This Friday we’ve got news of a fascinating and deeply weird new sci-fi movie with a former Deadpool star attached, a stellar new animated film, and the return of a movie franchise you probably forgot about years ago.
Zazie Beetz in a new sci-fi movie
Zazie Beetz is great, in everything from Atlanta to Bullet Train, but she’s especially endeared herself to superhero fans. In Deadpool 2, Beetz played Domino – my personal favorite unofficial X-Men member – whose supernatural luck propels her from one unbelievable victory to the next. Tragically, Beetz won’t be reprising that role in Deadpool & Wolverine, but fans will get to see her in an exciting new sci-fi story soon.
Variety reports that Beetz, alongside Elizabeth Debicki (Tenet, The Crown) has been cast in the upcoming film from Brazilian director Iuli Gerbase. The movie is called This Blue Is Mine, and it follows a woman named Connie (Beetz) going to a family get-together while still recovering from a miscarriage. Connie meets her dad’s new girlfriend Ivy (Debicki), who secretly tells Connie she’s an alien from another world. Ivy begins trying to seduce Connie and convince her to run away to another planet as Connie begins questioning her own sanity. The movie sounds utterly bizarre in the best way, and it’s something I’ll be keeping on my radar as it begins filming later this year.
Mars Express comes to North America
The animated French film Mars Express debuted at the end of last year, but it’s only making its way to North American theaters now. Directed by Jérémie Périn, the movie is a neo-noir, sci-fi adventure that wears its inspirations on its sleeve. It’s set in 2022, the movie follows private eye Aline Ruby and her android companion Carlos Rivera solving a murder on the high-tech, low-life streets of Mars.
Since hitting North American theaters, it’s been picking up some good reviews. “Mars Express isn’t the kind of revelatory experience that surpasses the film’s obvious inspirations, but it’s a welcome addition to the canon,” writes Andrew Webster for The Verge. Autumn Wright of Paste writes, “I can’t imagine that Mars Express will live alongside the animated cyberpunk greats … But I hope it’s remembered.” Even if it hasn’t managed to surpass its inspirations, the movie’s animation has wowed critics across the board, and some have been decidedly more impressed with the overall product. “It achieves its vision and then some,” writes Chase Hutchinson for Collider, “capturing the mind just as it does the soul.”
It sounds like Mars Express is worth heading to the theater to see, especially if you’ve previously been a fan of cyberpunk sci-fi stories or animation in general.
The Maze Runner is back?
Remember The Maze Runner? 20th Century Studios is hoping you do. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series is coming back for a fourth film. The original trilogy was based on a series of books by James Dashner, and they were released in rapid fire between 2014 and 2018. Though it’s easy to write off The Maze Runner movies as another cash-grab attempt at getting in on the young adult dystopian story trend, that ignores just how successful the movies were. None of them wowed critics, but collectively The Maze Runner trilogy made upward of $900 million at the box office.
The new movie will reportedly continue the story some time after the events of The Death Cure. It will flesh out The Maze Runner universe by introducing new characters while generally staying away from the events of the original trilogy. There’s probably some more material to mine out of the post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested, maze-happy society of the story’s world, but I’m not all that hopeful. What’s there is already pretty thin, and the new movie might not have the team it needs to be successful. According to THR, the studio is looking to get Jack Paglen to write the script, and he’s best known for the colossal sci-fi flop Transcendence. We’ll just have to wait and see on this one.
