Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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I knew someone once who had no interest in science-fiction, and dismissed it with “That could never happen.” That seems to be the mainstream attitude toward SF — try to pit Farscape against Survivor and you know exactly what will happen — and yet they love to see films about the impossible. (Well, as long as the words “Star Trek” aren’t in the title.) According to the IMDB, 15 of the top 20 all-time grossing movies in the U.S. are science-fiction or fantasy — including the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and four of the five Star Wars films (The Empire Strikes Back is #21). As much as people like to disdain Star Wars fans, there aren’t enough for the movies to do that well without the mainstream flocking to the theaters as well.

Now, I’m including The Sixth Sense, Spider-Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean, but even if you’d rather not, that’s still more than 50%. And the other five films include two movies about talking animals (Finding Nemo and The Lion King) and one about a guy surrounded by incredible coincidence (Forrest Gump).

Studios have clearly noticed the trend, since they keep making the films, but do you think the average Joe will notice how much sci-fi he actually watches? Nah, that could never happen.

From IMDB: All-Time USA Boxoffice as of July 7, 2004: Continue reading →

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I am thoroughly sick of the phenomenon I call the Draco Malfoy Effect. This is the process by which young (and not-so-young) women become convinced that not only are evil bad-boy types desirable, but completely reformable. Liking the maverick is nothing new for the Hollywood-hypnotized masses, especially seeing as how he’s so often played by a desirable star. However, liking the villain–the kind who has not yet been definitively shown to possess a heart–to the point that you believe he can be saved through sex with either a) you, b) your Mary Sue, or c) the ingenue of the cast is, to my thinking, simply bizarre.

I’d love to have a discussion on this. Please comment. (Even if you think I’m the one with her head on crooked.)

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I realized this morning what struck me as odd about the original crew of Moya: they’re not a crew, they’re a D&D party. Two warriors, a priest, a thief, and Ordinary Guy (who’d probably be classed as a bard). We started trying to categorize everyone else who shows up and realized that we’d need to know all the kits and extra subclasses to do it right. Then I thought of trying to determine alignments and couldn’t decide whether to use the D&D system or the TMNT system (which I barely know but seems to work better for actual people). It was at that point that Kelson said, “You know, it’d be easier to sort them into Hogwarts houses.” So we did. Continue reading →