1. Awesome - The Return of Original Sci-Fi
Looking ahead to 2013, there is much to be excited about if you're a fan of original sci-fi: Gravity, Oblivion, Elysium, Pacific Rim, and probably a few more that aren't yet on our radar that will come out of nowhere and kick us in the pants. It's happened once or twice every year for the past few years: 2008 gave us Wall*E. 2009 gave us Moon, District 9 and Avatar; 2010 gave us Inception; 2011 gave us Source Code and Super 8, and 2012 gave us the sublime Looper. I'm sure I'm overlooking a few gems that you might love and for that, I apologize. But take it as a good sign that there is enough good original sci-fi coming out to slip memory in the first place. I shouldn't really need to point out why this qualifies as an Awesome trend: few genres are able to hold up a mirror to our world with all its darkness, like sci-fi. Along with the Western, sci-fi is the best genre for allegory, and allegory is one of the best ways to tell a story about our own world, through the lens of a different one. Throw in some space travel and some aliens, and you've expanded the storytelling opportunities exponentially. Time travel? Even better. But it doesn't always have to be dark and brooding - lighthearted sci-fi is possible, but a little more tricky, and it requires an expert hand. The argument could be made for dropping "original" from this entry and just championing the virtues of the sci-fi genre as a whole. After all, some of the best sci-fi films of all time are adaptations of books or short stories, namely by authors like Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Philip K. Dick (Blade Runner, and Minority Report.) Hell - I even enjoy I, Robot from time to time. But coming back to the "original" theme as planned, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the original Star Wars and Alien were all original works of sci-fi, written specifically for the screen, and they're widely regarded as some of the best films of all time. When mentioning Alien in the context of this article though, we should take a quick peak at Prometheus. We all know that the script originally began as a straight up prequel to Alien, before Damon Lindelof came along and helped mold it into what we saw on screen. The funny thing about that process is even though it started as a script based on previously published works, Lindelof's involvement actually pushed it along to be MORE of an original work of sci-fi that needn't be connected, however tangentially, to the Alien universe. If you were to take out the references to Weyland Industries and change the look of the famous Space Jockey and his ship, you'd have the exact same movie that'd be wholly original. Seriously, keep everything the same but just change the names of a few characters and outward appearance of the space jockey, and you're good. I could go on, but I think you get the drift. The return of original science-fiction movies is most certainly an Awesome trend in current cinema. Let's hope it sticks around for a while. We can only benefit from supporting this genre and trend, so I urge you to vote with your wallet and seek out original sci-fi blockbusters, because while we may love the fact that they're getting made, studios still have to watch their bottom line. If we don't get off our butts and give them reasons to continue making thought-provoking, original sci-fi, they won't continue to do so. Simple as that. And those are the 5 Emerging Trends in Cinema that are Awesome and 5 that Suck. Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below.