Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
From the same director who did the mostly excellent The Fifth Element, so the setting is envisioned as a colorful whizz-bang future. Being based on a graphic novel series didn’t hurt, either. This was going pretty good until the trashy Rihanna strip tease scene. A-list celebs cameos tend to ruin decent science fiction and fantasy movies because they divert attention from the story and other characters, onto them. And because A-list celebs are terrible.
Krull
Star Wars meets Excalibur. This was my go-to fantasy movie when I was younger, so much so that I wore out the board game and the Atari game. Watching it now, the story is fine but the special effects’ reach was too far for its grasp.
Rideback
An injured ballerina gets into the local transforming motorcycle scene and falls into a politically rebellious faction. I really liked the designs of the ridebacks; they look like they could be something that’s feasible in the real world. The world just needs one millionaire dude to stop playing fantasy football or whatever for one season to fund a working prototype and get a Kickstarter going.
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
This combines two favorite sci-fi narrative settings of mine: origin stories and apocalypse (or near apocalypse stories). It takes some writing skill to come up with a backstory for stuff that’s already been well established in a universe—in this case, it’s the origin of Skynet. This movie was decent in that regard, but I’m sure there were better ways to portray it.
Kill la Kill
Teppen Toppa Gurren Lagann but with slutty superpowered clothing and swords instead of huge robots and “spiral power,” written by the same man, Kazuki Nakashima. Completely bonkers off-the-wall animation and action with the midway series twist, just like TTGL. The opening scene gives you a good idea of how things will go in the series.
Alita: Battle Angel
Should been titled Alita: Battle Sue, though I don’t think she’s quite a Mary Sue. The story itself seems fine, but I’m sure a lot of it was changed from the manga, which looks quite good. In the film, the powerful, attractive altruist is too prominent; maybe the “cute, naive 85lb killing machine” trope is being overplayed too much in anime, and it’s spilling over into Hollywood more and more.
Tomb Raider (2018)
I barely remember what happened in this movie, so it probably wasn’t good. I do remember Alicia Vikander being a more believable Lara Croft, physically, than Angelina Jolie, but that’s about it.
Logan’s Run
Came out nearly the same time as Star Wars but the special effects are a decade behind. I think this movie played into the Boomer fear of getting old: when they turn 30, citizens levitate and turn into fireworks, instead of being “renewed.” Crazier than Wooodstock, man! The titular character even breaks the main computer that controls the dome where they all live, just by sitting in front of it, in true Boomer fashion. Sorry, I don’t make jokes about Baby Boomers as much as I think I need to, being a late-Gen X-er, so I’m making up for it.
Shazam!
This is thought of as the DC version of Captain Marvel (even though he’s also named…*drum roll*…Captain Marvel), but in my head this was better because it didn’t take itself so seriously. Like Captain Marvel, Billy Batson/Shazam is overpowered, but Billy has a personality and isn’t a vehicle for a girl power revenge fantasy with the personality of a plank. And, though I think it should’ve happened earlier in the film, Billy Batson/Shazam has a moral struggle, which Captain Marvel doesn’t have. Should Billy give up his powers to save his family? There are real ramifications there. What makes Iron Man a great movie, for instance, is that Tony Stark has a moral struggle: should he build the bomb for the terrorists, or refuse and risk his own life and the innocent Yinsen’s? Should he honor Yinsen’s dying words, the words from a man who saved his life twice, though Stark would have to change the course of his business and life? And this is just in the first half hour. Captain Marvel just needs to figure out how to “control her emotions” and stop the bad guys. Eh.
Ragnarok
An “awakening an ancient power” story, so you can guess where this goes. There’s actually a very good twist to this, because the awakened power, some large beast, rampages around and kills a bunch of people in this remote location. Naturally, the humans want to avoid it—urvival instinct and all. It ends up that the beast isn’t necessarily evil but just trying to protect a baby beast. Undoubtedly this has been done before, but depicting a powerful apocalypse-beast that kills things as not evil but a part of how things are isn’t a bad idea.
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Some of these movies are almost worth my time. I’m going to guess that the better stuff is going to disappear from live action because of the permanent quarantines. However, the animated versions will likely rise in their place in the market.