Best:

10. The Road

One of the most significant SF-themed literary novels of the past decade, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic epic, was adapted into an arthouse film starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee. And while the novel's themes didn't quite work as well in a movie format, and we had serious issues with the movie's sentimentality, we still found the movie's post-apocalyptic vision compelling. In an era where the apocalypse strikes inside cinema with alarming regularity, this was the grimmest and most unflinching look at a world where every ounce of green, and almost every spark of human kindness, has been destroyed.

9. Gamer

This film, on the other hand, may have boasted slightly less of a literary pedigree. But if you love over-the-top, crazy exploitation films with a satirical edge — and we certainly do — then this tale of remote-controlled killers and sexbots will surprise you. It's easy to see why Gamer never got its props: It's crude, nasty, and full of day-glo wigs. But its plot, about a new biotech called "Nanex" that can replace your brain cells with remote-control devices that can never be removed, is creepy. And the architect of this evil scheme to own your brain? Is Dexter (Michael C. Hall). Who does a song-and-dance number about how much he enjoys yanking your synapses around. Really.

8. Coraline

Veering back towards literary adaptations, there's Henry Sellick's gorgeous version of Neil Gaiman's Hugo award-winning horror/fantasy book. Forget Avatar — this was the most visually striking use of 3-D this year, and it was in the service of a story that felt like a classic fairy tale.

7. Drag Me To Hell

Thank goodness Sam Raimi decided to take a break from Spider-Man movies and return to his horror roots, with this amazingly snarky, Evil Dead-esque journey into the heart of class insecurity. Charlene, a young loan officer at a bank, is desperate to advance up the corporate ladder and escape her hick past, not to mention impress her boyfriend's snobbish family. So she decides to deny a home loan to an old woman — who turns out to be the wrong person to mess with. As we said in our review, "Like all good horror, Drag Me To Hell takes real-life fears, dresses them up in blood-soaked costumes, and sets them running."

6. Paranormal Activity

As we mentioned, this was the year of low-budget movies that focused on a few unforgettable characters, and this film managed to turn a low budget into maximum scariness. As we wrote in our review, "Nothing ever felt like padding or gratuitous "we're going to amp up the tension with cheap jolts" bullshit. The terror was raw and real - all the more so because it was so understated." But the real horror in this film is the dysfunctional relationship at its core, between a woman stalked by a demon and the boyfriend whose antics wind up making things much worse.

5. Zombieland

This post-apocalyptic comedy swept us away with its cool style points — Columbus' rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse, Tallahassee's creative zombie-killing techniques — but it really won us over with its clever romance between Columbus and Wichita, and the way it conveyed the experience of geeky coming of age against a chaotic backdrop. Like all the best road movies, it's about the journey.

4. Avatar

James Cameron's long-awaited out-of-body-experience movie was everything we were expecting: It was just as clunky and preachy as his original "scriptment" suggested it would be, and the native peoples were just as much of a "noble savage" stereotype as we'd expected. But it was just as beautiful and thrilling as we'd expected, too. People have been in the habit, lately, of saying that Avatar has great special effects and a terrible story — but in addition to the incredible CG world-building, the film also does have some thrilling performances from Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, in particular. It's not just the cool flying dragons that suck you in — it's the characters.

3. Star Trek

Gene Roddenberry's optimistic space opera needed a long rest after the blunders that were Enterprise and the last two movies. In fact, we weren't sure Trek's tired old saws ever needed to be brought back. But J.J. Abrams somehow managed to make Trek seem fresh again, mostly by giving Kirk and Spock a new backstory. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves caring what happened to these guys again, and the scene where Sarek finally admits he married Amanda because he loved her is surprisingly powerful. For the first time in too long, Star Trek became a universe where anything could happen — even the destruction of Vulcan. Who knew Trek could be unpredictable?

2. Moon

Sam Rockwell brought enough conviction and character for twenty actors to this story of a lonely worker trapped in a lunar mining outpost. His loneliness and brushes with madness are captivating — and that's even before there turn out to be two of him at once. By the time this psychological thriller unravels into a story of an evil corporation treating its workforce as a disposable commodity (literally), we're so wound up into Sam Bell's loneliness and yearning to go home that the fate of both Sams becomes more urgent than the fate of entire worlds.

1. District 9

It's easy to think of this film as just a polemic against Apartheid and the mistreatment of refugees — but the story of aliens herded into shantytowns is much more than that. The story of Wikus Van De Merwe, a total bastard who enjoys watching alien children pop like popcorn, feels uncomfortably like our story. After Wikus gets infected with some kind of alien goo, he starts to discover what it's like to be one of the downtrodden aliens, but this revelation doesn't particularly make him a more noble person, at least not for most of the movie. Brilliant production design adds to this film's sense of stark realism, and even some ugly Nigerian stereotypes fail to detract from the film's unforgettable portrait of human cruelty and alien family values. This was the film, more than other, that stuck in our heads long after watching it.

Honorable mentions: I really wanted to give a shout out to Men Who Stare At Goats and Push, two films that got unfairly panned this past year. Goats is way more fun than people gave it credit for, and had occasional moments of total brilliance, especially from Jeff Bridges. Push is stylishly shot in Hong Kong, full of homages to Wong Kar-Wai, and features world-builiding about mutant powers and secret organizations that feels lived-in and clever.

Worst:

10. Surrogates

This film could have been terrific — based on a brilliant graphic novel written by Robert Venditti, this "shut-ins go out in robot bodies" epic is a potent metaphor for our relationship to technology. Unfortunately, the film version, starring Bruce Willis, is a cluttered, clunky mess. It's every dumb action-movie set piece jammed together with bits of chewing gum, plus an incredibly preachy screenplay that doesn't trust the audience to reach conclusions on its own. And that's really the worst sin a dystopian movie can commit: force-feeding us messages, because the dystopia isn't powerful enough to reach us on its own.

9. The Fourth Kind

Even as Paranormal Activity was making the Blair Witch-style "real-life recordings" vibe seem fresh again, The Fouth Kind was trying to pass off fake alien abduction tapes as real, and unfortunately the film-makers put more effort into trying to hoodwink the press than they did into crafting a compelling movie. The actual film is a mish-mash of bad "archival" footage, unscary alien abductions, and flaky plot twists like the idea that a professor can speak ancient Sumerian because he's seen some texts.

8. New Moon

There's something to be said for a book and movie franchise that has converted so many new people, especially girls, into SF/fantasy lovers. But still, this movie slathered us with cheese and bored us with long stretches of Bella moping after Edward, who's decided they can't be together. Edward starts appearing to Bella, Obi Wan-like, as she becomes an adrenaline junkie and runs around with shirtless Jacob. The moments where the film winks at the audience, or veers into outright self-parody, can't quite make up for the goopiness of much of the rest.

7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If we had a crane with a camera on it following us around all the time, we would feel tempted to look up at the ceiling and howl as well. Where can we get one of those? The fourth film in the X-Men saga continued X3's slide into mediocrity, with too many random mutant cameos and a campy mutant self-discovery plot that felt instantly forgettable, even without a memory-erasing magic bullet. At no point in this endless film do Logan and Sabretooth feel like brothers, and we don't really care which one of them kills the other. Is there any way that Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool movie can make up for this disaster? We can only hope.

6. The Time Traveler's Wife

We loved Audrey Niffenegger's clever, disciplined time-travel novel just as much as we hated the schlocky, smug movie version. The film excised some of the coolest parts of the novel, and substituted a lot of cookie-cutter romantic-dramedy whininess and angst. What was a classic love story, as well as a insightful look into the way in which we're all time-travelers because we're constantly reliving our pasts and dreaming of our futures, becomes a mindless (and heartless) exercise in pouting as character development. All the more disappointing, because it had such great material to work with.

