Home//SFX/August 2018/In This Issue
SFX|August 2018The Ed ZoneOf all the torture Game Of Thrones has put us through over the years – the thwarted reunions, the multiple character deaths, the actual torture – nothing has been crueller than making us hold on an extra year for its denouement. But fear not, because this issue, SFX has put together a magazine-shaped first aid kit to help nurse you through the difficult wait for season eight (p38). Over 14 pages, we look back at how the show transformed TV, speak to some of the cast, look ahead to the final year and the in-development prequel shows, remember a few of Westeros’s most iconic deaths, and speak to an actual real-life scientist about the biology of dragons – or should that be wyverns? Away from the Seven Kingdoms, we’ve been…1 min
SFX|August 2018WHAT THE DICKINSON?What was it about The Darkest Minds that attracted you in the first place? → I really liked the idea of these kids going up against the government in this revolution-style story. It was very inspiring to me. I think the idea of these kids being contained due to something very powerful developed in them is a very interesting concept. You play the telekinetic Liam. Who was this character to you? → When I first read the script I felt like he was someone with a lot of pain. He’s a guy who wants to fight for justice and do the right thing. Ultimately, he’s a guy trying to make a better future. I really tried to capture that element of family that he wanted to regain. Did reading the…2 min
SFX|August 2018ED GAMBLEBecause famous people are fans too FORMATIVE SF FILM → I remember watching ET through a veil of tears and being quite distressed by it. You can put a spoiler warning here but when you think he’s dead and then he’s not – I remember that being the biggest rollercoaster of emotions I’d ever been on at that point in my life. I was in tears. I remember thinking, “Well, the world is awful if you can show me this wonderful film about a weird alien and now he’s zipped up in a bag.” Then he’s fine and saying he’s going to phone home and suddenly I was the happiest I’ve ever been. FAVOURITE SF/FANTASY TV → I’m enjoying Westworld. I’m a bit behind with it because I was watching…2 min
SFX|August 2018DOWN MEMORY LANEThe latest original series from audio producers Big Finish is the brainchild of former Young One Nigel Planer – and appropriately for the onetime Neil, its premise is pretty far-out… A time travel tale with a difference, Jeremiah Bourne In Time doesn’t feature a time machine. Sebastian Armesto plays its titular hero, described by Planer as “moaning all the time” but “an action hero on the quiet” with “a very good sense of wrong and right”. Always ready with a quick quip. he has a special ability – one that he doesn’t initially understand… “It takes him a few episodes to work out what it is he’s doing to time travel,” Planer explains. “It’s a mental process, to do with his memory.” The actor compares how Jeremiah moves between eras…3 min
SFX|August 2018FAMILY REUNIONFresh off his 10-year run on TheAmazing Spider-Man, Dan Slott will be taking on another Marvel title next month when he helms the Fantastic Four’s long-awaited return. Illustrated by Sara Pichelli, opening storyline “Fourever” will see the first appearance of Reed and Sue Richards since they both vanished at the end of 2015 comic Secret Wars. “It’s tough comparing the two books as they are both the gold standard of comics,” Slott tells Red Alert. “Spidey is the greatest superhero ever, and the FF is the greatest superhero team. No two franchises are more quintessentially Marvel than those two. Spidey was Marvel’s first big breakout star, but Fantastic Four is the bedrock and foundations of the entire Marvel Universe. When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby brought the FF to life…3 min
SFX|August 2018TEAM BUILDING“DON’T QUOTE ME” “I THINK TOM HARDY COULD BE A GOOD BOND. YOU NEED AN ACTOR WHO CAN PUT A BIT OF WIGGLE INTO IT, THAT’S WHAT MAKES BOND.”HANDS UP IF YOU NOTICED PIERCE BROSNAN’S “WIGGLE”. Rebellion is delving once more into their vault of vintage British comics characters with a new one-shot based on classic ’70s characters from defunct titles Lion And Thunder, Smash and Valiant. The Vigilant, written by Simon Furman and drawn by Simon Coleby, sees a new superteam assembled from the likes of the Leopard from Lime Street, Steel Comando, Thunderbolt the Avenger and more. It’s the first step in establishing the Rebellion-verse – an ambitious new superhero line from the 2000 AD publishers. “The comics I’m now immersing myself in are those I read as…2 min
SFX|August 2018BOOK OF DUST“Is it really worth it?” After slaying his father and rising to the throne, Marith Altresyr asks himself just that in The Tower Of Living And Dying, the second instalment in Anna Smith Spark’s Empires Of Dust trilogy. “One of the key themes in Empires Of Dust is the emotional consequences of the pursuit of power,” says Smith Spark. “What it might be like to be in a position of great power and how this might affect someone. ‘I am destined to be king’ is such common trope in fantasy and historical fiction, and I wanted to explore that in more detail.” Described by her agent as “a military historical fiction writer, who just happens to have dragons,” Smith Spark studied classics and history at university, which she channels into…1 min
SFX|August 2018SFX Hot TopicTHIS MONTH’S COMMUNICATIONS MONITOR NICK SETCHFIELD, FEATURES EDITOR Strap yourselves into the Gyrosphere and don’t pat the wildlife – we’re heading to Isla Nublar for this issue’s Hot Topic. Yes, you came stumbling out of the clouds of volcanic ash to tell us what you made of the latest Jurassic World caper, Fallen Kingdom. Plus, some more thoughts on Solo, and a surge of correspondence about comic book adaptations. This month’s star letter goes to Delvin Nelson, whose thoughts on Star Wars fandom earn him a copy of Slaves To Darkness by John French, courtesy of Black Library. #JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM → Gary Mancini, Facebook Loved it. Great performances, exciting action and it was even heartbreaking in one scene. It’s a definite film of two halves: the first traditional…9 min
SFX|August 2018INVERTED WORLDChristopher Priest, 1974I can’t claim disinterested objectivity where Christopher Priest’s Inverted World (1974) is concerned. Reading Priest is a main reason why I became a science fiction writer myself. His debut, the dislocated and atmospheric Indoctrinaire (1970), a Kafka-writes-New-Wave-SF marvel, blew my mind not despite but because I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on in it. Both Fugue For A Darkening Island (1972) and A Dream Of Wessex (1977), two intensely English novels, connected in powerful but hard to articulate ways with my own conflicted sense of Englishness. Priest’s plain but poetic and oddly estranging style, his expert way with the hauntingly expressive image, his imaginative rigour and emotional elusion, barrelled through my young brain like a freight train. Or like, we might say – turning to Inverted World – a…3 min
SFX|August 2018LIAM CUNNINGHAM DAVOS SEAWORTH (Season 2-present)Davos is a popular character on the show. Is there any of your personality in there? I wish I was as brave as Davos. Stannis sent him off to be killed and then when he went down to talk to him, Stannis said, “You don’t care much for your own life, do you?” And he said, “Not really.” And it’s not because he’s depressed. I think we should all try to be like Davos because even when it’s difficult, he doesn’t hide behind things just to make his life a little easier. I really like that he’s from incredibly humble beginnings, a small-time crook who came from the worst slum in King’s Landing, yet he has more nobility than the Lannisters and Martells and people who’ve had money all their…2 min
SFX|August 2018FIRST AMOUNG PREQUELSEVEN AFTER THE GAME IS LOST OR won, Westeros will continue to go on. George RR Martin has established a vastly-detailed history for his world – and HBO is more than keen to explore it for as long as they can. There are currently no less than four Game Of Thrones-related projects in development - though it’s worth pointing out that there’s no guarantee that any of them will make it to a series. Indeed, there were at one point five successor shows being considered, but one of these ideas has since been shelved. So what do we know about the survivors? Let’s start with the project that’s closest to becoming a reality. Kingsman screenwriter Jane Goldman is set to collaborate with Martin on a story that HBO promise will…2 min
SFX|August 2018DRAGON FILESTHEY’RE NOT REALLY DRAGONS “Their morphology is not actually that of a dragon, it’s that of a wyvern – dragons have four legs and a pair of wings or sometimes no wings, whereas a wyvern has a pair of hind legs and then a pair of wings, like a bat. It’s a much more sensible design in terms of evolution because you wouldn’t expect additional limbs [like wings] to appear out of nowhere.” FLYING “The dragons aren’t too much bigger than the biggest known flying animal, which would be the Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur that had a wingspan of around 11 metres – the size of a small plane. But one of the big issues I have with something that size is that just supporting your own weight in the air…3 min
