We included the new Matt Damon sci-fi vehicle Elysium in our list of twenty-four movies to look for in 2013 back in December.  District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, in only his second major film, and Tristar Pictures have just released the first preview.  We had an idea that Damon would be decked out in some type of cybernetic gear but no idea that it would factor into his role in the film so much, as revealed in this first trailer.

The year is 2154.  The affluent in society live away from Earth in a space habitat in Earth’s orbit called Elysium.  Earth has been laid to waste and mankind is left destitute.  As with Blomkamp’s critically acclaimed and Oscar nominated first film District 9, Elysium promises to wrestle with hefty political issues, including class struggle, poverty, and immigration.  And there looks to be plenty of summer blockbuster action and slick borg circuitry attached to Damon’s hero character, Max Da Costa.

Wait no further, here’s the first trailer for Elysium:

Look for genre actors Jodie Foster (Contact), Faran Tahir (Star Trek, Dallas), William Fichtner (Armageddon, The Dark Knight, Ultraviolet), Alice Braga (Predators), and Bond girl Talisa Soto (Licence to Kill) to appear in Elysium, scheduled for an August 9, 2013 release.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

We’ve previewed the first trailer for Matt Damon’s science fiction film, Elysium, earlier this year.  Writer/director Neill Blomkamp offers his next entry in the science fiction as social commentary vein following his very successful District 9, one of the few films ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.  This second trailer for Elysium reveals a far more layered and interesting film than that shown in the first preview, however, it suffers from the problem on the other side of the spectrum:  It just reveals too much.  It’s possible the marketing folks think they need to show more to get people interested and into the theaters, but you wish there was a better, middle ground to be found.  Still, it looks great.

Check out the second trailer released for Elysium:

Elysium arrives in theaters August 9, 2013.

Europa Report takes a different approach to science fiction, clearly attempting to connect the reality of today’s aerospace programs and blending them into an exploration story involving astronauts on a voyage to a moon of Jupiter, showing us almost palpable risks, that suffers from some catastrophic event.  As the trailer states, it looks like it is taking the path of Moon and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  That could be a good thing as far as visuals go, but could be a bad thing if the story is similarly convoluted.  Unlike Elysium, this will appeal to a smaller audience, but it will be interesting to see how it is received by critics and the mass audience.

Check out this very cool looking preview for Europa Report:

Europa Report hits theaters June 27, 2013.

The final preview for today actually isn’t for a movie at all.  It’s the CBS TV mini-series Under the Dome.  Written by Stephen King and comic book writer Brian K. Vaughan, Under the Dome just screams made-for-TV Stephen King.  Set in a small town in Maine… about a town experience strange occurrences… odd local characters… it also has the comic book story feel of something like the series Revival or a classic William Shatner Twilight Zone episode.  It definitely looks like something worth giving a try.

Here’s the trailer for the mini-series Under the Dome:

Under the Dome begins June 24, 2013 on CBS.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

Art designers or aspiring art design students will want to pick up Mark Salisbury’s new look at creating sets, costumes and props for a world of the future in Elysium: The Art of the Film.  Incorporating commentary from the up-and-coming science fiction director of the geo-political sci-fi thriller District 9, Neill Blomkamp, this new large format hardcover delves into the creative process from early ponderings to the imagery that made it to the final film cut.

Like listening to the first demo tapes of your favorite band or scanning the rough sketches of your favorite artist, taking a peek at the development of Hollywood magic through various aspects of a film can teach you a lot about a designer.  Watching the development of a cyborg exo-skeletal costume from inception to final crafted piece challenges the reader to agree or disagree with what is cut and what isn’t.  What physical elements, like utilitarian tubes and pipes, plastics or metals, make us think of the visual “future”?

Blomkamp’s work brings with it a signature questioning of wealth and poverty, the powerful and the powerless, and he does this with the backdrop of a science fantasy posing as science fiction.  It may be Blomkamp’s own street cred–having one of the only science fiction films nominated for an Academy Award on his resume–that allows him to get away with creating an impossible orbital station without explaining how it could possibly work.  Blomkamp says he sees himself first as a visual artist more than director or writer, and he credits bringing together the right creators to help implement his vision.  With his new film Elysium that meant bringing in the team from the Weta Workshop, famous for their designs in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.  The book includes concept art from Weta designers Christian Pearce, Aaron Beck, Ben Mauro, Leri Greer, and Stuart Thomas.  Also notable is the contribution to Elysium by Blomkamp idol and classic sci-fi designer of Blade Runner and Tron, Syd Mead.

