The genre: Military science fiction
The book: Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein.
Actually, Wikipedia and Fandomania credit the earliest beginnings of military SF to George T. Chesney's 1871 Germany-invades-England tale "The Battle Of Dorking" and George T. Griffith's serialized "The Angel Of Revolution," plus the works of H.G. Wells. But the book that everybody refers to as the touchstone of military SF, the book which really launched the themes of futuristic interplanetary warfare and examining the military as a social entity, was Heinlein's Starship Troopers. As Fandomania's survey puts it, this 1959 book "put Military Science Fiction on the radar."

The genre: Cyberpunk
The book: Neuromancer by William Gibson.
There's some debate about who really "invented" Cyberpunk as a genre. As this cranky essay (PDF) notes, Asimov was the first writer to consider the ramifications of artificial intelligence seriously. Bruce Sterling helped shape the genre with his 1986 anthology Mirrorshades. Bruce Bethke invented the term "cyberpunk" with his 1980 short story called "Cyberpunk." But even Bethke admits:

I never claimed to have invented cyberpunk fiction! That honor belongs primarily to William Gibson, whose 1984 novel, Neuromancer, was the real defining work of "The Movement." (At the time, Mike Swanwick argued that the movement writers should properly be termed neuromantics, since so much of what they were doing was clearly Imitation Neuromancer.)

Gibson's Neuromancer gives us the fusion of noir with brain-computer interfaces and dystopian paranoia, which spawned so many imitators.

The genre: Gothic science fiction
The book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Commonly acclaimed as the first science fiction novel in general, Frankenstein was the first novel to meld the burgeoning gothic lit genre with the themes of abuse of science. Brian Aldiss, in his seminal work of SF criticism The Billion-Year Spree, claims that SF was "born out of the gothic mode" with Frankenstein. As CUNY professor Lilia Melani puts it:

In 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus introduced the theme of the dangers of science and created the obsessed scientist, who was to develop into the mad scientist, and the archetypal Monster. Frankenstein has been called the first science fiction novel; she of course thought she was writing a novel of terror.

Gothic science fiction has come to mean any science-fictional story with terrifying elements, a horrendous monster or some kind of science-fictional explanation for a horror trope, like vampires created by a bio-engineered plague.

The genre: First contact with an alien race
The book: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. This was a tough one - even if you only define "first contact" as being a scenario where human society, as a whole, comes into contact with an alien species (and not just one solitary human explorer) you still have tons of early stories about aliens showing up. Some would say the earliest notable "first contact" novel is H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds. But let's say that a crucial component of the "first contact" story is that the aliens are friendly - or at least reasonably well-intentioned. Otherwise, you just have an invasion or war story. In that case, Childhood's End, with its super-advanced Overlords showing up and guiding humanity to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind, although somewhat disturbing, is still a more benign story than Wells'. And thus a more proper precursor to books like Carl Sagan's Contact and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis saga.

The genre: Utopian science fiction
The book: Stories of utopian futures are enjoying a bit of a resurgence, with the upcoming Shine Anthology pushing for a more optimistic futurism. But the first future utopian novel (as distinguished from, say, More's Utopia, which is the account of a fictional realm) is The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane C. Loudon. In this happy future, everyone wears neon hats:

The ladies were all arrayed in loose trowsers, over which hung drapery in graceful folds; and most of them caried on their heads, streams of lighted gas forced by capillary tubes, into plumes, fleurs-de-lis, or in short any form the wearer pleased; which jets de feu had an uncommonly chaste and elegant effect.

Other wonders include "the steam-powered automaton surgeons and lawyers (who speak briefs fed into tubes in their bodies) and the delivery of letters by cannon-balls, which are shot into large nets erected in each village." She even predicts a sort of Internet. Everyone travels around in giant blimps, and it's a happy, egalitarian society. There's also Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, in which a young man goes to sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the Socialist utopia of the year 2000 - Bellamy's book may have been more influential, along with H.G. Wells' A Modern Utopia. (Thanks to Liz Henry for the suggestions.)

The genre: Apocalyptic fiction
The book: The earliest apocalyptic novel is probably Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man. But the first really popular novel of global devastation, and the one which helped to spawn a ton of imitators, is Nevil Schute's 1957 novel On The Beach. As you'd expect from that date, it's all about nuclear holocaust, which devastates the Northern Hemisphere and leaves the last survivors in Australia and New Zealand, drinking way too much wine while awaiting the end of everything. It became a film and also helped shape our atomic anxiety into a rich seam of fiction that endures today in novels like The Road.

The genre: Steampunk
The book: Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy by K.W. Jeter. Jeter not only invented the term steampunk, in an interview around the time this 1987 novel came out. A weird comic twist on the Victorian adventure novel, Infernal Devices stars George, a young watchmaker who discovers that his father was the greatest inventor of all time - even creating a clockwork automaton version of George. The clockwork duplicate of George plays the violin better than Paganini and has greater sexual prowess than George himself, leading to all sorts of wacky adventures as people mistake George for his automaton twin. Other books that could claim to be steampunk pioneers include Anubis Gates by Tim Powers (1983) and Homunculus (1986) by James Blaylock. But to be fair, the book that really popularized the steampunk genre was 1990's The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

The genre: Time travel
The book: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This is sort of a gimme, I guess. The best-known early time-travel saga, and still one of the best, Wells' story launched a whole flotilla of time vessels into the distant future as well as the past. Like War Of The Worlds, it has been adapted into movies and various other formats, and the Eloi/Morlock dichotomy has become a sort of shorthand for a type of future dystopia rife with exaggerated social division.

The genre: Alternate history
The book: Histoire de la Monarchie universelle: Napoléon et la conquête du monde (History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon And The Conquest Of The World.) Screw those "Hitler wins World War II" books. How about this popular "Napoleon won the Napoleonic wars" book, published back when Napoleon was still a living memory? Louis Geoffroy imagines Napoleon's First French Empire defeating Russia and then going on to invade England in 1814. Result: Game over. Napoleon rules the world.

The genre: Posthuman space opera
The book: Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. I have no idea what book launched the "space opera" genre originally - that might be a question for another day. And there's some debate over which book inspired the resurgence of space-opera books loosely called "the new space opera." But to me, it's probably more accurate to call this genre "posthuman space-opera," since it so frequently deals with artificial intelligences, augmented humans, beings who live for millions of years, and generally a set of characters who far exceed the capabilities of a regular human. And for my money, the first really influential star-spanning novel about a civilization of A.I.s (the Minds) and superhumans whose concerns are much farther reaching than our pathetic horizons was 1987's Consider Phlebas. I freely admit this may be a bit of personal bias showing through, since Phlebas was the first novel I read which really knocked my head off and made me see the awesome potential for this type of story.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and create some more new genres!

Top image from Consider Phelbas cover.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Hey, we've all seen our fair share of batty as hell scifi PSAs. Let's not forget the Star Wars Drunk Driving PSA, let alone all the things we learned about dangerous empty refrigerators from G.I. Joe (because knowing is half the battle). While we are all for actors using their press for a good cause, and raising awareness about child abuse, pairing PSAs and Starship Troopers is, well strange. Check out these ads the Johnny Rico did for Child Help.

Here is the even stranger Power Suits head in the clouds PSA.

But honestly if Rico wants me to start killing some abusers, I'll fall in line because I always have been and always will be a Roughneck... (A member of Rico's Roughnecks). So let's support him in his plight against bugs and child abusers, and go to Child Help. And tell him, if he really wants us to listen, throw in a drunk alien.

Killon's focus on robotics has been a consistent aspect of his tenure as the Army's No. 1 scientist:

"[W]e're now seeing a generation of soldiers who are very comfortable with that technology. They don't have a second thought about the fact that they're using a robot to perform a task. They think that's just the way business is done. And that's how the future will be. They'll think of robots as collaborators or partners or members of their squad, and it won't be unusual for them anymore, like it would be for us, because we come from a prior generation. And that's important—that level of comfort and confidence is critical."

The Army's Acquisitions, Logistics and Technology (ALT) department has grown considerably under Killion's watch. He continues to think outside of the box: at a recent panel, he discussed the research of sensors that monitor brain functions, which could lead to enhanced prosthesis control. The Army demonstrated its experiments with exoskeletons as recently as last year. The development of a material that would help matters is also ongoing:

“We’re trying to develop new fabrics” that could make combat uniforms tough as steel, [director for research and laboratory management for the Army, John A.] Parmentola says. The answer is in nanotechnology. At the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, scientists are trying to grow single carbon nanotubes to about a foot in length. “Once we start getting them in length, the hope is that we’ll be able to spin them into fabric,” he says.

Located in proximity to the Liberty Bell, the features all the doodads that young people like. X-Boxes! Tom Clancy! Flying a chopper with your mind! Today they'll host a Madden tournament during the Eagles game to expose new eyes to their aggressive recruitment methods.

A big part of this tiny piece of the Army's recruiting plan hopes to appeal to a sector that desperately needs new jobs. "All those acquisition career fields require highly trained people; it's not just the PhD scientists — it's the business school graduates that understand basics economics and finance and can help us put together a good contract instrument," Killian told that audience. It's not like they have a whole lot else to do: U.S.A.!

Army Scientists in Pursuit of the Extraordinary [National Defense Magazine]

The Bugs - or Arachnids - in Starship Troopers are at least three times bigger than the average member of the Mobile Infantry forces. This may seem comfortably outlandish from where you're sitting (hopefully with an armrest of bug-free Coca-Cola and a lap full of untainted popcorn) in the theater, but in prehistoric times, it actually was possible for arthropods to grow almost that large. Insects in that oxygen-rich atmosphere could easily suck up nourishment through their trachea, and that's why creatures like the Jaekelopterus rhenaniae (an 8-foot sea scorpion) and the Arthropleura (an 8.5-foot millipede) walked the earth.

Nowadays, however, having an open circulatory system isn't such a piece of cake. Arthropods have no blood vessels to transport oxygenated cells in their bodies, so they must wait for the oxygen to diffuse through their body tissue — and the oxygen concentration in the air is a lot lower now that there are six billion humans hogging it, too. So you won't be seeing 8-foot insects in your house anytime soon, but the present day still offers us a host of shudder-worthy members of the phylum arthropod.

Giant burrowing cockroach. This crawly fellow, which hails from Australia, is the longest and heaviest type of cockroach on Earth. Measuring up to 8 centimeters and weighing in at 35 grams, it narrowly beats the giant cockroach, or blaberus giganteus.) Apparently some people keep giant burrowing cockroaches as pets; I wonder what the vet says when they show up.

Hercules beetle. In May, a few of these babies caused quite a stir when they showed up inside packages at a Pennsylvania post office. Customs officials were probably nonplussed to discover beetles that were fifteen centimeters in diameter — but I'm sure they felt better when they found out that the largest Hercules beetles can reach up to seventeen centimeters.

Phobaeticus serratipes. This is the longest known insect, a stick bug that has reached up to 55 centimeters on record. That's only with legs fully extended, however, so I'm sure that makes you feel better. The Phobaeticus lives in Malaysia and Singapore, and catches the eyes of a few pet owners there, too.

Goliath birdeater. The most traumatic event of my childhood was discovering a 20-centimeter-long spider on the floor of my bathroom, but it turns out things could have been much, much worse for me. In the rainforests of South America, 30-centimeter-long spiders lie in wait — and oh yeah, they sometimes eat birds and mice. Ye gods.

Amazonian giant centipede. The Scolopendra gigantea is carnivorous, can grow more than 30 centimeters long, it might have as many as 46 legs, and its venom is dangerous to humans. It must be really, really adorable anyway, because people still keep Amazonian giant centipedes as pets — this guy in Trinidad, for example, looks pretty happy with his.

Japanese spider crab. This is the largest known arthropod on Earth today: Fully grown, it can reach a leg span of 4 meters and a weight of 20 kilograms. As if being huge isn't enough, this species also has a life expectancy of 100 years. Japanese spider crabs live at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and frankly, I'm happy to leave them there.

Images from Australian Museum Online, DK Images, God of Insects, Weekly Echo, BigHairySpiders.com, and Wikipedia.

First off: Casper Van Dien should only play Johnny Rico for the rest of his life. He totally and completely sells the Rico facade so well that, if I ever got the chance to hang out with Casper, I would demand that he be addressed only as Rico, and that the conversation topic would remain strictly on killing bugs. But although he's great in Marauder, the rest of the movie - like the Federation - has both its good and its terribly awful sides.

New faces in Marauder include big-lipped lady pilot Lola Beck (Jolene Blalock) and Dix Hauser (Boris Kodje), who both served with Rico at one time and, like him, have moved up the military food chain. Lola is an ex-girlfriend of Rico who is now shaking it up with Dix, who is a real...well you get the joke. But more important than the new troopers are the new bugs: Marauder gives us a few new battle-ready insects including an exploding pill bug (similar to a grenade), scorpions that shoot hot blue goo out of their asses and, best of all, the biggest brain bug of them all... which just happens to be as large as a planet. And if you thought the first brain bug looked like lady bits, wait until you get a load of its master. If this bug was ever shown on television it's going to have to be pixelated tremendously.

The story takes off with the reuniting of old friends Rico, Lola and Dix on a once-peaceful farming planet in the "outer colonies" (hello Firefly reference). Dix and Lola fly about with the famous pop star Sky Marshall, who can't take three steps with out a fan asking for an autograph and also happens to be the most powerful man in the universe. When the planet comes under bug attack, Lola gets stranded on a desert island with the Marshall and - one ego-fueled back and forth later - Dix sends Rico out to save the love of his life (That would be Lola, in case you're wondering). Cue Rico getting naked (including quickie frontal shot) and putting on the infamous Power Suits.

The storyline is hastily strung together based around what seemed more like what the movie could afford and less what the writers wanted to do. There were quite a few moments when asshole moves made by major characters were quickly forgotten because, really: who has the money for character development?, and a lot of plot troubles were swept under the rug in favor of more explosions and decapitations. Which normally is fine by me, but the important thing about the original Starship Troopers is even though it was cheestastic, it made me care about the characters. True, watching Dina Merer gasp her way through what could be considered the world's worst death scene was excruciating, but I was still sad to see Diz go because I fell in love with that character and her stereotypical actions. Unfortunately for Marauder, the only characters I cared about were the Sky Marshall and Rico, because I already loved the rough neck and SM was the only character they cared to give a back story that wasn't just "she's religious."

While the original movie's director Paul Verhoeven took a producer's chair on Marauder, a lot of the best parts of the original Troopers were missing. Sure, the Sky Marshall schtick is pretty funny (and his anthem "It's A Good Day To Die" will be stuck in your head forever) but the whole, "sign up and die for your government" takes a back seat to religious spoofing which makes little to no sense. So while you'll be getting plenty of new recruiting commercials, be prepared for the religious humor which doesn't commit enough to actually be funny. It's actually quite disappointing that director and writer of Robocop fame, Ed Neumeier, would make a commercial aimed at recruiting gays into the Federation's Fleet with the hilarious tag line: "People say boys don't give good H.E.D. but I do," from an incredibly effeminate soldier, and yet he glosses over the religion jokes with a simple, people who have faith can be silly. If you're not going to tackle the issue with some sort of poignant moment (be it serious or funny) then why bring it up?

That being said, it's worth the rental just to hear the announcer ask "would you like to know more?" Plenty of Marauder is squash-the-bug good fun; don't look for the spot-on humor, but, hey - it's a DVD, so there had to be sacrifices somewhere. Personally, I would have loved a Neil Patrick Harris cameo in his hilarious Nazi uniform (there was no NPH to speak of sadly), but I did like the addition of giant crosses to the front of the Federation suits. Rico had to carry the brunt of acting with a deadly serious face while delivering ridiculous dialog on his own shoulders. If only Neurmeier had taken to time to work out the religious humor, we would have had a movie that would have adults everywhere screaming for Power Suit toys.

It's happened to all of us. We read a novel that blows us away, and a few years later its title appears on posters underneath the face of Harrison Ford or Natalie Portman. But at some inevitable point in that darkened theater, the movie takes a turn we didn't expect. Our eyebrows go up, our lips turn down, and the disappointment begins. Maybe the wrong director or writer can curse an otherwise excellent project — or maybe some things were just never meant to be filmed. Here are 10 books that we think should never have been committed to celluloid.

DUNE by Frank Herbert

There's no doubt about it: Herbert's Dune is a bona fide classic. It won the first ever Nebula award and the 1966 Hugo award, and most consider it to be the best-selling sci-fi novel in history. Set in a future where a feudal empire controls the planets of the unvierse, the novel tells the story of young nobleman Paul Atreides and his family's rule of the desert planet Arrakis. Arrakis is the only source of "melange," an addictive spice that lengthens lives and makes interstellar travel possible. Herbert's book explores the power struggles that arise around the spice, and the complexity of human society that exists even in the far future.

Big shoes to fill for a film producer. Yet in 1984 David Lynch wrote and directed a movie version of Dune, rescuing it from development hell and plunging it into bad-adaptation hell. Reviews panned the movie — Roger Ebert deemed it "the worst movie of the year," and others expressed similar disgust. Despite the movie's 40-million-dollar budget, its effects were notably cheap, and the screenplay did not hold up to the challenge of translating a four-hundred-page book to screen. You'd think you couldn't go wrong with Patrick Stewart, Sting, and Jürgen Prochnow, but evidently you very much can.

FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury

Who could forget Fahrenheit 451, "the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns …"? Bradbury's classic 1953 novel takes place in a dystopian future where television has entirely replaced the printed word, and firemen burn books instead of saving lives. The author himself has stated that the point of the story was to showcase how owning a TV set can destroy all interest in literature — so making a movie version seems pretty damn ballsy to say the least.

With that in mind, the 1966 film, helmed by French icon François Truffaut, seems doomed from the start. It certainly didn't help that there were many notable omissions, like the disappearance of the novel's nuclear war (which is, let's face it, a pretty big cut). Julie Christie plays the main character's wife and his illicit lover, which adds an extra level of pointless weirdness. The bottom line is, there are plenty of books for which you can tell your friends to "just watch the movie." But in the case of Fahrenheit 451, that probably makes you kind of fascist. Just sayin'.

V FOR VENDETTA by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

The book is probably one of the best graphic novels ever produced. Detailing the adventures of a masked anarchist and his sweet blond protégée, Moore's writing also delves far deeply beyond his two main characters into complex themes of fascism, anarchy, identity, and the meaning of life itself. Nobody is without a story to tell: Even his villains are creepily sympathetic. By the end of the comic, every reader will have at least one Lloyd image burned in their brain, and be wondering — with no small amount of fear — exactly how much control their government does have.

