Top 25 Sci-Fi Movies of All Time
[history will place Prometheus in this list as well… then they’ll see, then they’ll AAAAAAALLLLL see]
A future built on a science that allows men to play God. Their creation? An artificial intelligence more human than human, forced into slave labor and born with a ticking-clock expiration date. It is up to an ex-cop by the name of Deckard, an ex-Blade Runner, to put down the last of the Replicants.
The tagline “In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream” defined the Alien film series, which owes its debt to Ridley Scott’s first movie that pit Warrant Officer Ripley against the acid-bleeding xenomorph. On the surface, Alien is a “monster in the house” creature feature, only the house is a spaceship and the monster is a mouth-tongue’d beastie that lays eggs and uses people’s chests as doors.
Why no one gets Prometheus, why the sci fi community, of all people, SHOULD, and why no one will probably understand my argument in this review
I’ve been stewing in my own juices, as they say, over writing this blog post, reading other reviews, seeing people respond to my excited Facebook rantings about the film in ways I can’t quite fathom…
(in response to my recent Facebook status update that I would be seeing the film a third time before it leaves theaters)
“See if you can close all the plot holes while you’re there.”
“You could certainly write a better screenplay while you’re there.”
“I liked Prometheus, but I’m unable to figure out why you’re so obsessed with it.”
I guess I shouldn’t be particularly surprised that even my above-average-intelligence Facebook friends (most of whom are lawyers, professors, and other types of knowledge-focused professionals) aren’t really getting behind this movie, but what shocks me even more is how many die-hard sci fi fans aren’t, IMO, getting why they didn’t like the film (two of the comments above are from folks who are major fans of the genre). Yes, you read that right: I think the entire criteria most people are using for liking/disliking this film are way off-base. AND: I think this has to do with longstanding tensions between science fiction films and their more-esteemed dramatic counterparts, tensions that will probably bleed over into any responses to this “review,” rendering my (admittedly highly nuanced (read: academic)) argument below null and void.
***SPOILERS PROMULGATE FASTER THAN THE BLACK OOZE BELOW***
Ridley Scott To Direct New ‘Blade Runner’ Installment For Alcon Entertainment
EXCLUSIVE: After revisiting his classic Alien with the upcoming 3D Fox film Prometheus, Ridley Scott is committing to direct and produce a film that advances his other seminal and groundbreaking science fiction film from the past. Scott has signed on to direct and produce a new installment of Blade Runner. He’ll make the film with Alcon Entertainment, producing with Alcon partners Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove. This would be the most high profile project for Alcon since The Blind Side. They got control of the franchise earlier this year, but it’s a whole different ballgame with Scott at the helm.
I’m not getting a clear sense at this point whether Scott intends to do a sequel or a prequel to the 1982 film that was loosely based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Also unclear is whether they start fresh or reach out to Harrison Ford. The original took place in dystopian Los Angeles in 2019, in which organic superhuman robots called replicants escaped and are hiding somewhere on earth. Ford played Richard Deckard, a burnt out blade runner assigned to hunt them down. His tired life gets altered when he himself falls for one of the replicants and struggles to keep her from being destroyed.
The film was not a blockbuster when first released–it grossed $32 million in its original run–but the film has gained esteem over time. From the bleak but breathtaking visuals to the complex storyline and themes of mortality, Blade Runner became a classic. There has periodically been talks of doing a sequel but those never really went anywhere. After injecting state of the art 3D in reviving Alien, imagine what Scott can do with Blade Runner? Now, the filmmaker is ready to engage. Alcon has its output deal with Warner Bros, which remastered and released a 25th anniversary version on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2007. Warner Bros made the original film.
This is just the first step and the project will have to be written and it will likely evolve during that process. That’s what happened on Alien, which began as a prequel to his 1979 classic. That changed when Lost‘s Damon Lindelof came inwith a different take on the subject matter that imprinted on Scott and Fox executives. They wound up making Prometheus, which Fox considers an original but which I’ve heard is a cousin to the original Alien franchise.
Alexis Madrigal - The Fake Magazines Used in Blade Runner Are Still Futuristic, Awesome
Basic Googling various combinations of Blade Runner and magazines with some other keywords yielded nothing. So, I took the image of Dorgon Magazine and ran it through Google Images to see if it had shown up anywhere else with more information attached. It had indeed been posted a few times around the web including at a site for Manahan Design, where they were presented as custom Kindle screensavers for jailbroken devices. But down at the bottom of that site, there was a little inscription: “Much credit goes to Kevin From the Propsummit forums for his amazingly made high-res reproductions of the magazine covers seen in various locations in Blade Runner,” we read. Who is this mysterious, Kevin? And what is Propsummit? And are these covers actually *recreations* by someone who looked at the magazines in the film and somehow designed from anew from scratch? Are these completely new design fiction objects modeled on old design fiction objects for a movie that came out 30 years ago?Yes, this is very awesome.
Source: The Atlantic
