Nick Nadel's Tuesday column examines the increasingly busy intersection between comic books and the movies.

Let's step into an alternate summer movie reality for a moment, shall we? It's the first week of May 2008, and audiences are primed for Iron Man. Its star, a veteran actor who is no stranger to controversy, promotes the film on Oprah and even announces a new website celebrating his two decades in film. Flash forward to the premiere: On screen, a military Humvee rumbles through the Afghan desert. Cut to inside, and we see millionaire playboy Tony Stark... portrayed by...Tom Cruise?? No!!!

Yep, it almost happened. And on that disturbing note, let's take a look at some of the reasons why A-listers should be kept as far away as possible from superhero roles.

They Bring Too Much Baggage
Take Tom, for instance. Cruise circled Iron Man for years, drawn to the playboy-turned-hero character. (And no doubt, drawn to yet another role where he could obscure his famous face. Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky, anyone?) Sure, the film might have worked if Tommy Boy had been cast. Perhaps the Cruise from Magnolia might have shown up... but chances are, this risky project with a quirky director would have morphed into a Tom Cruise Vehicle. (Dude overshadowed Spielberg on War of the Worlds, Favreau wouldn't have stood a chance.) And with Cruise comes more explosions and more noise. Before you could say "Pepper Potts," Iron Man would've become yet another bloated summer junk-a-thon. And the hype! Think Iron Man is being shoved down your throat now? Imagine the paparazzi photos of Katie and Suri on set, the Us Weekly reports of Tom insisting that Stark's suit be Xenu-powered. Sure, it's not like Downey didn't bring his own baggage to the table. But he certainly didn't bring Tom Cruise's jetloads of baggage.

Continue reading "Should A-List Stars Be Banned From Superhero Roles? " »

Girls can be geeks too, and proud of it. They'll debate the relative merits of Captains Kirk vs. Picard. And they'll talk about everything from George Lucas to the chest hair of Lost's Jack Shephard. You'll find these topics -- and much, much more -- on Pink Raygun, a fan site started in February 2007 that celebrates women as both science fiction fans and auteurs. The brainchild of Lisa Faryand John Dallaire, Fary says she launched the site because she couldn't find a place where women were having fun with scifi and "just enjoying the sheer geekery of it." Too often, "a woman who's interested in things like science, space travel, etc. has always been seen as an aberration," notes Teresa Jusino, one of the site's 15 writers. "Little boys are introduced to and encouraged in their interest, while little girls have to find it for themselves."

Continue reading "Site of the Week - Pink Raygun" »

If you live in the New York City area, boogie on down to the Scifi Screening Room this Wednesday night for the classic dystopian musical, The Apple.

It's Xanadu meets George Orwell in this flamboyant Adam and Eve story set in the nightmarish future of 1994 (as imagined in 1980.) Expect to see Catherine Mary Stewart mutate into a drug-fueled glam pop superstar (Hubba-hubba). If you like Phantom of the Paradise, but wished it had been made in Berlin by one-half of Golan-Globus, this is the movie for you!

The show will be hosted by The SciFi Department's Kevin Maher and Raven Snook, providing trivia, prizes, drinking games, free glitter and a sing-a-long.

Continue reading "SciFi Screening Room Presents The Apple" »

Beating death -- or at least the effects of old age -- is a longtime scifi flick theme. In real life, Viagra or a plastic surgeon's knife serves as the Fountain of Youth; on film, it comes in many different forms. The title character in The Picture of Dorian Gray has a magical painting that ages in his place. In Steven Spielberg's Twilight Zone: The Movie segment, codger Scatman Crothers turns the elderly denizens of a retirement home into their youthful selves. Terminally-ill billionaire Anthony Hopkins attempts to buy Emilio Estevez's body in Freejack. But perhaps the most memorable movie about the prospect of eternal youth is Cocoon.

Continue reading "Cocoon Offers a Youthful Look at Aging That Baby Boomers Can't Resist" »

• Dark Roasted Blend has a fantastic gallery of Soviet-era science fiction images.

• The director of The Pirates of the Caribbean will direct Bioshock. It will suck.

• Go listen to some Arthur C. Clarke reading 2001.

• io9 sees Captain America's shield in a still from Iron Man that looks slathered with an inch of Vaseline.

• A lot of information on the plot structure of Star Trek XI.

Continue reading "Daily Scan: 05.13.08 - Soviet-era SciFi; Star Trek XI Plot Details" »