Valerian & The City Of A Thousand Planets (To Infinity Retrospective)

Do I have to? Ugh. Fine. Okay, like, welcome to the To Infinity Retrospective, a series created in preparation for Rise Of Skywalker. Blah, blah, blah. Look, we’re only 18 days out from the premiere, so we had to do one more of these. And what better way to end this series of Space Opera reviews than with Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets? (He said sarcastically). What’s it about? Hell if I know, but keep reading and try to find out.

Annihilation (2018)

Natalie Portman is a biologist, and former soldier. Exactly one year ago, her husband, played by Oscar Isaac, went into a mysterious, mutated area called “the shimmer” and disappeared. Everyone thinks he’s dead, until, one day, out of nowhere, he shows up on Portman’s door, deeply ill. She learns from a psychologist, Jennifer Jason-Leigh, that he was part of a reconnaissance mission sent into “the shimmer” to find out just what it is, and that, to date, he is the only person to return. Upon hearing that there will be a new team sent into the area, Portman volunteers, for some reason, and she and the group venture forth into “the shimmer” where they encounter all kinds of crazy shit, including mutated plants, mutated crocodiles, and even mutated bears.

The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)

In the future, Earth is running dangerously low on fuel. So, in a last ditch effort to come up with a clean, alternative energy source, the world’s governments create a giant particle accelerator, and shoot it up in space, where it can be tested without fear of damaging the Earth. Unfortunately, when the particle accelerator does eventually function, the crew of said space station find themselves transported to a parallel dimension. And back on Earth, the particle accelerator’s explosion opens up a portal, releasing giant, Godzilla-like monsters, which begin wreaking havoc. Will the crew get home? Will they find a way to undo all the damage that they’ve caused? Well, you’ll just have to watch the movie to find out.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

While en route to a new world, a group of interstellar colonists receive a transmission from a nearby planet. After analyzing the signal, they realize that its human in origin, and that the planet its coming from might have ideal living conditions. Deciding that this is too good an opportunity to pass up, the Captain sends down a small group to investigate. At first, everything goes just fine; the source of the transmission, a crashed space ship, is discovered without incident, and the world itself is rather hospitable. Things quickly devolve, however, when a member of the team is infected by a bizarre black fungus, which causes him to birth an aggressive alien monster. And if that’s not bad enough, the crew are found by a survivor of the crashed ship, who may, or may not, want to do them harm.

Unique Sci-Fi Films To Learn From

Sci-Fi; It’s probably my favorite genre in cinema, and it’s certainly one of the most varied on Earth. Since it’s only parameters are that it must concern, “imagined future scientific or technological advances, or major social or environmental changes,” it is basically broad enough to encompass any story under the sun. Now, if you’re like me, you’re not content with simply reading or watching sci-fi. You want to make it as well. But, of course, one can’t simply jump head first into the creation of art. One must study the works of others, learn what works and what doesn’t, and then, using this newly acquired knowledge, go forth and invent. But what films should you watch? That’s what I asked myself when I concocted this list. What movies advanced the sci-fi genre with their unique story lines, innovative visual effects, and ability to get audiences to ponder moral and philosophical questions? These ones, my friend. Not only are none of them sequels, remakes or spin-offs, but each, in their own way, changed sci-fi forever, be it with their unique premises, narrative structures, or filmmaking techniques. They also cover the vast spectrum that sci-fi can encompass; from horror, to action, to comedy, to noir. I might not be a fan of all of them, but I do have to commend them for their originality and influence, and, for that reason, I must insist you all give them a look.

Arrival (2016)

When twelve massive UFO’s arrive on Earth, the US military hires an expert linguist (Amy Adams) to try to communicate with the Aliens. Quickly realizing that oral exchange is useless, since the extraterrestrials aren’t talking in the classic sense, Adams and her team decide to use written language to try to decode what the creatures are, and why they’re on Earth. And now we have a big mystery, which, I’m sorry to say, never really gets solved. But before I launch into my complaints, I would like to list some things that really worked about this movie.

Firefly

Greetings Loved Ones! Liu Is The Name, And Views Are My Game.

I know I’m probably going to catch hell for saying this but, having just sat down and watched every episode of Firefly, I can kind of understand why the show got canceled. This is not to suggest that I think it’s a bad series. I just think it had several things working against it. But, before I go any further, I feel like I need to explain some things to you all.

