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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 -
Visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) may have missed out on an Academy Award for their work on last year's The Avengers, but that doesn't take away from their achievement, which helped Marvel's comic book adaptation become the third highest-grossing movie of all time. ILM has been releasing videos that take fans behind-the-scenes of their work on the movie, starting with a reel of their visual effects material as well as a video describing how the company created a digital New York.
Now, Grantland has unveiled another video from ILM, one that focuses on how the company turned actor Mark Ruffalo into a digital Hulk.
watch the video >> Posted 03.04.13 by Ryan -
Last year's The Avengers took place mostly in New York City, with the last third or so of the movie seeing Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and (especially) the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) fight against the invading Chitauri on the New York streets. Surprisingly, the movie shot in New York for only a few days, with most of the action actually taking place in Cleveland, Ohio, and an New Mexico soundstage.
So how exactly did Industrial Light & Magic create a digital New York City? The answer has been revealed in a newly-released a behind the scenes video (via Gizmodo), which shows how the visual effects crew were able to replicate roughly 20 square blocks of midtown Manhattan.
watch the video >> Posted 02.24.13 by Ryan -
Considering its massive box office take and favorable reviews, there's no doubt that there are plenty of The Avengers fans out there — to say nothing of the comic book property's legion of fans, some of whom have been reading the comic since its inception in the 1960s. In fact, the movie's popularity has inspired fans, with some creating a mash-up trailer that combined The Avengers with The Breakfast Club, while others made a chronological video of everything that was "wrong" about the movie.
While extreme Avengers fandom is fairly established, its nonetheless rare to find a fan of both The Avengers and The Powerpuff Girls. It was an immensely popular cartoon in its time to be sure, but one that ended its broadcast run in 2005 with only one 2002 movie made during the height of the cartoon's popularity. Enter Iros Yan, a Chinese Animation student whose Tumblr (via Comics Alliance) is filled with various illustrations of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup dressed as Captain America, Thor and Iron Man. Yan has also taken the opening credit sequence from the Powerpuff Girls cartoon and turned it into Powerpuff Avengers, who have the same origin as the Powerpuff Girls but tackle several Marvel comics villains such as Loki, Doctor Doom and, yes, Thanos.
watch the amazing mashup >> Posted 02.22.13 by Ryan -
Outside of perhaps appealing to the same age demographic, there are few similarities between The Breakfast Club and The Avengers — at least, on the surface. Sure, one is a big-budget comic book adaptation about superheroes saving the planet Earth, while the other is about a group of high school students stuck together for a weekend detention, but both are about a group of disparate individuals who find a common ground together.
In fact, after watching this trailer mash-up (via Jezebel) which takes audio from a Breakfast Club trailer and plays it over footage from The Avengers, you may see more similarities between the two movies than you ever realized existed. Think about it: do you see either group finishing Mr. Vernon's 1000-word essay? Neither do we, which is only one of many associations we can't stop making after watching this fan-made trailer.
watch the trailer >> Posted 02.06.13 by Ryan -
Considering the huge success of last year's The Avengers, there are probably few out there who are unfamiliar with Marvel's comic book adaptation, which assembled all of Marvel's individual, cinematic superheroes onto one team. However, what most people probably haven't seen is how effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) created the Academy Award–nominated visual effects of the movie, including the creation of the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and the computer-generated New York City that Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) flies around in at the start of the movie.
In order to reveal the company's visual effects work (and celebrate the Oscar nod), ILM has released an Avengers reel online. "This reel represents a small fraction of the work created by over 200 ILM artists, scientists, and engineers backed up by a world class production team," said the company of their reel, which transitions from computer sketches to behind-the-scenes shots of the production to the final product.
watch the video >> Posted 01.12.13 by Ryan -
Last year's mega-hit The Avengers was, in some ways, the catalyst behind the spate of comic book movies created by Marvel Studios, who struck gold with 2008's Iron Man, which teased at a superhero team-up movie to come. After finding that success, Marvel followed by introducing more individual superheroes in 2008's The Incredible Hulk, 2010's Iron Man 2, and last year's Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, embarking on an unusual strategy of creating individual movies that also worked a little bit like sequels that fed into the story of The Avengers.
The Avengers 2 will arrive in 2015 and cap off a second phase of Marvel's "cinematic universe," and will face competition from what Warner Bros.and DC Entertainment hopes will be the start of their "cinematic universe," starting with 2015's Justice League. Gangster Squad screenwriter Will Beall has already been hired to write the screenplay for the movie which will follow (if recent rumors are true) an unsurprising lineup that includes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. With the release dates being so close together, we wondered which team could take down the other, and, since there will never be a movie where the two teams face off, there's only one way to solve this hypothetical dilemma: the cybernetic walls of our Character Cage Match!
check out the teams' strengths and weaknesses before weighing in on our poll >> Posted 01.10.13 by Ryan -
Comic book legend Stan Lee first started working for Marvel Comics in 1939, back when it was still known Timely Comics, eventually co-creating Marvel's most enduring characters, including the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the Avengers, to name a few. Still going strong at 90 years old, many might be surprised to know that Lee hasn't worked at Marvel Comics for years, as he is still seen as a figurehead for the comic book company. Lee continues to field questions and comments on Twitter, where he has a huge following, and continues his association with Marvel through his many cameos in Marvel movies.
Lee made his first onscreen cameo in the 1989 TV movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, and would go on to appear in 2000's X-Men, all four Spider-Man, 2003's Daredevil and Hulk, both Fantastic Four movies, 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, both Iron Man movies as well as 2011's Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger and last year's The Avengers (but not, inexplicably, 2003's X2: X-Men United or X-Men: First Class). Lee's entire, chronological cameo history has been compiled into a single video (via Mary Sue), including most of our ten favorites (sorry, Mallrats doesn't count) and excluding Lee's voice over work from Marvel's animated series.
watch the video >> Posted 01.09.13 by Ryan -
Delicious and entertaining
When it comes to performances in movies, it's usually the actors and actresses that are recognized rather than the inanimate objects that are featured in motion pictures. In order to rectify this oversight, we have decided to recognize the work of at least a few of those objects, beginning with the food seen in movies. Decide who wins the 2012 Reelzie for Best Performance by a Food
see the nominees and vote >> Posted 12.31.12 by Mandy -
No matter how many times superheroes risk their lives to save the innocent from crooks, terrorists and aliens, the powers that be in most of these fictional universes would rather the "civilians" leave the heroics to the professionals and give up the secrets to their superpowers in the name of national security. In the real world, billionaires spend their money buying islands and giving to charity instead of designing bat-gadgets and battle armor, and radiation exposure causes cancer instead of spider-like mutations. But, just because there are no superheroes to beg, borrow and steal from, that doesn't mean that the real U.S. military doesn't want superhero technology. In fact, in the not too distant future, U.S. soldiers will have the technology of Batman and Iron Man and the abilities of Spider-Man to use in defense of our freedom.
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines...Avengers? >> Posted 12.28.12 by BrentJS