This amazing scene comes from Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys, a film so fantastic it's actually a sequel to three different movies. Eat your heart out, X-Men 3. Brick Bardo, aka Dollman (Tim Thomerson), is the hero of Dollman, the story of an alien cop who just happens to be a few inches tall and winds up on Earth fighting crime from a unique perspective. Ginger is one of the women who got shrunk by the evil radio-station monsters in Bad Channels, which we featured a while back. And the demonic toys are from Demonic Toys, a movie about possessed playthings trying to raise Satan. Nobody will believe Tracy Scoggins that the toys are evil, which is why she's been suspended as a cop.

Poor Ginger thinks she's doomed to loneliness as the only doll-sized human, until Dollman comes into her life. But he's not the only one who's excited to have a tiny woman around — the demonic toys want to impregnate her with their miniature Satanic baby, who will grow up to be a doll-sized Antichrist. Here's a great scene where the toys attempt to kill Brick Bardo by pulling him apart with toy trucks, while promising Ginger that soon enough, "We're going to bump and grind."

Dollman Vs. Demonic Toys is only an hour long, and at least ten minutes of that is flashbacks to the three movies it's a sequel to. But somehow, it manages to pack in as much WTFery as three regular films.

Here's the new "book trailer" for Catching Fire, the sequel to The Hunger Games, in which the hints of political unrest in the first book appear to be exploding into full-on civil disorder:

And then Suzanne Collins reads from chapter 2 of Catching Fire, in which the President pays Katniss a visit, and we find out just how much she stirred things up when she outwitted the game-masters in the first book:

Catching Fire comes out Sept. 1, and we'll have a review in a couple weeks.

[Scholastic]

We caught up with Orci on the red carpet at the SyFy/Entertainment Weekly party, last Saturday evening, and we had a lot of questions for him.

First of all, we asked Orci about his statements the other day that Star Trek 2 and 3 might have a linked storyline — maybe with a cliffhanger, or a plot thread that continues from one movie into the next. Orci downplayed the speculation, saying he, writer Alex Kurtzman, director J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof and producer Bryan Burk had had one meeting, lasting 15 minutes, and they had considered for a brief moment the idea of doing the next two movies as a linked story. But it's still way too early to say anything definite, and they're still in the phase of throwing ideas out there and seeing what sticks.

When we interviewed Orci and his writing partner, Alex Kurtzman, about Transformers 2, they pointed out that it's very common for the second movie in a series to feature the protagonist trying to quit the "hero" racket. (Think Superman II or Spider-Man 2.) Transformers 2 follows that pattern, with Sam wanting to go off to college and lead a normal life. So we were wondering if Star Trek 2 would follow that formula as well — would we see Kirk thinking about quitting the Enterprise and going back to Iowa?

But Orci says the formula isn't iron-clad, and it doesn't apply to every second movie in a series. In the case of Trek, he sees the Enterprise crew as being much more committed to their mission and to doing good in the universe, so that kind of "hero no more" story wouldn't fit.

Meanwhile, Orci says that the Fringe writing staff had originally wanted to wait a few years before unveiling the "alternate world" storyline — but doing it now forces them to be more inventive about what happens next, and to create an even larger world to explore. "Let us force ourselves to come up with a bigger world. So you get a little bit of both. We wanted to answer things and see where that leads.

As for Cowboys And Aliens, the movie with the world's most self-explanatory title, Orci says, "We're wrapping up another draft, and hopefully that one will be good enough."

After yesterday's list of sequels that don't suck — and I still cling to RoboCop 2, although maybe I should watch it again — people asked for a list of threequels that do suck. Which seemed kind of pointless, because that would be the same as a complete list of threequels. Search For Spock? Sucked. Return Of The Jedi? Blew. Spider-Man 3? Superman III? RoboCop 3? X-Men 3? It's making my head pound just to list them. Alien³?

In the non-"this movie is melting my pituitary gland" category, there's... Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Which isn't science fiction, and for my money isn't quite as good as Raiders. But it's way better than Temple Of Doom. There are also some movies with numbers higher than three that were decent, like Star Treks IV and VI.

So why are so many "threequels" so horrifyingly bad? Here are some possible explanations.

There's no ready-made formula.

