Science Fiction

1986 – Flight of the Navigator

  • Title: Flight of the Navigator
  • IMDb: link

Flight of the NavigatorOn or around this day 30 years ago Disney’s Flight of the Navigator flew into theaters. The live-action sci-fi film starred Joey Cramer as a normal 12 year-old boy abducted by an alien spacecraft and returned to Earth eight years later without having aged a day to the confusion his parents (Cliff De Young and Veronica Cartwright) and once younger (now older) brother (Matt Adler). NASA grows interested in David (Cramer) as well when a medical examination links the boy to a recently crashed spaceship.

Flight of the Navigator is you typical all-ages Disney adventure. It does boast quite a few recognizable faces in supporting roles including WKRP‘s Howard Hesseman as the lead NASA scientist studying the spacecraft, Paul “Pee-Wee Herman” Reubens as the voice of the alien craft, and Sarah Jessica Parker as a NASA intern.

Telepathically linked to the ship, David helps it escape government control and begina to understand just what happened to him, why the ship’s artificial intelligence (named Max) needs his help, and how he ended up back home eight years too late.

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LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures – The Test

  • Title: LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures – The Test
  • wiki: link

LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures – The Test

The latest episode of LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures offers tie-ins to both The Clone Wars animated series and The Force Awakens. On the run from Naare (Grey Griffin), the Freemakers crash land their damaged ship on Takodana where they meet both Maz Kanata (Grey Griffin) and Hondo Ohnaka (Jim Cummings). While Maz offers a few words of advice to the kids, and a gift for Rowan (Nicolas Cantu), Hondo only gives them the difficult job of stealing Varactyl eggs to earn enough money to repair their ship.

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Star Wars #21

Star Wars #21Star Wars #21 breaks from the formula of Marvel’s main Star Wars comic. Moving away from the adventures of the core characters from the original Star Wars trilogy, the latest issue focuses instead on Sgt. Kreel and his new squad of elite Stormtroopers tasked with finding and eliminating Rebel insurgents throughout the Empire.

The latest issue is more a military comic with the squad learning to trust their new commander while performing their orders from the Emperor. While Stormtroopers have gotten a bad name (given their inability to hit anything resembling a target), writer Jason Aaron and artist Jorge Molina show that this is a different breed of soldier than those other walking targets seemingly trained solely to be shot down by the Rebellion.

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Killjoys – Schooled

  • Title: Killjoys – Schooled
  • wiki: link

Killjoys - Schooled

Taking a trio of gifted Westerley children to a school located on a space station is just the cover Dutch (Hannah John-Kamen), John (Aaron Ashmore), and D’Avin (Luke Macfarlane) need to track Khlyen‘s (Rob Stewart) final message before the destruction of Red 17. However, once they arrive it doesn’t take the Killjoys long to realize something is very, very wrong with the school as its only surviving student (Ricardo Hoyos) will risk everything to make it off the station alive. Of course having the same bizarre murderous memories in his head D’Avin is unable to make sense of, and seeing the rest of his classmates murdered, does help explain the kid’s distrust of every adult aboard the station.

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Star Trek Beyond

  • Title: Star Trek Beyond
  • IMDb: link

Star Trek BeyondThe third time’s the charm. After a lackluster first film and a clusterfuck of a sequel, the rebooted franchise finally gets it right with Star Trek Beyond. No longer awkwardly straddling the original and new continuities, the latest Star Trek film offers a wholly original story and the first really good movie in the Star Trek franchise in 20 years.

Opening with a humorous scene of Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) struggling with a delicate diplomatic mission which plants the first seed of the story, Star Trek Beyond really gets going when Kirk and the Enterprise are tricked into a rescue mission that leaves the Enterprise in pieces and most of its crew prisoners of a warmonger known as Krall (Idris Elba) who is after an ancient weapon which could change the balance of power in the galaxy.

While not offering much of the bigger themes of the original series’ best episodes, director Justin Lin (Fast & Furious) does deliver one hell of an action film (which looks even more impressive in IMAX 3D) that is still driven by the core relationships of its characters. For those of us dissatisfied with the recent additions to the franchise, this is the movie we’ve been waiting for.

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