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"Never send a human to do a machine's job."
When Star Wars (now titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) debuted in May of 1977, it forever changed sci-fi — and Hollywood’s perception of the genre — with its epic fantasy story and groundbreaking technology. It quickly became the highest grossing movie of all time and garnered numerous accolades, winning six of the ten Academy Awards categories for which it was nominated. Star Wars continually ranks near the top of just about every movie list category out there, including our own recent Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 1970’s and ‘80s, as voted by you, the Reelz.com readers.
The long-awaited prequel trilogy that was launched in May of 1999 with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was a huge success for Lucasfilm, but, even though it boasted far superior special effects, it failed to make the same sort of impact on moviegoers as the original. Was Jar Jar Binks really the source of the ambivalence that many fans felt toward The Phantom Menace or was it that they had already had their minds blown by The Matrix, which opened two months prior? And how do the Star Wars prequels and The Matrix trilogy stack up against other sci-fi movies with next-level special effects like Avatar or more cerebral movies like Donnie Darko? Sit down, jack in and upload your choices of the best sci-fi movies from 1990 to today.
Rate the Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies (1990s - 2010s) >>
Posted 03.14.13 by BrentJS -
"I see everything."
The field of robotics took another giant leap forward recently, with the creation of Rex, a "bionic man" with fully functional artificial human organs and lifelike features, bringing science reality ever closer to the science fiction depicted in movies. As incredible as it sounds, humanoid robots, or androids (just "droids" if you're George Lucas), like Rex have been appearing on screen since well before Czech writer Karel Capek gave the English language a name for them in his 1920 sci-fi play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), with the human simulacrum Hadaly a featured character in the 1896 French movie L'Eve Futur (The Future Eve). Hundreds of movies have included androids — and their part man, part machine, cyborg cousins — since Hadaly, but which ones were the best? Help us rank the movies with the coolest, the baddest, the sexiest, the deadliest, the most terrifying androids and cyborgs.
Rate the Top 10 Best Android & Cyborg Movies >>
Posted 03.06.13 by BrentJS -
In the prosperous, optimistic days that followed World War II, Americans dreamed of a utopian future made possible by advances in technology. In this gleaming future, all menial labor would be performed by robot servants, sparking a new Renaissance as Americans found themselves unfettered from the need to work. But, during the counterculture movement of the 1960s and '70s, when many Americans began to distrust the government and other established institutions, robots and technology were increasingly viewed with suspicion and paranoia. Increasingly, visions of the future of human-robot relations tended toward the antagonistic, if not the apocalyptic, with the smarter, faster, stronger machines intent on supplanting human beings or wiping us out, altogether.
Whether you believe that we humans will always be able to keep our technology on a leash or you're of the variety that predict we will inevitably be challenged for supremacy of the earth by our humanoid creations, both of those future scenarios recently became closer to reality with the unveiling last month of the "world's most high-tech humanoid," a robot with lifelike features and expressions and working artificial human organs.
the future has arrived >> Posted 03.05.13 by BrentJS -
Science fiction is replete with Earthlike alien planets, from Queen Amidala's lush Naboo in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, to Spock's (Zachary Quinto) ill-fated Vulcan in Star Trek. In science reality, however, Earthlike alien planets are nothing more than that, fiction. In fact, the first extrasolar planet revolving around a sunlike star wasn't even discovered until 1995 and nothing even closely resembling our home has been found...yet. Based on the latest analysis of data from NASA's Kepler mission, scientists now believe our galaxy contains "tens of billions" of planets similar to our own and Earth's first "twin" will likely be discovered this year.
Another Earth? >> Posted 01.09.13 by BrentJS -
Though he may not be the "king of the world," as he declared when accepting the Best Director Academy Award for Titanic in 1998, there's really no question that James Cameron is the king of 3D movies, thanks to the ground-breaking visuals of his 14-years-in-the-making sci-fi epic Avatar. Now, Cameron has "struck a deal with China" to ensure that the fastest-growing economy in the world gets in on the 3D wave. "If it's happening in 3D in China, we wanna be...right at the nexus of that," said Cameron in a recent interview. Cameron, excited about China's ambitious plans for the technology, is working on not only expanding the presence of 3D in Chinese theaters, but also to "live television broadcasts" in China, as well.
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Sequels to Avatar, writer-director James Cameron's 2009 blockbuster environmental parable and ode to 3-D, were officially announced in 2010, after Twentieth Century Fox decide they wanted to add to Avatar's almost $3 billion worldwide box office take, contractually locking down Cameron before he could run off and make something that didn't take place on Pandora.
What Fox didn't expect is for the sequels to take so long. With Avatar 2 expected for release in Christmas 2014, followed by Avatar 3 in 2015, production was supposed to start later this year. It still hasn't started. The first sign that the sequels might take more time than originally planned arrived last June when Cameron revealed that Avatar 2 and 3 were still in the script phase. The latest update suggests that Avatar 2 may be more likely to arrive in 2016, two years behind schedule.
more on the delay >> Posted 01.11.12 by Ryan -
When Avatar became the biggest box office success of all time, James Cameron was praised for making a movie based on a new concept — not based on a book, movie, TV show, comic book, toy, or cereal box. But a new lawsuit alleges that Avatar might not be as original as you think.
Cameron is being sued by Eric Ryder who claims the movie is based on his story KRZ 2068. According to the suit, the movie was envisioned as "an environmentally themed 3-D epic about a corporation's colonization and plundering of a distant moon's lush and wondrous natural setting."
Other alleged similarities between Avatar and KRZ 2068 include a protagonist sent to the moon of a distant planet by an Earth-based mining corporation.
Ryder claims Cameron knew about his project long before he began his Avatar script.
More about the lawsuit >> Posted 12.12.11 by Chris -
Sigourney Weaver recently revealed that her Avatar character Grace "will be back" for Avatar 2, just as she intimated last December. There could be a surprising revelation or two in this post for anyone that has yet to see Avatar, and if you are among those four or five people, we're sorry to have spoiled it for you.
As for how Weaver will return for a sequel, Vulture talked to James Cameron about how he could bring back a deceased character, to which Cameron responded with his usual sarcasm: "Have you ever heard of nonlinear storytelling?"
what did cameron say? >> Posted 10.12.11 by Ryan -
For those that saw Avatar, it would seem impossible for Sigourney Weaver to return for a sequel, but Weaver has been adamant that her character, Grace, wasn't quite as dead as previously believed. Last December, Weaver intimated that Grace could return, while Weaver recently confirmed to ComingSoon that she "will be back" for Avatar 2.
Don't worry, I will be back. Jim [Cameron] says no one ever dies in science fiction. He's told me the stories for the next two movies and I have to say that they're absolutely wonderful and there's a real treat in store. Now we just have to make them.
Weaver doesn't want to to do Ghostbusters III without Bill Murray >> Posted 09.19.11 by Ryan -
Since making the highest–grossing movie of all time with 2009's Avatar, James Cameron has remained relatively quiet, executive producing the underwater adventure movie Sanctum and advising various directors on the wonders of 3-D (and, in some cases, deriding them for their use of the format).
Unsurprisingly, Cameron has also been hard at work on Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, which he told Fox News were both still in the script phase.
We're shooting two films back-to-back, so I'm writing two scripts, not one, which will complete a [thr]ee-film story arc — not really a trilogy, but just an overall character arc so I’m pretty excited about that.
is cameron feeling the pressure? >> Posted 06.22.11 by Ryan