James Cameron has plenty to say about science fiction and he pulls in some sci-fi directors and dozens of sci-fi actors and creators to lay it all out in his new AMC series James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. Many series have wrestled with the subject of defining science fiction, most recently Ridley Scott’s Prophets of Science Fiction, where the Alien and Blade Runner director honored George Lucas, Robert Heinlein, Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, H.G. Wells, and Mary Shelley. Not known for his interviewing, Cameron opted to record more informal chats with a small circle of his contemporaries, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (plus an interview by friend/science fiction writer Randall Frakes of Cameron himself), attempting to guide them down his framework of analysis, sometimes gaining agreement and other times sparking interesting tangent questions. The interviews are divided up and sprinkled across six episodes of the AMC television series, and the blanks are filled in with sound bites from creators, professors, writers, and popular names from modern science fiction. But the companion book, also titled James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, is far more insightful, showing the broader unedited interview text for each of Cameron’s six key contributors, plus great color artwork to illustrate his history of the genre. Ultimately the book is a more useful, informative, and interesting overview of science fiction than what the series provides, and recommended for fans wanting to dig deeper into the history of the genre.
For those that haven’t encountered a review of the genre, Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction, available now from Insight Editions, will provide the appropriate highlights. The combined narrative is at its best when attempting to find the reasons for the importance of science fiction as literature and art, as influence to society, and as a reflection on mankind’s discovery of self, but it’s also fun for any diehard genre fan to follow along, agree or disagree, and ponder the myriad alternatives to the examples given to illustrate the topics covered. The book is better than the TV series at analyzing and presenting the coverage, tying each key contributor to a sub-genre or major sci-fi concept: alien life, outer space, time travel, monsters, dark futures, and intelligent machines. Cameron has done his homework and claims to have read nearly anything and everything since he was a kid on the subject. His own significant science fiction contributions, namely Terminator, Terminator 2, and Aliens, and developing the two biggest women film roles of the genre–Sarah Connor in Terminator 2 and Ellen Ripley in Aliens–are only slightly overshadowed by more than required attention to his film Avatar as frequent centerpiece topic. He also spends more time on modern science fiction films, sometimes leaving behind classic films that had done it all before. So surprisingly great influences like Star Trek, Rod Serling, and John Carpenter get far less attention proportionately than you’d find in another science fiction overview, and the vast body of science fiction television series is barely tapped at all.
The most insight comes from George Lucas and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Lucas provides rare reactions to fan criticism of Jar Jar Binks, his Star Wars prequels generally, and his concept of midichlorians manipulating the Force, which he states would have been key to the third trilogy had he kept control of the franchise. Immersed in an interview about science fiction his responses seem to reflect regret in selling Star Wars to Disney, as if he had far more Star Wars stories to tell. The rest of the book’s seriousness is counterbalanced nicely by Schwarzenegger, who Cameron repeatedly attempts to get introspective about playing science fiction’s greatest villain and hero cyborg as the Terminator. Not a method actor, Schwarzenegger reveals himself as fanboy and entertainer when it comes to science fiction, drawn more to the spectacle and excitement of science fiction roles and how the characters appear on the screen more than any life-changing meaning from the stories that Cameron is searching for.
The biggest news of yesterday’s Oscar nominations was in the adapted screenplay category. Writers Scott Frank, Michael Green, and director James Mangold were nominated for their script for Logan, the film borg.com picked as last year’s best picture in our annual wrap-up last month. Never before has a comic book superhero story been nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for best screenplay. The closest was a nomination in the original screenplay category for Brad Bird for The Incredibles, a superhero story not adapted from a comic book property, plus graphic novel adaptations for films History of Violence and American Splendor. But that puts Logan–an X-Men story starring Wolverine and a film that was the pinnacle of the Marvel franchise–right where it belongs, a film on equal footing with classic screenplay nominees featuring strong character development, including the likes of High Noon, Citizen Kane, Rocky, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Shane, The Grapes of Wrath, Sergeant York, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The writers adapted their story from no specific Marvel Comic series, instead pulling together ideas from several series, citing Craig Kyle’s X-23 series as a key influence. Unfortunately actors Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart did not receive a nomination in the acting categories.
