ALL SCI-FI

[Gord Green]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/into-the-woods-four-misfits-must-stave-off-an-alien-attack-in-rim-of-the-world/

I watched this movie last night and was highly impressed with the sheer fun of it. If you're a fan of STAND BY ME and THE GOONIES but with a sci-fi slant you will too!

The following is exerpted from the above article :

Summer camp can be challenging enough for an awkward 13-year-old nerdy kid without aliens invading and turning the surrounding region into a war zone.



That's the premise of Rim of the World, a fresh and fun original film from Netflix, written by screenwriter Zack Stentz (Thor, X-Men: First Class) and directed by McG (Charlie's Angels, Terminator Salvation). It's pretty much perfect summer fare, the kind of kid-centric action/adventure that used to bring audiences flocking to theaters in the 1980s.



Stentz sat down to chat with Ars about his inspirations, and how he and McG successfully brought the story to the screen on a relatively modest budget.

In the film, four misfit kids from very different backgrounds meet at a summer adventure camp in southern California's San Bernardino Mountains. Then aliens invade and Alex (Jack Gore), ZhenZhen (Miya Cech), Dariush (Benjamin Flores, Jr.) and Gabriel (Alessio Scalzotto) find themselves stranded alone in the woods when they miss the evacuation.



An astronaut from the International Space Station crash-lands near the camp while the four are out hiking. She knows the location of the alien mother ship and gives the kids a flash drive with that data, asking them with her dying breath to take it to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. It's Earth's best hope to beat back the invasion—but the lab is 70 miles away, so the foursome must use their wits to make it there in time.





While Rim of the World is much in the same spirit as the Netflix blockbuster hit Stranger Things, Stentz says he first wrote the script before the Duffer brothers launched their retro series.

If anything, his film has more in common with 1980s fare like ET, The Goonies, and Stand by Me. (There are plenty of sly nods to those films in Rim of the World, because our four young heroes are naturally highly media savvy.) "Those were the movies I grew up on, and I wanted kids my own kids' age to have their version of that, not as a period piece, but with contemporary kids," he said.



His agent initially told him there wasn't a market for such a film—and then the resounding success of Stranger Things changed the industry's mind.

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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Gord, forgive me, but somehow I managed to miss the amazing post above when you added it to All Sci-Fi back in 2019 — three years ago!

It doesn't make me feel a bit better to realize that none of our other members took notice of it either, because I've come to realize that All Sci-Fi has far too many great contributions like yours for most folks to find and reply to them.

But as All Sci-Fi's site administrator, I certainly should have spotted your post and thanked you for enriching our unique Sci-Fi forum with your picture-rich addition to the board's treasure trove of comments!

And now that your post has been highlighted by my reply, I hope some of our other members will get off their butts and honor it with a reply as well.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)