Category Sci-Fi

Oct 31 2012

2012 Doomsday Scenarios: Month Ten

Among the many well-known apocalyptic worries, the idea of supernatural creatures rising up and destroying our world, while hardly unlikely, captivates many people.

Doomsday Scenario No. 3: Vampires, Zombies & Monsters, Oh My!

Supernatural monsters have been a mainstay in many cultures going back centuries. They were convenient scapegoats for things that went wrong and filled in the dark void of the shadows. These monsters either won so that a moral could be learned or were vanquished by the forces of good. Lately, stories have appeared where the monsters have triumphed and defeated humanity en masse. Certain monsters are more popular than others and fit into a doomsday scenario more easily than others. Of course, these supernatural monsters are impossible, right? Well science fiction has found ways to make them plausible.

Vampires In The Blood

The stylish and grotesque vampires have populated many blood curdling tales for centuries. As true creatures of the night, vampires arose from their coffins after sunset to prey on the living. The way to become a vampire isn’t to just die but to be bitten by one. That suggests that these creatures probably transmit a virus that transforms a living person into a vampire.

Richard Matheson’s classic novel I Am Legend has a vampiric virus decimating humanity and resurrecting them as vampires and taking over the world. The book and the films based on it (The Last Man On Earth, The Omega Man and most recently I Am Legend) presented us with an empty, decimated world with a sole human survivor and his desperate fight not just against countless vampires but to develop a cure.  There are other works about viruses that turns people into vampires and imperils the world. Two books that come to mind are The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan and The Passage by Justin Cronin. The Passage is set in the near future where a virus quickly transforms most of humanity into vampire-like creatures who take over the world. The anthology novel Under The Fang features several short stories about humanity conquered by vampires.

As for films about vampires ruling the world, in addition to I Am Legend, there was Daybreakers, which took place a few years after a virus turned most of humanity into bloodsucking creatures. Daybreakers showed a world literally turned upside down as the vampire denizens populated major cities, but lived underground away from the sun and basically carried on with their lives. They just needed to farm the few remaining humans for nourishment. A variant of the vampire virus is the sci-fi film Lifeforce, which was based on the book The Space Vampires by Colin Wilson. This time vampire-like aliens were brought back to Earth by astronauts and it wasn’t blood that the aliens fed on. It was the titular lifeforce of people. As an added bonus, many of their victims also became vampiric and hunted humans for their lifeforce.

Zombie Apocalypse

The undead flesh eaters are undeniably the most popular monsters to use for post-apocalyptic tales. Look no further than the hit AMC series The Walking Dead. It wasn’t always so, until the late 1960s zombies were relegated to stale horror yarns usually dealing with voodoo. Then George Romero came along and changed the sub-genre forever. His classic film Night Of The Living Dead gave us a world on the brink of a societal breakdown as undead corpses roamed the countryside and feasted on the living.

Romero directed sequels that were very popular but the zombie apocalypse genre didn’t reach maturation until around the millennium, which coincided nicely with all the jitters about the coming apocalypse. Video games like Resident Evil, comic books like The Walking Dead, books like World War Z and films like 28 Days Later (not technically about zombies but it follows the same route) reinvigorated and amped up the zombie genre. The zombie apocalypse is so prevalent in pop culture that even the CDC put out  a comic book detailing how they would deal with such an event. Zombies are perfect metaphors for the chaos and decay that will follow the fall of civilization as humans are displaced as the apex predators. Also these stories are useful for illustrating how we would behave during the downfall of society. Will we return to our savage ways? Will we use our pluck and ingenuity to survive? How much stress can we withstand before we break down completely? And how will we find that perfect Twinkie? (Note: see Zombieland for more on that last question.)

Monsters, Etc.

Humanity has always feared monsters as seen in various mythologies. This morbid fascination continued well into modern times with countless books, stories and movies about monsters both large and small terrorizing the world. An often used motif is that of an ancient, slumbering giant that is awoken by modern humans and then wrecks destruction across the world. Godzilla is an excellent example and best personifies the Japanese kaiju films. But Godzilla had predecessors that need to be mentioned. One of the earliest modern imprisoned monsters is the famous Cthulhu first written about in H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “The Call Of The Cthulhu”.  An ancient entity described as part human, part dragon and part octopus, the Cthulhu had a cult that wanted to unleash the giant monster onto our world. This entity has been alluded to in other works by Lovecraft.

In film, the very first giant monster to be unleashed was the fictional rhedosaurus in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. Loosely based on Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Fog Horn”, the rhedosaurus was a dinosaur woken up by a nuclear blast and thus threatened the world not just with its destructive path but by its radioactive emissions. Destructive monsters have since plagued the silver screen with the Japanese kaiju films and American works like Q, Gremlins, John Carpenter’s In The Mouth Of Madness, Reign Of Fire, Cloverfield, The Cabin In the Woods and the upcoming Pacific Rim. In these films, the giants were mysterious and awakened inadvertently by humanity. Once unleashed they outmatched our military might and upended civilization as they destroyed cities and killed many people. Often entire cities and famous landscapes are decimated as seen in Cloverfield. And sometimes it was shown that the monsters won as the misshapen horrors from In The Mouth Of Madness  or the dragons in Reign Of Fire overran the world.

Oct 30 2012

Disney Buys Lucasfilm! Star Wars Episode VII On Its Way!

In a surprise move that rivals their acquisition of Marvel Entertainment a few years ago, Disney announced today that they bought Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion. Obviously, the sale includes the rights to the Star Wars franchise.

Kathleen Kennedy, who was the co-chair of Lucasfilm with George Lucas before the sale, has been named as president of Lucasfilm. Disney CEO Robert Iger announced that a new Star Wars film will be released in 2015 to be followed with more films coming out every two or three years.

At the moment, it wasn’t clear what would be the fate of the current Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series or the attempt to bring about a live-action Star Wars TV series. For all we know, The Clone Wars may cease production much in the same way that popular Marvel animated shows were canned following Disney’s purchase of Marvel. In the same way that Disney then launched new Marvel animated shows, they could produce a new Star Wars animated series. Additionally, Disney now has the rights to the Indiana Jones franchise, though no information was available on the production of future films of that franchise.

In a prepared statement, George Lucas said, “For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next.” In some ways this news isn’t that surprising given his announcement earlier this year that he was retiring from popular filmmaking. In the same statement Lucas added, “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers.” This most likely means that he won’t be directing the new films, which should cheer some fans. But it’s hard to imagine that the future films won’t have some kind of input from him, at least on an advisory basis.

For Star Wars fans this is undeniably shocking and exciting news. As some suspected after Star Wars: Episode III was released, we haven’t seen the last of Star Wars on the big screen. Like it or not Star Wars: Episode VII is coming.

José Soto

Oct 15 2012

A Revolution Comes To TV

In the new NBC series Revolution, viewers are presented a world fifteen years from now that is in a new Dark Age. In the opening scenes of Revolution’s pilot, the electricity throughout the world abruptly fails. Moments before this event happened Ben Matheson (Tim Guinee) races to his home and warns  his wife Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell) and their two children about what will happen. He also manages to phone his brother Miles (Billy Burke) about it just as the lights go out everywhere in the world. Viewers got a quick glimpse of the immediate impact of this blackout as airplanes fell out of the sky and cities plunged into darkness. Revolution jumps ahead fifteen years later to a radically changed world. Without electricity, governments collapsed and militias took over as everyone struggled to survive with the bare necessities. Ben is now living in a small, rustic community in Illinois with his teenage children Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) and Danny (Graham Rogers) and a new lover Maggie Foster (Anna Lise Phillips).

Their humble existence is interrupted with a visit by militia men, led by Captain Tom Neville (Giancarlo Esposito), belonging to a local tyrannical power called the Monroe Republic. Neville was sent by the Republic’s despot General Sebastian Monroe (David Lyons) to conscript Ben. During a melee Ben is killed and Danny is taken prisoner by the militia. Before Ben died he entrusted an amulet to Maggie and his friend Aaron Pittman (Zak Orth), which is capable of generating small amounts of electricity. What this means has not been revealed nor what caused the blackout. On Ben’s dying advice Charlie, Maggie and Aaron travel by foot to the decaying city of Chicago and recruit Miles for help in liberating Danny.

As the series progresses, viewers learn bits and pieces about the world and the characters. It was revealed that Miles was once friends with Monroe and was, in fact, a founder of the Monroe Republic. Now Miles has broken ties with Monroe and exists as a cynical Han Solo type until dragged into the limelight by Charlie and company. Monroe wants to have the power restored to spread his reign and he knows that Ben had knowledge about what caused the blackout. A plot development revealed that Rachel is still alive and Monroe’s prisoner. He intends to use her captured son as leverage to get her to reveal what she knows about the blackout. Also in reference to the show’s title, it turns out that there is a revolutionary movement among some people the main characters encounter to restore the United States. Peppered throughout the episodes are interesting flashbacks that show the immediate aftermath of the blackout, taking place days, even months after the event. The most touching one featured Maggie, who is British. In her story it’s revealed that she is cut off from her children in England and she tried for years to get back to England before giving up. Despondent and suicidal, she was found by Ben and his children sometime after Rachel was taken prisoner and Maggie became part of the family. At times, these flashbacks are the most interesting scenes in an episode.

Admittedly, Revolution has constant plot developments but the show is not overwhelming and things are kept at a fast pace that moves the overall story along. Many character have intriguing backgrounds and developments such as the revelation that Miles helped form the Monroe Republic and is hated and feared by many. The show took a daring step by unexpectedly killing off one of the main characters, a victim of a knife wound. This showed that the greatest dangers in this new Dark Age can come from fairly mundane and presently treatable ailments. The production design is very excellent and illustrates a world where nature is reclaiming the land as vegetation engulfs cities and towns. The credit for Revolution’s well presentation should go to series creator Eric Kripke (who created Supernatural), who serves as executive producer along with Iron Man’s director Jon Favreau and J. J. Abrams.

However, Revolution does have flaws. Sometimes Charlie is annoying, and how is it that Aaron (formerly a Google executive) is still overweight and seems to have no clue on how to survive in a post-apocalyptic environment? One would think that in the years since the blackout the characters would’ve been hardened and learned some survival skills. Drinking games can be made to how many times the roguish Miles threatens to leave the group or Danny’s many failed escape attempts. Why not keep that teenager shackled up in chains? But these seem to be the typical growing pains that every series goes through and the show seems to be getting stronger with each passing episode.

At first glance Revolution seems to borrow heavily from popular post-apocalyptic yarns like The Postman and obviously S. M. Stirling’s Emberverse books. But the series is setting its own fascinating mythology that hopefully the network will allow to play out to a satisfactory conclusion.

José Soto

Oct 11 2012

Recast Daredevil

 

Bit by bit, Marvel Entertainment is reclaiming its film properties under their own Marvel Studios. The latest acquisition is the blind superhero Daredevil. As recently as this summer Fox, who had the rights to the Daredevil property, tried to greenlight a Daredevil reboot but were unable to pull it off.

Whether or not Marvel Studios will launch their own reboot remains to be seen, but it seems likely given Daredevil’s popularity. Obviously Ben Affleck and the original cast won’t reprise their roles so who would be the best choices to play Daredevil and his gritty supporting cast? These are some possibilities:

 Ben Urich: The hard-nosed Daily Bugle reporter and Daredevil ally needs to be portrayed by someone who exudes integrity and intelligence. Tony Shalhoub should be offered the role in a Daredevil reboot.

 Stick: Daredevil’s blind mentor and sensei who taught him how to fight and use his extraordinary senses was a genuine old bad ass. Many online fans have opined that Scott Glenn would make a great Stick and frankly they are correct.

Bullseye/”Benjamin Pointdexter”: The mysterious master assassin and skilled marksmen is Daredevil’s deadliest adversary. The best actor for Bullseye has to give off a psychotic, vicious presence. He is someone who can be terrifying with his nihilistic demeanor and ability to make anything into a weapon. Jackie Earl Haley, who played a rebooted Freddie Krueger and Rorschach in Watchmen, makes a perfect Bullseye.

 Kingpin/Wilson Fisk: Daredevil’s greatest and most insidious enemy is a rotund powerhouse and master crime lord. Michael Clarke Duncan was an excellent Kingpin in Daredevil, sadly he’s no longer with us so he cannot reprise the role in a Daredevil reboot. Among the many other choices left to play the Kingpin, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the top pick (assuming he’s willing to shave his head or at least wear a bald cap), the actor is large and can do menacing villains, plus he’s one of the best actors around.

 Elektra Natchios: As a master assassin and Daredevil’s conflicted lover, Elektra needs to be played by someone who is strikingly beautiful and athletic. The wrong choice will doom the character from the start. That is one reason many say the original Daredevil didn’t work. There are plenty of superb candidates out there but Olivia Wilde is a dead ringer for Elektra. Tron: Legacy showcased her talents, looks and athletic prowess so she can do the role in her sleep.

 Karen Page: At first seen as a traditional secretary who later became Matt Murdock’s girlfriend, Karen Page has had a tortured history in the comic books. She eventually fell from grace, became a junkie who sold out Murdock’s secret identity before finally being killed off. She’s a tortured soul who needs to be portrayed by an actress who is beautiful and can do pathos. Emilie de Ravin, as seen on Lost, can break ground by bringing Karen Page to life on the big screen for the first time.

 Foggy Nelson: Matt Murdock’s law partner and best friend, Foggy seemed like the comic relief sorely needed by the grim comic book. But the slightly overweight lawyer was written as a complex, sympathetic person and one of Murdock’s strongest allies, who was often there for him when times were tough. Foggy Nelson shouldn’t be played strictly for laughs; check out the extended cut of the original Daredevil to get an idea of how he should be portrayed. For that reason, fan favorite Greg Grunberg seen in Alias and Heroes is an excellent pick for Foggy Nelson.

 Daredevil/Matt Murdock: Casting the blind superhero isn’t an easy task. Directors can’t just go with any stud actor. The person to take over the role of Matt Murdock from Ben Affleck needs to present viewers with a man possessing inner toughness, while having a conflicted nature. At the same time, this actor has to be able to pull off the lawyer act, in other words, he needs to be believably smart and convicted. At one point, one of the assigned directors of Fox’s failed reboot was interested in Tron: Legacy’s Garrett Hedlund. Although he’d be fine as Murdock, a better choice would be James Badge Dale. For comparison check out his roles in 24 (he played Jack Bauer’s junior partner in season three), The Pacific and Lexicon. Dale has all the qualities needed to play Matt Murdock and Daredevil.

The following enemies while not as prominent as say Bullseye would still make interesting secondary foes in a Daredevil reboot. The right casting and writing would make them very memorable. Also, the evil ninja group The Hand must make an appearance at some point in a reboot.

The Gladiator/Melvin Potter: Dwayne Johnson

Mister Fear/Larry Cranston, Alan Fagan: Bob Odenkirk

The Owl/Leland Owlsley: Oliver Platt

The Purple Man/Zebediah Killgrave: Robert Knepper

Typhoid Mary/Mary Walker: Milla Jovovich

José Soto

Oct 7 2012

Humanity Vs. Vampires: Our Advantages, Their Weaknesses

In many forms of media, vampires have been feared by humans and for good reasons. But one frightening element about them is their physical superiority to mere humans. Vampires in most stories possess superhuman strength, speed and reflexes. They’re also semi-telepathic and can fly, not to mention are nearly immortal. Recent tales have vampires living in complex secret societies and only tolerate humans who they consider to be glorified cattle.

So if it came down to it, how would humanity fare if vampires decided to take over? Well it wouldn’t be an automatic victory for vampires.

Think about it, sure vampires have all these fantastic powers but they have a severe weakness­­ ­— they’re vulnerable to sunlight. At best, as in the original Dracula novel, vampires while able to survive in the daytime are very weak. At worst, see an episode of True Blood or Being Human were vampires literally burst into flame when exposed to sunlight. If they were to actually exist that could be why they haven’t come out and conquered us. If there were an open war between humans and vampires, humans only need to wait until dawn to open coffins containing the vampires and expose them to direct sunlight. One thing that sunlight contains is ultraviolet radiation. Perhaps that radiation can be weaponized for night battles.

They have other weaknesses as well. Traditionally, they’re sensitive to garlic, holy water and religious symbols like crosses. Modern vampire tales like those written by Anne Rice have it that those so-called weapons are useless and have no effect on vampires. In Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, it’s stated that for a cross to work, the human bearing it must have religious faith. However, vampires in modern tales are still vulnerable to wooden stakes and sometimes silver (as seen in True Blood where the metal is used to incapacitate the night creatures).

Aside from sunlight and wooden stakes, a good beheading is a guaranteed way to kill vampires. Just ask the Winchester Brothers in Supernatural. In that TV show, beheadings are the only way to kill vampires, which early in the show’s run were considered an endangered species.

Movies like Blade and The Lost Boys feature heroes who come up with unique and clever adaptations of vampire weaknesses. For instance, the young heroes in The Lost Boys filled up ordinary water guns with holy water. Let’s not get into how formidable Blade was with his weapons. He was a bonafide one-man army against the undead with all the stabbing weapons and guns. In True Blood and the books the show is based on (known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris) vampires openly exist alongside humans, so police and militia groups routinely use wooden bullets against vampires along with silver. In one of the recent episodes when the Vampire Authority began to run amok, a human general threatened them. He revealed that humanity’s armies had already devised weapons to be used in the event of a war with the undead. Viewers got a taste of what a war would look like in second season episodes of True Blood where a radical, armed religious group threatened to wipe out vampires.

So if a state of war were to occur, humanity though physically outmatched has many aces up its collective sleeves. It’s been implied in many modern stories that humans far outnumber vampires which is one reason why they haven’t tried to conquer the planet. In the case of war, the huge numbers of humans will be a decided advantage and don’t forget that time and time again, we have shown an ability to adapt and refine battle tactics.

Probably the only way that vampires can counter humanity is in the form of a fast spreading virus. There are many page-turning books about a world overrun by vampires. The most famous one is Richard Mathesen’s I Am Legend, which was adapted three times into film. In I Am Legend, a pandemic is responsible for turning Earth’s population into vampire-like creatures. Other recent books that explore this theme of a virus transforming people into vampires are Justin Cronin’s The Passage and The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan.

The recent film Daybreakers is also about a world where a virus transforms humans into vampires. The outbreak was so severe that in the space of a few years, vampires had overrun human civilization, reducing the few humans left into cattle.

But unless a virus  quickly devastates humanity in the same way as shown in I Am Legend, don’t be so sure to count out humanity if war broke out against vampires. Sure one on one, a human probably cannot beat a vampire but it’s being demonstrated in these tales that a vampire can lose.

Waldermann Rivera