But the progress of Oscar doesn’t stop with Logan. A creature feature, the supernatural fantasy The Shape of Water took a whopping 13 nominations, including best picture, best director (Guillermo del Toro), and best actress (Sally Hawkins) and supporting actor (Richard Jenkins).Get Out, which is something more than just a horror genre movie (that also made our top list), is nominated for four Oscars, including three for first-time director Jordan Peele, for best picture, best director, and best screenplay. That’s one heck of an introduction to Hollywood, and ties Peele for the record of most nominations in a single year (along with Warren Beatty for Heaven Can Wait and James L. Brooks, who went on to win all three categories for Terms of Endearment). The film’s lead actor Daniel Kaluuya will be a big contender for the top spot in the best actor category.
Another film we loved, the riveting historical drama The Post (sometimes historical dramas get it right), received two nominations, including nods for best picture and actress Meryl Streep‘s compelling performance (her 21st nomination, breaking her own record for most nominated actor of all time), but unfortunately Oscar ignored one of the best Tom Hanks performances of his career and Liz Hannah’s exceptional screenplay. For one of the four nominations for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the beloved composer John Williams garnered his 51st Oscar nomination (he’s won five) for best score, besting his own record and hot on the heels of Walt Disney for most nominations ever (Disney was nominated 59 times). But was this a missed opportunity, when even Williams seemed impressed with himself for the unique work he’d created for his striking soundtrack for The Post? As he told Variety in a recent interview, “I’ve never done anything quite like it. There are three or four montages—the press-rolling montage, the extended review of the former presidents, waiting for Justice Black’s decision—with various degrees of intensity, speed and the like.” In our borg.com review we correctly predicted nominations for best picture and sound for the war genre movie Dunkirk, which was nominated for eight Oscars, including best picture and best director (Christopher Nolan). Hans Zimmer was nominated for his musical score, which was key to the film’s success.
Something about a film created contemporary to the World War II years automatically lends itself to a greater level of authenticity than the modern attempt at an epic war film. Dunkirk is one of those modern large-scale productions, falling in line behind the likes of 1998’s Saving Private Ryan and 2001’s Pearl Harbor. Dunkirk is better than both, and although it doesn’t have the gravitas of 1993’s Schindler’s List and is not as nail-biting as something like 1981’s Das Boot, Dunkirk still provides some good nuggets of emotion as we hone in on a dozen soldiers, sailors, and civilians attempting to get to the end of a week during the Battle of France–May 26 to June 4, 1940. Dunkirk doesn’t tell a story full of intrigue like 2008’s Valkyrie, but its reflection of the war seems all the more reality-based despite not using film methods like that of Steven Spielberg, who tends to film historical settings with filters that make audiences feel more like “we were there.” The most important lessons of history can be found in the study of World War II so any World War II film is a success if it can tell a story of brave leadership, brave soldiering, and accountability of the citizenry as Dunkirk does.
Dunkirk comes closest to Saving Private Ryan, presenting a believable wide-scope, giant battlefield, then bringing viewers into the brief encounters and interactions of a few. Compelling roles are shared evenly in the three stories by actors young and old–most importantly is newcomer Fionn Whitehead playing a soldier who barely makes it to the battlefield and then seems to have nothing but bad luck as he must make life-and-death choices at every step to try to get closer to home. From the older set, Mark Rylance (Wolf Hall, The BFG, Ready Player One) is a stoic Brit civilian who has his own reasons to try to bring some soldiers home. And Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises) plays the key fighter pilot, whose fuel gauge is broken and his assistance from other squadrons is nil. The aerial dogfights aren’t the exciting stuff of war movies of the past, but the story doesn’t really call for that. The theme is in the numbers: Can any individual beat the odds with the German fighter aircraft returning for further attacks on the beach, on the escort and attack vessels, and against the three British airplanes? Who will make it home, and who will not?
