STAR LETTER
OK, those guys from The Lego Movie and the Jump Street series were an interesting choice for the new Han Solo movie, but Ron Howard seems to have caught some flak as their replacement. The suggestion being that he’s just a pair of uninspiring safe hands! Come on, this guy was the helmer of Apollo 13, Edtv, Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon… I could go on. So I’ll simply quote Ron himself from happier days and tell them to “Sit on it,” as I’m sure he’ll soon have the Millennium Falcon doing the Kessel Run in 14 parsecs… sorry, 12! ELEANOR PALMER, GILDERSOME And lest we forget, Ron did Willow, which is essentially a Star Wars film in Tolkien cosplay. Speaking of replacements, as TF went to press Colin Trevorrow’s Episode IX departure broke. If the gap hasn’t already been filled, we’d like to draw Ms. Kennedy’s attention to the fan ‘film’ Dialogue once made starring Snowbell the Cat as an oddly disinterested wampa. Eleanor and everyone with a letter printed here will receive Fast & Furious 8, available digitally on 2 October and on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and on demand from 16 October via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Didn’t send an address? Email it! It’s a sub/Dom movie, but not like that.
FOLD SCHOOL
Iam terribly vexed. Why, I hear you ask? Well, I will tell you. I hate unicorns. I hate Total Film for making me make a unicorn. I hate origami.
I hate origami unicorns. Mine didn’t look like a unicorn from Blade Runner. More like a dog. Not sure where I went wrong but the blood coming from my fingers made it look like something from Cujo. Horrific, it was. Horrific. Hence, I am vexed. With kind regards and bloodied fingers. MARTIN JACKSON, BLETCHLEY For more tales of foil(ed)-folding, see the Blade Runner Unicorn Gallery column just over to the right. The reaction to our little ori-gift has had us wondering what to do next: revolving-shoebox Inception diorama? Cape Fear tattoo kit? The Great Wall part-work, every issue until 2094?
THE SHEET IS ON
Following the reference in your review [TF262], I watched the trailer for that new Scooby-Doo movie A Ghost Story and while Velma looks hotter than I remember, I’m concerned what has happened to the rest of the Mystery Incorporated gang. Have the Caveman, Creeper, Headless Phantom and the like finally finished off those pesky kids and nosy dog? Anyway, Velma was always the brains of the team, so I’m hoping for the usual frights and chases before the climactic unmasking. PS I suspect that the downtrodden Manchester By The Sea janitor did it. DAW, VIA EMAIL Zoinks, as no one in David Lowery’s indie says. We’re intrigued to know how many sheets the low-budget production went through. Was there an intern in the laundrette doing speed washes day and night? Or a mysterious wave of tablecloth thefts in the local area?
CON GAME
Having seen your features on Comic-Con and D23 and the amazing line-ups/footage presentations at these events, I can’t help but grump at the fact that it’s only at American cons you get such treats.
I’m a cosplayer and am at tons of cons every year. But never do we in the UK get the entire cast of Avengers: Infinity War or Justice League. We barely get a single A-lister at these UK cons. Seriously, the highest calibre of ‘celebrity’ at one of these was a bloke who was in the background of one scene in a Batman movie. Even his ‘this is me in action’ poster behind him was just his arm, out of focus and way in the background. Yet the Yanks get EVERYONE. Granted last year’s Star Wars Celebration one was OK, but the Star Trek 50th-anniversary event was rubbish. Come on guys, sort it out – it costs us tons in tickets, parking, petrol and food for the day, so make an effort! PAUL, VIA EMAIL Dialogue’s saddest con memory is having its photo taken as a five-year-old with a stormtrooper, only to realise, when the picture came back from Boots half a decade later, that the trooper had his breastplate on the wrong way round! There’s Dialogue and Dialogue’s brother doing their best Rebel-scum sneers, next to some costumed goon who got dressed in the dark. Bah! Scarred us for life, that did, and turned us into the cynical gloom spewers that you know and love today. So it didn’t turn out too badly when we come to think of it.
BYE, GEORGE
Iliked your recent bookazine that honoured those whom you felt were the Top 100 Sci-Fi Characters Of All Time. However, I must take issue with something in the Batman entry. As with other characters, you listed the actors who played them, but chose to ignore Val Kilmer (Batman Forever) and George Clooney
(Batman & Robin) with the line “they and Joel Schumacher know why”. REALLY? You included
Adam West (RIP) who made Kilmer and Clooney both look like Paul Kersey in Death Wish. Shouldn’t he have been omitted for the same reason? Hell, I would’ve included Lewis Wilson (1943’s Batman) and Robert Lowery (1949’s Batman
And Robin) before West! WILLIE HOLMES, CHICAGO To be fair, Clooney at least would probably thank us for leaving him off the list – and we should probably thank him and Schumacher for steering the Batmobile into a lamppost, leaving Nolan to show us the dark at the end of the tunnel. As for Adam West, he’ll always have a place in our too-tight-tights-wearing hearts, if for nothing other than cheering up our weekday after-school teatimes with his shiny batarang.
MAKE IT BIG
Loved The Defenders feature in issue 262. Amazing small-screen series deserve more promotion and accessibility à la their big-screen counterparts. With Marvel’s Inhumans having recently premiered in IMAX, wouldn’t it be great to see more TV shows at the multiplex? I for one would pay top dollar to see Game Of Thrones in all its cinematic glory! Should we start a petition? EMILY MATTHEWS, KENT Yes – and on the other side, a petition to have certain big-screen titles extradited to the small screen. Sorry to make an example of you, Emoji Movie, not sorry, Baywatch. Show we’d most like to see in IMAX: Great British Bake Off. Show we’d least like to see: Embarrassing Bodies. That would be like early Peter Jackson without the singing puppets.