Entertainment
"Wuthering Heights" review: Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi front a perplexing and provocative romance
There’s no question: This is not the Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë wrote. But Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman, Saltburn) never intended that.
Ahead of the release of Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” (yes, the quotation marks are part of the title), the English filmmaker has dropped controversial clues that her film adaptation would reject much of what Brontë fans might anticipate. In casting Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as damned lovers Catherine and Heathcliff, Fennell ignited outrage from fans who decried the Barbie star as too old for her role and Elordi too white for his.
‘Wuthering Heights’ trailer: Emerald Fennell pairs Emily Brontë with Charli XCX and steamy romance
The movie’s ad campaign leaned into romance-novel tropes, featuring posters of the two locked in an embrace, on the verge of kissing, with the tagline “Come undone.” Then came assurances that Fennell’s film would be willfully anachronistic from the book’s late 18th-century setting, as Charli XCX teased the film’s dance-pop soundtrack, and production stills revealed a synthetic latex-like dress, a shimmery negligee, and teeny rose-colored glasses that evoke a far more modern feel.
Finally, in pre-release interviews for “Wuthering Heights,” Fennell spoke to her approach in adapting a book “as dense and complicated and difficult” as the Brontë classic. “I can’t say I’m making Wuthering Heights. It’s not possible,” she told Fandango. “What I can say is I’m making a version of it. There’s a version that I remembered reading that isn’t quite real. And there’s a version where I wanted stuff to happen that never happened. And so it is “Wuthering Heights,” and it isn’t. But really, I’d say that any adaptation of a novel, especially a novel like this, should have quotation marks around it.”
After all of this, it should surprise no one that Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” is radically different from Brontë’s. The question is not if the film is faithful to the book, or even better than it. The question is, does this film work on its own terms, as a half-remembered fantasy of wild, enviable romance? And the answer is simply: No.
“Wuthering Heights” radically reimagines Catherine and Heathcliff.
The bones of our famed protagonists’ story remain: Catherine and Heathcliff meet as children in the moors of West Yorkshire, England, where she’s the spoiled daughter of a drunken landowner, and he’s a poor boy brusquely adopted to be raised alongside her. They share a wild nature in their remote surroundings, but as they grow, Catherine longs for luxury, which her gruff crush with no societal standing can’t promise. She breaks both their hearts by accepting the proposal of proper, aristocratic gentleman Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), from the estate next door, which spurs Heathcliff to run away. Upon his return to Yorkshire five years later, he is rich, dashing, and determined to make a mess of Catherine’s life, for better or worse.
However, despite the familiar framework, the dynamic of Catherine and Heathcliff in Fennell’s film feels more like The Princess Bride than Wuthering Heights. For one thing, Heathcliff’s cruelty is considerably softened. Like Westley, the sweet stable boy, he will suffer any abuse if it means being close to his blonde ladylove. In particular, Heathcliff will endure a violent whipping from Catherine’s father, which gives the boy a chance to prove his immovable dedication to her.
Heathcliff’s own violence and wrath in adulthood are channeled by Elordi into smoldering and brooding, with a tame frisson of kink, whether he’s forcefully gripping Catherine’s mouth or later degrading his bride, Edgar’s ward Isabella (Alison Oliver) with pet play. Meanwhile, Catherine is a beautiful brat who, in the blink of an eye, goes from a rosy-cheeked child to a picture-perfect doll of a woman. So, of course, Fennell cast Barbie.
Mashable Top Stories
Draped in meticulously crafted skirts and dresses in bold reds and whites and corseted into an impossible waist, Robbie looks like a fashion doll, especially as she marries into wealth via Edgar. This metaphor is made blatant as Isabella presents her new sort-of sister-in-law with a doll made in her likeness, complete with a giant dollhouse that resembles their shared home, Thrushcross Grange. Yes, Catherine has achieved all the luxuries she dreamed of, but now she feels trapped, a pretty plaything in a dollhouse. The dream is not what she hoped.
“Wuthering Heights” is juvenile in its provocations.
To kick things off, two evocative sounds play over the film’s opening credits. One is the rustling of fabric, the other a man groaning, an ambiguous preview of an imminent scene of sex or violence.
