Stargate still being rebooted.
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are returning to the Stargate helm with a reboot trilogy, as was reported back in September here. Details have still not been announced beyond the trilogy being a reboot instead of a continuation.
Spinward Traveller TV pilot on Kickstarter.
d20 Entertainment is working to put together a pilot episode of Spinward Traveller. The show, based on the Traveller RPG, follows the exploits of the free trader Beowulf in the Spinward Marches of the Third Imperium. The Beowulf‘s fame in the game comes from the distress call on the back of the box of the classic edition of Traveller.
Starship Troopers reboot/remake could be in works.
Still unconfirmed, but Megan Ellison of Annapurna Pictures had some interesting tweets involving the work.
Magnificent Seven being remade.
Denzel Washington may star in the remake. This leads to the chain of remaking an adaptation; the original Magnificent Seven took The Seven Samurai and placed it into the American frontier.
Speaking of Denzel Washington…
The Equilizer is set to hit theatres in September. The movie is a remake of the CBS TV series starring Edward Woodward that ran from 1985 to 1989 about a semi-retired spy who freelanced as a troubleshooter for people who needed help.
Sonic the adaptation
The speedy hedgehog is getting a combined live-action/CGI animated movie. Little has been released other than Doctor Eggman will be the villain.
Magic School Bus rebooted to Netflix
Miss Frizzle rides again as the series gets rebooted thanks to Netflix. The original Magic School Bus aired on PBS as an educational series where Miss Frizzle took her students in the titular bus to visit various locations, such as Egypt, space, and the human body.
Lion King spin-off Lion Guard
The series will follow Kion, the second born of Simba and Nala, as he leads the Guard. While other characters from the series may appear, new characters will compose the cast.
Grumpy Cat gets Christmas Special
Internet celebrity and meme source Tardar Sauce, also known as Grumpy Cat, will be getting a Christmas special that will air on Lifetime. The cat earned the nickname because of colouration and facial features that made her look like she was perpetually grumpy. When asked about the the special, she said, “Let it – NO.”
You new too, Scooby-Doo?
Warner Bros. to reboot Scooby-Doo, most likely as live-action movies. No cast is attached yet; the reboot of the adaptation movie is still in pre-production.
“Demon With a Glass Hand” to be adapted for the big screen.
Harlan Ellison’s episode for The Outer Limits will the basis for the upcoming movie based on the classic TV series. The episode involved time travel, aliens, and a man with a computerized hand.
Once again, the day will be saved…
… thanks to the Powerpuff Girls! Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup will be returning to Cartoon Network in 2016.
True Blood: The Musical.
With the TV adaptation wrapping up on HBO, Charlaine Harris’ The Southern Vampire Mysteries may become a stage musical. Nathan Barr, who worked on the TV series, has composed the musical.
Pacific Rim returning hard.
The sequel to the movie has been announced for April 2017. In the meantime, an animated series and a book series based on the movie, the latter having begun with Year Zero, are in the works. The original movie centered on fighting an invasion of kaiju, or giant monsters, with giant mecha and did far better outside the US than in it.
This post originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on June 19th, 2014.
Say what you want about the unfettered spring of creativity, but I find that there’s a lot to be said for being mechanical and thorough at some parts of the operation.
The best example of this might be the Better Novel Project, which is taking a very deliberative approach to writing a blockbuster novel. What’s one of the things that you could point to as an indicator of runaway success? A film based on the book. Which books have been the most consistent at turning into films— and successful films, at that? YA novels. And of these, you wouldn’t go wrong with holding up Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games as series that enjoyed great commercial success both in print and on the big screen.
Damn, where does the time go?
Well in my case, work. I have been pretty hammered, and am just recovering.
But that doesn’t mean the Writing Prompt Generator isn’t moving forward!
I’m DEFINITELY releasing this as alpha to get feedback. It’s easy to put stuff in, but to make it varied . . is a bit challenging. So I’ll want feedback. here’s some examples:
- She lived for fame, but would die for knowledge, which was really annoying.
- This is a story about unemployment and a tactical officer.
- This is a story that concerns evil, drug addiction, and an astronomer.
- It was Monday, the day of hate.
