1. The Dark Knight - is a 2008 American superhero film directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan’s Batman film series and a sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins. Christian Bale reprises the lead role. The plot of the film focuses on Batman’s fight against a new villain, the Joker (Heath Ledger), and his relationships with police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and his old friend and love interest, assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). For his conception of the film, Nolan was inspired by the Joker’s first two appearances in the comics and Batman: The Long Halloween. The Dark Knight was filmed primarily in Chicago, as well as in several other locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Nolan used an IMAX camera to film some sequences, including the Joker’s first appearance in the film.


Plot: Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent are forced to deal with the chaos unleashed by an anarchist mastermind known only as the Joker, as it drives each of them to their limits.

2. The Incredible Hulk is a 2008 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character the Hulk. It is directed by Louis Leterrier and stars Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner / the Hulk. Not a sequel to Hulk (2003), it is a reboot that establishes a new back-story, where Banner became the Hulk as an unwitting pawn in a military scheme to create supersoldiers. On the run, he attempts to cure himself of the Hulk before he is captured by General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt), but his worst fears are realized when power-hungry soldier Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) becomes the Abomination. Liv Tyler also stars as Betty Ross, Banner’s girlfriend and General Ross’ daughter.

Plot: Fugitive Dr. Bruce Banner must utilize the genetic accident that transforms him into a giant, rampaging hulk to stop a former soldier that purposely becomes an even more dangerous version.

3. Tropic Thunder is a 2008 action comedy film produced and directed by Ben Stiller and written by Stiller, Justin Theroux, and Etan Cohen. The film stars Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey, Jr. as a group of prima donna actors making a Vietnam War film when their fed-up writer and director decide to abandon them in the middle of the jungle, forcing them to fight their way out.
Plot: Through a series of freak occurrences, a group of actors shooting a big-budget war movie are forced to become the soldiers they are portraying.

4. Iron Man is a 2008 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Directed by Jon Favreau, the film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist and master engineer with a plethora of playboy vices who builds a powered exoskeleton and becomes the technologically advanced superhero, Iron Man. Gwyneth Paltrow plays his personal assistant Pepper Potts, Terrence Howard plays military liaison James Rhodes and Jeff Bridges plays Stark Industries executive Obadiah Stane.

Plot: When wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is forced to build an armored suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil.

This was my opinion. Debate and discuss please!

Plot: Banner works at a soda bottling factory in Brazil while searching for a cure for his condition (through extracting of certain properties from rare plants and herbs) with the help of a colleague on the Internet, known only as “Mr. Blue”. He is also learning meditative breathing techniques from a martial arts expert (Rickson Gracie) to help regulate his pulse rate and keep his anger under control, and has not transformed in 158 days. After Banner cuts his finger, a drop of his blood ends up in one of the bottles, and is eventually ingested by an ill-fated consumer (Stan Lee) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This accident points Ross to Banner’s location and he sends a team, led by Russian-born British special ops expert Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), to capture him. Banner escapes Blonsky by transforming into the Hulk and fighting off his team inside the bottle factory. After Ross explains how Banner first became the Hulk, a vengeful Blonsky agrees to be injected with the super soldier serum, giving him enhanced speed, agility, reflexes, endurance and healing.

The explosive, action-packed adventure in one of the all-time most popular superhero sagas unfolds with a cure in reach for the world’s most primal force of fury: THE INCREDIBLE HULK. We find scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) living in shadows, scouring the planet for an antidote. But the warmongers who dream of abusing his powers won’t leave him alone, nor will his need to be with the only woman he has ever loved, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler). Upon returning to civilization, our brilliant doctor is ruthlessly pursued by The Abomination (Tim Roth)–a nightmarish beast of pure adrenaline and aggression whose powers match The Hulk’s own. A fight of comic-book proportions ensues as Banner must call upon the hero within to rescue New York City from total destruction. And on June 13, 2008…one scientist must make an agonizing final choice–accept a peaceful life as Bruce Banner or the creature he could permanently become: THE INCREDIBLE HULK.

The Incredible Hulk 2008 Trailer:

Click here to download The Incredible Hulk

And because Marvel has been so brilliant at churning out one successful movie that everybody likes and one mediocre movie that everyone instantly forgets about a nanosecond after leaving the cinema, that can only mean one thing. More Marvel movies!

Paramount has just signed a deal to globally release the next five Marvel films. Since that includes Thor and Captain America, Paramount probably thinks it’s got a pretty sweet deal going on. But it should have read the contract in more detail - the other three movies are about Dazzler, 8-Ball and an utterly pointless shot-for-shot remake of Daredevil, this time with all the characters played by Ben Affleck. Eat it, Paramount!

We’re just starting to see how successful Marvel is at making its own movies. Back when Marvel announced its movie production business in 2005, we weren’t alone in fearing thousands of low-quality direct-to-DVD standard movies about all the superheroes nobody cares about. But Marvel has proved us wrong.

Look at Iron Man - by cherry-picking some of the world’s best actors, letting them operate under one of the world’s most admired indie directors and giving them hundreds of millions of dollars to blow shit up with, Iron Man was always going to be a guaranteed smash. And then there was The Incredible Hulk, which was, um. Yeah.

But the Marvel formula has been set - which is why Kenneth Branagh might be directing Thor next - and it mostly works very well. Which is why Paramount has just decided to globally distribute all the films that Marvel can possibly push out. Reuters reports:

Marvel Entertainment Inc raised its film unit’s 2008 revenue outlook following initial payments of $60 million from Viacom’s Paramount Pictures — the distributor of the comic book publisher’s “Iron Man” movie. Paramount will also distribute Marvel’s next five self-produced feature films across the world, the two companies said in a separate statement.

