Probably O'Bannon's biggest contribution to science-fiction movies is his work on the screenplay of Alien, which started life as his script Star Beast. According to Empire Magazine, O'Bannon's script was the movie's first draft, although others later worked on the screenplay. And Empire says he brought over several of his colleagues from Alejandro Jodorowsky's abortive film Dune to Alien.

But prior to Alien, O'Bannon was co-writer and visual effects supervisor on John Carpenter's loopy Dark Star. And he also played Sgt. Pinback, as seen in the clip above. And O'Bannon worked on the original Star Wars, helping to craft those great computer graphics of the Death Star plans and the attack run — and according to this poster at IMDB, he's also in the movie, as one of the technicians in the Rebel Base during the Battle of Yavin.

After Alien, he wrote the great helicopter movie Blue Thunder plus two episodes of the spin-off TV series, and he wrote Lifeforce, "one of the movies that I still make people sit down and watch against their will," according to novelist Richard Kadrey on Twitter. O'Bannon also wrote two Philip K. Dick adaptations, Screamers and Total Recall. He wrote and directed the Romero-inspired zombie comedy, Return Of The Living Dead. And he worked on both the Heavy Metal comic as well as the movie, writing the "Soft Landing" and "B17" segments of the film. Some claim his work on the Heavy Metal comic influenced the visual style of Blade Runner.

O'Bannon changed science-fiction on film forever, and he'll be missed. [Empire via Ain't It Cool News]

Serenity:

Here's the classic example of a voiceover that turns into a conversation. Joss Whedon's big movie debut starts out with a whole cosmic theme, as a woman talks to us about how we (once again) messed up the Earth and had to colonize a new solar system. And then suddenly, we're in the room with the woman, and it starts a whole new scene. Which turns into something else, which turns into something else.

Mimic:

Here's another voiceover that turns into someone talking to us. Guillermo dell Toro's early classic starts off with a male narrator telling us about the awful plague that struck... and then we're in a hospital with him, uncomfortably close to those plague victims. Aaaaa!

Megiddo: The Omega Code 2:

I love this Godsploitation movie's beginning so much. It starts out as an echoey ominous voiceover, with some guy reading Scripture, and then it turns into a sweeping apocalyptic montage, with that voice droning over it... and then suddenly, we're hanging out with that guy, and he's just having a regular conversation. He just happened to be quoting scripture and droning ominously in the course of his chat. To be fair, this is Satan.

What Planet Are You From?

And then, we effortlessly segue into our comedy voiceovers portion. This Garry Shandling movie feels the need to start off with a deep booming voice, letting us know Garry Shandling has no penis. It's important information that we'll need for the rest of the movie, so it's good to get it out there right away.

Morons From Outer Space:

And then finally, there's this cheesy British space comedy, which tries to play up our expectations that visitors from outer space will be brilliant and noble, so the movie can shatter them. (Of course, we already know we're watching a movie called Morons From Outer Space, so good luck with that.)

Heavy Metal:

Somehow, I remembered this opening monologue being longer and more crazy, but I guess they're saving that for later in the movie. As it is, you could almost be fooled into thinking you're watching a serious space epic.

Monster High:

I almost didn't include this one, since it's so short and kind of meh. (I already had 50 voiceovers, without this one.) I think the "imagine the furthest point in the universe. Our story begins just a couple blocks past that." I think they're trying for a Douglas Adams "space is big" vibe... and then they just give up and go home.

Eastman spilled the beans to Film School Rejects over the weekend that James Cameron, Zack Snyder, Gore Verbinski and David Fincher have signed on to the long-awaited anthology movie spun out of the long-running comic magazine:

I've got breaking news that Fincher and James Cameron are going to be Co-Executive Producers on the film. Fincher will direct one. Cameron will direct one. Zack Snyder is going to direct one and Gore Verbinski is going to. Mark Osborne and Jack Black from Tenacious D are going to do a comedy segment for the film. Three other directors have agreed but we haven't signed them, but they're equally as jaw-dropping. So we're on cloud nine to be working with such an amazing amount of talent.

That's an amazing collection of talent, but we're worried about the fact that there will be another three directors added to the five listed; just how long is this movie going to be? Or, more depressingly, is each segment going to be incredibly short?

‘Heavy Metal' Adds Cameron, Verbinksi, Snyder as Directors [Film School Rejects]

Starstruck started life as an off-Broadway play in 1980 before transferring to comics, along with its author Lee, two years later. A grandiose, funny and more than a little sexy space opera with beautiful illustrations by Kaluta, the series has skipped around various publishers throughout the years (Going from Heavy Metal to Marvel Comics, and then to Star Wars and Aliens publisher Dark Horse for awhile) before this new 13-part series was announced.