Being a book highlighting the visual, Elysium: The Art of the Film has relatively little text, but what it contains by way of development of hand weapons, scouting for locations, revealing how star Matt Damon ends up as a borg, and what makes a cool-designed robot and slick future cars, all make for an interesting compilation of ideas.  It very much mimics an artist’s notebook or idea log.  One two-page spread highlights advertising logos used to create the feeling of reality for moviegoers, and each looks like it really could be a trademark for some technological–or mundane–future business.  The book is smartly segmented by Earth and Elysium, mirroring the story elements that divide the bleak future from the utopian future–and all seem to be carefully crafted and well-planned.

Add Elysium: The Art of the Film to your film “behind the scenes” library.  Elysium: The Art of the Film is available directly through Weta here or via Amazon.com here.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

After climbing over our 1,000th daily post at borg.com this week, it’s time to update the borg.com Hall of Fame, with borg in genre fiction from past, present, and future, and from all media.  Click here for our “About” page if you need a refresher on what makes a borg a borg.

Some of these more than two dozen borg inductees were overlooked in our initial list.  A few may or may not be borg, depending on your point of view.  Robots or androids that look perfectly human, for example, that have organic looking material but may not have actual living tissue are not technically cyborgs.  But if Cylons are borg, we think most of the characters below should be considered borg, too.

So here is Round 2, the 2014 borg.com Hall of Fame honorees, in no particular order:

Mike Power, the Atomic Man from the 1970s.  We hope he shows up again in this year’s The Six Million Dollar Man, Season 6, from Dynamite Comics.

In the 2003 animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it was revealed the Rat King was once the Slayer, a bio-mechanical super soldier prototype.

From Dark Horse Comics’ 2014 comic book series, we have Vandroid.  Chuck Carducci is a mechanic.  Chuck is also an android created by Chuck, but does he have any humanity?  This one is just out so we’ll know for sure soon whether Vandroid is a borg or not.

From the low-budget sci-fi B-movie, we reviewed Manborg here at borg.com back in 2013.

From the classic fantasy movie The Dark Crystal, it’s SkekTek the Skeksis scientist who had multiple bionic parts.

From 2013’s new TV series Almost Human, Karl Urban’s detective John Kennex (who has a cybernetic leg) is a borg, but is his partner, Michael Ealy’s out-dated android Dorian?  The newer model police officers appear to be androids only, but is there any organic part, any living tissue, in Dorian?

Almost Human features a society full of androids (including the prostitute, above)–some with illegally-trafficked actual human skin–real skin, which, of course, makes them borg.  We don’t know if Dorian has any organic material yet.

From the Doctor Who episode “A Town Called Mercy,” the cybernetic Gunslinger.

From the title character of the Joe Benitez comic book steampunk series, the borg survivor of a killer’s experiments, the beautiful Lady Mechanika.

In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, once she was taken over by the V’ger probe, Ilia became a computer controlled cyborg, yet some of her Deltan “humanity” remained.

One series of low-budget films featured borg, first Jean-Claude van Damme’s Cyborg, where the cyborg isn’t van Damme’s character, but a woman named Pearl Prophet.

And here is the late Jack Palance’s cyborg Mercy, and Angelina Jolie’s first starring role as borg Cash Reese in Cyborg 2.  The second sequel Cyborg 3: The Recycler has Khrystyne Haje replacing Angelina Jolie.

In Back to the Future II, Griff Tannen was a descendant of Biff, who had bionic implants that made odd sounds whenever he moved.

Movies in 2014 featured plenty of borgs.  Matt Damon played the cyborg Max in Elysium.

And Tom Cruise played Jack, and Andrea Riseborough played Vika in Oblivion.  Borgs or droids?  They were called “clones,” so we think that requires them to be organic, therefore, borg.

And now we have a new Alex Murphy in 2014’s brilliant remake of the ultimate borg story, RoboCop.

Academy Award winner Denzel Washington played Lt. Parker Barnes from the film Virtuosity.

From the Marvel Comics universe, Rom the Space Knight was often referred to as a cyborg in the series of the same name.

Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 and the other supersoldiers from the Halo series were borgs.  Also, Captain Jacob Keyes and Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood had bionic parts.

Kenneth Branagh played a steampunk cyborg, Arliss Lovelace in Wild, Wild West.

Will Smith as bionic Detective Del Spooner from I, Robot.

The comic book series Concrete features a man whose brain is placed in a stone body by aliens, a very primitive way of going borg.

Renée Soutendijk played Eve VIII, referred to as a cyborg in Eve of Destruction, yet she seems to be an android who taps into her human creator’s memories, like the android Chuck in Vandroid.  Borg or not a borg?

What about all those other female androids, or fembots, which look so human?  We don’t really know if any have organic material, otherwise we’d include several fembots and similar characters, and we’ll feature several of them (and there are a surprising number of them in genre fiction) in a coming article at borg.com.

