Today, the news broke that Disney has bought Marvel Entertainment, lock stock and barrel, for $4 billion. That includes Marvel Comics, with over 5,000 characters, and Marvel Studios, with the successful Iron Man and Hulk film franchises, plus the upcoming Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. It seems like it's a win-win scenario -- Disney gets a boys' brand to bookend the Disney Princesses, and Marvel gets some global multimedia clout -- but what does this really mean for our beloved Marvel superheroes? As fans, these are just a few things we're worried and/or excited about.

I've figured out what it is about Stephen Sommers' movies that I absolutely despise. It's the fact that at no point in any of his films do I feel like any of what I'm watching is real. And it's not the mummies and the vampires and Sienna Miller's cleavage that make me think that -- it's the way the actors talk to each other, the way the music never stops, and the way that at no point does any character close his mouth. Every last moment is filled with dialogue, which isn't how the world works, and the constant music fills in any scenes they accidentally forgot to record dialogue for. At least Michael Bay had one or two scenes in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with no music or no dialogue, and it seemed to be entirely on purpose. Meanwhile, Sommers has actually made a movie that may be worse than Van Helsing, which is saying something. Specifically, it's saying that there is no slam-dunk movie idea that Sommers cannot ruin, or at least make enjoyable only by slightly dim children.

Here at MWoP, we've been taking a "wait-and-see-but-don't-hold-your-breath" approach to the G.I. Joe live-action movie. Early on, the visual disparities from the cartoon were pretty jarring, but then, so were the X-Men movie costumes, and that worked out okay. (I'll leave the Transformers movie designs aside, since A. I still don't like them and B. the movies were successful in spite of them, making my opinion moot.) But when the commercials and action scenes started showing up -- including performance-enhancing accelerator suits, which were never part of the G.I. Joe mythos until very recently -- we started to worry a bit more. And now they've declined to screen the movie for the press. But given the fact that negative buzz got so bad at one point that director Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing) was rumored to have been fired, that may be a wise choice. Regardless, it seems there may be nothing to worry about.

Director Ridley Scott recently announced that he was about to begin work on a prequel to one of his most popular films, the sci-fi/horror/genre-defining movie Alien. While we can't deny that we'd love to see a good Alien movie, a prequel seems like the wrong way to go, since Sigourney Weaver's Ripley, the fan-favorite character from the series, couldn't be in it, and to show where exactly the xenomorphs come from would take all of the mystery out of them. We came up with a list of genre films that need prequels -- good ones -- more than Alien does, starting with another Ridley Scott film...

There is very little that could be done to make me (or most people) worry about Iron Man 2. The first movie was so good, and so fun, that the second would have to be good, right? Unfortunately, it has to be good. It has to be better than the first, in fact, or people will be disappointed. It has to bring something new to the table. Luckily, director Jon Favreau and star Robert Downey Jr. seem to realize that, and they brought their A-game to the San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend. The footage they showed isn't online yet, but the descriptions of it dazzle the imagination. Here are ten things I learned from the Iron Man panel at SDCC that have gotten me even more excited to see it.

What a difference a year makes. Around this time in 2008, geeks were buzzing about the Watchmen teaser trailer and the exclusive footage presented by director Zack Snyder and the complete cast at San Diego Comic-Con. This was going to be the superhero movie that would Change. Superhero. Movies. Forever. Now, on the eve of another SDCC, the director's cut of the film has just been released on DVD in a decidedly different atmosphere -- one in which Watchmen is considered not only a box-office failure (despite being the second highest-grossing R-rated release of the year so far) but also a huge disappointment to large pockets of its core audience, nerds who have been message-board screaming their displeasure like an abattoir full of retarded children (sorry, couldn't resist).

Finally, the literary adaptation we've waited years for! The fantastic imagery! The unspeakable terror! The parallels to our own world! That's right, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is finally out on Blu-Ray! The long, hard, gay-innuendo-filled wait is over! Also, some other stuff came out.

Justin Timberlake must be some kind of mutant. The man can sing, dance and act (if his recent Emmy nomination is any indication), and he was recently in the running to play superhero Green Lantern, before he lost out on the part to superhero hog Ryan Reynolds, who has already played Hannibal King in Blade Trinity and Deadpool in Wolverine, and was recently given a Deadpool spin-off. If JT is interested in playing a superhero -- and Reynolds will give someone else a frickin' chance (Double-R backlash!) -- we think he should keep trying. In fact, we've come up with a batch of comic book characters that we think Timberlake would be perfect for.

I'm not really sure why movie critics complain about superhero movies being loud and stupid. I am an avowed lover of comic books -- superhero books in particular -- and I will be the first to admit that superhero comics are mostly pretty stupid. Even the really smart ones (Watchmen, Sandman) are based on stupid principles, i.e., that people who can fly, pop claws, shoot laser beams, etc. will put on tights and fight crime. So why do critics -- particularly the ones I've heard called "comic book tourists" -- continue to look for depth, meaning and artistry? Were they spoiled by last year's summer of high-quality superhero flicks, and they want Wolverine to shoulder the full responsibility this year, since it's the only superhero movie coming out? Talk about putting all of your eggs in one basket.

This Friday, the latest big-budget superhero movie hits theaters, and... well, a bunch of people have already seen it, thanks to a leaked bootleg copy, minus a lot of special effects. We haven't seen the bootleg ourselves -- and if we did, we certainly wouldnt tell anybody about it -- but we've seen enough trailers and teaser footage to give us a pretty good idea of what's going on. Plus, we've read enough X-Men comics to choke an industrial paper shredder, which makes us highly qualified to create a field guide to the super-powered mutants who will be popping up (and popping claws) in the latest X-movie. Only a few have been seen on the big screen before, and even they may not be so familiar anymore, as they're played by different actors. Check out all the new faces in out X-Men Origins: Wolverine gallery!