The 1990s were a pretty weak time for movies based on both video games and superhero comics. On the video game side, there were Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter and a couple of Mortal Kombat films. And on the superhero front, Batman acted out the law of diminishing returns. And that was about it. (I'm going to pretend Steel didn't exist.)

And then in the 2000s, CG visual effects caught up to the amazing superpowered spectacles that comics and games had led us to expect. In 2000, Bryan Singer, well-regarded director of The Usual Suspects, directed X-Men, which was a huge success. And the floodgates of superhero movies opened. Meanwhile, we got movies based on Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and a ton of others.

But superhero movies have vastly outgrossed video-game movies, according to Box Office Mojo: $7.2 billion to $900 million. (And to be fair, the site lists 77 superhero films, and only 28 video-game films.) Not only that, but directors like Singer, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, Jon Favreau and Ang Lee have been willing to venture into superhero films. By contrast, the most well-known video-game directors are people like Paul W.S. Anderson, and... Uwe Boll.

Why is this? There seem to be a few reasons. For one thing, many of the most successful video games haven't yet made the leap to movies. Neill Blomkamp's Halo film could have been the X-Men of video-game movies, but it fell apart. Ditto for Gore Verbinski's BioShock movie, which seems to have stalled out due to budgetary concerns.

And it's possible that translating video games to movies requires a higher level of CG mastery than translating comic books — the CG renditions of superhero comics just have to live up to our memories of 2-D pen-and-ink drawings. A live-action CG rendition of a video game, meanwhile, has to look cooler than the already impressive computer graphics most games serve up these days.

But also, movie adaptations of video-game films have generally employed the same kinds of story logic you used to see in the Joel Schumacher Batman films. Like, really — the Doom film, which featured evil alien parasites whose tongues could tell if you were genetically evil or not. Let me just repeat that: They had tongues that could genetically scan you and figure out if you were evil. No superhero movie in the past decade has shown that level of disrespect for the audience or the material. Sure, the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil films were a lot better — but even the mediocre superhero films showed a certain commitment to telling a semi-coherent story. Most comic-book heroes have decades of stories in the bank, however contradictory and full of holes, and the films have gotten slightly better about drawing on them.

But maybe the crux of it is that superhero films learned the difference between respect for the format, and respect for the characters. In some superhero films earlier in the decade, you saw some half-assed attempts at making "comic book panels" and captions on the screen — this was especially heinous in Ang Lee's Hulk. But as the decade went on, superhero films learned that the format wasn't what made these worlds awesome. Meanwhile, even as video games became more cinematic, the movies based on them haven't been able to distinguish between paying homage to video-game action, versus translating it to the different format.

But the other thing that becomes apparent, after you look at all of the superhero and video-game films of the past decade, is that the overall level of quality of both has been pretty bad. For every X-Men 2, Spider-Man or The Dark Knight, there are plenty of films like X-Men 3, Wolverine, Catwoman, Daredevil, and so on. Uwe Boll would have to work overtime and weekends to make a film half as bad as Catwoman. Superhero movies have won, in part, due to sheer quantity — if you generate a large enough mountain of crap, some good stuff will rise out of it. But also, a movie doesn't have to be good to make ten squillion quatloos.

But one thing's for sure: The House That Bryan Singer Built won't stand forever. Something's going to come along and knock superhero movies off their perch, establishing a new Hollywood feeding frenzy. Will it be video-game films? Maybe, if the ten video game movies that are in the pipeline actually get made, and achieve Dark Knight/Iron Man levels of success. It really only takes one movie to make half a billion dollars to turn on the firehose of copycats and sequels.

And even though Avatar isn't based on a video game, it's enough like a video game that if it has a strong enough second and third weekend, you could see the gears (of war) turning in the studio execs' heads. Avatar could turn out to be the movie that supercharged the video-game movie genre, since its strengths can so easily translate to recreating Dead Space or Bioshock. And of course if Tron Legacy does gangbusters next year, it could also provide a shot in the arm.

But right now, the up-and-coming genre seems to be toy movies instead. The two Transformers movies did superhero numbers, and appealed to a similar sense of nostalgia and escapism to superheroes. And there are tons and tons of toys out there waiting for their moment on the big screen — and unlike video-game companies, toy companies don't have any concerns about making sure the movies do justice to their existing stories. A toy movie doesn't have to tie in with existing continuity or jibe with the stories that have already told. A toy movie has one purpose only: To sell toys.

And that means toy movies can be dumber, and yet also more spectacular, than superhero films and video-game films combined. Just look at the Transformers films — they're so overstuffed and bloated with nonsense, they can barely move, but they have the power to spew crap for miles in all directions. And now there are films based on Monopoly, Battleship, Viewmaster, Stretch Armstrong, Battle Bots, and countless others on the way. Actual directors, like Ridley Scott (Monopoly) and Peter Berg (Battleship), are signing on to these projects.

Toy movies could well win out in the next decade, because the key to success will be casting the widest net for nostalgia among adults aged 18-49. Everybody feels vaguely nostalgic for Monopoly or Battleship — and it's just a matter of time before we get Steven Spielberg's Sorry! or David Lynch's Yahtzee. It's like the perfect combination: Everybody feels nostalgic, but nobody will complain that they got it wrong. How on Earth do you get a Yahtzee movie wrong?

It already seems like we're maxed out on superhero films, when Warner Bros. puts the kibosh on Superman and Wonder Woman movies and a Green Lantern film starring "it" boy Ryan Reynolds struggles to get made. If Marvel follows through on its plans to put out four movies a year, we could discover just how many superheroic origins the movie-going audience can stand. So maybe we'll see more of a blend of action/nostalgia pics, with films based on comics, toys, video games and other sources. Or maybe toy movies will just crush every other film genre, until there's nothing but massive CG recreations of your old plastic playthings, as far as the eye can see.

Safety

1983:

Who would have thought that a Disney movie targeted at children would see so many riders on motorcycles sans helmet? Sure, they're computer programs, not real people, and the rider is entirely encapsulated within the lightcycle. But other than the cycle bar, you go in with what you're wearing.

2010:

How things have changed! Not only are these guys wearing helmets, but they're wearing full face helmets and what looks like the head-to-toe recommendations of the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Helmet, padded gloves, over-the-ankle boots, eye protection, a body suit with pads on the shoulders, elbows and knees. Additionally, the suit lights up for maximum visibility whenever you're on the cycle. Other safety features include a nice bright headlight on the front of the cycle. There's a light on the back, but as with the original, close-up viewing can be terminal.

Acceleration and Power Curve

1983:

The original lightcycles seem to have a drive system that delivers power directly to the ground without the wheels acting as mediators, causing instantaneous forward momentum. You grab the cycle bars, get down into position and you're off like a shot without the need to accelerate over time. You can go faster than this, but you already start a good clip.

2010:

You can form your lightcycle in mid-air, but the trailer shows the lightcycle hitting the ground rear wheel first with a bounce. This indicates a nod to real-world physics, in terms of the power being delivered to the rear wheel, driving the cycle forward. It seems as though you can get a boost of speed by changing the cycle's configuration on the fly into a longer, lower machine. This is the only lightcycle indication of something analogous to shifting a real motorcycle. There's a simple click, but once the cycle is down you can power into what looks like the next-highest gear.

Turning

1983:

When the lightcycles are on the game grid, it's nothing but forward velocity and right-angle turns. From the sound they make, it seems as though while no momentum is lost in the turn, the engine slows down a touch to let you power out of the turn, with the sound of the engine rising. When the lightcycles are out of the game grid, they can turn at much softer angles, but it's a slower motion that seems gimballed.

2010:

Unfortunately, we don't see these cycles on the game grid in existing footage. However, they turn like real motorcycles in a non-grid scenario. It's standard look-press-roll on these turns, and we even get to see a little textbook swerving out of these machines, pressing on the handles while keeping the body independent of cycle lean.

Braking

1983:

Braking really isn't a feature of the original lightcycles, other than to proceed to a stop so you can pull your form out of the cycle itself.

2010:

The new lightcycles feature a retractable 'wind brake' that appears to slow the cycle in record time. Unlike a real cycle, it doesn't seem to be linked to any kind of front-brake/rear-brake combination motion, but it's possible that the activation of the wind brake is automatically tied to a succession of downshifts for engine braking.

The Verdict

Whether you ride a dual-sport, cruiser, sport or touring bike, the 2010 Tron Legacy Lightcycle is sure to keep you stable on twisty roads and tear down the highway in relative safety. While not yet approved for emissions standards in the state of California, you can still experience the thrill of riding this awesome machine in a theater near you next winter, regardless of icy road conditions.

2010 Tron Legacy Lightcycle
PROS: Enhanced safety features, far superior handling options and ambient lighting for better visibility.
CONS: More efficient 'Master Control Program' could lead to unexpected changes in group riding situations.

High-res version of Tron Legacy billboard artwork, via Stitch Kingdom.

Disney shared this image with a handful of lucky fans who registered via Tron's Facebook page, and presumably it'll be zooming over freeway overpasses at some point in the next few months. Bigger version at the link. [StitchKingdom]

Video via GameTrailers.com.

Wow, Disney is riding that cyberpunk idea fast and hard. Just look at Olivia Wilde on the left. Interesting how the new light-up suits look so much less like something I could make in my basement and more like actual battle suits. Are those built in muscles and SKIN we see? This helmet-free new life of a program has undergone one sexy upgrade.

[Images via MSN]

In 1979 Disney spent $20 Million bringing the USS Cygnus to life. The ship hovered outside a black hole, unaffected by its pull. The main characters aboard another ship, the Palomino, discover this long-lost ship and have to board it for repairs. All that's left of the crew is Doctor Hans Reinhardt and a bunch of creepy droids, of course the doctor has sunk deep into madness and calamity ensues.

Heat Vision is reporting that Joseph Kosinski and Sean Bailey, from the new Tron along with scriptwriter Travis Beacham. The only other details being revealed are that it will reveal the science surrounding the black hole, and Maximilian will be back.

This movie scared the crap out of me when I was younger — let's not forget the faceless drones, or what those creatures could look like today...

A much longer clip will be shown at the Spike Video Game Awards on December 12th.

We're all excited about Tron Legacy, but more so for the return of light cycles and less because of the script — but Universal has given Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz (who've also written many episodes of Lost) the task of turning the Ouija Board flick into a film, which I'm assuming is a step above the Viewmaster Movie and a step below the Monopoly film. According to The Hollywood Reporter this is what they are basing the film on.

The studio is looking at the project as a supernatural action-adventure movie. It is possible that certain rules of the game - never use it alone, never use it in a graveyard, always say good-bye - figure into the plot.

Wait a minute, those were the rules????? I thought the rules were if your parents caught you talking to the devil board, you'd be locked in the basement for three days without any light, so the devil's magic would be washed out of your soul. And what about the rule of fucking with the person who brought said board by making it say horrible things, since they are most likely the only person not to be forcing the triangle to spell their will? Also, spelling is boring.

This whole thing is just a ploy to sell more board games that supposedly connect you to the spirit world. And we all know the only way to really talk to ghosts is with the professional Ghost Hunters team and a film crew, duh.

Talking to Coming Soon, Wilde said,

We shot some 20-hour days, we were wearing the suits, which are not easy to wear. I was doing a lot of my own stunts and training a lot of the time. Really pushing myself physically as well as mentally. It was an epic undertaking. It was a HUGE film to shoot in those few days. I was so proud to be a part of it. The morning that we wrapped it was an unbelievable feeling. We all just lost it. It was sunrise and we couldn't believe we were actually done... Now I have so much more empathy and respect for the people who've done it before me... and after. I don't write-off large sci-fi films so flippantly as I did. I look at anyone who's had to put on a rubber suit and I'm, like, "Oh wow, you're awesome! You survived!" (laughs) None of the suits are like our suits, though. Our suits have really risen to a new level of discomfort, but it's brilliant and well worth it. It's totally worth it.

Tron Legacy is scheduled for release December 17th, 2010.

Olivia is Wilde About Tron! [Coming Soon]

Here's the original shorter version:

Tron Legacy

Producer Sean Bailey says that the younger version of Jeff Bridges (depicted using the same techniques done to de-age Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, play a major role in the film. But Bridges will also play a second, older character, though Bailey won't say who. He also said that the computer world of Tron Legacy is not part of the Internet, but an isolated space that evolved on its own, much like the Galapagos Islands. He also reiterated that we'll be seeing light runner vehicles traveling off-road. [SCI FI Wire]

Surrogates

Radha Mitchell talks a bit about playing her character as both her human self and her robotic surrogate:

It's great to be able to change your costume in one story, and have these two different identities, but what I guess the story really gets at is the abstraction of social interaction and I guess also the obsession with perfection. So there are the robots that are all supposed to have this particular aesthetic look that I guess currently we would consider better than the other look, but if you can change your costume like that, you lose the bias, and then you go for comfort. I had a padded ass in the second costume, and, like, buckteeth, but ultimately when you can wear high heels, or you can sit around in a padded ass? So you can do either or by choice and you choose the ass. Then there's the idea that you could change your gender, and you could change your race, so what is intrinsic to who we are? We feel like it's this sort of physical thing, but maybe we are just these creatures of the mind.

[Moviehole]

Pandorum

Here is the German trailer for the scifi thriller:

[via ShockTillYouDrop]

The Green Hornet

Seth Rogen gets suited up (in an actual suit) for his superhero movie, plus Jay Chou in suspenders:

[Accidental Sexiness]

Dollhouse

At the end of the season premiere, Echo will reveal to Paul that she is functioning with multiple personalities in her head and is becoming aware of her situation. And then Paul will start to look upon Echo as something other than a damsel in distress. [EW]

Kick-Ass

Mark Millar says both the Kick-Ass book and the movie will end on a teaser, setting up a sequel. [MTV]

Fringe

Blair Brown, who plays Massive Dynamics COO Nina Sharp, talks a bit about her character and the coming season:

[Zap2it]

Episode nine will feature Dr. Lao Che, an English and Cantonese-speaking herbalist with big plans. [Spoiler TV]

We'll have a fresh encounter with one of Broyles' old cases from his long history with the Fringe Division this season. [EW]

Joshua Jackson said not to expect any Peter-Olivia romance, as he views their relationship more like that of siblings. He also says this season's episodes are about half mythology episodes, and half one-off investigations. [CinemaBlend]

Supernatural

As we mentioned, the season's fourth episode, "The End," features Dean traveling into the future to the year 2014, when a demonic virus is turning people into zombies, and Zachariah explains that this is the world that results from Dean's refusal to help the angels fight Lucifer. Dean also meets his future self.

It's a Dean-heavy episode, to be sure, but Sam will appear about ten minutes before then end, and his appearance will make his absence from the rest of the episode make sense. [E! Online]

For the seventh episode, Hal Ozsan and Pascale Hutton have been cast as Lia and Patrick respectively. [Spoiler TV]

House

Creator David Shore is aware that Taub and Thirteen's three-year fellowships are about to end, but hasn't figured out what to do about it. Also, there are no indications in the early scripts that Cuddy is aware of House getting down and dirty with Franka Potente, but Cuddy may be getting a little action of her own, in the form of scruffy privae detective Lucas Douglas. [EW]

Lost

The third episode of the new season will center on Kate. [EW]

Warehouse 13

Here is the official description and sneak peek for the show's first season finale from Syfy:

"MacPherson" is the thrilling action-packed season finale which features guest appearances by CCH Pounder (ER) and Roger Rees (Cheers). MacPherson, after a failed attempt to take Artie's life, is now selling dangerous artifacts, stolen from the Warehouse shelves, on the black-market. Artie and Leena (Genelle Williams) also suspect there's a mole in the Warehouse who's secretly aligned with MacPherson – could it be Claudia? Meanwhile, as the team hunts down MacPherson, they realize too late that his capture is a carefully orchestrated trap to destroy them.

V

The producers are casting the guest role of Cyrus for episode three. He'll be a jittery man in his late 30s who was, in his youth, a fierce and proud soldier. [Spoiler TV]

Heroes

Actors Ray Park and Robert Knepper say that their characters aren't stereotypical carnival folk, and Knepper described his character Samuel is a "Keith Richards-esque, rock and roller kind of guy." Park said his character, Edgar is a supe speedster like Daphne, with knife skills and acrobatics as a bonus. Samuel, meanwhile, is an earthmover, able to manipulate the ground beneath him. They also said there is a lot of rivalry and jealousy between the pair, saying if they trust each other, they still won't turn their backs on one another for very long. [CBR]

On September 28, NBC is launching ten consecutive weeks of Heroes webisodes, which they say will crossover with the TV series. [Spoiler TV]

The tenth episode of the season is called "Brother's Keeper." [HeroesSite]

Eureka

In the season finale, Zoe heads off to Harvard, Tess is off to Australia, and a magnetic disturbance hovers over the town:

The Box

Cameron Diaz goes groovy in the latest round of publicity stills:

[Spoiler TV]

Priest

Madhcen Amick has been cast in this Paul Bettany-starring vampire Western. She'll be playing the mother of Bettany's kidnapped niece. [ShockTillYouDrop]

Smallville

In the early part of the season, Tess will mostly be interacting with Zod. They'll be allies, but with very different agendas — hers to protect the Blur, his to find him. And episode three will feature a zombified Lois Lane. [EW]

FlashForward

Seven clips from the premiere have been released:

[UGO]

In the third episode, a young Somali herder will see some very surprising things. [Spoiler TV]

MovieWeb has tons of interviews with the producers and cast:

Marc Guggenheim:

Jessika Borsiczky:

David Goyer:

Joseph Fiennes:

Christine Woods:

Courtney B. Vance:

Sonya Walger:

[MovieWeb]

Vampire Diaries

Ian Somerhalder, who plays less human-loving vamp Damon, says that while we'll see flashes of Damon's humanity, he'll stick with the evil thing for a while. He also says that Damon harbors a lot of animosity toward his brother Stefan for something that happened in their past, and any time Stefan finds himself enjoying any happiness, Damon will show up to ruin it. To that end, Damon will try to ingratiate himself to the townsfolk and worming his way into Stefan's life. [E! Online]

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Charlie Jane Anders.

Coming Soon talked to the man inside the machine and found out that Sheen will be playing a night club owner in cyberspace:

That was amazing, because there's a lot of green screen in that...But my stuff was mainly in this amazing set that they built because I'm a nightclub host, so they built the nightclub and there were hundreds of extras and it was one of those great scenes where there's just loads going on.

