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Reimagining Star Wars as West Wars

Reimagining Star Wars as West Wars

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west-wars-vaderI usually ignore the endless stream of Star Wars fan creativity here on the blog — Lego remakes, the Silent Star Wars, and numerous others. Black Gate is all about shining a light on neglected fantasy… if you think Star Wars is neglected, it’s because you’re blind and deaf and you live on Easter Island.

But every once in a while a simple idea comes along that reduces me to a 12-year old Star Wars fanboy again. That’s what happened yesterday when I discovered Sillof.com, the brainchild of Indianapolis, IN, sculptor Sillof, who specializes in making custom action figures and also makes props for films.

Sillof has created a line of action figures called West Wars, featuring a brilliantly realized cast: Luke S. Walker, a young man living on the outer borderlands with his poor aunt and uncle, Leah Orango, daughter of one of the most prominent ranch families in the territory, “Old” Bennet Kennelly, one-time sheriff who was driven into hiding when his former deputy turned on him, and the villainous Sheriff Akan “Death” Vardas, enforcer for the corrupt robber barons and railroad tycoons.

The entire cast is instantly recognizable, even though they’re all in period garb. Sillof has done the same with other periods, giving names and faces to the cast of Samurai Wars, World Wars, Noir Wars, Serial Wards, and others.

Besides making me daydream of someday watching a version of Star Wars set in a western town — sort of like watching MacBeth set during the US Civil War, or Romeo & Juliet in 1950s Brooklyn, both of which I have done — Sillof’s creations remind us just how universal the themes of Star Wars are. And in fact, just how fluid story is… how easy it can be to move the props of narrative to a different stage to make it fresh spin.

Not to mention that they vindicate a decades-long fascination with action figures. Thanks, Sillof!  You the man.

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Brave

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Brave

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brave-posterWho would think at the start of the summer that Brave was concealing more of its plot and themes than Prometheus? Strange days, my friends.

Ninety percent of the trailer for Brave comes from the first twenty-five percent of the movie. And to continue with percentages, fifty percent of Brave is a great film, and worthy to stand beside earlier Pixar classics. But except for a few flashes in the trailer, Disney and Pixar have revealed nothing of this later-running time greatness to you. The marketing department and directors Andrew Jones and Brenda Chapman have even specifically asked reviewers to hide what the center of the movie is about.

This is not a case of concealing a twist ending or a mid-movie shocker, but disguising the core of the film. Imagine a trailer for Pinocchio that never reveals that the puppet comes to life: it’s the story of a sad woodcarver and his pets who meet a blue fairy, and later on an enormous whale may peep into the plot. Or a trailer for King Kong that not only never shows the eighteen-foot gorilla, it never hints that there might be a giant monster of any sort in the film. According to this trailer, King Kong looks like the tale of a young woman who goes on a voyage with a film crew, possibly to find (dinosaur- and gorilla-free) adventure and romance away from dreary Depression Era New York.

Brave is the story of Merida (voice of Kelly Macdonald), a Scottish princess who hates that her parents King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) are trying to marry her off to a dullard in a political alliance when all she wants is her freedom — like any good Disney Princess™ — and the chance to choose her own destiny. While exploring, Merida discovers magic in the forest after following a trail of Will-‘o-the-Wisps. The rest of the story follows the standard princess adventure: she’ll go out on her own, fight some monsters, discover a handsome and roguish fellow who likes her for who she is, and her parents will finally let their daughter be herself and marry the man she loves.

Except, after the words “The rest of the story…” that is not actually the plot of the film. At all. It isn’t the main character conflict or the thematic center. I made it up. Don’t expect some sort of Sixth Sense twist, such as Merida discovering she’s actually trapped inside a giant video game or Mars invading medieval Scotland, but the story does pick a different and better way than the second half of my Disney-influenced outline. A very average opening gives way to a film that has much more to say, in the vaunted Pixar fashion.

I will reveal at least this: expect a helluva a lot more “bear” than you’ve seen in the trailers. This is a good thing. I like Big Bears and I cannot lie!

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Vintage Treasures: George R.R. Martin’s “Nightflyers”

Vintage Treasures: George R.R. Martin’s “Nightflyers”

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analog-april-1980-smallOver the weekend I put away a collection of 80s magazines I purchased a few months ago. In the process I discovered the April 1980 issue of Analog, which I read as a junior in high school in Ottawa, Canada.

There’s a lot to like about this issue, from the gorgeous cover by Paul Lehr — perhaps my favorite SF artist — to a famous short story by one of my all-time favorite SF writers: “Grotto of the Dancing Deer,” by Clifford D. Simak, which won both the 1980 Nebula Award and 1981 Hugo Award for Best Short Story. Even the ads reflect those things I personally found most exciting and fresh about SF and fantasy at the time: a full page ad from TSR for D&D, “The Ultimate in Adventure Games;” an ad for six microgames from Metagaming (the company that introduced me to role playing games), including the classic Ogre; and a subscription form for Ares, the short-lived SF gaming magazine from SPI.

This issue is an intriguing cultural artifact for other reasons. There’s an editorial from Stanley Schmidt in response to the recent kidnapping of 50 Americans at the US embassy in Iran, both a fascinating snapshot of a critical moment in American history, and a typical science fiction response:

What the Iranian crisis really demonstrates, at least as dramatically as any incident so far, is that if we want real freedom, we must produce our own energy… Technologies which can do this are possible, and we should not willingly settle for less. Readers of this magazine are well acquainted with the role space can play, but many people are not — and we need to get the action under way now.

If you read Analog in the 20th Century, you got used to this. Exploring space was pretty much the answer to everything — the energy crisis, the hole in the ozone, foreign policy crises, and crappy network television programming — and the magazine’s self-congratulatory tone clearly told its readership (including 15-year-old readers in Ottawa) that they were smarter and more informed than everyone else, especially on science and technology, topics far more important than cars, sports, and other things kids our age obsessed about. Analog told its readers they were destined for success. The future was ours.

But the real reason this issue is remembered is its cover story, George R.R. Martin’s novella of horror in deep space, the chilling classic “Nightflyers.”

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Brave: Pixar Improves Disney’s Fantasy Princess

Brave: Pixar Improves Disney’s Fantasy Princess

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295px-brave-apple-posterThe Disney/Pixar partnership has always been willing to take some risks. Let’s face it, these are the people who turned a lost fish, talking cars, and Ed Asner in a floating house into deeply rich character-driven stories about the human condition. It’s really a wonder if there’s anything they can’t do well!

But one thing that they have avoided, until now, is even trying to dip their toes into the genre that Disney has mastered: the fairy tale.

From my perspective, with Brave they’ve blown pretty much every Disney fairy-tale-themed film out of the water. I won’t get much into the plotline, because Pixar’s done a really good job of not spoiling it too much. (I had a guess about what was going to happen, based largely on the Subway restaurant promotional campaign materials, and that guess was pretty much on the mark.)

But, even with no idea what happens in the film, there are a lot of things that the film is about which I can discuss…

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Star Trek is New Again With Fresh Animated Intro

Star Trek is New Again With Fresh Animated Intro

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Our buddy John DeNardo at SF Signal tells us about this extremely cool re-imagining of the original Star Trek intro, with William Shatner’s famous voice over… and some very compelling animation.

Keep your eye out for a red shirt who buys it half a second after beaming down, right around the 20 second mark.

The video was produced by The Quintek Group, a digital retouching studio in the Detroit area.

I got seriously nostalgic watching this. It makes me want to blow the dust off my DVD box set of Star Trek Season One and enjoy a few episodes.

Thanks, John. Owe you one.

The Retro Pulp Art of Tim Anderson

The Retro Pulp Art of Tim Anderson

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blade-runner-pulpWe love pulp fiction. And we love classic SF & fantasy movies.

So what’s not to love about Tim Anderson’s re-imaginings of classic SF films as pulp paperbacks?

Anderson is a concept designer for Electronic Arts in Salt Lake City. He’s also worked as a concept designer for Paramount Licensing, Inc., Radical Comics, and various independent filmmakers.

He’s started working on a personal side project that he hoped would motivate him “into thinking more graphically,” a series of highly detailed period paperback covers for some of the most famous SF films of the 20th Century.

Here’s what he says about his Blade Runner piece at right (click for a bigger version):

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m a huge sci-fi fan, and a huge fan of Ridley Scott. Here’s a pulp cover I have had in the works off and on for a while now. I was inspired by the detective pulp covers of Robert McGinnis. If ever there was a sci-fi movie that lent itself well to a detective pulp cover, it’s Blade Runner.

Anyone who’s a fan of the great Robert McGinnis is okay by us.

Check out Tim Anderson’s versions of Alien, The Matrix and others here.

Drinking Atlantis, No Chaser: Conan the Barbarian (2011) Blow-by-Blow & Play-by-Play

Drinking Atlantis, No Chaser: Conan the Barbarian (2011) Blow-by-Blow & Play-by-Play

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conan-poster-1I have a week-long break between summer movie reviews, the gap between Prometheus and Brave, so I have chosen to return to Ghosts of Summer Pasts. Not long past. Just last year. Ladies and gentlemen, Hyborians and Hyrkanians, the 2011 Conan the Barbarian! [Insert tepid Monty Python and the Holy Grail “yeah!” here.]

Many movie websites do play-by-play reviews, essentially a one-post blog-thru of a film, providing comments along with time stamps. I’ve wanted to try my hand at this for years, and this short summer break opened up the opportunity to exercise this review format on an awful film that sword-and-sorcery fans don’t want to talk about. But if I can find a way to wrench some entertainment from the Blu-ray of this movie (yes, I bought it — but used at a bargain price), then let it be so.

