io9 
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San Francisco, 2:01 AM
Sun Dec 20
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/19/09
While Firefly was a very intimate and fun show, Serenity was the exact opposite, just big and grimdark. The whole thing had an attitude that says "You had fun watching Firefly, didn't you? Well wipe that stupid grin off of your face, pussy! All of your favorite characters are gonna die and there's nothing you can do about it!" It took the best parts of Firefly and blew them out the airlock, leaving just the generic feature-length sci-fi odyssey crap behind.
The whole "River, warrior princess" thing was unfortunate, too. While River being a sleeper super-soldier was the logical conclusion from everything we learned in the show, all of her fight scenes and just about everything that assassin with the sword did just looked incredibly silly.
01:22 AM
12/19/09
Book: The Baroque Cycle (Overpraised, beloved for its relation to Cryptonomicon)
Television Series: SG-1. SG-U. SG-A.
12/19/09
Yes. Yes it was. To this day it is the only movie I have ever wanted to walk out of.
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12/19/09
The real sad thing, now that we're really starting to live in the future (technologically speaking), is that so much of the past decade's cinematic & televised sci-fi sucked. Here's hoping the next decade is better.
12/19/09
Now, we know that our world is accelerating in technological knowledge at an exponential rate. Anyone who actually knows about our real level of advancement simply cannot find the same old same old believable anymore.
We watched it happen with Terminator. First a Cyborg, then Liquid programmable metal, then a nanotech robot. The cyborg was believable, the liquid metal plausible, but we lacked any real comprehension of a nanotech machine and that made for a truly unwatchable experience.
We've lost our long range vision of the future because of the Singularity, and our Sci-Fi shows this.
Even such forward looking movies as Surrogates couldn't make a truly believable scenario, simply because it was far too narrow a vision. Our future is something unlike anything in our past, and we simply don't have the tools to describe it well yet.
12/19/09
I think its a bigger crying shame that good shows got cut waaay too early in their TV screen life.
A couple of my favs that lived up to the hype....Life on Mars (uk version), Doctor Who (I can forgive Planet of the Dead), Farscape and Serenity!!
Also a special shout out to DS9. The greatest 'Space soap' that ever graced my eyeballs. It made me laugh, cry, scream and cry some more. This didnt live up to my expectations, it excelled them. Its the only boxset ive ever bought in full, and boy did it cost me a few organ parts!!! Yup I know its always going to get the stigma of being like B5. But that was a different animal. It was also not bad....but it didnt shine like DS9 did.
Anyone who can get me upset over a Bajoran and a Shapeshifter in a tux saying goodbye to each other in a lake of goo. Has certanly got my vote for best Sci-Fi series ever!
12/19/09
Making a sequel to X3 means that the fourth installment has to do without Professor X, Phoenix, Cyclops, and must deal with depowered Rogue and Magneto. (Not that they couldn't bring 'em back, but that makes for some weak storytelling.)
It's also a case of diminishing returns and a lowered production cost. A fourth installment is likely to be less of a success than a reboot. By constrast, a reboot means Fox doesn't have to coax Jackman, Paquin, Berry, Stewart, McKellan, Grammer, Page, et al. to return, when they're likely going to be costly and reluctant.
12/19/09
Cyclops never did much for me as a character, and James Marsden never really brought much to the character to begin with. Guy had like seven lines in the three films.
There are dozens and dozens of stories in the X-men universe to choose from, and there's nothing stopping anyone form doing any of those storylines.
12/19/09
For some reason, though, screenwriters in Hollywood don't really want to do that.
12/19/09
LIES.
But seriously, if I had to choose something, I guess I'd go with the first season of Heroes. And I loved it. But looking back, I can see a lot of the problems that really surfaced later on, and any look into what was going on behind the scenes gives the impression that there was at least initially someone around to slap the writers when they were coming up with stupid ideas, and whoever that was didn't exist starting season 2.
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12/19/09
Transformers. Shitty SFX spectacular is shitty. Transformers 2 left me in an even bigger rage.
Dollhouse. Helo (because I'll be damned if I remember his character's name in this show), Brink, and Adelle were the only interesting things and not always for good reasons. Joss did good with Firefly, but it takes me three hours of pausing and unpausing to watch each episode of Dollhouse.
The Matrix sequels. The original is fine, but the last two ruin it. What was originally an awesome popcorn flick turned into snoozefest infodumping about the creators' thoughts about the universe and "symbolism" that had all the subtlety of a crate of sledgehammers.
Terminator 3. I haven't seen Salvation, but considering the reaction of my brother (who is a Terminator fanboy) I'm glad I haven't. I'm really not a fan of Terminator in general, though. Robocop was always more appealing. And anyone who brings up the sequels to Robocop is getting a fork in the eye.
Heroes. Season 1 was fine, yet people still continue to watch it and call it amazing after it's turned to typical comic bullshit. Get a $60 year's subscription to Marvel's digital comic book collection. Or read Zuda. More stories for less money.
And that's all I can think of off the top of my head.
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12/19/09
Still I'd like to see a new take on Batman that didn't involve Nolan.