ll be recommending you go and see one of the other fantastic films still in theaters that you haven’t gotten around to yet, including Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Doctor Strange, Trolls, Moana, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, and Edge of Seventeen, among other choices.
We also got some cool news from TV land this week, not the least of which is Netflix’s decision to take things offline with free downloads of select titles for all subscribers. We’ll give you a crash course on how this will work, and talk about what this means for the streaming king going forward.
Speaking of streaming services, CBS’ new service, CBS All Access, is the only place to see the new Star Trek adventure currently in development, Star Trek: Discovery. After months of speculation, we finally got word on the first cast members for the series this week. They include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Michelle Yeoh as Captain Georgiou, the leader of the Starship Shenzhou, another Starfleet vessel. In addition, Discovery has added Doug Jones, who will play an alien, and Anthony Rapp, who will play a science officer who specializes in space fungus — you can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Also this week, we’ll be talking about Emerald City — NBC’s weirdo new take on The Wizard of Oz — Alien Covenant news, the latest from Martin Scorsese, and more.
