Elysium

After Earth

Pacific Rim

Ender’s Game

Oblivion

The Prototype

Gravity

Star Trek Into Darkness

Riddick

The most exciting ones are Star Trek Into Darkness, Elysium and Gravity . I’m mostly excited for Gravity, where we will see the return of Alfonso Cuaron since the amazing Children of Men — which, incidentally, had a huge influence on Blomkamp’s District 9 (and possibly also Elysium).

It’s great to see the return of sci-fi films. It’s all due to the successes of sci-fi films in 2009 (primarily Avatar, Star-Trek, District 9) that we see this reemergence. If we’re lucky, the anticipated successes of these film will set the motion for more sci-fi films the next 4-5 years (although Cameron’s Avatar-trilogy will carry a lot of this weight by itself, the way it has done it with the popularity of 3D-filmmaking).

Richard Venola, an editor of Combat Arms, noted this about the gun: “If I had to go to an unknown planet and I was allowed to bring one firearm, it would be an AK-47….When western civilization breaks down, I want an Ak-47.”

It’s popular for being extremely cheap and reliable. You could drive over it with a tank, bury it in sand and mud, abuse it to a degree that it is covered in rust, and it will still work — whereas other guns don’t have this quality. It is also the simplest gun to clean, and is in addition, because of its simplicity, easy to train soldiers with. A soldier can be taught to take care, field-strip and clean a Kalashnikov in a few hours. The M-16 is going to take a week.

I personally believe it will be around for about 300 years after its first use in 1947, and I don’t believe that to be an exaggeration. You still see shepherds and insurgents in every parts of the world, like Afghanistan, use a lot of old 19th century rifles from the old British Army with effectiveness against American soldiers. Why should it be any different with the AK-47, an even more versatile, solid and popular gun?

And If I’m not mistaken, the modified AK-47 in the trailer is the “lower-class” weapon, and probably the gun that is used by the underprivileged society down on earth, compared to the other high-tech weaponry we see on the trailer. The society that Damon’s character stems from is in the shape of, and maybe even worse than, today’s third world countries. The AK-47, with a touch of futuristic modification, makes perfect sense in a setting like this.

Think looks like a good place to start things.

@Brian – also thought of Iron Man when I saw this.

Watching this felt like I was watching a videogame cut-scene. Elysium reminded me of the Halo ring. ON BOARD the Elysium train ticket please!!!

See y’all at the movies;-)