Find me a sci-fi movie where there is a Utopia, and I will point out the worm in the apple. Every single time we are presented with a Utopian society on film, there is also a corrupt diplomat that's running the show, or it's a dream world, or it's built on a city of good-hearted underground dwellers... You know what I'm saying because you've all seen such movies before.
So I'm going to make a broad statement and say: There is no such thing as Utopia in science fiction.
The prototypical example of this, and perhaps the genesis of this whole meme, is H.G. Wells' classic The Time Machine. In it, the Utopian race of the Eloi lives in blissful harmony, at least on the surface. In fact, their society is completely dependent on the bestial Morlocks. Both races depend on each other for survival, and neither is complete as a species.
Forty years ago ape-men threw bones at a monolith, kicking off a love affair that would span generations. Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey is many things to many people: a tense thriller, a dystopian fable, a leftover hallucination from the 1960s.
Of course, there are those who don't know what to make of it, who watch and wait and watch again, hoping to understand. An unexpected benefit of 40 years of fan-worship and film criticism, however, is that it only grows easier for new audiences to explore the film. Movie City Indie, for example, has assembled a dazzling collection of notes, reviews, and trivia about the film that will have you throwing an impromptu screening party of your own to celebrate the occasion.
If you're still left scratching your head trying to figure it out, then how about some Cliff's Notes? Kubrick 2001: The Space Odyssey Explained is a ten-minute animated film that lays it all out in plain terms, leaving little to the imagination. Finally you'll know what Kubrick was trying to say.
George Lucas loves revisionism. In a recent interview with Starwars.com, George Lucas said that as far as he was concerned, there was no Star Wars after Return of the Jedi:
It's a certain story about Anakin Skywalker and once Anakin Skywalker dies, that's kind of the end of the story. There is no story about Luke Skywalker, I mean apart from the books. But there's three worlds: There's my world that I made up, there's the licensing world that's the books, the comics, all that kind of stuff, the games, which is their world, and then there's the fans' world, which is also very rich in imagination, but they don't always mesh. All I'm in charge of is my world. I can't be in charge of those other people's world, because I can't keep up with it.
It's sort of an interesting psychological profile of the man, isn't it? The Expanded Universe, most of which takes place after Episode VI, largely exceeds the quality of the prequels. And if Star Wars is "all about Anakin," why did he start by focusing on Luke?
One of the things I find enraging about George Lucas' demeanor isn't so much that he took Star Wars in a direction I find totally stupid. That's part of it, but what I really dislike is his perpetually stated dogma that the fans who hated the prequels are stupid, that there was no way he could make movies that would have impressed us, that its all our fault. Its a crappy way to treat the fans who have made you a billionaire, but it also betrays a mind that is only interested in the opinions of sycophants.
So will Lucas change his tune for the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Hardly. According to Lucas:
Desert island movies -- everyone's got them. Depending on whether you're there alone and not with a Lost-style bevy of tanned beauties, pornography might top your list. But for me, the choice is clear: If I could only have one movie to watch, it would be Merrian C. Cooper's King Kong.
As far as I'm concerned, King Kong is the perfect movie. No monster movie released before or since has come close to being that magical, that perfect blend of fantasy and adventure, with just a dash of romance. Fused together by Willis O'Brien's industry-shattering stop motion animation, it is a film that defies being dated by its era. It is every boy's ultimate fantasy, distilled into the purest, most artful cinematic interpretation.
Keanu Reeves as Klaatu. What else do you need to know about the new Day The Earth Stood Still Remake to convince you it's going to be stupid?
Granted, that algorithm doesn't always end up with 100% predictions of quality: The Matrix is excellent despite Keanu. Actually, come to think of it, for a guy who can't act, who subscribes to the Sock Puppet Method of Thespianism, Keanu's pretty excellent about picking his roles: This is the guy who was in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Dangerous Liaisons and Speed, after all.
So maybe discrediting a movie with Keanu Reeves in it doesn't work. A better reason to discredit a Day The Earth Stood Still remake would be because the original is one of those boring "classics" that no one actually enjoys watching.
Leaping straight from one bad idea (The Bionic Woman, ahem) to another, producer David Eick has now announced that he is going to adapt P.D. James' novel Children of Men into a regular series.
Sometimes Hollywood just bites. As you might recall, Alfonso Cuaron loosely adapted a film based on that novel in 2006, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore as infertile survivors in a barren London post-apocalypse in which a new child hasn't been born for the last twenty years. It's a genre-defying masterpiece, exactly as long as it needs to be, every shot and line perfect. So obviously it requires weekly extrapolation to dilute the effect.
In the face of modern and oftentimes frightening technological advances, mankind is wont to look to the past for reassurance and allegory -- to take comfort in the fact that we have triumphed in the face of such adversity before. Take the case of serial director Spencer Gordon Bennett's 1959 film, The Atomic Submarine.
Ostensibly a camp classic about an undersea alien invasion, the film is actually an exploration of the then newly-unveiled nuclear submarine. Made at the apex of the Atomic Age, when the idea of harnessing the power of the atom was both exciting and terrifying, The Atomic Submarine was crafted to look like a military action film -- early previews and promotions for the movie played down its sci-fi aspects and referred only to a dire threat the crew must conquer. The lurking danger is an octopedal one-eyed alien intent on mankind's destruction -- pure science fiction. Or is it ancient mythology?
Watching the film, it becomes difficult not to draw allusions to Homer's ancient epic The Odyssey, in which the warrior Odysseus, returning home from the successful siege of Troy, finds himself and his crew ensnared by Polyphemos the Cyclops -- guess what Commander Vandover and the crew of the atomic Tigershark name their alien threat?
While many remember Species as
"that movie with the naked alien babe," hardcore sci-fi fans know
it as one of the few films to showcase the mad-genius design work of
Swiss artist H.R. Giger. (Not to mention one of the few films that
proves the old sci-fi maxim, "sex with alien babe equals gruesome
death by tentacle.")
Famously known for dreaming up the Alien who
got up close and personal with Sigourney Weaver, Giger also designed
Species's Sil (the
creepy alien lurking inside Natasha Henstridge) as well as
the film's nightmarish ghost train dream sequence. But it was with this
sequence that the iconoclast artist (who also created
controversial album covers for everyone from The Dead Kennedys to
Emerson, Lake & Palmer) began to butt heads with MGM Studio.
It's Monday, and we're all a little tired. Or drunk. Or drunk and tired. Despite an ebullient weekend spent navel-gazing and hammock-swinging, the Moloch Machine of Capitalism grinds on, ripping us from our weekend bed and plunking us down as mere automatons in the corporate machine. It's enough to make almost anyone stand up in their cubicle, strip down to their underpants and scream, "That's it! Forget this rat race! I'm becoming a professional blogger!"
Still, it could be worse. For example, if -- as Disney's The Rocketeer informs -- Hitler had been successful in his mastery of jetpack technology, wave after wave of Nazi rocketmen would have invaded our fair country, raising a swaztika on the dome of the Capitol. Even the vanguards of our society -- bloggers -- would not be safe from National Socialist impressions, as our cushy cut-and-paste jobs suddenly turned into tortuous regurgitations of the Third Reich's press releases proclaiming its Ethnic Supremacy.
On the other hand, at least there'd be all the Hefeweizen you could drink. And jetpacks. Probably a dangerous combination, come to think of it.
George Lucas loves revisionism. In a recent interview with 
One of the things I find enraging about George Lucas' demeanor isn't so much that he took 
Desert island movies -- everyone's got them. Depending on whether you're there alone and not with a Lost-style bevy of tanned beauties, pornography might top your list. But for me, the choice is clear: If I could only have one movie to watch, it would be Merrian C. Cooper's 
Keanu Reeves as Klaatu. What else do you need to know about the new Day The Earth Stood Still Remake to convince you it's going to be stupid? 
In the face of modern and oftentimes frightening technological advances, mankind is wont to look to the past for reassurance and allegory -- to take comfort in the fact that we have triumphed in the face of such adversity before. Take the case of serial director Spencer Gordon Bennett's 1959 film, 