The intensity of both sounds grows to reveal not a sexual scenario, but a man being hung at a public execution. However, Fennell still blends sex and violence here. A young Catherine (Charlotte Mellington) thrills at the depravity of it, while Fennell is sure to include a close-up of the dead man’s “stiffy,” obvious even through his pants. Such twisted melding of themes will thread throughout “Wuthering Heights,” but in ways more trashy than transgressive.
Brontë fans might clutch their pearls that Fennell has not just a sex scene between Heathcliff and Catherine, but a montage of them, spanning from beds to carriages to the sweeping plains between their estates. And yet, while these scenes have the iconography of classic romance novels — the rich settings, the posh clothes, the forbidden attraction, the beautiful characters on the cover feigning elation — they fall flat. While Robbie is rigorous in bringing Catherine’s ire and yearning to life, and Elordi is strong and seething, the pair have all the chemistry of Barbie and Ken dolls bumping rubber when they collide.
Perhaps to add Saltburn-like spice, BDSM is worked into various love scenes, bringing horse bridles, shackles, and a metal collar into sex games of degradation. This makes the depravity of the novel more playful than dark. Now, Heathcliff, who comes off like a towering Dom, is less threatening, as his violence is channeled through consensual kink. Yet this depiction of BDSM still feels half-hearted next to more successfully sexy and psychologically provocative films like Babygirl and Pillion.
The race-bending in “Wuthering Heights” is a problem Fennell created.
Heathcliff’s racial identity has been studied by Brontë scholars due to the author’s descriptions of his “dark-skinned” appearance, which is why Elordi’s casting incensed some fans of the novel. However, it’s not Heathcliff’s casting alone that becomes problematic in Fennell’s version. Perhaps the director looked to Bridgerton for inspiration, both in the show’s colorblind casting and barrage of sex scenes that have fueled debates on historical accuracy for the period. Fennell not only casts both of her romantic leads with white actors, but casts actors of color in the roles of Edgar and Nelly (Hong Chau), characters who are regarded in the film as less desirable than the protagonists, instead assigned roles of boring cuckold and bitter old maid.
In addition, the film’s cinematography and set design fetishize white skin. Following the childhood scene of Catherine consoling Heathcliff over his whipping by her father, the scene dissolves from the bloody, clothed back of a boy to the bared back of a man (Elordi), striped with whiplash scars. Cinematographer Linus Sandgren offers a close-up, leering over Heathcliff’s scars as if these are proof of his love — sweaty, plump, and terrible. Perhaps Fennell feared such fetishizing would be problematic if Heathcliff were “dark-skinned” as Brontë wrote. But she doubles down with this painting of whiteness as desirable with Catherine’s skin room.
After their wedding, Edgar is giddy to show Catherine the bedroom he designed for her, painted in the “most beautiful color,” that of her face. It’s not just white flesh or flushed cheeks that Edgar has had recreated. The room is lined with vinyl-padded panels, each bearing birthmarks and light blue veins translucent beneath the faux skin. Far from romantic, the gesture is repulsive, and only becomes more so when an intruding Heathcliff licks the wall as if it were his beloved’s flesh. And in this, it becomes clear how much of Brontë’s novel Fennell ignored or stripped away to make her version. And what is left?
As an admirer of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, I was cautiously optimistic about Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights.” Adaptations are never what the book was, because the book is different depending on who reads it. This is why I like seeing movie adaptations of novels I loved and hated, because it’s like getting to walk around in someone else’s brain, seeing the story as they did. However, Fennell’s adaptation goes both too far and not far enough.
By slicing the book in half and cutting loose a clutch of relatives, she’s simplified the story to focus on the love between Heathcliff and Catherine. But for all the substance she’s cut away, only style has been put in its place. And it’s not enough to make this “Wuthering Heights” feel full or affecting. Instead of a cohesive re-imagining or even a titillating romance, “Wuthering Heights” feels like a passionate but incoherent collage of teenage lust and rebellion, the kind better suited to a high school locker than a movie theater.
Wuthering Heights opens in theaters on Feb. 13.
Entertainment
Khloé Kardashian Shares Her Strength-Focused Workout Routine and the Sweet Ways She Stays Active With Her Kids
Lift heavy, live light! Khloé Kardashian is opening up to ET about her current fitness routine and it’s just as effective as it is heartwarming.
While The Kardashians star still makes it a point to hit the gym, she’s learned not to sweat it when life gets in the way.
“My workouts are a mix of strength training and cardio,” she shares. “I give myself grace, too. Not every day is perfect, but consistency matters more than perfection.”
These days, some of her favorite ways to stay active happen right at home with her daughter, True, 7, and son Tatum, 3.
“It’s definitely a balance, but I’ve stopped thinking of it as a separate time. I try to blend everything together when I can,” the Khloé in Wonder Land podcast host says.
“With my kids, it’s all about making movement fun. We’ll have dance parties, go on walks, or just play games that keep us moving.”
Regardless of what her schedule looks like, Kardashian believes it really comes down to making nutritious choices.
“Protein is everything for me when it comes to working out. It keeps me strong, helps with recovery, and makes all the effort actually show up in results,” she explains. “No matter what I’m doing, fueling properly is key.”
She adds, “I’ve learned the hard way that if I’m not getting enough protein, I feel it. I’m more tired, my workouts feel harder, and I don’t recover the same.”
That same mindset even carries over into her snacking habits.
“Protein honestly changed the way I feel day to day. When I prioritize it, I have more energy, I stay full longer, and I’m not reaching for random snacks late at night. It just helps everything fall into place,” she notes. “When I stay on track, I feel stronger and more motivated.”
So instead of mindless eating, Kardashian is reaching for something more intentional: Her new Khloud Protein Chips, available in Nacho, Sweet Heat, and Buffalo flavors.
“I wanted something that actually feels like a treat, but still supports my goals,” she tells ET. “They give me that crunch and satisfaction, but I still feel good about eating them. It doesn’t feel like a compromise.”
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Entertainment
Stephen Colbert Compares His Career Pivot To SNL's Funniest Cast Member
By TeeJay Small
| Published
Stephen Colbert has already managed to have a generational television run over the course of the past several decades. Whether you were a fan of his satire on The Colbert Report, or his more straightforward material on CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, it’s hard to ignore the impact that the 61-year-old has had thus far. Of course, The Late Show is slated to come to a close this May, leaving many to wonder exactly what Colbert and his crew will do next.
Now, thanks to a write-up in Variety, we can confirm that Stephen Colbert will continue working as a writer, but he’ll be taking a more serious dramatic pivot. The comedian’s next chapter will include a co-writing credit on a new Lord of the Rings film titled Shadow of the Past. While discussing this surprising change of pace on a recent episode of the Smartless podcast, Colbert compared his trajectory to that of Saturday Night Live‘s Bill Hader.
The Colbert/Hader Parallel
During the Smartless interview, which was recorded before the news of Shadow of the Past was made public, Colbert made attempts to dodge questions about his next big project. Rather than giving a direct answer, he explained “the person who did the thing I most admire — I mean, not most admire, but the thing that really struck me is, you know what Hader did when he left SNL? He went and wrote for South Park for a season.”
The late night host concluded that working on an established IP that you love, and one to which you hold a personal attachment, is a great way to get your own creative juices flowing, and jumpstart something fresh and new in your artistic career. It’s worth noting that Bill Hader has since gone on to create and star in HBO’s Barry, which has earned countless accolades and an overwhelmingly positive response from critics. Hader also back-doored a promising career as a director through the series, and has since secured a deal with MRC to helm a psychological horror movie titled They Know.
Colbert’s Transition To Middle Earth Makes Sense
Fans of Stephen Colbert will be quick to point out that the comedian is a hardcore Tolkien fan. Needless to say, he’s probably more than happy to hang up his mantle as a late night host in favor of taking a hands-on role in the future of the expansive Lord of the Rings franchise. For now, details regarding Shadow of the Past are scant, but Colbert has confirmed that the narrative will be adapted from cut content originally slated for The Fellowship of the Ring.
It’s unclear at this time if Colbert will be punching up the script with his trademark blend of witty one-liners, or if he’ll be playing things entirely straight, and harnessing his inner LOTR fanaticism to deliver something as powerful and moving as Peter Jackson’s original trilogy. Either way, it could be the start of something completely unexpected. Nobody could have anticipated Bill Hader’s transformation on Barry, both as a serious performer and as a shockingly promising director. If that career change is any indication of what we’re getting with Colbert, it’s certainly worth following along.
