Giant Freakin Robot

Video games are rarely sources of quality cinematic fare, usually due to a focus on gameplay over narrative. Even when a game does have a deep storyline, transferring it to film could just be redundant. But for a game like Assassin’s Creed — part of the franchise that will soon see the release of the supercool-looking Assassin’s Creed IV — enough plot-driving story elements exist for a screenwriter to latch onto and fill in the blanks, so long as the lead character spends at least half of the film climbing shit and jumping off of it.

Given the history of video game movies, it inspires no confidence that Fox’s Assassin’s Creed film already has a release date posted up on Box Office Mojo, when it doesn’t even have a director yet. Granted, the date set is almost two years from now on May 22, 2015, but that just means they’re automatically shooting — or tomahawking, in this case — for summer blockbuster money, which will probably limit where they go for direction. The screenwriter, Michael Lesslie, is a largely unknown British playwright with no produced credits to his name, not that he’s at fault for that. But it means somebody like Stephen Sommers is going to get the directing gig, and there is definite fault to be found in that. Regardless of who gets the job, game developer Ubisoft is retaining control of how some of the games elements will come into play for the film, so we’ll have to wait and see what that means.

Michael Fassbender (Prometheus) will star as the lead character, a bartender who is kidnapped by a secret organization close to the Knights Templar and discovers he has trained assassins in his family history. He then uses a device called the Animus to retrieve historical events experienced by his ancestors, hoping to learn more about the long war between the Assassins and the Templars. We can all thank our lucky stars no one is calling it “Bill and Ted meets Parkour,” although that certainly sounds enjoyable.

Doctor Who just wrapped up its seventh season in truly epic fashion, with a storyline set to be continued in the 50th anniversary special this fall. While Who fans have plenty to talk about in the meantime, several things have been officially confirmed which we already assumed were true: the Doctor will indeed be returning for an eighth season in 2014, with Matt Smith still in the role, and we’ll be getting a Christmas special as usual.

Smith confirmed his own return in an interview with The Sun’s TV Magazine. The Who lead is currently appearing in How to Catch a Monster, the directorial debut of actor Ryan Gosling, which began filming earlier this month. Smith says, “We come back and shoot the Christmas special over the summer, then we go on to the next series, which will either start filming at the end of this year or at the start of 2014.” Good news for the Smith fans; as for the haters, well, you’re stuck with him for at least another season.

While Smith’s quote is confirmation enough that there will be a new season of Who, the BBC went ahead and made it official with an announcement Saturday night. Showrunner Steven Moffat is already said to be at work plotting the new season. Hopefully he’ll recover some of his writing mojo with season eight. While it rallied and finished in fine form, season seven was pretty uneven, especially the first block of episodes leading up to the departure of the Ponds.

One of the most surprising hit films of 2013 was director Jonathan Levine’s big-screen adaptation of author Isaac Marion’s best-selling novel, Warm Bodies. While not all of us liked it, it still did decent business, and it seems likely we’ll get a sequel at some point. In fact, Marion is busy at work writing a sequel to his first Warm Bodies novel. Marion already released a prequel novella titled The New Hunger, which depicts how the zombie apocalypse occurred. The 32-year-old author left the Warm Bodies novel’s ending as open-ended as Jonathan Levine did in the film adaptation, so there’s room for improvement and expansion.

Marion has offered up a few tidbits about the forthcoming sequel, which will be the final conclusion of the story he started in 2010. He also revealed that the sequel would be “much bigger” and “more complex” than the original Warm Bodies. Although Marion didn’t reveal the book’s title, he did say that it would not be titled Warm Bodies 2 or Warm Bodies: Even Warmer.

Warm Bodies takes place in a dystopian world where zombies have taken over the world. There are some small pockets of humanity still alive, protected in walled-off and gated communities. The story is told from the perspective of a zombie named R. But when R meets a human named Julie, he doesn’t try to eat her, but rather begins to fall in love with her. With every warm feeling between the two of them, R becomes more and more human.

When it comes to science fiction fans, we tend to be a little obsessive about our favorite things. We know every episode of Star Trek by name, we can quote Star Wars from front to back. Hell, we may even have memorized all the nicknames John Crichton called other characters in Farscape. So sometimes to make our beloved movies and shows and books and whatnot seem fresh again, all we need is a new set of eyes. Sometimes, however, that doesn’t always work out the way you’d expect. Cast in point, the video above, wherein some dude’s mother attempts to retell the events of the first Matrix movie, wherein Neo becomes Leo, who may or may not be bisexual, and there’s somebody named Moshimo. Or possibly Mustache.

If you enjoy the first video, you should also check out their Star Wars version. YouTuber Pixelpersecond’s friend Amanda had never seen a Star Wars movie all the way through, but she claimed she still knew what happened in them. Here’s her version: