Sci-Fi Storm

Remember that lawsuit filed almost two years ago which claimed that Marvel Studios ripped off elements from a comic called Radix for their modern take on Iron Man? Well, it hasn’t gone away just yet – it’s just transformed.

Early last year the court in Massachusetts denied the case based on jurisdiction, but the plaintiffs, brothers Ben and Ray Lai, owners of Horizon Comics Productions, refiled on April 4th, 2016 in New York. On Monday, U.s District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken issued a ruling on Marvel’s motion to dismiss the suit, dismissing portions of the complaint but allowing others to proceed.

In the ruling, Judge Oetken notes that several parts of the complaint revolve around elements that Marvel called “unprotectable” under copyright, and the court agreed. A “highly mechanized suit of armor” was one, as it was too vague, as was the “three point landing” pose that was common between a poster for Iron Man 3 and some Radix promotional artwork. The pose, frankly, is so utterly common it’s now a cliché and is even referred to as “scènes à faire” or an obligatory scene in the ruling, and despite the plaintiffs assertions that Iron Man originally wore spandex and minimal armor, he wore power armor well before Radix existed, and even when he first debuted in 1963. As those elements are unprotectable, they cannot be considered as part of the test for “substantial similarity” for the case.

Some elements, however, may be protectable in comparing the images, notably things like hairstyles, style of the suit, the use of blue lights in the suit, etc. and Judge Oetken will allow the complaint to proceed “in part”. However, with what seems to remain in the complaint to press on, it still looks like an uphill battle that got even steeper for the plaintiffs.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately…we had to attend to a family emergency this past week and returned home late last night, and we have a lot of decompressing to do while attending to an event this week with its own bit of drama attached…but here is a bit of catch up for this past week…

The big news yesterday is that we know who the next companion is on Doctor Who. West End stage actress Pearl Mackie, most recently appearing in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time for the National Theatre, will play a character named Bill in the 10th season, which will not air until 2017. This will be Mackie’s first major role on television.

While we await renewals for a few shows (notably Supergirl), some others did get the nod this week. Grimm will return for a sixth season on NBC, but the network ordered a base of 13 episodes instead of 22 – but that could still increase. NBC has a lot of shows competing for the schedule next Fall, several of which are serials done in 13-episode chunks, and the shorter order will allow them to have more options in scheduling them. If things don’t work out for one of the other shows, Grimm could see the order increase. Also on the renewed list is MTV’s freshman fantasy series Shannara Chronicles, which had so-so live ratings, but picked up heavily in the L+3 and L+7 rating plus lots of social media buzz and digital downloads making it their best new show.

Syfy has given a green light for a pilot for the long-in-development David S. Goyer project Krypton. The series intends to see what life was like on Superman’s home planet years before its destruction, and follow the house of El and in particular Kal-El’s grandfather who seeks to bring hope and equality to a planet in disarray.

And finally moving from the small screen to the large one with a couple of Marvel tidbits…it appears that Iron Man/Tony Stark will be making an appearance in the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming film starring Tom Holland as the webslinger in Sony’s reboot of the franchise. Whether this is an attempt to bring Spider-Man closer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe following his upcoming appearance in Captain America: Civil War, or it is just a courtesy crossover for Sony allowing Spidey in the Avengers universe, who knows. But it can only be a plus.

And lastly, Marvel’s Inhumans film, planned for 2019, has been taken off the release slate – at least temporarily. While this could put the production in doubt, it may just be a scheduling matter – the new Indiana Jones movie was scheduled to release just a week later which would have a Disney/Lucasfilm likely overshadowing a Disney/Marvel film. Plans are still in place for the movie, but they just don’t have a release window picked out yet.

This is looking GOOD…the Avengers fracture into two teams – one led by Captain America, and the other by Iron Man, while the government seeks to control them all…

In theaters May 6th!

