Movies about memory-erasing plagues, robotic babysitters, and murderous spaceships are
all currently in the works.
From time-traveling soldiers to strange space stories, these are the sci-fi movies that
are going to blow you away in 2020, 2021, and beyond.
Todd Hewitt, Chaos Walking's protagonist, lives in a world defined by two things, the
complete absence of women and the constant presence of other people's thoughts.
According to the authorities who rule New World, an alien planet only recently colonized
by humanity, the pathogen that killed every female human also caused the remaining men
to develop uncontrollable telepathy.
"Noise," as it's known, is the unending cascade of information that results.
Todd is shocked, then, to discover a mysterious patch of silence...and the woman who serves
as its source.
Based on Patrick Ness' 2008 novel The Knife of Never Letting Go, Chaos Walking promises
to be one of the most thought-provoking blockbusters of 2021.
Questions of gender, colonization, and violence are inherent in the premise, and if Ness'
trilogy is anything to go by, the story will only become more fascinatingly speculative
from there.
Moreover, Chaos Walking's cast is absolutely stacked with all-star talent.
Tom Holland will play Todd Hewitt, Daisy Ridley will play Viola, the woman Todd discovers,
and luminaries including Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen and Selma's David Oyelowo will round out the
supporting players.
A tantalizing premise, a bevy of prime performers, and an award-winning book as a foundation,
what more can a sci-fi cinephile ask for?
The Matrix trilogy's vision of a cyberpunk future changed sci-fi movie-making forever.
Scrolling code, bullet time, billowing black leather, these tropes were codified by the
Wachowskis' unstoppably cool films.
Though countless imitators have followed in The Matrix's wake, few have come close to
capturing the raw creative power present in the first film.
Two decades have passed, and we're all still debating whether or not we're living in a
simulation.
The Wachowskis claimed to be done with the series for good, as recently as 2015.
But times change, ideas grow, and with every passing year, The Matrix becomes ever more
relevant.
Thus, The Matrix 4 was officially announced in August 2019.
Some fans might not feel all that excited about the prospect of a new Matrix movie,
the latter two movies acre, after all, widely considered to be inferior to the first film.
But Lana Wachowski (who will act as sole director on The Matrix 4) has grown as a filmmaker
since 2003.
Since The Matrix Revolutions, the Wachowskis have released projects like Cloud Atlas, Speed
Racer, Jupiter Ascending, and Sense 8, weird, wild spectacles of sci-fi, space fantasy,
and surrealism that might not always wow the critics but never look like anything else
at the box office.
Will The Matrix 4 be a return to form for the franchise when it hits theaters in 2022?
Maybe, maybe not.
But you can be sure it won't be boring.
"I know kung fu."
"Show me."
In After Yang, from artsy horror powerhouse A24, a father and daughter confront a family
member's decline.
But this isn't a story about grandma losing her grip.
Instead, the faltering loved one is a robotic child named Yang.
Aaaaaand...that's about all we know about the story.
As for the movie itself, After Yang boasts an impressive pedigree.
The film stars Colin Farrell, is based on a short story from Alexander Weinstein's Children
of the New World, and will be the second feature film from director Kogonada, whose 2017 film,
Columbus, won nearly universal praise.
After Yang is poised to be the sort of sci-fi that fans pick apart for years, from the questions
it raises about family, to the central riddle of death as it relates to artificial intelligence.
Liu Cixin's 2008 novel, The Three-Body Problem, quickly became one of China's most popular
works of science fiction.
After Ken Liu, a celebrated author of fiction in his own right, translated the novel for
English-speaking audiences in 2014, it climbed to further heights of success, becoming the
first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Its stratospheric rise is no mystery.
The Three-Body Problem is a thrilling saga involving alien pacifists, the long-ranging
effects of China's Cultural Revolution, and a looming interstellar invasion.
Attempts to bring it to the big screen have been fraught.
However, the massive success of 2019's The Wandering Earth, which adapts another one
of Liu Cixin's works, gave the production the jolt it needed.
Reports surfaced in 2019 of a new shooting schedule, along with a call for patience from
Liu Cixin.
The author declared:
"Many famous sci-fi novels, such as Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Arthur C. Clarke's
Rendezvous with Rama, have taken dozens of years to prepare for the shooting."
Hopefully fans won't have to wait quite that long for The Three-Body Problem, but hey,
at least The Wandering Earth is finally on Netflix!
The first thing you need to know about Stowaway is that its cast could probably make any movie
worth watching.
First, we've got Anna Kendrick, who's captured the world's heart a dozen times over in films
like Trolls, Pitch Perfect, and Into the Woods.
Second, we've got Toni Collette, whose decades of brilliance have recently culminated in
a hot streak with Hereditary, Knives Out, and Unbelievable.
Then we've got Daniel Dae Kim, an absolute king of the small screen.
Lost, The Legend of Korra, and Hawaii Five-0 are all in this man's filmography.
Finally, we have Shamier Anderson whose performance as Xavier Dolls in Wynonna Earp can be summed
up thusly, he's a government agent, he's part-dragon, and he absolutely steals the show.
Stowaway promises to be claustrophobic, telling the story of a spaceship crew who discover
an accidental stowaway, and make some apparently grim choices about how to handle their dwindling
resources.
This tense scenario presents an ideal backdrop for the central foursome.
Can't you already see Collette's flinty gaze cutting across the bridge?
We don't yet know if Stowaway will be a tragedy, a dark comedy, a surrealist sci-fi, or something
else entirely.
But we know that with this cast, it will certainly be worth watching.
In Little Fish, a character asks a probing question:
"When your disaster is everyone's disaster, how do you grieve?"
That's the question at the heart of this high-concept film, which examines the effects of a virus
that induces memory loss.
Director Chad Hartigan has become known for telling intimate stories with uncommon grace.
His most recent feature, Morris from America, finds stirring emotion in the story of a 13-year-old
rapper adrift in Germany's EDM-dominated culture.
It's a far cry, premise-wise, from Little Fish, but not actually all that different
in the most important ways.
Hartigan's films have different trappings, but they share warmth, an impeccable eye for
detail, and an earnestness that never gets saccharine.
"Go to your room.
You’re grounded."
"For what?!"
"Because you like terrible music."
Emma and Jude, Little Fish's central couple, are unevenly affected by the virus.
Jude suffers from it from the film's first act on, while it's unclear if Emma ever contracts
it at all.
Early reviews indicate a love story that veers from comic to utterly tragic.
This won't be a feel-good movie, but like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie
to which Little Fish will likely be compared thousands of times, it doesn't seem like it
wants to be.
Instead, like Hartigan's other films, Little Fish promises to be melancholic, wistful,
darkly funny, and above all, a journey worth taking.
Think of Bruce Willis, and you think of action-packed spectacle.
You do not, however, think of malevolent cosmic terror.
But that's what the man who made John McClane into an icon is poised to face in Breach,
a space-faring sci-fi flick that stands to terrify fans as potently as it thrills them.
Breach will tell the story of a junior mechanic employed aboard a massive, interstellar ark
bound for "New Earth," who encounters a fearsome force from beyond the stars.
This enigmatic entity intends to take over the ship and use it as a weapon.
Here's a haunting hint as to how frightening this eldritch enemy is, in certain international
markets, Breach is titled Anti-Life.
What stills have been released reveal a chilling, blue-toned set, inhabited by what appear to
be the mechanics, technicians, and other workers who keep the ship intact.
There's nothing quite like the fathomlessness of outer space to enthrall sci-fi fans, especially
when it's contrasted against the claustrophobic world of a spaceship, and 2021's Breach is
poised to explore that tension to its fullest, most terrifying extent.
Bruce Willis fans, sci-fi aficionados, and horror hounds, take note.
This is a release to remember.
Warning will be Agata Alexander's directorial debut.
A simple synopsis has been released, saying,
"Warning explores the meaning of life when vastly disparate lives collide in interweaving
stories set in the near-future earth."
Actors including Alice Eve, Alex Pettyfer, and Kylie Bunbury have been named as cast
members, and a mysterious still was revealed in May 2019.
The image is intriguingly tense.
An unknown woman stands outdoors, gazing at a seemingly irrational terrarium.
It's shaped like a pyramid, and houses a bunch of roses in full bloom.
They appear to grow straight up from a carpet of moss, a manner in which no roses grow,
as any gardener could tell you.
Near the bottom of the terrarium floats a mysterious glowing orb.
All in all, it's the stuff sci-fi dreams are made of.
Alexander is unknown to most moviegoers, but if her body of work so far is any indication,
cinephiles are in for a treat.
The video shorts and photos that dominate her website are stunningly strange, much like
Warning's synopsis.
They're lurid, bloody, and often a little gross, the intersection at which much of the
best sci-fi filmmaking occurs.
Information about Warning might be scarce right now, but what's out there is fascinating
and has the makings of a truly unique entry into the genre.
The world of The Tomorrow War has been torn apart by alien invasion.
Humanity is in dire straits...until a breakthrough allows soldiers to be drafted from the past.
Chris Pratt plays Rex Fuller, one such time-displaced soldier.
Though few set pictures have been released, one posted by Pratt to Instagram is seriously
intriguing.
His Rex Fuller appears to have been drafted alongside some seriously intimidating soldiers,
and we know there will be characters played by J.K. Simmons, Betty Gilpin, Keith Powers,
and other impressive actors.
The moral implications of The Tomorrow War's keystone breakthrough are vast.
Are these unwitting time travelers grunts or generals?
Will their displacement affect humanity's history as a whole?
Are any of them playing real-world figures of military history?
Just how far back is humanity reaching for its troops?
Any sci-fi movie that raises this many questions with only a synopsis and an incomplete cast
list is a movie worth paying attention to.
Add in the fact that 2021's The Tomorrow War will be directed by Chris McKay, the man who
directed the uproariously funny Lego Batman Movie and the melancholic stop-motion masterpiece
Moral Orel, and you've got a movie unlike anything else being made.
Remember the Tamagotchi craze?
Ron's Gone Wrong takes place in a world similarly besotted with artificially intelligent companions...only
these robots live in the real world and accompany their kid companions everywhere.
Ron's Gone Wrong tells the story of an 11-year-old boy whose robotic pal doesn't quite work.
Ron's Gone Wrong has had a long road to production.
Originally announced by 20th Century Fox and Locksmith Animation back in 2017, the movie
was reshuffled repeatedly after Disney acquired Fox in 2019, then delayed again by COVID-19.
If the film's crew is anything to go by, however, Ron's Gone Wrong will be worth the wait.
The movie will be co-directed by Jean-Philippe Vine, who worked on Inside Out and The Good
Dinosaur, and Octavio Rodriguez, who boasts similar Pixar experience on Incredibles 2,
Coco, and Monsters University, in addition to working as a storyboard artist on iconic
SpongeBob SquarePants episodes including "Squidville" and "Texas."
Plus, Jack Dylan Grazer of It and Shazam! fame will be starring.
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