Enter the movie. For the Wachowski brothers, the boys who gave us the two-thirds-sucky Matrix trilogy, setting this story to film was easy. They just had to cut out all of the character depth, change Moore's nuanced portrayal of British fascism to the cookie-cutter Hollywood standby of Suited White Men, and (of course) turn the subtle, understated relationship of the main characters into romantic pining. But hey, at least they got the costume right.

A WRINKLE IN TIME by Madeleine L'Engle

Though it's often marketed as a young-adult fantasy novel, make no mistake: This book is without a doubt a sci-fi classic for all generations, an incredible tale that deftly blends science, speculation, and humanity. L'Engle's 1962 story invented the concept of a "tesseract" — the fifth dimension, a phenomenon that folds the fabric of space and time. It introduced a mother who cooks dinner on a Bunsen burner, a father whose research leaves him imprisoned on another planet, and a brother and sister whose loving relationship turns out to be the most important thing in the universe.

Mostly we make an effort to ignore it, but it's true: Many of the great sci-fi writers were (and are) better at dreaming up nifty science ideas than they were at weaving together a compelling story. L'Engle, however, belongs in no such group. Her work was never meant to be a crappy Disney movie, and yet in 2003, a crappy Disney made-for-TV adaptation appeared that one critic described as "lightweight, saccharine, rather slow going most of the way, and somewhat simplistic" as well as "sometimes clunky, and... often uninspiring". Let us speak no more about it.

THE MINORITY REPORT by Philip K. Dick

Dick's 1956 short story introduced the chilling concept of "precrime," a police system whose officers arrest would-be murderers, rapists, and thieves before they get a chance to do their dirty deeds. His futuristic New York City is a world where three future-seeing mutants control who goes to prison and who doesn't, and free will is a gray area — a luxury that not everyone possesses. One veteran cop, after seeing a prediction that he will kill someone he doesn't even know, is having none of it.

So what did Steven Spielberg's 2002 movie add, besides a gross eye transplant? Well, for one, it brought in Tom Cruise — balding, out-of-shape 50-year-olds are never attractive narrators as far as Hollywood's concerned, no matter what they might be able to share with us in real life. The setting's different, too, and names have been changed, but at least it presents the idea with a lot more nifty special effects and a lot less storytelling, right? And that, my friends, is frighteningly endemic of the print-to-film adaptation.

I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov

This is a revolutionary sci-fi classic, a collection of nine short stories exploring the limitations and dangers of human-created artificial intelligence. Asimov's 1950 publication of I, Robot established the Three Laws of Robotics, supposedly unbreakable rules which govern the actions of these metal beings, and his short stories read like the best sci-fi mind puzzles you will ever find.

2004's movie adaptation was undeniably well done, and it ended up being one of the best of the year — due in no small part to Jeff Vintar's tight script and the total awesomeness of Will Smith and Chi McBride. Asimov certainly meant to get us thinking, so one could imagine he'd be pleased that his work inspired a smart sci-fi thriller like this. As it happens, however, the main plot of the movie is actually lifted from a 1939 short story by Eando Binder that bears the same name; Asimov's publisher gave his collection the same title, against Asimov's wishes. The Three Laws of Robotics were only added to the script after the film's producers secured the rights to Asimov's anthology. This project, then, has been plagued from the beginning by intellectual property snafus: It's a confused collaboration of several minds, and it seems that not all the minds involved were properly credited. And since it's caused most of the problems, can we let go of that title already?

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer

It's a crusty old staple of hard sci-fi, a 1933 novel that first saw print as a magazine serial. Wylie and Balmer's story begins with a South African astronomer, Sven Bronson, who discovers that a pair of rogue planets are headed for Earth's orbit. Only a small group of scientists believe his claim; they work to build two ships that will carry the beginnings of a new human settlement to one of the rogue planets, which is projected to replace Earth in its orbit. This is the kind of pre-NASA speculation that works best in old-fashioned typewriter font on yellowed paper.

But of course, Hollywood felt the need to put it in Technicolor. The film adaptation did win an Oscar for special effects, but it was 1951, so you decide for yourself if that's impressive. The movie's story doesn't so much explore sci-fi ideas as showcase human hysteria when tidal waves sweep the Earth and survivors are chosen by lottery — and it naturally also allows for the most groan-worthy of romance subplots. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the way the film's hero pushes his handicapped financier off the boarding ramp as the ship leaves, despite the fact that he funded the entire project. "Politically incorrect" doesn't begin to cover it. Apparently there's a remake of the film scheduled for a 2010 release — isn't one mistake supposed to teach you a lesson?

STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein

War sucks, and Heinlein proved it with his 1960 Hugo-award-winning novel. Told from the point of view of Johnnie Rico, a young soldier, this futuristic tale explores a world where only veterans can vote or hold public office — and where humankind battles endlessly with giant bugs. Rico's flashbacks to his time at school, and his experiences in the military, serve to illustrate the total destruction that war causes.

In the book, the bugs barely ever appear; Rico views them only through a giant battle suit. For the 1997 film adaptation, though, that was not an option — after all, there ain't a moviegoer born of woman who doesn't want to see giant grasshoppers. Special effects left little screen time for Heinlein's philosophy discussions, but director Paul Verhoeven admitted he never got past the first few chapters of the novel anyway. If he hated the story that much, what do you think was keeping him from writing and directing his own friggin' screenplay?

THE POSTMAN by David Brin

Originally published as two novellas (both of which won Hugo awards), this post-apocalyptic story grapples with the concepts of survivalism, civilization, and hope. In a world destroyed not by disasters but by its own people, one man discovers a worn-out United States Postal Service uniform — and discovers that his fellow humans are so desperate they'll even take hope from that. The complete novel, published as the two novellas combined, was named the best science fiction novel of the year in 1986 in the John W. Campbell awards.

And then Kevin Costner decided to direct and star in a film adaptation. The 1997 story, while still broadcasting a message of hope, centered that message more around the Postman as a war hero — and don't forget his tagalong baby mama. The New York Times blasted the movie for its "bogus sentimentality" and "mawkish jingoism," but Roger Ebert warned that we "shouldn't blame them for trying." Well, I think perhaps we should.