- Around here, everyone has a story about injustice and a manager.
- On Saturday I become a medical officer.
- I have a story about ambition and a time traveller – a story everyone knows.
- I have a tale about getting old and a nanotechnologist – my story.
- Abigail knew that good requires fame.
- It was Wednesday, the day of authority.
Right now I think I need to up the “Seeds” but you can see the basics are forming. In theory at some point it’ll “go critical” and I’ll have enough data to create some serious cross-pollination of the individual parts. Right now it’s still a bit standard.
Otherwise kicking around other fun generators, we’ll see if anything comes together in my vacation. Though I plan to crash pretty hard . . .
Any thoughts?
Otherwise, glad folks are signing on to the Tumblr. I want to add a character a day as well at some point!
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
The Mary Sue is there to get you informed about Sailor Moon before what is doubtlessly going to be an insanely popular relaunch, with part two of their series.
It’s odd, I’m paying attention to this more because I want to know what’s going to happen than I actually have any interest in the show.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
No, you didn’t read any of that wrong.
It’s really something I’m still processing. I mean, it’s kind of a darkfic, I’m wondering how the band feels about this, and it sounds like people are piling onto what they see as a promising income stream.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Of course when you deal with sex and psychology, it’s all because beings have to interact to reproduce. Where you bring together two more more beings with some mutual goals and drives (at least reproduction) then things get complex. These creatures have to interact, get along, and work together to survive – and thus reproduce. Once you have sex you eventually have a crowd and they’re going to need to work together.
In fact, working together benefits everyone. You need some level of cooperation among a species to A) reproduce and B) not kill each other off.
At some point, you start developing a society. Be it a pack level behavior or a human-like capacity to hyperadapt and run culture as if it was a program, sex leads to social behavior.
What can I say? Sex makes things complicated. But you knew that.
A Quick Note
I’m going to be talking social behaviors here, and I’ll be referring to this as society, since it’s likely that you’re focusing on sentients in your settings and because sentience is when things get more complicated and when we write. However a good chunk of this applies to less-sentient, animal-level behavior that has social behavior even if it’s not a society. I’ll refer to this as “society” for the sake of not constantly clearing this up.
In short, i’m using the word society in the broadest sense.
So What Is Society?
So let’s ask just what a society and social behavior does.
Society is how living organisms arrange themselves and communicate among themselves. No man is an island, and a creature living on its own is probably dead in the end. But a society allows for members to interact, share, survive, and prosper – oh and of course have sex.
When it comes to sex, society lets them hook up, reproduce, and carry on the line – and the society. You can’t separate the two if you think about it. Society lets you reproduce easier (and deal with the results of reproduction).
Sexual organisms at the very least need some social elements to let them connect, have sex, reproduce, and raise the young (as much as is needed). When you have sex you have society of some kind. Some creatures just take it farther than others – like humans.
Society is sort of the “next level” of psychology for a species. It’s that principle that lets them get organized, communicate, and pass on information – and genes.
Consider how having these social instincts contributes to survival. The ability to bond and socialize, social behaviors, allows creatures to further grow and survive. Highly social creatures are almost an organism all their own, each being a cell, moving forward, growing, and surviving – even as some cells are born and die.
In fact, society itself really is about the transmission of information. Behaviors, language, rituals, training all allow for survival but are also communicated due to social abilities. An individual, be it a poet or an animal that passes on a clever hunting trick, outlives their time and perhaps even their progeny by passing information along.
In a weird way, society is almost a “second level” of sex. An individual can have vast influence beyond their individual reproduction, and ideas, concepts, or even simple learned behaviors can echo for ages in descendants yet unborn.
As I said, living beings are all about communication. Sex is just the first kind.
But that leads a lot to explore, and when you talk sex and society, there’s a few things you’ll want to explore when you world build a society and the way it affects sex.
The Biological Level
On one level you have to ask how much of the social instincts creatures you design are innate and how they vary.
It’s very likely any reasonably complex sexual species is going to have some hardwired social instincts just so they can survive and reproduce. These may be rather basic, but are likely to extend beyond the individual psychology of raw sex drive and need. After all if they’re not hardwired enough, that drive probably isn’t going to get expressed very well.
This can get rather tricky as now you have to ask where the core biological drive ends and learned and social behaviors begin. Ask yourself, in your experience, what are the basic human social drives and you’ll see how complex it gets.
Note that these social instincts do not always involve sex. Sure sex is a big part of living creature’s behaviors (as we know) but they also have behaviors that help them get along. I suppose you could note once you start reproducing you’ve gotta start getting along.
EXERCISE: Look at the way you spent your day today. How many things did you do that were more learned than instinctive? How many were more instinctive than learned? That point you yelled at someone for cutting you off on the freeway may have been pure territorial rage . . .
The Developmental Level
The next question in designing sexual species’ social elements is asking what traits that have that can be developed that are part of social (and thus to an extent) sexual behavior. What are the creatures wired to do or able to do, but that is highly variable or can be “filled” up?
Human language is a classic example of this. It’s amazing, but we have this ability to create symbol systems and thus pass on information. These words you are reading are in a language that evolved for aeons, allowing us to employ our natural communications abilities.
A similar example in humans is developing social roles. Though we have complex, varied societies, we still seem inclined to form social bonds and roles. It’s as if we slot ourselves into them happily – even if said role is that of an outsider, we almost need others to announce how “outsidery” we are.
This is an extremely challenging area as you have to enter a liminal area between biological traits and the larger society beings form, to ask what they’re INCLINED to do. However I find this area very rewarding to explore as you have to enter this unsure area and really ask how the life forms you designed adapt – and in what parameters.
EXERCISE: Name five human skills/traits/abilities that you think are natural and hardwired, but are also highly developmental. What role do they play?
The Social Level
Ultimately, when you get to sentients or complex social beings, you end up with a society.
A society is a strange thing really. It’s composed of biological creatures with some hardwired traits, who have learned various things because they’re inclined to, and now pass the society they constructed along. Society is both something they give birth to and that is their parent (to keep the whole sex thing in the picture)
At the same time, a society is a powerful thing for a species to develop. It can literally be like a unified yet adaptable organism, it vastly outlasts any of its components, it can change quickly since it’s not as tied to biological components, and it can propagate information effectively. A society is the ultimate reproductive/communicative tool that can send probes to distant worlds, seed TV signals into space, and write words down that survive thousands of years later.
Thus when you design organsims that have sex, they develop individual psychologies, they have social instincts, and ultimately they create a society.
Which if you think about it makes sense. A society is built on communication and propagating information, and because of that it allows for survival, and thus reproduction (even if its not biological). A society is in a way the sophisticated triumph of sex, the primal communication.
Of course that gets complex, but first . . .
EXERCISE: In the next five minutes, list all the ways an identifiable society is like a living organism.
EXERCISE: Now that you listed the similarities between a society and a living organism, list the differences.
The Social-Sexual Level
The thing is that sex is hardwired into beings that reproduce. So ultimately the society that they evolved is going to involve sex because its so primal, so hardwired, so vital to living beings.
Once you toss a bunch of beings together, the hormones (or equivalent) get going and there’s mating behavior, competition, childrearing, and more. So society, that giant organizational tool of living beings is going to have to cope with sex and make sure it’s handled properly (well what people deem properly). Sex got us to society, and society will usually have something to say about it.
This makes perfect sense since sex is such a primal part of living beings. If you’re going to get along, this core urge and process will be regulated, encouraged, discussed, etc. Thats jut part for the course. Sex doesn’t happen in a vacuum, unless you’re writing some interesting spaceborn pornography – and even then its not a social vacuum.
So ultimately when you design living creatures and their society, sex is going to come into it all the time. YOu can’t avoid it because sex is how you got here.
EXERCISE: List all the sexual taboos in your culture you can think of. Why do they exist.
EXERCISE: What is the most nonsensical sexual taboo you’ve seen. Why did it exist, and who may think it made sense.
Conclusion
Once you have living creatures that reproduce you eventually get society. It seems that’s kind of inevitable because sex requires socialization, and society just kind of follows.
Ultimately this loops itself and the society has to handle sexual issues as well. It’s sort of a perfect oroborous really.
Of course, when you get to society and sex, there’s plenty of areas society has to handle, so we’ll get to that next . . .