SFX|August 2018JAMES FAULKNER RANDYLL TARLY (Seasons 6-7)How did you find the levels of secrecy surrounding the show during filming? The level of secrecy involved approaches paranoia, I would say. I never say anything to anybody because they are so paranoid, you have to sign NDAs all over the place. But I subscribe to the Magic Circle ethos: don’t tell anybody anything, because storytelling is magic. They never issued a call sheet to an actor, because they could be leaked. The thing is, I use a call sheet as an aide memoir; I like to know with whom I’m working, I like to know who’s on the crew, I like to know who’s got the camera, I like to know who’s photographing me, I like to know who my make-up person is, I like to know all…1 min
SFX|August 2018Small Wonders🔍 Captain America was the first Marvel hero to encounter a sub-atomic world. Golden Age SF writer Ray Cummings recycled his 1919 tale “The Girl In The Golden Atom” as “The Princess In The Atom”, a two-parter in 1943’s Captain America Comics #25 and #26. This micro-kingdom was Mita, located in a single atom of a rock on Bird’s Nest Island, Maine… 🔍 Blasted by a shrinking ray, the ever resourceful Doctor Doom ended up conquering a miniature realm in 1963’s Fantastic Four #16. “We’re in some sort of micro-world,” says Sue Storm. “A world which might fit on the head of a pin!” Ant-Man was the “special surprise guest star”… as the cover blurted to the world. 🔍 1967’s Fantastic Four #5 introduced the sinister Psycho-Man. “I come from…1 min
SFX|August 2018EVANGELINE LILLY“FEMALE SUPERHEROES AREN’T JUST BEAUTIFUL BREASTS AND BUTTS” For the generation that grew up on Lost, Evangeline Lilly will always be Kate Austen, the intrepid plane crash survivor with a dark secret in the mysterious JJ Abrams-produced show. But after the series ended in 2010, Lilly more than made her mark in movies – from the arrow-firing elf Tauriel in The Hobbit trilogy to Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker and the ultra-accomplished Hope van Dyne in Marvel’s Ant-Man, starring alongside Paul Rudd. She returns to the character of Hope – and her newly-bestowed winged alter-ego – in Peyton Reed’s sequel, Ant-Man And The Wasp. Aside from looking like an absolute hero in the eyes of her little boy Kahekili, as she tells SFX, she’s come to appreciate the comic…4 min
SFX|August 2018REMEMBERINGTHE FUTUREWHAT DOES TOMORROW LOOK like? It’s a question that has long obsessed SF filmmakers as they looked to the world around them to try to predict what shape the future would take. Will we have flying cars, space travel and adventure? Or will it be war-torn wastelands, rain-soaked cities and technological disaster? If some sci-fi films are to be believed we won’t be here for much longer, so while we wait for the doomsday clock to strike midnight, let’s take a look at some of the big screen’s most famous futures… PLANET OF THE APES WHEN IS IT? 3978 WHAT IS THE FUTURE? How do you distil the fears of Cold War America into one image? You show the Statue of Liberty half-buried in dust following an apparent nuclear war.…7 min
SFX|August 2018RUBY RUBY RUBY RUBYWere you familiar with the book before you signed up for the movie? When I heard there was potentially a female role in there that could be good for me, I read the book, had a meeting with the director, got a copy of the script, and I just fell in love. I’ve read the book now and I love the author. He sent me some books and one of them said, “Dear Ruby, thank you for being in this film. My daughter has finally read my book!” She got excited, apparently, that I was doing the film, and decided that maybe dad’s books are okay! What can you tell us about Jaxx? Jaxx is an engineer and she’s the best at her job. She works in a team of…2 min
SFX|August 2018KING DOM COME“There’s a real sense of a town with old hurts and wrongs, secrets and betrayals” CASTLE ROCK, Maine is arguably one of the scariest places on Earth. The picturesque town has frequently served as ground zero for disturbing phenomena in a number of prolific author Stephen King’s novels, including The Dead Zone, Cujo, Needful Things and The Dark Half. Given the immense crossover potential, who could resist combining characters from all across the King oeuvre? Well, that’s happening in Hulu’s new show, Castle Rock, and its showrunners Dustin Thomason and Sam Shaw are unlocking the community’s dirty little secrets along the way. “Part of what we set out to do in creating this show was to look at what small town life was really like in 2018 and to think…7 min
SFX|August 2018STARSHIPTROOPERSTime Machine THE STORY BEHIND THE SF AND FANTASY OF YESTERYEAR 1997 STARSHIP TROOPERS is the title of one of sci-fi legend Robert A Heinlein’s most controversial novels: a far-future story about young people joining a war to fight killer alien insects on a far-off planet. This takes place in a militaristic world in which only those who take on the personal responsibility to fight are rewarded with the rights of citizenship. In the hands of RoboCop and Total Recall director Paul Verhoeven, its movie adaptation becomes something else: a 1997 action sci-fi blockbuster which viciously (but humorously) satirises the way that war makes fascists of us all. Sounds like the kind of thing Hollywood would spend millions of dollars on? Nor does it to us! But we’re sure glad…9 min
SFX|August 2018ANT-MAN AND THE WASP→ After the planet-hopping emotional gut punch of Avengers: Infinity War, it’s almost a relief to scale things down to the personal stakes and lightweight feel of the Ant-Man world. In keeping with the tone of the first movie, Ant-Man And The Wasp delivers silly banter, much growing-and-shrinking action (including a great sequence set in a school) and a keen sense of what it needs to be. Though it might not always display the visual panache of the original (with its leftover Edgar Wright influences), the sequel does keep things interesting, finding new ways to use Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and, getting her long-deserved focus, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and her tech-based powers. Hope takes centre stage here, kicking ass on a level Scott can only dream about. The…2 min
SFX|August 2018ANIMAL WORLD→ A kid trying to pay off a humongous debt by taking part in an elaborate game of rock-paper-scissors doesn’t, on the face of it, look like an obvious starting point for a Hunger Games-style franchise. But with its “To Be Continued” ending, it’s clear Animal World director Han Yan has high hopes for this Chinese-made, manga-derived, fantasy-flavoured gambling drama. Li Yifeng plays Zheng Kaisi, a teen in a dead-end job who, after being scammed by his oldest friend, ends up owing an astronomical debt to a sinister organisation headed by the mysterious Anderson (an effortlessly scene-stealing Michael Douglas). To pay off the bill, Zheng is forced to take part in a high-stakes card game, one with terrible consequences for the losers. Yan adds plenty of fizz to make the…1 min
SFX|August 2018READY PLAYER ONE“The giant multiplayer race through New York is thrilling” → A lot of derision was aimed atReady Player One before it even came out, mostly because a lot of people hated the original book. This is understandable: the novel is clunkily written, its nostalgia for ’80s pop culture is fun but self-indulgent, and its narrative voice is often self-satisfied. Yet underneath all this the book has a clever premise and a compelling story. As author Ernest Cline says in the special features here, it’s an SF take on Willy Wonka – what if a Steve Jobs-type figure bequeathed the virtual reality paradise he’d invented to a competition winner? – and the resultant race between teenage underdogs and a megacorp looking to commodify the prize is page-turning stuff. When it was…3 min
SFX|August 2018MOM AND DAD→ If you thought the “epidemic of violence” subgenre was all played out, think again. Mom And Dad finds a rewarding new angle, due to the specificity of its pitch. Quite why suburban Americans start flipping out is unclear – though it seems to be technology-related, and it may be a deliberate attack. Suddenly parents like Brent and Kendall Ryan (Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair) are dashing to kill their kids, as if a switch has been flipped on the parental urge to protect. It’s a brilliantly simple high-concept with some horrific ramifications – like what happens when a woman gives birth… The ensuing carnage is pacy and rich with black comedy – particularly since those affected remain perfectly lucid, able to calmly discuss their plans. Early on, the ironic scoring…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE HUMAN GODDESS→ You may find yourself half-expecting red white and blue Mini Coopers to crash into shot during this kitsch Hong Kong fantasy, due to its pilfering of cues from The Italian Job. If they did, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid, inured to any manner of insanity. When a goddess descends from the Heavenly Palace to visit our mortal realm, she meets a dead ringer for an old love, then uses her magical powers to help him save his orphanage from eviction. Naturally, they end up putting on a show. There’s plenty of breaking into song before that though, with our heroine delivering morally improving messages about a strong work ethic, and satirically skewering selfish socialites. Seemingly brainstormed by an eight-year-old after one too many Tizers, the plot takes in frugging…1 min
SFX|August 2018GENESIS→ There’s not much original about this post-apocalyptic thriller, right down to its crushingly generic title. Certainly the mid-film twist feels over-familiar, echoing as it does a similar reveal (only done way, way better) in HBO’s Westworld. A slim budget keeps Genesis mostly confined to the underground bunker that mankind has made its home since chemical warfare ravaged the planet, while the characters are as gloomy and forgettable as the glum, airless visuals. + Extras Motion graphics; deleted scenes.…1 min
SFX|August 2018LU OVER THE WALL“Has a quirky vibrancy all of its own” → While the poster, plot summary and character design might scream, “Ponyo knock-off!”, Lu Over The Wall has a quirky vibrancy all its own. Sure, it homages Studio Ghibli (there are echoes of Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) but only in a similar way to how Stranger Things is in thrall to Spielberg movies of the ’80s. In a sleepy coastal town where myths of mermaids abound, withdrawn loner Kai creates music on his computer. This draws the attention of not only a couple of classmates who want him in their band, but also an adorable, fun-loving mermaid, Lu, whose fish tail turns to legs when she wants to get down and groove. The band try to keep her…1 min
SFX|August 2018LA BELLE ET LA BÊTEBLU-RAY DEBUT We frequently talk about the romance of cinema, but nothing could be more magical than Jean Cocteau’s exquisitely crafted fairytale. Cocteau was an artist before he became a filmmaker, and it’s so obvious in the way he transforms simple allegory into sexual, surrealist poetry. So many captivating elements can be attributed to him, from the Beast’s smoking paws after he slays an animal to Belle’s falling tears turning to diamonds. With only a small budget at his disposal, Cocteau heightened the magic via tricks and illusion. Extras hid behind walls and under tables, their hands poking out to convey enchanted candelabras; footage of candles being puffed out were played in reverse to create the impression that they were magically igniting. An early scene where Belle glides through the…2 min
SFX|August 2018ROUND UPAn Indiana Jones-wannabe bricklayer travels to Peru in search of a golden necklace in Spanish animated sequel TAD THE LOST EXPLORER AND THE SECRET OF KING MIDAS (out now, DVD/VOD/download). You don’t need to have seen the first film to enjoy its rambunctious action, which involves chases, magic and daft animal companions. We said: “A bog-standard adventure romp… Everyman Tad is a bit uninteresting. But a mummy who spends most of the movie channelling RuPaul is good for a few belly laughs.” Making its HD debut is HANSEL AND GRETEL (out now, Blu-ray), a winningly bizarre Korean chiller. After a car-crash victim is taken back to a cottage in the woods by a young girl, he finds that the girl and her siblings have terrible powers, and really don’t want…1 min
SFX|August 2018BLOOD CRUISE→ This pulpy shocker locates its bloody carnage somewhere truly hellish: a run-down cruise ship en route from Sweden to Finland, many of whose 1200 passengers are set on getting hammered. With its cramped cabins and karaoke bar, it’s a sticky-carpeted nightmare. When a vampiric child on-board decides he’s had enough of lurking in the shadows in the approved manner, he kickstarts a wave of infection which sees passengers sprouting fangs, transformed into ravenous “newborns”. It’s an odd setting for an outbreak horror, but a vivid one, painted with such pungency that you can practically smell the stale vomit. Littered with prosaic details, Mats Strandberg’s prose is often starkly coarse – he’s not shy of dropping the C-bomb or frankly describing sexual arousal, making this feel like the sort of…1 min
SFX|August 2018REDEMPTION’S BLADE→ Set in the aftermath of a long, destructive war against a demigod called the Kinslayer, Redemption’s Blade asks a question rarely posed in fantasy: once you’ve won the fight, how do you win the peace? Adrian Tchaikovsky’s heroine, Celestaine, the Champion of Forinth, is uncomfortable with the mantle of hero recently bestowed for her role in the Kinslayer’s defeat, as victory has left her fundamentally unfulfilled. She sets out to restore one of the races who suffered most harshly under the Kinslayer’s rule, the Aethani, a quest that leads her to lands permanently scarred by conflict. Fortunately, Tchaikovsky isn’t interested in creating a catalogue of misery, even amid the blighted communities he describes with such clarity. Celestaine remains stubbornly optimistic despite the odds mounted against her, and the tone…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE WAR IN THE DARK• The debut novel from Nick Setchfield – who just happens to be SFX’s features editor! • We’re not giving it a full review complete with star rating because, while we always strive to be even-handed, we realise it’s impossible to be entirely impartial on this one – and frankly we don’t want to be mocked in the pages of Private Eye. • A ’60s-set spy thriller, with elements of James Bond and Indiana Jones, a memorable femme fatale, Soviet villains and plenty of black magic. • Our editor enjoyed it a lot. His verdict: “The influences are obvious, but they’re remixed in a fun, fresh way – the book frequently does the unexpected, and is wonderfully evocative of time and place.” • Also has moments of darkness and violence…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE ANOMALY→ As recent news stories have shown, embarking on foolish stunts in the hope of achieving fame will often end in tears… Nolan Moore is a moderately successful internet personality. The host of The Anomaly Files, he explores unexplained phenomena. Now with some solid financial backing, a book deal and the possibility of mainstream success within his grasp, he leads a team on an adventure into an off-limits cavern in the Grand Canyon. A lead in an explorer’s records has hinted at the presence of an incredible archaeological discovery that could change all our notions of humanity’s origins. What they find is something far more dangerous. “Michael Rutger” (not-sosecretly SF author Michael Marshall Smith) builds the tension well over the first two thirds, leading a small group of characters deeper…1 min
SFX|August 2018REISSUESOur pick of the paperbacks this month is Nick Harkaway’s GNOMON ( , out now, Windmill Books). Both a state-of-the-nation address about surveillance creep and a fiendishly plotted, cyberpunktinged whodunit, it centres on an investigator charged with finding out how a cult writer came to die in custody. We said: “A novel of energy and huge ambition, which confirms the emergence of a major talent.” There’s another mystery to be solved in Adam Roberts’s THE REAL-TOWN MURDERS ( , out now, Gollancz). In a robotmanned factory no human is ever allowed to enter, a body is discovered in the boot of a car. When a gumshoe investigates how it got there, she gets in trouble with shadowy elements of the authorities. We said: “Riffing on the way Alfred Hitchco*ck might…1 min
SFX|August 2018TWELVE TOMORROWS→ The MIT Technology Review is an August journal that aims “to equip its audiences with the intelligence to understand a world shaped by technology”. A grand vision, but one that rather lacks a human element when laid out so starkly. And what with issues such as climate change, the rise of populism in a networked world and the potential for mass job losses as a result of a breaking wave of automation, it’s humans who have to deal with the effects of all this technological change. To be fair to the editors of Technology Review, they’re aware of the dangers of focusing too tightly on tech in itself, which is why, since 2011, they’ve also worked with storytellers. In the words of editor Wade Roush, “The purpose of Twelve…2 min
SFX|August 2018FINAL FRONTIER TOWN“DON’T QUOTE ME” “IN MY CAREER OF SOME 30-SOMETHING YEARS, I HAVE WORN MORE LATEX THAN A CHEAP HOOKER.”Star Trek: Discovery’s Doug Jones gets nostalgic. Ushering a new fantasy series into the world isn’t an easy prospect given the pop cultural embrace of all things sword, sorcery, dragons and demons. But the creators of The Outpost aren’t worried about that. Jason Faller and Kyle Griffin dreamt up the show as an amalgam of different genres that they love, from post-apocalyptic science fiction to the cinematic worlds conjured by directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone. “We wanted to take fantasy in a direction that hadn’t been done,” says Faller. “The Outpost is this remote town where nothing is supposed to happen. Yet it becomes the nexus of…3 min
SFX|August 2018THE HAPPYTIME MURDERSCULTURE CLASH 1 Cover your eyes, Kermit, because The Henson Company’s going R-rated with crime comedy The Happytime Murders. Directed by Brian Henson, this hard-boiled caper takes us to the furry underbelly of a city where puppets and humans coexist… sort of. “This is a darker, grittier world than ours,” Henson tells Red Alert. “It feels like contemporary LA but there’s a minority population of puppets who live among us and there’s a lot of societal strife. There’s friction between the Puppet Americans or what we call ‘Felties’ and the ‘Fleshies’. We used that as a springboard to create the world.” PUPPET PARTNERS 2 When the cast of once-beloved puppet show The Happytime Gang start getting whacked, hot fuzz Phil Phillips (long-time Muppeteer Bill Barretta) is forced to re-team with…3 min
SFX|August 2018TALES OF THE UNEXPECTEDBefore entering the film industry, Hasraf Dulull spent his time working at a supermarket check-out counter. Now that’s given way to automated self-service, with just one person as supervisor. What, Dullul wondered, if the same happened to NASA-style space missions? His film 2036: Origin Unknown explores the relationship between a scientist and the AI that outmoded her. Mack is the last human supervisor at Mission Control, played by Katee “Starbuck” Sackhoff from Battlestar Galactica, and the AI is ARTi (voiced by Steven Cree, Ian in Outlander). The pair investigates an “Origin Unknown” signal from Mars, after a flight to the Red Planet ends in disaster. “Essentially it’s about Mack dealing with AI; it’s her show,” Dullul says. “We needed an actor who could collaborate, to come up with ideas and…2 min
