What Happens if Justice League Bombs? Greetings and/or salutations, people! Welcome to io. 9's (occasionally weekly) mail column, where I solve the mysteries of the world of nerd- dom to you, both fictional and otherwise.

This week: What was Elektra’s deal in The Defenders? Is an evil BB- 8 droid a good thing or a bad thing? And, most importantly, who’s to blame for Game of Thrones season seven? And don’t forget to send your questions to postman@io. Untie the League Lys D.: What happens if Justice League suck as bad as Batman v Superman does? Do the other DC movies get scrapped?

Do they try another new DC [movie continuity], or do they have to wait a while so people don’t get confused? How long would it take for the taste of JL to wash out of people’s mouths? Let’s take a step back and remember that “bomb” is a relative term here. For all its faults, Batman v Superman made a ton of money—$8.

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MovieStar, Do you have what it takes to live the life of a movie star?

The problem is that WB knows it could have made a lot more if it had been better, and fans had actually liked it. Then the studio miraculously got Wonder Woman right, so it knows that it has the power to make a true, Marvel Studios- level superhero blockbuster, even if it has no real idea how it managed it. Since these movies still make money either way (for now), there’s no impetus for Warner Bros. To wonder if WB will reset the DC Extended Universe is to wonder if it actually has a cinematic universe in the first place. Aquaman is much too close to being finished for the WB to back out of now, and Wonder Woman 2 is as a safe a bet as there could be. But what does it actually have in the works that’s even close to definitely getting made?

The next film on the schedule is Shazam in 2. Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam for his own film later. Neither Cyborg nor Green Lantern Corps.

Cyborg has a star—and they’re both ostensibly coming out in 2. Not likely. Now, here’s all the DC films that Warner Bros. The Batman, which was originally announced in 2. Matt Reeves said he was completely starting the movie over from scratch this past summer. The Flash, which has had Ezra Miller attached to star since October 2.

Flashpoint at this year’s San Diego Comic- Con. Batgirl, by the suddenly less beloved Joss Whedon. Justice League Dark, which was announced in 2. Lobo, announced in 2. A Joker and Harley Quinn movie. A Nightwing movie.

That insane “gritty” Elseworlds Joker origin movie from Martin Scorsese. Theoretically Black Adam, a Deadshot solo movie, and Suicide Squad 2. And there’s always Man of Steel 2 and Justice League 2. All these movies were either announced so long ago that we have no reason to believe they’ll actually get made in the next five years, or are so new that there’s little chance they’ll survive until gestation. Since 2. 01. 3, WB has made four DCEU films: Man of Steel, Suicide Squad, Batman v Superman, and Wonder Woman. Do you really think all 1.

I’m guessing five, max, and it’ll take at least 1. Oh, and if somehow Justice League is a smash hit and everything gets greenlit? Well, then Ben Affleck is still obviously, adorably desperate to abandon this nonsense, and Flashpoint almost certainly will, by its very name, reset the DC movie- verse anyway.

And then there’s WB’s astoundingly insane decision to maybe make DC superhero movies that aren’t in continuity with the rest of the films, for maximum audience confusion and absence of synergy. The bottom line is that WB is basically so terrified it’s going to screw these movies up again, that it’s waiting for Justice League and Aquaman to come out, and let the studio know if it’s on the right track or not. Until then (and, if we’re being honest, probably long after then) it’s going to keep throwing anything it can think of against the DC movie wall.

The occasional movie will somehow come out, and no one can be sure if it’ll be part of the cobbled- together Extended Universe or not. Not even Warner Bros. GRRM Warfare. About 8. People, Give or Take: 1) Are Benioff and Weiss actually bad showrunners who have coasted on George R. R. Martin’s work?

Why was the decision made to shorten seasons seven and eight when the show could have clearly benefitted from more time? Will season eight have the same problems? No. I know Weiss and Benioff have barely done anything else in Hollywood beyond Game of Thrones, which seems pretty incriminating. I also know that it feels like the two of them fully abandoned the books this season, and then calamity and problems immediately ensued. But let’s remember that Weiss and Benioff have made six good to great seasons of Game of Thrones, and there’s a hell of a lot more to showrunning than just putting the books onscreen.

More importantly, the two have been going off script from the books from the very beginning, from that wonderful, iconic conversation between Cersei and Robert Baratheon in season one right through that magnificent season six finale where Cersei finally achieved everything on her vision board. They had run out of book material for various storylines starting back in season four, and yet we were good straight through six. Have poor choices been made this season? Absolutely, but that brings us to…2) .. I think is responsible for most of the season’s problems. More time would have allowed more characters more moments, more explanations for some of the bizarre things that happened (see below), and just more breathing room to give the various storylines more weight. It still wouldn’t have solved the godawful mess that was the Sansa- Arya storyline, but it likely did mean Weiss and Benioff needed to figure out a way to kill Littlefinger sooner rather than later, and the only way they could think of to kill him with some drama was by turning Arya into a crazy person.