5. 2012

It's tempting to give this film a free pass, because who expected greatness, or anything other than explosions, from Roland Emmerich's umpteenth disaster film? But it's worth calling out this film for its brain-dead destruction porn and focus on special effects to the total exclusion of characters, or anything really. Bad science, bad writing, bad acting... but most of all, it's kind of boring, and you really have to turn off your brain to enjoy any of it. To quote from some of the comments in our review: "I didn't care who lived or died," "I felt dead inside," "My problem with this movie isn't the rampant destruction, but the boringness in between."

4. Knowing

Making fun of a Nic Cage movie these days almost feels like challenging a dyslexic to a spelling bee. But really. This film was so insultingly bad, that we can't let it slide. Cage plays a college professor, whose idea of teaching astrophysics is to hold model planets and say stuff like, "Hey, man. The sun is like, really, really hot. Did you ever think that maybe things happen for a reason?" It's like stoner astrophysics 101. And then he gets hold of a time capsule from the 1950s that's full of numbers which somehow predict every disaster, including the end of the world. Even if you can ignore coincidences like a plane crashing next to the highway where Cage is driving, you'll be clutching your head by the time this movie's final plot twist is revealed. If this is Knowing, then ignorance really is bliss.

3. Pandorum

Zombies infest a spaceship — how could that be bad? Well, um... how about if it's zombies on a spaceship where Dennis Quaid is doing a crappy pastiche of Fight Club? How then? We never knew space madness could be so boring. Actually, the biggest problem with this film isn't Quaid's endless freak-out, or the random cannibal guy who's diagrammed the entire plot in graffiti, it's the boredom. The makers of the film seem to have mixed up suspense with "nothing happening for long stretches," as our heroes skulk around dark tunnels endlessly. It could have been so much better, if the themes of reclaiming your pride as an officer and sticking together had been foregrounded. Even a cool ending can't save this stew.

2. Terminator Salvation

We debated whether to include T4 among the worst letdowns of the past decade — but there were already so many from 2009 on the list. It's shameful to admit it now, but we expected more from this film, thanks to the reunion of The Dark Knight's star and writer, Christian Bale and Jonathan Nolan. Instead, what we got was the giant head of Helena Bonham Carter delivering exposition. Sam Worthington does his best with the role of Marcus Wright, who discovers he's a cyborg, but he's hobbled by a nonsensical plot. And Bale is a major disappointment as John Connor — it's hard to believe anyone could make us miss Nick Stahl.

1. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen

We celebrated this film as the ultimate apotheosis of Bunuel-style surrealism, but if you're expecting it to make a lick of sense, you might as well expect ants to climb out of your hand. Honestly, 2012 only wishes it could be as dumb, as massive — and yes, as boring — as this clunker. These robots can turn themselves into anything — except for compelling characters. And unlike 2012, in which the action set pieces are the punctuation in between long boring sequences, this film's action sequences are the most boring part, because it's hard to tell what's supposed to be going on, and we don't really care anyway. If 2009 was the year that giant CG rainbow showers finally conquered movie screens, then Transformers 2 was the worst offender.

(To be entirely fair, the Moviefone poll asked "Which actress gave the worst performance?," so for all we know, America en masse may think Fox is a very talented actress who just had a series of really bad days.)

Fox's dual wins were reflected in the movie she won for, as well; Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen managed to win both Best Action Movie of 2009 and Worst Movie of 2009. Well, at least one of those is right.

Year-End Movies Poll Results [Moviefone] (Via)

Star Wars
Whether it's Han Solo's unseen girlfriend, Anakin preparing for a podrace or a very human Jabba, these ten clips show that George Lucas' space opera was more fun before it was edited.

Star Trek
Klingon torture! William Shatner's original death! Skydiving Captains! Ten clips to give you a good feeling about what you've missed so far.

Robot Movies
Never mind the Transformers, it's the Terminator material amongst these five clips that are must-sees. Especially the Arnold bit from T3.

Super-Heroes Can Save Us
Fifteen clips from Iron Man, Hulk, the X-Men movies as well as Batman and Superman's long careers on celluloid to remind you that sometimes, deleted scenes can add little to a movie - and sometimes, they can add an entire character. Go check out the Superman clone you've never met before.

All That College Stuff from Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen:

Lt. Traxler Should've Let Someone Else Talk To Reese in The Terminator:

Sarah Connor Decides To Become Bad-Ass in The Terminator:

Meet William Candy, The Face Behind Your Robotic Overlords, from Terminator 3:

If you liked Star Trek... And who didn't like J.J. Abrams' breezy reinvention of the 1960s space adventure show, focusing more on the coming-of-age of Kirk and Spock, and their journey from rivals to friends? Anarcho-syndicalists, that's who.

...You'll Love Ringworld by Larry Niven. The defining "big object in space" novel, Niven sees your scary Romulan drilling platform and raises you a huge ring-shaped world orbiting a star, with "shadow squares" to provide a day/night cycle, and many weird ecosystems and cultures thriving on it. And if you enjoy that, delve into more classic space opera by Heinlein, Clarke, E.E. "Doc" Smith, David Weber and Lois McMaster Bujold.

If you liked Wolverine... Maybe you enjoyed the way the latest X-Men spinoff used the experiences of a lonely mutant to talk about the ravages of war. Maybe you just liked the purer distillations of mutant angst and feeling like an outsider in non-mutant society. Or perhaps you just liked the sexy mayhem.

...You'll love Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey. The tale of a lonely mutant in a town on the U.S.-Mexico border, this novel's young female version of Wolverine named Loup blew us away. She's been genetically engineered not to feel fear, and she becomes her town's secret superhero.

If you liked The Dark Knight... Who didn't love The Dark Knight's reinvention of superhero comics' "grim and gritty" cliches in an even more noir, even more mind-blowing vein? Whether you were into the portrayal of a Gotham City that destroys the best among its citizens, or you just liked the brooding, this film was instantly iconic.

...You'll love Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey, or just about anything by Richard K. Morgan. If you love noir anti-heroes squaring off with madmen for the future of a city that doesn't deserve saving, then you'll want to spend some serious time with Sandman Slim — sure, the city in question is L.A., and that's automatically less cool than the fictional Gotham. But still, the hero who's crawled out of Hell and now fights his power-mad former friend is the best fix for your Nolan Batman addiction right now. And for more noir, check out Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels as well as his noir fantasy The Steel Remains.

If you think you'll like James Cameron's Avatar... Okay, you can't really know if you're going to like Avatar yet, since it's just a couple of trailers and one preview day so far. But a lot of us are pretty pumped up about the cool concept, of a human put into a hybrid alien body to interact with cool blue aliens... not to mention all the war-machine technology and battle scenes.

...You'll love The Color Of Distance by Amy Thomson. Why not try another take on the idea of a human who's transformed into an alien-human hybrid to live among aliens? Juna is a human who lands in the rainforests of the planet Tendu, whose pollen gives humans deadly allergies. Juna's atmosphere suit gets ruptured and she nearly dies, but the planet's elders save her by transforming her into something like one of them. She learns their skin-color-based language and grows to understand their weird culture, and accept her own half-alien self.

If you liked Hancock... Maybe you liked the look at a more flawed superhero. Maybe you liked the alienation, or the feeling of futility in spite of great power. Maybe you enjoyed the cynicism.

