Science Fiction

Avatar: Fire and Ash

  • Title: Avatar: Fire and Ash
  • IMDb: link

I quite enjoyed 2009’s Avatar which, despite its simple setup, brought an immersive experience on an alien world to life. While still an enjoyable popcorn movie, I was less impressed with 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water which followed the Sully clan, still hounded by human armed forces, to new lives as part of a Na’vi water tribe. Avatar: Fire and Ash feels very much a continuation of the second movie, continuing the story of the Sully clan against a very familiar antagonist.

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The Running Man

  • Title: The Running Man (1987)
  • IMDb: link

Set in the distant future of 6 years ago, 1987’s The Running Man starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as Ben Richards, an escaped convict and disgraced former police officer who was arrested for refusing to open fire on an unarmed mob in a totalitarian police state run by lies, propaganda, and brutal force that looks more and more prescient every day. Framed for the murders he refused to commit, Richard is tapped by Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), the host of the world’s most popular reality-TV game show, and forced into competing on The Running Man.

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Predator: Badlands

  • Title: Predator: Badlands
  • IMDb: link

Choosing to make the franchise monster the protagonist of the film rather than the antagonist, Predator: Badlands introduces us to the runt of the litter in Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who, in order to prove himself, goes to the the most dangerous world known to the Yautja seeking to kill the unkillable Kalisk. Gifting Dek with more personality than any Predator before him, the young warrior unlearns a bit of Yautja culture accepting assistance in his quest from a damaged synthetic named Thia (Elle Fanning) along with various creatures including one Thia names Bud.

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Outland

  • Title: Outland
  • IMDb: link

Set in a mining station on the moon of Jupiter, 1981’s Outland stars Sean Connery as the recently-assigned Marshal William T. O’Niel. With his wife (Kika Markham) and son (Nicholas Barnes) unable to deal with the conditions of his job any longer, and leaving for Earth, O’Neil finds himself increasingly isolated especially after he begins looking into a series of suspicious deaths and uncovers a company-approved amphetamine smuggling operation increasing the productivity of the miners but also making a number of the workers insane.

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Tron: Ares

  • Title: Tron: Ares
  • IMDb: link

Tron: Ares is the movie Tron: Legacy should have been. Largely ignoring the events of Legacy, the new film give us corporate espionage while also playing on the real-life debate of greed and fear of the proper use of Artificial Intelligence. On one side we have Eve Kim (Greta Lee), stepping in as the head of ENCOM following Sam Flynn‘s departure. On the other side we have Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters). Both are pursuing the breakthrough to manifest physical objects and programs into the real world for longer than 29-minutes (at which they become unstable and dissolve into dust).

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