Well! Tuesday was not a bad day for scifi: Avatar racked up nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, District 9 found its way to four nominations including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and Star Trek also picked up four nods in technical categories. Oh, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen got one, in Sound Mixing, to go with its seven Razzie nominations. So that's nice, too.

Some thoughts on all of this:

1. This year breaks a 27-year drought for science fiction in the Best Picture category, dating back to 1982 when E.T. was nominated; Avatar and District 9 are the fourth and fifth movies in the genre to be nominated (after E.T., Star Wars in 1977 and A Clockwork Orange in 1971). It's also the first time two scifi flicks have been nominated for Best Picture in the same year, so no matter how you slice it 2009 will go down as a watershed year in the genre.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Five Thoughts on This Year's SciFi Oscar Nominations" »

For the last few weeks, I've been chatting about serious real-world aspects of science fiction filmmaking, like movie grosses and award nominations and what it all means and so on. But this week I'd like to get back to the basics. To the essentials. To what really matters in scifi cinema.

And thus: A list of the pros and cons of totally getting killed by various scifi creatures. In chronological order:

1. Stormtroopers (The Star Wars series, 1977-2005)
Approved methods of killing: Shooting you with laser guns; setting fire to your moisture farm with you inside (which suggests your attempts at moisture farming are not so successful).
Pros: Stormtroopers are rumored to kill lots of folks on a daily basis, so at least you're dying in an efficient and government-approved way.
Cons: Aside from just being dead (we'll take that as a given going forward): Really? Shot by a Stormtrooper? The dudes make one shot in ten thousand, and the one that hits, hits you? That's gotta suck.

2. Deceptively Friendly Aliens (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977)
 Approved methods of killing: Luring you to a remote location and then conning you into entering their spaceships where they will do horrible things to you. Oh, don't look so shocked. You always knew that was going on.
Pros: At least you got away from that annoying synth theme.
Cons: The snickering the cute aliens indulge in before they do the deed.

Continue reading "Die, Human, Die! John Scalzi Ponders Death at the Hands of SciFi's Meanest Creatures" »

A plea from a friend of mine this week, while we were talking about movies. She said, "please tell me that Avatar's success doesn't mean that every movie will be in 3D now."

I feel her pain. As I've noted before, I'm not personally a huge fan of 3D, in part because filmmakers -- save James Cameron -- still haven't figured out that when you make a movie in 3D, you can't make it like a 2D movie and expect people to come away without a headache. This much was obvious to me when I was was subjected to the Piranha 3D trailer before Avatar, which gave me more of a headache in a minute than Avatar gave me in two and a half hours.

But there's no arguing with success, and even before Avatar raged at the box office Hollywood was gearing up for more 3D productions. It'll be well-nigh unstoppable now. With that in mind, a few thoughts about our 3D future.

Continue reading "John Scalzi's Thoughts on the Future of 3D Movies... IN 3D!!" »

Slow scifi movie week + Cabin fever because of piles of snow + Interesting questions in e-mail = Mailbag!

First question:

Avatar's domestic box office overtook Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen last weekend to make it the number one movie of 2009, but I think Avatar cheated because it gets extra money from 3D screenings. How much would Avatar made if its ticket prices were the same as Transformers'?

This is an interesting question, actually. The estimates I've seen have 3D screenings being anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of Avatar's take, and other estimates I've seen have 3D tickets running 20 to 30 percent more expensive than regular movie tickets. So, for the sake of argument, let's say that 75 percent of Avatar's box office take is from 3D showings, and that the tickets for these are 25 percent more expensive than regular tickets.

As of last Monday, Avatar's domestic take was $431 million, so about $323.25 million of that was from 3D showings. Lopping off a quarter of that gross gets you to $242.44 million. Add back in the 25% which were 2D showings and you get a total of about $350 million. Which is less than Transformers: ROTF's $402 million.

Continue reading "Spider-Man, 3D Box Office and Blade II - John Scalzi's Mailbag Returns!" »

It appears that at least some of the folks who read this column are closely following the awards and nominations that come out in advance of the Oscars. The following question popped up in my inbox:

The Producers Guild of America nominated three science fiction films for their Best Picture award. Do you think that will mean anything for the Oscars?

My answer: It might.

For those of you not keeping up with awards stuff, the three scifi movies the Producers Guild nominated are Avatar, District 9 and Star Trek. Avatar is no real surprise; it's been nominated for four Golden Globes (including Best Picture, Drama), and it's going to be a very real contender for the Academy Awards. District 9 and Star Trek, on the other hand, were enough of a surprise that The Los Angeles Times headlined the strength of the genre in its article on the matter (the non-genre nominees: An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Precious, Up and Up in the Air).

The presence of three science fiction movies in the mix is significant in that the Producers Guild has not been notably friendly to scifi before and because, as with the Academy Awards, it expanded its Best Picture category this year from five movies to ten. So both of these add some real interest into the mix when prognosticating about how the genre will do come Oscar time. Many of the folks in the Producers Guild are also in the Academy, and it seems unlikely that their Best Picture votes would change substantially. So I think the chances of District 9 and Star Trek showing up on the Oscar Best Picture ballot have increased a bit.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - Do the Producers Guild Nominations Foretell Oscar Bids for SciFi?" »

And now we've come to it: The last day of the year and also the last day of the decade, and with that turn comes my list of the Best Science Fiction Movies of the '00s.

As with my list of the Worst Movies of the '00s, I'm making some eligibility requirements. The movie must be:

1. Released between January 1, 2000 and right this very second;
2. Released to theaters in the U.S. (i.e., no straight-to-video or TV movies);
3. One of the top 100 money grossers of its year.

This last one may be controversial, as it snips off at least a couple movies which might otherwise deserve consideration (most notably Primer and Moon). But I think being seen matters. You're free to disagree. But if it really bothers you, remember I gave Moon some love last week.

And with that, here is my list, in alphabetical order:

28 Days Later (2002)
This was a primary spur for the decade's fascination with the undead, and offered two critical innovations to zombie lore: First, a "viral" explanation (which makes it science fiction), and second, the feral "fast zombie" as a counterpart to the classic shambler. Also, the movie was brilliantly done for totally cheap ($8 million), which showed that great scifi doesn't always need hundreds of millions of dollars to be realized.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - The Best SciFi Movies of the '00s" »

I've been talking about the decade in retrospect all month long, so for one week (and one week only!), I'm going to leave the rest of the decade to fend for itself and talk instead about the highlights of 2009. These are the scifi movies I'll remember, for good or ill. In no particular order:

Avatar
Wow, I could watch this movie every day. In order for this superexpensive, almost-all-CGI geekfest to succeed, James Cameron had to knock the cinematic ball out of the park -- and that's just what he did. On the one hand, this should come as no surprise; the dude's been knocking the ball out of the park visually and technically since Aliens. On the other, when you're as ambitious and spend as much money as Cameron is and does, sooner or later everyone expects you to face-plant. Well, haters, save your Schadenfreude and grind your teeth in anguish as Cameron delivers, spectacularly, again.

The question for Avatar now isn't whether it will be a hit, but whether Cameron's ambitions with the movie will be rewarded with Oscar nominations. I'm on record saying I didn't expect a scifi movie to make the Best Picture slate this year, but I left myself an out by saying I hadn't seen Avatar yet. I'm glad I did, because Avatar is exactly the sort of technical virtuoso act that makes it an easy pick for Best Picture, and Cameron himself a good shot for Best Director. Will it win? I don't know, but if it's not on the Oscar slate, there's something very wrong.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - The Most Memorable SciFi Movies of the Year" »

As we continue our look through a decade of science fiction, it becomes evident that in the past ten years there have emerged winners and losers in the field. Who and what are they? Hey! I'm getting to that!

WINNER: Uwe Boll. Yes, I know. He's arguably the worst director in the history of history, a pure product of Germany's insane film-oriented tax shelters and the man who put the umlaut in the word "sück." But, you know what? He's managed to make movies all decade long, often with big stars who should have known better. I would rather drag my tongue across 18 yards of feculent glass shards then ever watch another Boll movie, but you can't say he didn't win the decade. Well done, Uwe. Stay the hell away from me.

LOSER: Video Game Movies. Aside from being inflicted with the above-mentioned Boll, the genre was flick after flick of unmitigated fail. You may recall Doom making my "Ten Worst of the Decade" list, but to be fair to Doom, it could have been swapped out with Alone in the Dark, or Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, or Hitman or Street Fighter or any of the Resident Evils. The lone hope for the genre, the Halo movie, was squat-taunted before it ever got out of the gate (although we did get District 9 out of it, so it wasn't all bad). People seem to be holding out hope for Prince of Persia. Yeah, I've seen the trailer. Keep hoping, folks.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - The Winners and Losers of '00s SciFi Movies" »

As we wrap up the decade in science fiction movies, let's look at a list of the twenty most financially successful science fiction movies since 2000 -- as collated by IMDb Pro -- to see what we can learn. Are these flicks especially creative? Do they have big stars? Are they director driven? Put simply, if you're making science fiction, what is your easiest path to ridiculous levels of success?

Easy: Toys, Comics, Sequels, Remakes. Out of the top twenty scifi movies of the last decade, 80 percent -- that's sixteen out of twenty, if you don't want to do the math -- are based on comics or toys and/or a sequel and/or a remake.

Lets go to the numbers, which represent domestic box office take:

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($402 million): Sequel, Toys
2. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ($380 million): Sequel
3. Transformers ($319 million): Toys, Remake (if you count the '80s animated flick, and yeah, I do. Hey, it had Orson Welles in it. And Leonard Nimoy!)
4. Iron Man ($318 million): Comics
5. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones ($311 million): Sequel
6. The Matrix Reloaded ($281 million): Sequel
7. Star Trek ($250 million): Remake and Sequel, which is a nice trick if you think about it
8. I Am Legend ($256 million): Remake
9. X-Men: The Last Stand ($234 million): Sequel, Comics
10. War of the Worlds ($234 million): Remake

So the entire top ten science movies of the 2000s were Toys, Comics, Sequels, Remakes. What about the next ten?

Continue reading "Toys, Comics, Sequels, Remakes - John Scalzi Charts SciFi's Box Office Success in the '00s" »

Hey, look, it's December -- and not only are we coming to the end of another year, but we're also coming to the end of another decade. Oh, sure, the nitpickers will tell you the current decade doesn't actually turn over until 2011, but those people are no fun and we're ignoring them, so there.

The end of the decade means -- you guessed it! -- end of the decade retrospectives. This week, I thought I'd kick it off with my votes for the Worst (Major) Science Fiction Flicks of the Last Decade. For a movie to be eligible here, it has to fulfill three criteria:

1. Released between January 1, 2000 and right this very second;
2. Released to theaters in the U.S. (i.e., no straight-to-video or TV dreck);
3. One of the top 100 money grossers of its year. This last criterion, incidentally, disqualifies the entire Uwe Boll canon, for which I think we are all grateful.

What does this leave us with? My list, in alphabetical order:

Aeon Flux (2005)
An incomprehensible flick based on an MTV cartoon, which was also incomprehensible but at least stylish. I suspect the entire pitch of this movie was five words: "Charlize Theron! In skin-tight leather!" Doing what? Does it matter? Well, as it turns out, it does. Theron narrowly missed the award for the most embarrassing post-Oscar role with this one, thank you Halle Berry.

Alien vs. Predator I & II (2004, 2007)
It takes a special sort of director to make both aliens and predators boring, but Paul W.S. Anderson was just that sort of director, so well done him, I guess. At the very least he can take comfort in knowing he made the best AvP flick, as the sequel appears to have been written and directed by badgers.

Continue reading "John Scalzi - The Ten Worst SciFi Blockbusters of the '00s" »