Luke Y. Thompson

1 week ago | slashfilm.com | Luke Y. Thompson

There may be no more archetypical American family sitcom than "Leave it to Beaver." Even character names became archetypes, as "Ward Cleaver" instantly connotes a firm-but-fair perfect father, and a June Cleaver type would be assumed a wholesomely beautiful housewife and mother. Family problems, drawn from the writers' real lives, usually proved solvable, and the Cleaver clan generally provided the model of the family that the viewer would like to have.

1 week ago | slashfilm.com | Luke Y. Thompson

The main crew of the original "Star Trek" are not, by most stretches of the imagination, anti-heroes. They're the good guys, traveling through space in the service of exploration and peace. They're a diverse bunch who all get along...usually. If Starfleet were real, James Tiberius Kirk and his crew would be in its heroes hall of fame. Nobody, however, is perfect.

1 week ago | slashfilm.com | Luke Y. Thompson

If you think sequels are bad now, you should have seen them a couple decades ago. Today, franchises are so ubiquitous that the studios take time to get them as right as possible, securing the original stars and trying to write stories that equal their predecessors. At the dawn of the blockbuster era, however, sequels were seen as cheap cash cows to be rushed out as quickly as possible while people still remembered the original.

1 month ago | slashfilm.com | Luke Y. Thompson

Actors love to talk about authenticity, but if that were all it took, we wouldn't need them at all — cops, lawyers, and singles on the prowl could just play themselves (space aliens and superheroes, maybe not so much). There's more to it than that, of course, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to have a background in the role being played. Many former Marines have done well as actors, using their discipline for our entertainment.

1 month ago | slashfilm.com | Luke Y. Thompson

It's taken a while, but it feels like we're hitting peak "Star Trek: Voyager" nostalgia these days. It was not always like this: On the heels of "The Next Generation" movies and the sprawling war saga of "Deep Space Nine," the premise of "Voyager," which hurled a Federation ship to the other side of the universe where it presumably would encounter nothing familiar, wasn't as compelling.