Author: Bert Ehrmann
Dangerous Universe has been Bert’s web playground since 1998 when personal web sites were a rarity rather than the norm.
Direct Beam Comms #147
Movies
Rumor is that Henry Cavill won’t be returning to the role of Superman/Clark Kent/Kal-El he’s been playing in films since 2013. While Cavill’s been portraying the character for five years, he’s only had one movie of his own, the first Man of Steel, but has also played him in Batman vs Superman and Justice League. Fans are reacting with the news with a bit of shock, but let’s face it, Cavill was never going to play Superman forever. So far five guys have played the character in the movies; Kirk Alyn, George Reeves, Christopher Reeves, Brandon Routh and Cavill and a few more on TV; George Reeves again, Tom Welling and Dean Cain.
And when it comes to the cartoons I’m not even sure how many have voiced Superman. There are many as diverse as Bud Collyer who voiced him on screen in the early 1940s to Jerry O’Connell who played him this year in The Death of Superman.
And that’s not counting Nicolas Cage who very nearly played Superman in a 1990s production that would have been titled Superman Lives that would’ve been written by Kevin Smith and directed by Tim Burton.
So, in many ways Cavill is in good company. Sooner or later his tenure would end and I think it’s best for these actors to leave on good terms with roles like this. He’s played the character for a few years, and whether or not you liked his version/take on the strange visitor from another planet, I think he played him well.
In the short-term there’s been rumors that the new Shazam (Zachary Levi) or the upcoming Supergirl will be filling in for the last son of Krypton whenever a villain needs to be punched in the face really hard. But fear not, eventually some other actor will be brought in to fill the man of tomorrow’s boots.
Lost movies
I’ve always been interested in versions of movies that almost were. One example of this is the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story. That movie was originally going to be directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller who were three weeks away from being finished with their version before being fired for “creative differences” and director Ron Howard was brought in to complete the film/reshoot scenes.
While I really dig Howard’s version of the movie, I wonder what Lord and Miller’s version would’ve been like? Here are a few other movies that started out one way but ended another.
Enemy Mine
Originally begun by director Richard Loncraine, this sci fi flick starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. was halted and Loncraine fired when the studio didn’t like what he was delivering. Wolfgang Petersen was brought in and threw out Loncraine’s footage, redid everything from the special effects to the sets, reshot the script from the first page and delivered the finished film of what we now know of as Enemy Mine.
Galaxy Quest
While there’s not another version of Galaxy Quest floating out there like there might with Solo: A Star Wars Story or Enemy Mine, the tone of Galaxy Quest did change after the film was completed. Originally, the movie was rated R and scenes were cut and objectionable language changed in order to secure a PG–13 rating. But if you pay close attention, there’s still a hint of this rated R version hiding in the PG–13 version of the movie that was released. When Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver’s characters are climbing through the innards of their ship the NSEA Protector, there’s a part where they have to crawl through a Rube Goldberg inspired section where it looks like everything inside is meant to cut, squash or burn the two to death. Weaver’s character takes one look at the setup and says, “Well, screw that!” But if you watch her mouth, what she’s really saying, and what was dubbed over, was “Well, f@#k that!”
Today that line might have survived the cut and made it into the PG–13 version of the movie, but back in 1999 when the movie was released that was a no-go.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web trailer
Captain Marvel trailer
TV
The Haunting of Hill House TV spot
What To Watch This Week
Monday
Mainfest
This new series that looks absolutely not at all like a sequel to Lost mixed with This is Us premiers on NBC this week.
Tuesday
Doctor Who
Beginning Tuesday morning with episodes of the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, BBC America will be airing 13 days straight of Doctor Who.
Thursday
Murphy Brown
The old sitcom reboot train continues with Murphy Brown, a new show that picks up more than 20 years after the series ended back in 1998. And to be honest, I can’t believe Murphy Brown ran all the way ’til 1998.
The Good Place
The third season of the oh-so-good The Good Place returns to NBC this week.
The Reading & Watch List
- An Oral History of Apple’s Infinite Loop
- Chevy Chase can’t change
- Benjamin DuBay vs Stephen King: Jim Warren’s Deposition
- Going All In: An Oral History of ‘Rounders’
- Bomb squad warning over magnet fishing
- Jodie Whittaker Brings ‘Doctor Who’ Its Biggest Change in 55 Years
Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week
Captain Marvel 
Daredevil
Paolo Rivera Aliens drawing
The Orville – Great sci-fi hiding on network TV
There’s not a lot of hope in sci-fi these days, and it’s been like that for quite a while. The ever popular Battlestar Galactica reboot, though it was an amazing show, was guilty of this, are most modern sci-fi series like The Expanse and Black Mirror too. Their themes seems to be that because present day is so cruddy, surely the future will be cruddy too. And those shows have a point. In the whole of human history there’s never been a time when mankind’s been able to get over our petty disagreements and squabbles — which gets reflected in our sci-fi.
That’s why I find the FOX series The Orville, created by Seth Macfarlane of Family Guy fame so interesting. In it, it’s a few hundred years in the future and things are pretty great. We still have our problems, but they’re mostly solved and mankind instead devotes its time to less destructive pursuits like exploring the galaxy.
Over the years MacFarlane hasn’t hidden the fact that he’s a huge fan of Star Trek, going so far as to have a small acting role in Star Trek: Enterprise. And his love for Star Trek shows in The Orville, which is the closest thing to the original Star Trek since the original Star Trek, even more so than Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Sometimes I think sci-fi’s “hopelessness” is because the creators of sci-fi TV series and movies strive towards realism, and sometimes their definition of “realism” is that dark=real. And that’s great, but things don’t have to be “dark” to be real. Even the latest incarnation of Star Trek with Star Trek: Discovery is following this model where things are dark and dreary and the universe is a dangerous and forbidding place.
And I love “dark” — I’m a fan of The Expanse and Black Mirror and probably would be a fan of Discovery too if I subscribed to CBS All Access. But while there’s a lot of series that show just how the future might be just as worse as the present, there’s only one modern sci-fi show I can think of that follows the mold of the original Star Trek series and says that the future will be bright, shiny and better than the present. And that show is The Orville.
Originally advertised as a sort of “Galaxy Quest the TV series as brought to you by the guy who created Family Guy,” The Orville turned out to be a sci-fi show with a lot of heart and good intentions about the crew of the ship of the same name as they explore the galaxy.
Not all episodes of The Orville are perfect, there’s a few clunkers in the first season. But overall I’d say that the first season of The Orville was better than the first seasons of things like The Next Generation or Deep Space Nine which is saying a lot.
There’s one episode in particular that I think surmises the first series of The Orville as a whole. As the ship zooms through space the Orville the crew are on the bridge all watching an old episode of Seinfeld and are trying to explain to an alien crew member why it’s funny. It’s a small moment in a show that has nothing to do with Seinfeld, but I can’t imagine this scene happening on any other modern sci-fi show, only on The Orville, which is part of the reason why it’s so special.
The Orville did well enough in the ratings that it’s been picked up for a second season that’s set to start this winter. Now whether or not the show was picked up because FOX liked it, or they wanted to keep MacFarlane happy at FOX and not jumping ship like a few other series creators did this year to other venues like Netflix or Amazon Prime doesn’t really matter. Regardless of why The Orville got picked up, the fact is that it did get picked up made me very happy.
You have plenty of time on catching up on the first season of The Orville since the second doesn’t start until December 30.