SFX|August 2018A MONSTER CALLSCautionary tales don’t come much bigger than Leviathan, in which Ryan DeLuca and his friends make a misguided attempt to liven up a party with a spot of black magic. Alas, their ill-advised dabbling in the dark arts summons a giant monster intent on killing them all. “It’s a book where you buckle up, turn off your brain, and hope you don’t suffer whiplash, or worse, keeping up with the astonishing pace of non-stop action and mayhem,” says writer John Layman who teams up on the series with The Manhattan Projects artist Nick Pitarra. “We’d been talking for years, wanting to work with one another,” says Layman. “I wanted to make the quintessential Nick Pitarra book, the book you would go to first to show off Nick’s stuff. So, we…1 min
SFX|August 2018DARK DREAMSSicilian Ghost Story is an unusual film. On one hand it’s the dark story, based on fact, of a 12-year-old boy kidnapped from a small Sicilian village by the mafia. On the other, the film is described by writer/directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza as a fairytale, influenced by Charles Laughton’s Night Of The Hunter and Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen. Like them, it envisions two pure-hearted children who are devoted to each other in the face of evil. The bold girl, Luna, desperately seeks her beloved Giuseppe, the missing boy, in a story that slides between reality and dream, possible and impossible. Not surprisingly, the directors acknowledge Pan’s Labyrinth as an influence, a film which similarly merged violent reality and lyrical fable. Much of Sicilian Ghost Story depicts Luna…2 min
SFX|August 2018NEWS WARP→ Legendary SF writer Harlan Ellison has died at the age of 84. (There’ll be a full obituary in our next issue.) → Avengers: Infinity War becomes the fourth movie to cross the two-billion-dollar barrier at the box office. → BBC’s His Dark Materials adaptation casts Ruth Wilson as Mrs Coulter and James McAvoy as Lord Asriel. → The Clangers and Bagpuss creator Peter Firmin passes away at 89. → Jon Bernthal to return for season nine of The Walking Dead– despite his character, Shane, being dead. → Dark Horse to launch Stranger Things comics in September. → Inside Out director Pete Docter and Frozen director Jennifer Lee to head Pixar and Disney Animation, respectively, after John Lasseter steps down. → Former Young Ones Nigel Planer and Ade Edmondson to…1 min
SFX|August 2018DEVELOPMENT HELLSHINE ON! DOCTOR SLEEP → Some bad hotel experiences just can’t be exorcised by leaving a scathing review on Expedia. Just ask Danny, the son of Jack and Wendy Torrance in Stephen King’s The Shining. King gave us an adult Danny in 2013 sequel Doctor Sleep, one still dealing with his experiences in the Overlook Hotel (★ ★ – “Blood poured out of the elevator… will NOT be coming back!”). Dealing with lingering rage and alcoholism, Danny encounters a young girl in a hospice who shares his psychic abilities, and soon discovers she’s the target of a group with the same terrifying powers. Ewan McGregor has signed to play the grown-up Torrance kid in the movie version being prepped by Warner Bros. It’s set to be helmed by Oculus’s Mike…5 min
SFX|August 2018Penny Dreadful SFX’s high priestess of horrorBACKLASH WHIPLASH → Horror has never more exciting and more varied, so naturally there’s a bloody backlash. While op eds are trying to fob us off with phrases like “elevated horror” or calling horror movies “psychological thrillers” when anything deemed worthy by the mainstream lands, I’m now starting to see a backlash to the backlash. Hereditary – one of the most talked about movies of the year and one of the most divisive (personally I love it) – now seems to be encouraging a different kind of reaction from genre fans. I’m seeing people suggesting that those who found Hereditary effective only did so because they haven’t seen many horror movies. What scares people is personal and taste is subjective so I don’t care if people like it or don’t,…4 min
SFX|August 2018THE LONG GAMEIN 2011, GAME OF THRONES WAS SET TO crash and burn. “I had this yellow legal pad, and I just remembered writing in all caps, ‘MASSIVE PROBLEM,’” said co-creator David Benioff, recalling the moment he watched the show’s original pilot episode with HBO bosses. In short, it was a mess. Actors were wrong for their roles, the White Walkers were “a guy in a green [mo-cap] suit”, Jon Arryn’s death was laughably melodramatic and (perhaps worst of all) Tyrion was blond. “We just made a lot of mistakes!” Benioff admitted. “We’re the showrunners, and if the show’s not working, it’s our fault.” After the screening, Benioff and his Thrones co-creator DB Weiss tinkered with and refined their vision, determined to prove that George RR Martin’s self-branded “unfilmable” novels could work…8 min
SFX|August 2018THE FIRST VENNGAME OF THRONES SEAN BEAN KIT HARINGTON LENA HEADEY MAISIE WILLIAMS* SOPHIE TURNER IAIN GLEN* ALFIE ALLEN JOHN BRADLEY AIDAN GILLEN LIAM CUNNINGHAM* ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT CONLETH HILL DANIEL PORTMAN JEROME FLYNN NATHALIE EMMANUEL GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE * KATE DICKIE EMILIA CLARKE THOMAS BRODIE-SANGSTER * JESSICA HENWICK MARK LEWIS JONES* EMUN ELLIOTT MILTOS YEROLEMOU HARRY POTTER DAVID BRADLEY* NATALIA TENA JIM BROADBENT MICHELLE FAIRLEY CIARÁN HINDS ED TUDOR POLE RALPH INESON+ JULIAN GLOVER* IAN WHYTE SPENCER WILDING* DOMHNALL GLEESON WARWICK DAVIS* DANIEL RADCLIFFE EMMA WATSON RUPERT GRINT RICHARD HARRIS MICHAEL GAMBON* ROBBIE COLTRANE ALAN RICKMAN TOM FELTON MAGGIE SMITH KENNETH BRANAGH RALPH FIENNES MATTHEW LEWIS JULIE WALTERS MARK WILLIAMS* HELENA BONHAM CARTER GARY OLDMAN BRENDAN GLEESON DAVID THEWLIS TIMOTHY SPALL STAR WARS DAISY RIDLEY PETER CUSHING ANTHONY DANIELS JOHN BOYEGA FELICITY…1 min
SFX|August 2018GAME OF DEATHSPOILERS, OBVS! VISERYS TARGARYEN “A Golden Crown” (1.06) Daenerys’s mean, arrogant and abusive older brother hadn’t done much to endear himself when Khal Drogo gave him the crown he desired – the fact that it was made of molten metal and melted off half his face made this the show’s first true shocker. NED STARK “Baelor” (1.09) Okay, Sean Bean’s chances of survival on screen are generally low, but Ned was supposed to be the hero of the show! Then King Joffrey made a bid for the hotly contested title of Westeros’s biggest scumbag by ordering for Lord Stark to be beheaded. CATELYN STARK “The Rains Of Castamere” (3.09) The Lannisters sent their regards as Walder Frey and Roose Bolton turned traitor and murdered Robb Stark, his pregnant wife Talisa…2 min
See Also
Chthonic Ultraman Episode 33SFX|August 2018WINTER’S ENDTHE WALL HAS FALLEN, THE White Walkers are about to overrun Westeros – and they have an undead dragon of their own. Then there’s the little matter of Cersei’s plot to finish Daenerys off once and for all… There’s a lot to get through in the last season of Game Of Thrones, especially considering that it’s a mere six episodes long. While we certainly expect some characters and plot threads to fall by the wayside – we wouldn’t be holding out hope for any more of Hot Pie’s adventures in the publican trade – there are enough pieces in place now for us to predict the way that some of the major plots will play out… WINTER IS HERE As the White Walkers surge into Westeros, killing everything in their…4 min
SFX|August 2018ANT-MAN AND THE WASPDEEP IN THE BOWELS OF PINEWOOD Atlanta Studios, Marvel’s Ant-Man And The Wasp is well underway. It’s late September 2017, midway through the shoot for Peyton Reed’s sequel to his 2015 comic book movie Ant-Man. Crew members scurry around the studio floor like, well, ants, as they ready a scene in the laboratory run by Hank Pym, the former SHIELD scientist (played by Michael Douglas) responsible for discovering the mass-altering Pym Particles. Only this time it’s not just Paul Rudd’s ex-con Scott Lang who will be donning a Pym-patented shrinking suit to become an ant-sized superhero. Pym’s daughter, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), is joining him as the Wasp, taking on the costume last worn by her mother Janet. Even Pym’s lab has got that shrinking feeling: buried in the…7 min
SFX|August 2018“The sets are insane – I was completely gobsmacked”What can you say about Ghost? Does she have designs on world domination? I can’t say too much at all! There’s something that everybody wants… Every villain has their own agenda, let’s say. She has the ability to travel through walls and doors, right? Absolutely. Yes, I mean – it would be boring if we all had the same powers! I can definitely phase through things. How did you find the physical training? Absolutely loved every second of it. That’s the best part. Creating even the style of how your character fights. Everyone has their own different style. Were you amazed by the size of the Marvel machine? Oh my goodness, the sets are insane. I was completely gobsmacked. In between takes, I’m actually just walking around, soaking it all…1 min
SFX|August 2018Dream OnWITH ITS GOTHIC HERITAGE and spooky vibe, there can be few better places in the world to discuss the adventures of the Dream King than New Orleans. But after Simon Spurrier, Nalo Hopkinson, Dan Watters and Kat Howard were assigned to write The Dreaming, House Of Whispers, Lucifer and Books Of Magic – the quartet of titles that make up Vertigo’s new Sandman Universe line – they were invited out to the Big Easy to meet with the Prince of Stories himself, Neil Gaiman. “Once the four of us were chosen, we were told that if we could get our asses straight out to New Orleans, we could spend three days with Neil just sitting and talking it over with him,” says Simon Spurrier, who is penning The Dreaming for…7 min
SFX|August 2018ANOTHER FIN MESS“IF I’M LUCKY, I’VE MADE THE SECOND BEST SHARK MOVIE OF ALL TIME!” LAUGHS THE MEG DIRECTOR JON TURTELTAUB. In case you’re wondering, number one in the list is not Sharknado. Because whether it’s Deep Blue Sea, Open Water or, er, Shark Tale, anyone even contemplating unleashing an underwater killing machine has Hollywood’s ultimate apex predator to contend with. You know the one – you can tell it’s coming from its fin breaking above the waves, it’s been known to go by the name of Bruce, and its arrival is usually accompanied by the sound of some ominous cello notes. Yes, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is such a flawless behemoth of cinema – “I got into the movie business with a passion because I saw Jaws when I was 11,” Turteltaub…7 min
SFX|August 2018BITE-SIZED READWhat first sparked the idea for Meg? From the time I first saw Jaws, I was fascinated by great white sharks. After reading Benchley’s classic, I read about every true-life encounter with these creatures. There was always a blurb about megalodon, their prehistoric cousin, usually accompanied by a photo of six scientists in a meg jaw but I could find nothing else about these real monsters. In the summer of 1995, I read a TIME magazine article about the Mariana Trench, the deepest gorge in the world. The article also covered hydrothermal vent communities, and the idea struck me… What if that giant shark was still alive? I went to the library and spent a few weeks doing research to see if my premise was scientifically feasible. When I discovered…2 min
SFX|August 2018“IT’S SPOOKY STUFF!”So who is Jackie and what is her history with Castle Rock? Jackie is a townie. She’s grown up here. She is the self-proclaimed historian of Castle Rock. She’s extremely proud of her town. She’s also the town taxi driver. She really likes to know about town business. I wouldn’t call her a gossip. Jackie is more of a snoop. It comes from this curiosity and excitement about her town, and the legends she’s grown up hearing about. There’s the writer with the parasitic twin and the killer dog, but she’s actually never witnessed any of it. Jackie knows everything about it and thinks it’s so cool that she is from Castle Rock. When Henry Deaver shows up in town, she thinks, “Oh crap. This is my moment. This is…1 min
SFX|August 2018INCREDIBLES 2“The world around the Parrs is full of imagination and wit” → While not the lengthiest wait for a sequel in the record books, 14 years is, by any measure, A Long Time. With a film as well-crafted, respected and loved as The Incredibles, the anticipation has built expectations to a height you’d need an oxygen mask to survive. So, can Incredibles 2 actually live up to them, or does it come crashing down to earth under the weight of all the pressure? Fortunately, when Brad Bird said that he’d only make a follow-up when he had a story worth bringing to the screen, he wasn’t just cranking up the hype machine: the second outing for the Parrs delivers. Picking up right where the original adventure left off, the new…3 min
SFX|August 2018SICILIAN GHOST STORY→ Grim reality and Grimm fairy tales entwine audaciously in this story of two kids in love, separated by the adult world at its cruellest. In a Sicilian village in the ’90s, Luna and Giuseppe have a joyful after-school date. Then Giuseppe, son of a supergrass testifying against the Mafia, suddenly disappears. As it becomes obvious he’s been kidnapped, Luna searches for him, railing at the tight-lipped grown-ups and battling her mum, who tells her to forget Giuseppe. Wood and water motifs lend this dark story lyricism; the roaming camera and howling, chittering soundscapes suggest a supernatural presence constantly peering at the characters. Comparisons to Guillermo del Toro are apt – Luna’s rough-hewn family cellar could be straight from his world. But don’t expect animatronic creatures or special effects, barring…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE GIANT PEAR→ The charming design of this Danish toon has echoes of Wes Anderson, while the story is Roald Dahl mixed with Jules Verne. A young elephant and a cat embark on a sea-borne rescue mission in a giant pear to find their town’s mayor, meeting mechanical dragons, pirates and ghosts. It’s great fun if you’re under 10, but there’s not much here to entertain adults – particularly as the English dub makes young jumbo Sebastian so grumpy and whiny that you want to tie a knot in his trunk.…1 min
SFX|August 2018ZAK PENNDid adapting the novel feel like playing around in a pop culture toy box? → There’s this kind of unlimited imagination quality to the book that allows you to run wild, though with everything needing to be licensed, all of your wonderful ideas turn out to require a bunch of lawyers. But it’s definitely helpful having Spielberg when you’re in that situation, because he could just make a phone call and you knew you were going to get it. The Shining plays a big role in the movie. How did that come about? → I’d always wanted to do something closer to the original idea of Last Action Hero, my first script, which was getting to go into a movie and affecting it. The first movie I wrote into my…1 min
SFX|August 2018TOMB RAIDER→ Lara Croft’s latest flesh and blood incarnation is exactly that: flesh and blood. Inspired by 2013’s gritty reboot game, this is the Uzi-toting, FHM-friendly icon stripped of all that ’90s kitsch to reveal the human being behind the mirror shades and polygons. Alicia Vikander makes for a bruised, bleeding but determined Lara, raiding a remote island off the coast of Japan where a sorceress is entombed behind some obligatory final act death traps. Vikander – just on the cusp of being altogether too good for the role – shows us the vulnerability behind the treasure-chasing heiress while being game enough to plunge into rapids in the name of her art. One of the film’s smaller, more telling moments finds her catching herself after killing a man, an action that’s…2 min
SFX|August 2018THE NUDE VAMPIREBLU-RAY DEBUT It would be easy to dismiss Jean Rollin’s work as the epitome of the male gaze. His second film, The Nude Vampire, can feel queasily exploitative at times, roving hungrily over the bodies of naked or kinkily-attired young women. Yet there are just as many moments when it feels like a forgotten gothic fairytale, its castles and candelabras placed thoughtfully among fetish shots. When a young man called Pierre comes across a beautiful runaway one evening, he tries to save her from menacing figures in animal masks. His noble intentions are thwarted, however, and the woman is taken to a cavernous townhouse where wealthy guests idolise her beauty and scientists experiment with her blood. Proceeding with the cool, detached air of a dream, The Nude Vampire slips from…1 min
SFX|August 2018MIND RIPPERBLU-RAY DEBUT Producer Wes Craven’s name is splashed across this risible horror, co-written by his son. A super-soldier gets loose in an underground lab. Cue Alien déjà vu as he’s hunted down with a motion detector. Then Lance Henriksen’s scientist inexplicably brings his kids along. Their inane bants annoy, and the threat – a muscly bloke in a vest – fails to impress, even when it sprouts a clawed tongue (all the better to suck brains with). + Extras Interview; trailer; booklet.…1 min
SFX|August 2018NIGHT MONSTER→ Bela Lugosi earns star billing in this Universal chiller, but it’s a bait-and-switch – demoted from Transylvanian aristocracy, the Dracula icon brings what haughty charisma he can to the brief, thankless role of a butler. It’s a fitting metaphor for a studio at the tail-end of its horror glory years. Night Monster is very much a late period entry from the once mighty Universal, a routine take on the Old Dark House tradition that spices its murder mystery tropes with an intriguing dollop of metaphysical weirdness. Ingston Towers is the Old Dark House in question, a stately pile where “the air is charged with death and hatred and something that’s unclean”. A maid frantically scrubs blood from the stairs while a murderer prowls the fogbound swampland around the estate.…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE ADDICTION→ This scuzzy black-and-white horror follows the descent of philosophy student Kathleen (Lili Taylor), who’s attacked on her way home one night and begins turning into a vampire. This isn’t the grand vampirism of Interview With The Vampire or Coppola’s Dracula, but a grubby kind where Kathleen grows heroin-chic gaunt and feeds on the homeless. Unfortunately, in its pursuit of worthiness, the film is weighed down by endless discussions on redemption and sin, which somewhat spoils the fun. The film’s at its best when feeding us the simple, sick thrill of watching Kathleen fill a syringe with a stranger’s blood and pump it into her veins, or writhe on the floor of her apartment as black blood spurts from her neck. It’s also interesting when viewed as a metaphor for…1 min
