Now that we’re done with two of the three most hyped trilogies of the new millenium, and the market for comic book films has been exhausted (save Spider-Man and X-men sequels), it’s time to think about what Hollywood will come up with to top The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars. They’ll have plenty of Philip K. Dick stories left to fuck up (so his heirs can cash in) after Paycheck bombs, but the most recent batch of trailers on Apple.com promises a new crop of sci-fi blockbusters that actually look pretty good.
Hellboy stars Ron Perlman as genius comic book artist Mike Mignola’s sarcastic do-gooder demon. Hellboy leads a team of supernatural government agents on missions that more often than not involve thwarting occult-obsessed Nazis trying to raise a world-threatening evil.
Rumors of a sequel to the Vin Diesel vehicle Pitch Black are no longer hearsay with the release of a trailer for The Chronicles of Riddick. Diesel will again star as escaped convict Riddick, this time finding himself in the middle of an intergallactic war. The villains resemble medieval knights, possibly making a comment on modern Christian Imperialism…?
Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie battle giant robots and flying chrome drones in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I for one am a little tired of warp-speed spaceships, evil androids, and mind-erasing machines, and this revisitation of early 20th Century sci-fi will provide stark contrast to Star Trek and the like. It appears to be an homage to Hugo Gernsback and the 1939 World Fair, Hollywood having picked up on the underground success of The Iron Giant and its aesthetic. From the trailer, though, Sky Captain appears to do a lot of winking at the audience that could just make it annoying to watch.
Notable non-sci-fi movies coming out soon are Mel Gibson’s contoversial biblical epic The Passion of the Christ (which must be pronounced with a thick accent to be understood), a story of life under the Taliban called Osama (ever notice how one guy can ruin a perfectly nice name?), and possibly Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers.
On the other hand, movies that look far, far worse than Booty Call are: Garfield (sorry Bill Murray!), The Punisher, and Never Die Alone (when is DMX going to learn?).