Talking to Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman about Transformers 2 drove something home for me: there's a standard formula for the second movie in the series, just like there is for the first. In the first movie, the young hero discovers his (usually his) heroic destiny and learns from a father figure, who frequently dies or transcends somehow. In the second movie, the hero rejects his heroic mission and tries to return to a normal life — just like Superman in Superman II, Spidey in Spider-Man II and Sam in Transformers 2. Even in Star Trek II, you could argue that Kirk is questioning whether he's too old to keep adventuring.

But what happens in the third movie? Uhh... The hero gets a new hairstyle? There are more bad guys than before? What? There's no road map.

Studio interference.

Sam Raimi blames Sony for the disaster that was Spider-Man 3, and I sort of believe him. Once a movie series becomes cash-cowy enough for the studio to want to do a third go-around, I guess the suits get a bit antsy. They start insisting on shoe-horning Venom into a movie where he and his giant alien tongue just don't belong. Or they demand random rewrites of a perfectly good script, or weird stunt casting. (Hello, Richard Pryor!) The same execs who might have been willing to let a film-maker have a long leash the first couple times start tugging at that leash more, and choking the director and writers, because there's more at stake.

Just google the phrases "third movie" and "studio interference", and you'll see what I mean. Terminator 3, Alien3, X-Men 3... all blamed on studio bigshots stepping in and meddling.

Creative attrition.

Sam Raimi's presence on Spider-Man 3 was, in itself, an aberration. Normally, after directing two awesome movies in a series, someone like Raimi would have stepped out to do a serious Nazi epic or cop drama, leaving Spider-Man in the hands of Brett Ratner or Joel Schumacher. I'm actually not the world's biggest fan of Tim Burton's first two Bat-films, but compared to the Schumacher films that followed, Batman and Batman Returns look like Citizen Kane and Citizen Kane's Big Score. (Now I'm picturing Citizen Kane In Africa — sorry, in-joke.)

For some reason, very few writers and directors are willing to stick around for a third ride on the blockbuster-mobile, even if they're up for a second.

Creative exhaustion.

And even if any of the original creative team do come along, it's entirely possible to get a bit burned out after spending years of your life working on one saga. (It's probably a different matter if you're filming a trilogy all in one go, like Lord Of The Rings.) As much as any studio nonsense, I'm willing to bet that Sam Raimi's Spider-fatigue was a big reason for Spider-Man 3's problems. Raimi needed to go work on a smaller, less mainstream project, like Drag Me To Hell. (And here's hoping that his return to low-budget horror has cleansed his palate a bit, so he can come back to Peter Parker with a fresh eye.

And finally, there's always...

Problems in the source material.

A lot of these big movie series are based on comic books, television shows and older movies, which started out with a clear premise and a simple format: a guy dresses up as a bat and fights crime with the aid of fantastical tech. A guy gets bitten by a spider and gains fantastica powers, which he uses to fight crime. Etc. etc. So if your first movie is based on the early issues of the comic, or the early episodes of the TV show, you're golden. But the longer the source material goes on, the more convoluted and confusing it gets. The guy who dresses as a bat teams up with a circus acrobat and a girl librarian, plus he's got an imp from another dimension following him around, and so on. The more simple and pure the concept starts out, the more confusing and ridiculous it gets. So if a movie series tries to stick to the original, it'll run into similar problems the longer it goes on.

That's one huge problem with X-Men 3, for example — the need to include cameos from dozens of random X-people who were big in the 1980s and 1990s. Ditto with Venom in Spider-Man 3, and Robin and Batgirl in the Schumacher Bat-scursions. It doesn't really excuse those films' wretchness, but it's really true that the longer a serial goes on, the more baggage it tends to accrue. Movie-makers have be very careful to avoid shouldering that baggage as well.

X2

The original cast and director returned for this second outing, and it brings forward the themes of mutants in a society that hates and fears them. This time around, the rogue Col. William Stryker is plotting to use the mutants' own technology and superpowers to track them all down and destroy them. The early scenes of Magneto in a plastic prison are striking and well-realized, and the attack on Xavier's school drives home how vulnerable our mutant heroes are in a world that hates them. The first X-Men movie was a bit rushed and formulaic with the need to introduce so many mutant heroes, but this one feels a bit more cohesive.

