If you agree with us that the biggest landmark in the visual representation of futurism in science fiction over the last several years was Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow, Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and Netflix’s Altered Carbon, then you might also see something similarly new and refreshing–and yet new and different–happening with the new Paramount+ series Halo. As I described it last month here at borg, Halo’s first episode was a dense set-up of a series opener, establishing the world building, the opposing factions and key characters in this new universe extracted from the video game franchise. But the series’ second episode, titled “Unbound,” doesn’t miss a beat in showing viewers an even more layered science fiction story is in play, with plenty of visual surprises.
At $6.5 billion in sales, Halo, the 77th biggest media franchise, is nothing to sneeze at. So what took the video game franchise so long to make it to a major live-action production? It was just stuck in development stages. But for both those who never played the games and those who have, Halo is now a live-action series joining sci-fi’s Star Trek franchise on Paramount+. The series opener is full of all the pew-pew action you’d expect of a first-person shooter game. Neither a continuation, adaptation, or prequel to the games, the show is meant to be a standalone world. It’s Lost in Space meets Ender’s Game and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with similar plotting to Dune and Gears of War, a non-human threat like Ender’s Game and Starship Troopers, a 26th century mad scientist’s super squad with Edge of Tomorrow armor and guys in them that talk and stomp around like Jayne in Firefly.
Fortunately the pilot comes together like the short mini-series that touched off the successful Battlestar Galactica reboot. Yes, this is a military sci-fi genre series to check out, and one you’ll likely return for next week.
The most pervasive actress of the past two years, along with the stars of two of today’s biggest box office and critically acclaimed hits are all coming your way in May when HBO’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi classic, Fahrenheit 451, arrives. Sofia Boutella, star of every other box office champ in the past few years–the lead actress in Star Trek Beyond, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and The Mummy, and #2 actress in Atomic Blonde–will play nature-loving Clarisse McClellan. But don’t look for her except for a passing frame in the first teaser released this week.
You will see the actor behind the villainy of Man of Steel and The Shape of Water,Michael Shannon, again pouring on the evil, this time as Captain Beatty, the steely smart but twisted Fire Captain. And the actor behind the villain of the current #1 box office hit Black Panther,Michael B. Jordan, will portray the initially complacent protagonist of the story, the fireman Guy Montag.
Ray Bradbury‘s most famous work and a pinnacle of 20th century literature and social criticism, Fahrenheit 451 is filled with symbolism and messages no generation should forget. Ramin Bahrani serves as both writer and director for the series. Another familiar face to science fiction aficionados, Keir Dullea, plays the Historian in the series.
Check out this first look at HBO’s series Fahrenheit 451:
If you love 2001: A Space Odyssey or Stanley Kubrick, just walk away now. More than any other science fiction movie it stops me in my tracks. Every five years or so I re-watch it, thinking, like tomatoes, I may finally bite right in and say “tasty!” The movie is absolutely a treat for the eyes in much the same way as Star Trek: The Motion Picture. These are great looking movies. But when it comes to storytelling? Ask fans of the film, those with a critical eye, and no two will describe what the film is about in the same way. Yet 2001: A Space Odyssey is often on lists of the best movies of all time, lists made by clever people who know good movies.
Only after reading the Cliff’s Notes version of 2001 (the film, not the book) do I understand what Kubrick was going for. I’m still left scratching my head. The dialogue is flat like the lines in the Star Wars prequels. Kubrick admitted he wanted the viewer to have his/her own understanding of the film. That’s “the point”. Hey–if you’re a fan of ambiguity it’s the film for you. If you tried making a movie like it today you’d end up with something like Punch-Drunk Love or the remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Slow, boring, long, dull. Most of the film is just banal. But the star baby! The black monolith! So he takes a film and overlays it with well-known classical music and juxtaposes some cryptic symbolic imagery. Just because someone hasn’t done it doesn’t mean it’s groundbreaking. If I want cool images and great music sans linear story, I’ll take Powaqqatsi.
Maybe it’s because I like excitement in my science fiction, not this documentary-style filmmaking. For that give me a NASA IMAX movie and educate me along the way. Give me Star Wars or Star Trek II. Has anyone ever referred to 2001 as exciting?Great looking films minus a big story to back it up may be why I shy away from mainstream science fiction movies, the kind that get nominated for film awards like Gravity or Interstellar.
So why is it on the American Film Institute list of best science fiction films at #1 and on the Library of Congress National Film Registry?
