You know the rules: The best caption wins — and "Hey" doesn't count, because that's actually in the movie. New Moon will be released this Friday.

[Via The Jay Leno Show]

This is huge news. Over at Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait exults:

The infrared spectrometer on [probe] LCROSS definitely detected absorption lines from water, and the ultraviolet spectrometer saw it in emission. Not only that, the emission got stronger with time, which clinches the deal! That's exactly what you expect by a plume containing water. Wow. The amount of water they found in the plume was a couple of hundred kilograms in total, but that indicates there is a lot more still lying on the surface.

In the diagram below, you can see the absorption lines from the water - they're the yellow bands.

Even more interesting is a comment from one of the researchers who studied the LCROSS readings. NASA scientist Anthony Colaprete said:

The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich. Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years.

Cabeus is the crater basin on the moon that NASA picked for the LCROSS impact because its shaded location provides enough of a chill to keep water from evaporating. But now it sounds like there may be other surprises lurking in the lunar shadows. I sense the beginning of a great new discovery - or at least, a great science fiction story.

via Bad Astronomy and NASA

Jones has been announced as the director for Source Code, in which Gyllenhaal will star as a soldier who wakes up to find himself inside a computer that forces him to relive a train bombing until he can discover who was behind it. The movie, expected to go into production early next year, will be produced by Mark Gordon, one of the men behind Roland Emmerich's upcoming disaster porn 2012.

Gyllenhaal goes straight to 'Source' [Variety]

Observers of the Moon's surface have seen "sinuous rilles," or long, winding depressions on its surface that suggest the presence of underground tunnels. Such tunnels would be formed when lava rips through an underground area, then drains away, leaving a long tube behind. (Such structures exist on Earth, too.) At last, a satellite captured solid evidence for these tunnels when it snapped this picture of a massive hole in the Moon's surface.

The hole is actually what's called a "skylight," or a rift in the top of an ancient lava tunnel. According to New Scientist:

The team found the first candidate skylight in a volcanic area on the moon's near side called Marius Hills. "This is the first time that anybody's actually identified a skylight in a possible lava tube" on the moon, [researcher Carolyn] van der Bogert, who helped analyse the feature, told New Scientist.

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across.

It is not clear exactly how the hole formed. A meteorite impact, moonquakes, or pressure created by gravitational tugs from the Earth could be to blame. Alternatively, part of the lava tube's ceiling could have been pulled off as lava in the tube drained away billions of years ago.

We may not be able to explore this tube any time soon, however. Like lava tubes on Earth, it's possible that this tunnel is filled with debris and would require excavation to unblock.

What's important, however, is that we now have solid evidence that lava tubes exist beneath the Moon's surface, which means Moon real estate just got a little more appealing. Unless, of course, Moon natives already live there.

via New Scientist

(Thanks, Kle!)

According to The Register, this is the tallest rocket NASA has built in three decades, and it has 700 sensors on board to understand how a rocket this tall can fly. Photos by AP/John Raoux.

Things were a bit chaotic on the carpet last night but we managed to get a few moments with Hollywood's favorite everyman. Including how he got involved in Where The Wild Things Are, and hints about the Toy Story 3 storyline.

How did you get involved in this production?

I called up Maurice Sendack about 10 or 12 years ago, and said, "look you don't know me but I'm a big fan of your book, and if you ever want to make it into a movie, let us help you...

They shot this in Australia. And once they got going they were working on it full force. I was just saying, "What can we help do?" There's nothing more extraneous than a producer on set saying, "Hey, what time's lunch?" I didn't need to do that, Spike was in good hands.

Will you bring your kids to see this movie?

Yes, well, all my kids were all grown up.

Who are the new Toys in Toy Story 3?

There's a ton of them and I think I'm not allowed to say.

Not even one little toy?

I think contractually if I say anything, the legal team of the Walt Disney company will swoop down and grab up all your [recorders] [Hanks then jokingly grabs up all the reporters' recorders].

You're a space fan, what did you think about NASA blowing up the moon?

Oh, that was fantastic, I wish we could have actually seen it — what a brilliant idea. You smash in a thing and make it cloudy, and fly the space craft through it. Who was the genius that came up with that?

Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona will be presenting his findings on Europa today at American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. Europa's ability to support macrofauna — more complex organisms like animals — hinges on how much oxygen is contained in the suspected ocean beneath the moon's icy surface.

