Upcoming Sci-Fi Movies (and related)

[javasaurus]

Superman Returns (2006)
Star Trek XI (2007)
Since science fiction movies have come up recently, I decided to see what all's coming up. There must be something original coming. Right? Wrong. I'll see lots of these, but not an original title in the bunch.

Much of the following list is based on information from IMDB and actuacine.net.

The Net 2 (2006)
King Kong (2005)
X-Men 3 (2006)
Fantastic Four (2005)
Spiderman 3 (2007)
Star Wars III (2005)
Hitchhikers Guide (2005)
War of the Worlds (2005)
Batman Begins (2005)
Indian Jones 4 (2005)
Red Dwarf (2005)
XXX 2 (2005)
X-Files 2 (2005)
Doom (2005, based on video game?)
Zathura (2005, a sci-fi version of Jumanji, based on book by same author)
Mission Impossible 3 (2006)
Juraissic Park 4
Aliens 5
Mad Max 5
Underworld 2 (2005)
Many more superhero films (Iron Man, Wolverine, Submariner, Batman vs. Superman, Silver Surfer, Ghost Rider, Luke Cage)

I also saw that a new Herbie the Love Bug is coming out, and a new Bad News Bears, both this year.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

Red Dwarf still hasn't actually started production yet, so its highly unlikely to make the original '05 release date.

Same with the new Indiana Jones. They had a script that Ford and Connery seemed to agree on, but Lucas got cold feet about it and pushed it again, bringing in yet another screenwriter to play with it. [note, even that rumor is over a year old; things froze while Lucas was working post-production for Star Wars ep 3.] Just goes to show at the very least that Lucas DOES respect that story and script are critical elements to a movie's success, even in a successful franchise (the problem with many of the Trek movies). Shame he didn't do that on his own Star Wars films...

Batman v. Superman was just an idea thrown out to try to keep the momentum up on the Superman film that kept losing screenwriters, then directors, then actors, repeat ad naseum. it doesn't really exist anymore.

The Herbie and Bad News Bears movies are likely the "remake" rather than "sequel", much like Starsky&Hutch, Beverly Hillbillys, Freaky Friday, Charlies Angels, blah blah. Trying to milk a retro theme. My chance of seeing them before HBO puts them out is nil, which was the chance of my seeing any of those others. Ditto the remake of the Poseidon Adventure, which IS legit and coming out.

shame about all these damn remakes. its actually kinda the back-of-my-head problem with the Galactica remake as well: where's originality?

the one advantage to these kinds of remakes is that they can spend much less time "introducing" characters, both to the audience and to each other. The problem with a new first story is that you have to spend so much screen time establishing the relationships (think X-Men 1 using wolverine as a means of introducing the audience to the X-Men), and only if its successful can you actually look to a movie where you don't have that problem and can get on with a (theoretically) more interesting story (X2).

so by remaking a known story, the audience spends time going "oh, that's different and that's different and they kept that and hey, i think i like this" rather than having get a handle on a whole bunch of new characters. at least, that's the theory. sometimes you can instead piss off the audience by changing too much.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

Good Sci-fi movies are really tough to do. They are expensive for FX, and don't have a large enough target audience to warrant them. The large franchise types (star wars, star trek, superheroes) have a built in fan base, but original good sci-fi is tough. In recent years we've had only a few: Gattaca, Dark City, Butterfly Effect (which is only marginally sci-fi, more spec-fic), AI, and what else? Oh, Men in Black is another, though more action than real hard-core SF. Not much demand for the real thing, not enough to justify the costs. Which is really, really sad.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

nearly forgot about Minority Report, 5th Element, and I'm sure others, but they're still few and far between.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

and actually minority report brings up an interesting thing -- even original movies are starting to look "the same". i would be, at first glance at the trailers (as in, not really being able to see detail), hard pressed to tell the difference between minority report and i robot. both follow that same shimmering white, silver, and blue color scheme for most of their effects and "worlds" in the backgrounds.

now, that may be realistic to the direction that human architecture is going, but its striking how similar they are at times.