Extended Toy Box - Aliens (1992-1998)

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It’s become something of a cliché now to point out how, when it premiered, Star Wars changed everything, but it really did.  The ramifications of Star Wars as a film and, more importantly here, a multimedia phenomenon are still being felt today.  One of the biggest changes brought about Star Wars was a complete revamp to the way toys are created and sold.  Before this moment toys tended to exist as unique entities.  There were a handful of tie-in toys but for the most part toy “franchises” stayed confined to the medium of toys.  With the advent of Star Wars, suddenly franchised toys were big business, and Reagan’s deregulation of the FCC’s rules about advertising led to even more through TV shows built as ads for the toys. 

This was the first time something called ‘structured play’ entered the realm of American toy production, where the idea was that toys weren’t just for the imagination, but they were coming with a prebaked story and universe that informed them.  As such, when toy companies in the ‘80s and ‘90s wanted to keep selling new action figures from Terminator or Predator after the original film ended they needed to come up with new stories to base the new toys around.  

This series of events led to a ton of various toy lines at the time acting as the first expanded universe for the various franchise, the first place officially licensed new stories emerged even if it was just in the form of commercials or on the back of the packaging.  In this series, Extended Toy Box, I’m going to take a closer look at these franchises as well as occasionally touching on toys in general.  With all that said, let’s look at one of the best examples of this with Aliens.

Panel Vision - Aliens: Genocide

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So, the Alien franchise has, in classic form, given birth to a new monster in Alien: Covenant.  To celebrate the 6^th film in the Aliens franchise and the series’ seeming new lease on life in the 2010s I thought I’d look back at its most populated media frontier: comic books.  Yes, there were a metric ton of Alien comics published in the wake of Alien 3, which at the time seemed like the end of the franchise forever as “reboots” didn’t really seem like a thing yet back in 1992.  The main force behind the slew of Aliens branded books was Dark Horse, one of the B-list publishers now after clawing their way up from the C-list thanks to being the folks behind Hellboy. 

They’ve always made their bread and butter in adaptations and tie-in comics, and they milked the Alien franchise for everything it was worth, to the point they’re still putting out comics in this franchise now.  Seriously, there are 6 omnibuses worth of Alien comic material, which makes it all the more tragic that they’re so bad.  I dug through all of them in preparation for this review and found exactly two mini-series worth your time.  There was the enjoyably weird Aliens: Stronghold, which I’ll probably get to someday, and today’s focus, the unequivocal best of the bunch- Aliens: Genocide.  

Filmland - Severance

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As I write this, it’s the weekend of The Belko Experiment’s premiere.  This new dark horror-comedy from the director of Wolf Creek and the writer of Slither and Guardians of the Galaxy promises a playful yet gory dive into a blend of office politics, gladiatorial combat, and the corporate culture of backstabbing and inhumanity on the way to the top.  

This kind of subject has always been fertile ground for horror.  The idea of corporate greed as culture and betrayal as the order of the day was a core theme in John Carpenter’s They Live, and the idea of the evil, greedy, monolithic corporation exploiting its workforce has been a cornerstone of the Alien franchise since the beginning. 

Corporate culture was also obviously on the minds of the people behind 2006’s Severance, a British-German horror-comedy about a team building exercise that ends up murderous.  One look at the poster tells you everything you need to know about this flick, to the point you have to wonder if The Belko Experiment was somehow inspired by this film.  So, to mark The Belko Experiment’s return to this fertile genre, let’s take a trip in the way-back machine and check out the movie that got there first.    

Alien: Covenant Trailer Breakdown

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I'm kind of at a loss for words about Alien: Covenant.  There are plenty of things I could mention about the Alien series but, at this point, I’m pretty sure it’s all been said.  We’ve all heard the analysis of how the first film is about rape and sexual terror, we’ve all praised Aliens as one of the truly greater horror sequels, we’ve all searched for quality in Alien 3, and shamefully hidden our enjoyment of Alien Resurrection. 

We all struggled with Prometheus, a film whose failures and success seem to have most determined the path of Alien: Covenant, and we even enjoyed Alien v. Predator while also suffering through its sequel.  We’ve bought the comics and the action figures and the video games, we’ve gorged ourselves fully at the buffet of Alien.  So I guess my biggest question going into Alien: Covenant, the one thing I actually can say about it is…why do we need more, exactly?

Static Thoughts - What to Expect from Stranger Things Season 2

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Edited by Robert Beach

With the summer season drawing to a close, the time has come to look back on the many success of the last few months and inexorably ask: what’s next? For some, that may be a difficult question for Netflix’s Stranger Things, the breakout TV success of the summer. The answer is obvious: Season 2.  

As anyone who’s seen the show knows, there was a lot of dangling elements left in the retro sci-fi adventure series to be developed for the second season. Netflix has already announced plans for a follow-up to the massively popular series. Even though there are some obvious places to go with things, the question of what the second season will be about looms large over the production. As such, I’ve come up with a list of 5 major possibilities for what Stranger Things season 2 could be about. Obviously, there are spoilers to follow.

Supergirl Adds Superman to Season 2

Edited by Robert Beach

One of the bigger problems with Supergirl season 1 was the presence, or rather lack of presence, of Superman. Due to copyright issues, the show was unable to show Superman on-screen as a fully realized character. Instead, they were forced to keep him always just off-camera and never speaking. That plot device ended up getting very taxing by the end of season 1 and left the show with a big problem to solve going into season 2.

I already proposed some ways they could solve it, but it seems CW, CBS, and WB have hammered out an arrangement to fix the big issue of Superman as an actual character on Supergirl.  This will mark the first time Superman has appeared on TV since the end of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman in 1997 (Smallville doesn’t count as Clark was never really Superman till the very last minute.)  So what does this mean for Supergirl going forward? Let’s find out. 

X-Files 2016 Full Trailer Breakdown

So, as the 2010s hit their middle years the trend of ‘90s nostalgia has emerged from a simple curiosity to a full on cultural force.  These days our TV, movies, comics, and games all must live in a world where people are generally nostalgic for the cultural malaise of the 1990s as signified by the massive success heaped upon ‘90s revivals like Jurassic World as well as major fan interest in upcoming revivals like Power Rangers.  At the forefront of this cultural redefinition is the X-Files, who will be enjoying a revival of their own in 2016.  This is a big moment, the X-Files defined television in the ‘90s in a big way and are one of the most influential and successful genre shows to ever broadcast.  Even if you don’t like the show or feel some of its conspiratorial elements are now dated or less charming there’s no denying that it changed the television landscape over the course of its 9-season run.  I already looked at the first teaser trailer for the January 2016 revival series but now a full 2 minute trailer has been released, so let’s break it down.

Movie Monthly: Carnosaur

Hello and welcome to Movie Monthly.  In this review series I'm going to choose a theme for each month and then every Monday I’ll spotlight a movie somehow related to that theme.  Generally I want to use this is a way to focus on lesser known or overlooked films but I’ll also sprinkle in the occasional new release or well regarded classic as I see fit. 

For our opening month I decided to start things off big and so we have Jurassic June, celebrating dinosaur movies for the whole month.  Partially I chose this theme to celebrate the upcoming Jurassic World release but mainly I chose it because there really aren’t that many dinosaur movies.  As such it’s my duty, as a critic, to dig up the strange, interesting, cool, or overlooked additions to this undernourished niche.  With all that said let’s look at Roger Corman’s Carnosaur.