Fox has an almost unbroken record of putting out crap genre films over the past few years. Based on the studio's track record alone, you'd have to be a bit of a masochist to want to consume any more films like X-Files 2, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Eragon, Max Payne, The Happening, Space Chimps, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem, Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, Meet Dave, Jumper, or X-Men: The Last Stand. (To be fair, the studio also released City Of Ember, which I loved, and the Simpsons movie, in the last few years.)

These are not just movies you're better off renting. These movies are the reason there's a 4:20 in the morning as well as the afternoon — they probably look pretty good if you're both sleep-deprived and stoned.

Proving there is some justice, Fox has been suffering financially as a result. Says the Wall Street Journal:

Operating income at Fox Filmed Entertainment dropped 31% to $251 million for the fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, in part because this summer's results were weak in comparison with last summer's.

Fox's losing streak only ended with the release of Marley And Me, which looks to be a minor success.

And, by all accounts, Fox's output hasn't gotten wretched by accident. One hears stories about studio execs, hacking up movies to shorten them and dumb them down. Director Alex Proyas has publicly sworn never to work with Fox again, after his experience making I, Robot, and Matthieu Kassovitz has said similar things about Babylon A.D.

The main Fox movie people are talking about boycotting is Wolverine — and by coincidence, it's also the most recent movie to have reports of studio meddling. So far, the stories are pretty minor: director Gavin Hood left the filming for a short time, and when he'd returned, the studio had repainted one of the sets a brighter color, on the orders of studio chief Tom Rothman. More recently, Rothman said in an interview that he hadn't seen a final cut of the film, but he assured fans it's a dark storyline: "It's not Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm." Is Rothman going to keep his hands off the film's editing? We won't know for a while, if ever.

(To my mind, the biggest reason not to see Wolverine is that too many second- and third-string X-Men seem to have been shoehorned in, including Emma Frost, Gambit, the Blob, and a ton of others. It's supposed to be Wolverine's story, but it looks like it may be non-stop X-cameos. On the other hand, the trailers do make it seem like an entertaining slice of cheese, what with the "cut your head off" repartee and the truck/helicopter explosions. And Liev Schreiber does look great.)

What else is Fox releasing in the first half of next year? There's Dragonball: Evolution, which already has horrendous buzz based on the trailers and images that have come out so far. And then there's They Came From Upstairs, the cute-looking family-friendly movie about a group of teens (led by High School Musical's Ashley TIsdale) who stop an alien invasion. You probably won't suffer much hardship from skipping either of those, to be honest.

So if a boycott implies actually depriving yourself of something good in order to make a point, I'm really not seeing it here.

The hardship doesn't come until next December, when Fox releases James Cameron's long-awaited Avatar. And you'd have to be psychotic to skip that over something that happened a year earlier. Even if Avatar isn't among Cameron's best works, it could still be the best science fiction film of the year. And it's a film that has the potential to reinvent both film-making and science fiction. (Or it could be an underwhelming dud. But I really, really hope not.)

So I'd advise you to skip Fox's movie output for the next year, but don't deprive yourself of Avatar. And don't bother calling it a boycott — it's more a matter of exercising good taste. Oh, and let's not even talk about boycotting Fringe, Sarah Connor or Dollhouse. It's a different division of the Murdoch empire, and those shows actually deserve our support.

Writes Scalzi:

Original, major science fiction releases for 2009? Well, there's the super hero deconstruction tale Watchmen in March and James Cameron's whatever-the-hell-he's-been-up-to-for-a-decade Avatar in December, plus the animated spoof Monsters vs Aliens. But while casting no aspersions on the potential quality of either Watchmen or MvA (I'm looking forward to both, actually), those movies are thematically "meta," which is to say they rely on us having sucked down enough superhero and monster flicks in the past to get what they're trying to do. Basically, we have to know the genre to get the story, and that means Avatar is the only big scifi movie next year that we're walking into totally blind.

Scalzi is totally raising the bar here — asking for movies that aren't just part of an existing franchise, but don't rely on our knowledge of past genre works. But in the vanishingly unlikely event that Hollywood is listening, I hope they follow his suggestion. A slew of new science fiction films that are open to anyone who loves movies, regardless of their knowledge of monster movies or superheroes, would only be good for the genre in the long term. And they'd almost certainly be more thought-provoking and challenging, just by virtue of creating their own sub-genres from scratch. Yes please. [AMC]

You see, Schwarzenegger isn't just an action hero, he's our guide to the worlds of the fantastic and bizarre. His acting skills are as prodigious as his pecs, but they've gone unappreciated — until now. I recently sat down and watched pretty much every Schwarzenegger science fiction epic, and I came away with a new appreciation for his acting skillz. Here are the moments where he rises above his situation, no matter how dire, and manages to shine.