As for who decided to shortened the seasons, I sincerely doubt Weiss and Benioff wanted to. Game of Thrones is their baby, and they knew they were in for a long haul, assuming the show didn’t get canceled. I doubt they were bored right at the beginning of the series’ epic conclusion. Certainly HBO didn’t want shortened seasons; they’d be happy to run Game of Thrones until the heat death of the universe. That leaves the actors, and remember, seven years is a long time for an actor to play a single character, especially actors of the caliber of Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage. I bet anything Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke at minimum are dying to be done with it in order to move on to new projects.

The actors all had to sign new contracts for season seven and eight, and for many of them, the show needed them more than vice versa. I imagine these two shortened seasons was all they could get out of (one or more of) the biggest stars, forcing them to try and stuff everything they hoped to do in 2.

Which resulted in problems like…Grey(Worm)’s Audacity. Wes: What the hell was the opening scene with the Unsullied and Dothraki waiting outside of some castle and how did we teleport from there to the first meeting ever of the major players? I have scoured the net trying to figure out what the scene was and no one has covered it. Please help! Although it wasn’t spelled out, it’s actually pretty easy to put two and two together here. The big truce meeting was at the Dragonpit, right by King’s Landing. Obviously, Cersei was not going to remove her army and Euron’s fleet from the capital for these little talks, because that would have been dumb as hell, and Cersei is not dumb.

However, Daenerys would also not just come to King’s Landing, right smack in the middle of Cersei’s forces, without her own troops. So she had Grey Worm, the Unsullied, and the Dothraki surround the city, so if things went bad her forces were there to bail her out/kick Lannister ass. The better question is, how did the Unsullied get from being trapped in Casterly Rock with no food and surrounded by Lannister troops, to hanging outside King’s Landing looking totally fine? You know, I pride myself on being able to figure out completely unsupported ways to fill the plot holes of just about anything, but I have no clue here.

Recent Scifi Films That Didn't Need Big Budgets To Be Amazing. Low- budget scifi movies may have had their heyday during Roger Corman’s rise to B- movie greatness in the 1. Here are our favorites from the past few decades. Another Earth (2. Director Mike Cahill (I Origins) and star Brit Marling (The Sound of My Voice, Netflix’s The OA) co- wrote this tale of guilt, grief, and cosmic second chances.

Marling plays a brilliant woman named Rhoda who makes a terrible, tragic mistake: causing a car accident that kills a woman and her unborn child, leaving the woman’s husband, John (William Mapother), physically and mentally devastated. Rhoda makes another terrible mistake when she first tries to set things right, seeking out John but failing to tell him who she really is. But possible redemption comes from an unlikely place: the “mirror Earth” that looms above—represented by a very simple but effective visual effect—where the people and places are identical to those on our planet, with the key difference being that certain crappy life decisions may never have transpired. John Dies at the End (2. This cult horror- scifi comedy from Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho- Tep, Phantasm) features quite a few outrageous special effects, as well as a cameo from Paul Giamatti, but it was still made for less than a million bucks. Based on David Wong’s novel, it’s about a pair of buddies who experience increasingly bizarre hallucinations and circumstances (alternate dimensions, aliens, etc.) when they encounter a new street drug that’s nicknamed “Soy Sauce.” Eventually, the fate of the world hangs in the balance—and along the way, there’s also an evil supercomputer, a heroic dog, and a monster that cobbles itself together from a freezer full of meat. Computer Chess (2.

Filmed in black- and- white using period- appropriate video cameras, writer- director Andrew Bujalski’s offbeat and intricate study of a computer chess tournament is set in 1. It was actually made in 2. Authentic nerds (not Hollywood nerds) converge on a bland hotel to determine whose program will achieve chess supremacy, though the backstage dramas and micro- dramas outside the competition provide most of the real interest. Though Computer Chess is mostly an awkward comedy, it ventures into scifi when it begins to suggest that one team’s artificial intelligence software is way, way more self- aware than most anyone realizes or is willing to admit. The American Astronaut (2. Another black- and- white entry, The American Astronaut manages to meld the genres of scifi, Western, and musical.

Writer- director Cory Mc. Abee, who once described his work as “Buck Rogers meets Roy Rogers,” also plays the title character—an intergalactic cowboy/rare- goods dealer who becomes entangled in a scheme to deliver a man to the all- female planet of Venus (but it gets way more complicated than that)—and his band, the Billy Nayer Show, provided the tunes. Unsurprisingly, the end result is something completely unique, enhanced by the film’s use of hand- painted, lo- fi special effects in most cases.

Monsters (2. 01. 0)Before Gareth Edwards did Godzilla—and then achieved his lifelong dream of making a Star Wars movie with Rogue One—he worked as a digital effects artist and applied those skills to his first feature, Monsters. As the title suggests, it’s a monster movie, but it’s uniquely set in a world where humans and aliens have been co- existing on Earth for a number of years, and while the tension and fear may not have deflated, the novelty has.

Strangers (real- life couple Scoot Mc. Nairy and Whitney Able) team up to re- enter the US from Mexico, but the trip is complicated by a border that has become exponentially more hostile. Edwards, who also wrote the film, did the cinematography, and did the production design, makes the most of a budget that’s just a tiny fraction of what he’d get for his future blockbusters. Robot & Frank (2.

Lonely, technology- averse, and intermittently forgetful retiree Frank acquires a companion robot from his well- meaning son, and soon realizes his new sidekick would be the perfect partner in crime, literally. Robot & Frank is a poignant study of aging, but it also does an incredible job making a robot character (and it is a real, developed character) believably blend into its otherwise fairly typical indie- film landscape. A winning cast (most prominently Frank Langella as Frank and Peter Sarsgaard as the voice of the robot, though a different actor actually wears the suit) further elevates this inspired effort from first- time director Jake Schreier and first- time screenwriter Christopher D. Ford. 8. Sleep Dealer (2.

In Alex Rivera’s thriller, it’s a future in which illegal immigration between Mexico and the US has been completely outlawed (thanks to a border wall..). However, since the US economy would collapse without a steady stream of people willing to work for nothing, would- be prospective citizens toil in grim factories where they’re physically plugged into virtual reality machines that control robots doing labor stateside. Within this uneasy mix, we meet a man who dreams of hacking into a massive corporation to restore water to his region; a woman who peddles uploaded memories; and a drone pilot who has a crisis of conscience. Sleep Dealer is obviously a politically- minded tale that’s really about globalization, but it also manages to be completely thrilling at the same time.

Moon (2. 00. 9)At the very end of a three- year solo stint on the Moon, the man overseeing an automated mining facility (Sam Rockwell)—who has only his AI (voiced by Kevin Spacey) for companionship—realizes he’s not as alone as he once thought. He also starts to suspect that his corporate employers are not as benevolent as he once believed. Director Duncan Jones (Source Code, Warcraft) is working on another film set in the same universe as Moon, called Mute, which will also have scifi elements though it’ll be set on Earth this time; eventually, he hopes to do a third and make it a trilogy. The Signal (2. 01. College kids on a road trip take a detour to track down their nemesis, a mysterious hacker who lures them to an alien encounter, after which they’re whisked to an apparent government facility that’s experimenting with alien technology. On humans. Including them. Aside from its imaginative plot, which keeps you guessing until the end (and even then leaves you with a great “Huh?” image), it’s production design that evokes 2.

A Space Odyssey and supporting turns by Laurence Fishburne and Lin Shaye that make The Signal especially memorable. Safety Not Guaranteed (2. Following in the footsteps of Gareth Edwards, director Colin Trevorrow made his feature debut with this budgeted- under- a- million indie before taking on Jurassic World and Star Wars: Episode IX. An intriguing magazine ad seeking a time travel companion (“this is not a joke”) piques the interest of a trio of Seattle journalists (Aubrey Plaza, Jake Johnson, and Karan Soni), who track down the man (Mark Duplass) to see if he’s a nutcase or the real deal—or, as it turns out, kinda both. The script (by Derek Connolly) was inspired by a real (but fake) ad that once ran in Backwoods Home Magazine, a fact which helps ground the film’s quirkiness—as do its performances (Plaza is perfect) and its portrayal of time travel as something ordinary people might explore for their own deeply personal reasons. And yes, there are Star Wars jokes. The One I Love (2.

Yep, another one with Mark Duplass. Watch Open Graves Dailymotion. Charlie Mc. Dowell’s debut feature—filmed mostly at co- star Ted Danson’s house—is about Ethan and Sophie (Duplass and Elisabeth Moss), a married couple who try to salvage their relationship by going on a weekend getaway. Things soon get very, very surreal when it becomes apparent that everything is not what it seems, especially not Ethan and Sophie, who become entangled in their very unconventional therapy session.