Giant Freakin Robot

The Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending remains semi-permanently on the horizon as it deals with funding and all the technical wizardry that usually comes with their epic-in-scope films. And with Cloud Atlas not yet on DVD or Blu-ray, we’re left with only things we’ve seen before in the same formats.

Oh wait, except there’s a minute-long version of The Matrix from Russian animation studio 1A4Studio, as told using characters only slightly more complicated than stick figures, in settings just detailed enough so you know what part of the movie you’re in. All things told, it’s more enjoyable than anything involving the “reality” in either of the Matrix sequels. And I don’t think I’m straying very far outside the lines of our reality by saying an androgynous, mostly featureless Neo is easily as convincing as Keanu Reeves. Watch the hectic madness below and remember, “There is no spoooooon!”

If you thought that their recent entrance into electric car manufacturing would have been the most exciting news DeLorean had going for them….well, yeah, it probably is, But it’s not the biggest news for sci-fi fans, who like movie references mixed in with our ideas of progress. It’s taken at least a year, as well as an untold number of trips back and forth through time, but the DeLorean time machine from the Back to the Future franchise has finally been fully restored.

Officially known as the “A” car, this was the version used most often for non-stunt exterior scenes involving the actors, thus making it the most-used model type for the series. With over 20 years of amusement park displays and tours across the country, the original DeLorean model needed an update. Thanks to the 2011 Nike commercial with Christopher Lloyd reprising his Doc Brown role, the plans were put into place.

Co-creator and co-writer Bob Gale started up the project, which became known as “Time Machine Restoration,” and contacted TemporalFX’s Joe Walser and Terry Matalas to handle most of the grunt work. Using social media as a promotional tool, the team received donations from many fans looking to help out, and because the intent was to use as much of the original material as possible, the fans also pitched in to locate certain parts needed. It helps that they were just building a display model, as this probably wouldn’t make it up to 88 mph on a real highway. If the following promo video doesn’t get you nostalgic in a heartbeat, your brain is not in flux…capacitor.

Like many people of my generation, I’ve been waiting for mass-marketed hoverboards ever since Back to the Future II in 1989. Sure, Mattel has been marketing one, but though you can actually stand on it, it doesn’t hover. We’re not at that point in our technological evolution, sadly. Until we get to that point as a species, at least one of us will be able to hang our hat on the real thing. Sort of.

Memorabilia house Hollywood Parts has the actual Griff Tannen “Pit Bull” hoverboard from the Robert Zemeckis’ sequel up for auction on eBay. You may remember this particular item from the scene in 2015 when Marty McFly makes his escape from Griff and his goons. You can tell this is an extra-special conveyance before you even see it, because Griff carries it around in an impressive-looking case. Check out the “Pit Bull” in action below.

If I were being held at gunpoint right now — and let’s make it a laser gun, just to make it more exciting — and someone asked me to justify there being a mash-up trailer between Man of Steel and Back to the Future, I would appear speechless at first, but right at the last second I would blurt out, “There is a secret society of people whose sole purpose is to inject Back to the Future into every single film trailer, so that people in the future will assume it is some kind of cinematic bible that the citizens of our time followed and worshiped ” And they will ask me the name of this secret group, and I will tell them it is the Church of Robert Zemeckis of Latter-Day Flux Capacitors. And YouTube user TheSynchroCosm is a member.