We researched the vacation time allotted by present-day corporations, and used that data to figure out how many days off you'd get in an alternate reality or future world.

The Daily Planet (compare with: The New York Times)

Sorry, Clark — The only days you'll have off at the Daily Planet's corporate offices are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. It doesn't leave a lot of time to get back and forth to Kansas, but you might be able to make it if you're more powerful than a locomotive.

Stark Industries (compare with:Lockheed Martin)

A source within Lockheed Martin informs us that the holidays are represented by days off on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. You'll have limited resources to sketch out your War Machine plans at home, but you'll have plenty of time in the office for experimentation.

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (compare with: Solebury School)

Unlike Xavier's school, Solebury has never been destroyed. On the other hand, it merged with the Holmquist School for Girls in 1949, so it has had at least one name-change* in its history since 1925. It's set way back in Bucks County farmland and hosts 220 students this year, none of whom have exhibited a mutant healing factor — Yet. Solebury's Diane Sugden informs us that the Danger Room will be unavailable from December 21st to January 5th.

* Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters became the Xavier Institute of Higher Learning in X-Men Volume 2, Issue 38.

Starfleet Academy (compare with: The United States Naval Academy)

The holiday break at Annapolis starts with the last day of exams, which runs to December 22nd this year according to spokeswoman Deborah Goode. Classes start up again on January 7th, so you'll have a little over two weeks to prepare for the Kobayashi Maru.

Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards (compare with: Derecktor Shipyards)

If you're looking for lots of time off while putting Galaxy-class starships together, you won't find it; Derecktor Shipyards is only down for Christmas and New Year's Day, according to Marketing Director Kathy Kennedy. Hope you enjoyed your vacation time at the academy, cadet — When it comes to shipbuilding, your time is limited.

While talking to Slashfilm at the Wolverine Blu-Ray release, Donner doused rumors that X-Men First Class was ready to shoot and it definitely won't be ramping up in February. And no actors — not even Pocock — have signed contracts for the new series. Pocock submitted a Twitter retraction as well.

But that doesn't mean no more X-Men — Donner coyly mentioned that she's thinking of reuniting the old gang in X4, and possibly putting spin-off team The New Mutants in a movie of their own as well. But none of this has even been pitched to the studio yet. Which means, it could be many years until we get another mutant fix. And First Class may be a long, long ways away if Donner is already toying with the idea of a whole new crop of teen mutants to play with.

Meanwhile, Gavin Hood, who directed the recent Wolverine film, told MTV he's interested in directing the Magneto counterpart, X-Men Origins: Magneto, which is reported to be in the pipeline. Said Hood:

He's certainly a very interesting character-one rooted in childhood trauma and psychologically complex-and one that was superbly played by Ian McKellen," he said. "There are certain characters in the X-Men universe whose psychological life is strong and fascinating and complex. I think that's why they're appealing to audiences.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a Ukrainian video game in a similar vein to the Fallout franchise. Borrowing material from the novella Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and Andre Tarkovsky's film Stalker, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. takes place in the Zone of Alienation after a fictional second Chernobyl Disaster, which killed or mutated many of Chernobyl's residents.

This past August, over 200 players got together to organize a real-life version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., with the Russian town of Vyborg standing in for Chernobyl, and latex masks representing nuclear mutations. Their photos provide a veritable storyboard for military response to a mutant apocalypse.

Stalker: Inhabitants of core 2009 [LiveJournal — Thanks, John Struan!]

BBC News explains:

One of the scientists, Dr Yali Xue from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, said: "The amount of data we generated would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

"And finding this tiny number of mutations was more difficult than finding an ant's egg in an emperor's rice store."

New mutations can occasionally lead to severe diseases like cancer. It is hoped that the findings may lead to new ways to reduce mutations and provide insights into human evolution.

Joseph Nadeau, from the Case Western Reserve University in the US, who was not involved in this study said: "New mutations are the source of inherited variation, some of which can lead to disease and dysfunction, and some of which determine the nature and pace of evolutionary change.

"These are exciting times," he added.

I hope one of my 100 mutations includes the X-gene. I'm ready to grow wings now. Or, hey, I'd be satisfied with telekinesis.

via BBC

Not every mutant can follow all of these rules - in fact, some are contradictory. But following several of them is sure to lead you to the creme de la creme of the differently-genomed.

1. Mutant powers should either be invisible or really obvious.
None of this "I have sunglasses and therefore I'm a mutant" crap. Either you should look totally human but be able to break the world with your mind (like Phoenix, River Tam, or Professor Xavier), or you should look like a goddamn freak of nature, at least some of the time (like Hulk, The Thing, or Mystique).