Greenberg believes that energetic particles from the sun are able to reach Europa's subterranean ocean despite that layer of ice. Because the surface of Europa is relatively impact-free, the ice is believed to be relatively new, about 50 million years. Based on this, Greenberg sets forth the idea that Europa is being constantly resurfaced, possibly with fresh materials, thanks to oxidizers at the planet's surface. He also estimates that, if there were, say, fish on Europa, and those fish used the same amount of oxygen as Earth fish, the moon's ocean has enough oxygen to support 6.6 billion pounds of such macrofauna.

Of course, just because Europa might be able to sustain life doesn't mean we'll find life there. But this does present the possibility that other bodies produce enough oxygen to support complex biological processes.

Europa, Jupiter's Moon, Could Support Complex Life [Discovery]

He believes that if there weren't difficulties getting it made, then he must have got something wrong.

''Every problem,'' he points out like a scientist happily positing a theorem, ''is proof that we're planning a movie very different from the norm.''

[The Age]

Actually there will be no bombs involved. The LCROSS, or "lunar impacting probe," will itself smash into the Moon's surface near a crater-shadowed region where scientists have predicted that ice would form. Though radar of the Moon's surface lately has suggested strongly that such icy liquids are abundant on the Moon, the evidence remains inconclusive. Which is why we have to do the smash test.

The LCROSS will hit the Cabeus A site marked in the image below at 11:30 AM GMT October 9 - on the near side of the Moon, so you'll be able to see the explosion on impact if you have a decent telescope.

Phil "bad astronomer" Plait explains:

The plume from the impact should stretch up many kilometers. It will almost certainly be too thin to be seen by amateur instruments, but the impact itself should make a bright enough flash to be seen if you have a telescope. The crater itself will be in shadow, making the light flash easier to spot. It'll only last a second or two, so if you want to observe it, be prepared!

And if the plume contains melted water particles, tossed into the local volume of space on impact, that means a self-sustaining lunar colony is a more realistic goal than ever.

via Bad Astronomy

Foster's involvement in the European Aurora programme, which would see his company adapt materials found in space for use in building permanent structures on the moon, shouldn't come as a complete surprise; he's revealed an interest in space travel before, already designing the first private spaceport in the world. But if his tender is accepted, what will his designs look like? Here are some potential hints, in the form of some of his impressive earthbound creations.

Lord Norman Foster plans to build on the moon [Guardian]

If you're looking for the movie that outright made the most profit? Well, that's Transformers, but only just; right behind it is the movie that offered the best Return on Investment for studios, with some math that could even tempt some studios into spending less money on movies in future... unless Michael Bay is involved, of course. But there's no denying that District 9 has to be some kind of gamechanger for science fiction movies of the future, going by these numbers.

(For the math-inclined, these movies are ranked in terms of ROI.)

[UPDATED to add Wolverine and Harry Potter, because I forgot both. Sorry!]

District 9
Domestic Box Office: $112,440,084 (over 6 weeks - $18,740,014 per week average.)
Budget: $30,000,000
Profit: $82,440,084
(374% return domestically)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen
Domestic Box Office: $401,555,453 (over 13 weeks - $30,888,881 per week average.)
Budget: $200,000,000
Profit: $201,555,453
(200.7% return domestically)

Star Trek
Domestic Box Office: $257,638,255 (over 20 weeks - $12,881,912.75 per week average.)
Budget: $150,000,000
Profit: $107,638,255
(171.76% return domestically)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Domestic Box Office: $179,880,256 (over 21 weeks - $8,565,726 per week average)
Budget: $150,000,000
Profit: $29,880,256
(119.92% return domestically)

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince
Domestic Box Office: $299,695,999 (over 10 weeks - $29,996,599 per week average)
Budget: $250,000,000
Profit: $49,695,999
(119.88% return domestically)

Moon
Domestic Box Office: $4,843,670 (over 15 weeks of limited release - $322,911.33 per week average)
Budget: $5,000,000
Profit: -$156,330
(96.87% return domestically)

GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
Domestic Box Office: $146,569,665 (over 7 weeks - $20,938,523.43 per week average)
Budget: $175,000,000
Profit: -$28,430,335
(83.75% return domestically)

Terminator Salvation
Domestic Box Office: $125,322,469 (over 16 weeks - $7,832,654.31 per week average)
Budget: $200,000,000
Profit: -$74,677,531
(71.61% return domestically)

Three papers appearing in the upcoming issue of Science Express outline the discovery of pervasive water found clinging to the surface of the moon. Infrared spectroscope measurements from three different space probes have detected absorptions that indicate the presence of water or hydroxyl (which is, itself, a strong indicator for the presence of water) on the the lunar surface, with one model suggesting water makes up a few tenths of a percent by weight in the optical surface. This water is apparently clinging to the moon's surface, rather than being absorbed by dust.

It's hardly a vast lake, and it won't yet support that lunar agricultural colony you've been dreaming of, but it's far more water than scientists ever expected to find on the moon, and it could prove a valuable resource to future lunar visitors. The researchers have also found that the concentration of water is higher toward the poles, lending credence to the theory that larger deposits of water exist near the poles, and researchers note that it's possible we'll continue to find wetter lunar regions in the future.

So where did all this water come from? Although meteors or comets may have periodically brought water to the moon, the prevailing theory among the three papers is that solar winds have carried hydrogen to the moon's surface, where it has bonded with the oxygen in the moon's own dust and produced water.

[Science Express]

"The Last Man On The Planet Moon"
Will Eisner, Jules Feiffer and Wally Wood's August 31st 1952 episode of The Spirit was right in the middle of the Outer Space sequence of stories, but that didn't mean it lost its focus on small vignettes about the common man - In this particular case, about a man whose space madness meant that he hallucinated a world where he was the only man left from his mission, trapped all alone on the Moon. Forward thinking stuff from a period when Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon made space safe for newspaper comics readers.

Solaris
Stanisław Lem's original 1961 novel, that is, not the George Clooney movie. Lem imagined an alien being that prompted psychological responses in humans who tried to contact it, producing a particular strain of space madness - Trauma As Particularly Awkward First Contact. While Lem's novel depicts an unknowable and somewhat disturbing idea of such event, it was soon co-opted into cuddlier forms by...

Countless Star Trek Episodes
The various interstellar folk of Gene Roddenberry's future had a tendency to go insane every now and again, but there was always a comfortable external explanation for it all - An alien virus, mind-control of some sort, or Vulcans getting horny. Anything that could allow the Enterprise and her fine crew to leave after an hour, secure in the ultimate safety and pride of being outer space frontiersmen and insanity just being something that's akin to drunkenness:

Dark Star
Suicidal astronauts on a long-term mission who have to talk an intelligent bomb out of exploding, resorting to explaining philosophy because their cryogenically-frozen commander tells them to? No wonder that Lt. Doolittle (spoiler) surrenders to his dream of surfing to oblivion at the end of the movie. Never mind 2001, this was the movie that made a generation realize what space travel could do to your mind.

The Black Hole
...And for the kids that were too young to see Dark Star, there was always Disney's The Black Hole, in which mad Maximilian Schell (who had killed his own crew, turned them into robots, become obsessed with the black hole of the title and ends up melded to a killer robot and in Hell or something) managed to put another generation off the idea of going off into space. Those who weren't confused about the whole thing and/or distracted by the cuteness of VINCENT, that is.

Red Dwarf
1992's "Quarantine" demonstrated that it wasn't just humans who came down with space madness, when hologram Arnold Rimmer caught a virus that not only drove him quite mad, but finally introduced his latent crossdressing and puppetry tendencies. If only all other space madnesses came with their own Mr. Flibbles.

Event Horizon
Some have called Event Horizon the Pandorum or Sunshine of its 1997 day, but we prefer to think of this Sam Neill-starring SF-horror movie as The Black Hole for people who are afraid of robots. Again proving that hanging around cosmic events can lead to hallucinations and psychosis, Paul WS Anderson's thriller brought a spooky atmosphere, love of Latin and very little originality to the space madness genre, but we love it nonetheless.

Sunshine
Talking of unoriginal SF-horror movies, Danny Boyle's 2007 worst-case-scenario-fest (In turn, shamelessly ripped off by Ron Moore's failed pilot Virtuality) demonstrates yet again that, when your spaceship discovers a seemingly-abandoned spaceship floating in the void, the sensible thing to do is always to ignore it and carry on your mission. Points are subtracted for the unexpected and somewhat disappointing devolution into a generic slasher movie towards the end, but any movie where space + isolation + the sun = space madness can never be all bad.

Moon
Taking the traditional space madness ingredients (Namely loneliness, existential angst and improbable situations that can't be easily explained by what we know as science), Duncan Jones' debut movie comes up with something that, unusually, pays off without devolving into cliche or an "enigmatic" lack of answers. For that alone - as well as not succumbing to either space madness or movie hero syndrome - Sam Rockwell's Sam Bell takes the win.

The Ren and Stimpy Show
Surely the greatest example ever made of what space madness truly is. Oh my God, an ice cream bar!
See if you don't agree for yourself.

