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annibal Gay is sadly misinformed in his dissing of Leo DiCaprio's possible casting as Tony Stark/Iron Man ("DiCaprio Comic Casting Not Marvel-ous"). I collected Marvel comics back in the '60s when Iron Man first appeared; Tony Stark (of Stark Enterprises) was a brilliant inventor, but definitely not a "super mesomorph"; he was more of a Clark Gable-type ladies' man (right
down to the thin black mustache). His abilities as Iron Man come only from his Iron Man suit, invented originally to help keep shrapnel—embedded in his chest by a laboratory explosion and unable to be removed surgically—away from his heart (magnetically). Indeed, the irony (so to speak) was that Stark was no action hero, but found himself drawn into situations where his suit's powers (always being revised and improved) allowed him to be one. (It's a bit scary that I can remember all that 40
years later.)
Frankly, I think DiCaprio is a great choice for the role; he'll certainly give the "ladies' man" aspect more credibility than other possible choices, plus he's a good actor in the right role (as per Catch Me If You Can). After all, I would never have cast Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man (and it's still a bit jarring), but it's Maguire's acting chops that make the movie so watchable, especially on repeat viewings.
Point of trivia: In the Iron Man origin story, the original suit was gray, hulking, rather ugly and covered Stark's entire body all the time; the flashy red-and-gold, flexible suit came later. Iron Man's creators may well have intended a modern riff on The Man in the Iron Mask, which would make DiCaprio's selection poetic justice.
Bruce Webster
brucef@bfwa.com
n the light of the letter from the splendidly named T. Hannibal Gay ("DiCaprio Comic Casting Not Marvel-ous"), I started to think—always a risky business—about who else should play superheroes, or never play them, as the case may be. Here are some possibilities, the good, the bad and the butt ugly. It's a safe bet that the infamous Hollywood suits have already pencilled in one or two of these:
Wesley Snipes as Luke Cage
Jennifer Lopez as Invisible Girl
Alan Rickman as The Vision
Dennis Leary as John Constantine
Tom Hanks as Green Lantern
Jake Busey as The Human Torch
Kate Beckinsale as Jenny Sparks
Bill Goldberg as The Absorbing Man
Will Smith as The Black Panther
Gary Cole as Ghostrider
Dennis Quaid as Iron Man
Keanu Reeves as The Silver Surfer
Dennis Hopper as The Comedian
Catherine Zeta Jones as The Scarlet Witch
Ron Pearlman as Doctor Doom
Gary Oldman as Sandman (Gaiman version)
Tom Cruise as Reed Richards
Gwyneth Paltrow as Black Canary
Michael Ironside as Nick Fury
Vin Diesel as The Thing
Nathan Brazil
nathanbrazil@freeuk.com
ecently (issue #304), I sent in my opinions about Ben Affleck's casting and the mis-castings of the other leads ("Affleck Is to Be Feared as Daredevil"). Now I'd like to put forward my ideas for actors to play other Marvel comic characters.
I think Timothy Dalton of James Bond fame would play a great Mandrake the magician. Micheal Duncan Clarke as Lothar. George Clooney as Flash Gordon. Tom Selleck of Magnum P.I. would play an alright Iron Man. Daniel Day-Lewis for the role of The Sub-Mariner. Lawrence Fishbourne as X-Man Bishop. Micheal Duncan Clarke as X-Men enemy Apocalypse. Dolph Ludgren as Wolverine's enemy from Russia, Omega Red. Tim Dalton again could play X-Man Forge. Richard O'Brien (Crystal Maze) or John Malkovich could play X-Men enemy Gideon. As for Juggernaut, that's got to be a mad Woody Harrelson (Natural Born Killers). Ray Park (Toad in X-Men) as Chameleon in Spidey. That Mexican guy From Dusk Til Dawn as Kraven The Hunter vs. Spidey. That guy who played Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation for the role of Mysterion (with unnerving voice) vs. spidey. As for The Vulture: Richard O'Brien/John Malkovich.