...You'll love Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman. In any case, you should definitely check out this smarter, cooler look at what superheroes would be like in the real world. Where Hancock fobs you off with repeated gags and muddled mythology, Grossman (an io9 contributor) gives you real psychological complexity and sharp characterization.

If you liked The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button... It sure did look impressive: a love story involving a man who ages backwards, and somehow keeps finding the same woman over and over again as she ages forwards in time. Set against the backdrop of history as it was, maybe you liked the epic feeling.

...You'll love Confessions Of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer. This is definitely a case where a book did it first, and way better. (Yes, Button was nominally based on a HAITE story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.) Greer both pioneered and perfected the "backwards-aging love story" concept, without ignoring the potential creepiness of a boy who looks like an old man having a crush on a girl his own age. Heartbreaking and epic, this is the story Button should have been.

If you liked Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen... Umm... Well, you might have enjoyed the battle scenes and huge robots fighting alongside military hardware. You might have been into the love story between Shia and Megan, or Shia learning to grow up and accept responsibility. Oh, whatever. Let's assume you liked this movie for the big robots and military hardware.

...You'll love Hammer's Slammers by David Drake. This 1979 story collection, as much as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, is a landmark in the history of military science fiction. And it has the big hardware in spades — most notably the giant super-tank that the Slammers roll around in, which comes equipped with a massive 20 centimeter power gun that fires high-energy copper plasma. You might also really dig the Jon and Lobo novels by Mark Van Name, which are about a guy who makes friends with a giant artificially intelligent battlesuit, and they go off having adventures together.

If you liked Knowing... Maybe you liked the weird clues and all the numbers that secretly predicted all the disasters in the world. But most likely, you liked it for the same reason people seem to be liking 2012: for the apocalypse.

...You'll love Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. For a somewhat more light-hearted look at the end of days, you really can't beat this book. Or if you want a post-apocalyptic novel which shows how America continues after everything has collapsed and we've reverted to slavery and other nineteenth century institutions, try Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery.

If you liked Monsters vs. Aliens... With its A-list cast and zany monsters banding together to save the world, who didn't like this movie? Plus, it had a super-basic, but still welcome, message about being yourself and how it's OK to be different and all that stuff.

...You'll love Monster by A. Lee Martinez It's got the same spirit of fun, and a similar misfit cast of characters who save the day despite being weirdos. But it's maybe a little less kid-friendly, and the eponymous Monster is more of a slob who gets rid of the paranormal creatures threatening all the normal people, even though he'd rather just crash on the couch and drink beer. His paper gnome companion will definitely remind you of a cartoon character, and could easily be voiced by Hugh Laurie or Will Arnett in the movie version.

If you liked District 9... With its look at otherness, and the predicament of a human who accidentally gets infected with alien DNA and starts losing his privileged status, District 9's alien-ghetto tale was full of metaphors for the way humans treat each other.

...You'll love Mind Of My Mind by Octavia Butler. Nobody wrote about hierarchy, oppression and otherness better than Butler. And Mind Of My Mind deals with the idea of losing your humanity and becoming something unfamiliar and terrifying with incisive brilliance.

If you liked Moon... You probably got into the chilling depiction of loneliness on our only satellite and the slow madness that overtook our hero, played by Sam Rockwell. But you probably also loved the depiction of two Sam Rockwells, and the questions of identity this doppelganger story raised.

...You'll love Ophiuchi Hotline by John Varley. If you want a really thought-provoking tale about cloning, you'll definitely want to check out Ophiuchi Hotline. Varley deals with a far-future society where only the dead can be cloned legally, then plunges us into a world of outlaws whose cloning goes far beyond the permissible.

If you liked Wanted... It probably wasn't for any vestigial supervillain trappings. In its movie version, this film was mostly about a man realizing he's inherited his dad's gunman powers, and getting inducted into a society of super-assassins. But more than anything, it was about becoming an ubermensch and realizing that the "little people's" rules don't apply to you.

...You'll love Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks. If you really want a story of a super-assassin who has gone beyond traditional morality, you should check out the tale of Horza, a shapeshifter who has rejected the super-advanced Culture and is willing to do whatever it takes to win. Or if you just want the tale of an ubermensch who comes into his power, read Frank Herbert's Dune for the tale of Leto Atreides II.

Those are our book recommendations for the movie addicts in your life. What are your suggestions?

Thanks to Graeme, Meredith and Annalee for suggestions!

Transformers 3:

A secret video hidden on the Blu-Ray disc of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen shows Michael Bay discussing his early ideas for the third movie (although he says they're all lies.) You can't get any bigger in the third movie, so instead he'll go "sideways," and possibly go darker and more emotional. He's going even deeper into Transformers lore. And he says there'll be more of Bumblebee in the third movie, and more of the robot characters generally. "It doesn't have to be action, action, action," says Bay. (Really?) [Transformers Live]

Doctor Who:

Move over, K-9! The Doctor will be teaming up with a new robot named Gadget in this Martian adventure. We ran some set pics featuring this robot ages and ages ago, but here are the first official pics. [Den Of Geek]

As you'd probably gathered, "Waters Of Mars" takes place in 2059 on our first Mars colony, and there's a parasitic virus that makes people spurt water. And the Doctor must choose whether to save everyone, or avoid changing the future. Says Adelaide actor Lindsay Duncan, "It tells a different story. It is a long time into the episode before the Doctor takes control. We expect him to know [what to do] and take control earlier. It is a long time before he does it." [Daily Mail]

And here are some new promo pics in general. [Blogtor Who]

Someone asks the Doctor his name, rank and intent, and he replies, "The Doctor, doctor, fun." And the line "As consolation" will hit you like a punch in the gut. There's a mention of the Ice Warriors, and one sequence is lifted directly from 28 Days Later. [Bleeding Cool]

And here's a couple new clips!

Also, David Tennant says he filmed his last scenes as the Doctor out of order, so the actual last words he spoke as the Doctor were "You two, with me, spit spot." (The first time I read this, I thought he actually said those were his last words on screen as the Doctor — I was a bit upset.) [Guardian]

Caprica:

Reader Scott saw that this show had transformed the campus at Simon Fraser University into "Caprica Inter-Colonial Spaceport" for an upcoming shoot, and he sent us these amazingly sweet photos. [Thanks Scott!]

Lost:

In late October, the show was filming a scene in the kitchen of a local Presbyterian church, involving Sayid — plus Keamy and Omar, two thugs whom we saw die. Equally shocking is the report that the show was filming another high school scene involving Ben (who we're guessing is a substitute teacher) and Ben's late, lamented daughter Alex was there. And so was the late, somewhat lamented science teacher, Leslie Arzt. And new guest star William Atherton was there too, playing the principal at the high school. (I can just see it now — Ben wants to restart the high school glee club, and...) [Hawaii Weblog]

Here's a casting call for episode 6x08:

[KENDALL]Female, any ethnicity, early to mid 30s. An intellectual beauty with a sharp edge to her wit. Caught committing corporate espionage and has to lie her way out...GUEST STAR, POSSIBLE RECUR.

[Lyly Ford]

Nightmare On Elm Street:

Jackie Earle Haley says this version of Freddy Krueger is a bit darker, more serious and less campy than what you might be used to. [MTV]

Supernatural:

There's a pretty detailed review for the next episode, "Changing Channels." We start out on a sitcom with bright lighting and laugh track. Dean's sandwich is three feet tall. "I'm going to need a bigger mouth," says Dean. Then we go to wacky sitcom credits, explaining the monster-hunting brothers... including a shot of the two of them riding a tandem bicycle. Then we're in the real world, watching the Winchesters investigating an unusual "bear" attack, before being whisked into a Grey's Anatomy spoof in which only a doctor who's in love with a dead guy can see his ghost. There is some Jeffrey Dean Morgan in-jokery. We even visit a Japanese game show, NutCrackers, which is just what it sounds like, and there's a fake Japanese commercial. Finally, they're shoved into CSI Miami, and we get a bit of a lecture about the lack of originality in prime-time TV. Says the Trickster, "300 channels and nothing on." [SF Universe]

Here's a casting call for a character we'll meet in episode 5x12, "Swap Meat":

[GARY] 17 years old, physicality is extremely important for this role, GARY NEEDS TO BE THIN, THIN, THIN, and needs to be very likeable and appealing. Ideally he's like the character "McLovin" from "Superbad" or Anthony Michael Hall in "16 Candles." Puny, gawky, bespectacled, smart and geeky, he's a naive, amateur Satanist who works at a fast food joint and longs to break free from his wealthy, stifling parents. He's granted one of his wishes, and starts to live the life he's always wanted. Please denote age next to your suggestions. GUEST STAR

[SpoilerTV]

New Moon:

OMG Bella gets a papercut and sparks some bloodlust in Jasper. I love the blood-falling THWOOM sound effect:

V:

Even though Alan Tudyk's undercover alien character apparently dies in the series pilot, he'll still manage to be a recurring character in following episodes somehow. The final scene of the first episode has been redone since it was shown at Comic Con, and now there's a floating alien device called a "seeker," and one character wields a machine gun. And we'll see one of the aliens shed its human skin in the first few episodes. The alien mothership includes a chamber called a "Bliss Chamber." And the fourth episode will end with a series of cliffhangers, keeping us in suspense until March. [Sci Fi Wire]

Here's a new (I think) trailer, counting down the days until this show premieres:

Laura Vandervoort says her character is assigned to recruit humans for the Peace Ambassador program, but the experience gets more intense than she expected:

I think when she experiences a bit of the hate that's going on with the Visitors being on earth, and protestors, some of the things she sees impact her more than she expects. She feels more for some of the humans, I think, and I think she's learning more about dealing with conflict and not being wanted... But I don't know where they plan to go with it. Especially because she's focused on Tyler right now, and I'd like to see that develop into something, and perhaps that's where the Fifth Column will come in.

[SciFiTVZone]

And here are descriptions of the third and fourth episodes:

"A Bright New Day" — Chad reports from the Peace Ambassador Center as 100 diplomatic visas are being issued to the first wave of American Visitors, with Anna getting the 1st, but not everyone agrees with the decision - Erica has started tracking a death threat while paired with a V officer, as she actually has to protect the V's. Meanwhile, Ryan starts reaching out to his old friends to build up opposition forces and help fight-off the V's, on ABC's "V," TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET).

"It's Only The Beginning" — Erica works with new formed allies to uncover a biological threat they suspect the Visitors have been plotting, on ABC's "V," TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET). Aboard the mothership, Anna meets with a special guest, while managing the investigation into the murder of a V. Chad does a segment on the V Healing Centers demonstrating their amazing medical abilities, but then finds himself conflicted by some of his findings.

[SpoilerTV]

Fringe:

Here's the official description for the Nov. 5 episode "Earthling":

When the Division probes bizarre cases of people turning into ash, the investigation also reveals clues about Broyles' past. Directed by Emmy Award winner Jon Cassar ("24").

[TV Guide]

And here's a couple previews:

Plus some promo pics for episode 2x08, "August". [SpoilerTV]

FlashForward:

Peer into the future! Here are some casting calls for an upcoming episode:

[ABDI] - 29, Somali, Male. Leader of a group of outlaws. Has the ability to intimidate with barely a stare. Charming, yet capable of shocking brutality. Formidable, charismatic. Must be capable of a Somali accent...GUEST STAR

[JEAN-PIERRE] - 40's French ambassador to the UN. Continually at odds with the General Council on the developing Flashforward global situation. Potentially recurring.

[SOMALI WOMAN] - 30s, Somali, Sweet-faced. Loving but firm, she teaches her 11-year-old-son the right way to do things without preaching at him. Must be capable of a Somali accent..sptv050769.DAY PLAYER

[AWAALE] - 30s, Somali, Male. A Somali translator hired to travel with a group. Eager to please, easily unnerved, but confident in his language skills. Must speak preferably fluent, but at least some, Somalian. Day player

[SpoilerTV]

And here's a sneak peek of episode 1x07, "The Gift":

True Blood:

The writers were at a conference, and gave some more season three hints:

Get excited because season 3 will launch June 2010, and we will find out where Bill is in episode 3.01! Also, season 3 will introduce a lot of new characters, including the Newlins and Maryann is totally dead. The theme for season 3 is "identity," causing Sookie to find out more about what/who she is! Insiders also said, "Bill will not be marginalized. Bill and Sookie will have troubles, but Bill and Sookie have a connection that will not die." You are going to see more of Pan and Nan Flanagan in season 3 as well! As for Gordac, his death scene was partially live, partially green screen and they got it in only two takes! Lastly, you have not seen the last of Gordric- he will be featured in flashbacks!

[Daily Fill]

Heroes:

Here's the official description for episode 4x09, "Brother's Keeper":

THE TRUTH SETS OUR HEROES ON NEW AND DANGEROUS PATHS. Samuel (Robert Knepper) learns just how powerful he can become and takes dangerous measures to reach his full potential. Meanwhile, as Tracy (Ali Larter) begins to lose control of her ability, one of her own comes in harms way. Elsewhere, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) continues his battle with Matt (Greg Grunberg).

[SpoilerTV]

Smallville:

Michael Shanks says his Hawkman costume has involved a lot of fittings, and explains his relationship to Clark:

Hawkman being the alpha in the Justice Society, being someone who...has made some missteps along the way, can or could represent a type of mentor character to Clark in his leadership abilities with his burgeoning team members of the Justice League. He represents a character that has a lot of wisdom to pass down to this next generation, so there is a strong possibility that once the initial phase wears off that there will be a coming together of those two to paint a larger portrait of the future, of what Clark has available to him and what his options are.

Also, his relationship with Dr. Fate is heartbreaking in the first episode. [HuffingtonPost]

Stargate Universe:

Some promo pictures for episode 1x07, "Earth," which I don't think we've shown you. [SpoilerTV]

Additional reporting by Mary Ratliff.

As you might know, the writers' strike forced Bay to start work on TF2 without an actual script — all he had was an outline by writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman. So a lot of the movie's early designs and ideas came about without a real script, and when Orci and Kurtzman came back to work after the strike, Bay was able to tell them which robots he wanted in the movie. As he says in this clip, all of that pre-visualization work and brainstorming with artists actually informed the movie's script, once it finally had one. You probably have your own ideas about whether that was a good thing.

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen comes out on DVD tomorrow, October 20, on Blu-Ray and DVD, wherever awesomeness is available.

Here's what the press release says about the two-disc DVD/Blu-Ray edition:

Two-Disc Special Edition DVD & Blu-ray:
The TRANSFORMERS: Revenge of the Fallen two-disc Special Edition DVD is presented in widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions with Dolby Digital English 5.1 Surround, French 5.1 Surround and Spanish 5.1 Surround with English, French and Spanish subtitles. The Blu-ray will be presented in 1080p high definition with English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital with English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese subtitles. The disc breakdown is as follows:

Disc 1:
• Commentary by Michael Bay, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman

Disc 2:
• The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen-This multi-chapter documentary chronicles the entire creation of the film and includes interviews with the cast and crew:
o Seeds of Vengeance - Development and Design - After the overwhelming success of 2007's Transformers, how do the filmmakers top themselves for the sequel?
o Domestic Destruction – Production: United States - Michael Bay believes in going big: Big action and big explosions. Cast and crew are pushed to the limit as they traverse the U.S. from New Mexico to Pennsylvania.
o Joint Operations – Production: Military - No other filmmaker in the world enjoys the kind of military access and cooperation Michael Bay has. Here we see just how efficient our armed forces are and the awe and respect shown by the cast.
o Wonders of the World – Production: Middle East - You can't really reproduce Egypt anywhere but Egypt so off we go to Giza and Luxor.
o Start Making Sense - Editing - In order to turn over the massive amount of film as quickly as possible to VFX, four editors work tirelessly in a unique tag-team approach to shape the film.
o Under the Gun – Visual Effects – Revenge of the Fallen features the most complicated VFX in film history. So complicated in fact that the filmmakers were unsure they would make the deadline. The DEVASTATOR VFX alone required 83% of ILM's total render farm capacity.
o Running the Gauntlet – Post-Production and Release - Working seven days a week, Michael Bay and company usher the film through sound design, Digital Intermediate color-timing and a globe-trotting whirlwind of premieres.
• A Day with Bay: Tokyo-An intimate and fun all-access journey with Michael Bay as he travels to Tokyo, Japan tor the world premiere of the biggest film of the year.
• 25 Years of TRANSFORMERS-Access an all-new featurette celebrating a monumental milestone for one of Hasbro's most successful and popular franchises.
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub-Explore conceptual artwork created by the production for 12 of the most popular AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS from the film.
• Deconstructing Visual Bayhem with Commentary by Pre-Vis Supervisor
Steve Yamamoto- A series of multi-angle pre-visualization sequences allowing viewers to learn how some of the film's most spectacular scenes were created with an introduction by Michael Bay.
• Extended Scenes
• Music Video: Linkin Park's "New Divide"

BLU-RAY EXCLUSIVE:
• The ALLSPARK Experiment-Viewers get their chance to unleash the power of the recently recovered ALLSPARK shard on Earth vehicles. Begin by selecting and customizing a vehicle with a selection of parts and accessories. Then apply the ALLSPARK to this creation and watch what happens. Applying the ALLSPARK to certain custom combinations enables four new robot characters with special powers. If viewers discover all four, they unlock a fifth vehicle, which reveals a top secret message about the future of the TRANSFORMERS movie franchise.
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub-A database of some of the TRANSFORMERS characters that appear in the new film, offering users access to each robot's confidential file including:
o Innovative 3D spin galleries of each robot
o A timeline for each TRANSFORMERS character charting its origins, back story and design evolution from toys to animated series to comics and finally feature films
• Giant Effing Movie – A very personal look at the making of the movie.
• The Matrix of Marketing-An archive of the film's promotional media including trailers, posters and television spots.

In these clips from next week's DVD release, we get a peek at trying to film in Egypt, blowing up a college campus and the enduring mythology of the Transformers in their 25th anniversary year.

Best part? Megan Fox sharing that Michael Bay is about as fun-loving as we'd expect.

"There's no, like, 'Oh, he would like for us to try (a scene) at least.' That's not it, - we weren't giving the option.
"You do it, or something bad is gonna happen to you."

Revenge of the Fallen's release comes hand-in-hand with the 25th anniversary of the toys, and that fact is reflected in the DVD and Blu-Ray releases next Tuesday.

Separately, another DVD box set called Transformers: The Matrix Of Leadership Collector's Set comes out on Oct. 20 and offers a retrospective on the original cartoons, including some rare PSAs and complete annotated scripts for some episodes. Here are four clips the studio released, which include Bumblebee playing video games, Dinobots in training, and Starscream on the run:

On the two-disc Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen DVD, there are five special features.

The first is called The Human Factor: Exacting Revenge of the Fallen, a documentary chronicling the entire creation of the film and featuring interviews with the cast and crew. The doc is separated into chapters discussing the design of the film, Bay's extraordinary military access, and of course a portion devoted to the visual effects full of fun facts.

For example, on Fallen, the effects for Devastator alone required 83% of Industrial Light & Magic's total render capacity. The special goes in depth about ILM's design of the robots for the sequel and the differences from the first.

Other features include:

• A Day with Bay: Tokyo - An intimate and fun all-access journey with Michael Bay as he travels to Tokyo, Japan for the world premiere of the biggest film of the year.
• 25 Years of TRANSFORMERS - Access an all-new featurette celebrating a monumental milestone for one of Hasbro's most successful and popular franchises.
• NEST: Transformer Data-Hub - Explore conceptual artwork created by the production for 12 of the most popular AUTOBOTS and DECEPTICONS from the film.
• Deconstructing Visual Bayhem with Commentary by Pre-Vis Supervisor
Steve Yamamoto - A series of multi-angle pre-visualization sequences allowing viewers to learn how some of the film's most spectacular scenes were created with an introduction by Michael Bay.

On the DVD version, NEST is an interactive feature similar to one you'd find on a DVD-ROM, covering a few robots and allowing the user to learn about each of the Transformers. The Blu-Ray version covers the robots' history, from their first appearance to those (if any) in the original animated series and comics and finally in recent films.

The Blu-Ray also features a crew-made film, appropriately titled "Giant Effing Movie," their own take on making the movie. Also, there is "The ALLSPARK Experiment."

Viewers get their chance to unleash the power of the recently recovered ALLSPARK shard on Earth vehicles. Begin by selecting and customizing a vehicle with a selection of parts and accessories. Then apply the ALLSPARK to this creation and watch what happens. Applying the ALLSPARK to certain custom combinations enables four new robot characters with special powers. If viewers discover all four, they unlock a fifth vehicle, which reveals a top secret message about the future of the TRANSFORMERS movie franchise.

Ooooh, is that what foretells the death of Fox in T3?

I was thinking about this the other day, when I was watching Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II TV movie. I was wondering why this post-apocalyptic story of tyrannical dominatrices and mutants was less interesting than Star Trek, and I couldn't escape the conclusion: Genesis II was less interesting because it was less fun — and especially less escapist. Instead of cool people on an awesome spaceship packed with fantastic toys, like Communicators and Tricorders, you had a guy trapped in Planet Of The Apes without any apes. And with an extra helping of Roddenberry's signature preachiness.

And I started thinking about escapism, and why we tend to look down on it. We have a bias — myself included, on occasion — against works that allow people to burst out of the bonds of unpleasant reality. They're automatically less smart or interesting than works which seek to confront you with the real world's unpleasantness, to impress on you how unsavory our world really is.

Escapism is the candy-coated pill, the sedative designed to lull you away from realizing quite how messed up things are — and how much culpability you, as a no-doubt middle-class person, have for the situation. Escapism is opium, soma.

The distinction between escapist and "realist" fiction isn't even a matter of utopian versus dystopian narratives — after all, much escapist fiction is dystopian, and plenty of realistic fiction has an utopian impulse at its core. But when movies or books depict someone escaping from the world's unpleantness, or just offer a vision which allows the watcher or reader to escape through their imagination, then we deplore the cowardice of anyone who seeks to run away from their problems in this way. Most of all, escapism is inherently just not serious.

Escapism: pulpy and tacky

Ursula K. Le Guin makes the case against escapism very potently in her essay "Escape Routes," gathered in the collection The Language Of The Night: Essays On Fantasy And Science Fiction:

What if we're escaping from a complex, uncertain, frightening world of death and taxes into a nice simple cozy place where heroes don't have to pay taxes, where death happens only to villains, where Science, plus Free Enterprise, plus the Galactic Fleet in black and silver uniforms, can solve all problems, where human suffering is something that can be cured — like scurvy? This is no escape from the phony. This is an escape into the phony. This doesn't take us in the direction of the great myths and legends, which is always towards an intensification of the mystery of the real. This takes us the other way, toward a rejection of reality, in fact toward madness: infantile regression or paranoid delusion, or schizoid insulation. The movement is retrograde, autistic. We have escaped by locking ourselves in jail.

And inside the padded cell people say, Gee wow have you read the latest Belch the Barbarian story? It's the greatest.

They don't care if nobody outside is listening. They don't want to know there is an outside.

Because the most famous works of SF are socially and culturally speculative, the field has got a reputation for being inherently "relevant." Accused of escapism, it defends itself by pointing to Wells, Orwell, Huxley, Capek, Stapeldon, Zamyatin. But that won't wash: not for us. Not one of those writers was an American. My feeling is that American SF, while riding on the tradition of great European works, still clings to the pulp tradition of escapism.

That's overstated, and perhaps unfair. Recent American SF has been full of stories tackling totalitarianism, nationalism, overpopulation, pollution, prejudice, racism, sexism, militarism, and so on: all of the "relevant" problems.

She was writing this back in the 1970s, so the specific accusations about SF are outdated. But as a summation of the "escapism is childish and not literary" viewpoint, it's pretty much perfect. And as you can tell, a big part of the hatred for escapism comes from a desire to be literary, and to be taken seriously by the upper echelons of the (supposedly monolithic) literary world. Writing in The Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction in 1976, Barry N. Maltzberg raged that the literary/cultural establishment "either does not know we exist or patronizes us as pulp hacks for escapist kids."

One more quote. In his book On SF, Thomas M. Disch characterizes escapism as a "security blanket," and adds:

There are times when all of us would rather flee our problems than confront them head-on with the heightened awareness that genuine art forces on us. For such times, nothing will serve but escapism.

He goes on to say that certain trashy SF authors are as bad as Star Trek or Magnum P.I. (even though the latter show constantly bombarded us with Magnum's Vietnam War flashbacks.)

If you read these quotes carefully, a few things jump out at you. First of all, there's the equation of escapism with "pulp" traditions — which was obviously a big deal for authors like Le Guin and Maltzberg, who were trying to escape (sorry!) from the "pulp" label and prove that they deserved a higher grade of paper stock. And then there's the idea that escapism prevents your SF from being "relevant" or commenting on real-world issues — when, in fact, the most escapist narratives are often the most topical. (Just watch the original Star Trek.) There's the idea, which was way more prevalent in the 1970s, that explicit social commentary automatically made your work better or smarter.

There's also a certain feeling of disapproval, even dismay, that people are having too much fun. If I hadn't read tons of books by Le Guin and Disch, and discovered first hand how enjoyable (and frequently, how escapist) their work can be, I would think both authors wrote dry Socialist Realist works, in which their protagonists were born and died in the same gutter.

There has been a move to re-embrace escapism in recent years — Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay was about the fictional creation of a Golden Age superhero who was actually called The Escapist. And Chabon shows us exactly how The Escapist's real-world origins reflected the political and social trends of the 1930s and early 1940s, and how much his adventures reflect the struggles and traumas Sammy and Joey are going through in their real lives — everything from Sammy's secret homosexuality to Clay's family trapped in Nazi-controlled Eastern Europe becomes part of the secret backstory of the Escapist and the League of the Golden Key. In Chabon's novel, backstory is the story — when you try to strip the League of the Golden Key and the other details from the Escapist's origin, you chip away at what makes the Escapist who he is, and the reasons why he does what he does.

It's no coincidence, of course, that Chabon has also been a champion of bringing the pulps back into the sphere of the literary — he edited two anthologies of mock-pulp science fiction stories for McSweeney's a few years ago, chock full of literary and genre superstars doing pastiches and homages to the plot-heavy stories of the past. Authors like Chabon and Dave Eggers are able to celebrate the pulpy and retro in a way that Maltzberg never could back in the 1970s, because they're already assured of their literary status, and need not fear being marginalized. (And meanwhile, the "new space opera" and posthuman SF novels that throng on our shelves are the very picture of escapism, with their heroes who live for zillions of years and can port themselves into new customized bodies whenever they feel like it.)

But in any case, we're now far enough from the pulp era that the "pulpy" label has lost much of its sting, even as unabashedly pulpy urban fantasy heroines in tight pleather pants are eating science fiction's market share for lunch. So maybe it really is time to reclaim the word "escapism" and transform it into a paean to works that liberate and illuminate us.

A theory of escapist art

So I promised you an explanation of why escapism is the highest form of art — and yes, there may be a slight amount of hyperbole involved there. At the same time, escapism has given us some of our greatest speculative art works, and has the potential to spawn even greater ones in the future, if we recognize it for what it is.

First of all, let's dispose of this false dichotomy between "escapism" and "realism." Neither of those things is ever entirely pure, and each always contains elements of the other. Any time you have a flight of fancy, or a grace note, or an elivening metaphor, in a "realist" work, you are engaging in escapism. Because whenever you invoke the imagination, or suggest another world (made out of thought, or images) beyond your protagonist's "real" world, you're allowing the reader a brief escape. And in fact, if you look at "real life," some of our "realest" experiences involve escape.

Think about that old literary standby, the "coming of age" narrative — it is the most pure escapist story you can have, even if it doesn't always have a happy ending. (More on happy endings later.) The "coming of age" tale is about someone outgrowing his or her childhood, and casting off the stifling restrictions of parents, school and conformist expectations. It is a story about reaching escape velocity, and bursting out of childhood's gravity well. This is never a tidy process in real life, nor is it often in literature. But it's the original escapist tale, and in many ways, it's the template on which all other escapist tales build.

The reverse is also true — escapist elements don't automatically make a work less realistic. Just as the "coming of age" story is about escape in the "real" world, it's more than possible to tell a realistic story about a world that repesents an escape from our reality. We've all accepted, by now, that you can tell a realistic story about that ultimate avatar of escapism, Batman. (Batman is in many ways a more escapist figure than Superman, because Batman is just like us — except that his amazing training and gadgets turn him into an unstoppable force.) Look at Paul Pope's amazing, stark graphic novel Batman: Year 100. And if you want SF that comments on real-world issues, it's hard to get more topical than the first few seasons of the Battlestar Galactica remake.

And that leads to another point — escapism can be incredibly dark. I said earlier that many escapist works are dystopian, and it's clearly true. The "last survivors of a post-apocalyptic world" story is full of escapism — for one thing, you're one of the chosen few, and you're incredibly special and wonderful as a result. You no longer have to pay taxes (like Le Guin's heroes), and you live in a world where the worst has already happened. And many escapist films are show someone escaping from an incredibly dark world, even if it's only through the power of the imagination. Think of Guillermo Del Toro's beautiful Pan's Labyrinth, which is at its core a work about the escape into fantasy. Even if both the real world and the fantasy are dark and disturbing. Or Terry Gilliam's Brazil, which takes place in a dystopian world and shows us Sam Lowry's flights of the imagination as well as his attempts to escape in real life. Did I mention that escapist works don't have to have happy endings?

At the same time, who says that realism is the best thing a literary work can aspire to? It really is true, as many SF writers have said lately, that we live in a world that's changing so quickly, that any attempt at pure realism will become historicism instead. And then there's the subjective nature of "reality." But most of all, realism is like art that attempts to be purely representational: it can't show any deeper reality beneath the surface, nor can it reflect all of the stuff that's happening just beyond the frame of our perceptions. We've all lived through historical moments where a new meme or phenomenon seemed to "come out of nowhere," only to look inevitable in retrospect, once we see all of the early indicators that we ignored at the time, because they were outside of the narrative we were telling ourselves about "reality."

If the goal of a literary work (and remember, "literary" is not synonymous with "good." More on that here) is to reflect "reality," then "realism" is one tool among many for doing so. And escapism is another.

I already suggested, above, that metaphors are inherently escapist because they take us away from the strict view of what the thing "is." And the reverse is also true: escapism is a metaphor. TV shows like Lost In Space and Star Trek are so transparently metaphors for the hopes and fears of the Space Age that it's impossible to watch them now without thinking about what people were living through at the time. You get as revealing a mirror into the Space Age, Cold-War psyche from Star Trek as you do, say, from John Updike's Rabbit Run and Rabbit Redux. The stuff Star Trek tries to say about the politics of the 1960s is fascinating, but even more fascinating is the stuff that it says without meaning to, about Manifest Destiny and the post-colonial project of redeeming the Third World.

We tend to think of escapism as a childish impulse, but that's by no means always true — like Brazil, or The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, many great escapist works are about adults, who are trapped as only adults can be, in prisons partly of their own making, and look for a way out.

Escapism also shows what we're trying to escape from — this seems like an obvious point, but it's one that often seems to be overlooked. This changes over time, and also varies from creator to creator. Some escapist works are concerned about breaking out of a totalitarian, oppressive state, others are more concerned with running away from middle-class American life. There's escapism from war, from conformity, from individualism, from failure, from success. Whether or not an escapist work explicitly shows us what we're escaping, it's still always there, revealed by what the escapist elements aren't. Escapism always reveals what we're escaping, and serves as a mirror of whatever the artist (or corporate overlord, as the case may be) views as the most horrendous elements of current reality. It's convex where dire reality is concave, like a plaster cast mold. If your goal is to get the clearest possible picture of "reality," looking at that reflection may be your best shot.

And yes, escapist entertainment does reflect the era that spawned it. The Space Age gave us lots and lots of space heroes, but today's escapist avatars are much more likely to be superheroes — who existed during the Space Age, but were much more confined to comics and the occasional weak TV series. Actually, thinking about it some more, our most escapist works currently seem to fall neatly into three categories: superheroes, vampires and post-apocalyptic survivors. All of whom share a few categories that seem emblematic of our times: they're individualistic, they're special, and they're often at odds with a world that doesn't understand how special and great they are. In other words, they're the perfect heroes for a time when we're no longer involved in a collossal economic struggle like the Cold War, but instead are facing a crumbling middle class and a number of insoluble global struggles, in North Korea, Iraq and Iran, among others. Escapism illuminates our times.

Escapism also does go hand in hand with the epic, the same impulse to celebrate great heroes that gave us the Odyssey and the Iliad.

Returning to the Le Guin quote, it strikes me that what she's describing as escapism is actually better described as "weak story-telling." Stories in which there are no consequences, in which the choices are easy and the heroes always right, aren't escapist — they're just bad.

If escapism is frequently tawdry and dull — if our culture gives us Transformers 2 instead of Superman II — blame the creators, don't blame escapism itself. In fact, holding a low opinion of escapism (and saying things like "It's just a movie about explosions and robots, don't expect too much from it") lets the Michael Bays of this world off the hook too easily.

Let's give the last word to C.S. Lewis, who's quoted by Arthur C. Clarke as having once said, "Who are the people who are most opposed to escapism? Jailors!"

Posting to his blog, Bay revealed that work is already underway for the third in the Giant Robots In Disguise series:

Well its official: We have a great Transformers 3 story. The release date is now July 1st 2011. Not 2012.

Today is Day One. This morning started with an ILM meeting for five hours in San Francisco. Currently I'm flying with writer Ehren Kruger to Rhode Island to talk to Hasbro about new characters.

P.S. Megan Fox, welcome back. I promise no alien robots will harm you in any way during the production of this motion picture. Please consult your Physician when working under my direction because some side effects can occur, such as mild dizziness, intense nausea, suicidal tendencies, depression, minor chest hair growth, random internal hemorrhaging and inability to sleep. As some directors may be hazardous to your health, please consult your Doctor to determine if this is right for you.

For fans of large scale explosions that render things like "coherent plot" worthless, this can only be a good thing. Guess Bay realized that he liked that whole "getting paid a lot of money" thing after all.

Transformers 3: July 1st, 2011 [Shoot For The Edit]

Here's a list of all the movies with production budgets of $170 million and over, for the past ten years. (We chose the threshold of $170 million because there were a ton of movies clustered around the $150 million-$160 million mark.) Movies that failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office are underlined.

2009:

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince: $250 million

Avatar: $237 million (according to AP)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: $225 million (according to NY Post)

Terminator Salvation: $200 million

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA: $175 million

Up: $175 million

2008:

Quantum Of Solace: $230.6 million

Prince Caspian: $225.6 million

Iron Man: 186.5 million

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: $185.5 million

The Dark Knight: $185.5 million

Wall-E: $180.5 million

2007:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End: $317.4 million

Spider-Man 3: $272.9 million

The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials: $213.4 million

Rush Hour 3: $187.4 million

2006:

Superman Returns: $295.3 million

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: $223.1 million

X-Men: The Last Stand: $209.3 million

Poseidon: $171.3 million

2005:

King Kong: $232.5 million

Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe: $197.6 million

Sahara: $176.8 million

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire: $150 million (2005 dollars)

2004:

Spider-Man 2: $232.2 million

Troy: $199.9 million

Van Helsing: $182.8 million

The Polar Express: $186.6 million

Alexander: $175.4 million

2003:

Terminator 3: $238.4 million

The Matrix: Reloaded: $176.7 million

Master And Commander: $175.6 million

The Matrix: Revolutions: $175.6 million

2000:

The Perfect Storm: $175.6 million

1999:

Wild Wild West: $221 million

The World Is Not Enough: $173.3 million

The 13th Warrior: $206.8 million

Notes: All figures are in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation. These figures are just production budgets, and are based on the most accurate figures we could find. They don't include marketing budgets. And of course, many of the films which failed to break even at the U.S. box office did make a profit when you factor in international box office.

Conclusions:

There hasn't been a movie as expensive as Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End since 2007, so you could argue that, over all, movies are not getting more expensive. However, after a few years where there were four mega-budgeted movies per year, the last two years have each seen six movies with budgets over $170 million (in inflation-adjusted dollars.) And as we mentioned above, this year had the most movies costing $200 million or more of any year, with next year likely to see even more films over $200 million.

And the listing above doesn't reflect this fact, but we also found a steep rise in the number of movies costing around $150 million every year — this seems to be the safe point for a film that is expected to do well, but may not be a blockbuster. Films like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, Star Trek and many others all have production budgets in the magic $150 million zone.

At the same time, Hollywood seems slightly better at picking winners lately. We haven't had a year where most of the hugely expensive movies failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office since 2004, when two historical epics, The Polar Expressand Van Helsing all bombed. Or 2003, when one of two Matrix sequels underperformed, along with Terminator 3 and Master And Commander.

One thing jumps out at me: There were apparently no budget busting movies in 2000, 2001 or 2002. Apparently the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, had a budget of only about $75 million. And the Star Wars prequels, hideous though they were, were apparently on the cheap side, costing around $120 million each (in non-adjusted dollars.)

Why would this be? Well, look at the three big-budget movies from 1999. Notice anything the three of them have in common? Hmmm... Other mega-expensive bombs in the late 1990s include Speed 2: Cruise Control, Lethal Weapon 4 and, of course, Waterworld. The only mega-budget movies to make money in the latter half of the 1990s were Armageddon and Titanic.

Sources: Know Your Money, Forbes.com, Listphobia, The Numbers, IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia, and other sources as cited.

Get Smart Season 4
Maxwell Smart finally gets the girl in this 4 disc collection of the fourth season of the 1960s TV show. Agent 99, you could've done so much better.

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth - The Director's Cut
The surprisingly not-terrible reunion of the late 80s, early 90s comedy comes to America in the "As it's meant to be seen" format fans would rather watch. Expect behind the scenes footage and the traditional Smeg-Ups to round out the package.

Oct 13
Land of The Lost
Will Ferrells's not-especially-well-received remake of the classic TV series may not have made much of a dent in the box office earlier this year, but somehow we wouldn't be too surprised if it found a (potentially stoned) enthusiastic audience awaiting it on DVD.

Oct 20
Blood: The Last Vampire
Swordplay! Vampires! Violence! They're all coming to your house, as Chris Nahon's take on the Japanese anime gets released on DVD and Blu Ray.

Drag Me To Hell
Sam Raimi's return to off-kilter horror promises to be even more fun on DVD; it's a re-edited "unrated" version.

Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen
Michael Bay's ridiculously successful Robots In Disguise sequel gets multiple editions as it transforms into something you can take home: There's a single disc DVD, double disc DVD and double disc Blu Ray. We'd recommend the latter, if possible, for that authentic HD overwhelming robot carnage effect.

Oct 27
Adult Swim: In A Box
A truly bizarre seven disc set, collecting Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Volume Two, Space Ghost Coast To Coast: Season Three, Moral Orel: Season One, Robot Chicken: Season Two, Metalocalypse: Season One, Sealab 2021: Season Two, and the pilot episodes for The Best Of Totally For Teens, Cheyenne Cinnamon, Korgoth Of Barbaria, Perfect Hair Forever and Evan Dorkin's awesome Welcome To Eltingville, none of which made it to series. Don't ask. Just buy it.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan
Edward James Olmos' after-the-fact TV movie promises to fill in some of the gaps in just what the cylons' plan actually was, and this DVD version promises footage that won't be shown on Syfy when it airs November. So that's even more gaps filled in, I guess?

Like the movie preview, we've split this preview into months (and, inside those months, into weekly releases), but with releases still unconfirmed and unannounced, we've pushed November and December together. Don't worry; it'll make sense when you click on the links below.

September
October
November/December

Nature Abhors A Superhero Vacuum (But Apparently Abhors Wolverine Even More)
After last year's crunch of The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Hancock (and you could arguably throw in Speed Racer in there, as well), this summer was remarkably clear of superheroes, if you ignore X-Men Origins: Wolverine (as most who've seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine are probably prone to do). But, even as Hollywood collectively recovered from last year's superpowered orgy and looked around the nostalgiascape to see if there were alternatives, we couldn't help but notice that some of the movies this summer seemed like superhero movies anyway. GI Joe, with your battlesuits and superhero team dynamic, we're looking at you.

It didn't hurt that Joe, like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and Star Trek, had clearly defined good guys and bad guys, as well as larger than life stakes and days to be saved - oh, and action set pieces during which the day-saving takes place. Yes, none of these films featured people with actual superpowers (aside from Spock's mind-melding, but come on), but in almost every other respect, they were superhero movies... and all the more successful for it.

Moral Ambiguity Isn't What We're Looking For, After All?
And what of Wolverine? Or pre-summer release Watchmen, for that matter...? Why weren't they Dark Knight-style colossuses (colossi?), striding across the box office landscape? Possibly for the same reason that Terminator Salvation disappointed: Because they were ill-considered, non-sensical pieces of filmmaking that considered style more important than substa - No, wait, I mean, "because neither offered any comfort to the viewer" (Okay, maybe a little of the former, too). Yes, Wolverine "won" at the end of his movie, but it was a shitty victory that still made him look like an easy dupe who'd been used and abused by The Powers That Be. Watchmen's (and, for that matter, Terminator Salvation's) victory was even more ambiguous. And maybe, Dark Knight aside - and who's to say that that movie won't continue to seem more and more like a fluke in terms of hyper-popularity as time goes on - that's just not what audiences are looking for from their blockbusters?

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reviews
GI Joe wasn't screened for mainstream critics ahead of its release - which, considering the harshness of some of the reviews, seems like a sensible plan - and had a more successful opening than most expected. In interviews, Joe director Stephen Sommers cited the success of the badly-reviewed Transformers 2 as the reason why some movies don't need reviews any more:

I don't think the mainstream critics are relevant here, they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. `Transformers 2' got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?

There is no way that the people behind other blockbuster movies - especially the ones that know that they're unlikely to get good reviews - aren't going to look at this and consider doing the same thing. It's not that critics have "criticized themselves into irrelevancy," but that studios are finally realizing that mass audiences have never, really, cared that much about them.

(Re)Birth Of The Alternative Mainstream
That said, what are we to make of critical darlings District 9, Cold Souls and Moon? Clearly, the great reviews mattered here - although, in D9's case, possibly not as much as Peter Jackson's name and an advertising campaign that's been going on for more than a year - drawing attention to smaller films that may otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Some are using these movies as a case for SF cinema "rediscover[ing] its brains, heart and soul," and there's definitely an argument to be made there... but there's an equally strong one to be made, I think, for these movies to be used as evidence for the need for SF cinema to be used as a vehicle for new voices wanting to exercise their imaginations and engage audiences before they get ground down by industry politics and pretention. It's not that big a step from Being John Malkovich to the rest of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze's movie careers, after all.

By the end of this summer movie season, it feels as if cinema has fragmented: There are the critic-proof (and unnecessarily-reviewed) blockbusters that fit into our nostalgic take on what stories should be, with good guys and bad guys and evil losing in the end, there are the intellectual, playful, indie darlings, and then there're movies that try and straddle the two and fail at the box office (Although, as ever, "failure" is a moving target; Watchmen must have easily made its money back by now, and if not, will do so with the "Ultimate Edition" DVD at the end of the year). Maybe next year, Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2 will shake things up a little. Here's hoping.

I'd like to see Michael Bay bring this level of wrongness to Transformers 3. If anyone can do it, Bay can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by TF master Simon Furman and drawn by Carlos Magno, Nefarious follows up on Michael Bay's hyper-successful movie by introducing new human characters who aren't only aware of the Transformers' war on Earth, but plan to retrofit all the robot's hardware and software for their own shady purposes. Editor Andy Schmidt explains:

The latest Transformers movie added several very cool elements to the tapestry — Soundwave and Ravage being my favorites — and we're keen to explore them... Our story tracks a new organization with ‘nefarious' designs on the robots in disguise. Their technology gives them a tactical advantage not yet seen in the films.

What kind of tactical advantage? You'll have to wait until early next year, when the series begins, to find out.

The desert battle scenes look a lot more impressive (and coherent) in Church's imagination, and the underwater salvage of Megatron suddenly looks moody and Cameron-esque. Here are more of our favorites:

You can see the rest of Church's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen concept art (plus tons of other great art) at the link. [Ryan Church via TFW2005]