2. "Being able to take all the powers of other mutants" is a lame mutant power and should be eschewed.
I am not trying to single anybody out here, but mutant supervillain Sylar in Heroes violates this rule in an extreme fashion. The worst part is that one of Heroes' only compelling actors, Zachary Quinto, plays him with enough magnetism that you actually CARE about all the stupid plot twists that the writers are tormenting him with. Perhaps the dumbest thing about Sylar is that his power is stealing other mutant powers, but in ways that make no sense. Sometimes he needs to do something with their brains; sometimes he just needs to be near them. Even worse, though, is Sylar nemesis Peter Petrelli, who absorbs other mutant powers but only if he can use them in the service of emo passive-aggression.

Put it this way. Who wasn't disappointed, when playing D&D, to discover that the most mega-powerful dragon, the polychromatic dragon, was so great just because he had all the breath weapons of the other dragons. Combining breath weapons isn't as cool as having your own uniquely powerful breath weapon. This rule can resolve that crucial issue.

3. Acceptable ways to make mutants include radiation, weird chemicals, and hybridization with aliens or other species.
Mutation origin tales may include the sudden appearance of an X-gene, aliens/future people meddling with the human genome, and mutation-inducing toxins (whether from pollution or lab experiments). Also high on the list are home-brewed substances like promycin that make you thrash around and choke and gag and then lie still - until you rise up all better and totally mutantastic. Spider-Man and Dr. Manhattan have classic mutant origins that stand up to the test of time. I don't care if it's borderline silly, being bitten by a radioactive spider is still totally awesome. And of course having your body deconstructed at the atomic level and then reconstituted as a Freaky Blue Atom-Manipulator Thing - obviously beyond cool. The movie Species offers us another fine example of mutant-making. Just hybridize a hot model with alien DNA you know nothing about, and presto! Killer morphing-spine babe.

What is the lesson to be learned here? All mutation should somehow involve a substance that plausibly or implausibly transforms the mutant's genome so that it goes from "recognizable creature" to "freaktastic badass." Which brings me to our next rule.

4. Magic is not a mutant power.
I think this goes without saying, but still it bears repeating. You might be tempted, upon watching Clive Barker's classic film Nightbreed, to say: "Hey, these toothy, tattooed, spinefaces living under the cemetary are mutants!" No. They are magical monsters and that is the end of the story. Also, do NOT be led astray by the work of Guillermo Tel Toro, who wonderfully and frustratingly confuses the category of mutant and magical all the time in his work. The giant humanoid cockroaches in Mimic? Pretty much totally mutants, with a "toxins in the subway" origin story, so that's OK. But the mutant vampires in Blade II? Look, nobody disputes that a mutant vampire is an awesome concept. But vampires (at least in Blade I) are magic, capable of summoning spirits by shooting blood into statues and crap like that. So are they really subject to the rules of genomics? I am dubious.

5. A mutant should have a trusty mutant steed.
Like rule 4, I believe this is a "no duh." But nevertheless you'd be surprised how often a cool mutant lacks some kind of awesome ship, robot, or dinosaur to ride on. Shouldn't a mutant guy have a mutant horse? After all, the mutants in I Am Legend had mutant dogs. Failing that, at least throw your mutant a flying surfboard thing like Green Goblin has.

6. No mutants without mad scientists, crazy doctors, demented engineers, freaky inventors, or bizarro physicists.
Your mutant needs a nemesis, and often that nemesis comes in the form of the mad scientist who created him. That's why the psychic mutants in Scanners go after the scientists who ran the defense labs where they were prodded - and where a drug to make more mutants is being secretly fed to pregnant women. It's why the replicants in Blade Runner go after their maker Tyrell. (And no the replicants are not androids - they're synthetic human mutants whose DNA has been messed with to make them strong and lead short lives.) Hell, it's why the monster killed Frankenstein and why Mr. Hyde had it in for Jekyll. Nobody wants to be an experiment, and that's why mutants fear the lab and hate the scientists who run them.

7. Mutation must be understood as painful, even when it is liberating.
One of the masterpieces of the mutant genre is the comic book Black Hole, about teenagers who suddenly find themselves turning into horrible mutants. They flee their suburb and hide in the forest, drinking and doing drugs, trying to escape the horror of their transforming bodies. While most stories about mutants focus on the superpower side of things, the best mutant tales always contain a little of the angst that lurks in every dark page of Black Hole. X-Men does this incredibly well, constantly reminding us that humans barely tolerate mutants. The thing about being a mutant is that it makes you different from the rest of your species - and often from your family too. And it's something biological and intrinsic to you that can't be changed (unless you're willing to undergo potentially fatal or crippling treatments from evil scientists - see rule 6). The reason why Heroes season 1 was so compelling was because it dealt with this issue, too. The mutants are alone, slowly becoming alienated from their friends and family as their powers develop. Seeing the mutants grapple with this, as well as watching them embrace their superpowers, made for some truly great television.

8. Mutant must be pitted against mutant. But more dangerous than mutants are those who refuse to mutate themselves.
Mutant stories often pit the integrationist mutants against the separatist mutants, which reminds us (sometimes embarrassingly) how much these tales are about minority groups of various kinds. But the biggest threat to mutants are the purists who believe in the sanctity of the genome. Usually, however, it turns out that these "don't mess with the genome" types are really jsut genome supremacists like the society in Gattaca, where anyone whose genome deviates from the superpowered norm is trash. Or they're like the Gaia worshippers in Paul McAuley's novel The Quiet War, who proclaim that nobody should alter the human genome, but then build genetically-enhanced supersoldiers in order to stop people in the outer planet colonies from re-engineering their bodies. In other words: It always turns out that the people who are anti-mutant are really just DNA fascists who don't like the idea of anybody controlling the genome but them.

9. All mutants are transhuman.
When transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil or R.U. Sirius talk about humans evolving into something better, what they mean is that we will mutate into creatures who are not recognizably human. Of course that doesn't mean we won't be humanists.

10. Mutation is inextricable from Darwinism and evolutionary theory. Therefore it must always be a condition that science can understand and (at least try to) deal with.
Maybe scientists never really show up in the story, which is the case in amazing mutant movie Teeth. But we still know that there is a scientific explanation for why our hero has superpowerd fangs in her vagina that will defend against date rapes and sexual abuse. There is a giant nuclear power plant right behind her house. My point is, a good mutant exists in a Darwinian universe. A mutant without science is like a dragon without a breath weapon. It just isn't good form.

11. A cool mutation can be inherited from your parents. A really cool mutation can be spread virally.
The mutants in Push or Octavia Butler's Wild Seed series are pretty damn awesome, but their mutations are always contained within families. So the mutations don't really spread very often - especially in Wild Seed, where there is actually a supermutant who is breeding the mutants with each other over dozens of generations. In other words, these mutants don't signal the transformation of the whole human race into something posthuman. They are almost like a separate minority species.

More intriguing and explosive are the mutations that jump from host to host virally. They might spread literally via a virus, as in I Am Legend, or be caused by some sudden genomic shift in response to environmental conditions (this is what happens in Greg Bear's novel Darwin's Radio, but also is hinted at in Heroes ). Another classic way to spread mutations virally is to create a mutation serum like promicin from The 4400, or like whatever it is that the family was dosed with in Firestarter. What makes viral mutations more exciting is that they have the potential to change the entire world relatively quickly. You don't have to wait for the mutation to spread through the population via natural selection or some other slow-ass evolutionary method.

12. Every mutant should be experimented upon, or should experiment on herself.
Though rule 6 states that mutants fear the lab, they are also drawn to it. If they were made in a lab, perhaps they can find a way to control their powers in the lab too! Some of the most iconic scenes in mutant tales show our crazed, mutating hero desperately trying to cook up a cure in his secret research facility, from the Invisible Man creating a DiY lab in the boarding house where he lives, to Jeff Brundle in Cronenberg's The Fly zooming between his teleportation pods to fix his hybrid DNA. If only they could get their hands on one more dose, one fresh sample of human brains, or one more cube of hyperzincmeritallium, at last these mutant experimenters could control the outcome of their experiments!

13. Being sexy is not a mutant power, though mutants are sexy.
All those "makes men fight over her" mutant powers? No, those are not good. They are not mutant powers. And I'm talking to you, Joss Whedon with the Runaways in the nineteenth century running into the lass with the "pheromone mutant power" thing. Yuck. No.

The thing is, mutants don't need sexual appeal to be a mutant power because all mutant powers make you sexier. Even the nerdy, flightless bird kid in New X-Men found a cute girlfriend. And let's face it: Most mutants just happen to look like Summer Glau and Zachary Quinto. The X-gene regulates the expression of the "hotness" gene, so the two are ever-intertwined.

Dear Heroes,

What happened? Villains marked an all time low in your ratings, and lost you a significant portion of your core audience (myself included). You broke my heart, Heroes. Fugitives won me back in much the same way your ex does when he or she promises to reform, to be better and try harder. But the make-up sex just wasn't that great; the second half of the third season was just too little too late, with the writers and network executives over-compensating furiously with its Con Air plot line and conspiracy theories pieced together with duct tape and hurried exposition. Heroes, if you really want to win me back, here's what you have to do.

