I watched Iron Man the other night, which I thought was a good solid action movie. It was no Dark Knight, but it did the licence justice. I thought there were a couple of nice touches, but they might be considered spoilers for someone who doesn't know the universe and doesn't want to know.

When James Rhodes watches Tony Stark leave in the Iron Man suit, he looks at the other silver prototype, and says "Next time". This is an obvious reference to the fact that he will become War Machine in the sequel. As far as I remember from what I know of the Iron Man universe, he takes over for a period of time when Tony Stark is out of action. Maybe they co-exist, I forget exactly. I used to be a comic collector a decade ago, and I still remember a bunch of that stuff. I never collected Iron Man, but I liked researching the Marvel Universe regardless, as my cousin was also a collector at the time.

The part after the credits made me smile. I thought both the introduction and the casting were great. Tony Stark gets home, and who should step out of the shadows but Samuel L. Jackson wearing an eye patch. After being asked who he is, he replies "I'm Nick Fury, the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm here to talk to you about the Avenger project". Nice setup for two movies!

Marvel are going all out with a whole bunch of their characters. Incredible Hulk comes out on DVD in a couple of weeks, but there is plenty more in the works. Here is what is on the way, according to www.imdb.com

Iron Fist (2008 ) guess this one isn't going to make the date, seeing as I can't even find a trailer on youtube.
Punisher : War Zone (2008 ) again, I guess this will be next year.
X-Men Origins : Magento (2009)
Silver Surfer (2009)
X-Men Origins : Wolverine (2009)
Luke Cage (2009)
Ghost Rider 2 (2009)
Nick Fury (2010)
Ant Man (2010)
Thor (2010)
Iron Man 2 (2010)
Doctor Strange (2010)
Submariner (2010)
The First Avenger : Captain America (2011)
Spiderman 4 (2011)
The Avengers (2011)
Deathlok (2011)

Cripes. I would have loved to have seen a Venom movie, but I guess that is not to be, and we will probably see Carnage in the next Spiderman. I find Daredevil 2 a strange omission from the list; I know it isn't in the top tier of the superhero movies, but figured it would have done well enough for a sequel. On top of that, there are some other movies that might interest big kids coming in the future.

Master of the Universe aka He-Man (2009)
Astroboy (2009)
Transformers 2 (2009) I doubt this surprises anyone
Voltron (2010)
Thundercats (2010)

I've heard that Master of the Universe is going to be directed by John Woo. So this time it might actually be good...