PlanetOfTheApes

'Planet of the Apes' May Yet Rise Again

Jan 25th 2010 3:55PM By: Peter Hall

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A few weeks ago Devin Faraci at CHUD relayed how a proposed reboot of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, given the cryptic production title of Caesar, had fallen to the wayside at Fox. In short the problem was this: Writer-director Scott Frank (Minority Report, The Lookout) wanted to make a dark and somber Planet of the Apes film that unraveled how genetic experimentation brought forth the simian uprising that made homo sapiens the minority on Earth. Fox, reportedly, didn't like the idea of a thought-provoking look at the downfall of man and so they scrapped the project.

Or so the Internet thought. NY Magazine's Vulture blog is now clarifying that Fox still wants their stinking paws on a new Planet of the Apes film, they just don't want it to be Scott Frank's Caesar. New Fox producer Peter Chernin is overseeing the untitled film's development and has hired Street Kings writer Jamie Moss to write a new draft. No new director has been tapped yet, but should Moss' new script play to the dumbed-down instincts of Fox (remember, this is the same studio that thought shooting Wolverine with amnesia bullets was cool), chances are they'll be giving the project a steadfast greenlight.

As for Scott Frank, Vulture says he'll be writing a new draft of I Am Number Four, the aliens-go-to-high-school flick D.J. Caruso was just tapped to direct in place of Michael Bay.

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The Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Flicks (Preferably With Dogs)

Nov 12th 2009 12:02PM By: Peter Martin

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* The headline became too unwieldy, but, just so you know, my original title was: "The Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Flicks With Dogs, Hot Chicks, Robots, or Zombies." Please consider the following list accordingly!

In these difficult economic times, it's encouraging to see that hundreds of people found gainful employment destroying the world (again). Roland Emmerich's 2012 opens tomorrow and apparently employed every living soul who knows how to create havoc on the big screen. The trailer promises large-scale destruction of well-known landmarks, a prescient, disheveled, very concerned parent / ex-husband (John Cusack), and last-second narrow escapes. That doesn't sound too familiar, does it?

Meanwhile, The Road, which finally opens November 25, stars Viggo Mortensen in an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's bleak, devastating novel about a father and son trudging through a post-apocalyptic world with nary a glimmer of hope. Between those two extremes -- popcorn and pessimism -- lie my favorite kind of post-disaster flick: reasonable possibilities in a world forever changed -- but still with dogs, hot chicks, robots, or zombies.

1. Mad Max 2 (AKA The Road Warrior)

George Miller pushed Max (Mel Gibson) to the edge in the first film; in the sequel, Max well illustrated the changes wrought upon ordinary people by extraordinary circumstances, as the family man was transformed into the ultimate loner, an action hero for the new millenium. Thrills, chills, and missing heartbeats play out amidst the carnage of last-chance heroes and the bewildered affection of a feral child. At least Max had his dog.

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Great Apocalyptic Science Fiction Films

May 19th 2009 10:59AM By: Sci-Fi Squad Staff

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By: Matt Bradshaw

Apocalypse you say? Then armageddon outta here. Whether it's war, pestilence or one of the other Four Horsemen, the end of civilization as we know it has been a recurring theme since the beginning of science fiction cinema. This Friday sees the release of Knowing, a film in which a looming global cataclysm plays a major role -- so let's take a look back at seven films with different versions of how it will all end.

I Am Legend (2007)
Let's start with one that's still fresh in everyone's mind. In this film based on the Richard Matheson novel, Will Smith plays Robert Neville who, at the start of the film anyway, appears to be the last man on Earth thanks to his immunity to the virus that has stricken everyone else. The majority of the population has died from the disease, while the remainder have been mutated into animalistic rage-driven creatures who fear the daylight. Neville is a virologist and spends his days looking for a cure and his nights locked away in the safety of his Manhattan home.

It's interesting that this is one of the few such films where the end of civilization is not brought on by an act of aggression, but by a noble cause: a man-made virus intended to cure cancer that goes horribly wrong. The film is entertaining, but personally I find the CGI Darkseekers distractingly unconvincing. They leap around as if they have no weight and when they shriek their jaws distend like an anaconda swallowing a pig. Also, the film's original ending, which you can see on the DVD, made a lot more sense to me. Of the previous adaptations of the novel, The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price remains my favorite. Charlton Heston's The Omega Man has its moments but hasn't aged well and starts to run out of steam early on.

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