THIS ISLAND EARTH by Raymond F. Jones

The year 1952, I'm sure, saw many new creations in sci-fi, but I'm willing to bet that almost none of them were as silly as the interociter — an alien transmission device, which despite its apparent sophistication is about as big as a truck. Jones gave us the interociter in his novel This Island Earth, which told of an alien race that recruited Earth's greatest thinkers for a group called the "Peace Engineers." Not surprisingly, the "Peace Engineers" were actually helping the aliens wage an intergalactic war. On a planet that had already seen the genius of 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, this should not have seemed a good candidate for a film adaptation.

Since the movie version of This Island Earth now gets most of its viewings in the form of Mystery Science Theater 3000's lampoon, the folly of bringing it to film is assured. Plastic skulldomes, toilet thrones, and raspberry bushes are not the stuff of eternal movie classics. Before you adapt a book, my advice is to run it through a quick Mike-Joel-Crow-Tom Servo test. You might be surprised how much money you save on camera equipment and actors.

Game:

Here's another new image from Game, the new movie about Gerard "300" Butler being trapped in a video game and forced to kill to survive. [First Showing]

Starship Troopers: Marauder:

The Starship Troopers 3 fansite got some new images from the direct-to-DVD movie, including what the new marauder armor will look like, some kind of lander vehicle, and Jolene Blalock looking awesome. More pics at the link. [Starship Troopers 3 via JoBlo]

Lost:

Lost producer Carlton Cuse spilled some new info. In Lost season five, Jack will become more of a man of faith, and Locke will become more of a man of science. We'll learn what happened to Locke (and the Others) after he embraced his destiny to be "in charge" of the island. Also, Locke's story isn't done yet, and there's a hint that he may have a Jesus-esque resurrection. Meanwhile, Kate will end up with either Jack or Sawyer eventually.

Also, people's theories about the show are wrong because you don't have enough information and the explanation for everything isn't simple. [Lost Spoilers]

Heroes:

The first four episodes of Heroes season one are called "The Butterfly Effect," "Dreamtime," "One Of Us, One Of Them," and "The Year Of Our Lord." ("Dreamtime" introduces that Aboriginal storyteller we've mentioned.) And the fifth episode introduces a mean SOB named Eric Doyle, a white guy in his thirties or forties, who's "hideous, horrible and big," and who "delights in controlling others." He'll also be in the sixth episode, and possibly beyond. [Spoilerfix]

And remember that spoiler we posted about a dark-haired Claire (from a future/alternate dimension) shooting her uncle Peter and saying she's always loved him? Well, here are a couple of pics of that scene being filmed. Also visible: Future Peter, complete with scar. (More pics at the link.) [Just Jared]

Eureka:

Eureka will introduce a new character this season: Lexi (Ever Carradine), the free-spirited sister of Sheriff Carter, who appears in at least four of this summer's eight episodes. [Hollywood Reporter]

Doctor Who:

As usual, Digital Spy has posted some spoilers for this Saturday's "Doctor Who episode, along with three fake spoilers. The one about K-9 rescuing the Doctor's daughter from a black hole seems obviously fake, although you never know. And it's definitely true that Wilf wields a cricket bat, since it's in the trailer. Here's the list:

• Wilf wields a cricket bat.
• Davros has been harvesting bees into a new army of Daleks.
• The Daleks know the identity of a certain former Prime Minister.
• Captain Jack becomes angry at Paul O'Grady's effect on Ianto Jones.
• A certain body part in a jar is bubbling.
• A Dalek exterminates the Torchwood pterodactyl.
• The fate of a character from 'Voyage Of The Damned' is revealed.
• Wilf was banned from using a webcam as there were suspicions over what he might use it for.
• Project Indigo holds the key to salvation.
• The Doctor's daughter Jenny is trapped near a black hole, but K-9 is sent to rescue her.
• A Dalek speaks to Mr. Smith.
• The Time War was 'time locked', or so thought The Doctor.

And here's a new teaser trailer featuring the sporty red Dalek. And another trailer, with Davros speaking! [TARDIS Base]

Also, the official cast list for Saturday's episode includes Martha's mother, Sarah Jane's computer "Mr. Smith," Sarah Jane's adoptive son Luke, plus Richard Dawkins and talk show host Paul O'Grady playing themselves. [Doctor Who Hideout]

[Twitch]

As I said above, the story of evil humans coming and despoiling an alien planet is nothing new in written science fiction. Off the top of my head, there's Ursula LeGuin's The Word For World Is Forest, among others. I'm almost done reading Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods (review coming soon) which deals with this theme. But I can't think of too many movies which have handled this type of storyline. (Enemy Mine, I guess.)

We still don't know all of the plot details for James Cameron's Avatar, coming in 2009, but an early "scriptment" that's reputed to be real includes a lot of information. In a nutshell, Earth is ruined due to centuries of exploitation, and we've used up all our resources. So we decide to go and plunder the mineral wealth of the planet Pandora, whose atmosphere is poisonous to us. Humans can only walk around on Pandora by growing special alien bodies, akin to the native Na'vi aliens. The humans can control their own vat-grown Na'vi bodies, which are called avatars. (We don't know how much of this stuff survives in the final script, but Sigourney Weaver's comments about her character having "her own avatar" make it sound as though it's still there in some form.)

In addition to these surrogate aliens, the humans have also landed some bloodthirsty troops who hate the natives and want to wipe them out. So there's a conflict between the Avatar-using humans, who want to understand the natives (who are basically Native Americans) and the power-armor-using troops, who want to bulldoze all the natives' sacred lands and kill them all. This leads to a speech by our hero, Josh:

Pandora is not Hell, it's Eden. And Eden is being bulldozed and stripmined and raped. We have no right. We are the aliens here. We are the space monsters.

If that sounds too subtle for you, then there's Terra, which we covered the other day. The new full-length animated film is about humans coming to terraform a planet of peaceloving aliens, after Earth has become basically uninhabitable. We already terraformed Venus and Mars, but then the planets had a huge civil war. So now we have to come and use our transforming device to turn Terra's helium atmosphere into oxygen.