The Rijksmuseum was gifted what it believed to be a piece of lunar rock from the estate of the late Prime Minister Willem Drees seventeen years ago, and checked with NASA to confirm its authenticity (NASA apparently said that it was "possible," despite not actually seeing the rock). Recent tests have, in fact, revealed that the rock is actually a piece of petrified wood most likely from Arizona... so why was it thought to be a moon rock in the first place? Drees' family have a potential explanation:

The US ambassador gave Drees the rock during an Oct. 9, 1969 visit by the Apollo 11 astronauts to the Netherlands. Drees's grandson, also named Willem, told the AP his grandfather had been out of office for more than a decade and was nearly deaf and blind in 1969, though his mind was still sharp.

"My guess is that he did not hear well what was said," said the grandson. "He may have formed his own idea about what it was."

It's always good to see our faith in politicans rewarded, isn't it?

Mystery surrounds missing moon rocks [Independent.co.uk]

Mute center around the disappearance of a young woman, and her partner, a mute bartender, who must face Berlin's gangsters to find out what happened to her. We spoke to Jones earlier this summer about the setting for Mute and why he's had Bladerunner in mind when constructing his future Berlin:

The only reason that I mention Blade Runner is because there's something about that particular film, where they really created a believable and realistic living breathing futuristic world. For all of the other films that have tried to do that I don't think anything has come as close the way Blade Runner has to creating something believable. Something that feels real and organic. It's like going to a real city and shooting a film there. You just get a sense that this place exists. [In] most of the science fiction films, it always feels a bit fake and a bit flat, but Blade Runner really didn't. That's the aspect of Blade Runner I'm hoping to capture. If and when I get the chance to do my film that I'm making.

According to the Liberty Films site, Jones plans to start shooting Mute in Berlin early next year.

[Liberty Films via /Film]

[via Wired]

You know, the monetary cost of producing a science fiction film for theatrical release. Someone like myself who makes a good living in the entertainment business probably shouldn't be discussing such things in public, but this summer we've had our Terminator 4, Transformers 2, GI Joe, Star Trek and Harry Potter all in the two hundred million dollar budget range, and Moon costing somewhere around five million dollars. So does that mean the only science fiction movies getting a theatrical release are at the opposite ends of the budget spectrum? District 9 is reported to have cost somewhere around thirty million bucks to produce, but I wonder if Weta Digitia; would've billed the same number of hours if Peter Jackson hadn't been the movie's producer. I dunno. Still — let's say that one's in the middle, and I think it's really the best of the lot. Neill Blomkamp is the mega shizz in my opinion.

Hmmm... I wonder if those sixteen minutes of Avatar cost the same as District 9. Maybe. They certainly cost more than Moon. Reports have Avatar costing somewhere north of three hundred million bucks, and it looks seriously and completely awesome: I think that blue Legolas guy looks cool! So don't get me wrong, I'm very happy that science fiction has become such a popular form of global entertainment that financial investments of the aforementioned magnitude make sense to somebody. But one thing does kind of suck about it. Most of that money is spent on CGI. Maybe Avatar will be the game changer, but for me — CGI jeopardy isn't usually that compelling. Are you still blown away by green screen vistas and pixel generated monsters? Are you still terrified by tidal waves and explosions that took rocket scientists months to render?

I like that stuff. I like it a lot in fact. I read Cinefex every month. But CGI just doesn't freak me out or put me on the edge of my seat like it once did. I think one of the great things about science fiction movies that don't have a gazillion dollars to spend is that they need to make choices. They need to come up with ways to use filmmaking techniques and practical effects to adjust for the fact that they can't afford 1000+ CGI shots. They've gotta build suspense the old fashioned way: Hide the creature for a while. Shoot on location. Blow stuff up. Crash a car. Pay a stuntman to do a full body burn. That's the stuff I miss. I miss movies like Star Wars, Escape From New York, Alien, Aliens, Outland and Predator. Movies where a big part of my suspension of disbelief came from recognizing a world where physics could be painful and not everything was in focus all the time.

Lost and BSG have been kicking ass with this approach on the small screen. And with Blomkamp's District 9 and his amazing short films, I have hope that we could be on the verge of a new crop of middle budget sci-fi flicks coming to theaters; movies that can transport me to a different reality by taking a world that I recognize and making it extraordinary through traditional movie making techniques and state of the art CGI. Gamer looks like it might do this. Neveldine and Taylor's gonzo Crank flicks give me hope that it's gonna viscerally rock. But I hear it cost around sixty million, so I wonder how much of that they spent on CGI?

Oh well — see you in line for Avatar.

Jesse Alexander is creator and executive producer of NBC's Day One, and has worked on Alias, Lost and Heroes.

Images are all from the very sharp collection from the artist Bill Mudron, who has also brought a lot of other modern day scifi fare to life.

Oh, and there are spoilers for both movies here.

On the surface, the two films feel totally different: Moon sports a micro-budget of $5 million, and the only actor who's featured on screen for any length of time is Sam Rockwell, as the film's lonesome miner. D9 has a comparatively rich $30 million budget, with tons of CG animation, and a fairly sprawling cast. But when you drill down, both films share similar themes and story elements:

1) The Little Guy.

Both movies feature a similar sort of protagonist — not your typical action-movie hero, but a guy who's just sort of a working stiff. And in both cases, the guy gets promoted to an important gig, where he's on the front lines and most likely to get rained with crap. Sam Bell, of course, gets the super-vital, but lonesome, job of harvesting Helium-3 on the Moon's surface, with only a robot for company. Wikus van der Merwe, meanwhile, gets to be the field leader on the vital mission of serving eviction notices to the alien residents of the District 9 shantytown, so they can be moved to concentration camps. Wikus seems more out of his depth than Sam, but they're both just regular guys struggling with a huge burden.

2) The Health Crisis.

And both Sam and Wikus get ill as a result of their jobs. In the case of Sam, he just gets sort of worn out, for reasons that are never fully explained. Is he sick because his cloned body only has a limited lifespan? Or is it the effects of dealing with Helium-3? Either way, he starts getting shaky, having hallucinations and forgetting stuff. And looking, generally, like a ghost of himself. Meanwhile, in the course of doing his job, Wikus gets sprayed with some kind of alien fluid that's both fuel and biotech, and he starts vomiting up black bile. Then his arm transforms into a hideous bug arm with black tentacles coming out of it. Either way, work makes you sick.

3) The Evil Corporation.

The good news is, Sam and Wikus have good health benefits. Right? Right? Actually, no. Sam's employer, Lunar Industries, has a planned obsolescence scheme for him — when one clone of Sam Bell gets worn out, they just defrost another one, with all of Sam's original memories in it. The old Sam gets incinerated, in the guise of being sent back home. As for Wikus, well... Multi National United isn't really interested in curing him. They're much more concerned with harvesting all the biotech possibilities from his hybrid body, which brings us to...

4) The Twisted Biotech.

What makes both Lunar Industries and MNU fully evil is that they're doing twisted biological experiments on sentient creatures. Playing god, etc. In the case of Lunar Industries, it's just cloning (that we know of, anyway). The Moonbase turns out to have rows and rows of identical Sam Bells in deep freeze, even down to the snarky T-shirt, in a hidden compartment. As for MNU, it has a whole evil laboratory full of alien specimens who are being experimented on — it's not just Wikus that they want to dissect, it's tons of the "Prawns" as well — the sight is so horrific that when Christopher Johnson, Wikus' "Prawn" friend, sees it, he's paralyzed with grief.

5) The Uneasy Partnership

The main ray of hope in both films comes from the idea that you can only win against the Man if you team up with your fellow oppressed beings, no matter how different. In Moon, Sam's not sure how much he can trust Gerty, the Kevin Spacey-voiced robot who's keeping watch over him (and helping to perpetuate the deception that there's only one Sam.) But in the end, Gerty exceeds his programming and gives Sam access to sensitive data — even letting Sam shut him down and erase part of his memory banks, so Sam can get away. (Or at least one Sam can.) As for Wikus, he's forced to team up with the abused alien named Christopher Johnson so he can get his regular arm back — although Wikus doesn't really become a real friend to Christopher until the very end of the movie. And not coincidentally, that's when Wikus finally shows us a glimmer of hope that things can change.

6) The Daring Escape

And both movies end with one of our heroes racing away, on a shuttle, so they can reveal what's been going on — but in neither case does it feel like a clean getaway. Moon leaves us hoping that after the "second" Sam Bell blows the whistle on Lunar Industries' misdeeds, there'll be some changes made, but we still have to watch the "original" Sam Bell die in his crashed rover. Meanwhile, District 9 tricks us into thinking, for a moment, that Wikus is really going to escape from his situation — but of course, there's really nowhere for a half-human, half-Prawn to go. It's only Christopher Johnson who's able to flee in the command module, and we don't know how damaged it (and he) is at that point. Does he make it home to tell his people about what's happened on Earth? We don't know.

