Giant Freakin Robot

When Terminator Salvation  was released in 2009, Halcyon’s plan was to make several films continuing and exploring the decades-old franchise.  Unfortunately, the little matter of Halcyon’s bankruptcy got in the way of that plan.  Then Pacifor picked it up at a bankruptcy auction in 2010 and Deadline reported a year ago that none other than the original Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached to a fifth installment in the series.  Schwarzenegger’s move makes sense in the context of his post-gubernatorial return to action flicks, but it also seems that he had some “advising” from another significant figure from the franchise’s past: James Cameron.

In a recent interview with MTV News, Cameron revealed that he had been “quietly advising” Schwarzenegger on the potential new Terminator film.  Specifically, Cameron and the Governator spoke about what the film should look like if Schwarzenegger was to participate:

“I was trying to be as encouraging as possible. Frankly, at that time, I thought it needed to be more about him,” Cameron said. “I told him he should not do it until it’s focused on his character or he shouldn’t do it. I think there are some great stories that can be told about that character that haven’t even been thought of yet.”

Whatever you personally think of Terminator Salvation, there’s no denying that director McG’s return to the world of Skynet pretty much killed the franchise. It’ll be awhile before we see anything new from the Terminator now and series star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who didn’t appear in Salvation (at least not in person), knows why. It was awful.

Talking to Collider about possible sequels to some of his famous franchises Arnie had this to say, “[I’m open to] all those things, if it’s True Lies, Terminator, a well-made Terminator…the last one was awful. It tried hard, not that they didn’t try, the acting and everything. It missed the boat.”

Science fiction fires the musical imaginations of composers unlike almost any other genre. It’s no accident that so many of the greatest movie soundtracks of all time were written to express the bombastic majesty of outer space, to convey the shock and awe of creatures beyond our reckoning, to blast across the screen with cars trailing fire as they rip a hole though the fabric of time. Music has become an indelible part of almost all of the greatest science fiction movies ever made, and some of the greatest music ever to appear on film has been in science fiction movies.

But which sci-fi score is the best? The GFR team spent some time listening to our favorite composers, cast votes, and came up with this list of greats. * Listen to selections from all twenty of the best orchestral scores ever composed for science fiction films, by clicking play on each item below. Let the music speak for itself.

1. Jurassic Park | composed by John Williams

As you might guess, we’re big fans of robots here at GFR. Big robots, little robots, real robots, fantastical robots. We love ‘em all, from Robby to R2 to that big lug the Iron Giant. It is our philosophy that robots are awesome, with one crucial exception: we don’t like it when they try to kill all humans. Sadly, the inevitable robopocalypse is now one step closer. As NPR reports, a group of flying robots just built a 20-foot tower all by themselves. It’s just a matter of time before they realize they can start dive-bombing us and chopping at us with their whirly-blades.

We may be lucky in this case, though, because these flying robots were apparently liberal arts majors. The robot-assisted tower construction was part of an art project, unfolding in a gallery near Paris. The tower, a twisting edifice designed by Swiss architects Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler, was built out of light, polystyrene bricks. Here’s a picture of one of the bots at work: