RETROSPECTACLE #2 PITCH BLACK (2000) & THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (2004) Vin Diesel has had something of a roller coaster ride when it comes to his career. He had a small role in a big movie (Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan), voiced the titular character in The Iron Giant, and big roles in smaller films…
No genre of film has had a spottier track record than that of the video game adaptation. For every feature-length motion picture that clings well below the level of mediocrity like the Prince of Persia movie, there is something like House of the Dead or Silent Hill: Revelation that pierces the bottom of the barrel…
RETROSPECTACLE: MOVIES RELEASED WHEN I WAS YOUNGER A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001) I spent a week in Kentucky during the summer of 2001. On a rather sleepy night in the middle of a particularly sleepy week, we decided to pile into the car to go see a drive-in movie. At the site, there were two movies…
Once upon a time, upstart South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp was tapped to direct an adaptation of the insanely popular Halo videogame series. Blomkamp, who had yet to direct a feature-length film in his budding career, was given the director’s chair by executive producer Peter Jackson, who was impressed by Blomkamp’s short film work. Failed…
Tampering with a beloved childhood memory for many moviegoers is a sure way to incite an internet flame war, and that is exactly what happened when a script reportedly from the new Michael Bay Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot surfaced. Bay already caused controversy with the decision to simply call the movie Ninja Turtles, rather…
Remember the first time you watched the Jetson’s and dreamt of hovercrafts? We were all a little disappointed when the year 2000 came around and we didn’t all own the latest model of the hover car. Or what about the time you were watching Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and though, “Man, those speeder…
What if you combined the free roaming stealth and action of Assassin’s Creed with a mind altering story in the same vein as Inception? The result would be Remember Me, a new game from developer Dontnod and Capcom. Set in Neo Paris in the year 2084, players will take on the role of Nilin, a…
Halo is one of the most popular shooters in the world, and a great science fiction franchise to boot. It should come as no surprise then that weapons are the star of the show in the Halo universe. Pulling from standard human weaponry to exotic alien armaments, these are my favorite Halo weapons. Battle Rifle…
X-Wing. Tie Fighter. The Millennium freakin Falcon. The space ships in the Star Wars universe are some of the most memorable spacecraft in all of science fiction, often copied, but rarely surpassed. Every ship is a character in its own right, with a distinct look and personality that demands for it to be remembered. Here…
Growing up without the knowledge database that is the internet or a subscription to a gaming magazine, I played a ton of not so great games back in the day. Not that I cared, or even noticed how terrible they really were. As a result, some of my fondest gaming memories are of games that…
Traveling through space is standard fare in the majority of science fiction. Mundane but important, space travel allows characters to explore new worlds, engage in daring space battles, or flee from a troubled past. Just as in real life, many vehicles simply don’t catch the eye. We’ve seen them all before, a hundred times a…
Bounty Hunters are a staple of popular science fiction. Bad-ass, tough as nails, guns for hire who don’t take crap from anybody and only looking to get paid, they capture our imagination. But who are the worst of the worst in this elite club of galactic rogues? Here are my picks for science fiction’s best…
