Gnashing and Wailing - Summer Geek Films

The first two blockbusters of the summer are most certainly going to be X-Men Origins: Wolverine and J.J. Abram's Star Trek, both will most certainly cause much gnashing of teeth and wailing within the geek community. If there are two groups of geeks out there that can match the fervor and slavish devotion of Brownshirts it is Trekkies and X-Men fans. Worse yet, Gambit fans - who almost have as many sexual fantasies about the Ragin' Cajun as Sonic fans have about the blue hedgehog.

I'm looking forward to Star Trek. I've always had a love/hate relationship with the various television series and the movies. I am hoping that this movie, a reset will have more of what I love, and less of what I hate. Unfortunately, since it will still begin with yet another time related plot, and at least the elder Spock making an appearance, it starts off with some worrisome baggage. Despite that, I think that Abrams will bring to the movie some slick production and excellent film making. I am hoping that this will really be an excellent high budget science fiction action movie. I'm also really digging Karl Urban as Bones. I've been a fan of his for some time, and the clip I have seen of him and Kirk on a shuttle is awesome. He is not merely a caricature of DeForest Kelley but still maintains the particular ornery charm of the late actor and his most famous character.

The Wolverine movie confuses me. Amidst the other Marvel movies the X-men franchise stands out as being the most distinct from the comics in terms of story and origins being different from the printed sources. Spiderman, Ironman, the Fantastic Four, even Daredevil and that atrocious Elektra movie stayed close to the source material, whereas X-men existed in it's own pocket continuity. Wolverine seems to stray from the established X-men film continuity even further. I enjoy Hugh Jackman and I'm very interested to see Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth but I really don't see why they feel the need to have Cyclops in this film. In the movies there was no indication Cyclops or Xavier had any knowledge of Wolverine prior to the movies. I don't understand why they feel the need to break established movie canon, especially with the X-men First Class movie in the works.

Both movies presales of tickets are higher than last years breakout success Ironman, by some 25% in the case of Wolverine and even higher for Star Trek, I expect both will do remarkably well. Personally I am looking forward to seeing Stark Trek in Imax and I'll go see Wolverine, but my expectations are significantly lower.