And it’s probably a wise investment on Paramount’s part, because Marvel seems to be so hell-bent on putting a movie about The Avengers together that it’ll keep throwing out huge new movies based on its individual members - and the inevitable sequels - until it gets there.

MTV News caught up with Rourke and Aronofsky in Toronto only hours after the film was sold to Fox Searchlight (which will, by all accounts, release “The Wrestler” for awards consideration before the end of the year). We found an introspective and ultimately upbeat Rourke, mindful of his past mistakes and eager for the next phase of his career.

MTV: This is such a raw performance in every conceivable way. Did you know what you were getting yourself into?

Mickey Rourke: I knew 10 days into making this movie that this would be the best movie I ever made, and I knew after three days that it would be the hardest movie I ever made. I didn’t have a wrestling background. People like to go, “Oh, he was an ex-professional boxer — he can do the wrestling.” Wrestling and boxing is like Ping-Pong and rugby. There’s no connection. These guys get really hurt. You’ve got guys who are 265 [pounds] throwing you across the ring. They take several years to learn how to land. I landed like a lump of sh–. Every bone in my body vibrated. Darren would go, “Let’s do it again!” I was like, “Give me five f—ing minutes to relax!” Here’s a guy whose only exercise he ever did was lifting his fork to his mouth, and he’s going, “C’mon, Mickey, you’re only giving me 50 percent!” That’s part of his thing, to push my buttons.

MTV: What kind of training did you go through?

Rourke: I got a really good Israeli trainer who made me pump iron and do the cardio for four months. Then we did two hours of weight training and cardio and two hours of wrestling practice. This is months before the film. By the time we shot the movie I was like, “This is the easy part.” The other stuff was murder.

MTV: I’ve heard that you rewrote a lot of your dialogue in the film.

Rourke: I rewrote all of my scenes and all of my dialogue. The speech at the end I wrote the night before.

MTV: That’s a heartbreaking speech for this character. Where did it come from?

Rourke: I was an amateur fighter way before I was an actor. I got hurt and I quit. I had a lot of shame about that. I felt I quit because I was afraid I was going to fail. When I turned 34 I went back and [fought]. I did pretty good. I had 12 fights and six knockouts. It probably wasn’t the brightest decision in my life, but I had some demons as a man. At that point, I was getting really destructive. I didn’t want to act anymore. I had issues from my childhood. It was shame that turned into anger. Some really awful things happened. Boxing was almost like a healing process for me.

[Aronofsky joins.]

MTV: This sounds like a close collaboration between you two.

Rourke: The best thing that I can thank Darren for is he surrounded me with the best possible people. We had some stuff choreographed for the movie that was going to be a lot simpler than what we did. And then one of the real wrestlers would do a fancy move, and I’d say, “I want to do that!”

Darren Aronofsky: I’d be like, “You’re crazy! Just do the basic moves.”

Rourke: As soon as my head got in that mindset, I wanted to be the best wrestler in three months in the world.

Aronofsky: And by the end of it, a lot of his trainers said to me, “He’s better than 80 percent of the WWF guys out there.”

Rourke: I was more proud of that than the acting.

MTV: I’ve never seen a film that stayed quite literally on the back of a character for so much of the story.

Aronofsky: It’s one of the connections me and Mickey have. My mentor at film school was Stuart Rosenberg who directed “Cool Hand Luke” and “The Pope of Greenwich Village” [which starred Rourke]. When I first met Mickey I tried to impress him by saying I was Stuart’s friend. And Mickey told me, “Stuart taught me one thing. He taught me how to act with my back.”

Rourke: There’s a scene [in "The Pope of Greenwich Village"] where Daryl Hannah shoots me down. As I walk out, Stuart says to me, “You just got dumped by the love of your life. You’re going to walk out of the room.” Now what does a guy do then when they have to go out and face the world? [Rourke gets up and demonstrates a slow, defeated walk.] He walks out, stops a second. [Rourke stops, subtly collects himself and continues walking.] It was little things like that.

MTV: When I watched the film I couldn’t help but think about your personal ups and downs, Mickey. Did you guys discuss the audience coming to this with that kind of knowledge?

Aronofsky: No, we never talked about that. For me, it was always about the talent of this man who’s been playing heavies for 20 years and never showing his sympathetic side.

Rourke: For me, it was a little different. I had a career 15 years ago, and I screwed it up from my issues I couldn’t deal with until I got help. When you were somebody and then you’re not anybody anymore you live in a state of shame. Randy is a proud guy. He doesn’t want to work at a deli counter. He wants the audience still, but his time has passed him by.

MTV: Mickey, how are you feeling today, both physically and about where your career can go at this point?

Rourke: I looked in the mirror when my boxing career was over. My equilibrium was off. I can’t do intricate things with my hands because of the nerve damage. There are a few teeth missing. I don’t remember things the way I used to. But I was fortunate. I got out when the doctors told me. I wasted a lot of time. I want to work with interesting directors. I’m going to do a lot of work because of the time I wasted.

We all knew this was coming, so I’m glad to see that WB is not afraid of the hype that this film still has. I’m sure it’ll get at least one additional Oscar nomination which might just be enough to help it earn $90 million more. Although in its current run, it only earned $55 million in IMAX total, and as of this moment, the January re-release is only being planned in IMAX theaters - which makes me believe that it’ll be much harder to beat Titanic than originally thought.