Director Christopher Nolan engages a unique story device, telling three stories simultaneously. The first begins a week before the finale that follows the fate of 400,000 British ground forces (with a few French soldiers) waiting to be picked up on the beach in Dunkirk for transport back to England after the failure to secure France (or picked off by enemy strafing). The second story begins one day before the finale, as a man, his son, and a friend answer the call in England for civilian boats to head across the channel to Dunkirk to transport troops home. The third story begins one hour prior to the end, and follows three British pilots trying to stave off a German aerial assault on the beachhead. Despite the spliced intersections of three clocks, Nolan makes it work. Astonishingly the audience is reeled into the story even if we learn almost nothing about the backstory of any character in the film. The best takeaway? The relative value in war of one man in a single fighter plane vs. 400,000 ground troops.
Our annual “All the Movies You’ll Want to See…” series has been one of the most viewed of all of our entries at borg.com each year. So this year we again scoured Hollywood and its publicity machine for as many genre films coming out in 2017 that have been disclosed. The result is a whopping 58 movies, many you’ll probably want to see in the theater or catch on video (and some you may want to skip). We bet you’ll find a bunch below you’ve never heard of. Bookmark this now for your 2017 calendar!
Most coming out in the second half of 2017 don’t even have posters released yet. We’ve included descriptions and key cast so you can start planning accordingly.
What do we think will be the biggest hits of the year? How about Star Wars: Episode VIII or Wonder Woman? Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of 1,000 Planets? Ghost in the Shell? Or Beauty and the Beast?
You’ve heard endlessly about Logan and Justice League, but 2017 will also see numerous other sequels, like Alien: Covenant, Blade Runner 2049,Thor:Ragnarok, and sequels for Underworld, Resident Evil, Planet of the Apes, Pirates of the Caribbean, XXX, John Wick, King Kong, The Fast and the Furious, Cars, The Kingsman, Transformers, Despicable Me. And The Six Billion Dollar Man is finally on its way. Look for plenty of Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel, Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoe Saldana, Hugh Jackman, John Goodman, Michael Peña, Ryan Reynolds, Sofia Boutella, and Elle Fanning in theaters this year.
So wait no further, here are your genre films for 2017:
Known for one of the most bizarre characters ever played by actor Yul Brynner, 1973’s Westworld was writer/director Michael Crichton’s original theme park-turned disaster. Twenty years before Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs went on a murderous rampage, it was sideshow automatons from a high-tech vacation spot that turned on the tourists. Will HBO’s new series Westworld also add in the other theme parks (like RomanWorld) as in the original? We’ll know soon.
Jonathan Nolan, brother of The Dark Knight series’ Christopher Nolan, is directing the return of the sci-fi classic. The original starred Brynner as the cool and unflinching Gunslinger, with Richard Benjamin running for his life, along with appearances by James Brolin and Majel Barrett. The new series stars a great, comparable actor to Brynner–Ed Harris, as well as Anthony Hopkins, James Marsden, Jimmi Simpson, and James Bond’s Jeffrey Wright.
Check out the first teaser for the series Westworld:
It must be hard to portray the art of being a magician on the big screen. The latest effort is The Transporter, The Incredible Hulk, and Clash of the Titans’ director Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me previewed earlier at borg.comhere. It has much to offer by way of entertainment, the best reward being the cast, which manages to nail that very Las Vegas magic act schtick of “showmanship” that you only see in a good magic act. But can you give a theatrical audience a convincing magic show–actually trick us and surprise us in the same way someone like David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty disappear right in front of you, or how Teller distracts as Penn causes the very thing you’re staring at to disappear right before you?
Apparently you can’t do that in the movies–or at least no one has dazzled us in that way yet. But you can at least give us a good show letting us see different styles in which magicians practice their art.