1. No eyebrows, in The Terminator.
Major challenge: Arnold is a killer cyborg from the future, and he uses his eyebrows convey a subtle menace — until his eyebrows get singed off halfway through the movie. He looks like Bob Geldof at the end of Pink Floyd's The Wall.
Massive solution: Arnie is up to the task, scowling and grimacing and turning his forehead into a gnarled mask of terror. Until he finally gets some big sunglasses, which solve the problem for him.

2. Covered with mud, in Predator.
Major challenge: At the end of this alien hunter movie, Arnie gets slathered with mud, which hides him from the creature. Not only is he deprived of his eyebrows, but you can't even make out his sharp jawline and jutting chin.
Massive solution: Arnie's eyes go into maximum overdrive, bugging out, rolling around and finally bursting out of his sockets. "Cmawwn! Kill me!" He yells.

3. The yellow unitard, in Running Man.
Major challenge: Accused of a crime he didn't commit, Arnie is dropped into a maze of death for the amusement of the dystopian masses. Worst of all, he's wearing a bright yellow spandex unitard.
Massive solution: You can't repress Arnie's masculinity just by putting him in a bizarre aerobics outfit. You'll only make him more manly. And indeed, the moment the unitard goes on, Arnie gets mean. He grins with delight as he strangles his attackers or castrates them with a chainsaw, and his face finds four new outer quadrants of expression, expanding to convey the full scope of his rage as he threatens to rip out the producer's spine.

4. Danny DeVito chemistry, in Twins.
Major challenge: Arnie is paired with comedian Danny DeVito, as they pretend to be twins, the result of a weird genetic experiment. How can Arnie bring his usual gravitas opposite this sleazy clown?
Massive solution: He basically goes for the "overgrown child" thing, grinning and acting super eager in contrast to DeVito's world-weary scumbag. Arnie is super smart but ignorant of the "real" world, and doesn't know what tossing your cookies means.

5. The crotch kick, in Total Recall.
Major challenge: Sharon Stone wearing aerobics gear (considerably cuter than Arnie's in Running Man) kicks Arnie in the crotch over and over. How can Arnie convey the wounded masculinity? How?
Massive solution: Luckily, Arnie has had a hundred extra teeth added to his mouth for this film, and he uses all of them, in a grimace so massive it disrupts the gravity of Mars. Little known fact: Arnie and his many teeth were the model for Rob Liefeld's art.

6. Slave robot, in Terminator 2.
Major challenge: Arnie's back playing a killer cyborg, but this time he has to obey everything a punk kid tells him to do.
Massive solution: He brings a quiet dignity, underplaying the role for once and letting Edward Furlong and Linda Hamilton spaz out around him.

7. Getting hormonal, in Junior.
Major challenge: Not only is he acting opposite DeVito once again, but he has to play a pregnant man, who gets all emotional on massive doses of female hormones and starts to cry while watching a Lifetime TV movie. And then he finally has to go undercover and pose as a woman. Can Arnie bring his sensitive side?
Massive solution: Score! Arnie reaches deep inside himself, a little fold of softness under the five thousand layers of muscle. His eyes crinkle up, his mouth twists into an S-shape, or maybe that mysterious symbol that's on Hiro's sword in Heroes, and he looks like he's experiencing the joys and sorrows of every mother, everywhere. Mothers, Arnold Schwarzenegger is you.

8. Covered with goop, in Batman And Robin.
Major challenge: His greatest struggle yet. This time, he's got no eyebrows, like in Terminator. He's covered with gunk, like in Predator. And he's wearing weird dance wear, like in Running Man. What can he do?
Massive solution: He can't act with his eyes, or his jaw, or his teeth, or his chin this time around. The only thing Arnie has left is his voice, and he just works it, shouting at the top of his lungs. With dialogue like "You're not sending ME to the cooler!" and "Tonight, Hell freezes over!" it's probably the best option.

9. Too many facelifts, in The Sixth Day.
Major challenge: It's like a futuristic science fiction nightmare. Medical technology has advanced to the point where you can give Arnold Schwarzenegger a whole new face. It just may not be a good idea. Gone are Arnie's trademark grimaces, scowls and eye-pops, because the skin on his face has been stretched so tight he can barely see any more.
Massive solution: Arnie just relaxes and goes with it. It's a more laid-back Arnie, even after a clone takes his place and sleeps with his wife. He has one facial expression, a rigid grin, and it sometimes expands to turn into a cracked-out leer. It sort of works, as the maniac who's on the run from the evil clone heads.

10. Obsolescence, in Terminator 3.
Major challenge: Arnie is kind of old to be playing a super-advanced ageless cyborg from the future, a fact he references by referring to himself as an "obsolete design." Plus, he's stuck acting opposite an annoying Nick Stahl, who isn't nearly as fun as Edward Furlong was.
Massive solution: Arnie just sort of zones out, acting way more robotic than in the first two Terminators.

And here's our video compilation of Arnie's greatest science fiction moments: