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Q: What’s the deal with Steven Spielberg’s time-travel, dinosaur series Terra Nova? I thought it was coming in January. — Dan, Vancouver, WA
The Oracle Speaks:
Because this is such a high-profile project – Steven Spielberg doing a big-budget time-travel TV series about dinosaurs – interest has obviously been sky-high. Not surprisingly, every little move has been chronicled by the media (including a controversy last fall, which the show’s producers now deny even happened, attributing it all to mere scheduling problems).
But I’m not sure the show is as far behind schedule as some people think, or as any other show of this magnitude might be; I think it’s simply a question of higher visibility coupled with viewer impatience. Regardless, it will definitely debut in May with a two-hour premiere movie, setting it up for a regular run in the fall.
Truthfully? While I’m interested in the show, I’m also mostly pessimistic about it.
First, I was at the network’s preview presentation of the show at last week’s Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena: they showed brief clips, and the cast and crew all talked about the project (Spielberg wasn’t there).
I was unimpressed. They emphasized that this is big, broad entertainment, nothing like Lost, which, for all my issues with it, was smart and complicated. I interpreted this talk to mean they’re dumbing the show down. I’m all for popcorn entertainment, but the central dramatic premise — about a family trying to reconnect with each other by going back through time — screamed “cliche”.
Next, the showrunner is Brannon Braga of Star Trek fame. For some, that’s a good sign, but while Braga did some interesting work on ST: The Next Generation and Voyager, he’s stayed decidedly old-school and proven mostly unable to reinvent himself in this era of changes in the TV sci-fi genre: Battlestar Galactica was the Star Trek project that Enterprise should’ve been, and Threshold and Flash Forward, which Braga was intimately involved with, ended up being major disappointments to me.
And perhaps apropos of nothing, I just finished watching Steven Spielberg’s other high profile TV “event” of the year, the alien invasion series Fallen Skies, coming this summer on TNT.
It. Is. Terrible. I mean, shockingly bad: horribly written, cheaply produced, and a complete cliche is almost every way.
It’s debatable how involved Spielberg has been with either of these shows (and given the fair amount of crap Spielberg has produced in his career, an argument can also be made that he may not be the brilliant visionary he’s sometimes made out to be; his TV record is even more mixed than his movie one: Seaquest 2032 anyone? ).
Like I said, all this makes me a little pessimistic.
Q: It depressed me to see the new movie The Rite, which seems like yet another rip-off of The Exorcist. Just out of curiosity, how many “demon possession” movies have their been now anyway? – MM, Calgary, Canada
The Oracle Speaks:
It’s a little depressing, isn’t it? The Rite opens January 28th in the US and certainly proves the long-standing fascination with the Catholic ritual, doesn’t it?
But it’s an interesting question: how many Exorcist rip-offs er, films about exorcism have their been?
In addition to four Exorcist sequels or prequels, movies where exorcism plays at least a semi-major plot element include The Exorcism of Emily Rose; Exorcism: The Possession of Gail Bowers (2006); End of Days (1999); The Order (2003); Exorcismus (2010); Stigmata(1999): Possessed (2000); The Unborn (2009); Requiem (2006); and two parody films, The Last Exorcism (2010) and Repossessed (1990).
Q: A new year, a new slate of genre movies. Which are you most looking forward to? — Andrew, Miami, FL
The Oracle Speaks:
In the months ahead, fantasy or sci-fi movies I’m looking forward to include The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon (March 4), about a man who decides to defy his “destiny,” and The Source Code (April 1), about Jake Gyllenhaal forced to relive the last eight minutes of his life (it’s by the director of Moon, which was flawed but interesting).
Incidentally, expect to see many many such Inception-like movies in the years ahead!
Based solely on the premise of a man suing the devil for $8 trillion, I’m intrigue by Suing the Devil (March 11).
The word on the fantasy spoof Your Highness (April 8) is pretty good, and the cast (James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel) is to die for, but the trailer was unfunny to me.
Movies I don’t want to see?
The worst actor in movies today, Nic Cage, has another movie I will naturally try to avoid, Drive Angry (February 25), and I’m already tired of the trend of “reclaiming” children’s fairy tales, so that rules out Beastly (March 3) and Red Riding Hood (March 11).
I’m think I’m mostly done with superhero movies for a few years, even Thor (May 6), but I may be talked into going to X-Men: First Class (June 3).
They’re pushing Limitless (March 18), about a man who takes a pill to tap into his potential, way too hard, and you obviously couldn’t pay me to see Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides (May 20).
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