New Talent. With Bryan Fuller off to pursue new projects, there are some pretty big shoes to fill. If Fuller's replacement generates the same buzz you did around Fuller's return to the show, and then deliver on it, you may just win many of us back. Carlton Cuse, who is wrapping up his epic run with Lost, might just be the hero you need. Other people capable of filling the void could be Adam Horowitz (the Lost scribe, not the Beastie Boy) or David Fury, the uber-talented Joss Whedon alum. I'll even put in a plug for Rob Thomas (creator of Veronica Mars), who has an amazing gift for crafting characters we love - and love to hate.

"You know how this works; one of us, one of them." Heroes is at its best when pairing up a hero with a human. For the first two seasons, and well into the third, Hiro and Ando formed the beating heart of the show for just this reason... and then you had to go and give Ando super powers. Why? The show is at its peak when specials and non-specials are grappling to understand one another and find common ground (Yes, I would even use Claire and her relationship with the Bennetts, overplayed as it is, as an example here). Continuing to team up specials and non-specials is a sure fire win.

We need a new geek. Look, I'll be honest; The moment you lost me in Villains was when you gave Mohinder powers. Dr. Suresh was originally conceived as a fifty-something scientist, until hunky hero Sendhil Ramamurthy was cast in the role. You never quite reconciled the fact that the geeky scientist who was there to serve as an anchoring point to the show and deliver much needed exposition was also part of its beefcake buffet. We need a scientist whose theories we believe, and who can deliver lines like "The virus is breaking down her DNA and turning her into something altogether... different" with a straight face. Perhaps a long-lost protege of Mohinder's father, or a government-funded geneticist can turn up to espouse the comic book science we've been missing (Someone like much underrated and underused character actor Ian Hart would be a perfect fit). Heroes, you need to find your Daniel Faraday.

Focus. The cast has gotten wildly out of control. Too many specials, too many superpowers, and an endless supply of shape-shifting characters, twins, and future selves is just mucking up the works. Slim down the cast and find your focus - the core group of characters we care about. Kill off the characters who only annoy us. Ali Larter's character comebacks have gotten ridiculous. Besides, we only tolerated her in the first place so we could have Micah. He, along with his super-mimic cousin, and human GPS Molly almost disappeared entirely from the show, with Micah just making a recent comeback. These kids are now perfectly poised, as they hit their 'tweens, to be the subjects of mutation-as-puberty-metaphor story arcs. You are already mining every good X-Men device ever conceived, why not just steal that one as well?

Everybody loves bad girls. I miss your sexy villains; I loved Elle, and I howled in horror when she got killed off last season. Madeline Zima is joining the show next season, and could very well fill the sexy female villain role, with the storyline in the hands of the right writers. Summer Glau is also looking for work in Tinseltown these days, and playing a full-on femme fatale would be a challenge we'd all love to see her take. Ray Park, the sexiest Sith, also joins the cast next season, reportedly as an evil carny character. I'm keeping my fingers crossed you match him up with some equally amazing female character.

Kill the cheerleader, Save the show. Hayden Panettiere has a film career now, and it's time to let her go. Between her bad acting and on-set temper tantrums, she is completely destroying the show. Besides, killing Claire off would give many of the characters, HRG especially, some great motivation.

One last thing...9th Wonders needs to come back in a big way. Please?

In an interview with Total Film, Singer was asked about the possibility of directing another Superman movie. Singer sort of lurched around an answer:

I don't know, I don't know. There are still issues...I just...I just don't know. I don't necessarily...I don't know. It's one of those things where...It's so weird talking about stuff unless I'm about to ramp up and shoot it.

So what does that mean, Singer, are you ramping up to shoot it? This only perks my interest more, as I would like to see someone else handle America's boy scout. It needs fresh directing blood desperately. On a positive note, Singer talked about the X-Men fondly, saying "I would love to return to that universe." Does this mean the Magneto universe too, as in an interesting WW2 set prequel?

The only thing that concerns me about Magneto is that if the prequel were to follow the track I used in X-Men, which is Magneto's history in the concentration camp, then I've lived in that world. Apt Pupil, X-Men and now Valkyrie… I've lived in that Nazi universe for quite a while. I just might need to take a little break before I do something like that.

Interesting answer, but I still wouldn't mind Singer going after the Magneto movie. He is, like he said, dedicated to the franchise maybe enough to keep his friend Brent Ratner away from it.

[Geek Files]

Painting via Faithmouse

An American family on holiday get stuck on the back roads of Ireland, and fall into the hands of a group of deformed, infected and mutated children. Damn, I hate evil kids.

Plague Town is out today on DVD, clips via Bloody Disgusting.

This clip, of course, comes from Boll's Far Cry, which is a far cry from a good movie, but does provide a certain bombastic thrill. It's loosely based on a video game, but mostly based on some mushrooms Boll ate once. Right after the clip cuts off (sorry, it was getting too long), the military guy tells Udo Kier, "Why don't you shove your civilian orders up your civilian ass?"

What's the plot of Far Cry? Well... Let's just let the trailer speak for itself:

I picture someone saying "You're making brainless monsters!!" to Uwe Boll. Right after they watched this film. [IMDB]

Poor Cyclops - he never gets a break. While fans were howling for more Wolverine, Fox doesn't give Scott Summers an inch of coolness or fun. Hell, they even killed him off half an hour into the last picture. Sure Cyclops is a boy scout, but seeing him helpless and bloodied in the stills for the new X-Men Origins: Wolverine flick feels like a continuation of Fox's anti-Scott campaign. Who knows: maybe he'll pull out in the end and save the day (doubtful as he does suck). But right now it looks like he gets yelled at in school, his glasses get stolen, and then he's thrown in jail and beaten up.

In other news, you MUST give Hugh Jackman massive credit for going all out on this Spanish TV show El Hormiguero. Say what you will about the new Wolverine film, Jackman is giving the international press circuit his all and we're reaping the benefits. Like this amazing video:

[Video via Filmonic]

MTV has a collection of character videos from the new Wolverine movie. I'm most surprised with Reynolds super serious delivery.

Taylor Kitsch as Gambit (Plays For Keeps)

Ryan Reynolds As Wade Wilson (Loves His Job)

Hugh Jackman As Wolverine (Gets New Jewelry)

Liev Schrieber As Sabretooth (Is An Animal)

Will.i.am As Wraith (Wants To Give His Gift Back To The Devil...sigh)

Wolverine will be in theaters May 1st.

Mutants:
Check out the latest trailer for David Morley's French film Mutants, where one pregnant woman has to fight off her rapidly changing boyfriend. It actually looks pretty gory, so I'm quite psyched.

Mutants

via Quiet Earth.

Zombies of Mass Destruction:
The latest zombie picture, which has nothing to do with the ZMD comics or ZMD movie adaptation, is from Kevin Hamedani and focuses in on what happens with a little island city gets overrun with zombies. It looks like, despite all the limb hacking and skin gnawing, this film will actually follow cultural and political intolerance between the island inhabitants - which could just be awful if they try and teach everyone wholesome values along with the zombie fighting, but we'll have to wait and see.

Meet Meline:
Twitch pointed out this beautiful little short from French CG artist Virginie Goyons and Sebastien Labanon. Check out the tiny trailer for the short - the little girl is captivating. The little lady supposedly uncovers an alien life form in her house, but don't worry - it looks nothing like Mac and Me.

MEET MELINE (2009) - TRAILER from Sebastien LABAN on Vimeo.

Sleep Dealer:
And finally, here are two clips from Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer, which pops up all over theaters in the US on April 17th. The drama follows the future of labor laws when the US builds a giant fence around the country and contracts hired hands in from Mexico via robot Avatars.

Picture from Brian A. Pounds/Staff Photographer

[ConnPost]

I don't blame the show's producers, who hadn't planned for this to be a series finale, but wow, that was an unsatisfying conclusion. I literally kept rewinding and fast-forwarding to make sure there wasn't another minute or two of episode, after Cassidy pulled the "Luke, I am your father... Oh wait, I mean brother" speech.

There wasn't just the out-of-nowhere question of, "How does Kyle deal with being related to this guy, who's been destroying his life?" Which I honestly wouldn't lose any sleep over anyway. It's not like Cassidy and Kyle are brothers in any meaningful sense, and it seems like everybody at Latnok is related to everybody else. There was the larger issue: can Kyle ever really be free of Latnok?

Even though Kyle dealt a serious blow to Latnok's science-maniacs in this episode, it still felt like a bit of a downer. Because Cassidy's right: Latnok will never stop trying to control Kyle, and they can get a lot more aggressive if they need to. So far, all Latnok's done is manipulate Kyle a bit, when Kyle wears his heart on his sleeve and proclaims loudly that the Tragers are the most important people in his life. Kyle is practically announcing, "Threaten the Tragers and I'll do anything you want."

And Latnok was at its absolute creepiest last night, with the plan to clone 100 Kyles and (possibly) turn them into biological computers, without any free will or life of their own. It sounded, reading between the lines, like a "Spock's Brain" scenario, only more dehumanizing and evil. With 100 Kyles hooked up, you could rule the world.

Supposedly, Kyle dealt with that particular threat last night, although I have my doubts. What kind of mega-scientific organization has an incredibly valuable formula, and only makes one offsite backup? I couldn't help jeering at the screen a bit when that plot point was introduced. (There's also the issue, which nobody ever raises, that this formula is a magic cure-all which brought back Nicole Trager from the brink of death. Kyle is sentencing millions of ordinary people to death by destroying it. And of course, if Latnok really wanted to rule the world, they could just sell the formula and become rich enough to buy countries.)