Last week Ben and Ray Lai, owners of Horizon Comics Productions, filed suit in the Federal Court of Massachusetts against Marvel and parent company Disney over claims that Marvel lifted the design of the Iron Man body armor designs from their own title, Radix.

The two allege that after they created Radix in 2001, they worked for a time for Marvel as artists, and that Radix materials had been distributed within Marvel. Then, in 2008 after the Lai brothers left Marvel, the first Iron Man movie came out, with a full mechanized body armor.

In the suit they say that “Marvel’s “Iron Man” comic book character first appeared in 1963. From that time until the first movie in the franchise was released, the comic typically depicted Iron Man wearing simple spandex-like attire and minimal armor.” But with the movie’s updated look and Marvel employees having access to the Radix designs, they believe their designs were lifted for the movies’ more modern high-tech armor.

However, it appears that their description of the “traditional” Iron Man armor isn’t quite accurate. Going all the way back to the first appearance of Iron Man in “Tales of Suspense #39”, we see him in full body armor…pretty clunky, and not unlike the armor Tony Stark built to escape his captors in the beginning of the 2008 movie. And through the years, although artistically you could probably mistake the depiction as being spandex, showing musculature, it was originally stylized full armor. And if you need other examples of full body armor with anatomical design, just do a Google image search for “George Clooney nipple suit” and witness the destruction of a franchise. 🙂

We’ll see what becomes of it. There is in fact a clear resemblance between a poster shot of Stark/Iron Man in a three point stance to a Radix promotional image…

Marvel announced today that Robert Downey Jr. has reached an agreement to reprise his Tony Stark/Iron Man role in two more films – but not alone.

The two-movie deal only covers the upcoming Avengers 2 (to start production next March for a May 2015 release) and Avengers 3, but leaves Iron Man 4 further in doubt, considering this will take Downey to around 2018, when he’ll be 53, and he’s already said he only wanted to do it until he’s 50.

Then again, they seemed to leave the end of Iron Man 3 at an appropriate closing point, and the primary comic character storylines only seem to be making it to three films as it is before the reboot tag starts getting thrown around…

Here is the latest trailer for Iron Man 3…we see War Machine has a more patriotic design, and we get a good look at The Mandarin…and of course lots of booms and Tony Stark out for revenge…it opens in wide release and IMAX in the U.S. on May 3rd, and internationally on April 25th.
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Here is the extended version of the Super Bowl trailer for the upcoming Iron Man 3!
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In this trailer, we see that Tony Stark faces a new supervillain, but also struggles with his own identity…Iron Man 3 comes out on May 3rd, 2013, and features returning stars Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Don Cheadle.
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Stan Lee Media, Inc. (which isn’t really related to Stan Lee himself, since the company filed for bankruptcy back in 2001), is swinging for the fences. The company filed a $5.5 BILLION lawsuit against Disney, claiming that Disney does not actually own the rights to Stan Lee’s creations, and therefore want all the profits from the massive movie hits that Marvel, and now Disney since they acquired Marvel in 2009, plus a declaration of full control over the characters. This directly affects the Spider-Man, Iron Man and X-Men franchises, and several characters in The Avengers.

This appears to be a continuation of lawsuits that started back in 2007. SLMI claims that when the company was formed, Stan Lee assigned all rights to his characters to the company. But later on, Lee assigned the rights to Marvel, the company he originally created and published all those characters. It all hinges on what Lee actually gave to SLMI – was SLMI created to work on new properties, or to administer the old ones?

Speaking of the Man in the Iron Suit, it appears that Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr. injured his foot during a stunt on set. According to Disney:

While performing a stunt on the set of Iron Man 3, Robert Downey Jr. sustained an injury to his foot. There will be a short delay in production while he recuperates.

Nothing else is known at this point. This comes on the heels of actress Mayim Bialik (The Big Bang Theory) who suffered injuries to her hand in an automobile collision in New York City yesterday. Fortunately she tweeted yesterday (with her husband typing) that she was “in pain but will keep all my fingers,” and she was back on set today.