So that’s it for now.  We’ve added these to the borg.com Hall of Fame at the “Know your borg” link on our home page.  Let us know if you find any others we should add next time around.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

Although The Amazing Spider-man 2 has received mixed reviews, as with last year’s sci-fi flick Elysium, the Weta Workshop was one of the special effects companies that added another dimension to the look of the film.  Weta continues to establish itself as the creative team coming up with cutting edge costumes and props that often surpass the story being told.

Weta created the make-up and Green Goblin suit worn by actor Dane DeHaan, the Electro suspension rig worn by Jamie Foxx, and several other props for this latest Spidey flick.

This week Weta released this montage video of the creators and creations behind The Amazing Spider-man 2.  Check it out:

Does anyone else think it’s cool that one of the costumers has a tattoo of scissors on her hands?  And check out the 3D printer printing the Green Goblin suit components.

The Amazing Spider-man 2 is in theaters now.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

Antonio Banderas is not someone you might think of as star of sci-fi or futuristic tales, but evidently this is one he’s had in play for a while.  He’s producing and starring in his next feature film–taking inspiration from Isaac Asimov short stories his new Automata looks a bit like Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence meets Elysium or District 9.

Something about the variety of low-end tech robots and independent film vibe might show some promise, but it also may reflect a low production quality film, too.  It’s hard to say whether this is a poorly conceived trailer or reflective of what we’re going to see in the theaters. We’ll be waiting for early reviews before jumping in to see this one.

Automata also stars Dylan McDermott, Melanie Griffith, and the great Robert Forster.  Gabe Ibáñez directs.

Here’s the trailer for Automata:

Automata arrives in theaters and On Demand October 10, 2014.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

Writer/director Neill Blomkamp has a unique vision for his sci-fi films.  His first foray, District 9, resulted in a rare nomination for the genre for an Academy Award.  District 9 looked at the social upheaval caused by a future immigration of aliens from a doomed spaceship.  Last year, he turned Matt Damon into a cyborg making an escape to a Utopian world in Elysium.

Now Blomkamp again looks at human society and culture but this time in the context of a robot with artificial intelligence in Chappie.  Chappie is a fish-out-of-water story about a robot experiencing what it means to be alive.

This modern take on the 1980s robot movie Short Circuit and update to Steven Spielberg’s A.I.: Artificial intelligence stars Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel as an inventor who creates the robot that thinks and feels.  His creator role is like that of Geppetto from Pinocchio, and Chappie experiences his own growth like the puppet that wanted to be a real boy.

As with Blomkamp’s prior sci-fi films, the special effects look to be superb.  The robot moves freely like a human, and it’s easy to predict that moviegoers will fall for this new creation.

Check out this first trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie:

Genre faves Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver will co-star.

Chappie will be released in theaters March 6, 2015.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

First we saw CNN’s Anderson Cooper reporting in the Black Widow comic book series, now he’s leading up the latest trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s 2015 release Chappie.  Columbia Pictures has switched gears since the original trailer was released, from a quirky preview about a Pinocchio-esque robot trying to be real to a story that looks a lot like RoboCop.

It gets better–this trailer actually may bring in more moviegoers.  It reveals more action, the kind of action that Blomkamp showed us he could provide in his Academy Award-nominated geopolitical sci-fi thrill ride District 9.  And where the first trailer sidelined stars Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, now they’re front and center.

It still looks to be more light-hearted like Blomkamp’s District 9 and certainly less dark than his Elysium, but that might be a good thing, too.  Elysium sorely lacked any heart, and this may be an attempt to re-balance Blomkamp’s movies for a wider audience.

See for yourself–check out this new trailer for Chappie, after the break:

Look for Chappie in theaters March 6, 2015.

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

For more than six years we at borg.com have been covering entertainment memorabilia auctions–sales of not merely replicas or mass-produced collectibles, but the real objects seen on film–rare or even one-of-a-kind costumes created by award-winning Hollywood costume designers, detailed props created by production crew, model vehicles created by special effects departments like Industrial Light and Magic, prosthetics created by famous makeup artists, set decoration, concept art, and much more.  Amassing a wide variety of artifacts from classic and more recent film and television history, London and Los Angeles-based Prop Store is hosting its annual auction later this month.  Known for its consignment of some of the most well-known and iconic screen-used props and costumes, Prop Store’s ultimate museum collectibles auction will be open for bidding from anyone, and items will be available at estimates for both beginning collectors and those with deeper pockets.

