It seems that all the best plot lines in film history always seem to get shoved to the back of Hollywood’s dusty shelf, behind Disney and “Twilight,” and every other simplistic film crafted to attract the attention of our wallets. All the ideas with promise, widdled down until they become simple enough for a ‘general audience’.
Artistic science says that in the present day and age, if something exciting doesn’t happen every ten minutes, an audience loses interest.
I used to think that a film needed to have a car explode every five minutes to keep the audience’s attention, until I found a small space behind Hollywood’s shelves – more specifically the “High School Musical” section and “The Secret Life of an American Teenager,” and discovered cult fandom.
First on my list wasn’t entirely a discovery – everyone who is everyone is a cult fan for Joss Whedon’s creations, most notably, “Firefly.” Whedon came up with the idea while reading a book about being an outcast in a firm society.
After a couple more books and a little inspiration, his golden egg hatched, telling the amazingly, originally told tale of a crew aboard the space ship Serenity, who fly around space trying to catch a transport job wherever they can in a world that’s broken down.
In “Donnie Darko” Jake Gyllenhaal busted his way to the red carpets of Hollywood with the help of a six foot tall rabbit named Frank. “Donnie Darko” is all about the aspects of growing up, even if the strange effects and slight hallucinations give the film a thriller-esque styling.
Whether it’s SG-1, Atlantis, Universe, or the original movie that blew sci-fi geeks the planet over into nerd Heaven, no one will ever forget “Stargate’s” creative story-line.
With “Stargate” there is a series type for everyone. For the extreme geek there is the multipule season Stargate-1 (SG-1), the first, the best. For the regular citizen who happens to love quirky humor, John Sheppard catches just about everyone’s attention, one way or the next, in Atlantis.and then there’s Universe.
The next SG project, Universe looks at a group of people who get stranded on a strange, ancient ship called Destiny, that is continuously headed down a path they can’t control. While they try to collect enough supplies whenever they can to stay alive, they start to question if they even want to escape the journey set out before them.