Are you seeing a trend here? The stories about humans as scourge of the cosmos are what come after the post-apocalyptic Earth stories. We ruin our own planet, so we have to go and fuck up someone else's planet. (That's also the storyline in the Winterson book, where Orbus is about to become unable to support human life.) There could also be some guilt about the Iraq war and our various other foreign adventures, which we could be excising.

There's also the remake of the original humans-are-assholes movie The Day The Earth Stood Still, coming this December, in which peaceful aliens warn us not to take our asshole ways out into space. And there's a new direct-to-DVD sequel to Starship Troopers coming out in a couple of months. In the original Troopers, director Paul Verhoeven's aim was to show that humans were the aggressors and the bugs were simply reacting to human colonies encroaching on their territory. This message flew over a lot of people's heads, so maybe Troopers scriptwriter Ed Neumeier (who's directing the new movie) will make it more blatant this time around.

And then there's also the animated Planet 51, starring the Rock, in which the peaceful aliens think the humans are there to invade and despoil their planet. But they're wrong... or are they?

I guess there's not enough examples there to argue that this is a sweeping new trend. And of course the post-apocalyptic Earth movie has one major advantage over the alien world epic: it's cheap to film, since you can make a post-apocalyptic landscape almost anywhere you can find some rubble.

"I'm really glad to be back as Johnny Rico," says Van Dien. "It's 11 years later. I'm a little bit older and hopefully a little wiser. And ah yeah, he's killing bugs."

It has been ten years since the bug war has been going on. And Neumeier wants to use that time, and the effect it has on people, to show what a long war can do to government and society.

Clip 1: News Reel/Rico's Back

It's a Federal Network newsreel updating viewers on the Bug War. There are new bugs that the Federation wants to keep their troops updated on such as bombardier bugs which act like little kamakaze grenades. The reel then attempts to address the question "Are We Losing This War?" The answer, "Don't Bet On It." The next segment deals with the strict penalty the Federation is doling out for war protesters: execution. The announcer bellows, "People need to watch what they say." Quickly adding to the lists of things not to do while under the rule of The Federation is a segment on religious worship. Apparently that too, "will not be tolerated if it destabilizes our war efforts."

Moving on, the reel focuses on something more positive: music. The hottest ticket seems to be on military personnel who can also carry a tune. And not just any tune: the newscaster leads us in a sing-along to, "It's always a good day to die." Don't forget to support the war effort by purchasing a coffee mug, pen or knife with the Federation's logo and sponsored singer on the back.

The scene then cuts to a military base under attack. A bombardier bug has been launched in and explodes, impaling one soldier with a shovel. But out of the shadows comes a statuesque figure with the jaw line of a lumberjack. It's none other than Colonel Johnny Rico himself. He reaches over, pulls out the shovel and demands action. He turns to the wounded and says, "Can you walk soldier? Give us a hand and pick up that arm and find out who it belongs to." Seriously, sold.

Clip 2: Excessive Punishment

At a local canteen best buds Rico, Lola and another new character Dix Hauzer demonstrate the rift between Federation and the non-citizens. Dix waxes on politically about how more people need to sign up because it's all about the numbers. He has on glasses and talks about math, so he's obviously a geek. Dix then makes a toast to The Federation and only those in military dress salute, while others (who are all strangely wearing flannel) jeer at Dix and his attitude. Then a hush falls over the crowd as a newsreel airs and someone yells out, "Quiet! It's hangin' time." The whole bar goes silent as a group of criminals are fitted with nooses on television. The announcers says, 'They've said goodbye to their families. All that remains is their payment against their crimes against you, citizen." Then the newsreel actually shows them going through with the hanging. It's not super graphic (more on that to come) but just truly unpleasant. Of course this action insights the locals at the pub to yell out to Dix and other Federation types, "You'll pay, you'll pay."

Clip 3: Gore!

The bugs have overwhelmed a military base and are crawling all over the facility. No new bugs yet, just your standard CGI crawlies from the first and second movies. A group of men are attacked and the bugs overpower them, ripping them to shreds. One bug struts off with a human head still impaled on its leg. What happens next is hard to tell because blood gets smeared on the lens and all you can see are the silhouettes of the bugs running back and forth.

Clip 4: Newsreel and Scorpion

The scene begins at another military base and Dix is yelling on a walkie-talkie that he is in charge but gets hit by some sort of blast. Dix falls and loses his glasses. And by Starship Trooper rules, falling down usually equals death, so he's probably gone. You then witness a man sacrificing his life for others by throwing himself atop a bombardier which leads to a good scene of organ-like goo being tossed in the air. Finally back to Rico as he takes out a massive Scorpion bug. Which literally is a giant Scorpion that can shoot a white laser blast out of its tail that kills people.

It's interrupted by another newsreel and finally we get to find out what the "Crack a Planet" phrase means from the first trailer. The news covers the Q bomb debate. Apparently the Federation has concocted a bomb strong enough to blow up a planet. Next is a join-the-Fleet draft commercial: you just have to pass your H.E.D.'s and be of a certain age. It cuts to a young enlistee man giving the camera "the eyes" stating that, "people say boys don't give great H.E.D., but I do." Yikes.

More Spoilers:

While there were only two bugs revealed in the clips there is still one more bug yet to be discovered. Neumeier promises that this bug will be the biggest bug ever. Also during the question and answer segment a fan asked when they would start implementing Heinlein's mech suits or life suits, and Neumeirer suggested they watch the 3rd movie intently. But what about the destruction that Starship Troopers 2 wreaked, with the whole bugs impersonating humans, will audiences be seeing this in 3? Neumeier skirted this issue saying, "I think there is always room for that."

Star Wars: A New Hope

Tattoine, the remote desert planet where Luke Skywalker is raised by his Aunt and Uncle, is full of nomads and farmers who scrabble out a life among rocks and dunes. The Jawas roam around in caravans, and the Tusken Raiders are dressed in strips of towel and called only by a name (Sand People) that is probably the space version of a well-known US epithet for Arabs. The only "nice" people on the planet appear to be the transplanted (white) humans like Skywalker and Obi Wan. As usual, George Lucas serves up racial stereotypes, likes white people, and doesn't do much else.