Two recent contenders for the top of the “movies about magicians and magic” list are not at risk of leaving the top because of Now You See Me. The Illusionist, starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell, Eddie Marsan, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and The Prestige, starring Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johansson released opposite each other in 2006, take on the same themes. But if you’re deciding between the two we think The Illusionist, from director Neil Burger (Limitless, Divergent) is the better film, over the very typically over-the-top effort by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy, Man of Steel, Inception) in The Prestige. It’s the payoff of Now You See Me that doesn’t quite cut it, despite some fun theatrics along the way.
I was having lunch with a friend the other day and we were talking about comic book movies and the slow transition of the formulas for the ones which have succeeded to television format. My friend was grumbling about the lack of costumed heroes on popular shows such as Arrow or the new Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I have to admit, I hadn’t really noticed the lack of costumes in those shows, loving the first season of Arrow despite very few folks with traditional comic book costumes, and enjoying the first couple of episodes of A.O.S. (can you acronym an acronym?).
But the more I thought about it, the more puzzled I was. Why weren’t there more costumes in Arrow? Certainly Deathstroke’s mask was a pivotal prop in the series, and the Dark Archer had a cool getup, but they weren’t costumes so much as work attire fitting the villain’s nature. And of course A.O.S. is a show about normal people, super spies and highly-skilled to be sure, but not superheroes. And certainly without costumes outside of May’s black leather suit, akin to Fury’s normal wardrobe and the attire seen by many personnel aboard the Heli-carrier in The Avengers.
Speaking of which, The Avengers is a perfect case in point. The evolution of the superhero sans costume. I’ll get back to that in a minute.
More than 25 years after Frank Miller and Klaus Janson’s four-part prestige format comic book series/graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns changed the landscape for comic books thereafter, DC Animation produced a quality animated adaptation. Released in two parts, we reviewed The Dark Knight Returns Part 1here last year. Part 1 was a faithful adaptation of roughly the first half of the original graphic novel. It proved first and foremost that Christopher Nolan really pulled his key story elements in his Dark Knight trilogy of films from Frank Miller’s work. Part 1 really keyed in on Nolan’s Bane character. Both Part 1 and the Dark Knight trilogy failed to provide an exciting narrative, however, when compared to The Dark Knight Returns Part 2, now on video.
Part 2 is every bit as faithful to the original as Part 1. Commissioner Gordon has already stepped down and was replaced by a new commissioner whose first act is issuing a warrant for Batman. The vacuous Doctor Wolper brings his patient The Joker to appear on Miller’s take on The David Letterman Show, only for The Joker to release a gas bombing that kills the entire audience as well as the host, leaving The Joker’s trademark grin on all their faces. From the first sentences of Part 2, you know this is not a kid’s Batman film. The Joker escapes and proceeds to bloodily murder everyone in his path until he confronts Batman in the bowels of Gotham City. Here the classic confrontation between the long-time foes plays out exactly as it should.
The 23rd James Bond film has a lot it must accomplish compared to other franchise movies. On the 50th anniversary of Bond on film, director Sam Mendes had to deliver something special, more than just the latest entry in the Bond canon. And despite Mendes’s influences, Skyfall had to be more than another Christopher Nolan action romp like the recent Batman films. After 50 years, Bond is a British tradition, an international icon, the star of every diehard action film fan’s awaited pilgrimage every few years. Mendes had to blend the classic with the new as each of his predecessors had, and make sure that even that was done in a new way, without copying other action film franchises like the Jason Bourne movies, as the last movie, Quantum of Solace, has been accused of. Messing with the Bond formula is like messing with the formula for Coca-Cola. A director of a Bond film has a delicate trapeze act to maneuver to create a successful Bond picture connecting all the elements of the Bond formula.
Thursday evening brought in the newest national movie theater marathon, this time for Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. Starting at six p.m. with Batman Begins, followed by The Dark Knight and culminating with a midnight showing of the new feature film, fans of Nolan’s vision of Batman surely got their fix. Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is as it’s described–dark. But none as dark and bleak as the third and final installment.
