Probably O'Bannon's biggest contribution to science-fiction movies is his work on the screenplay of Alien, which started life as his script Star Beast. According to Empire Magazine, O'Bannon's script was the movie's first draft, although others later worked on the screenplay. And Empire says he brought over several of his colleagues from Alejandro Jodorowsky's abortive film Dune to Alien.

But prior to Alien, O'Bannon was co-writer and visual effects supervisor on John Carpenter's loopy Dark Star. And he also played Sgt. Pinback, as seen in the clip above. And O'Bannon worked on the original Star Wars, helping to craft those great computer graphics of the Death Star plans and the attack run — and according to this poster at IMDB, he's also in the movie, as one of the technicians in the Rebel Base during the Battle of Yavin.

After Alien, he wrote the great helicopter movie Blue Thunder plus two episodes of the spin-off TV series, and he wrote Lifeforce, "one of the movies that I still make people sit down and watch against their will," according to novelist Richard Kadrey on Twitter. O'Bannon also wrote two Philip K. Dick adaptations, Screamers and Total Recall. He wrote and directed the Romero-inspired zombie comedy, Return Of The Living Dead. And he worked on both the Heavy Metal comic as well as the movie, writing the "Soft Landing" and "B17" segments of the film. Some claim his work on the Heavy Metal comic influenced the visual style of Blade Runner.

O'Bannon changed science-fiction on film forever, and he'll be missed. [Empire via Ain't It Cool News]

Thanks to S.J. Edwards, Elizabeth Bear, DJ Chaotica, Larry-Bob Roberts, Zack Stentz, Daphne Gottlieb, Paul McEnery, James McGirk, Jessy Randall, Kevin Schmidt, Morgan Johnson, Susie Kay, Kat Page and David Fraser for the suggestions!

The Mayor In City Of Ember
He's the textbook example of a corrupt mayor who's only interested in saving his own skin. He knows the underground city of Ember is on its way out, and soon it'll be uninhabitable due to power failures and dwindling supplies. But instead of trying to cope with the problem, the mayor tries to hoard as much stuff for himself as possible, in a secret room — and puts together meaningless commissions to study the problem. Here he is in this video, eating sardines in the grossest possible manner.

Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Okay, so Lando is the kind of scoundrel we love to watch. And he's a perfect counterpart for Han Solo. But would you really want him in charge of your city? His Cloud City of Bespin seems like a pretty corrupt, messed-up place. And then he goes inviting Darth Vader and his crew there, which is not good city planning at all. And then after Vader has demolished half the city in his battle with Luke Skywalker, Lando takes off and leaves his city behind. Call that leadership?

Aunty Entity in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
She does keep the city of Bartertown humming along — except when she gets stuck into an idiotic power struggle with Master/Blaster, and everything grinds to a halt. Plus she rules with an iron fist, and forces people to fight to the death in a deadly arena. That's not the kind of leadership our post-apocalyptic cities need!

Mayor in RoboCop 2
He makes deals with drug dealers and criminals. And then he mismanages the city's finances and winds up handing the entire city over to the evil OCP. This clip pretty much says it all. And when he's in a tight corner, he just loses his shit.

Mayor Wilkins, in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, season 3
Your average terrible mayor may let the city fall apart, or make deals with drug lords, or bulldoze your house for no reason. But a really awful mayor, like Wilkins, makes cozy arrangements with vampires and tries to kill off the town's only protector. And then tries to turn into a demon so he can eat the high-school graduating class. Now that's bad leadership.

Vilos Cohaagen, in Total Recall.
He's an evil administrator of the Mars settlement, keeping the mutants down and ruling with an iron grip. He uses mind-control and brainwashing to keep his minions in line. And worst of all, he won't give the people air. WTF, Cohaagen?

Mayor Bentham Rudgutter, in Perdido Street Station by China Miéville.
He's always described as sitting "regally on his throne," or sitting "behind his desk with an air of utter command." He rules over New Crobuson, with its corruption and oppression — and he's not averse to making deals with the city's crime syndicates as well as its demons. He systematically rounds up dissidents and has them tortured, and he's not above imposing martial law if the situation gets out of hand.

Father in Equilibrium
Father rules over the city-state of Libria and outlaws all human emotion, even the love of a small puppy. To this end, he keeps the people doped up on a drug called Prozium, and keeps everyone under constant surveillance. (Similar to other figureheads like Big Brother in 1984, or Mustapha Mond in Brave New World — except that Father just rules over one city.) The only good thing "Father" has going for him is his kick-ass gun-centric martial art, gun-kata. Woo hoo!

Judge Cal, In Judge Dredd
This character, closely based on the Roman emperor Caligula, seized power after he had the Chief Judge of Mega-City One assassinated. In Mega-City One, the Chief Judge has absolute authority — an arrangement that's caused some problems on several occasions. So Judge Cal goes completely nuts, making it a crime to criticize him and appointing a goldfish as his deputy. He even shoots Judge Dredd! Dude!

Mayor Prentiss in The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness.
Prentisstown is not a nice place to begin with — there are no women, and the males can all hear each other's thoughts all the time, whether they want to or not. But Mayor Prentiss makes matters worse, by figuring out a way to control men's minds. He declares himself President and invades the neighboring settlement of Haven, where there are some women. And that's just the beginning of his reign of terror. Runner up: The mayors in Truancy by Isamu Fukui.

Stout, who also does many of the concert posters for Flight of the Conchords, has an ever-growing series of posters from classic and more recent films (and, for good measure, the geek-themed comedy series Spaced). Many of these posters were created specifically for the Alamo Drafthouse CInema in Austin, Texas to promote their "Big Screen Sci-Fi Classics." He also made the "Remember the Alamo" poster for the theater, which contains visual references to an absurd number of films across the genres.

[Tyler Stout via FFFFOUND!]

GAMER:
Now, I'm sure that controlling Gerard Butler is really special and the pinnacle of the FPS experience, but aren't there better ways that we could use that technology. And for that matter wouldn't it make for a more interesting picture?



GAY PENGUINS:
Scientists have discovered this week that two gay penguins have adopted a child and are wonderful parents. Now this may come as a shock to some of you but the rest of us have known for a while that many animals are gay. But sadly what should have been a unifying scientific discovery for the world has begun to create a rift in the gay communities of the animal kingdom as the new Out Magazine explains.


GHOSTBUSTERS:
Hey, the new IKEA catalog is out and it has something for everyone. Even the Keymaster!


THOSE GALACTIC HEROES:
Hey, who knew Mon Mothma was a spy?! It clears up that whole "It's a TRAP!" thing though.



CONSIDER IT CAPTIONED:
Commenter, and blog buddy, Plague's caption for the Michael Bay shot was too good not to re-post here in its full glory so anyone who missed it the first time can see it here.


TOTAL DISASTER:
io9ers... Get your ass to Mars so you can avoid the slew of remakes coming down the road.

This is GarrisonDean saying tune in RIGHT NOW!!!

1. Douglas Quaid, Total Recall

The Setup:

After visiting Rekall in the hopes of going on a virtual vacation of Mars, unassuming nobody Douglas Quaid learns he's actually Hauser, a mindwiped secret agent. He then proceeds to get his ass to Mars, whereupon he becomes embroiled in a tangled web involving evil government operatives, psychic mutants, ancient aliens, and triple-breasted prostitutes. It's all very tense and exciting until a man claiming to from Rekall shows up to point out this is all just the memory implant he ordered gone horribly wrong.

Quaid dismisses this possibility, but the question remains - did he ever actually make it out of Rekall?

The Case For:

Director Paul Verhoeven has occasionally confirmed that the movie really happened, but that was mostly when it looked like the film was going to get a sequel. Perhaps the best evidence that the events seen actually happened is that Arnold Schwarzenegger played Quaid. In the end, is it really any more believable that a guy as impossibly ripped as Schwarzenegger was just a lowly construction worker than that he was a secret agent? And there is the fact that Quaid was dreaming about something similar to his supposedly recovered memories before he ever went to Rekall, but even the movie acknowledges how weak it is to use a dream to disprove virtual reality.

The Case Against:

The guy who claims to be implanted by Rekall to get Quaid out of his broken mind trip not only correctly points out everything that had happened was in line with the adventure Quaid chose, but he also accurately predicts the rest of the movie. (Quaid's logic in this scene also leaves something to be desired. People in virtual reality can't possibly sweat! Shoot him in the head!) For that matter, a Rekall technician at the beginning of the movie says the memory simulator has brought up the unprecedented element of blue skies on Mars for Quaid's trip. And guess what we see at the end of the movie right before the scene fades to white...

Chances That It Really Happened:

10%. Sorry, Quaid, I don't believe you'll be seeing Richter at the party after all.

2. Sam Tyler, Life On Mars (US Version)

The Setup:

The final episode of the American version of Life on Mars offered a rather unexpected resolution to just what had been going on with Sam Tyler all this time. As it turned out, he was neither a cop from 1973 nor one from 2008. Instead, he was part of the first manned expedition to Mars in 2035 and the virtual reality simulation meant to keep his mind busy during the two year trip to the red planet had gone haywire, accidentally sending him from his chosen reality of 2008 to 1973. His friends in 1973 had really been his fellow crew members, and Gene Hunt was really his father, Major Tom Tyler. But was this real, or just another coma fantasy?

