Here’s GEO’s Cool Pick of the Week. Vintage World War II-era Star Wars toys! I came across this website while searching online for Adam Hughes’ art (BTW I just found out that some of my fellow Starloggers’ articles are popping up on the first page of a Google search, way to go!) and these toys just captivated me.
I am really intrigued by this concept created by a toy enthusiast known only as Sillof. These toys are mockups from other toys that are remade into our favorite Star Wars characters as World War II/1930s-era figures. They’re really cool and a retcon of George Lucas’ saga. See much of Star Wars was inspired by the old pulp movie serials like Flash Gordon that played during the 1930s. But naturally, he updated the look of the characters to be more appealing to today’s audiences and it worked.
With these toys, any fan can see the influences much more easily and it is a truly imaginative concept. What if Star Wars had been a movie serial from that era?
My favorite character in this line is Han Solo with his bomber jacket because this toy figure keeps the essence of Han Solo and easily transplants him into the era. I thought the Darth Vader re-imagining was perfect with his stylized gas mask and his chest piece is just awesome. As for Chewbacca, while he looks more human it does illustrate how the wookie would’ve been executed by Hollywood in those days. Chewbacca reminded me of the Wolf Man makeup as worn by Lon Chaney, Jr.
The website links to Sillof’s website where other creative figures are showcased such as Star Wars re-imagined as a western and a medieval fantasy. They’re worth a look and made this fan, who’s a bit burned out on the regular Star Wars toy line , take notice. They’re not on sale but Hasbro and Lucasfilm should seriously consider commissioning a line like this, at least on a trial basis. I’ll bet they would be very popular.
It’s that time of year lovers! In commemoration of Valentine’s Day, here are the silver screen’s most romantic couples in the world of science fiction. The films they appear in aren’t always romances, actually, one of the entries on this list comes from a gritty, action-packed movie. The fact is there aren’t many sci-fi romantic films, so the focus is on the characters in a sci-fi film. Either way, these characters made for memorable couples and romances.
10. Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese (The Terminator): OK this is a bit of a stretch. Romance in The Terminator? The one with all the explosions and darkness? Yes, it isn’t apparent when Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) first saves Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from the T-800, but as the movie progresses, the two begin to bond, culminating in a tender and passionate love moment. Their brief encounter comes as a welcome relief in the midst of all the gore and gunfire and leads to humanity’s savior, their son John Connor.
9. Jake Sully and Neytiri (Avatar): Blue alien love baby! This film presents every sci-fi geek’s wish of having a big blue alien as a girlfriend. The love between Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) builds gradually. Initially she’s disgusted by him but then starts to admiring him until love took hold. And towards the end, viewers see that her love for him is transcendent even after she sees Jake in his frail human form.
8. Superman and Lois Lane (Superman and Superman II): From the moment that Superman (Christopher Reeve) saved intrepid reporter Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) from the helicopter accident and made his world debut, she only had eyes for the big boy scout. The sweeping romance continued in the sequel but ended in one big copout.
7. WALL-E and EVE (WALL-E): This is one unconventional romance, it’s between two robots but that’s science fiction. Ultimately the two exemplify the notion of opposites attract. WALL-E is a curious, Chaplinesque garbage robot, EVE is a suave, tough, and pristine scout robot. Naturally, he falls head over tank treads for EVE but she only comes to love him during the film as they save humanity.
6. Henry and Claire DeTamble (The Time Traveler’s Wife): Relationships are hard, but how much harder is it when your husband has a genetic abnormality that makes him time travel uncontrollably throughout his lifetime? That’s what viewers see when Henry (Eric Bana) literally pops in and out of the life of Claire (Rachel McAdams), even on their wedding day! Warning: the ending is a tearjerker.
5. H.G. Welles and Amy Robbins (Time After Time): This underappreciated sci-fi film has H.G. Welles (Malcolm McDowell) time traveling to San Francisco in 1979 to track down Jack the Ripper. Along the way, the sweetly naive Welles meets strong-willed, modern bank teller Amy (Mary Steenburgen) and they soon have an affair. The chemistry the actors shared was obvious (they even got married in real life for a time) and made the film more special.