Entertainment
The Best Star Wars That Isn't Star Wars
By Jonathan Klotz and Joshua Tyler | Updated
Star Wars used to be the end-all, be-all in space sci-fi, but in the years since the original trilogy, others have rushed in to fill the void left by its waning popularity. Whether you love new Star Wars or hate it, you’d probably still love more of that old-school Star Wars vibe. Luckily, there’s a way to get it.
We set out to determine which non-Star Wars movies and TV shows most capture the feel of Star Wars, while at the same time delivering the best possible spectacle and story. It’s not just a ranking of which entry is best. If it were, then Babylon 5 would be a lot closer to the top.
These are the 18 best sci-fis that are most like Star Wars, without actually being Star Wars.
18. Jupiter Ascending
Jupiter Ascending is the only entry on this list that includes Channing Tatum playing a half-man/half-dog. There’s no hiding the fact that Jupiter Ascending is a strange movie. It was supposed to be the Wachowskis grand return to sci-fi cinema, but instead, it’s a glorious mess.
Mila Kunis plays Jupiter, a housekeeper and secretly the Queen of Earth. The forces of House Abrasax, led by Balem, want to stop her from claiming her legacy. Eddie Redmayne’s performance as the villain may make you think he wandered in off a different, far more serious movie, but no, that’s just how uneven the tone is.
For all of its faults, Jupiter Ascending was a throwback in 2015 to the 90s-style of sci-fi that tossed you into a strange, wonderful world, and dared you to try and keep up with it. The film doesn’t work; it’s barely coherent, visually confusing, and the acting is… questionable. And yet, Jupiter Ascending dared to be weird, it tried to do something different, and a decade of sanitized, by-the-numbers sci-fi later, it’s worth checking out for anyone sick and tired of movies developed by committee.
17. Rebel Moon
Zack Snyder wanted to make a Star Wars film, but Disney said no, so he went to Netflix and made Rebel Moon. Sometimes it really is that simple. George Lucas used Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress as inspiration for A New Hope, and Snyder used Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai as inspiration for Rebel Moon.
Adapting Seven Samurai is always a recipe for success. It’s a great story. A few holding out against all odds against the many? Rebel Moon is a handful against a battalion.
It’s one of Netflix’s most expensive original movies. The streaming giant gave Snyder a blank check, and it looks like it. Rebel Moon is near the bottom of this list for a reason, but it’s worth checking out once, if for no other reason than to see Zach Snyder’s vision for Star Wars, but it’s a bit of a drag with uneven pacing and the patron saint of bad movies, Charlie Hunnam.
You can also experience the sequel, The Scargiver, which was so bad that Netflix yanked the black check out of Snyder’s hands before he could utter the words, “Trilogy.”
16. Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets
Few people in Hollywood can match the visual style of French director Luc Besson. He brought to life The Fifth Element and Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy, but his most beautiful film is Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets. Based on a French comic series, the film is packed full of stunning visuals; each world on its own would be the highlight of any other movie, but here, it’s just scene 5.
Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne lead the cast as Federation Soldiers sucked into a decades-old conspiracy around a missing planet. The massive space station Alpha is home to over 3,000 alien species, and maintaining peace among them is a dangerous balancing act. In Valerian, the focus isn’t on Babylon 5-style politics, but on exploring different worlds and coming across a new alien species every 10 minutes, making the film a visual masterpiece.
If your favorite part of Star Wars is the constant parade of unique and strange background aliens, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is the perfect movie for you.
15. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
The success of Star Wars in 1977 took Hollywood by surprise and started a scramble for the next big sci-fi hit. Universal Pictures pulled the old Buck Rogers license out of mothballs and turned it into a television series, but then, six months after the series had debuted, the television pilot hit theaters as a standalone movie.
That sounds convoluted, but then again, so does everything when it comes to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, a film that put trade negotiations front and center decades before The Phantom Menace. NASA astronaut Buck Rogers emerges from suspended animation in the 25th century and immediately finds himself in the middle of trouble between the remaining humans on Earth, living in New Chicago, and the Draconians, an alien species secretly plotting to conquer the planet.
The movie is again a pilot for the two-season television series, which started with Buck as a defender of New Chicago and, in season two, had him roaming the galaxy with his crew to find the lost tribes of humanity. If you were to mash the Star Wars prequels against Flash Gordon, you’d get Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
14. Babylon 5
If your favorite part of Star Wars was the Galactic Senate from the prequels, then there’s a 90s sci-fi series for you. Babylon 5 puts the focus on intergalactic politics in a way no show has before, or since. Set on a space station that houses countless alien species, all with their own goals, motivations, and ancient grudges, it’s sci-fi for the most hardcore of sci-fi fans.
The show starts off with an attempted assassination on the Vorlon ambassador, Kosh, and Babylon 5’s commander, Jeffrey Sinclair, is the prime suspect. It’s a quaint beginning for a show that would eventually culminate in one of the best sci-fi wars ever shown on a television budget. Unlike every other show on this list, Babylon 5 was plotted from the very beginning to tell a single, cohesive story over 5 seasons.
That right there puts it above The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker, two feature films that couldn’t agree on what story the sequel trilogy was trying to tell.
13. Krull
It was one of the largest box office bombs in history. For decades, it was the butt of jokes. But Krull had the last laugh. Combining science fiction with fantasy, a simple rescue-the-princess plot alongside one of the coolest weapons in movie history, Krull became a cult classic.
After The Beast interrupts Prince Colwyn’s wedding to Princess Lyssa, he sets off on a quest to win her back. The only thing in his way is the Beast’s mountainous Black Fortress and an army of Slayers. All Colwyn has is a band of magicians, thieves, including a young Liam Neeson, and a cyclops.
The special effects don’t hold up today, the plot is as basic as it gets, but there’s no denying that Krull is a fun movie. Sometimes you don’t need 30 minutes of worldbuilding and exposition; all you need is a quest to slay an evil warlord and rescue a princess.
12. Killjoys
Say “sci-fi western” and most people think of The Mandalorian, or Firefly, but there has to be someone, at least one person out there, who thinks of Killjoys. The Canadian Sci-Fi original series aired for 5 seasons, from 2014 to 2019, and you didn’t watch a single one.
Dutch, Johnny, and Da’vin work as bounty hunters, and these three are professionals, so they don’t disintegrate any of their targets. Looking at you, Boba Fett. Over the course of 50 episodes, the trio unravels the mysteries of the universe, upends the delicate political structure, and end up saving the universe. A few times.
When Star Wars fans were excited over the video game Star Wars: Outlaws, or the canceled 1313, what they wanted was a game that plays like Killjoys. It’s a sci-fi western about characters who aren’t exactly heroes, but unlike that other show, this one was able to tell a complete story. That and you have to love a show that uses the name, Team Awesome Force.
11. Stargate
It’s hard to remember now, but for most of the 80s and 90s, Star Wars wasn’t a pop culture juggernaut; it was something nerds loved. During that dark period, studios tried to create their own Star Wars-style sci-fi franchises, and of all of them, Stargate found the most success. It all began with the 1995 Roland Emmerich film that sent the U.S. military through a portal to battle an Egyptian God. Surprise. It’s an alien.
Unlike other movies on this list that throw an endless string of nonsense names and deep, unfathomable lore at viewers within the first 30 seconds, Stargate takes its time to explain what’s going on (there’s a strange portal, they go through it), why it’s important (can Ra invade Earth from his side?), and teases at why the aliens all look like they came out of Ancient Egypt.
Stargate introduced moviegoers to a universe of infinite possibilities, and for once, it paid off with the launch of the television franchise (does this sound familiar?). Between Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe, there are 17 seasons of amazing sci-fi adventure television waiting to be discovered. Best of all, there’s a new series coming to Amazon Prime. The Stargate is opening again and now’s the time to step through.
10. The Last Starfighter
It’s every kid’s dream. After countless hours playing a video game, it becomes real, and you get to save the universe. 1984’s The Last Starfighter is pure wish fulfillment, and it’s awesome.
Like Star Wars: A New Hope, it follows the classic hero’s journey format. Only, instead of growing up in the desert, our future hero fighter pilot grows up in a trailer park.
Teenager Alex Rogan earns the high score in the arcade game Starfighter, not realizing it was developed by an undercover alien to locate warriors to save his planet. Alex goes from living in a trailer park to flying a real spaceship against real aliens in the span of 48 hours.
The greatest tragedy about The Last Starfighter is that we never received a legacy sequel. 40 years later, video games are more popular than ever before. A modern-day remake would be a license to print money. Sci-fi can be wish fulfillment that exists for no other reason than to be fun and make you happy. To this day, nothing hits that mark quite like The Last Starfighter.
