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Writer/producer Brannon Braga is one of the more controversial figures in Star Trek. (Hey, the guy actually received death threats after killing off Capt. Kirk in Generations.) But if he'd had his way—metaphorically speaking, of course—with Jeri Ryan's Star Trek: Voyager character Seven of Nine, believe us, things would have gotten even WORSE.
In a recent interview with SFX magazine, the former Star Trek: Enterprise and Voyager show runner shared his belief that Seven of Nine should have been killed off:
"It was my feeling that Seven Of Nine should have died. If you watch the episode 'Human Error' written by Andre Bormanis, it was not only a heart breaking episode in that Seven Of Nine learns, as she begins to explore her human emotions, that she can't experience them. There's a Borg chip inside her that will kill her if she tries to do so. First of all, that's kind of an interesting 'rape victim' analogy or whatever you want to call it, about a damaged woman who can't get past what happened to her, but I also always saw it as a crucial episode that would set up the finale.
"This was a woman who knew she was neither here nor there. She couldn't go back to the Borg, nor would she want to, but she could never be fully human, so she was doomed. And I wanted to have her sacrifice herself to get her shipmates home." sci-fi wire...
It was great to see Ripley herself, Sigourney Weaver, back in a kick-ass sci-fi movie like Avatar. Too bad they killed her off, though. (Sorry for the spoiler, but it's like the biggest movie of all time—haven't you seen it already?)
Dr. Grace Augustine took a bullet in her human form, so the Na'vi tried to permanently transfer her into her avatar. From what it looked like in the film, Grace didn't survive the transfer, so there's no way she'll be in Avatar 2, right?
"Darling, that's not true," Weaver assured fans in an interview on Aug. 27 in Beverly Hills, Calif., where she was promoting the comedy You Again. "She didn't maybe die. Maybe she's just in the tree."
We can certainly take Weaver's word for it if she was suggesting Grace could come back as a tree. And she's not just guessing. James Cameron's been plotting ideas for a sequel, and they still include Weaver.
"I'm not allowed to say anything, but he certainly made a lot of notes over the last year of where to move on," Weaver said. "I think he really wants to keep the team together as much as he can."
This is Pandora we're talking about, so Grace could come back as pretty much anything Cameron wanted. That suggestion must have struck a nerve. "You stop there," Weaver teased. "I'm not allowed to say anything."
One thing's for sure, it would still be Grace. With the performance-capture technology Cameron invented for Avatar, he could just recast her as a different character and change her look. That would be cool to bring Weaver back, but she's positive it's still going to be Grace.
"I think that would be odd [to play someone else]," Weaver said. "But it's not clear if Grace could have the possibility of coming back in a different form."
If you can't wait to see Grace's return, there is a little more of her in the new extended cut of Avatar released this weekend. "There's a lovely scene where Grace brings Jake and Norm to her old schoolhouse, which is now deserted, when they first meet her. Then there's a little added delight in the Jake/Neytiri love scene."
Wait, they put the Na'vi sex back in? They kept going back and forth about that one. "It's back, it's back," Weaver said.
Weaver saw all the additional scenes and raved about one that doesn't even involve her. "In this version, which Jim took me through, I was able to see all this footage that's going in. There's the most amazing thing called the sturmbeasts. It's like a big buffalo hunt, and you're really in this hunt with these gigantic wonderful creatures called sturmbeasts with the other Na'vi with your bow and arrow. That's the longest sequence, and it's so visceral. You are there."
Then there will even be more Grace in the special-edition DVD. "In the DVD there's a whole series of scenes between Grace and Jake talking about the Na'vi and her relationship with them and his relationship with them. Really, for the original movie I think you didn't need it. It was done without all that dialogue, but it's cool to see. If not in this one, it's going to be in the DVD."
sci-fi wire...
Shocking news in the world of Doctor Who today: The BBC just announced that series six will be split in two for the first time since it started in 2005, with one block of episodes airing over the spring of 2011 and the second one airing in the fall.
Steven Moffat claims that the move will essentially turn series six into two separate series, but more importantly, that there will be a GAME-CHANGING cliffhanger separating the two.
That's what the show runner revealed while speaking during the Edinburgh International Television Festival. And that game-changing cliffhanger—whatever that will be—is what will lead to the series being split in two.
Steven Moffat said:
"Looking at the next series I thought what this show needs is a big event in the middle.
"I kept referring to a mid-season finale. So we are going to make it two series—seven episodes at Easter building to an earth-shattering climax, a cliffhanger we could never normally do because it would be too long before it came back. An enormous game-changing cliffhanger that will change everything.
"The wrong expression would be to say we are splitting it in two. We are making it two separate series."
So what do you think about this news? Any guesses as to the kind of "earth-shattering climax" Moffat could be coming up with? And—what do you think of the idea of having a season split into two separate series?
You may have been thrilled, puzzled, moved, bewildered, excited or confused by Inception, but one thing we're willing to bet is that your heart didn't sink when you watched Christopher Nolan's latest hit. No, only one person felt that way—director Matthew Vaughn, who suddenly realized he'd have to make massive changes to the script for X-Men: First Class.
Vaughn, who's working on the X-Men prequel film in London, took a break yesterday to catch a showing of Inception, and was horrified to discover that the film's dream sequences meant he'd have to scrap at least a dozen pages of the script for First Class.
"I saw Inception, which I loved," Vaughn said today. "But my heart sank when I saw that a few of the ideas we had were up [on the screen]. So it's either leave it in and look as if you're copying or change things. We completely ripped out about 12 pages of the script and the storyboards."
According to herocomplex:
The jettisoned sequence was a sort of dream-space combat, according to Vaughn; that reminded me of "psi war" scenes like the one ... from The Uncanny X-Men No. 117 way back in 1979, but the filmmaker said for the film the fight involving Professor X (James McAvoy) and some other mutants was to going to be presented with spinning rooms and other physics-bending imagery—visions that he felt drifted too close to signature moments in "Inception."
Do you think Vaughn was right to react this way? Or should he have left his planned storyline intact?
X-Men: First Class is due to be released June 3, 2011. sci-fi wire...
Remember that 1994 movie about The Shadow? We do, though we wish we didn't. (Sorry, Alec Baldwin!) Luckily, a new big-screen adaptation is coming, one we've known about for a while. But the latest news on the project—one that might be nothing more than a rumor—could bring aboard a new director who'd wipe that earlier film from our minds.
According to pajiba, Quentin Tarantino is currently in discussions to direct:
... the person that is now attached to the project is none other than Quentin Tarantino, who is also attached as co-writer. ... The Shadow has never been mentioned among the 27 dozen projects that Tarantino has always been obsessed with. Maybe he loved original radio show and the pulps (which do seem up Tarantino's alley), and maybe he saw Siavash Farahani's script and decided that, if anyone could erase the memory of Alec Baldwin's atrocity, it'd be him. Maybe Tarantino just loves the challenge. Or maybe he's just added this to the huge pile of future possibilities and has no intention of ever directing. All I know is that, for the moment, he is being discussed (and this is a two-way discussion) and or already attached as the future director of The Shadow.
This is one rumor we're hoping turns true. Whether it does or not, what do you think about a Tarantino-flavored Shadow?sci-fi wire...
Everyone's been talking about the big-screen Avengers movie Marvel managed to pull together. But what about that other epic supergroup movie, the one that couldn't get off the ground? An actor who was going to appear in DC's Justice League tells us about the $300 million blockbuster that might have been.
Jay Baruchel, most recently seen in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, explained what "the single most expensive movie in the history of movies" (his words) would have been like:
"I'll just say this, if we had been able to make the movie that we had gone down [to Australia] to rehearse, if you had seen the production art I'd seen ... it would've been the coolest thing ever. It would have been the neatest vision of Batman and the coolest vision of Superman you've ever seen. It would have been dark and fairly brutal and quite gory and just $#%@-ng epic."
Now that you've heard what Baruchel had to say about the movie that would have been directed by George Miller, are you glad the high pricetag got the project cancelled? Or would you have wanted to see what sounds as if it would have been a Watchmen-like Justice League? sci-fi wire...
What if your house knew how you liked your coffee? Could anticipate what kind of music you'd want to hear given the situation? That's exactly the kind of technology a team at the University of Essex in the UK tests in their iSpace apartment and lab.
It's the kind of easy livin' that's been the driving vision behind stuff such as SARAH from Eureka, pictured above.
The Essex crew use what they call "ambient intelligence" to tie the whole home together. The occupant's patterns are identified: What time do you make coffee? How often do you do laundry? How bright do you keep the lights? The iSpace home would be able to do all these things for you based on your behavior.
It's a wonder if we'll ever get to live in houses like this one day, or if it'll be reserved only for the very rich. For what it's worth, if you're planning a trip to the UK the iSpace team is actually looking for volunteers to stay in the dorm.
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