The Prop Store Live Auction: Treasures from Film and Television will be auctioning off approximately 600 items.  You’ll find the following movies and TV shows represented and more:  3:10 to Yuma (2007), 300, Aliens, Back to the Future films, Blade Runner, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Chronicles of Narnia films, Elysium, Enemy Mine, Excalibur, The Fifth Element, Gladiator, The Goonies, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Jason and the Argonauts, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the Indiana Jones films, Iron Man, the James Bond films, Judge Dredd (1995), the Jurassic Park films, Kick-Ass 2, Kingsman: the Secret Service, Lifeforce, Looper, The Lost Boys, The Martian, The Matrix, Men in Black III, Mission: Impossible (1996), The Mummy (1999), Patton, Pirates of the Caribbean series, Predators, the Rocky films, Saving Private Ryan, Scarface, Serenity, Shaun of the Dead, Shawshank Redemption, Sherlock Holmes (2009), Star Trek franchise, Star Wars franchise, Starship Troopers, Superman films, Terminator films, The Three Musketeers (1993), Tropic Thunder, Troy, True Grit, Underworld: Evolution, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Willow, The Wolfman (2010), World War Z, and the X-Men films.

You can flip through the auction house’s hefty 360-page catalog, or start with a look at what we selected as the best 50 of the lots–what we predict as the most sought-after by collectors and those that represent some of fandom’s favorite sci-fi and fantasy classics and modern favorites.

• Industrial Light and Magic 17 3/4-inch Rebel Y-Wing filming model from Return of the Jedi
• Sark (David Warner) Grid costume from the original Tron (1982)
• Julie Newmar’s Catwoman costume and Burgess Meredith Penguin hat from the classic Batman TV series
• Buttercup (Robin Wright) Fire Swamp red dress from The Princess Bride
• Chekov (Walter Koenig) “nuclear wessels” costume, Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) costume, and Sulu (George Takei) double shirt from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
• Full crew set of costumes (Malcolm, Zoe, Wash, Jayne, Inara, Kaylee, River, Book, and Simon) from Serenity (sold as individual costume lots)
• Jack Nicholson purple Joker costume, plus separate coat and hat, from Batman (1989)
• Enterprise-D 48-inch “pyro” model from Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Will Munny (Clint Eastwood) stunt shotgun from Unforgiven
• Star-lord helmet from Guardians of the Galaxy
• Thor (Chris Hemsworth) Mjolnir hammer from Thor

• Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II jumpsuits made for Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman
• Witch-king of Angmar crown from The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
• Val Kilmer Batman suit and cowl from Batman Forever
• Maverick (Tom Cruise) flight suit from Top Gun
• Geoffrey Rush Captain Barbossa costume from the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, Curse of the Black Pearl

And there are so many more.  Like…

• Michael J. Fox Marty McFly costume from Back to the Future III and full-sized restored future-2015 police cruiser from Back to the Future II
• Two classic “Evil Ash” (Bruce Campbell) costumes and one full-sized cable-controlled puppet from Army of Darkness
• Sylvester McCoy Seventh Doctor hat from Doctor Who
• Ian McKellen Magneto helmet and tunic from X-Men (2000)
• Buddy the Elf costume worn by Will Farrell in Elf
• T-X red costume and effects arm worn by Kristanna Loken in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
• Full-sized, Stampe biplane mock-up vehicle from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Peter Weller armor costume from RoboCop 2
• Harry and Mrs. Bigfoot masks from Harry and the Hendersons
• Steve McQueen costume from Papillon

• Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) red jacket from The Shining
• Third season Star Trek “red shirt” from the classic Star Trek TV series
• Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) prosthetics and display from Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• Walker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) costume vest from Timecop
• Roger Moore James Bond Royal Navy cap from Live and Let Die
• Bespin Guard jacket from The Empire Strikes Back
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail round table helmet
• Conan swords made for Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian
• Two full EVA spacesuits from The Martian, worn by Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain
• Jamaican bobsled team suits from Cool Runnings

This is just the tip of the iceberg–check out the Prop Store online auction catalog here to see more than 500 other items being sold, find photographs of each lot and description information, and here to register for the auction.

The Prop Store Live Auction: Treasures from Film and Television is September 26, 2017.

Happy bidding!

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com

Review by C.J. Bunce

Syd Mead, the famed “artist who illustrates the future,” is an icon of visionary design and illustration.  No other creator has shown the world a utopian vision of a possible future in so many ways.  At the same time he has created a world we want to see develop that lies ahead, we have seen his future begin to be realized.  His aerodynamic designs have influenced auto design in recent decades from car makers including Chrysler, Ford, and GM.  He has created the look of space technology that we all accept as believable thanks to his concept art–art that has influenced the art direction of films for four decades.  A new book published this month provides an in-depth intellectual review of Mead’s style, influences, and impact on the history of design.  The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist is a college level, art design course book of sorts that takes movie concept art to an entirely new level, a serious look at his style that will appeal to serious artists in any field, and a popular work for fans of the films he has inspired.

“What makes Syd’s vision so compelling,” says the book’s author, architect/designer and professor Craig Hodgetts, “is not only the means he employs to convey it, but the acute physical and environmental awareness: the endless curiosity about how the world works; the precise level of detail and the practical engineering knowledge that he brings to even the most fantastic devices.”  Beginning with the look of the both geometric and organic mechanical villain V’ger from the year 2273 in 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture to a mid-21st century casino and hotel in this year’s Blade Runner 2049, Mead’s sketches, drawings, illustrations, and paintings have inspired and influenced the art design of dozens of movie productions.

