Science-Fiction Weekly – Kong: Skull Island, Y: The Last Man, The Last Of Us, Terminator

One of my favorite holidays is just a few days away. No, I'm not talking about the wonderfully gluttonous Thanksgiving. I love shopping, and there's no better day to do that than on Black Friday. I don't wake up at the crack of dawn to track down "door buster" bargains; I'm more in the market for dirt cheap Blu-Ray movies and television shows. The crowds and lines have never been that bad in my neck of the woods, and I've never run into shortages on items I want to pick up. For the first time this year, I haven't looked in advance at ads to see what I may want to purchase. I'm going in blind, and my excitement levels are through the roof. I know this is a random aside for my Science-Fiction Weekly column, but it could be a primer for next week's discussion if I happen to pick up a few science-fiction movies or shows. It's also a nice reminder that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are imminent. Get your food, and don't buy a lot of stuff for the chance of getting it cheaper this weekend.

It's a relatively quiet week for science fiction in video games, but we did see the release of three games for PlayStation VR. The big one, Robinson: The Journey, didn't deliver the intense land of the lost experience we were hoping for. Game Informer's Joe Juba gave the game a poor review, stating that it "is just a linear tour of the world with no meaningful deviations and barely functional controls, all for the dubious benefit of seeing some cool VR dinosaurs." He scored it a paltry 5 out of 10.

The first episode of Space Rift is also readily available for PlayStation VR and Steam. Due to most of my time going to my Final Fantasy XV review (hitting next Monday), I didn't have time to dedicate to this space adventure, but I will get to it next week if you want hands-on impressions. Just let me know in the comments section below. The game is developed by BitComposer, and mixes space combat with resource mining. You can get a look at over an hour of footage from the first episode in the video below.

The last game release to mention is Time Machine VR, out now for PlayStation VR, Vive, Oculus Rift, and Steam. Again, I haven't had a chance to get my hands (or face) on this one yet, but I like what I'm seeing in the trailer. We don't get a good idea of how the game plays from the footage, but we do see giant, prehistoric sea creature eating things, and, well, you can't really top that. Check it out for yourself, and the same question applies: If you want to know more, let me know and I'll dive into it (almost literally) next week.

Now it's time to smack your senses around with an array of crazy movie, television show, and comic book news. If you're a fan of Green Lantern, the super hero who shoots green apparitions out of a ring, you won't like what I'm about to say. He's the centerpiece in a new crossover event that I can't for the life of me wrap my brain around. He's going to meet Cornelius, the primate, in a Green Lantern/Planet of the Apes comic book series event. If the cover art can be believed, Cornelius becomes a Green Lantern. The first issue hits store shelves on February 1 and is published by Boom.

I know Green Lantern/Planet of the Apes sounds like a disaster in the making, but I can't wait to check out the first issue. I have to know how the hell these wildly different dots connect. In less bats--- crazy news, Dark Horse Comics is just released Halo: Tales from Slipspace, a 128-page graphic novel that collects all new short stories from over a dozen writers including 343 Industries' Frank O’Connor, who was once a game critic.

German filmmaker Bruce Stirling John Knox (yes, that's his full name) put together a cool pitch video for an animated Terminator film and shared it on YouTube to try to generate enthusiasm. I don't see this project getting off of the ground, but it is an interesting idea for a new Terminator story. Knox's 3:00 tease is titled "Extermination." You can watch all of it below.

Speaking of the end of days, The Last of Us' theatrical adaptation appears to be deep in development hell. In an interview with IGN, famed director Sam Raimi says he doesn't know what is going on with the film, and makes it sound like Sony is at odds with Neil Druckmann, the director of The Last of Us video game. "Right now it's just sitting there. They don't want to move forward, and it's not my place to say why, and Neil, I think, is in a slight disagreement with them about how things should go so there's a standstill. And I don't have the power to move it. Yes, I'm attached to it. I'm not too sure what that means," Raimi said.

Brian K. Vaughan's brilliant Y: The Last Man comic book series appears to be in good shape for a FX-produced television series. The Hollywood Reporter says Vaughan is actively working on a treatment with Michael Green (Heroes, Smallville) for the network. Before the show hits, I strongly urge you to read the comic book series first. It's one of the all-time greats for the medium, and shares many thematic traits to The Walking Dead.

In movie news, I'm sure you heard that Emilia Clarke has joined the Han Solo standalone film, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and starring Alden Ehrenreich as the smuggler of note. We don't know what role Clarke will be in, or how big it will be, but I think we all agree that adding the Mother of Dragons to this story is a good thing. This yet-to-be-named film is due out in 2018.

I'll leave you today with two new looks at films I can't wait to see for very different reasons. The first is the second official trailer for Kong: Skull Island, which at last gives us a taste of the creatures that inhabit this strange land. The second is behind-the-scenes footage from Transformers: The Last Knight. Don't expect to see too many giant robots in this Michael Bay movie, just King Arthur and his troops. Ugh. I don't even want to think about how this story is going to unfold.