Life’s hard in a dystopian world, and sometimes you really just need any escape you can get. That’s why there’s no shortage of new and exciting drugs being created in these kinds of places–or at least, they always sound exciting. A lot of the time, these futuristic drug offerings aren’t quite what you’re promised, and come with some major downsides. The next time someone offers you a first hit for free, pause and think over the points below before you wind up the latest victim of a half-baked narcotics fad.

Read more

There’s a lot to be said for cybernetics–they allow the blind to see, the deaf to hear, and the handicapped to walk once more (sometimes even as superheroes!). Such enhancements can be extremely impressive, sometimes offering vast improvements over your average human’s capabilities. But let’s not be chopping off limbs as an excuse to go full cyborg just yet; just as often, there’s a high cost associated with obtaining cybernetically enhanced strength or senses. We have to consider exactly what it is you’re giving up: your ability to touch, perhaps… or even your very personality. Here are four dangers commonly faced by those who’ve chased after the perfect blend of man and machine, to offer you a chance to avoid them.

Read more

Ever heard of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?” It’s a little game people like to play with celebrities, based on the idea that you can get from any one actor to another (typically the aforementioned Kevin Bacon) by naming someone who was in a movie with another actor, who starred alongside a third in a different movie, and so on, until you make it to an actor who appeared on screen with Kevin Bacon. Today’s Friday Four (well, six, this week) is going to engage in some fun trivia by pulling the sci-fi version of this–counting each jump from universe to universe, how many jumps away are some of the biggest Sci-Fi heroes from each other? Let’s find out!

Read more

So, earlier this week I discussed the dark side of franchises, and how all that corporate ownership isn’t always a good thing. In that post, I mentioned Iron Man 2, a film that was burdened by its shared universe connections because of its place in the franchise as a launch point for The Avengers. It had to include flashback scenes with Howard Stark, Black Widow had to show up and bring all of S.H.I.E.L.D. along with her, and Nick Fury evaluating Tony’s potential. And then the post-credits sequence for Thor… Suffice it to say, it didn’t leave as much room for the main plot as most people would have desired, and Whiplash ends up coming off as a silly second-tier threat, at best. But while Iron Man 2 still has plenty of enjoyable scenes to it, not every film is so lucky. Here are 4 films ruined by studios in their quest for franchise creation.

Read more

So, there’s been talk recently of a Minority Report TV series, and it looks like it’s moving ahead at full steam. While I’m highly skeptical that the show can succeed (it’s almost like someone forgot to tell the producers this is supposed to be a horrible dystopia), it would hardly be the first film needlessly adapted to fit television. This is a little different from something like Agents of SHIELD, which is still in continuity with an ongoing film series; instead, it’s trying to take a plot that worked for one film and turn it into a long running TV series. In the past, this has occasionally been successful, with Stargate SG-1 as by far the best example. In that case, the show took the loose premise of the film–that there exists a network of stargates, established by ancient aliens, that can be used to travel interstellar distances instantaneously–and ran with it, going places the film would never have dreamed of exploring. It’s such an open premise that the possibilities for stories in this universe are almost endless. And then there are these, films which barely had enough plot for 90-120 minutes that someone tried to stretch out far beyond what it could support.

Read more

With the recent news that Stargate will be rebooting into a new trilogy of films, I thought it might be the right time to take a step back and look at the abundance of reboots and remakes we’re seeing of late. It’s been a problem with the film industry for some time, but the expensive nature of the sci-fi blockbuster means that as a fandom, we’re far more likely to have to deal with this problem than your average cinephile. Stargate just happens to be the perfect lens through which to examine the issue. Read more