4. Cornelius and Zira (Planet Of The Apes and Escape From The Planet Of The Apes): Their relationship wasn’t the center of attention in the first film but forms a strong foundation in the third film. Across the first three Apes films viewers see a tender, loving simian couple who strongly respect and cherish one another. Sadly, this makes the end of the third film so heartbreaking when they are brutally killed. It’s still hard to watch Zira’s (Kim Hunter) final moments when she embraces Cornelius’ (Roddy McDowall) body as she dies.
3. Doc Brown and Clara Clayton (Back To The Future, Part III): Marty McFly’s time-traveling partner (Christopher Lloyd) is trapped in the 1880s but finds existence there to be rewarding thanks to a chance encounter with schoolteacher Clara (Mary Steenburgen again). She gets extra bonus points from us since she’s a big science fiction fan! The tortured choices that Doc faces on whether or not to return to the present or stay with his true love really do a number on him. But alas, love conquers all.
2. Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa (Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back): Who would’ve thought of it? A scruffy, unpolished smuggler and a headstrong, independent space princess falling for each other. Han (Harrison Ford) and Leia’s (Carrie Fisher) relationship lift the first Star Wars sequel with their romantic tension and squabbling that reaches a climax when they first kiss passionately while fixing the Millennium Falcon. Plus, as every fan knows the film has one of the greatest comeback line to “I love you.”
1. Starman/”Scott Hayden” and Jenny Hayden (Starman): Poor Jenny (Karen Allen) is still mourning the death of her husband when she gets the shock of her life when he is reborn in front of her. Actually the resurrected Scott is a stranded alien (Jeff Bridges) who takes her husband’s form and enlists her help to get back to a rescue spaceship. Like any romantic road trip picture, the two don’t quite connect at first but begin to like then love each other. What helps the romance are the passionate performances by both actors, John Carpenter’s direction and the haunting yet uplifting score by Jack Nitzsche.
Finally, let’s give a shout out to those without a beloved on Valentine’s Day and mention the big screen’s best would-be lovers. In an ode to unrequited love in the realm of science fiction that honor goes to Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and Inara Serra (Morena Baccarin) from Serenity.
I didn’t catch the Super Bowl last night. It’s not because I didn’t like the teams playing, but because I don’t enjoy football. I won’t go into how boring the sport is with the constant timeouts, overinflated egos, etc. But there is a sport I would rather watch if it existed. Which one? Why rollerball of course!
The film Rollerball was released in 1975 and was based on the short story “Roller Ball Murder.” It takes place in 2018 in a liberal’s worst nightmare: a world ruled overtly by faceless corporations. One such organization, the Energy Corp. backs the popular Houston team in the sport of rollerball. It’s a lot like roller derby. Teams in two opposing teams skate around a closed arena (th0ugh some ride around in motorcycles) and are clad with spiked gloves, body armor and helmets. The object of the game is to get possession of a steel ball and score points by slamming it into a cone in the arena. Along the way, the players use violent means to gain possession of the ball and score or to prevent the other team from scoring.
In this future, there isn’t any other sport but rollerball is wildly popular. It’s also supposed to be a sport that emphasizes the work of a team, while diminishing the efforts of the individual. There’s the film’s conflict. Jonathan E (James Cann) is emerging as a popular sports figure but the corporations disapprove of this since they don’t want an individual hero. See, they want to keep the average person down and make him or her feel powerless. That’s because the mantra of “one person making a difference” no longer applies in the new world. Most of the film concerns itself with Jonathan E being persuaded to retire from the sport and his reaction to the effort.