Can you have fun at a movie that is so dark? The “dark” I am referring to in the context of Nolan’s film is “the bleak future ahead.” Batman films before Nolan also were dark, but in a fantasy, comic book way. I miss the sleek Batmobiles of earlier films. To be fair, the current various DC Comics Batman series are pretty dark–gruesome at times–so maybe movies are just mirroring the evolution of the comic stories. There’s a bit of a battle between making your story seem real and still have the rules of comic books apply. Battle scenes in the current franchise, with Tumbler tanks that could be right out of an Iraq army base, take away some of the fun, the fantasy, of watching superhero films. I want my Batman movies to be not only dark but also fun, and I am looking for escapism, not realism. If you have the same mindset, can you still have fun watching the new Batman movie? Sure. What I am not sure of is whether you may like The Dark Knight Rises more were you to see it without the benefit of the Dark Knight Marathon.
I attended last night’s screening of the full marathon with borg.com writer Art Schmidt. And we had fun. Crowds at these big screenings really want to be there, and really want to like the new movie. But where I had the most fun was re-watching Nolan’s second installment–The Dark Knight–on the big IMAX screen. And I think the crowd simply responded, audibly, better to The Dark Knight than The Dark Knight Rises. Would I have liked The Dark Knight Rises more had it not been viewed at the end of such a solid film as The Dark Knight? That’s the question I am left pondering.
I’d seen both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight in the theater when first released. I was not a fan of Batman Begins, other than I liked Michael Caine’s Alfred and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox. I will acknowledge in the first two films the nods to Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One as a positive thing. I should have liked Liam Neeson as Ra’s Al Ghul, but didn’t. Last night, in the right mindset for a fun evening of movie watching, I was pleasantly surprised that I found Batman Begins to be better than I had remembered from viewing it in its initial release.
But it was installment two, The Dark Knight, that proved to be the highlight of the entire night. It cemented the reasoning for Heath Ledger being awarded an Academy Award for his performance as the Joker. His performance was both creepy and comical, despite his grim, psychotic nature. But Aaron Eckhart’s brilliant performance as Harvey Dent was not far behind. The writers of this “trilogy” seem to me to have screwed up somehow. Why? After watching all three films the real hero of the trilogy is unquestionably Harvey Dent. Despite him turning criminal after going through the murder of his fiance and the destruction of his face, he is entirely a sympathetic victim who acted heroically until his world was devastated. But this is all wrong–the hero of a Batman trilogy should be Batman, plain and simple. After watching the newest film, The Dark Knight Rises, we are left with a vision of Batman as a whiny adult who could not get beyond early tragedy in his life. Sure, he had it tough, and yes, he is a sympathetic character, but the character never really moves beyond the mindset of the young Bruce Wayne sitting in a cave. Classic Batman stories do not rely on Bruce Wayne moping around about his problems–he is able to push them aside and help other people. For me, the fatal flaw in Nolan’s trilogy is this basic thread at the core of Bruce Wayne’s character. What Batman fans want is a movie where Batman gets to be the hero, where he saves the day, and leaves a better world behind.
Most of The Dark Knight Rises does not even feature Christian Bale in the Batsuit. I’ve always thought a detective story focusing solely on Bruce Wayne and his analytical skills would be a great idea. For a book, yes. But now I know it doesn’t work for a movie. Fans want to see Batman being Batman. And not being beaten to a pulp by an ugly thug who has little motivation or character development. Tom Hardy’s Bane is just bad for the sake of being bad. Without revealing details, I think a plot twist at the end is predictable, and a last-minute attempt to make us feel sorry for Bane is too little, too late. You cannot really even tell what actor is playing Bane. The marquis credits say it is Tom Hardy, a solid young character actor who has been in Star Trek Nemesis, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Blackhawk Down and Inception, but how would any of us know who he was with that face-covering breathing apparatus? What does that thing even do? He acts like Darth Vader, even holding someone up by his neck. He sounds like Ian McKellan’s Gandalf. His dialogue is muffled. He speaks in loud shouts like the ringmaster at a circus.