Back To The Future Part 2

Easily my favorite of the BTTF movies, this one actually takes us to the real future, instead of just 1985. Biff, the hapless bully, beats Marty at his own time-hacking game, creating an alternate timeline where Biff rules. I'm a sucker for any storyline where the hero has to cross his own timeline and run around the same series of events a second time, without upsetting all the applecarts he set in motion the first time around. Sure, it's goofy, but so was the first one.

Superman II

A confession: I haven't yet seen the "director's cut" that came out on DVD a couple years ago, because the idea of giving this movie the same ending as the first one seemed just patently silly. Famously, director Richard Donner had a falling out with the studio over this film, and the studio brought in someone else to finish this movie, and recut the final product. But I still really like the original cut, for its awesome mega-villains from Superman's own home planet, including General Zod. Of all the sequels to feature the hero giving up his powers to live a normal life, this is the most interesting, since Superman probably couldn't be with Lois otherwise. And I love the random yahoo in a bar beating the crap out of Clark. The only major flaw is the memory-erasing kiss at the end, which is total drek.

Robocop 2

This is another questionable one — but this film has a special place in my heart. Frank Miller's first foray into making movies, back when he was still an edgy maniac, picks up the satirical themes of the first movie and goes nuts with them. (Sure, the studio messed with Frank's script, but the result is still pleasingly freaktastic.) Detroit is being privatized, the police force is maneuvered into being on strike, and Robocop is out there on his own. We venture deeper into the dark heart of Robocop, as Alex Murphy tries and fails to recapture his original life with his family — and meanwhile, every attempt to create a new Robocop only leads to suicides (and murder-suicides) as the replacements can't face the horror of what they've become. Until OCP tries creating a totally amoral, power-crazed version.

Spider-Man 2

After reading the original Michael Chabon script for this movie, I marginally prefer that version — the whole "Peter Parker stops being Spider-Man" subplot in this movie is handled really weirdly and confusingly. (He suddenly needs glasses? Why?) But either version of the story is still a worthwhile continuation of the first film. Alfred Molina is a sympathetic but deranged Doc Octopus, and the sequence where Spidey stops a runaway train — and then the passengers don't rat out his identity — is a classic for a reason.

Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

The first Peter Cushing Dalek movie was a total flying-saucer wreck, with blond hippie aliens in blue eye-shadow and non-deadly Daleks. But this sequel, also based on an episode from the Doctor Who television series, is a total classic. It has much more energy, from beginning to end, and the Daleks are awesomely bloodthirsty. The supporting cast includes Bernard Cribbins and Philip Madoc, and the TV episode's slightly bloated plotline benefits a lot from being compressed down to a movie length.

Blade II

Guillermo del Toro stepped in and directed this sequel, instantly elevating it to a gothic horror masterpiece along the way. Blade, the "daywalker," is more enigmatic and cooler, and his relationship with Whistler takes a weird turn when he has to cure Whistler of vampirism. But mostly, this movie is memorable for its genetic engineering project, where the vampires are trying to breed a new race of super-vampires. Vampires + weird science = win.

The Chronicles Of Riddick

Thanks to Pansy for suggesting this one — it really should be on the list. Riddick, the merciless killer from Pitch Black, gets a whole backstory and and a heroic destiny, but mostly he kicks a whole lot more ass than in the first movie.

Dawn Of The Dead

Following on from the undead flesh-eating plague set up in Night Of The Living Dead, George Romero's second zombie film shows in more detail the effects of a widespread epidemic of reanimated cannibals. Containing one of the most famous shopping mall sequences in movie history, it's no accident that this is the Romero classic that Zack Snyder chose to remake. Thanks to Dr.Wadd for suggesting this one — although I think I can't quite get with Escape From L.A.

Mad Max: The Road Warrior

Many people probably didn't even know this was a sequel when it came out. The first Mad Max movie didn't make nearly as big an impact (in the United States, anyway) as this incredible follow-up, with its long scenes of caravan carnage. (It didn't help that when the original Max came out, Mel Gibson was dubbed with a horrendous American accent.) The original Max is a total classic, but movies like Doomsday are still biting the feeling of anarchy and vehicular mayhem that this sequel brings. Fans are still doing Road Warrior reconstructions on the public roads.

Aliens

James Cameron steps in and shows how to do a sequel to someone else's creation. Ripley goes back to the moon where she encountered the alien eggs, accompanied by a platoon of colonial marines. Every character in this film is an awesome archetype, from Burke the corporate weenie to Vasquez the tough marine chick. The supporting cast of this film is more memorable than the main characters of a lot of other films. (Even Newt, the cute kid, is tolerable.) From the moment they return to LV-426, the tension is palpable, and the action sequences only reinforce the feeling of a squad under siege in cramped quarters. By the time Ripley takes care of the alien queen using that power suit at the end, you're jumping up and cheering for her.

Terminator 2

Cameron already proved he had what it took to make a killer sequel when he returned to the film that put him on the map. In some ways, this is just a remake of the original, only with Arnie's Terminator in the role of protector instead of pursuer. But just like Cameron increased Ripley's bad-assery in Aliens, he does the same for Sarah Connor here, including her awesome mental institution escape. Having a reprogrammed Terminator — and actually getting to open up its head and change it from read-only to read-write — opens up all sorts of fascinating questions about the nature of artificial consciousness that the first movie barely touched on. All the cool ideas in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles get their start here.

The Dark Knight

I almost left this one off because of the constant debate over whether it really counts as science fiction... but still. This really is a primer in how to do a decent sequel. Batman Begins shows us the making of Batman, and the sequel comes close to showing us the breaking of him. Instead of another sequel where the hero randomly decides to walk away from being a hero in order to get married or have a "normal" life, this film shows us Bruce Wayne choosing to remain Batman in the face of almost unimaginable chaos that's laid at his door. Okay, he does almost reveal his identity at one point, but in the end, this film is a great continuation of the first movie because it shows just what it takes for Bruce to stay Batman. Thanks to all the commenters who insisted it should be in here.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

RoboCop 2 director Irvin Kerschner also directed another sequel, which might be slightly more famous. There's so much to love about this film, including our first meetings with Yoda and Lando Calrissian, and the way Darth Vader goes through Admirals like popcorn. But really, the reason why it's the best film in the series is because of the way it builds up to the revelation that Luke Skywalker's dad went bad — and there's an excellent chance that Luke will go the same way. The sequence in the cave, where Luke confronts his own inner darkness, is more powerful than everything Hayden Christensen ever committed to film.

Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan

And then, of course, there's the film that all other sequels are compared to. It doesn't hurt that the first movie in the series consists of three hours of watching a train pull out of a station, while people talk about grain futures. But still, this movie makes the original Trek characters as vivid as they've ever been, from Spock and McCoy both giving birthday presents to Kirk all the way up to the end. Almost every line of dialog in this movie has been in someone's sig file at some point, and this film does for space battles what Road Warrior does for car chases. And then there's Ricardo Montalban's magnetic turn as the obsessed, arrogant space maniac, Khan.

The Marshall rumor comes from Bloody DIsgusting, which cites a "100% reliable source" for the buzz that the Doomsday and The Descent director is close to signing with 20th Century Fox to helm Predators, a movie that reportedly involves a team of commandos facing down a whole race of the dreadlocked aliens. Robert Rodriguez, who co-wrote the script, backed out of directing it last month but will still produce. The film, which may or may not feature a return-visit cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is due in July 2010.

Now, we may have gone a bit overboard in our enthusiasm for Doomsday, but then, so did Marshall in directing it. We hereby endorse him for the Predators gig. In fact, if he doesn't get the job, heads will roll. Then again, if his Predators is anything like Doomsday, plenty of heads will roll if he does get the job.

Reitman, who helmed the first two movies 25 and 20 years ago, tells MTV News he may direct the third one as well. Dan Aykroyd has already been hinting around at a premise, which would see the original team (or at least Aykroyd, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis) joined by a younger generation of recruits, including a woman or two. A script is already in the works, by The Office's Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, and should be completed within a month.

We loved the first Ghostbusters (out on Blu-Ray next week in time for its 25th anniversary, y'all!), the second not so much, and Reitman's recent directing efforts are pretty hacktacular (Evolution may have a few closet supporters, but is there anyone out there who'll defend My Super Ex-Girlfriend? Anyone?) So we're dreading Ghostbusters III, especially if it falls into Reitman's hands again. At least one hint of good news may keep our well of hostility-loving pink goo from boiling over: Reitman may just be too darn busy to direct, forcing him to hand his nuclear backpack over to Ramis (Groundhog Day), who is Aykroyd's first choice anyway. Cross your fingers — but remember, don't cross the streams.

UPDATE: Ramis just gave an interview to ComingSoon, in which he says he doubts that Reitman wants to direct. (Though he'll undoubtedly nab a producing credit.) Ramis adds that he himself may not want to direct, but that all four of the OGs (original Ghostbusters), including Ernie Hudson, are on board, and that everyone's just waiting for the script. Also, he confirms that the story idea, on which he collaborated with Stupnitsky and Eisenberg (who also wrote Ramis' soon-to-be-released prehistoric spoof Year One), will involve a younger team of ghoul grabbers. "It's not about us running around," he says. "We'll be introducing new people."

So wait, why reboot Star Wars? I'm sick of the reboots. Movies are getting as crash-happy as my Macbook.

Oh, whine whine whine. Too many remakes, sequels and reboots. "Poor me, the entertainment industry is trying to pander to me by recreating the entertainments of my childhood, or in some cases my grandparents' childhoods." I know, it sucks to be you. But look at it this way: a lot of these entertainment franchises need the occasional reboot, because they've been running for decades and are struggling to run the latest firmware. "Women's lib" made Wonder Woman go BSOD several times in the 1960s, and more recently she's been as crash-prone as a J.J. Abrams airplane.

Actually, Star Wars is the perfect example of what happens to a long-running franchise that doesn't get rebooted. You keep adding more and more trendy stuff to the mix, piling on extra chunks of mythos and bits of backstory, and inflating the importance of minor characters until they overwhelm the narrative. (Jango Fett?) It's not the creators' fault, necessarily. It's just what happens when you try to keep a complex universe running for decades without restarting.

Eventually, your once-shiny universe gets to the point where you have to shut it down forever, or do a hard restart. And there's too much money in these old juggernauts to shut them down.

But... But... George Lucas will never go for it!

He will, once he runs out of money. It's just a matter of time. Those life-size solid-gold Yoda bidets don't pay for themselves, you know. (With the proximity activation, and the voice that says, "Wash your bottom, you will." That's expensive stuff.) All it'll take is another few insane Star Wars projects, like another big-screen Clone Wars movie and another three Star Wars TV shows that he's financing out-of-pocket. Chances are, he's already completed a few thousand scripts for his live-action Star Wars show, which takes place between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy and probably includes a whole set of episodes about Jar Jar Binks visiting the Ewoks.

Eventually, Lucas will need some walking-around money, and the studios will put pressure on him, and someone will come up with an offer he can't refuse. It'll probably allow him to keep his original version of the galaxy far, far away chugging along. It'll be like the Ultimate Marvel Universe, or Smallville: a new reimagined version of the franchise, even as the original version keeps trundling. Call it Star Wars: Extreme. Or Star Wars: Ultraspace. Or maybe Star Wars: Even Farther Away.

Okay, so the Star Wars reboot is inevitable, if not imminent. What makes you think it could possibly be a good thing?

It could be horrendous, sure. But it doesn't have to be, and that's what this primer is about. A few years from now, when Lucas and the suits are having meetings about creating Star Wars 2.0, there are a few simple rules for how to avoid a painful Stepford Wives or Planet Of The Apes boondoggle. (Probably not including Nicole Kidman is a good place to start.)

The good news is, Star Wars has a good solid structure underneath all the crud that's been layered on top of it in recent years. At heart, it's a strong adventure story with a very simple Joseph Campbell-inspired throughline. The original Star Wars is the movie that reinvented entertainment, and forced all of those other franchises to add new features, or reboot altogether. To this day, when people reboot other franchises, they're aiming to make them more like Star Wars — blatantly so, in the case of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek.

So if some Hollywood exec is reading this, and contemplating rebooting Star Wars, the best advice we can give you is: make it more like Star Wars. With a new lick of paint, and less baggage.

Here's the longer version of that advice, in the form of eight simple rules for reinventing our beloved saga:

1) Keep it simple. Just keep reminding yourself that the purpose of a reboot is to jettison dead weight, and don't feel obliged to bring in all the extra crud about Trade Federations and midichlorians. There's the Empire, and the Rebellion, and the Force has two sides: light and dark. Stay within the lines, and give us a cool story about good versus evil, and trusting your feelings, and relying on your friends. Batman Begins scored because it gave us the essence of Bruce Wayne: the tragedy, the grief and powerless rage, and then the quest to become something bad enough to counter the darkness.

2) Keep the sense of joy and dread. Okay, I've dissed both the "hero's journey" and science fiction's obsession with "sense of wonder" before, but there is something to be said for a story where a young person starts out in a small world, and then comes out into a gigantic universe, full of moon-sized battle stations, princesses, space fights and massive ice planets. Of all the stuff that goes into "coming of age" stories, it's perhaps the most universal, since it's about leaving home. And then you find out that you're actually way more connected to this deep history that went on before you were born, because your dad was a Jedi knight. There's plenty of great stuff there.

3) Get back to the characters we care about. It sounds basic, but that's how J.J. Abrams revitalized Star Trek. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader. The classic characters. And here's a suggestion: Anakin Skywalker's dismal progression, where he starts out as a promising young Jedi only to be seduced to the Dark Side? That is what flashbacks or prologues are made for. You could even intersperse Anakin's journey with Luke's, as Luke learns more about his father while he grows into his powers. And speaking of heroes...

4) Admit that Han Solo is the hero as much as Luke. That's the other thing J.J. Abrams' Star Trek did right: It treated Spock as the hero, just as much as Kirk. We all knew, all along, that Spock belonged in the top spot alongside Kirk, but the series had never quite admitted it before. (Probably due to Shatner's ego, among other things.) Han Solo deserves a similar elevation. Like Kirk and Spock, Han and Luke are the yin and yang, except that they go in opposite directions. Han Solo regains his altruism and optimism, just as Luke is shedding his innocence and becoming more of a hard-ass. Bring Han Solo's journey to the fore, and don't be afraid to make him more of a jerky antihero at the beginning, so it'll feel like a real arc. (And yes, that means Han shoots first.)

5) Don't be afraid to make some changes, to bring it up to date. So you're inevitably going to make some changes to the storyline, like maybe making Obi-Wan less of a lying prick. Or maybe you'll want to add more depth to the early scenes of Luke on Tattooine, to show what he's leaving behind, and flesh out his dreams of joining Biggs and Wedge in space. Other changes I might make to the first film might involve having Leia pilot an X-wing in the final Death Star attack, and elminating all the incest-vibes with Leia and Luke. (Not to mention the scene where Vader is menacing Leia, and there's some definite sexual tension. Eww.)

6) A truckload of fanservice makes the revisionism go down. But you're worried, inevitably, about getting bags of bantha poodoo on your doorstep if you make any alterations to the sacrosanct franchise. Fans can be unforgiving murglaks. But they're also very susceptible to bribery. If you throw in lots of references and nods to old stories, then you can do anything. You can blow up Vulcan. You can even make Spock's mom Winona Ryder. You can have an evil assassin cult train Batman. It's all good. You just have to throw in the Kobayashi Maru, Henri Ducard and all the stuff that fans salivate over, and they'll run with whatever changes you want to make. (Having a decent story doesn't hurt either.) Have Spock quote the best lines from Wrath Of Khan, and fans won't care that the Enterprise looks like the bar at the W Hotel.

7) Restrain your video-game impulses. Any new Star Wars will have to be Imax and 3-D and CG and huge, sure. That's just a given, unless those fads have been replaced by something even bigger and more eyeball-gouging by then. But it doesn't have to feel like a video game. The original Star Wars inspired a million video games — because it felt so real and got your adrenaline pumping. It wasn't just the special effects, it was the crazy you-are-there feeling of the Millenium Falcon's gun turrent swinging around, and the stars whizzing past as Luke shot at tie fighters. Try to keep that sense of realness, and actual peril, and genuine thrills. Not so much with the fakey rollercoaster shit.

8) Get a real writer. Please. In addition to feeling invested in the characters, we have to buy into their conflicts and quote their snappy dialog. Seek out one of the legion of Joss Whedon apprentices and press-gang him or her. I'm thinking Drew Goddard, who moved on from Buffy to write Cloverfield, and is now directing Whedon's Cabin In The Woods. Or Jane Espenson. Get someone who can do characters and banter and insane high-stakes drama, and turn him/her loose on the saga of Luke, Leia and their crazy aging biker dad. And may the Force be with all of us if you fail.

Top image from Carlos Number Two on Worth 1000.

Talking to Film Journal, McG explained what he thinks will happen in his second Terminator film:

I strongly suspect the next movie is going to take place in a [pre-Judgment Day] 2011. John Connor is going to travel back in time and he's going to have to galvanize the militaries of the world for an impending Skynet invasion. They've figured out time travel to the degree where they can send more than [just] one naked entity. So you're going to have hunter killers and transports and harvesters and everything arriving in our time and Connor fighting back with conventional military warfare, which I think is going to be fucking awesome. I also think he's going to meet a scientist that's going to look a lot like present-day Robert Patrick [who famously played the T-1000 in Terminator 2], talking about stem-cell research and how we can all live as idealized, younger versions of ourselves

All I can say, is whoa. I don't even know where to start.

Actually, I do know where to start: throwing out the Terminator series' most iconic rule for time travel — that only living tissue can travel, and anything covering it gets shredded — seems like a really weird notion. If you can send a Hunter-Killer back in time, what can't you send back? At what point do you shred the space-time continuum so much that nothing makes sense any more? Also, according to Terminator 3, Judgment Day happens in 2004. So what moves it forward seven years?

I'm also wondering what happens to make Skynet so desperate, it's willing to invade the past in such a dramatic fashion. I could be wrong, but isn't one of the cornerstones of the series that Skynet treads somewhat carefully about tampering with the past, lest it undo its own rise to power? There could be a clue to the ending of Terminator Salvation in there somewhere — maybe John Connor does something that puts Skynet in a no-win situation?

Or maybe McG's just yanking our chains?

Meanwhile, here are some pics from Yahoo that I don't think we've posted before:

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The original Speed Racer series was made in Japan as Mach GoGoGo, and the English dubbed version was shown in 1967 to 1968, then shown in syndication for several years afterward. It finally disappeared from TV screens for a while in the mid-1970s. "Speed Racer, the superviolent, antieducational cartoon series that lived by the sword, is dead," proclaimed the Chicago Tribune on Jul. 12, 1974.

It took 25 years for a new Speed Racer cartoon to appear on American television:

The New Adventures of Speed Racer (1993). This show only lasted 13 episodes, and was widely regarded as a shallow reinvention of the original series. For one thing, Speed could now travel in time, which seems kind of like a weird tangent. And the paranoid conspiracy subplots of the original cartoon were missing, replaced with scifi-ish plots, such as Speed racing against aliens. As a scifi enthusiast, I aprove — except that the end result doesn't look that great. It was created by Fred Wolf Productions (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and featured more American-style animation.

"Winston Smith" wrote on Usenet:

In my opinion the "new Speedracer" really has nothing to do with the "Speed Racer" of the 1960's. It has the characters and a car, but has very little to do with the original. The "new Speedracer" is spiritually closer to the animation of "James Bond Junior", which is funny since "James Bond Junior" has more of the "Speed Racer" feel to it than the "new Speedracer". I would consider it "James Bond Junior, PART VI" with racing cars. There are none of the emotional social dynamics that make up the original. Either the creators are intimidated by the original, or they have no concept of what the idea of "family" means. It is more like a series of adult divorced people running around and masquerading as a family.

Volkswagen commercials. (1997) VW did a series of 30-second spots that formed sort of a continuing adventures of Speed Racer — and they were a horrendous travesty of everything we hold dear. In a typical ad, Speed is driving along when the Mach-5 is sabotaged... so he's forced to drive a Volkswagen GTI instead. Says producer J.J. Sedelmaier:

They were doing a cool, Baby Boomer-type campaign. I don't know if it's Baby Boomer or Generation X or whatever, but they were obviously hitting people my age (41) and a little younger, trying to sell Volkswagens, specifically the GTI.

Speed Racer X (2002). Another short-lived cartoon, this time on Nickelodeon, which pulled it after only a few episodes. At least this one was made by Japanese animation studio Tatsunoko Productions, back in 1997, before being imported to the U.S. In this version, the Mach 5 can fly. Also, some of the buttons on the steering wheel were different: "A" was "aero jack" instead of "auto jack," "B" was "balloon tires instead of "belt tires," "E" was "emergency wire" (a grappling hook) instead of "evening light" (a floodlamp), and "F" was "fish diver" instead of "frogger mode" (so the car's wheels would turn inwards and it would become a full submarine.) The animation was supposed to have a "darker" and more "grown-up" feel to it.

Speed Racer Lives (2006). A series of webtoons to tie in with a new toy line, it looks as though this series only lasted three brief installments before being killed. It features Speed Jr., the son of the original Speed Racer — who's still hanging around as Speed Sr., complete with Reed Richards-style white streaks over his temples. Speed Jr. is supposed to be hip and trendy, and hangs out with people with names like Nitro, Clutch and Vortex. (NItro is a girl with purple hair, Vortex wears a sort of Tron-looking jumpsuit.)

Speed Racer: The Next Generation (2008). A new animated series airing on NickToons and then coming out almost immediately on DVD, this series looks like it'll consist of three 30-minute episodes squished into 90-minute TV movies. Like Speed Racer Lives, this is all about the son of the original Speed Racer, who goes to a racing school where Speed's younger brother Spridle is the headmaster. And there's a new Racer X as well as an evil racing girl named Annalise. New characters include Speed's friends Conor and Lucy, plus a robot monkey named Chim Chim. The new Speed has to prove his worth, probably by winning a really important race.

In the sequel, Mia Farrow and Danny Glover would pair off, and so would Alma (the cute dry-cleaning girl) and Mos Def. But poor demented Jack Black is left alone... until he finds a cute dog and becomes attached to it. And then everybody decides to mount a socialist revolution and take over the city hall of Passaic, NJ. They open a restaurant that gives away free food, they refuse to support the Iraq war, and they create more jobs for everyone.

Everything's fine for a while, until Danny Glover gets a brain tumor that turns him into a raving racist. He freaks out at Jack Black and drives him away, claiming that Polish people tricked African Americans into taking the lowest paid jobs. "It's terrible, frenzied, racism," says Gondry. Things get worse and worse, until a race war is starting. "Segregation is reinstalled."

Mos Def leads the African American community, and Jack Black leads the Polish community. (This is actually where my suspension of disbelief fails.) And Alma leads the Latino community. Everybody gets into a horrible fight.

But then the cute little dog dies, and somehow this convinces everybody to stop their race war. And then everybody realizes that Danny Glover just had a benign brain tumor, which made him turn racist. So everything goes back to normal.

It would definitely be the most demented Gondry film yet. I would probably pay $10 just to see Jack Black playing a zany manic white supremacist. But I might have a lot of elbow room in the theater. At the very least, it sounds more interesting than Cloverfield 2. [MTV Movies]

I love the look on the forklift operator's face. Says scriptwriter/comics artist Kang:

I wanted to maintain the grace of the original film and to overcome the difficulties and limitations a sequel could have. And I wish to show more action with multiple monsters.

The Host 2 takes place in 2003, six months before the first movie. Once again, our sympathies are with the regular people. We follow the street vendors displaced by the renovation and the demolition workers and police involved in it. Supposedly a line in the movie actually mentions Lee pushing for the river project so he can run for president. The project disturbs horrible creatures that live underground, and you can guess the rest. Monster pile-on! [Scifi Japan, via MonsterFest]

The X-Men already have an upcoming spinoff with the lengthily-titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine coming out sometime in the next couple of years. However, Fox wants to prime the registers a bit early and start pumping out direct to DVD movies for the lesser characters, while top-tier mutants like Magneto get their own feature films.

Joe Carnahan, who directed last year's wankfest Smokin' Aces, is already working on a direct to DVD Smokin' Aces sequel (shoot us already), and possibly a direct to DVD X-Men Origins: Juggernaut movie. Last week he posted an image of Juggernaut on his blog, saying "I'll let you guys go nuts on this one." If by "go nuts" you mean "wail in despair," then no problem.

DVDX [Comic Book Resources]