Wild Imagination: Forty Years of The Thing
“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]
Category: SF & Fantasy
Animation · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
Batman, Anime, and How to Make Great Pop Art
Blockbuster films don’t have to be watered-down hero fare to succeed at the box office. The compelling design and archetypal simplicity of our comic-book heroes are gold mines for stories[…]
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Body Horror · Horror · SF & Fantasy
“A Great Future in Plastics”: Crimes of the Future and Cronenberg’s Story of Evolution
The voice-over tells us that as a result of this neo-venereal disease, his colleague’s body is creating new organs, each one complex, perfect, unique, but without function. Each time these[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays · Franchises & Series · Race · SF & Fantasy · SF/Fantasy · Societal Trends
Star Trek: Voyager – “Tuvix” and the Warped Humanities
If Deep Space 9 demonstrates how the casting of African American commanders in chief – and their election – may constitute or create a backlash disguised as “progress,” it has[…]
Franchises & Series · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends
The Batman, the Grand Appeaser: Repressive Desublimation, Foucault, and False Hope
The Batman (2022) fulfills complex, necessary roles in society. The intricate power relations of the film, as a part of mass media, are directly related to those in the spectacle[…]
Franchises & Series · Gender · Men & Masculinity · SF & Fantasy
Toxic Masculinity? There’s More to Tony Stark
Further analysis of Tony Stark indicates the character exemplifies more than toxic masculinity. Stark’s various actions and roles throughout his nine-film arc can be interpreted as exemplifying gender nonconformity too,[…]
Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
Touched by an Angel (of Death): Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm and the Visionary Ideal
“Look at the stars,” the genius of Trumbull’s movie finally seems to be saying, but also know the stars within. * * * Often, it’s the throwaway scenes that click.[…]
Eco · Horror · SF & Fantasy
My New Life as Human Fertilizer: Jaco Bouwer’s Gaia (2021)
In his creation of a nonhuman cinematic world that mines horror from its confrontation of human fear of irrelevance and inadaptability, Bouwer ultimately suggests that survival in the era following[…]
Essays · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy · War
Nuclear Realism and Memories of Extinction in the 1980s: Testament, The Day After, and Threads
Excerpted from the author’s new critical study, Cold War Space and Culture in the 1960s and 1980s: The Bunkered Decades (Oxford University Press, December 2021), with the kind permission of[…]
Horror · Psychology · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming · Women in Film
A Record of Human Matter: John Newland’s One Step Beyond
But that’s not to deny the series’ eerie impact, all the same – starting with the level, assured-past-urgency mortician’s cool of Newland himself and his unnerving, implacable smile. Is it[…]
Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy · Women in Film
Being Nobody: The Rise and Fall of Rey Skywalker
In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey learns that her grandfather is Emperor Palpatine. Feeling more like a backtrack than a step forward, this new information is a betrayal of Rey’s[…]
Activist & Political · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy
Living through a Pandemic and Thinking about E.T.
I can’t believe it took me almost four decades and living through a global pandemic to realize it, but in E.T., Elliott and his motley crew of rascals might well[…]
SF & Fantasy · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
A World Like This Deserves Contempt: Adapting Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog
A Boy and His Dog’s promotional advertisements also reveal how the novella was adapted and modified to suit the tastes of the American popular film-going public. The movie’s promo posters[…]
Activist & Political · Brazilian Cinema · Indigenous · SF & Fantasy · Westerns
Bacurau: Sheltering in Place
When I watched Bacurau again this summer online, so much felt different: the open-air communal life of the villagers seemed even more distant and utopian; after months of Brazil’s president[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
A Song of Ire: Game of Thrones, A Year Later
It is a fascinating exercise to consume this show according to the twenty-first-century rules of binge-watching. As the hours pass and the on-screen death count rises, the sustained passivity of[…]
Horror · Mystery · SF & Fantasy · Westerns
The Self as Other: Unknown Identities in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Thing and The Hateful Eight’s analogous narratives speak to broader philosophical notions of selfhood and knowledge of others. Their thematic undercurrents explore the forever-complicated terrain of what it means[…]
Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
The Thing about The Thing and Some Other Things
It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]
Drama · Literature and Film · Russia · SF & Fantasy
Intimately Alien: Conflicting Ideologies in Solyaris (1968) and Solaris (1972)
While there can be no doubt Solyaris is no artistic masterpiece, the idea that it isn’t a product of its time is more complicated. To the extent that the film[…]
I Won’t Hurt You: Edward Scissorhands’ Lessons in Compassion
Edward is never really accepted for who he is by those around him, the persecution he is subjected to the result of a communal, warped worldview and individual biases, ranging[…]
Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
“One Last Look at My Friends”: An Archetypal Review of Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker
Now, there is no reason or way to lay blame for this clash of styles, since Abrams devotees can fairly claim that Johnson started the revisionary process, and the Johnsonians[…]