Mead’s most groundbreaking and memorable cinematic visionary creations came in the 1980s with four films.  Returning to our theme of celebrating 1982 films, for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Mead was influenced by Edward Hopper’s desolate cityscapes.  To translate author Phillip K. Dick’s writings into visual form, Mead and Scott took an idea of sculpture artists Robert Rauschenberg and Richard Stankewicz and author William Gibson.  The filmmakers lay claim to be the first to use their ideas of “retro-fitting” on film–the process of creating a unique object by means of a strategic assemblage of allied components; by harvesting parts from abandoned or obsolescent “donors” and re-assembling them, a new entity is created.  In the same year as Blade Runner, Mead saw his designs realized in the very different world of Tron, modelling a convincing digital world by extrapolating from the patterns of computer motherboards and other now obsolete technology of the era.  The giant screen-filling image of Master Control, the labyrinthine pathways for the lightcycles, and Sark’s hefty transport vessel all hailed from the mind and pen of Mead.  Taking the look of James Cameron’s original Alien film and modifying it significantly, Mead skipped the “slick shapes of Star Trek” and the “greeblies of Star Wars” to create what he envisioned as a “highly-engineered, purposeful vessel” where each feature could have a function, in the 1986 sequel Aliens.  In the same year, Mead created what would become an iconic image of the 1980s, Number Five the robot, the friendly star of the film Short Circuit.

Most recently audiences saw Mead’s designs realized on the big screen throughout 2013’s dystopian sci-fi tale Elysium, as Mead created the interiors and exteriors of the film’s orbiting paradise.  He also designed the prosthetic replica head carrying case in 2006’s Mission: Impossible III.

Like many creators, much of his original work never made it into final form and onto the big screen.  Some of his most amazing pieces in The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist were created for a cancelled reboot of the classic animated series The Jetsons.  In only the past five years Mead designed a fully fleshed-out future world for a film called Topeka, which never was green-lighted after the development work was completed, but would have delivered a unique hodgepodge of hot rod-steampunk-junkyard motorcycles and classic cars in a city the evokes a mix of post-modern Asian metropolis and Logan’s Run.

At 256 pages, cannot include all of his imagery, but it also is not complete in scope–movies Mead designed the large time machine and weaponry for 1994’s Timecop and concept art for 2015’s Tomorrowland, which are not mentioned.  My biggest quirk with The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist is the somewhat artistic arrangement of films explored.  They are not presented in chronological order and some provide neither the dates that Mead designed the images nor the dates of the film release, so it takes some work on the part of the reader to piece together this information and attempt to identify any differences or changes in style in Mead’s work over time or from project to project.  Still the book is a great overview of original concept art presented for its own sake and without the need to reference any finally realized images or screen stills.

Some images from the book:

Artists, art historians, designers, and architects–and film fans–will all appreciate Mead’s style and influence in The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist.

The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist is available now here at Amazon.

Review by C.J. Bunce

A behind the scenes book for a 2019 movie, which consists of a third or more of its images from 2005?  As fascinating as the special effects developed for the film, the history of the movie merits its own book, and it gets it in Abbie Bernstein‘s Alita: Battle Angel–The Art and Making of the Movie, now out from Titan Books.  It turns out executive producer James Cameron and artists were working on the pre-production of Alita: Battle Angel during the development of his film Avatar.  According to interviews with Cameron and Alita director Robert Rodriguez, in the early 2000s the technology was not yet advanced to deliver what they wanted for their adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s manga novel.  But now that it’s arrived, fans of the film can trace its development over the past 15 years.

Alita: Battle Angel–The Art and Making of the Movie is filled with concept art, split between 2005 digital ideas in advance of knowing what actors might be cast and final characters developed, and a renewed look at the project as it began to get fully underway only a few years ago.  Key interviews with Rodriguez, Cameron, producer Jon Landau, production designers Caylah Eddleblute and Steve Joyner, art director Todd Holland, visual effects supervisors Richard Hollander and Eric Saindon, costume designer Nina Proctor, Weta Digital’s Joe Letteri, and others tell the story–a marriage of practical effects and CGI.  In fact the commenters almost seem to have a battle between those responsible between the practical effects and CGI–all with an eye toward realism.  The most interesting aspects of the discussion are the incorporation of Alita star Rosa Salazar’s motion capture (or per Rodriguez, “performance capture” since motion doesn’t include the “emotion” element required to make a story come together) with Proctor’s real-world costumes, and the CGI layering that ends up as the final image that made it to the screen.

No doubt a highlight of the film and of the book are detailed images of Alita’s cyborg body shell, as created by the character of Dr. Ido in the film.  In real life it looks incredibly porcelain, but the artists discuss how the body and all the components of the film were actually fabricated.  The commenters don’t reference their inspirations for the look of the Iron City in the film or its cyborg inhabitants, but fans of the genre will no doubt see the influences–from the borg designs to story elements–from films including Chappie, Elysium, District 9, Ex Machina, Ghost in the Shell, Mad Max: Fury Road, Cameron’s The Terminator, and even the light cycles of Tron.  Readers will learn more about the science behind the cyborgs in the film–how Cameron and others estimated weights of body parts, including Alita’s removable metal heart, as an example–all needed for 3D and CGI work and viewer believability.

Take a look inside Alita: Battle Angel–The Art and Making of the Movie courtesy of the publisher:

Artwork featured in the book was created by Alita production staff and outsourced artists, including Jonathan Bach, Marc Baird, Shane Baxley, Jonathan Berube, Michael Broom, Dawn Brown, Vitaly Bulgarov, Kit Casati, Keith Christensen, James Chung, James Clyne, Dylan Cole, Fausto De Martini, Mark Goerner, Saiful Haque, Joseph Hiura, Sarah King, Martin Laing, Ellen Lampl, Khang Le, Scott Lukowski, Stephan Martiniere, Steven Messing, Annis Naeem, Chris Olivia, John Park, Joseph C. Pepe, Joe Peterson, Ben Procter, Deborah Scott, Robert Simons, Tully Summers, Alex Toader, and Feng Zhu, and effects shops KNB FX, Lightstorm, and Weta Digital.

Fans of the manga, the film, and all things borg will appreciated the artistry behind the film in Alita: Battle Angel–The Art and Making of the Movie.  It’s available now from Titan Books.  Pick up a copy here at Amazon.

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s what Blade Runner fans have been waiting for, and if your appetite was whetted by the movie Blade Runner 2049, then you’re going to want to check our the next era of Blade Runner stories as Titan Comics goes back to a parallel Earth future in Blade Runner 2019.  The future is now.  It’s been worth the wait, as the new story looks and feels like we’re back inside Philip K. Dick’s original vision in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  In the neo-noir city of Los Angeles, 2019, Ash, a veteran Blade Runner, is working the kidnapping of a billionaire’s wife and child.  Is the CEO of the new Canaan Corporation any better than those behind the Tyrell Corporation?  Written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Michael Green (Logan, Blade Runner 2049), with co-writer Mike Johnson (Supergirl, Star Trek), get ready for Blade Runner to experience the treatment we’ve seen in recent years for franchises like Firefly, Planet of the Apes, and Alien, as another new world of science fiction storytelling opens up.  Green and Johnson have written a perfect first chapter.

This very first original, in-canon story set in the Blade Runner universe is illustrated by Andres Guinaldo (Justice League Dark, Captain America) with brilliant color work by Marco Lesko.   You’re going to see something surprising in Guinaldo’s artwork–not only is this the world of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, and Syd Mead′s neo-noir future, readers will see influences from cyberpunk and tech-noir classics like John Carpenter′s Escape from New York, Luc Besson′s The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Neill Blomkamp′s Elysium, James Cameron′s The Terminator and Aliens, Robert Rodriguez′s Alita: Battle Angel, and the other futureworlds adapted to film from Philip K. Dick′s stories.  It all probably comes down to the versatility, breadth, and influence of concept artist Syd Mead, but the creators do give due credit to Dick, Scott, Hampton Fancher, David Peoples, Michael Deeley–and Mead–for the look and feel of their new story.

The first issue arrives next Wednesday, and you can pick from four cover options, from Stanley “Artgerm” Lau, Andreas Guinaldo, John Royle, and an original concept piece by Syd Mead.

Check out our sneak preview of the first issue of Blade Runner 2019, courtesy of Titan Comics, plus a new trailer for the series released just today:

It’s as good as it looks.  The story’s billionaire has a good Jeremy Irons vibe, and Ash is a blend of Deckard, Rachel, and Luv from the movies, and maybe some other tech-noir characters from sci-fi’s recent past.

Look for the first issue of Blade Runner 2019 next Wednesday, July 17, 2019, at Elite Comics or your local comic book store.

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s a fantastic sci-fi series with a stellar cast and a story and production values that rival the original Blade Runner and its 2017 sequel: Altered Carbon is based on Richard K. Morgan’s novel of the same name, a story about Takeshi Kovacs, a future soldier in a world where science has developed a hard drive called a “stack” that is implanted in humans’ necks, allowing our memories to be uploaded to storage and replanted over and over so they seemingly can live forever, even in new bodies.  That conceit allows Kovacs and other characters to be played by any number of actors, which could allow the series to run forever much as Doctor Who’s regeneration mechanism allows replacement Doctors.  Originally launched on Netflix in 2018, Altered Carbon has been extended for a second season, with filming underway last year, and viewers should expected a second season trailer and 2020 air date any day.  Which means fans of the Syd Mead, Ridley Scott, and Philip K. Dick brand of futurism, and all things borg, should catch up on the first season now.  What does it mean to be human, and how much can you shed away and replace with technology and still retain the “self”?  Altered Carbon tackles the philosophical questions The Matrix film series tried to answer.