Does anyone agree?
Stuart Howson
showson2002@yahoo.co.uk
would like to reply to the letter "Stargate Rewrites Language Rules." I have read two of the Stargate SG-1 novels and though they are lacking the spirit of the show they do explain that the Stargate has a built-in translator that imparts the local language to travelers much of the time. The exceptions seem to be situations where the DHD is not present, or in
cases where the gate is not in use and hidden away from the local population.
William Travis
thewall@charter.net
he [February 2003] edition of SCI FI magazine stated that Andromeda was the number-one syndicated sci-fi show in the country. I read and re-read this, repeatedly thinking that I was continuing to misunderstand what it was that I was reading. Andromeda? The show that has battles with inevitable outcomes, trite dialogue, unoriginal and predictable plots, uncomplicated and bullet-proof characters, easily resolved pseudo-moral dilemmas, hackneyed multicultural themes and a lead B actor? How was this possible?
Was it the only syndicated sci-fi show? (No.) Was it Kevin Sorbo's loyal following? Was it that Andromeda found its niche with children's sci-fi? Was it a wildly successful advertising campaign? Was it that the rating system is skewed to privilege the lowest common dominator? Or was it something else entirely?
I really don't know. But before I read this, I was laboring under the comfortable illusion that there was something particular about the type of person who was drawn to science fiction. I thought that the more than casual viewer of science fiction was smart, interested, creative, thoughtful, philosophical and reflective, and that a good series would speak to these qualities. But I've since learned that popular sci-fi and good sci-fi operate independently of each other. (Hence, Scott Edelman's New Year's resolution not to place bets on which sci-fi series will live and die. Series that succeed are not necessarily good series, and series that fail aren't necessarily bad. There are simply too many exogenous factors to make reliable prediction possible.) Good sci-fi does not translate into popularity and thus success (e.g., Farscape), and no inferences can be drawn about popular shows (i.e., that they are well written, creative, well directed, etc.).
That Andromeda is the number-one syndicated sci-fi show does not bode well for what's to come. For example, all of the thoughtful suggestions that people have written to this forum proposing possible directions Star Trek should take will almost surely be rejected. Producers and writers want to mirror what works and discard what doesn't: enter Andromeda, exit Farscape. Moreover, new shows will likely try to emulate this formula for success: hello Andromeda, goodbye Babylon 5. And finally, we are likely to see this have an impact on the genre overall, as a push towards this type of mind-numbing sci-fi becomes more commonplace.
Peter Boghossian
pete@boghossian.com
riting rhymes with fighting," somebody once said, and Rod Serling never dropped his gloves ("A Zone as Vast as Space, A Twilight as Timeless as Infinity"). He feinted with fables to draw in viewers only to coldcock us with a left hook we never saw coming.
It's a Serling irony—unleashing upon us monsters and mayhem, cannibalistic aliens and soulless bureaucracies, what killed him was once ceaselessly promoted by television and Serling himself—cigarettes. Now that's a Zone episode if I never saw one.
Kevin Ahearn
KEVTOMA@aol.com
he Twilight Zone is the thinking man's genre television and I am glad that Mr. Serling got a chance to tell the stories that he did on that show ("A Zone as Vast as Space, A Twilight as Timeless as Infinity"). I enjoyed trying to figure out the twists of each episode.
One classic that I remember is when the tiny aliens that were terrorizing a woman turned out to be Earthmen. After all, how many stories have there been showing that mother Earth is under attack by extra-terrestrial forces?
Julian Gift
lira-b@tstt.net.tt
as nobody noticed how Enterprise is very selective in its history? We have opening credits that totally leave out the Russian involvement in the conquest of space in favor of showing purely U.S. achievements. Then, to add insult to injury, when Vulcans come to Earth to view the "human" Sputnik, and crash land in the U.S., one of them comments that they are surprised that Americans could have built such a satellite. To which the answer is they didn't nor did they put the first man in space. Or is it that that Sputnik is now a "human" achievement? The "American" inventor of the warp drive has been mentioned, so is it that from now on, in the show, if something is achieved outside of the U.S. it is a "human" achievement, but if it happens in the U.S. it is an American achievement?
At least we get a glimpse of the British with HMS Enterprise.
Terry Mckay
balbus@geocities.com
egarding the "controversy" of money in the Star Trek universe (aren't there
more important things to talk about?), I think we're getting too deep here ("Communism Is Not the Answer", "Replicators Will Kill Capitalism" and "Trek and Farscape Are Opposites").
Roddenberry probably took money out of the future for mere writing convenience's sake. Having Starfleet personnel asking for raises or bribing Klingons to go away just doesn't fit in with Gene's extremely optimistic future. Of course, there were plenty of rotten apples in the Federation
that cropped up from time to time, but these were plot devices rather than commentary that the Federation's system was bad.
Some of the other races seem to have currency and bartering is common. Think of the galaxy as a frontier. Prices and deals were never a fixed thing there. I don't think this was an endorsement for communism. Living for discovery was the ideal of the Athenians, those folks who brought us democracy in the first place. Perhaps our defenders of capitalism would prefer the halls of the Enterprise should be littered with ads for Coke or Snickers?
Mike Nelson
Address withheld by request
t should be obvious to Tom Holste ("Communism Is Not the Answer") that nobody is advocating Stalinism. Rather people are talking about a post-scarcity and hence post-capitalism environment predicated on nanotechnology. This is what we see in Star Trek, Iain Banks' Culture novels and various other works of science fiction. Communism is a pretty good word for this sort of moneyless society.
People haven't forgotten what communism was like in practice because it has never been put into practice. That dictatorships might describe themselves as such does not make it true. Thankfully, revolutionary Communism is on the wane. However, we can dream about the magic technology that would bring true communism into existence.
Martin Lewis
martin@theculture.org
magine a life form that exists for one purpose and has one drive: to stalk and devour prey. It is shapeless and nearly liquid. It can go anywhere water can flow. Wherever you try to run and hide, it can follow you; there is NO escape. It moves in complete and total silence; you may never even know it's there until it's too late. And once it has you, it absorbs you completely. You're gone, without a trace, as if you never existed. And the more victims it claims, the bigger it grows, until an entire city may not be safe from its endless hunger. ...
Actually, you don't have to imagine such a creature. It's been slithering through people's nightmares—mine included—for more than 40 years. That creature is the Blob, and my intrigue at seeing this film retro-reviewed in SF Weekly #306 is matched only by my mild dismay at the panning you gave one of the great, classic Hollywood monsters. Really, I think you're being way too hard on this picture. There is a reason The Blob has endured for four decades and counting, and it is simply that the concept is utterly, viscerally terrifying. Say what you will for the way the creature was portrayed; the filmmakers had to work within a small budget. But the reason people remember the Blob, and the reason you're reviewing it after 40 years, is that it is one of the most deeply frightening ideas ever conceived for the screen.
What I'd like to see is The Blob done one more time, this time with its original appearance and concept. I want to see the totally mysterious, utterly lethal, blood-red mass from unknown space that completely absorbs its prey, not the wad of pink slime created by government germ-warfare researchers that leaves gruesome remains of its victims lying around (as in that sorry 1988 remake). I want to see it done with modern CGI effects (the kind of effect that was used for Odo and the Changelings in Star Trek: DS9, done in red instead of gold, would be perfect) and with the creature living up to its theme lyrics: "It leaps and creeps, and slides and glides across the floor, right through the door, and all around the walls. ..." The original concept with modern production values would give us a Blob terrifying enough to last another 40 years.
A little respect, please, gentlemen. Don't bash the Blob!
J.A. Fludd
jafcontact@hotmail.com
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