The Gallifreyan Gazette: Eye on Sci-Fi - Star Wars, Orphan Black, Mad Max

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Eye on Sci-Fi - Star Wars, Orphan Black, Mad Max

Late April 2015

by Ken Parker

With a slew of high profile sci-fi movies coming out this year like The Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mad Max: Fury Road, Terminator: Genisys and Jurassic World, one can be excused to forget about the biggest release of the year, mostly because it is still many months away from coming out. But we won't be forgetting about Star Wars from now on. Expect an ever increasing level of promotion and coverage about Star Wars from now on.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens – Obviously the big news for this was the release of the trailer.

Some skeptics have become believers while most fans have gotten more excited for this upcoming film that may be more anticipated than any film in history. The trailer seems to have supported some of the early rumors of the plot and as expected, that trailer has been dissected and over analyzed.

http://io9.com/lets-break-down-the-secrets-and-spectacle-of-the-new-st-1698268479

http://io9.com/everything-we-learned-about-star-wars-force-awakens-at-1698280402

I would expect more of this as time goes on and it is all good. When do you stop reading potential spoilers though?

Star Wars: Rebels Season 2 – we won't have to wait until December to experience more Star Wars. The second season of Rebels will be back this fall and will no doubt have some big scenes. What follows is a trailer and a poster that may be seen as spoilers so look away if you dare.

Of course the real reason to watch season 2 is this........

Star Wars – BB-8 is real! I know most of us thought that that rolling soccer ball droid seen in the first teaser was a CG effect but come to find out it wasn't. Here is an article that tells us how this real prop was created.

http://observationdeck.io9.com/so-how-does-bb-8-work-1698641248

And yes, if I could afford it, I would buy one!!

Star Wars: Battlefront Trailer – Perhaps more exciting than the actual movie trailer, is the video game trailer for Battlefront. I played the first two Star Wars Battlefront games way back when and loved them. This trailer, showing non gameplay footage mind you, is certainly exciting.

Orphan Black Season 3 is on – For those still not on board the Orphan Black trip, season 3 is airing on BBC America on Saturdays and there is plenty of time to catch up with season 1 & 2. So far the season looks great and this show just continues to impress. I have almost given up thinking one actress is playing all the clone parts. There is no way Tatiana Maslaney can be that good. She has created several different characters in a most impressive way that makes you forget they are preformed by the same actress. I could watch this show forever!!! Oh, Wait......

Orphan Black Ending? Oh, no.. this is devastating news. It appears that Orphan Black is set to end at the end of season 5. The good news is that we are not even half way there yet but the bad news is that, well, the best sci-fi TV show is ending. More good news is Tatiana Maslany will be able to show off her incredible acting skills somewhere else and show more people what she is made of. I do not want to see this show end but I suppose it is best for the show to keep from going on too long.

http://static02.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2015/04/giphy.gif

Gordon's Alive? - a rumor that a new Flash Gordon movie is in the works with Matthew Vaughn (X-Men First Class, Kingsman) directing. This is an interesting animal because the original Flash Gordon is a fairly straight forward, classic sci-fi hero story that was completely altered with the cheesy and fun Flash Gordon movie of the 80's. What will this remake remake? Will they go with the classic tone or will they attempt to remake cheese? And then there is an offshoot of this rumor that claims that this film will be a sequel of sorts. When a sequel attempts to copy what was partially an accident with the original (bad film becoming a cult classic because it is over the top bad) then it would be unlikely to even come close to capturing that original tone. Still, we shall wait and see.

Mad Max: Fury Road – The Avengers may be on everyone's mind but only a few weeks after its release, Mad Max is back in what looks to be the craziest and most beautiful looking films of the year. This latest trailer pulls in the past to remind us what we could be in store for.

Tomorrowland Trailer 3 – This is looking better and better. I thought this was going to be more of a kids adventure but there is sure a lot of action as well.

Childhood's End Teaser – SyFy appears to be doing more sci-fi lately and their 3 part series for this December hopefully will be better than Ascension.

Dark Matter airs June 12 on SyFy - I like all the sci-fi on SyFy but will any of it be any good? Has to be better than that WWE Wrestling garbage that had no right to be on the channel in the first place - thankfully that is going away in 2016!!