Accompanying Lee and Kaluta for this latest go-around will be painter Lee Moyer, whose work has appeared on the covers of books by people like Iain M. Banks and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Charles Vess, who'll be helping Kaluta finish the artwork on the series' second strip, Galactic Girl Guides which features the futuristic version of everyone's favorite cookie sellers.

Starstruck #1 will be released in August.

There's been plenty of animated scifi before this summer, of course — Fox and Blue Sky put out the bog-awful Robots a few years ago, and Disney/Pixar did The Incredibles. There's been underground-y weird animated scifi like Heavy Metal since the 70s, and plenty of animated science fiction/comics stuff on TV. And while we've been dragging our feet in the U.S., the Japanese have been putting science fiction anime on the big screen for decades.

But this will be remembered as the summer science fiction animation broke out, mostly thanks to Wall-E and Clone Wars. It's not just that both films will probably end up having been box-office successes. They're also so different from each other, in style and storylines, that you won't be able to think of science fiction animation as being restricted to a kind of space-operatic goofiness or superhero pastiche ever again. Whether you love either of those films, they're both a proof of concept for two different ways of approaching big-screen CG-animated science fiction.

(Despite having the cartoony chubby humans, Wall-E is actually more photorealistic than Clone Wars, thanks to the awesome pseudo-cinematography of Roger Deakins, complete with lens flare and textures. Clone Wars, meanwhile, deliberately sets out to avoid being photorealistic and winds up with a weird puppet style of animation that may grow on me. Or not. )

At first, I thought the science fiction animated boom would be self-limiting, because of a string of wretched films in the pipeline, like Space Chimps, Fly, and (I have a feeling) the forthcoming Planet 51. These films sport a cheesy not-quite-Pixar style and paper-thin plots. Unlike Pixar films, which are aimed at kids but speak to adults on a whole different level, the Chimps/Fly movies are barely cogent enough for a really slow child.

But Pixar comes to the rescue once again, with the animated Newt, about the last two blue-footed newts in the world, who hate each other but must interbreed in order to save their species. I'm also quite optimistic about Monsters Vs. Aliens, which is based on a great comic book and has put out some really cool images and a great trailer so far. It has a 50-foot woman and a mad scientist with the head of a cockroach, plus a sort of Mars Attacks sensibility.

I'm sort of intrigued by Igor, mostly thanks to the incredible cast listing, including Eddie Izzard, John Cleese and John Cusack. It also has a cute premise: the hunch-back who wants to a mad scientist instead of an "Igor." The latest poster looks sort of clunky and awful, but the trailer is cute and funny. A brain in a jar tries to hypnotize Igor, and when that doesn't work, it just hits him with a spatula. Pure win!

We're also in for a big-screen anime explosion, with American studios involved. Studio Imagi is working on animated Astro Boy and Gatchaman movies, among others. There's also a Heavy Metal remake/homage in the pipeline.

I feel as though these sorts of kid-friendly animated movies have been dominated by fantasy and funny animals for as long as the CG variety has been around. (There's no science behind talking toys in Toy Story or talking cars in Cars.) But now the pendulum is swinging toward scifi premises, maybe as more creators who grew up on scifi in the 1950s and 1960s take charge.

I have two happy observations about the rise of CG animated scifi kiddie movies:

1) Science fiction is the new fairy tale, and that's an awesomely good thing. Who could watch Wall-E without starting to think of him as a young commoner who gets swept up into a castle by a princess, only to discover his own nobility? Etc. etc. The Igor trailer even includes the "Once upon a time" caption. I could totally see Clone Wars' Ahsoka turning into a fairy tale heroine (although she's probably destined for a bad end.) It would be great if generations of kids grew up thinking of robots and scientists the way earlier Disney watchers thought about princesses and flying elephants.

2) On the flipside, even as these animated scifi movies become fairy-tale-ish, they're also more serious and thoughtful than most "grown-up" science fiction movies. Of the summer's big blockbuster films, how many were as smart and debate-provoking as Wall-E? Off the top of my head, I'd say Iron Man and Dark Knight, and that's it. Okay, so Clone Wars is not going to be smart or thought-provoking, I'm pretty sure. But movies like Newt, Igor and Monsters Vs. Aliens at least have the potential to throw in some clever concepts and make you think about issues like extinction, the class system, and the rights of monsters. So I'm cautiously excited about the new scifi animated boom — and I think it's going to be around for a while.

Famous names: Blue Oyster Cult John Candy Devo Joe Flaherty Sammy Hagar Eugene Levy Stevie Nicks Grand Funk Railroad Black Sabbath Cheap Trick John Vernon

Crunchy goodness: 3

Elevator pitch: Animal House meets Flash Gordon, with more cartoon boobies. And one moving violation.

Sights you'll never unsee: Harry Canyon's "Mayonnaise Sandwich Royale"

Life lesson: When you've captured the last of the Tarakians, just kill her. Quickly. All this talking and whipping and everything just gives her time to think.

The Heavy Metal Movie Script