Okay, I hated The Fantastic Four film, and I am less than excited about the sequel. Don't get me wrong, I loved the comic book. It's just that the film was an absurd translation. I think the thing that most annoyed me was how the filmmakers took one of Marvel's greatest villians, Dr. Doom, and turned him into a stereotype. The only thing they didn't do was have him shake his fist at the sky and bark. But enough about that...I am continuing here the theme of fantastic vehicles...

The Fantasticar will make its appearance in the upcoming film (along with Galactica and Surfer---I shudder to think...but never mind). The vehicle, pictured above comes from a USA Today story with a picture by Michael Miller at Twentieth Century Fox. If you want to read the article, go here: http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2006-11-29-fantasticar_x.htm .

The fantasticar is a supervehicle thanks to the scientific genius of Reed Richards. It's a large, blocky bit of gear first envisioned by Jack Kirby, a man who painted with his fists and never dreamed of subtlety. It could fly at five hundred miles an hour and soar well above the city. Here is a picture of the unveiling of a newer version of the machine, drawn by Kirby himself.

I want to be excited about it, but again, based on the first film, I am cynical. It's my guess that it will be a fun and explosive bit of machinery, something that can stir audiences and give them the sort of thirll that they enjoyed when they first sat back in Return of the Jedi and watched the speeder chase through the forests of Endor.

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I've noticed a disturbing trend among some of my favorite sci-fi movies; the inability to make a decent sequel.

Am I the only one who has noticed this? Somehow I doubt it.

The Star Wars saga IMO turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments ever. Granted, Lucas managed to make the first trilogy worth watching. Star Wars itself will always be the best one, but The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were worthy successors. But what the Hell happened after that?

The second trilogy was such a letdown to me. I tried to like The Phantom Menace, I did. But there were so many things that bothered me. I wasn't a huge fan of the young Anakin and Natalie Portman brought new meaning to the description "wooden." And need I really get into the whole Jar Jar Binks issue? So when Attack of the Clones came out, I didn't exactly rush to the box office, and I humbly admit I haven't even seen Revenge of the Sith. ((ducks))

If I had to pick out one thing that ruined the last Star Wars trilogy it would be the over-emphasis on computer graphics and a complete lack of character building. I know I am not the first to say it, but that doesn't make it a less valid complaint.

Another great idea that fell apart was the Matrix movie franchise. Man, I loved the Matrix too. I thought it was the most interesting, innovative movie I had seen in a long long time. I was so looking forward to the sequel and couldn't have been more excited that they were making THREE of them!

*sigh*

And then I saw The Matrix Reloaded. To be honest, I didn't understand but half of what they were talking about. And it seemed to me they were trying so hard to be deep, they forgot to make the story interesting. There were some good fight scenes, of which I am a big fan and the freeway chase scene was fun. But other than that, I was disappointed enough not to bother to see Matrix Revolutions in the movie theater. I did maintain enough hope to rent the final movie, but frankly, I couldn't wait for the darn thing to end. I think the makers of the third movie ended up making the same mistake George Lucas did and spent too much time on computer generated stunts and forgot the story. And the CGI at the end of the movie wasn't even convincing to me. I thought it looked terribly fake.

The Terminator series did manage to fare better than most, with two really good films with the original Terminator and T2: Judgement Day. Nope this one didn't fall apart until T3: Rise of the Machines. The only thing I liked about this one was the Terminatrix; I guess I like strong women. The biggest mistakes here were that James Cameron didn't direct the film and it didn't include Linda Hamilton. I didn't mind Nick Stahl too much as John Conner, but I would've preferred Edward Furlong if only for consistency.

Since I already mentioned Highlander in a recent post, I won't delve into that any further right now. Though it fits since the first movie is the only one worth mentioning.

Let me know if you agree with my assessment or if you think I am way off. And as always, tell me if you think I left anything out.

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Stewart mentioned that the Batmobile deserved credit in my Cars With Charisma post, and I couldn't agree more. So this post is dedicated exclusively to the Batmobile in all its glory.

The Batmobile as had several incarnations, the most recent from Batman Begins is my absolute favorite; though they are all worthy of mentioning. I can't pretend to be a car aficionado, or even a Batmobile expert. Mostly the car is important for what it represents. Batman was known for his gadgets and the Batmobile was one heck of a gadget. It was a huge extension of Batman's power and resourcefulness.

I'm mostly just going to lay out the specs and leave it to the rest of you to try to remember what the car could do and what it represents to you.

The original TV Batmobile started out as a concept car called the Lincoln Futura originally built in 1955. Apparently the car weighed 3 tons and was prone to stress fractures, but did we really care? We just wanted to see all the cool stuff it could do. This model was said to have atomic batteries, turbine engines and all sorts of gadgets. And, lest we forget the 60's show also featured a bunch of other vehicles like the Batboat, the Batcycle and the Batcopter.

