It is Friday, the end of yet another glorious week on our planet Earth. As the sun sets on the final full week of February, FinalBoss reflects on some of the most prominent news stories of the past seven days.
With Black Panther in the cinemas, The Walking Dead fast approaching and the BAFTAs stealing the limelight, you may have missed a few major but easy-to-oversee stories that broke since last Friday. Here are our top picks of news for this week:
Transformers Gets a Reboot
The Transformers universe is a torrid affair of terrible acting, terrible plot, terrible product placing and incredible CGI. The first movie in the series was the benchmark of quality, from which it has been slipping away from ever since. Which isn’t saying much, since the first movie is hardly Citizen Kane.
Despite being to the movie industry what the Kardashians are to pop-culture — an unexplainable success — the series is still alive and kicking, with two more titles in the works. Previously, these were supposed to be a Bumblebee movie and a sequel to the heavily-criticised Transformers: The Last Knight, but now Hasbro has announced a change in direction.
Instead, the new Bumblebee movie will go ahead as planned, but the sequel to the most recent title has been scrapped, and instead, the Transformers series will get a reboot starting the bright yellow Camaro’s solo adventure.
Michael Bay won’t direct these movies, but he will act as a producer, so his influence isn’t totally being scraped clean from the tiles. Still, maybe they can salvage this franchise and produce a decent movie; or continue to create billion-dollar blockbusters which are about as empty as a screening for Fifty Shades Freed.
EA Announces The New Battlefield Title Will Be Playable at EA Play
Here’s some shocking news: you’ll get to play something at EA Play.
EA’s own-brand E3; effectively a giant middle finger to the biggest name in the gaming convention world, will take play the week before E3 2018 and run right up until the show starts. A bunch of titles and events have been teased for EA Play, but this week the studio announced that its highly-anticipated new Battlefield game will be on show, and playable, at EA Play this June.
With the success of Battlefield 1 helping to build hype for the latest instalment of the franchise, this major announcement gives EA Play a bit of spice it had been previously lacking. Of course, most people can’t jet off to California to get a first-hand taste, but being a new-age convention, all the content will likely be streamed live, so Battlefield fans will at least get to see some gameplay during the event.
The Star Wars Episode 9 Script is Finished
J.J Abrams, the director, brought in last minute to piece together the final act of the latest trilogy, has announced the script is finished. Immediately, speculation has begun that filming will begin this summer, with many fans hoping the last episode in Disney’s first saga will hit more notes than the controversial Last Jedi.
Details at this point are thin on the ground, as you’d expect considering its just the script that is done. J.J co-wrote the piece with Chris Terrio, famed for bringing together the misshapen mess that is Batman vs. Superman.
Two Honest Guys are fans of the Last Jedi and the idea of J.J being back at the helm, and writing a script with a man who thought the Martha dialogue was a good idea, is kind of scary. We just hope it isn’t a cobbled together mess of nostalgia and mystery boxes that we’ll never get to open.
What does this news really mean, though? Well, it means they are definitely still making that Star Wars movie thing… so that’s something.
Terminator Six Starts Filming in May
Movies we loved in the 80s are clearly not built for 21st-century incarnations. We’ve learnt this with Aliens, we’ve learnt this with Indiana Jones, and we’ve learnt this with the Terminator. Yet here we are, with a new announcement that Terminator 6 starts filming in May.
While James Cameron gave Genesys the thumbs up, only for it to be an overwhelming thumbs down, the studio behind it still seems to think that this franchise can be saved; even after being unable to find Salvation… get it?
It’s late.
Whether or not you are excited, scared or indifferent to the filming of Terminator 6, it is happening. This May, shooting starts, and soon after, a movie will probably appear in the cinemas.
We can all pin our hopes on this one finally being good, for the first time since 1991, but we’ve been burned before. At this point you’ve got to wonder, how long can the series survive on love for a movie made over 30 years ago? If this one isn’t good, it’ll be the end of the franchise… after maybe another one or two, just to be sure.
We’ll be back next Friday with some more news stories, so be sure to head on over to FinalBoss a week today. Or on Saturday… it’ll still be relevant then I guess. I wouldn’t leave it to Monday, though.
