Blog
Wing Commander (1999): Almost a Cult Classic
Some films misread the assignment. Some ignore it entirely. Wing Commander had the assignment written on the box — beloved franchise, built-in audience, a universe already mapped across a decade of games and books — and it still turned in someone else's homework.
The result is a film that has humanity on the brink, a war-winning MacGuffin in enemy hands, a half-breed outsider nobody trusts, and a ticking clock counting down to Earth's destruction. It sounds like everything you'd want.
It plays like someone describing a great film rather than making one.
Sawdust, Storylines, and a New Table
From piles of rubbish, remarkable things can be created. Entire worlds are imagined. Stories are written. Characters live and breathe in places that began as nothing more than scattered ideas and discarded fragments.
Over the past month I’ve been doing something similar on a much smaller scale.
A stack of weathered old decking boards full of screw holes and years of use, has slowly been turned into the desk where those worlds and stories will be written. Piece by piece the timber was cut down, layered, glued, and shaped into something new.
This post is a small look at that process: how a pile of old boards became the table where the next stories will begin.
Moon 44 (1990): Almost a Cult Classic
Moon 44 is what happens when you blend Aliens, Top Gun, and Blade Runner in a blender, forget the lid, and call the mess "gritty sci-fi."
Outland (1981): Almost a Cult Classic
What can older stories tell us about modern storytelling?
Let’s look at the 1981 classic movie, Outland, and compare it to what it could have been.