So to summarize: You're a tool of the man, your work will make you sick and your employer will try to screw you over, and in fact your employer will take the earliest opportunity to experiment on you in sick, sadistic ways. Your only hope is to team up with other people who are stuck in the shit with you, no matter how different from you they are, and maybe then you can make an ambiguously dirty getaway.

I'm not saying these similarities in any way diminish the awesomeness of either movie — if anything, it's the other way around. In addition to being incredible films in their own right, both D9 and Moon seem to be saying something profound about work and how dehumanizing and destructive it can be. At a moment when large corporations are more powerful than they've ever been, and governments appear all but powerless to affect the economy, both films are about the feeling of being crushed by corporate power — and they offer a hope that by sticking together, we can break free.

Nature Abhors A Superhero Vacuum (But Apparently Abhors Wolverine Even More)
After last year's crunch of The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Hancock (and you could arguably throw in Speed Racer in there, as well), this summer was remarkably clear of superheroes, if you ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine (as most who've seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine are probably prone to do). But, even as Hollywood collectively recovered from last year's superpowered orgy and looked around the nostalgiascape to see if there were alternatives, we couldn't help but notice that some of the movies this summer seemed like superhero movies anyway. GI Joe, with your battlesuits and superhero team dynamic, we're looking at you.

It didn't hurt that Joe, like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and Star Trek, had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, as well as larger than life stakes and days to be saved - oh, and action set pieces during which the day-saving takes place. Yes, none of these films featured people with actual superpowers (aside from Spock's mind-melding, but come on), but in almost every other respect, they were superhero movies... and all the more successful for it.

Moral Ambiguity Isn't What We're Looking For, After All?
And what of Wolverine? Or pre-summer release Watchmen, for that matter...? Why weren't they Dark Knight-style colossuses (colossi?), striding across the box office landscape? Possibly for the same reason that Terminator Salvation disappointed: Because they were ill-considered, non-sensical pieces of filmmaking that considered style more important than substa - No, wait, I mean, "because neither offered any comfort to the viewer" (Okay, maybe a little of the former, too). Yes, Wolverine "won" at the end of his movie, but it was a shitty victory that still made him look like an easy dupe who'd been used and abused by The Powers That Be. Watchmen's (and, for that matter, Terminator Salvation's) victory was even more ambiguous. And maybe, Dark Knight aside - and who's to say that that movie won't continue to seem more and more like a fluke in terms of hyper-popularity as time goes on - that's just not what audiences are looking for from their blockbusters?

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reviews
GI Joe wasn't screened for mainstream critics ahead of its release - which, considering the harshness of some of the reviews, seems like a sensible plan - and had a more successful opening than most expected. In interviews, Joe director Stephen Sommers cited the success of the badly-reviewed Transformers 2 as the reason why some movies don't need reviews any more:

I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant here, they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. `Transformers 2' got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?

There is no way that the people behind other blockbuster movies - especially the ones that know that they're unlikely to get good reviews - aren't going to look at this and consider doing the same thing. It's not that critics have "criticized themselves into irrelevancy," but that studios are finally realizing that mass audiences have never, really, cared that much about them.

(Re)Birth Of The Alternative Mainstream
That said, what are we to make of critical darlings District 9, Cold Souls and Moon? Clearly, the great reviews mattered here - although, in D9's case, possibly not as much as Peter Jackson's name and an advertising campaign that's been going on for more than a year - drawing attention to smaller films that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Some are using these movies as a case for SF cinema "rediscover[ing] its brains, heart and soul," and there's definitely an argument to be made there... but there's an equally strong one to be made, I think, for these movies to be used as evidence for the need for SF cinema to be used as a vehicle for new voices wanting to exercise their imaginations and engage audiences before they get ground down by industry politics and pretention. It's not that big a step from Being John Malkovich to the rest of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze's movie careers, after all.

By the end of this summer movie season, it feels as if cinema has fragmented: There are the critic-proof (and unnecessarily-reviewed) blockbusters that fit into our nostalgic take on what stories should be, with good guys and bad guys and evil losing in the end, there are the intellectual, playful, indie darlings, and then there're movies that try and straddle the two and fail at the box office (Although, as ever, "failure" is a moving target; Watchmen must have easily made its money back by now, and if not, will do so with the "Ultimate Edition" DVD at the end of the year). Maybe next year, Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 will shake things up a little. Here's hoping.