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.  

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?

Martin Starr & Logan Marshall Good join Spider-Man: Homecoming

Edited By Robert Beach 
Damn, it must be casting season as this is the 4^th recent article I’ve written about casting news. If you haven’t been following the slow drip of casting news coming out of Marvel/Sony’s latest Spider-Man blockbuster, here’s the deal. 

We were all introduced to the new Spider-Man, Tom Holland, earlier this year during his star-making turn in Captain America: Civil War. Since then, Sony has slowly been announcing casting for his solo film Spider-Man: Homecoming, most notably with Michael Keaton, the original Batman, signed up. More recently Donald Glover, of Community and The Martian, was rumored to be playing a role in the film much to the Internet’s engagement. 

Now, two new names have joined the cast list in the form of Logan Marshall Good, of Prometheus and The Invitation, and Martin Starr, of Party Down and Silicon Valley.

Movie Monthly - The Time Machine (2002)

Edited by Robert Beach 

Welcome back to Movie Monthly where we spend a whole month looking at movies of one particular theme. To celebrate the return of Doctor Who later this week, we’re dedicating September exclusively to time travel flicks. Even though this genre seems broad, there are actually very few worthwhile entries in it. We’ll be looking at the weirder portions of that spectrum starting with the time travel story that started it all…sort of. In 1895, H.G. Wells penned what is arguably the first major pop cultural time travel story with The Time Machine. 

It’s an interesting speculative future story that’s honestly more of a fantasy adventure tale than a sci-fi story, especially when compared to the heavy social commentary inherent to the works of Wells’ contemporary Jules Verne. Wells’ novel was a pop smash at the time that influenced a lot of future tales through its unique blend of sci-fi affectations with Victorian fantasy adventure. That was the same basic blend that would eventually inform Doctor Who. Given that pedigree, The Time Machine has been adapted multiple times including an excellent B-movie version from 1960 and today’s subject: a 2002 feature film starring Guy Pierce.  

 

Static Thoughts - 15 Non-Comic Star Trek Crossovers

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Earlier this week I posted a list of comic book properties I thought Star Trek should crossover with next.  While making that list I started thinking about other things Trek should crossover with, a not uncommon occurrence given my status as an avid Trek-cionado.  So I came up with another 15 non-comic book properties that Star Trek should crossover with next now that it’s already crossed into Planet of the Apes, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters, G.I. Joe, and Transformers.  Let us list them.