Marion Cotillard’s character Miranda seemed to be an afterthought in the script, a character whose actions would have insulted the intelligence of the Wayne and Fox characters from prior films. There is no chemistry between Wayne and Miranda, yet out of nowhere they are a couple—right after Wayne speaks longingly of Rachel (who was killed by the Joker in the last film), and while we movie goers see him developing some attraction to Anne Hathaway’s Salina Kyle. (Seeing Batman Begins back to back with The Dark Knight also showed why Katie Holmes was better cast as Rachel than Maggie Gyllenhaal).
Caine, Bale, Freeman, and Oldman all were underused in The Dark Knight Rises, and when used they play caricatures of their roles from past films, even repeating scenes from the past two films, often doing things that seem out of character, like Caine turning his back on Bruce, like Gordon turning his back on Batman. Matthew Modine added to his list of drab roles by playing a police officer who came off as annoying and irrelevant. There are points where you don’t know whether to cheer the street mob or the police, the bad guys or the good. Ultimately everything becomes a free-for-all and Nolan tries to make Gotham a cross between the Holocaust and New York City in John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a nice opportunity to shine in the film, but too much time is spent on his character, and not enough on Bruce Wayne or Batman, where the focus should have been. Throughout the movie you can’t help but look for how Gordon-Levitt will fill Batman’s shoes one day–like Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt in the last Indiana Jones movie. Note to Hollywood producers: if you are going to reboot your franchises every five years you don’t need to worry about taking valuable screen time to build up having younger characters pick up the reins for the title roles in future movies.
The best part of the movie was without a doubt Anne Hathaway as Salina Kyle. Although there were a few directing decisions that seemed like missed opportunities—like what could have been a more overt and less subtle switch from innocent maid to deceitful thief in a key early scene—her dialogue was the best of anyone’s in the film and her performance was also spot on. Her character had chemistry with Wayne, and if there was a saving grace to the movie it was the scenes of Batman and Catwoman together. Hathaway seemed literally to bring out better acting by Bale.
One good scene had Fox introduce Wayne to some new gadgetry, straight out of any Q scene in a 007 movie. Cameos from actors in past movies were also a nice addition, added some fun to the film, and the story at least made an effort to try to tie up storylines from early films.
Despair and hopelessness accounted for a long film that I thought would never end. Once it got to an ending, the creators could not decide which ending to use, so they used them all. The sound was loud throughout without letting up, lots of thumps and bass notes to tell you when you’re supposed to feel angst or fear. I know operatically the third scene of a three-part work often can have a large gothic, epic feel winding up to a conclusion, but the film did not feel like an ending, more like another installment in a continuing franchise. But the foundation of this third installment rests on the proposition that Harvey Dent was a bad guy in installment two. Harvey Dent was a victim who turned bad in the end. Gordon and Wayne do the right thing by not revealing the criminal acts he committed after his life was ruined. After all, Harvey Dent was dead. Yet so much of The Dark Knight Rises hinges on Gordon’s conflicts with this decision to keep this quiet. In the big scheme of things it’s not the gravity needed to support a film. It’s not enough to support a story and what happens to cause Gotham to fall apart.
The crowd had a good time but there sure was a lot to discuss afterward. Ultimately disappointment was what I walked away with for the new film, happy that I got to see The Dark Knight movie in the theater again, and it really left me looking forward to a new director and a new vision for future Batman films.
The Dark Knight Rises at our theater included a great, extended trailer for the next James Bond 007 film, Skyfall, including revealing the new Q actor as the young Ben Whishaw from The Hour—a very cool switch-up from the older characters playing Q in the past. We also saw a previously released trailer for The Hobbit, which looked great, and a fun preview for Expendables 2. The big reveal we were waiting for was the teaser trailer for DC Comics’ coming Superman reboot Man of Steel, and it was disappointing–very bland and unremarkable for what we heard was to be an exciting new preview.
really keyed in on Nolan’s Bane character. Both 