The Case For:

To be fair, the makers of Life on Mars had set up this possibility for much of the series, what with all the Mars Rover stuff. Say what you will about the ending, but it wasn't completely random, and the act that Sam immediately accepts this new reality suggests it's the one he expected to find all along, deep down.

The Case Against:

For a start, there's that shot of the loafer as they step out onto the Martian surface right at the very end. It doesn't prove anything, but it undermines the supposed reality of the situation. And then there's the fact that this vision of 2035 really, really seems like the kind of thing a dude in 2008 would come up with. I mean, President Obama? I've already dealt with the logical gymnastics you have to do to get Malia Obama into the White House for her to send off a space mission in 2033. It seems just as likely that 2008 Sam simply came up with one of the very few recognizable names who could be president in 2035.

Then there's the fact that not-Ray describes his virtual reality trip as a deserted island full of women who looked like Splash-era Daryl Hannah or Scarface-era Michelle Pfeiffer. You know, pretty as both of them were in those films, I'm not sure I buy an astronaut fifty years later singling out those specific women for his two year porn dream. (By the way, does his haircut really look like NASA regulation? You'd think he'd have something more like Sam's crewcut in 2035.) Oh, and do we really want to deal with the implications of Sam sleeping with the daughter of Gene Hunt, when Gene Hunt is really his father? I don't think we do.

Chances That He Really Escaped:

30%. The whole thing just seems too contrived to be real, even if I'm pretty sure the creators intended it to be the actual solution.

3. Neo, The Matrix

The Setup:

I don't really need to recap The Matrix, do I? The main thing we're concerned with here is whether ever really got out of the Matrix once he took the red pill, which was briefly a matter of some fan debate back when the film first came out. So, how about it - did he really wake up?

The Case For:

This should be open and shut, really. Even if Neo's adventures are all illusory, the Matrix itself seems to be real. After all, the first scene of the movie features Trinity and the Agents doing impossible things, not Neo. That's fairly objective proof that the Matrix exists. There's also the fact that there were two sequels and an entire anthology of animated spin-offs made after the original Matrix, which would seem to remove any doubt the original actually happened. Why are we even discussing this?

The Case Against:

Well, there are a couple of loose ends worth considering. How, exactly, did Neo shut down all those sentinels at the end of The Matrix Reloaded using only his mind when he was in the supposed real world? I suppose it could have been some sort of residual link, but it certainly raises the question as to whether that world is any more real than that of the Matrix. Then there's what the Architect explains to Neo in Reloaded. He explains that 99% of humanity accepts the Matrix because they can't face the alternative, and the remaining humans wake themselves up and go to Zion.

But what if Zion itself is just another aspect of the Matrix, one that this tiny sliver of humanity is prepared to accept because it's suitably bleak? It certainly wouldn't be the most ridiculously convoluted plan the Architect came up with. As for the argument that the existence of the sequels proves the originally happened as it appeared to, I can't get away from the fact that, in the end, this is the Wachowskis we're talking about. I long ago stopped expecting them to play by the rules of fairness and logic.

Chances That He Really Escaped:

80%. A lot of weird stuff happens in the sequels that doesn't make a lot of sense, but that probably has more to do with them being terrible movies.

4. Buffy Summers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The Setup:

The episode "Normal Again", the Trio unleashes a demon on Buffy that causes her to suffer severe hallucinatory episodes. She suddenly imagines herself in a mental institution, where she is told she has spent much of the last six years in a catatonia. Her doctor and her parents, who are still alive in this world, take advantage of this rare lucid moment to advise her how she can escape forever. The way to do this, however, is to allow all her friends to die, which is ultimately not something she can do. Returning to Sunnydale and taking an antidote to the demon's attack, Buffy commits to her vampire-slaying life as the real one. But did she choose correctly?

The Case For:

Well, that demon who attacked her did have hallucinatory powers. It's also questionable whether she could plausibly develop such a strong connection to the people she knew in her supposed fantasy world, and you'd kind of think the reality of the mental institution would have intruded just a little bit in the preceding six years.

The Case Against:
But all of those supposed arguments are countered and dealt with in the episode itself. And if she did just hallucinate the whole thing, then who exactly is issuing into existence the last scene of the episode, where the doctor sadly informs her parents that Buffy is gone forever? That happens after she took the antidote, so her mind should no longer be creating anything in that reality.

Chances That She Really Escaped:

50%. Because, in the end, it doesn't really matter which world is real and which is an illusion. What really matters is that Buffy chose the world she wanted to be real, and so the answer can remain safely ambiguous.

5. Batman, Batman: The Animated Series

The Setup:

In the 1992 episode "Perchance to Dream", Batman wakes up to find out he isn't really Batman at all. His parents are still alive, he's engaged to Selina Kyle, and someone else is playing the role of Gotham's Dark Knight. After initially rejecting the possibility that this could actually be real and the life he thought he knew nothing more than an intense dream, Bruce realizes he finally has a chance to be happy and have everything he always wanted.

But this moment of contentment is fleeting, as his sudden inability to read tips him off that this is a dream after all. In the final showdown with this world's Batman, he learns the Mad Hatter has him trapped in a dream machine from which there is no possible escape. Which he then escapes from...because he's Batman. But did he really?

The Case For:

It's pretty simple, really. Like I said, this is Batman we're talking about. Mind like a steel trap doesn't even begin to describe Bruce Wayne's intellect and inner resolve, so is it really likely a two-bit villain like the Mad Hatter could trap him for all eternity in a VR machine? When the comic book version of Batman faced a similar situation during Final Crisis, he managed to reassert control and destroy Darkseid's machine before he even woke up. There's just no way you can win in a battle with Batman's mind.

The Case Against:

Well, let's think about this for a second. When "Perchance to Dream" came out, Batman: The Animated Series was still a relatively grounded show. There had certainly been elements of science fiction before that, such as Man-Bat, Mr. Freeze, Clayface, and an invisibility cloak, but by and large the show had remained true to its film noir roots. It's only after this that Batman starts tangling with completely impossible characters like the immortals Ra's Al Ghul and Jason Blood, and it's not long before actually superpowered heroes like Superman start showing up everywhere.

In less than five years, Batman goes from barely defeating a guy who hides in the sewers with a bunch of alligators to confidently leading a Justice League of literally unlimited membership in wars with Brainiac and Darkseid. Maybe Batman's mind could never accept a world where he was completely happy. But what about a world where he could share his burdens with other heroes, a world where anything could happen and it frequently did, a world where he could stand toe to toe with evil gods...and win? That might be exactly the kind of world Batman wanted, and it's just possible the Mad Hatter gave it to him.

Chances That He Really Escaped:

98%. It's a nice theory and all, but come on...Batman doesn't lose.

6. Number Six, The Prisoner

The Setup:

In the series's penultimate episode, the unspeakably brilliant "Once Upon A Time", Number Two made the big push to crack Number Six by subjecting him to a lot of drugs and insane recreations of his life story. This backfires, as Number Six gains the upper hand and instead manages to break Number Two. The final episode, "Fallout", finds Number Six before a bizarre masked court, and then a bunch of crazy (but kind of awesome) stuff happens.

Finally, things take a turn for the incomprehensible as Number Six, the rebellious Number 48, the recovered Number Two, and the Village butler gun down the entire court as the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" plays. They then destroy the Village with a big rocket and find themselves on a motorway back to London, signaling that they've all finally broken free. But did any of that actually happen, or did Number Two really manage to break Number Six back in "Once Upon A Time"?

The Case For:

It's somewhat paradoxical to criticize anything that happened on The Prisoner for being impossible or nonsensical. The entire series is littered with little moments that make absolutely no sense whatsoever and go completely unexplained, even compared to the vaguely understandable main plots. This episode just happens to be nothing but absurdity, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's any less tethered to The Prisoner's fractured take on reality.

The Case Against:

"Fallout" is insane, even by the standards of The Prisoner. (The revelation of Number One's identity is just the bonkers icing on an already demented cake.) And it's not as though the Village hadn't successfully trapped Number Six in illusory worlds before, as seen in "A, B, and C" (which used virtual reality) and "Living in Harmony" (which used a lot of drugs).

For what it's worth, the followup Prisoner comic miniseries, Shattered Visage, ran with the premise that the events of "Fallout" were indeed the Village's last, successful attempt to break the mind of Number Six. Considering Patrick McGoohan read Shattered Visage and said that he didn't hate it - which, by McGoohan's standards, qualified as a rave review - there might actually be something to its version of events.

Chances That He Really Escaped:

Pick a number. Any number. Now divide it by zero. Whatever that number is, that's the probability that Number Six escaped.

Check back this weekend as we examine a few more characters who may well still be trapped in virtual reality, even if they don't know it any more.

Wimmer's also worked on highly praised films such as The Thomas Crown Affair, and I'm imagining the gritty, dark mutant-strewn Mars our young protagonist will have to search through, now that he's got a new set of vacation memories. But I'm still not sure this needed to be made.

This original film, based on Philip K Dick's We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, is such a classic, it's almost blasphemous to consider an Arnold-free remake. All we know from the studio is that they're planning on making it a "contemporized adaptation." (Shudder.) Does this mean no more three-breasted lady and eye-popping prosthetics? Will the ending be more like the story? All important questions we put out there to you, Hollywood, as your audience and the people who will picket outside the premiere unless the three-breasted lady gets her cameo.

[Hollywood Reporter]

According to The Hollywood Reporter Moritz believes

the advancements in technology and state-of-the-art visual effects can help tell the "Recall" story in a fresh way.

Yes, the technology is better now, but did you ask the question, should it be done? There's a feel in the original that only Arnold Schwarzenegger's crazy-grimace acting combined with the strange Paul Verhoeven sets and makeup can provide, that give Total Recall its own flavor. It's a strange combination of wild ideas mixed with action, with minimal CG hysterics, that could never be recreated and really doesn't need to be. I feel this way about Robocop as well - even though I'm a bit more inclined to see what Darren Aronofsky will do with this movie because he's Aronofsky. Currently there are no directors or writers attached to this project, but I'm not sure if even attaching Peter Jackson to a Total Recall reboot would make me want to see it.

Total Recall is fine where it is. Why don't you take the idea and do something inspired by it, yet still original, and leave Total Recall alone? We totally support bouncing another idea off of the Philip K. Dick story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," from which the movie was spawned, but a resounding "Seven Hells, no" to a Total Recall reboot, remake or anything of that nature.

Ultrasound has a lot of great uses, like creating an image of an unborn baby or testing the internal structure of a piece of metal without destroying the piece. What we mean by "ultrasound" is a pressure wave with a frequency above about 20 kHz, the upper limit of hearing for most humans. By measuring the different rates of reflection off of different surfaces, we can use it as a sort of "sonic x-ray" on some materials, including pregnant women's tummies. Scientists have known for decades that ultrasound causes changes in muscle and nerve tissues, but the ASU team studied exactly what happens at the cellular level. They found that LILF ultrasound starts a series of reactions that eventually trigger synapses within the brain.

The short-term relevance of the research could revolutionize certain medical procedures that require neuron stimulation. A host of therapies for various mental conditions currently require implantation of electrodes into the brain, and thus are seldom performed due to the risk. Ultrasound might be able to do the job non-invasively and open the door to these treatments for tens of thousands of patients.

For now, the researchers are focused on giving Arnold Schwarzenegger a fake vacation to Mars. Lead investigator William Tyler weighed on the potential for ultrasonic brain control:

"One might be able to envision potential applications ranging from medical interventions to use in video gaming or the creation of artificial memories along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in 'Total Recall.' Imagine taking a vacation without actually going anywhere? Obviously, we need to conduct further research and development, but one of the most exhilarating prospects is that low intensity, low frequency ultrasound permit deep-brain stimulation procedures without requiring exogenous proteins or surgically implanted medical devices."

Image by: Reigh LeBlanc.

Ultrasound shown to exert remote control of brain circuits. [EurekAlert!]

It's a weird moment to be appreciating Arnie. For one thing, it's the run-up to a big election, when my fellow liberals are gleefully contemplating the destruction of GOP politicians big and small. And he hasn't exactly been a heroic success as governor of California, saddling the state with more debt just as we were roaring towards another economic sugar-crash.

And Arnie's style of action movies are out of style lately. Today's action heroes are more like Will Smith or Jason Statham, regular guys who often seem a bit out of their depth. (Both of those guys have bulked up lately, but still look a bit wiry and gawky, compared to Arnie and the other body-builder action stars of the 80s. And they seem grouchy and occasionally cocky, not larger-than-life like Arnie.) We've almost gotten used to seeing weaselly stars like Shia LaBeouf smirk their way through giant-robot movies, so it's weird to look back and see an Ubermensch who is never wrong, except when he's programmed to be bad.

But I feel as though a new round of Schwarzenegger love is over due — and not just because he starred in some of the most memorable science fiction movies of the past 20 years.

Watching eight or nine Arnie movies in a row, I'm really struck by how much manic energy he puts into everything he does. Being a killer cyborg, fighting a camouflaged alien hunter, dealing with his own clone... whatever it is, Arnie is 100 percent there. His eyes squint or bulge enormously, his neck tendons expand, and his mouth? His mouth is a whole separate actor in itself, along with his jaw. In a difficult spot, Arnie's teeth grit into a grimace the size of a Humvee. When he's thrilled, his open-mouthed smile appears about to devour the camera. Seriously, at the end of Total Recall, when Arnie has brought a breathable atmosphere to Mars, here's what I wrote in my notes: "There is AIR on Mars now, and Arnie is going to EAT it like a cheeseburger." His mouth is that huge, that full of appetite.

Look at those teeth!

Arnie brings conviction, in other words. Other actors can concentrate on being understated, or relatable. Anybody can be naturalistic, and try to build a real persona in the midst of unreal events. But Arnold is one of the few actors who ups the ante. He's in the midst of a crazy, unreal situation... and he's the most unreal thing about it. He totally believes in the space monster or the evil clonemasters. But more importantly, he's bigger than they are. You could drop a mothership next to Arnie, and he would still be bigger than it is. He's larger than unreal life.

The other thing that really jumps out at me about Ahnuld after watching so many of his films: he's the good guy, in a way that we don't see so much any more. Sure, he's occasionally kind of a bully, and he enjoys laughing at people who are physically weaker than him, including most women. But in every one of his movies, there's at least one moment where he chooses to do the right thing in a moment of jaw-jutting drama. He's willing to let his head be cut open. He won't shoot his own clone. In Total Recall, he clings to his identity as the white knight, even after he's told he's really an agent of evil. In Predator, he snarls that he doesn't do black ops. Etc. etc. etc. He's flamboyantly moral, even if he's not always a nice guy.

In short, he's everything I used to wish John McCain could be: genuine, honorable, and a little bit of a maniac in the cause of justice.

Maybe it's time for a return to Schwarzenegger values in our big scifi adventures?

Here's my rundown on every Arnold Schwarzenegger science fiction movie, based on having just watched all of them in one go. (I seriously watched Arnie while blogging about other stuff, watched in bed on my laptop, and even took my laptop into the bathroom and watched while I brushed my teeth. I dreamed about Arnie last night.)

The movie: Terminator (1984)
Arnie plays: A killer cyborg from the future, sent back to the 1980s to kill Sarah Connor, who will give birth to a leader of the resistance against the machine oppressors.
His performance: It's a slower, more purposeful Arnold, moving in slow-motion a lot of the time. He starts out not just naked, but shining in the blue light, all of his 10,000 muscles glowing bright indigo. His hair is super 1980s, almost a yuppie hairstyle, and he puts on disco jacket to stalk around frowning at everyone. When he closes in on Sarah Connor in the nightclub, he sways his pelvis like he's preparing to lambada with her, and his eyes bulge enormously when he shoots his gun.

When he says his famous line, "I'll be back," he leans in slowly, as if he's sharing a personal confidence with the random cop.

Taking away Arnie's eyebrows later in the film poses an extra acting challenge, but he's up to it. He scowls and grimaces even harder, and makes his forehead gnarl like an old tree. It's almost a mercy when he gets big sunglasses and doesn't have to act with his eyes any more.

The movie: Predator (1987)
Arnie plays: A super-commando named "Dutch," who's the best there is at what he does... just don't blow smoke up his ass. He's sent to the jungle on a bogus rescue mission, and winds up facing an inhuman killer that comes out of nowhere.
His performance: Our first glimpse of the jolly Arnie comes at the start of the movie, as he spontaneously arm-wrestles in mid-air with his old friend and they compare each other's bulging muscles. But once he gets to the jungle, he's grim and intense, believable as a combat veteran in a tough spot. Delivers lines like "You cooked up a story and dropped the six of us into a meat-grinder" with gusto. He squints a lot, until finally his eyes bug out and he screams, "Nooooooooooooo! Get to the choppa!"

Covering Arnie with thick mud poses another acting challenge, but he overcomes: his eyes go into overtime, since they're all you can see of him. Arnie's peepers roll around, bug out, and finally explode out of their sockets. "C'mawn! I'm here! C'mawn! Kill me!" At the end, it's a thoughtful, withdrawn Arnie being lifted off in the choppa.

The movie: The Running Man (1987)
Arnie plays: Ben Richards, a man accused of a crime he didn't commit, who has to survive his "public execution," staged in the form of a televised game show, in this Stephen King adaptation.
His performance: Arnie is jutting and gritting his jaw more than ever in this film. He seems a bit more sadistic, especially when he's bullying the woman he takes hostage, and later when he's killing and mutilating the thugs that are after him. But he gets a great moment where he says he won't kill a defenseless human being. It's very Captain Kirk in "The Arena." He stares intensely a LOT. He spends a lot of the movie being flat-out pissed at the people who set him up, lied to him, and put him in this fake game show, and it works. He's not just pissed, he's outraged.

The movie: Total Recall (1990)
Arnie plays: Douglas Quaid, a construction worker who pays to have false memories of a Martian adventure implanted in his head, only to find himself on a real Martian adventure. Or is it?
His performance: There's no ramping up. Arnie's eyes and tongue are bursting with energy from the first scene, where he dreams about Mars. He has the yuppie hair again. He grimaces constantly. In one scene, his "wife" kicks him in the crotch like 20 times, and he just keeps the same grimace he had before she started. He looks crotch-kicked pretty much the whole time in this movie. "Shit! Shit!" He yells. Is Arnie constipated? Watching Arnie at the end, clinging to a rope over an abyss and his grimace gets bigger and bigger, I'm hit with a thought — he really is the big-screen version of William Shatner.

The movie: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Arnie plays: Another killer cyborg from the future. But this time he's been reprogrammed to protect Sarah Connor and her son, John Connor. He winds up being a sort of father figure to the troubled John.
His performance: He's actually more mellow, and yet more robotic, than he was in Terminator. Instead of just wreaking mayhem, he has to do stuff like stand on one foot and have long conversations with John Connor over humanity's self-destructiveness. He transforms into a sort of grumpy daddy halfway through, and seems a bit world-weary. More of an understated performance, and it totally scores.

The movie: Junior (1994)
Arnie plays: Dr. Alex Hesse, a scientist who agrees to carry a pregnancy inside his own manly body, as part of a fertility experiment.
His performance: Oh dear. At some point in the 1990s, somebody thought it would be a great idea to explore the chemistry between Danny DeVito's wise-guy and Arnold's big stiff. And it was a horrendous, multi-movie mistake. For one thing, they have no chemistry. For another, Arnold should be the wise-cracking guy, not Danny. Arnold is playing against type, trying to be first a lifeless nerdy scientist and then a weeping sentimental pregnant guy. He doesn't quite pull either of them off. Total misfire.

The movie: Batman And Robin (1997)
Arnie plays: Dr. Victor Fries, aka Mr. Freeze, a supervillain who can only live in sub-zero temperatures and gives out with wise cracks like "You're not sending ME to the cooler."
His performance: Arnie faces his biggest acting challenge yet: he's got no eyebrows, just like in Terminator. And he's covered with crap, just like in Predator. What can you do with that? He pretty much just bellows his lines at the top of his lungs, secure in the knowledge that whatever happens, his will be the best performance in this death-trap of a movie.

The movie: The Sixth Day (2000)
Arnie plays: Adam Gibson, a pilot who discovers that he's been illegally cloned — or is he the clone, and the other Adam is the original???
His performance: This is the plastic surgeried Arnie in full effect, and he can't do all the crazy facial expressions he used to. But that's okay, he can smile bigger than ever, and his eyes still bug out in spite of his stretched out skin. He gives his sidekick lessons on manliness, including having a big chest and a flat stomach. He starts out manically jolly — "I had the breakfast of champions today!" — but then gets freaked out after he discovers the evil cloning scam thing. When he gets worked up, he sort of leers.

Watching this movie, I'm struck by a couple of thoughts: Arnie has managed to be both an Everyman and a Superman — he's superhuman, but he's also a regular guy who's victimized by the man. Also: Arnold Schwarzenegger is Charlton Heston. He's the manly dude who's always getting thrust into dystopian messes by damn fools.

The movie: Terminator 3: The Rise Of The Machines (2003)
Arnie plays: Yet another killer cyborg from the future, once again reprogrammed to protect John Connor (and John's future wife.) But this time, Arnie is the "obsolete" model, and the cyborg attacker is far more advanced and slicker.
His performance: I hate to say it, but Arnie seems bored in this movie. The film seems intent on turning his famous character into a joke, stealing clothes from a male stripper, wearing Elton John glasses and grabbing John Connor's head to look for brain trauma. "Talk to da hand." Arnie sleepwalks through the whole exercise, only waking up a bit for the fight scenes. Most painful is when Arnie tries to dispense "basic psychology," like "anger is more useful than despair." He seems a bit sad when he announces that he is an obsolete model. A hint of the old Arnie zing when he tells the more advanced robot T-X, "You are TERMINATED!"

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First of all, there are a zillion reasons why your head might get into an explody situation. Here you can see Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in the flick Total Recall after he's ejected from a dome on Mars. With less pressure in the atmosphere, his head starts to explode, his eyes bug out, and it almost seems like his teeth get bigger. Is that possible? Arnie's teeth are already super big.

Another great head explosion, which isn't quite an explosion but more of a violent reconfiguration, comes in John Carpenter's superlative remake of The Thing. A bunch of guys, including Kurt "hellz yes" Russell are trapped in a remote antarctic station being stalked by an alien whose frozen body they dragged out of the ice. Of course, the first thing the alien does is try to hide by killing and duplicating members of the group. In this scene, the doctor is trying to revive a guy who turns out to be . . . THE THING! Check out what the hell happens to this guy's head. Seriously fucking cool.