Some kind of resolution to the Kyle/Latnok issue would have been nice... even if it was just Kyle realizing that he's going to be fighting Latnok for the rest of his life.

One thing I did like was Mama Trager bringing up the fact that Kyle has gotten pretty ruthless and crafty all of a sudden, in a drastic (but mostly believable) shift from his old doe-eyed innocent act. He's basically doing what he has to do, since he's up against some pretty evil people, but it doesn't change her point. (Even if she did simper a bit too much in delivering her warning.) I'm all in favor of the show realizing that "coming of age" doesn't always mean "learning toasty life lessons and becoming a better person." Sometimes — often — becoming an adult means getting your hands dirtier.

The other thing I really loved about this finale — and wished I'd be seeing more of, in the fourth season we're not going to get — was the fact that both of "Kyle's girlfriends" really stepped up. Okay, so Jessi is still psycho and clingy, and has never seen a boundary she doesn't want to steamroller over. But at least this time around, Jessi got to do actual science, and prove she was as smart as Kyle, even though he's the golden boy. It was Jessi who found the warehouse where they were keeping the cryo-chambers, and who figured out how to use staph bacteria to kill the magic formula. Meanwhile, Amanda, who hasn't always been my favorite character, got to show some backbone and stand up to Jessi. Plus, she decked Nate. Woo!

Another character who got to prove how awesome he was was poor old Declan, who's been enjoying a bit of a renassance in the past few episodes, but especially last night's. Helping Kyle break into Cassidy's apartment, hacking into Andy's GPS as she's traveling across the country. I would actually totally watch a Declan spinoff. Oh, and speaking of Andy, the Josh/Andy closure was not particularly great in this episode, but I guess they got their real send off last week, with the cheesy Star Trek thing and the sleepover. The only character I really felt was shortchanged, by this episode as well as a lot of the recent episodes, was poor old Lori. We needed at least ten more scenes of her and cute DJ boy making out and processing.

All in all, I was frustrated even though this was a pretty solid episode of Kyle XY. What resolution we got felt somewhat forced, and the cliffhanger ending just felt a bit like dirty pool. Let's hope ABC Family comes to its senses and greenlights a miniseries or TV movie to address some of our pressing Kyle XY resolution needs.

What did you think?

Obviously, several grains of salt are indicated here. Still, the screening report does match up fairly well with the footage we've already seen, except that it doesn't mention the bar-brawl with Gambit or the boxing-ring sequence with The Blob. (Which doesn't mean anything, since those probably aren't major parts of the movie's storyline.) In any case, it sounds plausibly insane, so here goes.

We see Wolverine as a kid, with his brother, and something terrible happens and Logan's mutant power is revealed.

Then flash forward: it's the 1970s in Vietnam, and Logan and his "brother" Victor (Sabretooth) are soldiers. Victor has been going psycho and killing anyone who looks at him crosswise, so both mutants wind up locked in the brig. Until Stryker, a high-ranking officer, comes and tells them he's putting together a special team, with special privileges.

The elite special-ops team is made up of mutants with cool powers. One of the members of the team is the sword-wielding Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool, who keeps making dumb jokes and driving everybody else nuts. Everybody keeps telling Wade to shut up, and Victor nearly kills Wade until Logan intervenes. The team takes on tons of missions, with Victor getting more and more bloodthirsty.

But Logan draws the line at having to kill innocent people, and walks away. He lives in a cabin in the woods, becoming a lumberjack (and he's okay), with his girlfriend Silver Fox. Meanwhile, someone is killing all the members of that special-ops team one by one. (The first to die is Beak, who uses electricity.) Stryker comes to warn Wolverine, but he says he can take care of himself... right before he finds Silver Fox with her throat cut.

This time it's personal. Wolverine goes after Victor, and they fight, but their powers are too evenly matched. So Wolverine goes back to Stryker and lets the military officer put him in a goo bath, giving him new adamantium skeleton and blades. And we find out where the name "Wolverine" comes from.

And in the end, we find out Stryker is kidnapping mutants and keeping them prisoner so he can harvest their DNA. All of these mutants are being held prisoner on an island, which turns out to be the Three Mile Island. It turns out Stryker has been harvesting mutant DNA to breed one super-mutant, who will have all the superpowers of the other mutants... and that mutant is Wade Wilson, aka Deadpool. Stryker doesn't want to release the super-mutant because he's not ready yet, but the nearly indestructible Wolverine is tearing everything up.

So finally Stryker releases Deadpool, who now is bald with flame shooting out of his sunken red eyes, and the ability to disappear like Wraith. And Deadpool's mouth is sewn shut, causing Wolverine to quip, "They finally shut you up." And Deadpool's trusty sword comes out of his fist — just like Wolverine's claws. The fight moves to the top of one of the nuclear reactors, and Deadpool is shooting everything with his eye-blasts, destroying all the reactors.

Wolverine almost falls into the reactor, but an arm reaches out and saves him — and it's Sabretooth. Who says, "Nobody kills you but me, brother." Then Sabretooth says "Back to back," and the two mutants fight back to back, so they can see on both sides. Wolverine slices Deadpool's head off with one swipe. Says Sabretooth, "You know, this doesn't mean we're not still enemies," and then he takes off.

And then — here's my favorite part — Wolverine is freeing all the mutant captives. And Stryker says he has a "magic bullet" to shoot Logan with. The other scientists point out that it won't kill Logan. Stryker says, "I know, but if I shoot him in the head, it'll erase his memory." So he shoots Logan in the head, and he falls to the ground, apparently dead. But then he wakes up with total amnesia. Gambit drags Logan to safety and says he's a friend. Then we hear Patrick Stewart's voice (as Professor X) telling the escaping mutants to come to him, and he'll keep them safe. [We Are Movie Geeks via Worst Previews]

Here are our reasons to give Heroes a reprieve, in escalating levels of tongue-in-cheekness:

1. Come on! It's a whole new start. It's practically a whole new show, even. They blew up all the boring people at the end of Volume 3. So you can't really judge it according to what's come before. C'mawn.

2. President Worf!

3. Supposedly the good guys are going to work together more, instead of just running around separately.

4. The bad guy is named The Hunter. At least that's a proper supervillain name, as opposed to "Bob." Or "Knox." It's a step in the right direction. Maybe.

5. The return of morally gray badass HRG! Maybe.

6. Daphne and Matt really are kind of a cute couple. Give those kids a break already.

7. We really do want to know more about the secret weird-science program to "create" super-mutants like Nikki, Tracy and Nathan.

8. Sylar's taking another road trip, but this time he has a young totally-not-gay "apprentice" named Luke. Much better than Maya.

9. No more time travel! (Supposedly.)

10. Bryan "Fountain Of Awesome" Fuller is coming back.

11. Supposedly we're going back to basics a bit, with actual characters living their lives and holding down jobs. Until they get hauled off to Super-Gitmo, that is.

12. This time around, the role of creepy patriarch and good-guy-gone-bad is going to Adrian Pasdar, who can probably pull it off with some panache.

13. We'll also be on the edge of our seats wondering if anybody will point out that Nathan is right to want to lock all these people up, given how many times they've all turned evil.

14. Heroes will try to channel BSG, by adding "topical" storylines about the good guys being accused of terrorism and sent to Super-Gitmo.

15. And they hired a real BSG writer, Mark Verheiden.

16. Biker Ando!!

17. More Seth Green cameos are looking highly likely, since only his character understands the show's storyline at this point.

18. Sylar will keep taking his shirt off! We hope.

19. I refuse to believe all that stuff about Claire wanting to be a real hero was not going somewhere. Please?

20. Ando's actual superpower is codependency! With a hint of passive-aggressiveness. Don't you want to see how that's going to play out?

21. The show values its die-hard nerd audience more than ever, and is going to work hard to appeal to those viewers, even as it struggles to win back a broader viewership.

22. That means you're going to get pandered to.

23. Did we mention it's political this time? It's political!

24. If they had the ability to turn Nikki and Tracy into super-mutants in utero, then there could still be a genetically engineered evil mutant army ready to launch a fascist takeover. We want our fascist mutant army!

25. Hiro and Ando are doing Two Men And A Baby.

26. Christopher Eccleston will be in every scene this season. (Okay, he'll be invisible, and he's also taken a vow of silence. But he's there somewhere. We promise!)

27. The turtle will cry if you don't watch.

28. More scenes at the Angry Skunk Bar. Best bar name ever.

29. Claire will probably get more things jammed into her skull at some point.

30. Did I mention Claire's bio-mom is gone?

31. Mr. Muggles will eventually get a superpower.

32. You need an excuse to get drunk on a Monday night.

33. It's not actually true that nobody stays dead on this show. Supposedly Adam/Kensei, Maya's brother, DL, Hiro's dad and a few other people really are dead. We think.

34. They've almost run out of ethnic stereotypes. If the show ends, you'll get a new show, which'll have to start over again, with the nerdy Japanese guy and the African American guy who's on the run from the law.

