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Prepare yourself for a roller-coaster with unfathomable enemies — gargoyles, demons, apes (or humans, depending on which side you stand) and aliens. Choose as you please, with Hollywood's most thrilling futuristic sci-fi movies this year

February 02, 2014 07:01 pm | Updated May 18, 2016 05:23 am IST - Chennai

Robocop

Robocop

RoboCop

(Set in 2028; releasing this month)

The reboot of a classic film sure requires a lot of work. Which possibly explains why this film was not made earlier. The half-robot half-human supercop who was first seen in 1987 and got two sequels after that is now reappearing in a classy new avatar set four decades later. This one is a continuity reboot of the RoboCop film series. To achieve the futuristic look of RoboCop, the filmmakers turned to production designer Martin Whist. Besides the film’s sets, he also designed several other aspects of the film, including the RoboCop suits, the bikes and cars, the weapons, and the VFX robots: the ED-209 and EM-208.

I, Frankenstein

(Set in present-day; releasing this month)

This is one book that has been made and remade on celluloid several times with off-shoots of the concept being done to death, pardon the pun. Yet, the re-animated corpse continues his stranglehold. After a 200-year leap, Adam has come back to fight the demons that pursue him. Makeup effects supervisors Nick Nicolaou and Paul Katte were called in to style Adam Frankenstein and had to bear in mind the fact that the film takes a 200-year leap, so over time, the nature of Adams scars and his look also change. Hence no grotesque, stitched-up appearance of the classic Frankenstein monster but a rather more subtle uncanny visage, befitting Adam’s long life and evolving humanity. “For the current-day Adam, we used what we call prosthetic transfers, which are basically a three-dimensional transfer using an acetate-type film that we apply like adhesive bandage,” Paul observed in the production note. “For the 1700’s Adam, we instead used a silicone makeup, with a more elaborate stitch design and a more contorted look.”

Edge Of Tomorrow

(Set in the future; releasing in June)

Based on the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. And if it is the future, who is the most likely villain? Hollywood movies don’t go further than aliens, do they? Lt Col William “Bill” Cage (Tom Cruise) and Special Forces soldier Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) team up to fight a hostile alien race known as Mimics. Fancy seeing Tom Cruise die and take birth and die again? A time loop in the film allows you to see this. Tom gets inexplicably thrown into a time loop forcing him to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying again and again. Sounds like a game to us.

Dawn Of the Planet Of The Apes

(Set in 2029; releasing in July)

This is a sequel to the 2011 reboot of the classic Planet Of The Apes series, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. The genetically evolved apes are being threatened by the band of human survivors of the Simian Flu that killed them (us?) all. The film’s official website leads us into two separate worlds — that of the apes, where war paint adorns every face, and that of the humans where disease and in-fighting rule. Post-civilisation thoughts, anyone?

X Men: Days Of Future Past

(Set in the 1970s and 2023; releasing in May) The ultimate fantasy of every X-Men fan out there. The seventh film in the X-Men film series, this one has the X-Men ensemble fight a war for the survival of the species across two time periods. The beloved mutants from the original X-Men film trilogy join forces with their younger selves from X-Men: First Class in an epic battle that must change the past to save the future.

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