Update: I apologize, I haven't been online much due to the holidays. I realized that there was an erroneous data point for Andrew Stanton in 2009 that was never supposed to be there. I missed it when I initially looked over the graph, but it's been removed now.

As we've been reflecting on the last ten years, we've been asking ourselves whether any true "masters" of science fiction and urban fantasy have emerged, especially in film and television. It's certainly been a decade of highs and lows, of old masters who've begun to fade and bright new stars just cresting the horizon.

To that end, I've attempted to chart the relative "master levels" of various directors and television producers over the several years. This is an utterly unscientific chart; I looked at the projects these folks have had since 2000 and assigned each one a "master level." The number reflects my understanding of the projects acclaim, its ability to attract an audience (i.e. box office/Nielsen numbers), its awards, whether it succeeded in something unusual (such as a relatively popular foreign language film in the case of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth or Dr. Horrible's status as a breakthrough web film), and the nebulous sense that it add or subtracted from the individual's "geek cred." The numbers themselves are largely subjective and, of course, you should feel free to nitpick.

The greater purpose was to offer a watercolory sense of whether any "masters" have emerged from this crowd. Certainly, the last year has brought low some of the genres' promising potentials. Joss Whedon entered into the decade riding high on a Buffy/Angel cocktail. Though his name wasn't enough to overcome Fox's confusing treatment of Firefly, but the show's eventual cult popularity led to the Serenity feature film, and the Whedon brand helped make Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog an important moment for web-based content. Perhaps this all made Dollhouse — which has been, by turns, frustrating and brilliant — all the more disappointing, its impeding demise fairly readily accepted, even by Whedon's fanbase. Similarly, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, despite being regarded by some readers as the most overrated scifi of the decade, was regarded by many as a turning point for smart, politically savvy space opera. But a rocky final season punctuated by finale filled with dei ex machinae left a lot of folks sour on the entire series. And the Wachowskis, while doing a solid (though Alan Moore-enraging) bit of cinema with V for Vendetta, never quite lived up to the promises of The Matrix.

But there have been plenty of masterful bright spots as well. Bryan Fuller gave us some beautiful urban fantasy with shows with Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, and Pushing Daisies, even if many of his efforts (including the truly amazing The Amazing Screw-On Head) were prematurely axed, or shafted before ever getting off the ground. Guillermo del Toro brought us to great heights with Pan's Labyrinth, even if his other eye candy films didn't hit the same heights.

So have we seen any masters? Peter Jackson has certainly come close. Granted, The Lord of the Rings movies are high fantasy, but they showcased Jackson's ability to handle a difficult epic in a way that not only pleased JRR Tolkien's fans, but also won him mainstream accolades. And his remake of King Kong, which should have been automatically anathema, proved both profitable and well-reviewed. The Lovely Bones has been his blip, earning him his worst reviews in 20 years. But it's more likely that 2009 will be remembered as the year Jackson introduced the world to filmmaker Neill Blomkamp, demonstrating that he has a good eye for new talent and the Hollywood cache to bring that talent to light. It's not for nothing that he made this year's power list.

Another power list member, JJ Abrams, has also given us a good spate of fun and thoughtful science fiction. While he didn't give us the decade's best monster movie, he did manage to reboot the Star Trek franchise in a way that was respectful to what came before and drew in folks who never turned into the TV shows. Of course, we still have yet to see as Lost will end and whether Fringe will survive.

Chris Nolan is on the list of promising possibilities for eventual masterhood. Although Memento wasn't science fiction, it took a "what if" concept (here, what if a man searching for his wife's killer had no short term memory) and portrayed it in a thoughtful, suspenseful, and ultimately heartbreaking way. And he not only shot fresh blood into the corpse of the Batman franchise, he made it Oscar-worthy. And now he's continuing the science fiction thread with Inception.