Kovacs, played by several actors (more on that below), is a 300-year-old soldier.  As a seasoned fighter 250 years ago he was the last of a mercenary group called the Envoys, leading a rebellion against the new world order.  Kovacs’s stack is shelved for the intervening 250 years until one of the wealthiest men alive, Laurens Bancroft, played by James Purefoy (an actor who has been runner up for the James Bond film roles and appeared in A Knight’s Tale and The Following), buys his stack and puts it in a new body or “sleeve,” giving Kovacs the opportunity to live anew if he agrees to find Bancroft’s killer.  This is a bleak world, filled with virtual reality and virtual sex, body swapping and trafficking, and the kind of tech noir, bleak, dystopian realm seen in Strange Days, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Ready Player One, The Running Man, Brazil, Total Recall, with the violence of A Clockwork Orange, but maybe not so hopeless as in Elysium, Mad Max, Gattaca, Terminator, and Dredd.  

The series, which has a slow start and doesn’t kick into high gear until the second episode, also has the John Carpenter Escape from New York vibe but with Blade Runner visuals and effects, plus the creative elements of Total Recall that made for some unexpected surprises.  Altered Carbon is a close match to RoboCop as future science and technology goes, so it’s easy to see why the casting agents brought along RoboCop remake star Joel Kinnaman as Kovacs’ primary sleeve in the first season.  This sleeve was last owned by a cop killed in duty named Ryker.  Ryker’s partner, Kristin Ortega, played by Mexican actress Martha Higareda (McFarland USA, Royal Pains), takes on the role of the season’s co-lead, struggling as she sees her old partner’s body and acting to protect his sleeve, trying to solve the murder of Bancroft, and uncovering the bad cops in the bureau.  Ortega is a badass character in a small package who gets in and out of several fights that would take down anyone else in any other story, and she is the high point of the series–at one point an incident results in a loss of an arm, soon replaced by a powerful cybernetic arm.  An interesting twist is that her family are Catholics, and in this future Catholics don’t believe in the stacks, which means once they die they are dead forever.  This sets up one of the more interesting plot threads.  If it seems like the series has a lot going on, that’s because it does. But it all comes together in a satisfying way in the final episodes.

Upon Kovacs’ return to the world–at the beginning of the series–he finds a place to live in a virtual reality “themed-hotel” called The Raven situated in a seedy part of San Francisco, run by an artificial intelligence named Poe, played brilliantly by Chris Conner (Burn Notice, House, Bones).  Once you’re a guest of the hotel, you get all kinds of protective measures, the best involving a laser defense system that drops from the ceiling.  To investigate the murder Kovacs enlists a former marine named Vernon, played by Ato Essandoh (X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Vinyl, Law & Order), whose wife (returning in a male sleeve played by Cliff Chamberlain) was taken and daughter Lizzie (Hayley Law) was murdered.  Poe is enlisted to help what is left of Lizzie’s mind, setting up another great heroine in the series, inside and outside the virtual realm.  Other great roles go to Renee Goldsberry as a fierce Envoy leader from Kovacs’ past and Nepalese-Australian actress Dichen Lachman as Kovacs’ equally fierce sister.

The great supporting cast is a Who’s Who of genre television: Battlestar Galactica, Dollhouse, and Continuum’s Tahmoh Penikett, Captain America: The First Avenger, Walking Tall, The X-Files, and Star Trek First Contact’s Neal McDonough, The Max Headroom Show, Orphan Black, and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Matt Frewer, Bones, Serenity, and Lost’s Tamara Taylor, Arrow, The Expanse, and Wu Assassin’s Byron Mann, Star Trek, Community, and Knives Out’s Marlene Forte, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Colony, and The Rookie’s Adam Busch, and iZombie, Godzilla, and Legends of Tomorrow’s Hiro Kanagawa.  Look forward to Anthony Mackie (Captain America: Winter Soldier, The Adjustment Bureau, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) joining the cast as a new Kovacs sleeve, with Simone Missick (Marvel’s Luke Cage, The Defenders) in season two.

If it suffers at all as a series it’s the way the production doesn’t take advantage of the novel’s lead character being part Asian, swapping him out for a more familiar anglo movie actor (as was done with Tom Cruise taking the lead role in Edge of Tomorrow, originally a Japanese character in the source novel All You Need is Kill).  The lead character, Kovacs, is played by Will Yun Lee (Hawaii Five-O, Bionic Woman, Witchblade), but only infrequently, opting instead to highlight anglo actor Joel Kinnaman, star of RoboCop, Suicide Squad, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Kovacs in a different “sleeve.”  The production had another shot at changing that focus for season two, but is opting for a similar bigger name star (Anthony Mackie) to play Kovacs for the majority of the season.

The series is also heavy at times, and is not a recommended series for binge-watching.  It’s a hard Rated R with sex, sexual violence, and extensive nudity, and is best taken in weekly doses.  More minor flaws include not addressing Kovacs’ reactions to a world 250 years after his death, so we’re left to assume the place he left behind was similar to where he arrived (that would be like dying in 1770 and waking up in 2020 and not noticing any differences in the world).  His character could have been explored like John Spartan in Demolition Man–Kovacs feels like he should be a similar character–but the show’s success is also finding new ways to approach the problems someone in his shoes might face.  So it’s not really about those 250 years.  And there’s a lot of smoking going on, even for noir.

Cool props, cool costumes, cool sets and visual effects.  Cyberpunk, tech noir, future military, dystopian mystery.  A hero with a pink children’s backpack.  It’s fantastic.  It’s thought-provoking.  And it’s dark and not going to be for everyone.  The first ten episodes of Altered Carbon are now streaming on Netflix.  Look for season two to arrive later this year.

Review by C.J. Bunce

It’s the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and prequel to Blade Runner 2049, giving fans of either or both a look into the world created by Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  Blade Runner stories continue as Titan Comics looks to the parallel Earth future in Blade Runner 2019.  The first nine issues introduced us to ex-Blade Runner Ash and Cleo, daughter of business magnate Alexander Selwyn.  It’s now 2026.  On returning to Los Angeles, Ash sleuthed out the location of Selwyn, but Selwyn knows Ash is after him, and has created a new Blade Runner.  Of course the ghosts of Tyrell are always in the shadows.

New issues are written by Mike Johnson (Supergirl, Star Trek).  If you haven’t yet climbed on board, get ready for Blade Runner 2019 to experience the treatment we’ve seen in recent years for franchises like Firefly, Planet of the Apes, and Alien.  Academy Award-nominated writer Michael Green and Johnson created a great offshoot in their first issues.  Illustrated by Andres Guinaldo (Justice League Dark, Captain America) with brilliant color work by Marco Lesko, expect to see images conjuring the designs and ideas of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, and Syd Mead with influences from cyberpunk and tech-noir classics like John Carpenter′s Escape from New York, Luc Besson′s The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Neill Blomkamp′s Elysium, James Cameron′s The Terminator and Aliens, and Robert Rodriguez′s Alita: Battle Angel.

Issue #10 arrives today, a good jumping on point if you missed the earlier issues.  And you can pick from three cover options, from Andreas Guinaldo, Rian Hughes, and an original concept piece by Syd Mead.

Check out our sneak preview of the Issue #10 of Blade Runner 2019, courtesy of Titan Comics:

Look for the next issue of Blade Runner 2019 next Wednesday, September 23, 2020, at Elite Comics or your local comic book shop.

Just this past Fall, Titan Comics took fans of the Blade Runner movie franchise into their past and future with the comic book series Blade Runner 2019 (review here at borg).  Both the sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and prequel to Blade Runner 2049, the series introduced a new Blade Runner, a female engineered cyborg named Ash.  Beginning next week readers will find Ash ten years later in the pages of Blade Runner 2029.  With the ghosts of the Tyrell corporation always in the shadows, Ashina has a new mission, a personal one, and she decides to seek a lost target from her past.

Check out our sneak preview of artwork from Issue #1 of Blade Runner 2029, courtesy of Titan Comics:

New issues are written by Mike Johnson (Supergirl, Star Trek).  If you haven’t yet climbed on board, get ready for Blade Runner 2029 to experience the treatment we’ve seen in recent years for franchises like Firefly, Planet of the Apes, and Alien, another worthy spin-off to keep fans engaged in the franchise.  Johnson created a great offshoot in last year’s series.  Illustrated by Andres Guinaldo (Justice League Dark, Captain America) with brilliant color work by Marco Lesko, expect to see more images in this continuation series conjuring the designs and ideas of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, and Syd Mead with influences from cyberpunk and tech-noir classics like John Carpenter′s Escape from New York, Luc Besson′s The Fifth Element and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Neill Blomkamp′s Elysium, James Cameron′s The Terminator and Aliens, and Robert Rodriguez′s Alita: Battle Angel.

Readers can pick from four cover options, from artists Peach Momoko, Giovanni Valletta, Fernando Dagnino, a classic concept piece by Syd Mead, and a cosplay cover.

Look for the next issue of Blade Runner 2029 next Wednesday, December 16, 2020, at Elite Comics or your local comic book shop.

C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg