Tag: robots
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Terminator: Dark Fate is a trashcan of exposition
Criticizing the plots of popcorn action blockbusters is usually a fool’s errand. Nobody cares if Hobbs & Shaw makes any sense, but surely it’s fair game in the Terminator franchise, where untangling pseudo-scientific time travel logic is 99% of the fun. So the biggest disappointment of Dark Fate (other than its singularly unmemorable title, and…
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Life by Remote Control: Surrogates
Surrogates is an elegantly literal twist on the classic sci-fi theme of living through avatars. Cyberpunk writers William Gibson and Neal Stephenson pioneered virtual reality as a setting for the dramatic exaggeration of issues first sparked by the very beginnings of internet chat rooms. Their predictions have already come true, in part, in the form…
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The Vacation of the Future, Today: Westworld
The late Michael Crichton is primarily known as a bestselling novelist, but somewhat less so as a screenwriter, feature film director, and television producer (he was one of the co-creators of the blockbuster series E.R.). Characteristic novels Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain are built upon fascinating speculative science with thrilling story potential, spoiled by…
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Answering Questions With More Questions: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Put simply, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is a clip show done right, albeit in disguise as an original movie for television. Whatever else its intended purpose, it must also do double-duty as a kind of coda, appendix, or postscript to the celebrated television series (2004-2009). But is it one final cash-in, before the sets are…
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Before the Fall: The Caprica SyFy Series Premiere
The recently concluded television series Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) was critically acclaimed and much beloved by a relatively small group of fans and critics that appreciated the brainy show’s bleak, pessimistic view of humanity. It will certainly live forever as a classic achievement in television, but the common consensus is that it failed to reach the…
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Keanu Reeves Comes to Save the World, in The Day the Earth Stood Still
If the least one expects of the 2008 remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still is that it merely fulfill the promise of its title, then please move right along, for the earth stands still for only a few brief moments. It is, however, a far bigger production than the 1951 original directed by…
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Klaatu barada nikto: Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still
Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of the few essential science fiction movies that has lasted, overcoming dated special effects, acting styles, and the end of the Cold War — the provider of subtext for many a horror story. In the company of Forbidden Planet (Shakespeare’s The Tempest in space), The…