Clubs in Tron City - oh my the mind it flies with possibilities of day-glo unitard ensembles. It's pretty impressive that they are going to flesh out the computer world to include clubs. Does this mean the Master Control Program will control the dancers? Read the rest of the interview at Coming Soon to find out what else Sheen had to say about the highly anticipated sequel.

Star Trek 2:

Zoe "Uhura" Saldana says J.J. Abrams has promised her that Uhura will get her own fight scene, or at least some kind of action sequence, in the sequel. "I mean, just [let me] kick a guy in the groin or something!" [Cinematical]

Zombieland:

Some new stills focus on the female members of the zombie-killing foursome. [SpoilerTV-Movies]

Dollhouse:

Now that Echo has been re-integrated with her other personalities and started to retain her identity no matter what, things are going to get hairy. The dynamic between Echo and her "original" personality Caroline will be at the center of season two. And in the season opener, where she's married off to Jamie Bamber things go terribly wrong and Echo starts turning back into Caroline under stress. Which could be a good thing, or a bad thing. [E! Online]

Plus the network released some behind-the-scenes clips and interviews with the creators:

Fringe

TV Guide gives us a brief primer on the new season, including the alternate universe:

And EW interviews the cast, who talk about the growing relationships between the characters:

In the season opener, Olivia lets down a bit of her guard and has a few tender moments with Peter. And she even asks him for personal help. [EW]

Here's the official description for the season's third episode, "Fracture:"

Peter, Walter, Olivia and Broyles pursue a strange and deadly occurrence in Philadelphia where a bomb blew up inside a train station but left no trace of any explosive device. The perplexing and unexplained set of circumstances returns Walter to the lab to closely examine the human remains where he uncovers an unlikely energy source that triggered the explosion. With the explosive threat of more bombs and links to a classified military project, the intense investigation leads Olivia and Peter to Iraq.

[Fringe Spoilers]

And John Noble gives some more hints about the new season. [Fringe Television]

Supernatural:

Jeffrey Dean Morgan says he's eager to return to the role of the Winchester boys' daddy, if he can find the time. And he feels like his storyline on the show got cut too soon. He also casts doubt on rumors that a sixth season of Supernatural could feature an entirely new cast, rebooting the show without Jared Padalecki or Jensen Ackles. He htinsk those rumors are just designed to stir up the fans. [Sci Fi Wire]

New promo pics show Sam getting his groove back a little bit. [SpoilerTV]

FlashForward:

New cast promo pics focus on some of the characters besides Mark and Demetri... including Simon, played by Dominic Monaghan. [SpoilerTV]

Warehouse 13:

We'll be seeing more of the evil McPherson coming up. He's in the season finale, where we learn he has ties with two of the women of the Warehouse, making life a lot more difficult for them — and for Artie. [E! Online]

Eureka:

Taggart won't be in Friday's season finale, but actor Matt Frewer says he's in a "wait and see mode" about apperaing next season. [E! Online]

Heroes:

I don't think we've shown you this behind-the-scenes featurette for the returning show yet:

Smallville:

A few new TV spots for next week's season premiere:

Eastwick:

Some new clips from episode four, "Fleas And Casserole":

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown and Lauren Davis.

Talking to Screencrave, Lisberger said that Tron Legacy addresses the way in which technology can be mistaken for reality:

I think that one of the themes in the story being expressed is where Flynn's allegiances really lie. He created breakthrough technology in the day, so it means something very special to him. But he also has a real world family, and he's being asked to decide who he loves more. Then it gets really tricky because there's a tendency for people to say, ‘The best thing I could do for my kid is bless them with the best technology,' and maybe the kid doesn't really want your technology, he just wants you... I think that's sort of an interesting metaphor because we're sort of in the race with the Devil. Aspects of the world are going to hell, and we think if we can get to the point where we can simulate it, then we'll understand it and we'll solve the problem. We're struggling with AIDS and global warming, but if we can simulate it correctly, then we'll understand it and we can fix it. It's a classic sci-fi problem. Is technology gonna be your best friend or at times is it gonna be your best friend who turns out to be your worst enemy?

Part of the answer to that last question may lie in something that may be a spoiler about the new movie, if it's not a metaphor:

We were imprisoned at one time by the MCP, which was the mainframe computer system that told us what we could know about our information, and when we could know it. Some very trippy people have talked to me about what they think the MCP represents, and how it represents a form of how the universe tends to make us feel like we can't exceed certain parameters.

It's like "Why can't I play the piano? Why am I not gifted at sports?" There seems to be something in us that's limiting us. There's a since of being trapped. We deal with being trapped all the time as people. It's like yeah, "I can't play music, I wish I could." So, we overthrow the MCP, but we don't overthrow that limitation, and now technology is much more sophisticated in how it traps us. It doesn't just brutally say, "I'm the MCP, you're going to do what I want."

Sounds kind of Matrix-y... Does this mean we should expect Jeff Bridges in a long black coat doing wirework in the movie? Suddenly I may be less excited about this movie than I used to be.

D23: Steven Lisberger 1:1 for Tron [Screencrave]

Thanks to Graeme McMillan, Meredith Woerner, Annalee Newitz, Lauren Davis, Briana Cavanaugh, Chris West, Jeff VanderMeer, Andrew Liptak, Pete Gofton, James McGirk, Dennis Woo, Rachael Parker, Brian Williams, Rina Weisman, Chris Hsiang, Jessy Randall, David Fraser, Tim Todd, Chris Newman and Kiriko Moth, plus anyone I missed.

Tron

This is the all-time classic of trapped-in-a-game stories, and it's the first type of story that you see a lot — hero gets sucked inside the digital/computer world, and turned glowy or avatar-y. In this case, the evil Master Control Program is trying to keep the users from monitoring its functions, because it wants to gain absolute power. So when Flynn challenges its rule, the MCP digitizes him and then forces him to take part in a series of deadly disc-throwing, bike-racing, tank-battling games against computer programs.

Running Man

There's the "guy gets sucked inside video game" story, which is like Tron. And then there's the "condemned prisoner gets forced to take part in brutal gladitorial games in an ugly unitard" story, and this is the most perfect example. Partly because it features Arnold Schwarzenegger bringing his A-game, acting wise. But also, it gets major points for use of chainsaws and barbed wire and stuff.

Star Trek: "Gamesters Of Triskelion"

And this is the third type of "trapped in a game" story. There are some vaguely superior aliens (except that they kind of suck) and they kidnap other species and force them to compete/fight for their amusement. There needs to be a gangsta rap about hustling for the quatloos.

Doctor Who: Vengeance On Varos

Doctor Who has done many, many "trapped in a game" stories. There's "Vengeance On Varos," which is pretty much the classic "prisoners forced to take part in deadly games" scenario. There's "The Five Doctors," which is the epitome of "superior aliens kidnap lesser species and play deadly games with them for amusement, with the added wrinkle that the superior aliens are the Doctor's own species. There's also "The War Games," which is what it sounds like. And "The Celestial Toymaker," which features a superior alien games master who's inexplicably Fake Chinese.

Gemini Game by Michael Scott

This is another classic standard — teenage twins Liz and BJ create a hot-selling virtual reality game called Night's Castle. But then it gets invaded by an evil virus, causing havoc. Liz and BJ are trapped inside the game trying to fix it.

Death Race 2000

In a dystopian future, the totalitarian Bipartisan Party keeps an iron grip partly by distracting the people with its televised deadly cross-country race — and top racer Frankenstein is the latest person in a long line to bear that identity, having no choice but to race and/or die. In the recent remake starring Jason Statham, it's more like Running Man — another "felons forced to take part in deadly games" type deal.

Lexx, "The Game"

Kai plays against Prince in a deadly game of chess — and if Kai loses, his crewmates will die. But if Kai wins, he gets reunited with his soul. So Kai accepts Prince's terms, and Stan and Xev get turned into literal pawns.

Deep Space Nine, "Move Along Home"

Quite possibly the most annoying episode of DS9 ever, this episode features the Wadi, aliens from the Gamma Quadrant who force Sisko, Bashir and their friends to play really dumb games, with the refrain of "Move along home," every time they complete one of the asinine challenges. And then there's also the DS9 episode where O'Brien befriends the Tosk, an alien who's been bred to be the prey in a lifelong hunt.

Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon)

A group of kids gets on a spooky roller-coaster fairground ride at a fair, and winds up pulled into the dark world of D&D, where they must play the game in order to escape. Here's a clip from "The Dragon's Graveyard," the most controversial episode, which was almost banned because of its violence and because they contemplate killing their nemesis.

"Arena" by Frederic Brown.

This famous short story is basically the same deal as the Star Trek episode of the same name: Humans are fighting a bunch of lizard aliens, so super-powerful godlike beings pick one representative of each side and force them to fight in a barren landscape. The solution to the puzzle is different, and the human actually does take the opportunity to kill his enemy. You'll have to get your entertainment right here! There's also an Outer Limits episode with a similar premise, "Fun And Games," according to Wikipedia.

Legend Of Neil

We've raved about this webseries, about a guy who gets sucked into a World Of Warcraft-style online game world, before. Neil gets drunk and plays Legend Of Zelda, and decides to masturbate while asphyxiating himself with his Nintendo game controller, which somehow leads to him getting trapped inside the game, where he hangs out with psychotic fairy Felicia Day.

Arcade

From Albert Pyun (the director who brought you Cyborg and the original Captain America), and writer David S. Goyer comes this great movie, about a video game that takes over your brain. You must win the game — or get sucked inside it forever. Or something. It's all because they used human brain cells in making their new game console. Video game developers — do not do that. Human brain cells do not belong in your wii controller. They will turn Wii Boxing into a deadly death sport. Seriously!

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

Two men enter — how many leave? (How many do you think?) This is another subset of the "hero forced to compete in a deadly arena" genre — here, it's humans forcing each other to take part in ritual combat in an arena. Mad Max is pitted against Stevie Wonder's second worst song, Master Blaster, and there can be only one victor. The "trial by combat" thing is a common feature in science fiction, including many many television episodes.

Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone

You know what's cooler than Arnold Schwarzenegger having to navigate a deadly maze of games and traps? Molly Ringwald having to do the same thing! Okay, maybe not. It's the handiwork of the evil Robodog, whose deadly maze is almost unescapable, even for classic brat-pack actors at the start of their careers.

Stargate SG-1, "Avatar."

There are at least a couple classic Stargate episodes featuring a deadly game of death — but "Avatar" is our favorite, because Teal'c kicks major ass in it. He gets stuck inside a V.R. game training module, where every time he dies, he's brought back to life. The only way out is to win or get inside the Elevator of Surrender. And every time Teal'c dies in the game, his chances of dying in real life due to a heart attack increase. Here's an awesome music video of the episode's events, to the sounds of Michael Jackson.

Philip K. Dick, Game Players Of Titan

It's a dystopian future, and the last inhabitants of a depopulated Earth amuse themselves by playing a board game known as the Game, for huge amounts of property as well as each other's wives. (Um, yeah.) The game is administered by the Vugs, amorphous gambling-loving aliens from Titan, who turn out to have different factions with their own agendas. The rules of the game start to change, and it turns out the endgame is a lot more sinister than you'd realized. Other notable Dick works: Maze Of Death, and The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch.

Farscape, "John Quixote"

Chiana brings back a fancy virtual-reality game, and Crichton gets sucked into it, finding himself reliving his exploits in the Uncharted Territories, and then moving on to a scary fantasy world. The game plays out Crichton's fears, and he encounters dark reflections of people knows in the real world.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Game."

We've already made fun of the silliness of this game once before. Trust Riker to get everyone on the ship addicted to a time-waster.

Vivian Vande Velde, Heir Apparent

Fourteen-year-old Gianne is connected to a virtual reality game of kings and intrigue, only to find it has a malfunction and she must win quickly, or it will kill her.

Ben 10, "Game Over"

Here's another one we featured in our list of suckiest fictional video games. Ben gets stuck inside a really weak game involving flying discs and aerial combat — and if the game controller is turned off, he'll be trapped there forever.

X-Files, "First Person Shooter"

In this Wiliam Gibson-scripted episode, Mulder and Scully find themselves inside a VR game with sexy-but-deadly cowboys. Good thing Scully's got riot gear and funky goggles. And a virtual machine gun.

Scooby Doo And The Cyber Bunch

A group of computer nerds makes a special video game about Scooby Doo, and our heroes get digitized and beamed inside the game in a very Tron-inspired sequence. There they must face killer video game icons, deadly tests... and computerized versions of themselves.

Lost In Space, "The Deadly Games Of Gamma 6"

Faux Klingons challenge Dr. Smith and the Robinson family to a series of games of death — and if they lose, the Earth is forfeit. Here's a great scene of Daddy Robinson playing Russian Laser Roulette (which turns into a bong if it doesn't shoot) with one of the Kling-nots, who blinks first.

Existenz

This is the total classic "sucked into a video game" movie — you never quite know if our heroes have escaped from the game or not, and the scene of down-and-dirty spinal installation of a weirdly organic-looking video game port in the guy's spine is pretty memorable.

series 7: the contenders, are you afraid of the dark "tale of the pinball wizard"

Charles Stross, Glasshouse

This one is sort of a social experiment as well as a game — a group of people volunteer to be ported into random bodies inside a simulation of 1990s Earth. The better they do of embodying their pre-ordorained roles, the more points they get. But there's no way out of the game, and over time it becomes clearer that the people running it are actually trying to create a new society.

The Game

It's vaguely five minutes into the future, and Michael Douglas applies to take part in an alternate-reality game where the game intersects with your real life. He can't ever quite escape from the tentacles of intrigue and stuff. Notable for being one of the first pieces of fiction about ARGs, as well as for its sinister game/life overlap.

Saw

People are trapped in a game by a psycho who makes them do puzzles. It's like every psycho GM you've ever gamed with, rolled into one.