Dune

Arakis, the desert planet whose rolling dunes shelter sandworms and a tribe of polygamous insurrectionaries known as the Fremen, is clearly set up as a Middle Eastern country that has been colonized for centuries. Arakis is the only source of "the spice," a substance that makes interplanetary space travel possible and is mined from the sands by giant spice rigs (that look a lot like oil rigs in the films). Not only is the culture in the Dune universe intended to refer to Muslim culture — for instance, a massive war is referred to as a "Jihad" — but the economy of Arakis is similar to the Saudi, Kuwaiti or Iraqi economies. The planet is full of many oppressed tribes, and ruled by a tiny elite class that trades a single natural energy source for wealth and power. What's interesting is that the books side with the Fremen, who are essentially the insurgents bent on overthrowing the wealthy offworlders who want Arakis' spice.

Stargate (the movie)

While the Stargate television series deal with many different worlds, the original film is focused on only one: Abydos, a land of space Egyptians, ruled by an alien named Ra. According to Stargate lore, Ra came to Earth during the Egyptian era to steal slaves for Abydos. So the culture of the desert planet is a direct descendant of early Middle Eastern culture on Earth. Weirdly, it hasn't developed in the centuries since its transplantation, though of course modern Egypt on Earth is far more technologically advanced than ancient Egypt. It's as if the people on Abydos have just been waiting for some white dude to come and rescue them.

Starship Troopers (the movie)

In the first Starship Troopers film, and the book, our Earth soldiers first attempt to mow down the alien bugs on their home planet of Klendathu. It's a desert planet, much like Planet P where the bugs and humans do most of their fighting in the first movie. While there is no direct connection between the culture of the bugs and Middle Eastern cultures, the desert surroundings definitely suggest it. The bugs are the ultimate, dehumanized "enemy," and therefore it's tempting to say they stand in for Iraqis since the films were all made during a period in history when there was tension between Iraq and the United States. Still, it would be just as easy to say the bugs stand in for other "enemies" in desert regions. So the connection in this franchise between a desert planet and the Middle East is weaker than in the previous three, though it's still there. Especially because so much wartime propaganda is about dehumanizing the enemy.

The Years of Rice and Salt

This novel by Kim Stanley Robinson is not set on another planet — instead, it's set on a very different Earth from our own. It's an Earth where the plagues of the middle ages wiped out nearly all of Christian Europe, and where Islam became the dominant religion in the West. So it's not about the Middle East, but instead a brilliant thought-experiment in which what many people think of as "Middle Eastern culture" has been superimposed on what many think of as "Western culture." The results? Muslim feminism, for one thing. And India colonizes Europe rather than the other way around.

• Major Alan "Dutch" Schaefer from Predator: As the only surviving member of a squad who encountered a Predator, Dutch isn't afraid to take risks and do what he needs to do to survive. He might not be the best at keeping everyone around him alive, but he'll make sure the objective is taken out no matter what the cost. Plus he's handy to have around for catchphrases and one-liners.
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• Second Lieutenant Juan "Johnny" Rico from Starship Troopers: Sure, he may have joined up for a girl, and he almost washed himself out after he got a squadmate killed, but when the going got tough he decided to man up for the job. Heck, he was even reported dead and survived a giant claw through his thigh.
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• Sergeant Todd from Soldier: As a genetically engineered soldier who has been trained since birth, Todd won't break down and start wishing he was back home during a skirmish in the rings of Saturn. He's a cold, calculating, killing machine, and he's there to get the job done. Just don't expect him to show any emotion.
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• Sergeant Andrew Scott from Universal Soldier: You'd need two sergeants to keep a group like this in line, so why not balance out Sgt. Todd's emotionless stare with the over the top insanity from Sgt. Scott? He'd be crazy enough to put the fear of god in you, and you probably wouldn't question his orders.
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• Master Chief from Halo: As another genetically engineered super soldier, Master Chief is already tough under his hardened battle armor, and he'd be the perfect man to throw at groups of invading aliens for some brute force action. Plus he seems to have an endless supply of lives on-hand, which could come in handy.
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• Mandalorian Supercommando Jango Fett from Star Wars: Jango Fett was so tough and feared that they eventually engineered an entire clone army of soldiers from his DNA. He could go toe to toe with Jedi Knights and survive (for the most part), although his clones didn't seem to be able to shoot that straight. He's handy to have around to serve as every member of the squad in case you lose someone.
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• Pvt. First Class Jenette Vasquez from Aliens: Vasquez was tougher than every man on her squad in Aliens, proving that she could trade bullets with the best of them. She lugged around a giant M56 Smart Gun, and she wasn't afraid to get down, dirty, and up close with a pistol. Plus, women in uniform who kick as much ass as she does are just hot.
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• Colonial Fleet Ensign Samuel Anders from Battlestar Galactica: As a former star Pyramid player for the Caprica Buccaneers, Anders has the moves and the stamina to pull off flanking maneuvers and keep going when the going gets tough. He's also just found out he's a Cylon, and I'm sure that means he has other capabilities as well. Of course, he might murder you in your sleep too.
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• Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart from Doctor Who: As the leader of U.N.I.T. (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce), he's used to handling strange situations and issuing commands under pressure. From his dealings with the Doctor, he's also used to seeing a lot of really strange shit, so he'd be cool and calm while time-traveling wraiths try to invade. Also, he probably makes a darn good cup of tea.

• Thanks to Finite_Elephant for suggesting this triviagasm. Got other ideas? Let us have 'em!

1. Double mouth, or double-wide mouth. (See: Alien)

As the Alien series taught us, there's nothing scarier than a really long, giant toothy mouth — especially if there's a second long, toothy mouth inside it. But the long, toothy mouth rule shows up in a lot of alien movies. In Slither, for example, a guy is taken over by an alien and one of the first things it does is elongate his mouth so that it practically stretches to his ears on one side. (Lopsided elongated mouths are a bonus — lopsided is always scary.)

Corollary: Drool

A scary alien must drool. Again, we know this from the Alien series where the drool flows like water. But since Ridley Scott first gave us full frontal drool in the first Alien flick, drool has been the sign of scary for all aliens. It says "out of control." Now, of course, we cannot imagine any monster without drool. See, for instance, Beowulf, where the monster's drool is one of the first 3D effects. And there's 3D drool coming up in Journey to the Center of the Earth, too. Dinosaur drool!