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
My group was talking online and they found some resources that just take me back . . .
- 1990’s game console commercials. Remember these?
- Softline magazine is online. Trust me, this matters if you’re like me – old.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Last week, I looked at the mess that was Super Mario Bros. That adaptation, along with those for Double Dragon and Street Fighter, cemented the idea that movies based on video games will suck. Mortal Kombat, released in 1995, did reduce the stigma of the video game movie by being both entertaining and a decent adaptation of the Mortal Kombat video game, but quality is still not guarenteed. Still, licensing for movies still happens, even if the concept of the game isn’t easily adapted.
With the march of technology, what once cost thousands to millions to make can now be done at home on a computer with inexpensive or even open source software. Digital cameras are now standard on cell phones, smart or otherwise. Editing software allows budding film makers to create their blockbuster. Sure, they may not have the budget for extensive sets and A-list actors, but creativity can get the film makers around those problems. Today’s technology allows anyone to try to make a film. Even Spielberg and Lucas had to start somewhere and, today, it’s far easier to get started.
This week’s focus is on The Four Players by PolarisGo, a group that creates short films based on video games. With The Four Players, they went for a gritty background for four iconic characters. Each part is short, no more than five minutes each, and is available on PolarisGo’s YouTube channel. Go take a look, then come back.
Without names being dropped during each video, it’s easy to tell which Mario character is the focus. The videos use the iconic colours for Mario and Luigi, even if they’re not wearing the traditional coveralls at first. Mario is still a plumber and still Italian-American. He still wears the cheesy mustache. Luigi is tall and lanky. The Princess is still in distress. Toad is still a mushroom. In fact, Toad being a mushroom puts his video ahead of the official adaptation, even with Mojo Nixon doing what he can with what he was given.
The cast and crew have put their own spin on the video game. At the same time, the videos do fit into the world of Mario. Mario punches a block made of bricks, something not seen in the movie. Likewise, the Chain Chomps that threaten the Princess and the power-up mushrooms Mario and Luigi use appear in the videos but not Super Mario Bros. Toad gets a bag full of Bob-ombs. Guarding and menacing the Princess are recognizable Koopa Troopas, which were called Goombas in the movie.
At this point, it is obvious that PolarisGo put more effort into keeping to the spirit of the Super Mario Bros. video game in four short videos that the creators of the movie had. Steve said it best when he pointed out the movie “went out of its way to be wrong.” Meanwhile, a low budget fan production managed to portray Mario as seen in the game while still putting a dark twist on it and still giving the audience a ray of hope. The Four Players channels the essence of Mario and builds on top instead of replacing.
The videos do show why now is a great time to be a geek. A creative group willing to put time and effort can put together a video based on a favorite work and be seen by other fans. The gear needed to film and the software to edit is within reach of most groups. Game peripherals can easily be adapted for filming; a steering wheel controller can be turned into a steady-cam for far less than the cost of the steady-cam. Getting the final product out for the world to see just requires a webpage and a YouTube channel. We’re long past the 500-channel future of the 80s and 90s.
Next week, the June round-up of remake news.
Well I doubt any of us need Sailor Moon explained to us. But if you ever need to give someone an overview, The Mary Sue is putting together a series explaining it all.
Now as a creative type, I’m following this pretty closely. The relaunch is a huge thing of a beloved franchise, it’s supposedly following the manga closer (which will make it fresher), and it seems that the American audience is even more receptive to the magical girl genre. This could be insanely huge.
Also if it’s huge (figure it will be) I’m thinking . . .
It’ll play into Hollywood’s unoriginality. They will jump on this.
I expect more attention to the magical girl genre in the US. Again.
It could be surprisingly mainstream as the seeds are there.
What do you think?
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
First, Disney Characters Done Warrior Style. Admittedly some already are, but seriously, this is a collection of family friendly badassery, and Ursula has electric eels as weapons. Which, if you think about it, really would be what Fighting Game Ursula would use. Actually, it sounds like something cartoon Ursula would use.
On the other hand, the kids-of-villains live series Descendants . . . doesn’t look as promising. Jafar, really, you could have raised your kid better.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