And, of course, there's the question of whether James Cameron will prove the kind of science fiction as much as he claimed to be the king of the world. His foray into science fiction television, Dark Angel, never fared particularly well in the ratings; it was eventually canceled in favor of Firefly, and it never achieved the posthumous popularity of the later show. But perhaps Avatar is the reinforcement of his previous scifi successes, proof that he can still be relevant where other long-time directors have started to fade away. Hopefully, we won't have to wait another 12 years to see his next installment.

Personally, though, after seeing the delightful Monsters Inc. followed by the superb The Incredibles and WALL-E, I have my fingers crossed for Andrew Stanton and Pixar Studios. Here's hoping that John Carter of Mars is something phenomenal.

Still, singling out directors and producers as possible masters might be missing the point entirely, even when we're talking about movies and TV. Alan Moore might well be your science fiction master, not just because he has written so many fantastic books, but also because those books have captured the imagination of so many directors in the last several years — albeit with varying results. And in the coming years we'll see how comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan — who has been working on Lost as well as the Buffy Season Eight comics — translates to the big screen when Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Runaways hit theaters.

So who, if anyone, do you see as your science fiction master? Someone from the list above? Perhaps Russell T. Davis for reviving and expanding Doctor Who? Or maybe writers like Jane Espenson, who have worked on so many of the shows we love? And, with filmmakers like Neill Blomkamp and Duncan Jones arriving on the scene, who might prove themselves master of the genre in the next ten years?

Graph by Steph Fox.

Here's a bonus chart, with more data:

Any help translating would be wonderful, but what we can see is an exceedingly pissed-off Joseph Gordon-Levitt, backing a cab into...something. Ken Watanabe waking from his sleep, ready to shoot someone. In fact there are lots of people around beds, looks like the "people entering each other's dreams" theory of this movie's plot is holding up. Leo sits in a cafe while the world explodes around him, and doesn't flinch. More water imagery, and way more Leo freaking out scenes. Can't wait for the English version!

[via Making Of]

Morgan Freeman sat down with MTV and told them that there is no way Chris Nolan would walk away from the Batman series. Saying, "I know-I just know-that Chris is working on number three," Morgan Freeman told MTV News. "He couldn't possibly not be."

So who does Freeman dream of as the next Nolan villain, Catwoman. So do we Morgan, so do we.

In other Dark Knight news check out this hilarious plot hole song that points out the few problems and questions many folks had with the beloved film.

The lucky devils over at Incontention have uncovered a few pivotal details about Nolan's new film.

Leonardo DiCaprio has thus far only been described as a CEO and our first glimpse of his character in the new Inception trailer showed a mildly skittish person, but revealed little more.

Incontention reveals, based on an inside source who's read the script, that Leo's character Cobb is also a thief. Cobb "dives," (perhaps this was what all the water was about) into people's dreams to get information.

Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Arthur and Tom Hardy's Eames are all a part of Cobbs business team. Together they create and manipulate your dreams, Ellen Page's character Ariadne is an dream engineer of sorts.

The way someone enters another dream is via injection. Which means they can enter dreams from wherever they are, shots being portable.

But the biggest spoiler of them all happens after Cobb and his wife end up trapped in the dream world and his wife tries to convince him to stay in the dream world even though he wants to go back to be with his family. Somehow Cobb's wife ends up committing suicide in the dream world in an attempt to try and get back to the real world — not sure what changed her mind. But as urban myth goes, if you die in your dreams, you die in real life. And Cobb wakes up accused of the murder of his wife.

The official synopsis is as vague as the trailer...

A CEO-type becomes involved in a blackmailing scandal.

But we do know that Leo is the CEO and his villain is Ken Watanabe, who is pretty fantastic in just about everything, but not as great as that spinning top! What the heck does it all mean? And please let these hallway fights stay clear from Matrix territory.

Eating Class points out that water seems to be a pretty pivotal part of this film as it's in just about every scene, even the one with the top. Also in the fight scenes with Joseph Gordon-Levitt prancing about, "people are subject to their environments, not the other way around." Check out the site for a full breakdown.

Also, the film now has an official website: InceptionMovie.

We know Ken Watanabe is playing the villain, and the film is jam packed with actors who love a good staredown session, such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Marion Cotillard plays Lisa Hastley, the wife of DiCaprio's character Jacob. But what's with the knife she's holding in one of these pics?

The official synopsis is this, "A CEO-type becomes involved in a blackmailing scandal." We believe that Leo is the boss and the scandal involves some sort of brain-mapping, mind-recording science — at least that squares with the vague reports about the film dabbling with "the architecture of the mind."

Check out the full gallery over at Coming Soon.

Note: We didn't include any directors who haven't worked in the genre this decade. We also left out McG and Brett Ratner. If either of those guys is your favorite director, we're very sorry. Very, very sorry.

The Dark Knight is very clearly a film of two halves, as the cliche goes. The first half is impressive, if flawed: Foregoing the flash of an Iron Man or Incredible Hulk in favor of direction and visuals that seem more influenced by movies like Michael Clayton and Heat, it's successful in spite of the men in the funny outfits fighting over who can try to save the day. In fact, for the first half of the movie, it's as if everyone involved is kind of embarrassed about Batman's involvement... which makes sense, considering Bale's performance when he's wearing the costume, all near-parodic husky whispers and threatening pouting (He's better as Bruce Wayne, thankfully). The movie comes to life more when we're watching Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent and Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon as the last two good men in Gotham trying to deal with the chaos caused by the Joker's appearance in the criminal underworld than watching Batman stiffly fight dogs and men in clown masks.

Not that there aren't good action set pieces - the climactic chase through Gotham where the Joker is both trying to kill Harvey Dent and simultaneously just piss off Batman is wonderful, over-the-top enough to be spectacular but realistic enough to be thrillingly believable, edge of the seat, viewing. A shame, then, that it happens less than halfway into the movie itself.

That's the main problem with The Dark Knight. We can put up with bad dialogue, accidentally homoerotic scenes of male bonding (The scenes of Harvey and Bruce falling for each other are unintentionally hilarious) and unimpressive second-fiddle villains as long as we have a story that actually worked. Instead, we get a movie that wraps up all of its themes with a literally explosive climax about ninety minutes in, and then forgets to stop. When Maggie Gyllenhall's Rachel Dawes - Katie Holmes' character from Batman Begins - gets killed as the result of the Joker's schemes at the same time that he escapes from the Gotham City police station and causes the accident that turns Dent into Two-Face, we're given a strong emotional end to all of the movie's character arcs - The (already cynical) idealism of the heroes has been shown as naive, Dent has compromised his morals for the woman he loves, and Batman has realized that he can't save everyone. It's a downer of an ending, but it is an ending... something that the moviemakers seem to have either missed, or else felt compelled to ignore in order to give the audience some kind of closure that is completely unnecessary.

Everything that follows the death of Rachel betrays the tone and intent of what came before. Batman goes from flawed hero to a man who - thanks to his new cell-phone-tapping sonar technology - can now see through walls, hear every conversation in the city, single-handedly defeat a SWAT team and the Joker and his henchmen all at the same time. Dent goes from a nuanced but fucked-up character to one-dimensional one-schtick murderer out for revenge at any cost. As the plotlines pile-up on each other - and there are three subplots in particular that serve no purpose whatsoever, although I guess that Chris Nolan got a trip to Hong Kong with one of them. The movie devolves into crass melodrama, something that is made all the more obvious by the end of the movie, where a small blond child tells his daddy (and the audience) that despite everything, Batman has done nothing wrong. The boy's daddy - Oldman's Jim Gordon, at this point finally the police commissioner - gives a long and sprawling monologue about the fact that Batman isn't a hero, he's more than a hero, he's a "silent guardian" and Gotham City's "dark knight."

The end of the movie in particular is, despite the intent of the creators, far too neat and tidy: The bad guys are either dead or captured, Batman makes a noble sacrifice for the good of his city, and everyone else pretty much goes on about their business in exactly the same way as they had at the start of the movie. It's a lazy and, considering the unsettling nature of the first half of the film, frustratingly safe way to finish.

There is one area, however, where all of the hype is earned: Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker really is everything people have been saying. Nervous, edgy, uncertain, he's magnetic everytime he's on-screen, and by far the best thing about the movie. For the first time outside of the comics - and perhaps just the first time anywhere - the Joker actually is scary and disturbing, fucking with everyone's heads just for the hell of it. Even when his character gets reduced to near-generic expositionary villain at the end of the movie, Ledger's performance really sells it. I don't know if that means that it's Oscar-worthy, as people have been saying, but it's stunning, stunning work.

The best way to enjoy The Dark Knight may really be to just leave once you've seen Aaron Eckhart lying in the hospital bed, half of his face, covered in gauze, weeping; it's not just that it doesn't get any better than that, but that it gets much, much worse. Stick around at your own risk.

Oldman and Nolan confirmed the next Batman villain would be The Riddler, last played by Jim Carrey in Batman Forever. Asked whether they would recast the role of the Joker due to the sad passing of actor Heath Ledger Oldman expressed his great appreciation for Ledger's portrayal, and said, "Maybe we don't need the Joker. Because we'll have The Riddler." Fascinating, how will Nolan bring to life such an over-the-top character? Granted he brought The Joker to deep and dark reality, so The Riddler could very well be a slightly believable villain.

Director Chris Nolan had no idea about bringing back The Joker, and in fact he says he's not especially gung ho about making a third Batman movie in the first place. When asked about making a third film, Nolan tells Movie Web, "I don't know. I take my projects one at a time, and I am not thinking about that right now. I don't know if I want to come back." Whoa — what's with the sour grapes? You've been making movie magic, why not round out the series while you still have all the actors you love under contract? [Movie Web]

Don't get me wrong; I know that Batman is as much about the gadgets as he is the whole parents-getting-killed-so-he-fights-crime thing. But the last two posters to be released promoting The Dark Knight have both focused much more on the Batcycle than they have the caped crusader; all you can see is his head, on both posters. Holy guano, Batfans; why are Warner Bros hiding the dark knight?

I'm all for mystery, but in the fifteen posters released for The Dark Knight to date, not only is the eponymous hero of the movie absent from eight of them, there are only three where you can really see more than his head or a hand - and in two of those, he has his back to you. When you can actually see more of Christian Bale's Batman in a Got Milk advertisement than the movie's own publicity, you have to wonder what's going on. We've narrowed it down to three possibilities:

Someone finally realized that the movie Batman costume looks ridiculous: Yes, it's practical with all the padding and everything, but look at it - It's like he's wearing a tire. It's a movie where we're already buying a hundred different unbelievable things, so why do we have to care about the believability of his body armor? Whatever happened to the simplicity of the comic book outfit, with the grey and the black and wearing his pants on the outside?

Christian Bale couldn't breathe in and push out his chest for the length of the movie, and almost all publicity shots they had made Batman look fat: Hey, crimefighting's a tough gig, and who can manage to look glamorous all the time when keeping a city safe from Aaron Eckhart 24-7? Just as cops like to stereotypically take a break by having a doughnut or several, so does a Batman like to indulge in his pastry of choice: The bearclaw.

Warner Bros wants to convince fans that Batman is now a Transformer: It sounds ridiculous, I know, but think about it: Transformers was a massive hit last year, and Warners may be hoping that the audience out there is so hungry for new stories about heroes who can turn themselves into vehicles that they'll mistake Batman's head on a bike to mean that Batman has, himself, taken his crusade for justice so far that he was willing to turn himself into a part-man, part-bike cyborg if it meant Gotham City was even 1% safer at night. And when most people haven't seen anything other than Batman's head and his massive bike, who's to say that that's not the case?

It's sad to see that the folks at Warners seem to be downplaying Batman in the advertisements for his own movie. I mean, I like The Joker as much as the next man, but you pay too much attention to him and not your star and you end up with... well, the first Tim Burton Batman. And no-one wants to go through that again.

[The Dark Knight]