35. On the other hand, we still haven't had a Russian sex-kitten spy or Chinese computer hacker yet.

36. Maybe the puppetmaster guy will make people dance, like on Star Trek.

37. If you can explain what happened in "Villains," you get a free ice cream cone at Baskin Robbins.* Just imagine what you'll get if you're able to explain what happened in "Fugitives" too.

38. If the show sticks around long enough, Micah will eventually show up again. Not to mention Molly.

39. No more Heroes, no more bizarre dada webisodes.

40. Potential for Nazi zombie subplot.

41. Possibly the only show that regularly features telekinetic underwear fights.

42. Not to mention, maybe Mohinder will get laid again, and celebrate by coating several people with his sticky white residue.

43. And maybe Claire will finally explore her lesbian airborne electro-sex fetish.

44. Here's a list of veteran science fiction actors who haven't yet appeared on the show: Brent Spiner, Lalla Ward, Richard Dean Anderson, Ben Browder, Linda Carter, Wil Wheaton, Martin Landau, that guy from Highlander 2, Jeffrey Combs, Kyle McLachlan, Michael Sheard, Tom Baker, Brad Dourif, Tim Russ, ummm... okay, it's a long list. Why are you trying to deny Tim Russ his chance? Why?

45. More mad scientist porn!

46. And injections!

47. If the show stays on the air long enough, it'll run out of X-Men storylines to, um, borrow from. And then we'll get the Heroes version of "House of M!" Or maybe "Age Of Apocalypse."

48. Actually, with "Fugitives," the show is sort of doing Civil War. Which means World War Hulk is next. Come on, who doesn't want to see Heroes do World War Hulk?

49. Everybody looks good in orange.

50. The show can't die until it reveals that West (the flying boy) was behind everything.

51. Maybe we'll get to see the dark future where everybody uses the formula to get superpowers, and it'll be like a glimpse of what The 4400 would have been like if it hadn't gotten canceled.

52. There will be more awesome viewer comments like this one, on NBC's message board: "just when you think you know what's gonna happen, this show takes a turn for unforseen surprises. i'm just blown away. just one question—whatever happened to the copycat? would like to see more of her."

53. They haven't done a musical episode yet.

54. Or an episode where everyone turns animated.

55. Slim chance we'll get to see Matt and Daphne have ultra-fast sex.

56. Bad guys with even weirder powers, like projectile toenails.

57. Maybe there are more than three Ali Larters after all, and we'll get to see an Ali Larter army at some point.

58. Heroes is the only thing standing between us and more Knight Riders.

59. Let's just go back to how Worf is president. Who's in his cabinet? Is Martok secretary of defense? Is the first pet a Targ? We'll never know, unless the show stays on the air.

60. Tonight's episode is essentially Volume 4, Number one. That's right — it's a first issue. It's like a collector's item. If you watch it, and keep it in mint condition in your brain, you'll eventually be able to sell the memory of watching it for double what you paid. (In other words, you'll get two hours of your life back. Can Lost do that? Actually, maybe Lost can. But most shows can't.)

61. Caitlin the Irish barmaid sacrificed not just her life, but her existence in the causal nexus of reality itself, so you could keep watching this show. Don't make her sacrifice in vain!

62. If Heroes fails, NBC could go under, damaging NBC/Universal, which runs the Sci Fi Channel. And Universal Studios.

63. Worst come to worst, Heroes' failure could affect NBC's parent company GE, and that could cause your toaster to rise up in rebellion against you. Yes, failing to support Heroes could directly lead to the Cylon civil war. It's happened before, after all.

* - This is not true. Do not go to Baskin Robbins and try to obtain a free ice cream this way.

This is actually a super cute idea and I'm already contemplating making waffles while explaining the waffles Sylar craziness. I just need to find that apron. Go to NBC now and submit your video, or I'll sic the cheerleader on you.

Eric McCormack (Will & Grace), Dan Lauria (the Dad from The Wonder Years), and the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) all star in this could-be-clever alien movie. Alien Trespass is a homage to the 50s scifi B-movies and is set in 1957. The cast gets a surprise visit from a meteor, which crashes into a California mountain. An alien, named the Ghota, launches a flying saucer out of the rubble, followed quickly by an intergalactic bounty hunter called Urp (McCormack). He must save the world from the Urp with help from the cast - and one diner waitress. You can catch this campy thriller at the 2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 10 and 11.

Also playing at the festival is Egon and his space kitty Dönci. Egon & Dönci follows the two into space, but will the kitty enjoy weightless space floating? There's only one way to find out for sure: strap your cat to a rocket.

And finally, Frenchy mutants that take forever to turn to rotting undead have a new trailer in Mutants, and it looks fantastic. Leave it to the French to make a horror movie I want to see. This feature debut comes from David Morley, and I cannot wait to hear more French screams.