For those of you who don’t know, Firefly is a science fiction TV series created by Joss Whedon. It ran for one, fourteen-episode season back in 2002, before getting cancelled. Despite its relatively brief run on the air, Firefly gained a massive cult following, and to this day, is considered by many to be one of the greatest TV series ever made. In terms of plot, well, that’s kind of hard to explain. Basically, it’s a Western set in space. In the year 2517, human beings have colonized multiple planets beyond this solar system, and some are really rich and technology-filled, and some aren’t. And when I say they aren’t technology-filled, I mean people on them are still using horse-drawn carriages, steam locomotives, and old colt revolvers. Anyway, because of all the inequity, there was this war between rebels from the poor, Outer Rim planets, and the big evil Alliance, which the rebels lost. One of the men who fought for the rebels is Captain Malcolm Reynolds, who now works as a gun-slinger, mercenary, smuggler hybrid with a small crew on his ship, Serenity. If all that’s hard to remember, just think of him as a Confederate Civil War vet with a chip on his shoulder, trying to get by working as a bounty hunter. But, yeah, in the show, Malcolm and his crew get jobs, go on adventures, and usually get into trouble with Alliance officials. And, well, that’s basically it. Oh yeah, and they occasionally run into this zombie Alien things whose origins never really get explained. I watched the series, and here’s what I have to say about it.

It’s wildly imaginative, and I really appreciate that. As good as television is nowadays, most shows stick to basic premises–murder mystery, big city sitcom, political and/or espionage thriller, etc. I can’t think of many other series with as expansive universes as this one. Yeah, there are the Stargate and Star Trek series, but those are well-established properties with decades of continuity and countless reinterpretations to build off of, so its easy to be creative with them. With this show, they literally had to start from scratch, create a whole new universe with rules, and then try to present that universe and those rules to us in a manner that didn’t feel forced. So, again, from a creativity standpoint, I applaud Whedon and his team. And as far as simple filmmaking is concerned, I don’t have any real problems. The show is well-shot, the actors do fine jobs, and the stories for each episode are certainly entertaining. But, as I said before, I can still understand why this series got cancelled.

For starters, when you watch the show, you can tell that it was expensive to make. All the CGI they had to use, the sets they had to build, and the locations they had to go to to shoot, seemed like they cost a pretty penny. And, take it from me, no investor is going to continue to fork over that much cash unless they’ve got some guarantee that all that money is going to come back to them. From what I’ve heard, Firefly didn’t have that many viewers at the time of its initial release, and wasn’t making that much money, so I can see why the investors over at Fox decided to pull the plug. Secondly, as much as I praise this series for its creativity and originality, there are points where both of those things get in the way of good storytelling. Literally every single episode begins with a voice over explaining the premise I gave you above, including the date, the setting, and the civil war. And unlike other series that do that–such as Avatar: The Last Airbender–where the explanation serves as the intro, Firefly has a musical intro ON TOP OF all the information they dump on you. That means you have to wait a good five to six minutes before the actual plot of each episode begins. And finally, as with a lot of sci-fi movies and shows, Whedon felt the need to develop his own brand of futuristic slang. There are points in episodes where characters are talking, and then, out of the blue, they’ll say a random series of syllables that clearly mean something to them, but that don’t mean a damn thing to the rest of us. I hate it when writers do that–come up with weird vernacular and overly complicated names for simple things. You know what I’m talking about–calling kids “younglings” in the Star Wars movies, robot spiders “grievers” in The Maze Runner, and werewolves “lycans” in the Underworld films. There’s no need for this. Just call things what they are–kids, robots, werewolves. Avatar: The Last Airbender had a comparably complex premise, world and plot to Firefly, but didn’t get canceled after one season. Why? Because it didn’t spend unnecessarily long amounts of time explaining things, it didn’t bog down the dialogue with silly slang and odd terminology, and it didn’t let the mythology it was creating get in the way of good storytelling.

So, like I said before, I don’t think Firefly is a bad series, but I do think that it is one that could have been better. That’s why I’ve decided to give it a 6.8 out of 10. It’s not a show that I would want to watch again, but, if you decide to, and enjoy it, more power to you!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and a Bloody Good New Year to you all!