Blockbuster Buzz - Times Online - WBLG

How can we make 'The day the Earth stood still' more predictable?

Keanu Reeves, star of the forthcoming Day the Earth stood Still rehash, let slip a few plot points in his interview with MTV last week.

In the original fifties classic, Klaatu was dispatched to Earth by a galactic council to warn humanity that the disparity between the capability of their weaponry and their maturity as a species could lead to their annihilation.

It's a sensible  basis for a sci-fi movie, and one which would bear  remaking. Instead, however, the eloquent Mr Reeves (who also assures us that Gort, the iconic robot in the 1951 movie was 'iconoclastic') lets slip that we are being warned this time about Global Warming. Because that's what everyone's talking about.

Which of course is patently ridiculous. A superior pan-galactic civilisation wouldn't concern itself with a race that was burning itself out through its own stupidity. The premise of the Michael Rennie / Patricia Neal movie was that mankind represented a danger to other civilisations and that's why we were being warned.

If we just represent a danger to ourselves it's hard to see why anyone else should care.

Still looking forward to seeing the robot though.

Dune: Third time lucky?

Frank Herbert’s messianic tale of  worm-related hi-jinks on Arrakis, the Desert Planet, has already been a sprawling miniseries for the SciFi channel and (most memorably) a giddy gothic epic starring Kyle McLachan and featuring tantric bassman Sting in an amusing space Speedo.

Now, perhaps emboldened by the huge success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Paramount are gearing up to attempt the galaxy-spanning spice saga again. Instead of the weirdo’s weirdo David Lynch at the helm we have actor/director Peter Berg, best remembered as the all-too-mortal bounty hunty hunter Pistol Pete Deeks in Smokin’ Aces. Berg has also directed Will Smith’s nice-looking superhero comedy Hancock which is due for release in July. This new version doesn’t have a script or even a writer yet, but Berg is reportedly promising an entirely different direction than the one Lynch took. The project is slated as a major Summer blockbuster for Paramount with, they say, its theme of finite ecological resources promising to be particularly timely.

This early in production it would be reckless to predict a release date, so I will: Dune will be in cinemas in Summer 2010.

Arthur C Clarke: 1917-2008

Arthur C Clarke was, if we’re being honest, a bit too brainy ever to have written the kind of story that Blockbuster Buzz might have covered. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he eschewed the temptations of rip-roaring Space Opera in favour of thoughtful ruminations on the way a future world might actually work.

 His best-known work, 2001, was a stately examination of the next step in mankind’s evolution as we are ushered by godlike aliens into a more advanced phase of existence.

Or something.

Honestly I don’t know anyone who pretends to completely understand it, but that’s hardly the point.

Wall-E: New trailer

The story of loveable rubbish-collecting robot Wall-E is so assured of being the biggest kids' movie of 2008 it seems almost unfair. Mixing equal parts Short Circuit and ET, and the adding a sprinkle of that irresistible Pixar magic the lonely mechanoid's creators have built an all -conquering merchandising phenomenon that will undoubtedly be selling toys, lunchboxes and (for all I know) actual robots well into the next Century.

You're going to end up seeing this film. Might as well watch the trailer now to get yourself in the mood:

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Terminator 4: You hadn't got too used to that title had you?

Christian Bale's other blockbuster franchise has taken one small step backwards today. The movie we were all getting used to calling Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins has, according to Coming Soon, lost its title. Appropriate, you might think, for a movie that's being directed by a chap without a name.

I quite like 'Terminator 4 - Future War' as a title, but maybe that's just because it has that rhyming ' Gone with the Wind 2 - Electric Boogaloo' sound to it.

What do you think? Leave your best title ideas in the comments and I'll see if I can't pass them off as my own.

Starship Troopers 3: Trailer

The new trailer for Starship Troopers 3: Marauder tells us quite a few things: First, that 'thinking woman's Vanilla Ice' Casper Van Dien is back as Johnny Rico. Second, that the effects budget for the movie doesn't seem appreciably higher than it was for the lamentable Starship Troopers 2. Third, that this thing looks like a riot.

At last humanity decides to deploy some WMDs to combat those persistent bugs: "Let's go crack a planet" is sure to be catchphrase of the year but there are still plenty of scenes of troopers packed suicidally close together and hosing down monster cockroaches with assault rifles.

 

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The trailer does its best to capture original director Paul Verhoeven's mock-totalitarian irony, and is full  of preposterous action. There's still no sign of the power armour from Robert Heinlein's original book but the movie still looks like an essential guilty pleasure treat for fans of sci-fi action.  It's direct-to-DVD, so no-one will spot you in the cinema queue.