Giant Freakin Robot

It’s happened countless times. You’ve got an otherwise great show or movie that’s firing on all cylinders… but there’s this one guy. This one bad apple who nearly spoils the whole bunch, simply by constantly doing stupid things or saying stupid things or hanging around looking at things with his stupid face. We’re not saying Carl from The Walking Dead was like that, but we are saying that if we had an awards show for that sort of thing, it would just be one long montage of Carl dying.

So, we’ve decided to celebrate some of the absolute worst, the characters from science fiction television who constantly made us want to punch a wall, especially if their head was between our fist and said wall. We’ll be measuring them against the accepted international unit of measurement for terribleness, Jar Jar Binks. (For purposes of this article, five Jar Jars is equivalent to going full Jar Jar, meaning you should nuke the site from orbit, because it’s the only way to be sure.)

One last note: we didn’t set out trying to populate this piece with so many kids, but it just sort of worked out that way.

Carl Grimes (The Walking Dead)

For all of its strengths, The Walking Dead can’t ever seem to get over the hill that is “strong character development.” There are likable characters and detestable characters, but Carl Grimes didn’t come from the mind of any mere writer, for he was created from the ashes of the former Tenth Circle of Hell. In Robert Kirkman’s comic series, Carl is a kid who is understandably having trouble coping with his trial-by-error education on survival in a post-apocalyptic world. In the TV show, Carl is a testosterone-free dip who is perpetually mad ’cause Daddy won’t let him hold the gun real close.

Seriously, I’ve been through an appendicitis exam that was less painful than watching this kid formulate ideas that he has an identity that’s worth more to the group than, say, a sock full of dead batteries. I don’t even blame the petulant performances from actor Chandler Riggs, because he’s not the one putting lines in his own mouth. For four seasons, Carl has been his own biggest threat, always finding himself in trouble after some adolescent tirade. He has yet to fuck it all up in Season 5, but as sure as the moon will rise tonight, it’s coming.

How We Would Kill Him Off: Just as he’s about to have sex for the first time, he gets thrown into a giant dumpster, where everyone forgets about him and he starves to death.

The Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending finally opens wide this weekend after being pushed back and delayed multiple times. It’s a movie you’re either going to love or hate—it premiered at Sundance recently and was brutalized—but either way, it’s a wingnut spectacle to behold. It’s like a pulpy, B-grade sci-fi flick from a bygone era, only with a huge budget and no restrictions, which is both an asset and a curse.

As filmmakers, the brother/sister duo wear their influences on their sleeves. There are obvious inspirations, like Star Wars, but you might references or nods any number of other, more obscure films. With that in mind, we thought we’d go ahead and make a list of some of the stranger flicks that might make a nice double feature with Jupiter Ascending, for a variety of reasons. For the most part, this is really a list of movies that, as I watched, I exclaimed loudly (at least in my own head, that would be rude to do in a theater), “hey, that’s just like movie X.”

There were a lot of reasons to like Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, from the quirky humor to the epic storyline to Mia Jovovich running around wearing a couple of strategically placed bandages. But the movie was also a visual wonder, serving up perhaps the most memorable future landscape since Blade Runner. One of the folks who helped design the world of The Fifth Element was comics artist Jean-Claude Mezieres. Much of his Fifth Element work has popped up on Imgur, showcasing sprawling future cityscapes, high-tech laboratories, and an early on the film’s unforgettable blue alien diva. (Some of the images are NSFW.)

Halloween is coming, and while there’s always a lot of talk about potentially awesome costume designs, every year people don and assortment of truly questionable outfits. To help steer your holiday in the right direction, we’ve compiled a list of sci-fi themes you may want to steer away from to ensure a smooth, hassle free night of handing out candy and getting wasted.

We’re big fans of the Los Angeles-based Gallery 1988 here at GFR. The gallery is dedicated to celebrating pop culture in all its forms, and over the years they’ve hosted exhibits honoring Ghostbusters’ 30th anniversary and Joey Spiotto’s awesome “Golden Books” twists on beloved movies such as Back to the Future and Alien. Now they’ve got a new show highlighting another talented artist with a love for some of our favorite stuff. If you’re in LA looking for a good time, consider hitting up Gallery 1988’s “Squares 4 Squares” show, featuring Philadelphia artist Dave Perillo’s delightful takes on things like Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, as seen in the above piece, dubbed “Your Next Stop.”

Perillo’s solo show at Gallery 1988 is already quite the success, with Blurppy.com reporting that a bunch of his original artwork sold out almost immediately. The show itself kicked off on August 22 and runs through September 20, so you’ve still got plenty of time to check it out. Just resist the urge to grab Perillo’s “Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey” print off the wall and take off running. They’ll catch you, it’s just a matter of time.

Because your weekend always needs just a little bit more weird-ass singing blue alien, here is exactly that. And if you think I’m talking about that one scene from French action auteur Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi opus The Fifth Element where Diva Plavalaguna sings, then you’d be right. This video show her entire performance captured during filming, before all the editing and special effects were added into the mix.

Shot against a green screen during principal photography, Besson’s cameras captured the entire performance in a single take before it was later cut up and spliced in various ways. This was also filmed at the legendary Pinewood Studios in London, England, which you may recognize as the same place that J.J. Abrams and company are currently filming Star Wars: Episode VII for Disney and Lucasfilm—the most recent of many that have come to life within these hallowed halls. If those walls could talk, right?