Cube

In this classic by Vincenzo Natali, director of the upcoming genetic thriller Splice, a group of people wake up in cube-shaped rooms in a building that turns out to be cube-shaped in turn. They have to navigate a series of deadly traps to escape from the mega-cube, but their sanity starts to come apart.

Hellraiser: Hellworld.

In the umpteenth Hellraiser movie, there's an evil game, and someone commits suicide while playing it. And then all the other players get invited to a mansion where everything is the game, and (wait for it) you can never quit playing.

Nightmares

This early 1980s horror movie features four different stories wrapped together, and one (which we featured previously) shows Emilio Estevez taking on the "Bishop Of Battle" video game — only to find that if you win, the console blows apart, and the video game monsters come into the real world and attack you.

Jumanji/Zathura

In this Robin Williams vehicle (and its quasi-sequel, directed by Jon Favreau), there's a board game and stuff from the game becomes real and invades the real world, menacing our heroes' lives. In the second movie, the board game is actually an outer space game, and the entire house gets whisked out into space, where the kids are menaced by aliens and helped by a friendly astronaut.

Evolver

Wow. How did I not know about this movie already? Every time the video game system Evolver is activated, it learns and "evolves" becoming more powerful... and more deadly. And Evolver is played by William H. Macy. And in this trailer, John "Q" DeLancie explains to us how Evolver hates to lose and will just get smarter and harder to beat, until...

It's not just the comic continuations of canceled shows (which also include The X-Files, Angel and, soon, Pushing Daisies), though; old ideas are never allowed to die anymore anywhere; that's why we're reading news about Battlestar Galactica being relaunched as a movie by Bryan Singer, X-Files possibly undergoing a movie reboot, eagerly anticipating the 28-years-later sequel to Tron and worrying whether or not there's going to be a fifth Terminator movie.

Arguments could - and will - be made about how this shows the void of new ideas in the entertainment world, but I'm not sure that those really hold water; this year alone, we've seen District 9 and Moon find success, gotten curious about Chris Nolan's Inception and watched as James Cameron's Avatar has become the most anticipated movie of the year. New stories are out there, and from big studios normally condemned for only sticking with familiar franchises, as well (In television, the same arguments can be made; for all the familiarity of Fringe or Warehouse 13, they're new shows, as are/were Dollhouse, Day One and even Flash Forward. As far as comics go, you only have to leaf through the 400+ page Previews to see all manner of new ideas sharing space with familiar faces). So, if it's not that no-one's coming up with new stories, why do we keep going back to the old?

It can't just be nostalgia; you can't really tell me that Jericho's return as a comic book and potential TV movie comes down to people longing for those halcyon days of 2008, for one thing, and it's not just the sense of unfinished stories or unfulfilled potential (Unless I missed the legions of people crying out for someone to come along and give us the story of bearded Lorne Greene Adama in Galactica 1980 that they knew we deserved for all these years). So, what is it?
I'm worried that, ultimately, it's laziness. Not only laziness on the side of creators, but also on the side of fans; for the creators, resurrecting an old franchise seems like a no-brainer because it:
* offers a way around that whole pesky "coming up with an idea" thing,
* brings a ready-made amount of fans, no matter how small, who are not only already interested in your product but can take up some slack on marketing and publicity (Yes, this involves "I can't believe they're letting Bryan Singer do BSG only months after Ron Moore's show ended" style outrage),
* creates an easy PR hook for whatever publicity you want to do ("[Character X] is back!")
* allows you to learn from the mistakes and successes of your predecessors instead of making yourself look like idiots in public (Until, of course, you learn new ways to do that, which is inevitable), and
* gives you a chance to work out some of your "I could do that idea a million times better!" feelings about original version.

On the fan side of things, though, it gets more complicated. We cling onto these resuscitations because, in a weird way, we feel entitled to them: We've invested all this time and energy in them, and - for want of a better way to put it - that gives us the right to demand more of it until we decide we're done (See: Star Trek and Star Wars and the fact that they'll never go away), and also because... well, we've invested all this time and energy and we want to know that it's not for nothing, and that we won't have to go through it all again with something else that might just break our heart.

In the end, it's as much a success for the market as it is anything else: Everything is available to us if we want it badly enough (Well, as long as what we want already exists; those new things, they still have to be dreamt up), even if it's not what we really need, or what is good for us. Don't get me wrong; for the people who couldn't consider life without knowing what happened to Angel and Illyria after the end of the TV show, I'm happy that they get their chance to find out (And I selfishly look forward to the further adventures of Ned and Chuck, when they appear). I just wish that, sometimes, we were not only allowed to move on from our old favorites and find something else to surprise and amaze us.