The next Batmobile was the Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney car from the first series of Batman movies. The Keaton version featured a jet engine, aircraft instruments and browning sub machine guns.The Kilmer car had "Powerful interior machinery radiating with blue-white light through a ribbed body, wing and fins rising majestically from the rear of its body, illuminated hubcaps emblazoned with the Bat Ensignia, a powerful engine pulsating beneath the meshed hood, an orange-red flame jetting out of the rear turbine exhaust." What else is there to say? The Clooney version is pretty wild looking, though it doesn't appear to have had much more than the appearance altered having "Goodyear tires with the Bat emblem embossed on the treads; single rear cockpit; independent suspension; illuminated blue hubcaps; pulsing chassis lights...(and) Six flame columns produce a V-shaped exhaust pattern six feet long." Ok then.

By far my favorite is the Batmobile from the Batman Begins movie, although it is never actually referred to as the Batmobile in the movie. It is a military vehicle called The Tumbler. This car has: "HOOSIER racetrack tires on front, 4 Rear 44 inch SUPER SWAMPERS, a our wheel drive conversion component, jet burner in rear with vector controls for the jet, back end flaps for quick stops, landing Hook, enabled with front-firing machine guns, built-in safety link for petrol control, built-in fire extinguisher system, front wheels on bolted arms for an axle-less front end, conventional single axle rear end." But mostly it was cool. What also made this car the best was the way you could see Batman adjusting the car to do it's various functions. And watching the uninitiated try to lie on their stomach to drive the car was just plain fun.

That's all I really have for now. It's surprisingly hard to find more specifics on the cars, though I thought this was pretty good. I didn't read the comics as a kid so I don't know what may be missing that was featured in those, so if anyone has info on that I'd love to hear about it.

So what do you guys remember? And why do you think the Batmobile is so important to the Batman legend? You know you wanna tell me.

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Guess What Billy Did After Battlestar Galactica?

This is his pilot...for real.

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In 1970 Alvin Toffler published a book that had most of us wide-eyed and self-impressed, "Future Shock" (I should mention that people were also reading and talking about such nonsense as "Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask" and "Fear of Flying", but that would just be excessive on my part and I'm not about to stoop to that to impress people...nor will I mention "The Naked Ape" or "The Media is The Message"---but I digress). Toffler's book warned that as our world changed rapidly that some people would struggle to psychologically adjust to the change.

Well. Maybe. Having grown up in the 60's, I am still waiting for the flying cars, rocket packs, and wall tv screens that they promised us would be here after the turn of the century, along with the colonies on the moon. They also said women would lose most of their secondary sexual characteristics, and like Twiggy, have no breasts or hips. Allow me to give thanks for that one prediction not coming to pass.

So, the question is, as sci-fi writers of the fifties and sixties tried to guess what changes would be wrought in the next fifty years and how those changes would affect the life of the average person, what predictions are our contemporaries making today? What will the next fifty years hold?

One group of visionaries have made prediction as to the future of the internet. According to a post on the Pew/Internet Report ( http://www.pewinternet.org/index.asp ) the following predictions have been made:

*A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.

*Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.

*Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.

*Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.

*People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.

*English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

Another group of visionaries addressed the question of the next fifty years over at New Scientist ( http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/science-forecasts). Some of their predictions include: people living into their hundreds, computers capable of passing the Turing test, and final and workable grasp of a unified field theory.

Of course not all futurists are optimistic. With global warming and the growing number of nuclear states capable of supplying terrorists with dirty bombs, it's easy to adopt a different paradigm. Personally, of the doom and gloom predictors, I prefer the unknown future plague that will sweep through the industrialized nations like a fire through dry grass. Maybe the dead will even rise and walk the earth.

So what about you? What do you see the next fifty years holding?

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As I was writing my post the other day about cartoons and animated movies I mentioned the movie Cars. It occurred to me then that there are an awful lot of TV shows and movies out there in which cars have been given distinct personalities.

I'm not talking about the General Lee, though some might argue that car has personality. No, I mean cars with actual consciousness.

Probably the first TV show that featured the kind of cars I'm talking about was 1965's My Mother the Car. This show was comedy starring Jerry Van Dyke (brother to Dick) as David Crabtree. He hears his mother talking to him through the radio of an old 1928 Porter and realizes that his Mother has been reincarnated into the car. No one else can hear her, so of course most everyone thinks he's crazy.

This show came out at a time when a lot of other shows featured supernatural storylines, like Bewitched and My Favorite Martian. And though at the time it was widely panned as one of the worst shows on TV, it has become a kind of sentimental favorite to many.

Steven King wrote of a possessed car as well, though of a much more malevolent kind in Christine, which was later turned into a movie directed by John Carpenter. The book describes the car, a 1958 Plymouth Fury (appropriate car wouldn't you say) as having been possessed by the spirit of a guy named Roland LeBay, though the movie portrays the car as simply evil.

I also remember a movie that was similar to Christine that I saw as a kid that scared the crap out of me called simply The Car. There's very little to this movie other than it's a customized 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III that runs people down for no apparent reason. The movie never specifies why the car is evil, if it's possessed or otherwise. Though I believe this was meant to be based on the movie The Duel by Stephen Spielberg, that time with an inexplicably evil Peterbilt Truck.

Disney took the idea of a car with a mind of its own and made it into a kid friendly franchise with the Herbie movies of the late 60's through the early 80's and the most recent incarnation with Lindsay Lohan in Herbie Fully Loaded. Herbie, as you all probably remember, was the lovable Volkswagen Bug that had it's own personality and abilities far beyond that of a regular Bug. I've never heard that any kind of "possession" was attributed to Herbie, he just simply was a car with its own consciousness.

Another family friendly magical car was featured in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang based on a book written by James Bond author Ian Flemming for his son. The movie starred Dick Van Dyke and had many fantasy sequences in which the car flew. I haven't seen it in so long I can't remember if the car was actually supposed to be able to fly or if it was merely imaginary. Hopefully someone can enlighten me.

One of my all time cheesy favorites was the 80's classic Knight Rider; another David Hasselhoff masterpiece. The car in Knight Rider was known as Kitt, or the Knight Industries Two Thousand. Kitt was given its somewhat sarcastic personality through Artificial Intelligence and was used as a crime fighting weapon of sorts.

I really did love Knight Rider, I think the car's sarcasm appealed to me even then. After all, who doesn't want to give "The Hoff" a verbal smackdown now and then?

Cars are often a big part of film and TV, from The Dukes of Hazzard to movies like Bullitt we've always had a love affair with cars. But there is something a little extra special about movies and TV shows that have cars with animated personalities. At least I've always thought so. ;)

As always, tell me what you think.

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Ok, the title of the post is a bit much.

Anyway.

When I was in high school I remember the guys all talking about the movie Highlander. It was kind of a big deal to these guys and I couldn't figure out what the heck they were talking about until I finally saw it for myself.

It wasn't the best movie in the world, but the idea is what makes it such a great cult classic.

If you haven't seen the movie then I'll fill you in on the basics.

The main character in the movie is Connor MacLeod, aka The Highlander, played by Christopher Lambert. He is an immortal man who can only be killed if he is decapitated. He is one among a small group of immortals who all vie to be that last man standing. The immortals in this movie duel with swords and whenever they kill another immortal, they absorb their power. The last immortal alive is supposed to then have great power and influence world events. The movie also stars Sean Connery as an immortal who is a mentor to MacLeod.

As the story begins the time of The Gathering is approaching and all the immortals will be drawn to a particular place, in this case New York, for the final battle. The movie starts with a sword battle in a New York parking garage and when Connor finally wins the battle we see him absorb the power from the other immortal. It appears to be almost as if lightening is striking him and we later learn it is called The Quickening.

The movie kind of reminds me of the first Terminator movie. It's dark and grainy and you get the feeling it was filmed on a fairly low budget. And at times it can be confusing. But I still liked it. In fact, so many people liked it they ended up making four movies, two TV series, one animated series, not to mention all the books that have been written. The first TV series starred Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod, who is a clansman of Connor MacLeod. (not to mention rather easy on the eyes...ahem)

I really liked the TV series with Adrian Paul, and not just for obvious reasons. I thought it was rather well done. It showed the conflicts many immortals had with a virtually never ending life span and what happens when you find yourself forced to face personal demons that come from such a long life.

And ultimately I think that's what appeals to viewers, the idea of immortality. Don't you wonder what you would do if you could live forever? It's something to ponder anyway. Or maybe like the Queen song that asks "who wants to live forever?" Or better yet, who wants to watch their loved one's die over and over? This is a concept that is dealt with in both the movie and the TV series.

Essentially I liked how the story developed over time, except maybe for the concept of the Watchers. The Watchers were basically a group of mortals who watched and kept track of the immortals but didn't interfere; or they weren't supposed to anyway. The Watcher's always seemed forced to me. Basically it was used as a device to introduce other characters into the show and used as a means to give us a historical background on certain characters. But I think I could have lived without the whole Watchers element.

My other small gripe is that I don't think the movies were done as well as the TV series. I haven't even seen the third one because I heard it was so bad and frankly didn't realize there was a fourth one until I wrote this. Oops! I do plan on renting the fourth one though, after all, it does include Adrian Paul. ;) I also haven't really figured out how they have reconciled the fact that Connor MacLeod was supposed to be the last immortal at the end of the movie, but somehow the story was continued with Duncan MacLeod and several cameo appearances by Connor in the TV series. I'm hoping the fourth movie will answer that for me.

Shhh, don't spoil it.

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