SFX|August 2018EARLY RISER→ What if humans hibernated? That’s the intriguing central conceit of Jasper Fforde’s latest fantasy comedy. Because this is Fforde, don’t expect some spurious geophysical disaster to explain the new normal; as with his Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes series, he simply invents a whimsical alternate Earth where sleeping through impossibly harsh winters has always been the case. So in Early Riser, 99% of the human race fatten themselves up in the autumn in readiness for five months of kip. The other 1% are the “winsomniacs” who either can’t sleep or choose not to for various reasons; various villains, bandits and dropouts; and the Winter Consuls, who police things while everyone else slumbers. In the modern world, this hibernation is dreamless – for those above a certain pay grade. This…3 min
SFX|August 2018BALL LIGHTNING→ Chinese author Cixin Liu came to UK readers’ attention in 2014 when The Three-Body Problem was translated into English (later winning a Hugo), but he already had several novels under his belt. Ball Lightning, first published in 2004, is a striking, strange and sometimes quite chewy standalone novel about the uneasy alliance between cutting-edge scientific research and the agencies that fund it. Chen’s life is changed – rather dramatically – when his parents are incinerated in front of him by a glob of ball lightning. Shocked, he takes an unusual approach to dealing with his grief: he decides to study the phenomena, setting out on an obsessive quest to fully understand it. Along the way he forms a bond with Lin Yun, a young woman working for New Concepts…2 min
SFX|August 2018MIND GAMESNEWS //// INTERVIEWS //// INSIGHT //// TROLLS You would expect The Darkest Minds to be far-fetched. It is, after all, a movie about a disease that has wiped out 98% of America’s children, leaving the survivors with supernatural powers. But it’s what happens next – when the children are rounded up, separated from their parents, caged in camps – that has proved eerily prescient, with certain imagery mirroring that of real-life children in cages. It’s hard not to think about the victims of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy. “The topicality is astounding to me,” says producer Shawn Levy, currently best known for his work on Netflix hit Stranger Things. “I’ve been stunned to see imagery that horrific in real life and then just astonishingly similar to imagery we put…4 min
SFX|August 2018AERIAL ASSAULT→ Salvation for Lucifer as Netflix rescues the show from cancellation. → Fan campaign to save Timeless fails as NBC axes it – though talks are ongoing about a two-hour movie to conclude the story. → Fox cancels spooky comedy Ghosted. → Alex Kurtzman takes over showrunning duties on Star Trek: Discovery. He’s also developing other Trek TV shows. → Damon Lindelof’s HBO Watchmen spinoff adds Tom Mison, Jeremy Irons, Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson and Louis Gossett Jr to the cast. → Halo’s Master Chief coming to TV in a 10-episode series for US cable network Showtime. → MTV lines up Teen Wolf showrunner Jeff Davis for Aeon Flux TV reboot. → Amazon Studios developing series based on Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel Of Time book series. →…1 min
SFX|August 2018INFINITY SCORETo those with long Doctor Who memories, the release of “The Orphans Of The Polyoptra”, the second episode of the Doctor Who Infinity videogame, is tinged with poignancy as it marks, after over 30 years, Gary Russell’s final piece of writing for the show. “This is my swansong,” he tells Red Alert. Despite penning a myriad of Doctor Who comic strips, novels, coffee table books and magazine articles, not to mention script editing the programme itself, Gary Russell had never written for a videogame. Until now, that is. “It was a big challenge for me,” he admits. “I’d seen [2013 game] Doctor Who Legacy, but Tiny Rebel said they were taking it up a level from that. We’re making it far more intricate.” Russell’s episode, released alongside the first, George…1 min
SFX|August 201814 CHRISTOPHER LLOYDThe 30th anniversary celebrations for Back To The Future (1985) proved that the film is as much loved now as it ever was. Still regarded as a gold standard for blockbuster filmmaking, it also coined some of Generation X’s most recognisable movie quotes, and managed to make DeLorean cars iconic. So it’s a good thing that Christopher Lloyd, who created one of cinema’s most iconic scientists in Dr Emmett Lathrop Brown, is as much a fan of the franchise as anyone. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads… Would you like to play the role again? → Yes, I would! It doesn’t look like there’s going to be a Back To The Future 4 but certainly if it happened I would love to do it again. You got to reprise…1 min
SFX|August 2018KATE MASCARENHASWho are your protagonists? → Barbara’s a scientist who helped invent time travel in 1967, but lost her job when she had a breakdown. Her granddaughter Ruby is a psychologist who tries, years later, to piece together what happened. And Odette’s an aspiring detective, investigating the murder of an unknown woman – possibly Barbara – in 2018. How does time travel work here? → The story assumes there’s only one timeline rather than many worlds. Attempts to change the past are unsuccessful. Most of my rules draw from Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov’s work on closed timeline curves. Did your experience as a psychologist help? → I was keen to explore the psychological adjustments time travellers would make. For instance, how would they experience bereavement when they could visit the dead when…1 min
SFX|August 2018STRANGE MAGICDescribed as “Downton Abbey meets Game Of Thrones in a world where Voldemort won,” Vic James’s The Dark Arts Trilogy takes place in a Britain where commoners serve as slaves to the magically-skilled aristocracy for a decade. As a documentary maker who has worked for the BBC and Channel 4, the novels were inspired by James’s day job. “I’d been producing a series called The Super-Rich And Us, about how the wealth of the 1% affects the rest of us,” she tells Red Alert. “I’d been speaking to some billionaires, and what they all had in common was never questioning that their money gave them the ability to do anything they wanted, which was almost like a form of magic.” With James promising “magic, and more magic!” there are plenty…1 min
SFX|August 2018TROLL WITH ITAfter 15 years in development production has finally wrapped on 40-minute Discworld short Troll Bridge. Based on the very short story by the late Sir Terry Pratchett, Troll Bridge follows Cohen the Barbarian (an octogenarian parody of Conan) as he sets out to prove himself a hero by besting a bridge troll in a battle of one-on-one combat, but ends up reminiscing about the good old days instead. “We wanted to adapt a Discworld story and so we looked for something short and easy to manage, and Troll Bridge was it,” director Daniel Knight tells Red Alert with mock anguish. “When we started 15 years ago we were doing it more as a filmmaking learning experience. We knew there was a wider audience out there but we were just trying…2 min
SFX|August 2018ALSO BURNING→ Jim Carrey in the frame for Robotnik in Sonic The Hedgehog… James Wan producing remake of Arachnophobia… Kumail Nanjiani joining Men In Black… Cate Shortland on the shortlist to direct Marvel’s Black Widow… Geoff Johns writing and producing Green Lantern Corps… Matthew Vaughn planning Kingsman spin-off The Great Game, set in the early years of the 20th Century, along with a Kick-Ass reboot… Donald Glover, Ryan Gosling and Ezra Miller frontrunners for Willy Wonka… Yoson An joining Disney’s live-action Mulan… Helena Bonham Carter and Angelina Jolie are tabloid rumours for the villain in Danny Boyle’s Bond 25… Julian Dennison joining Godzilla Vs Kong… JK Rowling beginning work on the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts 3… Kaya Scodelario joining creature-fest Crawl, directed by Alexandre Aja… Paramount and Bad Robot bringing Jared…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE ROOTS OF ALL EVIL“ONE CAN’T SHAKE THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED OR FOLLOWED” In times of national – and international – uncertainty we often turn to genre fiction for escapism and entertainment. This was borne out throughout the 20th century. Vicious new methods of killing devised during the First World War meant that what soldiers were left returned home disfigured, mutilated, damaged both internally and externally. How was this reflected in popular culture? A new wave of horror films, exemplified by Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, of monsters who terrified and elicited sympathy in equal measure. In the 1950s the combination of Red Scares and fears of nuclear annihilation led to movies and literature based around massive, rampaging child of the atom mutations and body snatchers taking over our identities. And so it continued. Yes,…3 min
SFX|August 2018KRISTIAN NAIRN HODOR (Seasons 1-6)How long did it take you to figure the character of Hodor out? There were grand plans, but nobody knew apart from George RR Martin… I tried to ask him… But even for me, for the first season or two, Hodor was kind of an enigma… who he was and where he came from. But after about season two, I really started to enjoy playing him, and I kind of projected my own backstory onto him. I asked George, numerous times. I bought him whiskies, vodkas, everything… never worked. He had a really good poker face. But a theory I had, being a big guy, maybe he was another of the Clegane brothers, and something happened to him as a child, like it did with the Hound, having his face…1 min
SFX|August 2018GAME of THRONES by NUMBERS3 Number of religions in Westeros 25 Days it took to shoot the Battle of the Bastards $15 Million Estimated budget per episode for Season 8 7 Kingdoms of Westeros 1 YEAR The length of the tyrannical King Joffrey’s reign 153 AC Year the last of the (old) dragons died* * AC: after the Targaryen conquest. 4 Number of beheadings in first episode 700 Height of the Wall feet 300 Distance the Wall covers miles 9 Number of episodes Sean Bean was in before Ned’s death 38 Number of Emmys Game Of Thrones has won 6000 The number of men Ramsay says the Boltons have in their army 120 million The number of times the season 7 finale was pirated 3 Number of times “Winter is coming” is said in…1 min
SFX|August 2018JOHN BRADLEY SAMWELL TARLY (Season 1-present)Have you been surprised at Sam’s character arc? I’ve been constantly surprised. What you first see about him is what he tells Jon about what he believes about himself, so he believes he’s a coward. He believes he’s no good. He believes he’s weak and can’t achieve anything. And over the course of the show you actually see how untrue that is – about how much he can achieve if he sets his mind to it. He’s not a coward. He’s got a healthy contempt for rules, and he will stand up to the rules if he believes they’re getting in the way of somebody’s happiness or bravery. And he’s fallen in love, he’s taken the responsibility of parenthood and through a series of clever political manipulations, he’s managed to…1 min
SFX|August 2018ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT BRAN STARK (Season 1-present)Is Bran the most powerful character in Game Of Thrones? I think there are so many different characters in the Game Of Thrones world. You’ve got Cersei, who is arguably one of the most powerful political figures, and then you’ve got your Varyses and Littlefingers. But Bran, I think… I’ll be bold and say that overall he probably is the most poweful character, because he’s all-knowing. That’s the point of being the Three-Eyed Raven. He can dip into all of time and the history of the universe, in a moment, so I think that in itself presents a huge power for Bran. But at the same time, what’s neat about it is the way this power has been given to one of the least physically powerful characters. If Cersei had…1 min
SFX|August 2018“All of a sudden kids recognised me!”How did you feel about returning to the character of Scott? I was happy to do the role… I don’t think I questioned it as much [on] this movie. How do we find Scott at the beginning of Ant-Man And The Wasp? I have certainly reconnected my daughter and family. The thing that makes it a little trickier is we start the movie and I’m under house arrest… I am not living a very heroic life, I’ve been the last couple years in my house and Cassie will come over and we have play dates. What about your relationship with Hope as the Wasp? I think that we are discovering our strengths as a team working together. When we start off we’re not on the best of terms because of…1 min
SFX|August 2018“This could possibly be my meal ticket into retirement!”What inspired you to join Ant-Man? There was a conscious thought, when I got involved with this, this could possibly be my meal ticket into retirement! But I’m happy to be part of the Marvel family. It’s really been a hell of a lot of fun. Were you a Marvel expert before you signed on? Not really. They send you a very nice coffee table book of Marvel characters for your reading pleasure! A lot of the Ant-Man stuff with Hank Pym… he’s in his prime. Now we’ve moved him to a senior position and he’s passing everything on to Scott. The sequel concentrates on the search for Janet. But what’s Hank’s relationship like with Hope now? We had our struggles, and it’s been smoothed out… we work well together…1 min
SFX|August 2018SpellboundOften compared to JK Rowling’s famous boy wizard, teenage mage Tim Hunter actually made his debut in 1990 prestige format mini-series The Books Of Magic, seven years before the publication of the first Harry Potter novel. Going on to rack up 75 issues of his own Vertigo monthly, the 13-year-old Tim Hunter that appears in Books Of Magic has been described by Neil Gaiman as “a Tim Hunter for a new time.” Gaiman also cryptically hints that “the old Tim Hunter may well have existed, and that may actually have ramifications down the line.” “It’s not an absolutely clean slate, as there are specific references to Neil’s Books Of Magic run,” says Kat Howard, who has been paired with artist Tom Fowler. “But I do feel like I’ve been given…1 min
SFX|August 2018FIN CITYHOOK JAW Star strip in ultra-violent ’70s comic Action, Hook Jaw took a shameless, great white-sized bite out of the Jaws phenomenon. Its ocean-menacing hero earned its name from a gaff hook embedded in its jaw. GUMS Another Jaws cash-in but this one was played for laffs in the pages of Monster Fun. Not-so-apex predator Gums was “a shark worse than its bite” – toothless, the finny goon had to rely on a pair of false chompers. SKY SHARKS These whimsical beasts appeared in 2010 Doctor Who special “A Christmas Carol”. Gliding through the atmosphere of a pseudo-Dickensian planet, they were inspired by Steven Moffat’s childhood fear of sharks. KING SHARK Son of the Hawaiian Shark God no less, this humanoid hammerhead is one of the freakiest DC Comics villains.…1 min
SFX|August 2018SPY-TECH!Where would a screen spy be without a trusty piece of audience-dazzling tech? Face down in a shark tank, that’s where. But just how plausible are these mission-enhancing accessories? We asked Matt Bolton – editor of tech lifestyle magazine T3 and a real-life Q – to give his expert opinion… 1 INVISIBLE CAR SEEN IN Die Another Day 2002 The most controversial Q-Branch creation in the 007 canon, the plausibility-taunting Aston Martin Vanquish V12 – or “the Aston Martin Vanish” as Q calls it – uses adaptive camouflage to render itself near-invisible. Car-mounted cameras capture images that are projected onto a light-emitting polymer skin on the other side. MATT SAYS Building a car out of OLED screens could make this work. Used for high-end TVs, these are light-emitting, high-res and…4 min
SFX|August 2018BECKY CHAMBERSMany years into the future, humanity has made contact with aliens and become part of the intergalactic community. Despite this, a flotilla of generation ships, the Exodus Fleet that carried the last humans to leave Earth, is still travelling through space, and still provides a home to the descendants of those who left. But why stay aboard? It’s a question that intrigues even Becky Chambers, from whose head the Exodus Fleet originally blasted off. As she herself puts it, “If the point of a generation ship is to carry you away to a more hospitable planet why would you stay? Why have they continued to do so when they could move to alien cities or colonise other worlds? Why are people still living there? What makes this way of life…5 min
SFX|August 2018TOON TITANSTHE IMPOSSIBLES (1966) When called by boss Big D, Hanna-Barbera’s rock’n’ roll trio would spring into crime-fighting action – quite literally, in the case of Coil-Man! Completing the line-up: Multi-Man (who could duplicate himself) and Fluid-Man (have a guess). THE MIGHTY HEROES (1966) Brainchild of Ralph Bakshi (Fritz The Cat/Wizards), this Terrytoons show was somewhat ironically titled… its heroes included Rope Man (who kept getting tangled up) and Diaper Man – a baby packing a bottle that shot a powerful jet of formula milk! THE GALAXY TRIO (1967) Sandwiched between segments of Birdman (nowadays an Attorney at Law…) came the adventures of three more Hanna-Barbera heroes: Vapor Man, Meteor Man and Gravity Girl. These extra-terrestrial law-enforcers patrolled space in their ship, the Condor One. THE SPACE SENTINELS (1977) Based in…1 min
SFX|August 2018HOTEL ARTEMIS→ Most first-time directors would kill to have a cast half as good as the one Drew Pearce assembled for Hotel Artemis. That said, having writing credits on the likes of Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible 5 is always going to put you at something of an advantage, contacts book-wise – it’s not like he landed in Hollywood yesterday. The big names aren’t just window-dressing, however, because this is a film constructed to make the most of its star power; a dark, stylish crime thriller with a subtle but effective sci-fi edge. The ever-watchable Jodie Foster (in her first big-screen outing since 2013’s Elysium) plays the Nurse, manager and chief physician at the titular establishment. The Artemis is less hotel than hospital, a private members club where criminals go…2 min
SFX|August 2018ALSO + OUTSadly, horror prequel THE FIRST PURGE (out now) wasn’t shown to critics until the day before release – just too late for our deadline. Adam Sandler’s Dracula holidays on a cruise ship in HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3: A MONSTER VACATION (27 July), while TEEN TITANS GO! TO THE MOVIES (3 August) sees the Cartoon Network heroes hit the big screen. And 10 August brings two releases. When a disease kills off 98% of America’s kids, survivors develop superpowers in THE DARKEST MINDS; meanwhile, Jason Statham takes on a prehistoric shark in THE MEG. Nut’im, Jase!…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE X-FILES Season Eleven→ It’s a tall order for a TV series to keep surprising you after 25 years, but Mulder and Scully’s final outing manages it. Unfortunately, it initially does so through the egregious stupidity of its storytelling, pulling a Bobby Ewing on season 10’s climax by revealing that it was all a Scully vision – a reset which, while coming as something of a relief, still feels disrespectful to viewers. Similar charges can be levelled at the finale, which concludes the pair’s search for teenage son William – revealed, mid-season, to be something extraordinary – with practically a shrug. Thankfully, that still leaves seven arc-free adventures, and though a couple are forgettable, the general standard is good. “Familiar” refreshes an old witchcraft template by conjuring creepy spins on kids’ TV faves…2 min
SFX|August 2018PACIFIC RIM: UPRISING“You see the evil plan coming from miles away” → At heart, Pacific Rim was about giant robots scrapping with giant monsters, so creator/director Guillermo del Toro did an amazing job making sure the more nuanced elements of the story weren’t totally overwhelmed by apocalyptic carnage. His vision of an international team overcoming adversity to fight alien invaders, linking their minds to pilot mecha fighting machines with cool names like Gipsy Danger, was such a successful formula that this follow-up attempts to replicate it wholesale. Alas, lacking the charm or invention of its predecessor, it all feels rather flat. Ten years have passed since the apocalypse was cancelled. Kaiju skeletons litter the landscape but humanity is rebuilding from the ruins, and the Jaeger fleet is on the verge of being…2 min
SFX|August 2018MAYHEM→ This irritating, highly stylised infection horror sees a corrupt law firm on lockdown when staff (including The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun) are infected by a virus that makes them violent and impulsive. A convoluted corporate misconduct plot mixes with ultraviolence and sub-Tarantino bantz in a way that’s probably supposed to be funny, but instead is just a bunch of suited up a-holes killing each other with office equipment and swearing for an hour and a half. + Extras None.…1 min
SFX|August 2018SUFFERING OF NINKO→ As afflictions go, being irresistibly attractive is one most of us could live with. But it’s a bit more problematic when you’re a Buddhist monk sworn to a life of celibacy. Mixing mild eroticism, gentle humour and folkloric fantasy, this low-budget effort is a slight tale (the credits roll 67 minutes in), and one which largely plays its hero’s peculiar curse for laughs. As Ninko is mobbed by the local womenfolk, it all starts to resemble an Edo-era Lynx advert, or possibly – as a mob of topless suitors pursues him, breasts jiggling in slow motion – a p*rnier Benny Hill sketch. Thankfully, Suffering Of Ninko has things going for it beyond merely mild titillation. An encounter with a mysterious female figure uncannily absent of either a face or…1 min
SFX|August 2018A WRINKLE IN TIME→ A much-loved children’s novel, an Oscar-nominated director and a nine-figure budget… these three things had the potential to create something special. Unfortunately, the finished result just feels a little underwhelming. Meg Murry (Storm Reid) is an unhappy girl, bullied at school and missing her scientist father (Chris Pine), who went missing four years ago. She and genius younger brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) are approached by three women – Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which – who explain that he “tessered” across the universe using the power of his mind, and offer to help the children find him. Thus begins a journey across brightly-coloured planets and sandy beaches, searching for Meg’s dad while fighting a malevolent entity The It. This is a trippy, vibrantly-hued film that’s fundamentally about…1 min
SFX|August 2018IT HAPPENED HERE“Its power comes from the sense of raw reality” → From The Man In The HighCastle to SS-GB, the idea of Nazi victory in World War 2 is one of the great preoccupations of the alt-history genre. It’s a scenario brought to the screen with a rare, unsettling authenticity in this remarkable piece of verité fantasy, begun – just as remarkably – when its directors were teenage boys. It’s presented here in a new 2K remaster from the original camera negative, but the power and the urgency of the film comes from its sense of raw, newsreel reality, the stark documentary frisson of its grainy black-and-white images. German troop transports rattle past thatched cottages; riots explode on fascist-controlled London streets; reels of Nazi propaganda unspool with the reassuringly patrician tones…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE UNLIKELY HEROICS OF SAM HOLLOWAY→ It’s not often that you think, “If ever I bumped into that author in a pub, I’d buy him drinks for the rest of the night.” Why does Rhys Thomas deserve so many beverages? To thank him for The Unlikely Heroics Of Sam Holloway, possibly the best book about a geek written for geeks that’s ever been written. Sam spends his days working in a warehouse and his nights fighting crime as the Phantasm, inspired by a) the superhero comics he loved as a kid and b) a family tragedy… but when he meets the woman of his dreams, his comfortable status quo is rocked. Sounds straightforward, right? But there’s so much more to this story: layer upon layer of believable character building; the unfussy, pragmatic way it tackles…1 min
SFX|August 2018ALL RIGHTS RESERVED→ Sometimes, a book has a central idea so nifty that it’s fun to read even if the execution’s off. Gregory Katsoulis’s debut imagines a near-future US in which patent law is king. Everything – every device, every song, every word – is subject to copyright. From the age of 15, everyone wears a bracelet that monitors communications and charges by the word. Trying to speak while out of credit produces electric shocks to the eyeballs, from corneal implants. The whole thing is hilariously OTT, as only YA dystopia can manage. Naturally, people are shipped off to do hard labour forever for tiny infractions, naturally the authorities are omnipotent, and naturally there’s a lone teenage girl who defies the system – by choosing not to speak at all – and…1 min
SFX|August 2018ONE OF US→ Ah, mutant kids. Can’t live with ’em, can’t just lock them away in special schools as though they’re nothing more than animals and generally treat ’em like crap. Except the US government does just that in this dark and disturbingly visceral story (set in the ’80s), which drips with Deep South racism and fear of the “other”. As usual in tales about “different” humans, these children – affected by a virus that’s given them everything from wings to psychic powers – come to realise that the treatment they’re getting is unfair, and soon a full-scale mutant revolt is on the way. Picture the X-Men, but with utterly shocking (and, yes, final) deaths amid all the human-vsmutant destruction. It’s not pretty, but it’s not meant to be; expect blood, gore,…1 min
SFX|August 2018THE CON ARTIST→ This comedy murder mystery isn’t actually SF or fantasy at all, but we’re reviewing it for the very good reason that it’s set at San Diego Comic-Con. Ever since his marriage broke up, comics artist Mike Miller has been on a never-ending tour of conventions, moving from one hotel to the next. But on the Thursday night at San Diego, the editor who Mike’s wife left him for is found murdered – and Mike has no alibi. What’s great about The Con Artist is how it doesn’t simply use Comic-Con as a colourful backdrop: yes, it’s full of nerd culture in-jokes, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Fred Van Lente (who’s written numerous comics himself) builds the whole murder mystery out of the shady side of…1 min
SFX|August 2018HELLCORP→ Hellcorp takes a leaf from a well-regarded 1934 fantasy film, Death Takes A Holiday, and its less-liked remake, Meet Joe Black. In both, Death takes on our form and slowly becomes humanised by a mortal woman. In Hellcorp, the Devil undergoes the same treatment, in what the book presents as less-than-gorgeous Glasgow. (The author’s Scottish, so he can get away with dissing the city – he’s even ruder about its prettified suburbs.) The humour is broadly Tom Holt-ish, but with one unfortunate difference: it’s not much good. The jokes don’t land, and the central pairing between Him Downstairs and a human nurse called Jill is woefully charmless. This Devil is never really evil, he’s just detached from humanity until he gets a bit of a scolding – some Prince…1 min
SFX|August 2018DEATH OF A CLONE→ Sci-fi murder mysteries have been around for decades, and there’s something about the idea of a spacebound whodunnit that’s immediately attention-grabbing. Debut author Alex Thomson tries to channel this pulpy charm with the clunkily-titled Death Of A Clone, but the end result is never quite as thrilling or satisfying as it should be. Set deep in the Asteroid Belt, the story follows Leila, one of several groups of clones bred to work in a mining facility on a resource-rich asteroid known as Hell. When Leila’s identical clone-sister Lily is found dead, the facility’s human bosses are keen to dismiss the death as just an accident – but Leila is convinced that Lily has been murdered, and uses her knowledge of Agatha Christie mysteries to set out and start her…1 min
SFX|August 2018GARRISON GIRL→ Now this is unusual: a YA novel by an American author, spun off from a Japanese animation franchise. For the uninitiated, Attack On Titan envisions humanity living behind huge walls, besieged by the titular man-eating giants and defended by soldiers who use cables to swoop and swing into battle like Spider-Man. Both the manga and anime are still ongoing. Rachel Aaron’s enjoyable spin-off boldly opts to create a new cast of characters, relegating the series’ established heroes to just a few glimpses. The book’s set early in the Titan story (around the time of the third and fourth episodes of the anime), and its heroine is 16-year-old Rosalie. She’s an aristocrat whose wedding has already been arranged by her cash-strapped family, but is determined to have a few months…1 min