9. The Fifth Element
One of Bruce Willis’s best movies, The Fifth Element launched the career of Milla Jovovich, helped turn Chris Tucker into a star, and proved that well-written, visually-stunning sci-fi could become a blockbuster even in the jaded culture of the 90s. By 1997, caring about things and earnestness was considered uncool, which became a plot point in Luc Besson’s sci-fi magnum opus. How The Fifth Element earned over $290 million at the box office, and millions more through DVD sales, should be studied by upcoming filmmakers.
The Fifth Element turned a futuristic cabbie into an unlikely savior when the reincarnation of a forgotten alien species lands on the hood of his cab. Together, the two have to stop The Great Evil from consuming Earth by overcoming Zorg, a greedy billionaire who might be the creepiest sci-fi villain of the 90s thanks to Gary Oldman’s scenery-chewing performance.
Few films to this day are as manic as The Fifth Element, which deserves to be right up there on every sci-fi fan’s Mt. Rushmore and, in the process, delivers some of the same kinds of space thrills as Star Wars.
8. Flash Gordon
Besides the amazing soundtrack provided by Queen, Flash Gordon is the most American sci-fi movie you’ll ever come across. A quarterback saves the universe using his football skills to take down a unit of elite guards? How awesome is that?
Star Wars was inspired by the serials of the 1930s, and Flash Gordon was one of those serials. But it started out as a comic strip, and you can tell. The villain’s name is Ming the Merciless, all the visual designs are old-school pre-Star Wars sci-fi, and again, the hero’s name is Flash Gordon. This is pure camp, and that’s before you get to the legendary overacting of Brian Blessed as Vultan!
The tropes, designs, and plot beats of Flash Gordon make it required viewing for all sci-fi fans, and it has the same DNA as Star Wars. You can’t appreciate how far science fiction has come if you don’t know where it started. Flash Gordon is a love letter to the genre’s pulp roots, and honestly, you wish more films were made today in the retro-futuristic style. Ming the Merciless may be corny, but the man’s rizz is unmatched.
7. John Carter
In a just world, John Carter would have been the start of a retro-futuristic sci-fi franchise to rival Star Wars in scale and scope. Taylor Kitsch should have become a superstar. John Carter is a fantastic movie that bombed hard because Disney had no idea how to market it.
Adapting the classic sci-fi pulp novel, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the same man who created Tarzan, John Carter looks fantastic, and the story of a Civil War soldier sent to Mars is a straight-up crowd-pleaser. Unfortunately, the limited crowds that went to see it weren’t enough to make it a success.
John Carter’s Mars vistas stretch on forever, but that beauty came with a hefty price tag. The film needed to earn $600 million to break even. It earned $300 million. Disney lost hundreds of millions of dollars and decided instead of turning John Carter into a sci-fi franchise, they’d go out and buy one.
Three years later, Disney bought Star Wars.
Now do you wish you had seen Taylor Kitsch’s cult hit in theaters when you had the chance?
6. Farscape
Star Wars has shifted gears in the last few years, becoming a streaming franchise. It’s playing catch-up behind the 90s and early 2000’s series Farscape, which perfected the serialized formula of ragtag heroes going up against an oppressive government. Farscape is clearly influenced by the original trilogy, right down to having Jim Henson’s Creatureworks provide puppets, but that’s not a bad thing.
Farscape starts off with human astronaut John Crichton surviving a trip through a wormhole and winding up on the far side of the galaxy. He quickly learns to get along with the escaped convicts Ka D’Argo, Zhaan, and Rygel on board a living spaceship, the Moya, as they try to stay one step ahead of the corrupt Peacekeepers. Later on, the leather-clad villain Scorpius comes after Crichton for his hidden knowledge of wormholes, and this all leads to Crichton being split into two separate versions: an imaginary Scorpius living in his head, the organic spaceship giving birth, and a constant struggle to survive when it feels the entire universe is out to get them.
If you liked the original trilogy, and even if you liked Guardians of the Galaxy, you need to fire up Farscape and start binging it right now. This is everything fans wanted out of a Star Wars streaming series.
Welcome To The Top 5
Congratulations, you’ve reached the top five, and things are about to get really fun. Keep in mind that this list is ranked by two criteria: how much something is like Star Wars and how good it is.
It’s an average of the two factors, which can result in all kinds of ranking weirdness, especially in the lower levels of this list. These are the 5 best Star Wars sci-fis that aren’t Star Wars at all.
5. Predator: Badlands
Remember when Chewbacca carried C3-PO on his back? How the mismatched characters played off of each other? Turn that into a survival story on an alien planet where everything is trying to kill them, and you get Predator: Badlands, the latest in the long-running franchise.
Dek is a Predator who heads off to a planet in order to hunt down the apex predator. A Weyland-Yutani android is the only survivor of an encounter with the beast. Only the top half of her body survived. Dek straps her to his back, and together, they navigate a world where everything is trying to kill them.
It has the feel of a Star Wars novel in the best way possible. It’s easy to imagine a Wookie and a droid having to navigate a planet similar to Genna. Predator: Badlands lacks the size and scope of a Star Wars film, but it’s an absolute blast from start to finish. All it takes is one setting, two characters, and a horde of bizarre alien lifeforms that make the Rancor look like a puppy.
4. Firefly
The Mandalorian was praised for taking Star Wars in a bold new direction: Space Western. Well, why not take some time and enjoy the series that put space westerns on the map? Firefly is still the greatest one-season sci-fi series of all time, and the sequel film, Serenity, is the perfect ending to the crew’s story.
Out on the edge of the known galaxy, Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew pick up odd jobs, carrying cows, protecting a brothel, whatever they have to do to get enough gas to keep flying. Imagine the adventures of smuggler Han Solo under the watchful eye of the Empire, and that’s Firefly, only with no aliens, more cowboy hats, and more jokes.
A new animated series is on the way, set between the end of Season 1 and Serenity, making this the best time to get caught up on the space western that paved the way for The Mandalorian.
3. Dune
David Lynch’s Dune is an underrated masterpiece, but Denis Villeneuve’s modern adaptation turned the classic sci-fi novel into a blockbuster. 12 years before Star Wars, author Frank Herbert took sci-fi fans to the planet of Arakkis, the center of intergalactic politics and trade, thanks to the miracle mineral: Spice. Imagine if Tattooine was important for any reason other than its abundance of Skywalkers, and that’s Arakkis.
It even has a chosen one, destined to reshape the galaxy. Paul Atreides is the hero that Anakin Skywalker wishes he could be. Paul liberates his planet, unites a people, has twins destined to be even greater than him, and doesn’t become a villain. In the first two movies.
Star Wars is more of a space fantasy than hard sci-fi, but Dune isn’t afraid to get weird. Later books include human/sandworm hybrid that lives for thousands of years and rules over the galaxy. Oddly, that’s not as strange as it gets.
2. The Expanse
A grounded, hard sci-fi series might not seem like it would have much in common with Star Wars, but The Expanse centers around a ragtag group of misfits on a medium size ship flying around saving the Galaxy.
It’s based on a series of books set in a not-too-distant future where humanity has colonized the solar system. Earth, Mars, and the asteroid belt are locked in political tension, and a crew of unlikely allies gets pulled into events that reshape civilization.
Despite being a totally different type of space sci-fi from Star Wars, The Expanse pulls off the crew of the Millennium Falcon against the universe vibe better than anything has since The Empire Strikes Back. Ride shotgun with the crew of the Rocinante as they battle to save the solar system from threats not inside and out, on one of the best sci-fi shows ever produced.
1. Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy is so much fun, it turned a dancing tree into the hottest Christmas toy. Comic fans knew how strange and bizarre the cosmic side of Marvel was, but in 2014, the general public took a trip to Knowhere and had their minds blown for the first time since they stepped foot inside a hive of scum and villainy.
The colorful cast even brings to mind the original trilogy, except both Star-Lord and Rocket are Han Solo, Gamora is Leia’s intrusive thoughts given physical form, Drax is C-3PO, Groot is R2-D2, and Mantis is… there.
The Guardians trilogy is among the very best of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and any one of them could be someone’s favorite movie, and you know what, sure. It’s fun, and it’s awesome. Each one of them reveals another strange corner of the galaxy, and while yes, Adam Warlock was wasted, the thrill of what comes next is only comparable to the original trilogy.
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