But enough about that, my favorite parts were with the game itself. That thing is wickedly violent, and that’s even before the corporations eliminate penalties halfway through Rollerball! See, they want the game to turn so violent to make Jonathan E want to step down, and things get very desperate for the evil corporate bosses in Rollerball’s last act. At that point, the final game is a no-holds-bar brouhaha with lots of explosions, blood and maimings. But like a true hero, Jonathan E just sucks it in and gets just as violent as the other players, coming off as some kind of futuristic gladiator. What kind of violence is in this film? Lots of bashing across the face and skull with the spiked gloves, players get dragged around the arena, players smashing into each other; it’s easy to see why this sport would placate the masses and their bloodlust.
Now ask yourself, would you see anything like that in football today? Thought so. Supposedly football is popular because of the violence. Please, if you want that go to a boxing match or a good hockey game. The players in those sports wear less body protection. And it’s the closest we’ll ever get to rollerball.
Alcatraz is the latest show that premiered on Fox from executive producer J.J. Abrams (for anyone who doesn’t know, he’s the guy behind Alias, LOST, Fringe, Super 8 and the Star Trek reboot). It’s co-created by Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lillen and Bryan Wynbrandt and is about the manhunt for prisoners who escaped from the infamous Alcatraz prison.
The twist? Back in 1960, 256 prisoners and 46 guards disappeared from Alcatraz without a trace and now they are popping up all over modern-day San Francisco and haven’t aged a day. Was it time travel? Hibernation? Not even the prisoners know. After being captured and interrogated, they reveal that they’re just as mystified as the show’s main characters, though there are hints of time travel during nuggets of revelation.
The show stars Rebecca Madsen as Sarah Jones, a local police detective with unexpected ties to one of the escaped prisoners; she is recruited by a mysterious government agent Emerson Hauser (Sam Neill), who was once an Alcatraz guard and knows a lot more about what is going than he’s willing to reveal. Sarah is teamed up with comic book store owner and geek Dr. Diego Soto (Jorge Garcia, well known as the beloved Hurley from LOST), who is a walking encyclopedia of Alcatraz trivia that proves useful in the investigations.
The rundown of each episode aired to date goes like this: some escapee appears in the city unaged and continues the same criminal activity that had him jailed in the first place. Sarah and Diego run around the city, tracking him down with half-hearted help by Hauser, (who sometimes seems as if he’s impeding them) and his aide Lucy Banerjee (Parminder Nagra), who like the prisoners hasn’t aged since 1960. In between, the manhunts, we’re shown flashbacks to life in Alcatraz before the prisoner escaped so that he can be fleshed out and given some motive. Here and there, viewers are given clues and riddles without an answer such as how did the prisoners and guards disappear and why? Who is behind this? What is the deal with Hauser’s assistant? Why hasn’t she aged? Will Hauser stop beating around the bush and just explain it all to Sarah? After all, she is supposed to be working for him now and should be privy to what is happening in order to better perform her duties.
There lies the flaw with Alcatraz. It has some good moments and hooks to keep viewers watching, but it doesn’t have the drive and real mystery that LOST and Fringe had. The mythology isn’t as compelling and many of the characters aren’t as interesting. Maybe it’s a response to complaints about J.J. Abrams’ shows being too mythologized, so he plays it safer this time. Sarah comes off as a pale imitation of Fringe’s Olivia Dunham, just a younger, bustier version without Dunham’s inner toughness. Hauser, as portrayed by Neill, seems bored half the time. Garcia’s Diego is the most interesting character but only because he isn’t a law enforcement type and the show wisely shows how he is more like an ordinary person swept up in this mystery. And while the stories about the prisoners are so far interesting, the basic setup of each episode is starting to get repetitious. In many ways, Alcatraz seems more like a procedural cop show that belongs on CBS.
Then there are some nagging problems about the premise. Chiefly with the way the prisoners so easily get by in modern society without drawing attention to themselves. Sorry but if someone from the early ’60s were to suddenly appear today, that person would experience a future shock over how things have changed. They would speak differently, act a bit strange, not know how to use modern devices or how to blend in. Yet none of this is shown, unless the prisoners are lying about not knowing anything and had time to assimilate into modern society.
So is it worth watching? Short answer: yes. When compared to ninety percent of the garbage on TV now, it stands above them. But so far it isn’t as captivating as Abrams’ other shows.