One of my favorite directors in the whole world is Frank Henelotter, who brought you the fantastic Frankenhooker and Basket Case trilogy. His least-known flick is this one, a bizarro tale of a boy and his brain parasite called Brain Damage. The parasite, named Ayler, has gotten our hero addicted to a drug he oozes into our hero's brain. The price the kid has to pay? He's got to bring Ayler fresh brains to eat. In this scene, the poor guy tries to stop killing hookers for brains and goes through the worst drug withdrawal you've ever seen. OK, this isn't exactly a brain explosion, but it's kind of like a slow disintegration. And it's so winningly gross. Henelotter is working on a new flick called Bad Biology. Can't wait!

The head-explosion subgenre of futuristic prison flicks is well-known to aficionados of Escape from New York, where Kurt "hellz yeah" Russell is given a neck implant that will blow up his head if he doesn't complete his mission in twenty-four hours. Less known is this flick, Deadlock, set in a futuristic prison where everybody wears collars that will BLOW UP YOUR HEAD and the head of your buddy if you step over the wrong line or tinker with the collar. Here, an amusingly-coifed Rutger Hauer schools his enemy in a prison fight, jimmys his collar, and well . . . you guessed it. Double head pop. Now it's your turn — tell us your favorite head-exploding moment in scifi. Because it's Friday and all of our heads are blowing up.

Car chases are woven deep into the DNA of movies, says crime writer Elmore Leonard. We invented cars and movies at around the same time, and both experiences are about speed, exhilaration and technophilia. And you can't write a good car chase — you have to film it. With explosions and crazy weird vehicles. So here are our favorites:

Freejack (1992). Emilio Estevez is a racecar driver, who dies in a car crash. But he doesn't really die, he's kidnapped into the future so Anthony Hopkins can steal his body. Or something. It's all just a set-up for a giant car chase. You can tell it's the distant future because everybody has laptops with video-chat clients in their cars. How else could Estevez tell Jagger he couldn't catch the clap in a whorehouse? CB radio? I also love Jagger giving him driving tips via vid-chat. I want a video Mick Jagger critiquing my driving to be a standard feature in my next car.

Andy Gill, the stunt driver for Freejack also did all the driving for the original Knight Rider, and here are a couple of his favorite stunts:

Death Race 2000 (1975). David Carradine is a super-driver created by the world's greatest surgeons to drive the world's fastest car, which just happens to have jaggedy fake teeth. He's up against Sylvester Stallone in the world's most vicious race, where you win or die. Here's the trailer:

Mad Max: Road Warrior (1981). Mel Gibson is escorting a hella giant oil tanker across the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Australia. But a whole gang of New Wave savages with mohawks and spikes sticking out of their vehicles want to jack him. Crossbows, flaming projectiles, funny helmets and weird-looking machine guns are just some of the weapons they use to try and put Mel off his game, while he gets his swerve on.

Cyber Tracker (1994). Someone in law enforcement took RoboCop a little too seriously, and now all the cops are mean cyborgs. Plus an evil corporation wants to replace political leaders with bots. It's up to Don "The Dragon" Wilson to stop this mess, the only way he knows how... with car chases. Cyborgs are crazy driving fiends in this movie. At one point, a van hits Wilson's car, flips over in mid-air, soars about twenty feet up and then crashes and explodes. Wilson, of course, is unharmed. Cyber-crashes are just better than regular crashes. The shot is so awesome, it appears three different times in the movie's trailer:

Looker (1981). Michael Crichton directed his own weird story about an evil company that scans models and creates perfect computerized facsimiles of them... then disposes of the originals. The company also comes up with a weird hypno raygun that works like roofies... it temporarily blanks out your mind and makes you unable to remember your assailant afterwards. At one point, Albert Finney and a hit-man drive around chasing each other and trying to shoot each other with hypno-rays. D00d, it's drive-by hypno!

Total Recall (1991). This one is more comedy than anything else. Arnie is on the run, with a wet towel around his head to block the tracking device in his skull and a suitcase containing an important secret from Mars. To get way from the spooks chasing him, he steals a JohnnyCab, but first he has to disable the chirpy auto-driver and take control of the joystick steering. Here's the video:

Tomorrow, we'll have the greatest car chases of science fiction from the mid-90s onward. What are your favorites?

Famous names: Inspired by a Philip K. Dick story and directed by Paul Verhoeven; during the mid-80s, David Cronenberg (yay!) was attached to direct what would have likely been a much more faithful adaptation.

Crunchy goodness: 4

Memorable product tie-in: The Nintendo game based on the movie frequently appears on "Worst Game Ever" lists.

Sights you'll never unsee: Schwarzenegger pulling a glowing golf ball out of his nose.

Life lesson: Get your ass to Mars.

I-Mockery: The Ten Best Things About Total Recall!