It was August of ’11 that saw the release and immediate flop of the Marcus Nispel-directed Conan the Barbarian. Critics savaged the movie, but most fans of Robert E. Howard saw the dire writing in the ancient language of Acheron on the wall long before the release. I gave up hope for the movie when I heard that Nispel was attached to it. Nothing I had seen of the man’s previous work indicated he had any notion of theme or subtlety — or even how to stitch together a comprehensible action scene. The guy came across as a refugee from an awful ’80s metal band who decided to get into directing so he could show “awesome!” stuff on screen. In other words, he was picked for the job because of a superficial resemblance to sword-and-sorcery, not because the man has any affinity for filmmaking or Robert E. Howard.

The casting of Jason Momoa met skepticism when first announced, but among all else that went awry with Conan the Barbarian, Momoa was one thing that went right. More about that on the play-by-play.

I enjoyed the movie more this second time viewing it, but that isn’t because I found any new appreciation for it. Conan ’11 works simply better on home video, where its limited scope and poor VFX feel more appropriate. Also, watching at home meant I could take breaks to go get a drink or read Shakespeare or call my sister in Munich. I could live my life around the film, and the film benefits from my ability to ignore it whenever I want to. The only downside to home video is that the 3D in the theater, terrible as it was, did hide some of visual flaws and clunky special effects.

Okay, queue up your disc or streaming or whatever, and let’s drink Atlantis….

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Goth Chick News: The Walls Have Ears; And Other Stuff Apparently…

Goth Chick News: The Walls Have Ears; And Other Stuff Apparently…

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image007Those of you who are fans of Game of Thrones (the books or the HBO series) are already well aware that when civilizations build walls, it’s usually to keep something really nasty on the other side of them. In the case of “The Wall” which borders the Seven Kingdoms of GoT, the 300 miles of solid ice stands between humanity and an army of corpse-collecting, walking dead.

Which sort of makes you wonder; what are other really big walls meant to keep out?

The Great Wall of China for instance…

Oh sure, it might really have been to keep out the Mongols. But what if it was something worse?

In the spring of 2013, Legendary East, an offshoot of Legendary Pictures (late of The Dark Knight Rises), will begin shooting its first project The Great Wall in both China and New Zealand.

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Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Prometheus

Black Gate Goes to the Summer Movies: Prometheus

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prometheus-posterIf you plan to see Prometheus this weekend, know that you are in for an endless buffet of visual astonishment, especially if you spring to see it in IMAX 3D. Ridley Scott belongs to the breed of filmmaker who can justify the use of the 3D gimmick. He poured everything at his disposal to make his new science-fiction film worth the extra dollars, euros, pound notes needed to watch it in an immersive environment. Prometheus is visual and aural splendor for the cinema.

Know also that you will meet flat characters who often do idiotic things (“Don’t pet the freaky alien snake-thingy! You call yourself a scientist?”) and more idiotic things (“Don’t take off your helmets, you morons! You call yourselves space-explorers?”) and more idiotic things (“Don’t go down into the basement alone!” Well, that doesn’t specifically happen, but many equivalent things do.); a script that turns its initial concept into a shapeless mess by the halfway point; and the general disappointment of watching what promised to be an amazing return for Ridley Scott to the Alien universe he helped create ending up as standard science-fiction thriller pulp.

Does this add up to a good film? Uh, I’m willing to say it does. And whether “good” is enough for you when it comes to Prometheus will depend on how much you anticipated its release and how much you devoured of its brilliant promotional and viral campaigns.

Prometheus presents a puzzle for me personally: It is far below what I wanted as a dramatic experience, yet the cinematic experience of it is stupendous. The tension here offers plenty to ponder, but in a meta-critical sense that has little to do with the story that Prometheus offers. What makes a good film? What makes a good story? What makes a good film story? How much do expectations alter those questions? Are they all the same questions? Yes? No? Buy a vowel?

I guess what I am trying to say is that you should go see Prometheus for yourself, no matter what the critical consensus says, simply because it engages in questions about filmmaking and will no doubt begin tons of debate.

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Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for the Creators of Outpost 13

Goth Chick News: 13 Questions for the Creators of Outpost 13

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image001As you know, we here at Goth Chick News are great fans of the indy film industry and there’s nothing we love better than getting a peak behind the clapboard.  Well, there was that one intern who refused to watch any film that didn’t have a title soundtrack by Celine Dion, but oddly enough he got sent out to pick up a YooHoo for Scott Taylor on his second day and just never came back.

Funny that.

So you can imagine the excitement when Wyatt Weed (Pirate Pictures), Billy Hartzel and Corey Logsdon (State of Mind Productions) agreed to give Black Gate an exclusive look at their short film Outpost 13 before it launches into what will surely be an exciting journey.

Clearly recognizing a bandwagon headed down the yellow brick road of success, it was obvious the only thing to do was jump on.  But not before squeezing a little insider information out the boys on how they turned their creative imaginations into movie magic.

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