Okay it’s 2012 now, supposedly our final year according to the Mayan calendar. Earth was put on notice last week with that big solar flare that could’ve disrupted our satellites (but thankfully didn’t). With all the hoopla about the end of the world, one has to wonder if this is our swan song, how will it end? Here at Starloggers, we’re going to examine the possible doomsday scenarios each month as a sort of countdown.
Doomsday Scenario No. 12: The Aliens Are Coming, The Aliens Are Coming
Whether the E.T.s are friendly, cuddly visitors or blood thirsty, destructive invaders, it can’t be denied that once they do arrive life as we know it is over. So even if the first contact is benevolent our isolation in the universe is gone and with it the way we see ourselves. This scenario would bring about an end of our world. These are the possible scenarios:
Friendly, curious neighbors come by to say hello: Think of E.T. or Starman or the alien greys from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. They mean well, they’re just explorers but their arrival is nonetheless disruptive. A variation of this scenario is explored in Carl Sagan’s book Contact (and film based on his work), where just the radio signals from another star changes our society.
We’re invited: Continuing to look at Contact, the aliens willingly or unwittingly give humanity the technology to travel to their world. This theme is also seen with the film Stargate and its TV shows, the John Carter books and Adam Strange in comic books.
The Enforcers: The gist of this scenario goes like this, aliens make first contact with humans. But we’re given a stern warning to clean up our act and play nice otherwise either A) we can’t join their club or B) they’ll wipe us off the map. Option A was presented in Allen Steele’s Coyote universe books and option B was best shown with the classic The Day The Earth Stood Still.
Caught up in an interplanetary conflict: This is the plot for those Transformers films. We’re standing by innocently in our little blue world obsessed with nonsense like taxes, the presidential election and Snookie until BAM! A bunch of aliens from two different sides arrive and duke it out, using our planet as a battlefield. This also happened in the book The Last World War and the Aliens Vs. Predators films.
Aliens with a mysterious agenda: Most recently seen with the V series but a terrific example is Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End. What happens is that aliens arrive in mammoth motherships over major cities. They claim to be peaceful and want to help humanity but have another agenda they’re keeping from us. With V (the original show, the remake was pretty vague–could be why the show failed) the aliens wanted our water and us for food. In Childhood’s End the mysterious Overlords arrived to shepherd in our next evolutionary stage and move our descendants into the cosmos. Another example is that show from the late ’90s Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, where the mysterious Taelons arrive on Earth bringing an era of peace but have secret motives for coming to our world.
This Petri dish Earth or we taste like chicken: The first V show and mini-series fit this bill. And if the UFO fanatics are to be believed, alien greys come to our planet to create human/alien hybrids and to conduct painful, invasive experiments on humans. On the big screen, this was best shown with the underrated film A Fire In The Sky.
INVASION: The tried and true plotline of alien contact. Aliens arrive in huge ships and proceed to stomp us into smithereens until the heroes in the third act find a way to beat them. Examples in film, shows and books are numerous and include War Of The Worlds, Independence Day, Battle: Los Angeles, Footfall, the Worldwar books, etc. A variation of the invasion scenario is the clandestine invasion where the aliens slowly infiltrate us until it’s too late. Check out the shows Threshold, The X-Files, The Invaders, and First Wave (this invasion scenario is probably prevalent on TV for budgetary reasons) as examples. On film the most famous example is Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.
That’s one look at how 2012 could the end of the world as we know it (apologies to R.E.M.). One month down, eleven more to go; be prepared.
My favorite character in this line is Han Solo with his bomber jacket because this toy figure keeps the essence of Han Solo and easily transplants him into the era. I thought the Darth Vader re-imagining was perfect with his stylized gas mask and his chest piece is just awesome. As for Chewbacca, while he looks more human it does illustrate how the wookie would’ve been executed by Hollywood in those days. Chewbacca reminded me of the Wolf Man makeup as worn by Lon Chaney, Jr.
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