2. Collective Consciousness (See: Borg from Star Trek)

One of the scariest and most alien things we can imagine is a species that has collective consciousness, or group think. All their minds are connected together like a bunch of little networked Linux boxes, rapidly churning through all that knowledge to figure out exactly how to kill you. Plus, collectively conscious creatures can more easily coordinate an attack, because they are all in mental communication with each other all the time. And they might absorb you — think how scary it was the first time you saw the Borg chanting: "You will be assimilated."

3. Looks Exactly Like a Human (See: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

Somehow it's scarier when an alien looks exactly like a human, or is camouflaged as one. Even though Men in Black wasn't exactly scary, there was something uncanny when the alien took off its human skin and revealed its true face. And of course one of the reasons Hollywood has remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers four times in the past 50 years (Invasion was the most recent one) is that it's so freakin creepy that the aliens look perfectly human — except for the fact that they have no emotion. We will not, however, speak of the human-camo farting aliens from Doctor Who.

4. Treats Humans the Way Humans Treat Animals (See: Predator)

The infamous Twilight Zone tale "To Serve Man" packs all its punch into one single idea: the aliens have a cookbook ALL ABOUT EATING HUMANS! They look at us the way we look at chickens! The same idea lurks at the heart of popular franchise Predator, where the whole conceit is that the alien has just come to Earth on a safari to hunt human game. Where's the respect? 5. Polymorphous (See: The Thing)

If there's anything scarier than an alien that looks just like a human, it's an alien that can look like whatever it wants. Although the shiny, pretty aliens in Abyss wind up being our friends, they are super scary at first because they can morph into any shape they want. And of course what makes the thing in John Carpenter's version of The Thing so scary is that it can turn any body part into chunks of alien — human heads sprout legs, blood jumps up and runs around the room, people grow dog heads. Whoa. Same goes for the aliens in my personal favorite alien movie, Society, where a bunch of rich Beverly Hills types turn out to be polymorphous creatures who love to have giant orgies where they merge into a big room full of goo and eat humans.

6. Wants to Mate With Humans to Produce Scary Hybrid Offspring (See: Species)

The fear of an alien being who wants to mate with you probably goes back thousands of years, but in terms of current pop culture we can probably trace it back to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories of the 1920s. Remember, one of the scariest things about Cthulhu's spawn is that they are mating with humans, producing strange, fishy-looking humans who eventually go back to the sea. Combining this rule with rule 3 (looks human) is the Species franchise, where a super-hot alien lady goes around humping unsuspecting men for their seed and then killing them in flagrante delicto.

7. Buglike (See: Independence Day, Starship Troopers)

Buglike aliens are a staple of the genre. Even the aliens of Alien are buglike, with their hard carapaces. Bugs are so scary-looking already, and we suspect they may also participate in rule 2, having collective consciousness. In fact, "buglike" has become shorthand (sometimes lazy shorthand) for "scary alien," which is why you see so many depictions of aliens with feelers or antennae on their heads. Bug aliens show up in some of the most generic scifi flicks like Independence Day and Starship Troopers. But there are buggy aliens in more highbrow places too, like the Ender's Game series, where Earth is battling (and ultimately genociding) a buglike race.

We didn't see much more of Iron Man than you did if you watched the Superbowl commercial a few weeks ago, but director Jon Favreau did let it slip that he had to do some very creative editing to make this flick kid-friendly. No wonder, given that Iron Man as a character is about as dark as you can get: in recent series Civil War, he led the government crackdown on the superhero community, rounding up his cohorts and forcing them to be placed under surveillance under the Superhero Registration Act.

Starship Troopers III writer and director Ed Neumeier, who worked on the first film, said the new film will be a lot more darkly satirical. The soldiers are sick of the war, and just want to go home. It's based much more faithfully on the original Heinlein novel, and from what we could see from the hefty clips they showed us the action scenes will be fun and exciting to watch. A new generation of bugs have cool robo-suits that make them look like a cross between bug and Tripod from War of the Worlds.

And of course the biggest draw of the weekend was the new X-Files movie, which is being shot even as I write. The packed crowd of thousands was going crazy for every little word dropped by director Chris Carter, and the teeny taste of the movie we got to see was exciting. X-Files protagonists Scully and Mulder have always been morally ambiguous — even, at times, obviously insane. And the new flick has 9/11 looming over it like a dark cloud. The fans couldn't stop talking about conspiracy theories about how the original series was destroyed by the 9/11 disaster, and even Carter admitted the movie had to wait until the mood in the country was lighter again. Just to prove how light their moods were, stars Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny spent a while joking about how XF3 should be about Mulder's experiments with autoerotic asphyxiation. (And we got it on tape — you can see it if you click through.)

It's important to note, of course, that number of SFX shots is not the same as complexity of effects. It's also possible that different movie directors define the term "special effects shot" differently. But still, the raw number of special effects shots in a movie is often used as a proxy for how effects-heavy it is, and how fancy it looks. So here's a ranking of SFX shots per movie, starting with the original Star Wars:

Star Wars: 380 special effects shots, according to Harrison Ford: The Films. Other sources just say "around 300".

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: 400 special effects shots.

The Matrix: 414 special effects sequences.

End of Days, directed by Peter Hyams: 450 special effects shots.

Minority Report: 477 special effects shots.

Starship Troopers: Around 500 SFX shots.

The Frighteners, directed by Peter Jackson: 570 special effects shots, according to the book Stalking The Beast.

Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back: 414 special effects shots (same book), or 605, according to Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. The ballpark figure of 600 gets tossed around a lot, along with the meme that this movie had twice as many effects shots as the original Star Wars.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: 800 special effects shots, plus another 160 on the DVD.

The Matrix Revolutions: 804 special effects shots.

Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi: 900 special effects shots, according to this book.

Spider-Man 3: "over 900" special effects shots.

The Matrix Reloaded: over 1000 special effects shots.

Spy Kids II, directed by Robert Rodriguez: 1050 special effects shots.

Tron: 1100 special effects shots, according to director Steve Lisberger.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: 1500 SFX shots.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: 2000 special effects shots, according to George Lucas.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones: 2000 special effects.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: over 2000 special effects shots.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: 2000 special effects shots, or 2151 according to this article.

Independence Day: 3000 special effects shots.

King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson: 3,000 special effects shots.