Just a quick scan down the list below reveals an extraordinary breadth of genres and subject matters, from imposing, expensive science fiction films to quiet, intimate stories about men at sea on boats or outlaws breaking out of prison to be with their wives. Disparate though the films are, they're all linked by at least one common motif: their music is utterly brilliant.

So with 2014 already well underway, and an entire new wave of films with great music in them beckoning, join us as we look back to the movies of last year, their finest soundtracks, and the must-listen pieces of music you can dig out on each one.

1. Gravity (Steven Price)

Must-listen track: Don't Let Go

When does sound become music and music become sound? When you're so busy not breathing that your ears can't tell the difference any more. Steven Price's accompaniment for Gravity, in which you can literally hear the death of a machine as a trumpet loops through a failing synth, is a bravura piece of technical design: a pulse-racing yet heart-stopping string of sonic vibrations that captures the experience of floating through space without hearing anything outside of your suit.

Weaving that with a haunting vocal line that nails Dr Ryan Stone's lonely struggle to survive, Gravity manages to move and terrify in equal measure. A thrilling action theme with no percussion? That's bold. What Price creates? It's out of this world. Never has the word "soundtrack" been more apt.

2. The Hobbit (Howard Shore)

Must-listen track: The Forest River (Extended Version)

If movie music is about capturing the feel of what's onscreen, there's no greater composer than Howard Shore. His work on The Lord Of The Rings made Middle-earth come to life – and his two soundtracks for The Hobbit have kept it that way. In fact, this might just be the best of the lot. If An Unexpected Journey's contrast of small and large themes felt a bit signposted, The Desolation Of Smaug throws you into Tolkein's world without a map.

Familiar tunes are there, along with the age-old uppy-downy rule (good guys go up, bad go down), but they're combined with a wealth of new material to the point where it's easy to dismiss the seemingly directionless sound. Repeat listens, though, reveal all kinds of inspired touches.

The Necromancer's motif makes a strong return before blaring into Sauron's familiar tune in A Spell Of Concealment, while The Shire is almost nowhere to be seen amid the darkness, its nature-driven sound fleeting past in the ambiguous theme for animal-friendly newcomer Beorn. Thorin's rousing heroic medley, meanwhile, is initially kept under wraps, making way for the marching harpsichords of Dale (the town's downward medieval vibe – Thrice Welcome - hinting at the untrustworthy politician at its head) and the Rivendell-ish vocals of The Woodland Realm.

All the while, six notes loom large over the score, seemingly attached to nothing. Then, you reach the second half of the album and Smaug reveals himself: an intimidating motif inverting Sauron's evil power before swooping on your eardrums.

Shore is joined by orchestrator and conductor Conrad Pope for this movie, but Howard's hand makes sure everything sounds the same – even as Conrad introduces industrial, metallic gongs for the showdown in the dwarfish kingdom that climaxes in a deafening, fiery spectacle.

It's here that Thorin arrives, with Durin's Folk and Protector of The Common Folk pitting the king's rising motif against the descending omens of Dale, Azog (remember him?) and Smaug. The stand-out new music, though, belongs to Tauriel, who gets two themes to herself: one, a romantic serenade that lights up the shadow around it, the other, an ass-kicking five-note fanfare that flows through The Forest River for five glorious minutes with all the romping charisma of Indiana Jones.

Stack them all on top of each other and you have another supreme piece of acoustic world building to rival the Star Wars universe. With a second hand to share the workload, Shore has the chance to go bigger and bolder than before:  complete with Ed Sheeran's beautifully orchestrated acoustic number, I See Fire, Tolkein has never sounded more exciting or complex – you'll be dipping in and out of these musical pages for years.

3. The Broken Circle Breakdown (The Broken Circle Breakdown Bluegrass Band)

Must-listen track: Wayfaring Stranger

While many soundtrack lovers will already have started to listen to 2014's Inside LLewyn Davis on repeat, they may be missing out on 2013's widely overlooked country-driven counterpart, the similarly themed and equally sorrowful The Broken Circle Breakdown. Performed by the movie's talented cast - including writer and actress Veerle Baetens and her co-star Johan Heldenbergh - it's a collection of familiar folk standards that are sung by the lead couple's band as they go through a heart-wrenching break-up.

“If I needed you, would you come to me? Would you come to me for to ease my pain?” they ask each other on-stage. The singers may be Belgian, but those American blues have rarely felt so raw. A jukebox of painful honesty, every banjo and fiddle-filled cover is a three-minute window into the characters' devastation. Think Blue Valentine with country music. Bluegrass Valentine.

Watch the movie, buy the CD, then congratulate yourself every time you manage to listen to Wayfaring Stranger on the bus without weeping.

4. Iron Man 3 (Brian Tyler)

Must-listen track: Can You Dig It

Ask anyone to hum the music from Iron Man 1 or 2 and they'll start singing AC/DC at you. Ask them to hum the music from Iron Man 3 and they'll come back with Can You Dig It, the blisteringly cool end credits number that hops between familiar guitar power chords and sax and organ like the conductor's got rockets in his feet.

There are traces of the now-standard Zimmer-inspired tone here, but Tyler follows Shane Black's lead to create a new theme that matches Tony Stark's personality and, more importantly, morphs throughout the movie without ever being lost in the noise of a number-one rock band. Forget AC/DC: this is The London Philharmonic Orchestra baby, and their James Bond-like line, all jazzy fourths and straight minors, is as catchy as it gets.

Why so high up the list of 2013 scores? Because Iron Man 3 is the satisfying sound of Marvel's superhero getting the recognisable theme it deserves; for the first time in the franchise, it has a real musical identity. The fact that it kicks off with Eiffel 65's Blue (Da Be Dee) is a bonus.

5. Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek)

Must-listen track: The Cloud Atlas Sextet for Orchestra

"That’s it! That’s the music I heard in my dream," yells Jim Broadbent's composer after Ben Whishaw's apprentice plays the movie's main theme on the piano. It's a tall order for a soundtrack in a movie based on an unfilmable novel, but Tom Tykwer and his regular collaborators are more than up to it. They start with The Atlas March, a simple, looping melody with hints of David Mitchell's original Debussy-ish description, but then reinterpret that tune - mixed with the Opening Titles' rhythm - to fit six strikingly different story lines.

Choirs, orchestras, blues, synth, you name it, they do it, past, present and future. A repeating structure, riff and beat tapping out the same universal tune across time and space? That elusive glimpse of perfection holds together this impossible project, a universal thread that underscores the parallel themes within Cloud Atlas' mind-boggling chart of humanity. You'll be hearing it in your dreams for weeks.

6. Prince Avalanche (Explosions in the Sky & David Wingo)

Must-listen track: Join Me On My Avalanche

Explosions in the Sky join forces with David Wingo for one of 2013's biggest surprises: a tiny atmospheric score that lights up Paul Gordon Green's enchanting indie. Conjuring up the desolated isolation of a fire-ravaged forest (in which our leads are painting lines on a highway), this is an album full of airy piano arpeggios and floating clarinets that takes two contrasting instruments and intertwines them into an odd couple of softly-stepping melodies.

Then, as the awkward, on-screen bromance begins to flourish, those signature explosions start to happen. Choirs, cellos, drums, synths; it's a disjointed union that captures both the surreal slices of humor and warmth that defines the men's relationship. When it clicks, you'll swear you're there beside them, paintbrush in hand, bickering over who gets to play what on the stereo. Sometimes, the simplest of tunes can be the most affecting.

7. Stoker (Clint Mansell)

Must-listen track: Piano Duet

Was there a movie more carefully crafted last year than Stoker? Park Chan-wook production designed his Hitchcockian thriller to heck, making Clint Mansell's scores one of the most integrated of recent years. Philip Glass was originally down for the job, but it's hard to imagine anything other than Clint's typically uneasy whirl of synths and regular rhythms taking us into our young heroine's mind. Uncle Charlie's warped 007-style riff, a rising and falling chromatic ditty, muddies the psychosexual water to the point of confusion, while saucy songs such as Summer Wine boost the lusty tension.

That potent, heady cocktail paves the way for Glass' only contribution: a piano duet between Mia Wasikowka's India and her sinister uncle (Matthew Goode). Played by Sugar Veil and Trevor Gureckis, it grows from a restrained right hand into darker bass chords, leaping with excitement in paroxysms of discord until the left hand departs, leaving an excited, naive finger on its own, limp and unfulfilled. It might well be the most erotic piano playing ever caught on movie.

Thanks to Park's precise direction, that audible frisson sends a shiver through every frame.

8. Frozen (Robert Lopez, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Christophe Beck)

Must-listen track: Let It Go

Disney set the tone for the subtly subversive Frozen with their choice of songwriters: Kristen Anderson-Lopez and her husband, Robert Lopez, also known as the man behind The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q. The duo deliver Broadway-style numbers in abundance, keeping up conventions with songs about falling in love and fighting for one's own identity. But accompanying the traditional chords and themes are fantastically unconventional lyrics.

"I wanna stuff some chocolate in my face", announces Princess Anna in The First Time In Forever - a craving a Disney Princess would never admit to, let alone sing about. Combined with Josh Gad's Olaf, a snowman who sings a Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins-worthy ditty about how great the summer is, it's a strange fusion of modern and retro that gives Frozen a strikingly fresh sound. Christophe Beck's Icelandic-themed instrumentals bring in bukkehorns and South Saami chanting to set the chilly mood, before everything erupts in 2013's catchiest song: Let It Go.

"Let the storm rage on!" shouts Idina Menzel's Elsa, "the cold never bothered me anyway." A feel-good power ballad for the person who would usually be the villain? Frozen's soundtrack defiantly bucks the Disney trend to create a heartwarming, funny, infectious musical about two fully-fledged sisters, who just happen to be princesses.

That Disney have released it in a rare two-disc edition, complete with deleted songs and karaoke backing, shows how confident they are in the movie's music - and also makes it an essential purchase.

9. The Impossible (Fernando Velázquez)

Must-listen track: The Impossible End Titles

Hitting UK cinemas almost exactly one year ago, it's easy to forget that The Impossible came out in 2013 - something that's hard to believe while your ears are recovering after watching it. The true story of a family trying to find each other after the 2004 Thailand tsunami, Juan Antonio Bayona's movie risked being sickeningly syrupy or cynically manipulative, but somehow avoided both. The answer lies partly in Fernando Velázquez's score.

The versatile composer worked on Bayona's excellent The Orphanage as well as M. Night Shyamalan's Devil, but it's his history as a cello player that forms the basis for this rousing score, which starts with a throbbing cello note on The Best vacation Season Ever before rising into a beautiful yet basic theme that recalls the simple power of Atonement's Elegy For Dunkirk. That tune, broken into bits by the frantic, dissonant horror of Is It Over?, pops up all over the place until finding its way back together for a rousing finale on The Impossible End Titles.

Moving but never sickly, evocative without being manipulative, it's a full-on symphonic catharsis that carries the kind of pure melodic force you associate with Ennio Morricone in his prime. Wow.

10. Star Trek Into Darkness (Michael Giacchino)

Must-listen track: London Calling

If Michael Giacchino isn't in the end of year best-of list then frankly, something's wrong. The composer's knack of playing with other people's themes is uncanny, so the chance to hear him do it with his own - Star Trek Into Darkness is his first sequel to an earlier score - is a treat.

Giacchino builds upon his original Star Trek theme (one of the best French Horns showcases around) and gives it a tweak, taking advantage of its flexible chord progression to deliver both inversions (Sub Prime Directive) and straight action numbers. The new kid on the block is London Calling, for bad guy John Harrison, and it doesn't disappoint, a triplet-led piano miniature that dances between minor and major seventh to drive up the tension. That rhythm infects everything else in the score (Meld-merized), but Giacchino's only getting started. He soon chucks The Kronos Wartet into the warp drive, a madcap frenzy of noise with a choir shouting in - yes - Klingon over the top.

All that character and colorand still time for a balls-out reworking of Spock's theme (The San Fran Hustle), a moving nod to Kirk's dad (Warp Corp Values), not to mention Alexander Courage's souped-up classic? Unlike the mildly disappointing movie, Star Trek Into Darkness' score is one of those you wish could go on for even longer.

11. Man Of Steel

Must-listen track: Earth

2013 was another year where Hans Zimmer turned in several scores. Rush's old-school guitar work was fun, but Man Of Steel was where you could tell the effort really went in. Why? Because rather than his usual minor thirds, Zimmer went for another intermission entirely: a major fifth. Leaping from there up to a sixth, then a seventh, then a full octave, it's a daringly simple theme that isn't Zimmer doing Zimmer at all. It's Zimmer paying tribute to John Williams. The rest is drums. Drums, drums and more drums. Played by, according to the CD liner notes, 12 world-class drummers, who were brought together to create a super army (or world engine, if you will) that can be unleashed at will.

But step away from the bombast and pick up Disc 2 of the Man Of Steel's Deluxe Edition: when Zimmer's decision not to follow in Batman's footsteps plays out on delicate piano and guitar (Earth), it's bliss. Who needs 12 drummers when you can have five notes?

12. Ain't Them Bodies Saints (Daniel Hart)

Must-listen track: Ruth and Sylvie

Ain't Them Bodies Saints' title comes from a misremembered folk song - and composer Daniel Hart goes with it, turning the whole movie into a lyrical ballad in its own right. Fiddles and guitars introduce the traditional folk vibe, while shimmering strings create a hazy sense of a half-forgotten legend, but the music's power comes from a relentless clapping that runs through it. Hands slap thighs and fingers snap in syncopated loops, mimicking instruments and overlapping each other until it accelerates into a hypnotic blur.

There's something of Jonny Greenwood's uneasy dread lurking beneath the sparse landscape, but guest vocals from local Texas talent Curtis Heath, John Graney and Andrew Tinker give the whole thing a grounded emotional warmth. And all the while, that clapping continues. Applause isn’t something you’d normally call intimate, but Ain’t Them Bodies Saints makes it exactly that. A swooning little masterpiece.

13. The Lone Ranger (Hans Zimmer, Geoff Zanelli)

Must-listen track: Finale

Let's not mess about here: The Lone Ranger isn't on this list because of Hans Zimmer. It's because of Geoff Zanelli. Zimmer's score is an adequate mix of Spaghetti Western orchestration and Pirates Of The Caribbean-style tunes, but the soundtrack bursts into life with the Finale, the only time the original TV theme is heard in the movie - and guest composer Geoff isn't about to waste it. He takes Rossini's already-grand William Tell Overture and triples it in length, introducing a snare drum and more strings to keep the pace up - even though the speed is actually slower than the original.

Then, he flips the theme into a minor key (a move so effective you wonder why Rossini didn't do it in the first place) before pulling out each of Zimmer's previously boring themes and inserting them seamlessly between movements. The result is a fizzing, popping, careening composition that gallops along with irresistible enthusiasm.

The rest of the album may be merely satisfactory, but this single track is easily the best 10 minutes of movie music from 2013. It's so good that (whisper it) it might actually be better than Rossini's original music. Someone give Zanelli a full score immediately.

14. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth)

Must-listen track: Leaves Expanded May Be Prevailing Blue Mixed With Yellow Of The Sand

In a world where Michael Giacchino gives his album track names such delightfully cute puns as The Incredits and Does It Still McFly?, there's always room for Shane Carruth's equally idiosyncratic track names: Leaves Expanded May Be Prevailing Blue Mixed with Yellow of the Sand. Right. A Young Forest Growing Up Under Your Meadows. Ok, then. The Sun Is But A Morning Star. You bet it is.

But for all its absurd levels of pretention, Carruth's music is just another string to the talented filmmaker's bow - and an important one at that. Upstream Color may be annoyingly obtuse, but it sits alongside Stoker as one of 2013's most carefully crafted pieces of art. Composed by the writer-director, Upstream's score is a huge factor in creating the lofty sci-fi's transcendent, yet bluntly horrific, atmosphere; an ethereal mix of wafting electronics and slow keyboards.

At times recalling David Lynch's heyday, it seduces you with hazy synths before gongs and beeps take you up to a higher plane. A plane where titles like The Finest Qualities Of Our Nature Like The Bloom On Fruits Can Be Preserved don't seem so daft after all. To so skilfully match sound and visuals is impressive on such a tiny budget. To do it while also writing, directing and starring in a movie is just scary.

15. Les Miserables (Various)

Must-listen track: One Day More

Do you hear the people sing? You will do, thanks to Tom Hooper's groundbreaking decision to record his whole cast singing live on-set. It's an inevitably mixed bag; away from the bad CGI, Russell Crowe acquits himself well as Javier, while Hugh Jackman's Valjean brings a little too much vibrato to Bring Him Home, but Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen's chemistry makes for a cracking Master Of The House and Samantha Barks' On My Own is staggeringly sincere.

But the show is stolen, inevitably, by Anne Hathaway. Given the freedom to vary the delivery of her signature tune, her decision to blub through I Dreamed A Dream rather than belt it out Broadway-style creates a heartbreaking four-minute ballad that will bring you to tears at least twice. By the time the cast unite for One Day More and that well-known finale, you'll be hearing the people sing in your head for weeks.

16. Saving Mr. Banks (Thomas Newman)

Must-listen track: Let's Go Fly A Kite

Thomas Newman's Disney score just trumps his music for Steven Soderbergh's superb thriller Side Effects thanks to its ability to juggle Disney past and present: taking its cue from Mary Poppins, Feed The Birds is delicately inverted for Newman's main theme, while a dainty piano version of Chim Chim Cher-Ee links flashbacks with the present day.

The highlight, though, is undoubtedly Jason Schwartzman and BJ Novak as The Scherman Brothers, singing and writing their way through Mary Poppins' much-loved classics behind a piano. When Emma Thompson's reluctant author hears their rendition of Let's Go Fly A Kite (featuring Bradley Whitford and Melanie Lawson), you'll be hard-pressed not to waltz around the room with glee.

17. From Up on Poppy Hill (Satoshi Takebe)

Must-listen track: The Breakfast Song

Like Disney, Studio Ghibli have always known how to pick a good soundtrack. Normally, that's because the answer is Joe Hisaishi, who's scored everything from My Neighbor Totoro to Hayao Miyazaki's final movie, The Wind Rises. His son Gorō, though, hired Satoshi Takebe to compose the charming music for From Up on Poppy Hill.

A tiny movie about a tiny love story, the melodies throughout are suitably sweet and twee, setting the relaxed pace for the life within a sleepy coastal village. But the songs will get even the most sedated viewer's toes tapping. The standout? The Breakfast Song, a simple ode to fried eggs and food written by Gorō and Hiroko Taniyama, composed by Hiroko Taniyama, arranged by Satoshi Takebe and performed by Aoi Teshima.

Together, they produce perhaps the most cheerful opening to any movie in 2013, while stirring up your appetite. Who knew your ears could get hungry?

18. Wreck-It Ralph (Henry Jackman) / The Kings of Summer (Ryan Miller)

Must-listen track: Sugar Rush Showdown / Game Night

Henry Jackman had a good year in 2013 with both Captain Phillips and Wreck-It Ralph under his belt, but Disney's arcade game gets the high score thanks to its creative use of chip tune melodies. Balancing orchestral work with 8-bit lines (Jackman spent his youth converting music for Commodore games), the result is an increasingly symphonic score that moves from retro computers to modern strings and brass - a bold combination that pays off beautifully on Sugar Rush Showdown, delivering blockbuster-sized emotions within a Mario Kart-style package.

Wreck-It Ralph is a perfect companion for The Kings Of Summer's score by Ryan Miller. Following up his work on Safety Not Guaranteed, Miller proves he can do big things with small stories, using chip tunes as well to nail the nostalgia of young boys running into the woods. Building up tracks like boss stages, chromatic melodies are more typical of videogames than movies, while Game Night charms with a whistling reminiscent of a Western played on a Sega Mega Drive, but the soundtrack levels up for its opening and closing numbers: a boy bashing out rhythms on a pipe in the woods. Sometimes, instead of virtual wizardry, you just need something real.

19. Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)

Must-listen track: Freedom

Quentin Tarantino  comes his closest to an original score yet with Django Unchained, which boasts standout new tracks from John Legend (Who Did That To You?), Rick Ross (100 Black Coffins) and Anthony Hamilton (Freedom). There's even one from Ennio Morricone: Ancora Qui. Sung by Elisa Toffoli over shots of some dinner plates being laid out, it's the director's most mature use of music in a movie yet, but he ends up with so many tracks that they get sandwiched together on-screen with uneven edits; an over-indulgent selection to match an over-indulgent movie.

There are songs and pieces on hear you'll be singing throughout 2014 and older numbers from Luis Bacalov set the tone perfectly, but you can't help but wonder what it would be like if Tarantino finally had the guts to trust a composer (Morricone) to score his movie completely.

20. The Great Gatsby (Craig Armstrong)

Must-listen track: Boats Against The Current and Daisy's Theme

Dial down The Great Gatsby and you'll be surprised by the music you find: this is an album that evokes the emotions of the period without relying upon Emeli Sandé's Crazy In Love. Craig Armstrong's Dream Violin is achingly sad, while that piercing high note (introduced in the Overture) that flashes through the screen every time Daisy's green light turns on is an impressively subtle piece of acoustic character development in a movie defined by orgiastic excess.

For those who like the pop numbers, that's the kind of thing they like. But you can keep the anachronistic period covers of 21st Century hits: Baz Luhrrmann's greatest Gatsby soundtrack can be found on The Orchestral Score album.

Honourable mentions

All Is Lost (Alex Ebert)

Must-listen track: Amen

A near-silent movie starring Robert Redford and nobody else, stranded in the middle of the ocean? JC Chandor's tale was always going to need something good to back up his lead's resilient fight to stay alive - and Alex Ebert's score is it. Floating between hopeful flutes and mellifluous strings, before dipping into mournful brass wails and eerily ominous choirs, it's a diverse emotional rollercoaster that may not work that well as a standalone listen, but while watching the movie, doesn't get lost once. The gravelly Amen, sung by Ebert's cracked vocals, is a perfectly pitched finale.

Lincoln (John Williams)

Must-listen track: With Malice Toward None

Another year, another chance for John Williams to come out of retirement and score another movie. This time, it's Spielberg's Lincoln. An understated soundtrack, Williams avoids any obvious pomp, instead producing a pleasant - if not especially memorable - mix of clarinet and soft trumpet that sets the mood for the period, with its dusty political chambers and wooden fireplaces, and hints at the understated presence of Daniel Day-Lewis' towering icon. If it's reminiscent at times of the pastoral simplicity of Carter Burwell's True Grit, that's no bad thing.

Oblivion (M83)

Must-listen track: Waking Up

M83 may not be that happy with their studio-directed score, which derives its sound heavily from TRON: Legacy and Hans Zimmer's Inception, but there are some strong individual tracks here that sit right alongside Joe Kosinski's stunning dystopian world.

Like us onFacebook and follow us onTwitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. AndGoogle+, if that's your thing!

The first full clip from Justice League: War is here. The new DC Universe animated movie tells the story of how the Justice League first formed. Justice League: War marks the first translation of the DC New 52 universe to animation and is adapted from Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League: Origin graphic novel, which kickstarted DC's new continuity back in 2011.

This clip, showcasing Batman and Green Lantern as they take on one of Darkseid's parademons, looks to be a pretty faithful translation of those opening pages of Justice League: Origin. The DC animated movies have always taken a non-linear, non-continuity approach to storytelling, simply adapting great DC Comics works (sometimes loosely), and then moving on to the next one. But as the previous animated movie was Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, based on the story that famously reset the continuity of the comic book line, does this mean that future animated films will continue to focus on the New 52? Time will tell. Until then, enjoy the clip!

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing!

 

The trial of Dr. Curt Connors came to an end as the former geneticist for Oscorp Industries was found guilty on all twenty counts for which he was indicted, including the murder of NYPD Captain George Stacy.

 

Connors and his attorney, Anne Weying, were unable to convince the jury that he was not responsible for his deadly actions while transformed. His defense that he only injected himself with the serum that changed him into the Lizard to prevent Oscorp Industries from experimenting on innocent civilians did not sway the jury.

 

Next stop: Rikers. But even that is controversial. Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane has said their facility is better served for housing and studying a prisoner such as Connors, but the judge has yet to rule on where Curt Connors will spend what is likely to be the rest of his life. 

As awesome as Dredd 3D was, it didn't do very well at the box office. While its cult following has been picking up, a filmed sequel doesn't seem all too likely. Regardless, it was announced that 2000AD will be releasing a sequel to the movie in comic book form. Similiarly, Chuck Palahniuk recently talked up how Fight Club would also get its own sequel as a comic.

It's pretty cool how comics can expand a cinematic universe like that. When Avengers was about to hit theaters, Marvel released a miniseries called Fury's Big Week that acted as a prologue while filling in some blanks, such as whatever happened with Sam Stern becoming the Leader from Incredible Hulk. The Alien and Predator movies expanded to the extent of sharing the same reality and the movies began to reflect that. The Transformers and recent Star Trek movies released prequels in comic form to build on concepts, as did Southland Tales. And let's not forget Jack Kirby's 2001: A Space Odyssey, which introduced Marvel Comics mainstay Machine Man.

Expanding the universe and doing a prequel is easy enough, though. You aren't truly stepping on anyone's toes (unless it's Alan Moore, but that's a discussion for another day). What's truly interesting is when an author has to move the story forward. Whether good or bad, it's still bold. There are a lot of comics that act as sequels under different circumstances. Sometimes it's a follow-up to a movie that's still fresh and will ultimately earn a sequel anyway, usually rendering the comic's stories moot. There are times that an unused screenplay will be translated into a comic so that at least the vision will live on in some form. Sometimes you get Scarface: Scarred for Life.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Star Wars is the most obvious and there are a million comics to talk about. Unfortunately, I can't keep them all straight. You have plenty of sequels, prequels and concurrent storytelling. Really, the best thing to focus on is Marvel's 100+ issue run from the 70's. For the first six issues, it was just a retelling of New Hope, including their own depiction of Jabba the Hut (based on the script for the deleted scene) as a yellow camel man with giant whiskers. After #6... where do you go? Empire Strikes Back won't be for several years and even then, it would be completely different from whatever ideas Lucas had initially planned.

Instead, they simply continued the story in their own way with space gladiator battles, space pirates, and Darth Vader trying to catch those pesky rebels. It's really crazy to look at and not just because of the time capsule Marvel Bronze Age storytelling. Star Wars at this point is just a single film. It isn't a franchise by a long shot. We don't know Boba Fett or Lando or who Darth Vader really is or any of that. It's like playing that Simpsons arcade game that was based on stuff from the first season.

That led to the creation of new heroes and villains, including quite a few that fandom tries to forget. The first post-movie arc centered around Han Solo putting together his own Magnificent Seven-style team of mercenaries, which introduced the sultry Amaiza, the insane would-be Jedi Don-Wan Kohotay, the inexperienced Starkiller Kid and most infamous of all, Jaxxon the green rabbit.

Jaxxon is basically a hardass Bugs Bunny with a laser pistol and he's mostly looked down upon by Star Wars fans. It's crazy. This was before Bea Arthur singing in the cantina and tribal teddy bears and CGI Jabba the Hut and all the prequels. Jaxxon was the original instance of, "YOU'RE RUINING STAR WARS!" which is a shame, because I think he's plenty awesome.

It's hard to really identify what you'd call a Terminator tie-in comic. If it takes place in the future, is it a prequel or a sequel? It's puzzling. Dark Horse has done a lot of Terminator comics, but just like Star Wars, the real intrigue comes from the earliest take. That would be NOW Comics, who started their series in 1988, again when there was only one movie to base the comic on. This is rather surprising to me as although Terminator is a very good movie, it didn't really find its spot as a cultural staple until the more popular sequel that was yet to be released at this point.

The Terminator series would go on for seventeen issues, followed by a five-issue follow-up called Terminator: The Burning Earth, written by Ron Fortier. The Burning Earth is remembered more due to having all of its art done by Alex Ross. That miniseries is pretty straightforward as the rebellious humans go to take out Skynet once and for all. The tone feels right at home with the Terminator film series, other than some of the Terminators themselves having too much personality.

The seventeen issues prior, though? Holy crap. These comics are bonkers and reeking of the 80's. While going the anthology route every now and again, it mainly follows the adventures of a group of human survivors in the future. At first, the only real connection to the movie is how the team inducts a little boy who turns out to be Kyle Reese's brother. John Connor does show up, but not until the twelfth issue. The real strangeness comes from Konrad.

Konrad is an android created by a bunch of humans who live on the moon. Because when you think of the Terminator franchise, you think of people sneaking off to the moon to start their own society. Still, it is kind of rad when he saves someone by tackling one of the main Terminators and tells it, "Get up. I want to see how well you're made," before fists start flying.

There are some pretty decent stories in there. Terminator #4 and #5 by Jack Herman and Thomas Tenney tells the story of tribe in Honduras so separated from society that they've been untouched and unaware of the Skynet uprising. A Terminator ends up stumbling into their jungle and we have one cyborg vs. a civilization armed with only arrows. The robot is defeated when one of the tribesmen reads through a discarded comic book from a crashed airplane that teaches him how to use shotguns and dynamite. It's amazing.

Again, the problem with the series is that the Terminators are too expressive and human in their own right. While they do want to wipe out all humanity, they have more emotion than Agent Smith and are even able to show fear, which the first movie went out of its way to explain isn't possible.

Dark Horse eventually picked up the Terminator license and made a whole lot of comics. A notable one that I liked was Terminator 2029 followed by Terminator 1984, written by Zack Whedon and drawn by Andy MacDonald. It tells the story of Ben, a close friend of Kyle Reese during the big future war.

In the second issue, they find an old Cyberdyne facility, where they had been keeping some old man prisoner for who knows how long. The old man insists on speaking to Ben and reveals himself to be Kyle. It turns out he didn't die at the end of the first movie after all. Instead, Cyberdyne kept him alive as part of them being a cartoonishly evil corporation. Old Kyle eventually convinces Ben that he's telling the truth and after Ben's girlfriend is killed by a Terminator, he agrees to follow young Kyle back to the 80's. He's too late to prevent the events of the first movie, but he does team up with Sarah to liberate Kyle.

Does it lead to a happy ending? Not exactly. But it is certainly a happier one and Kyle gets something of a more rewarding existence than what the filmmakers originally gave him.

I'm not really going to talk about the Predator comics because they're more of an expanded universe than an outright sequel... though to be fair, that's what Predator 2 was. It's not like we're getting the further adventures of Dutch from the first movie. It's just other Predators doing other things. The Aliens comics started out being direct follow-ups to the movies until Dark Horse decided that they weren't.

Told in a trilogy of stories called Outbreak, Asylum and Earth War by Mark Verheiden and artists Mark A. Nelson, Den Beauvais and Sam Keith, the Aliens series was originally about the adventures of Hicks and Newt years after the events in the film Aliens. Why? Because this was 1988 and as far as everyone knew, the characters deemed survivors at the end of the latest movie were actual survivors. Due to your usual human failings and the Alien Queen's ability to trick people into believing her to be a deity, Earth gets overrun by the xenomorphs. Ripley shows up later in the story to help out her old friends.

They end up tricking the creatures into being bunched up together so that they can nuke the holy hell out of them and then retreat back into space. There's also a thing in there about Newt (who is now an adult woman who has spent a lot of time in an asylum for obvious reasons) rescuing a little girl much in the same way Ripley saved her years ago. The whole thing is a pretty cool follow-up to the first two movies.

Unfortunately, Alien 3 came out, which started with the reveal that Hicks and Newt most certainly did not survive after all. Well, that puts a damper on continuity. Rather than say that the Aliens comics are part of a divergent reality, Dark Horse was pretty set on making them part of the same universe. Hence, the issues were rereleased, reedited and retconned to oblivion in a way that's pretty laughable. Hicks became "Wilkes" and Newt became "Billie." They're no longer the characters from the movie, but just happen to have backstories that are incredibly similar to them. Even if Wilkes' fallen comrades have the same names as the soldiers that accompanied Hicks in Aliens.

As for Ripley? Ripley is Ripley, believe it or not. She's just an android copy or something. I don't know.

There have been plenty of RoboCop comics out there, starting with Marvel's 23-issue series starting in 1990, written by Alan Grant and later Simon Furman. The series started out right before RoboCop 2 hit theaters and takes place in-between the second and third movies. Not that you'd really notice, what with there being no major developments to namedrop outside of Alex Murphy's wife and son being told that RoboCop is just a robot that wears Murphy's face out of honor. There's also the way the Old Man is characterized between the first two movies with his comic self starting at fatherly, nice guy and gradually moving towards corrupt douche.

The stories are really fun and despite Marvel not being able to go balls-out on the violence, it really hits the feel of the first movie (outside of the hover-bikes) while constantly throwing the satirical news and commercial segments at us. It hits a nice balance between the movie's cynical style and the early 90's Marvel storytelling. RoboCop gets to fight a cyborg gorilla, a cloned tyrannosaurus and, in a really inspired story, a city overflowing with masked vigilantes.

The franchise was brought over to Dark Horse after that, giving us the brilliant RoboCop vs. Terminator by Frank Miller and Walt Simonson. Even though the comic came out a while before RoboCop 3 (also written by Miller), it includes Dr. Marie Lazarus, who is introduced in that movie. If you haven't read it, by all means track it down. Granted, it has virtually nothing to do with the Connor family, but it's so damn satisfying.

Just don't get it confused with Dynamite's Terminator/RoboCop: Kill Human by Rob Williams and PJ Holden. It's the absolute worst. The story makes no sense and it acts as a character assassination of Murphy.

There have been other RoboCop comics, but one worth mentioning is the nine-issue series by Steven Grant and Juan Jose Ryp that's based on Frank Miller's unused script for RoboCop 2. The general consensus on how that turned out is that maybe messing with that script to give us such an uneven final product was for the better.

We go from four instances of pop-culture staples to a movie that most likely makes you go, "Oh, yeah. That existed." Clive Barker's Nightbreed had a good run at 25 issues and a two-issue side story as part of Marvel's Epic imprint. The first four issues of the comic tell the story of the movie, or at least the director's cut of the movie. Instead of Decker and his creepy-ass button mask being resurrected as part of the Nightbreed, it's Cabal's girlfriend Lori. The comic follows up by having Ashberry the vengeful priest go out for revenge while Cabal tries to lead the Nightbreed to a new home while they mostly splinter off into the world.

What we end up getting is basically Clive Barker's X-Men. The same concepts of a bunch of outsiders fighting each other while the good ones are trying to protect a race of people who hate and fear them, but with a hard R rating. Lots of cursing, gore, nudity all over the place, and a constant horror atmosphere. Also, they fight this thing, which I wouldn't expect to see in an X-Men book anytime soon.

Apparently one of the guys from the band Duck Sauce got his start in this comic.

There are a couple crossovers in there where they fight other Clive Barker properties such as Rawhead Rex and Pinhead. Then they team up with a naked Lucifer. It's all very strange.

"You think this happens to Wayne and Garth?"

"Not unless it's in their contract..."

When Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey hit the screens, Marvel had Evan Dorkin write and draw the adaptation. It's actually based on the original version of the movie that has a very different climax. Bill and Ted are killed by their evil robot duplicates, but point out that Death still owes them a couple extra lives due to beating him a couple times over. Not only do they end up defeating their robot doubles, but they use their exploding heads to kill the villain De Nomolos instead of having him simply arrested. De Nomolos and the evil robots are fated to spend eternity together in Hell, breaking rocks.

The comic follows up on this version and does it in a more original way than expected. When Bill and Ted were given a cartoon and live-action show, both went the easy route of just sending them back in time to a different event every week. Dorkin's Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic Book proceeds to build on the two movies rather than stew in their concepts. The duo take part in all sorts of wacky adventures, like having to deal with Death taking a vacation, traveling to alternate realities, and being put on trial by the gods of time. There's even a pretty clever storyline where a teenager from the future goes back and picks up historical legends Bill and Ted (along with Mark Twain, George Washington and Sir Isaac Newton) in order to help out with his own history report. Not to mention De Nomolos returns in an attempt to exact revenge.

I love that this version of the Grim Reaper is just a skeleton because it's comics, so why not?

Everything ties together in its twelve-issue run, ending with the reveal that not only do Bill and Ted's sons grow up just fine, but they've been spending their lives going back in time to fix all of their fathers' screw-ups.

This one's unexpected, but yes, Marvel released a comic book sequel to 1993's Saturday Night Live spinoff movie. Coming out about a year after the movie, the miniseries was put together by Terry Collins and Tom Richmond. I haven't heard of it being based on a discarded screenplay for Coneheads 2 or anything, but it certainly reads like it. As the groundwork for a movie sequel, it could have maybe worked. The Coneheads themselves decide to take a summer vacation to – suitably enough – France and it's apparent that Chris Farley's Ronnie still hasn't put it together that the Coneheads are aliens, even with the events from the end of the movie.

While this is going on, the David Spade character Eli plots his freedom from the Highmaster by telling him that Beldar was obviously lying about Earth's counter-invasion lasers and his own death. Eli is tasked with returning to Earth with two cone-headed soldiers who appear like evil versions of Beldar and Prymatt. Coincidentally, the male is known as Ackradd. Cute. Through these Zod and Ursa stand-ins, we get another go at fish-out-of-water storytelling.

The character voices are true to form, but without the actors making the best of the script, it doesn't fully recognize the charm that made the movie watchable. Plus one of the better parts of the movie was seeing the dozens of cameos (usually in the form of SNL alumni) in a parade of minor roles. That's out the window.

Practically every horror movie has its own comics tie-in. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Hellraiser, Evil Dead, Child's Play, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Final Destination, Puppet Master, etc. A lot of the time, those stories deal with the basic concept of the movies with the murderers murdering like they always do. Freddy and Jason don't really need continuity to do their iconic hobbies. Since I can go on forever about all these different series, I'll stick with one of the more notable ones in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash and its sequel.

With a creative team of Jeff Katz, James Kuhoric, and Jason Craig, this first miniseries is based on the unused script for a Freddy vs. Jason follow-up that would bring Evil Dead's Ash Williams into the fray. It begins with the rather needless death of the two survivors from the first movie, who go to Camp Crystal Lake just to make sure that Freddy and Jason are really dead. Spoiler alert: they aren't.

Freddy's intent on getting the Necronomicon for himself and is able to sway Jason into following his lead. Ash is on his own hunt for the book and hooks up with our usual batch of victims, who work at the local S-Mart. Lots of people die, Freddy gets brought back into the physical world while being powered up by the Necronomicon and it all leads to a big three-way fight. It's nothing exceptional, but works as a whole. Mainly because it's nice to have a hero who can challenge Freddy in both charisma and plot armor.

There are a couple of great moments mixed in there, such as when Ash lops off Jason's left forearm with a chainsaw. Jason simply picks up his machete and jams the handle into his stump, causing Ash to groan about unoriginality. If you liked the movie, it's worth a read.

Then the same team released a sequel called Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: Nightmare Warriors and things went flying off the rails. On paper, it's a really cool concept. Ash is asked to join a support group of sorts for people who have survived encounters with Freddy and/or Jason so that they can figure out a permanent end to them. For the most part, it's those who have mystical powers of their own (the hero from Dream Master, the telekinetic girl from Friday the 13th: Part 7, etc.). Then there's Tommy Jarvis, who shows up for the sake of yelling, "Nobody is able to kill Jason Voorhees but me! Screw all of you!" Meanwhile, the government dabbles in weaponizing the Necronomicon and Jason, which of course means bad things happen and soon we have a near-omnipotent Freddy Krueger stationed in the White House with an army of Deadites and Jason as their commander.

That sounds decent and all, but the writing is so sloppy that stuff simply happens for no reason. The Nightmare Warriors group is put together by Freddy's daughter, Katherine Krueger, who proceeds to reveal herself as evil and turn on the group completely out of the blue. Then she dresses all slutty and makes out with her father while he puts one hand in her pants and the other over her boob. Seriously. I know she's the main character from the worst Nightmare on Elm Street movie, but Jesus Christ...

Oh, and Freddy powers up Jason with the Necronomicon, which gives him swanky clothes and long, luxurious hair. Sure, why not.

Even the ending is more than a little uncooked. A vortex opens up and swallows people, causing one of its victims to be thrown back into 1964. There we find that it's the officer who forgot to sign the search warrant on Freddy Krueger's arrest, which caused the lynch mob origin story. Realizing where and when he is, he signs the paperwork and thereby negates the existence of the nightmare murderer. All well and good except who the hell is this dude? Seriously, I had to reread the entire thing just to find where he was ever mentioned and this Agent Carter guy was only in like two scenes where he did absolutely nothing of note. He's a glorified extra and this completely forgettable character is somehow supposed to be this shocking payoff.

Not to mention the art gets increasingly rushed and unreadable as the story goes on. Laughably so by the last issue.

Oh my God, Scarface: Scarred for Life. In 2007, John Layman and Dave Crosland teamed up to create a follow-up to the Al Pacino cinematic classic. Now, other than all the other entries on this list, the idea of a Scarface sequel might give you pause. You're probably asking yourself, "How can there be a sequel to Scarface? Tony Montana's dead. In fact, Tony Montana is as dead as anyone can possibly be, having been shot up by every bullet that's ever existed on the planet Earth."

It's all explained when Tony wakes up from an 8-month coma.

"You shouldn't even be alive, Tony. You took a total of nine bullets to the chest, and three more to the upper appendages. In surgery for more than eighteen hours. Two bullets came within millimeters of your heart, another punctured your spleen, another took out a kidney. They lost you twice on the operating table. Docs said it was a miracle you survived, that your system was so amped on coke that it couldn't remember it was supposed to die."

That about says it all. It doesn't feel like the movie at all, but it's okay because it's awesome. It's a grindhouse cartoon that comes off as a prototype for Layman's Chew. As Montana tries to rebuild his empire while appeasing his corrupt cop allies on the side (they kept him alive to help nail Sosa), he proceeds to kill a man with a colostomy bag, hide a gun in a roasted pig (and then go on a shooting rampage), and runs over a couple of guys with a giant lawnmower.

Does it miss the point of the Brian De Palma flick? Yeah, probably. Does that make it any less fun? Not really.

There have been a ton of Ghostbusters comics out there, though most tend to follow up on the cartoon. I'm more of a fan of the IDW series, which started off with a batch of miniseries and one-shots before settling in on its own long-running narrative written by Erik Burnham with art by Dan Schoening. The continuity here is based on the two movies as well as the recent video game, starting with a nice callout where Peter mentions that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is such a pushover that even "what's-his-name" was able to take him down.

That's actually a really neat plot point about that. In the first movie, Stay Puft was considered this horrifying ender of worlds to the point that Ray has ultimately doomed the world by thinking him up. In the comic, his guilt is negated by the ghost of Jake Blues, who points out that Ray's imagination saved the world. Sure, Stay Puft is huge, but he's also immobile and made of an incredibly weak substance. There are a million horrifying things Gozer could have taken the form of, but Ray ended up cutting him off at the knees by imagining him as a waddling mascot.

While a lot of the team's adventures include your usual ghost-fighting fare, one of the more inventive threats is that of competition. A jerk by the name of Ron Alexander wonders why these guys get to have the monopoly on ghostbusting, steals some hardware specs, reverse engineers his own guns, and starts his own group called Ghostsmashers. They're a lot flashier, especially since they choose to blow up ghosts instead of trapping them. Considering the way energy works, I'm sure you can imagine their downfall.

Even though the series tosses away the events of the cartoons, it doesn't disown them. Kylie, the goth girl from Extreme Ghostbusters, is a character in the series, introduced as the person put in charge of Ray's occult shop. When the Ghostbusters are abducted by demons, the series becomes New Ghostbusters, where the team of Kylie, Janine, Ron, and a government agent Melanie Ortiz are put together to pick up the slack.

Coincidentally, the rookie from the video game would later be given the name Bryan Welsh and it's revealed that he runs his own Ghostbusters team in Chicago. Once the original four return, Ron is made a member of the Chicago team, much to Bryan's chagrin.

The "official" aspect of this sequel is a bit iffy. Parker Bennett was one of the writers of the Super Mario Bros. movie back in the day and some discussions with writers Steven Applebaum and Ryan Hoss led to the idea of this webcomic. The movie ended on a cliffhanger that everyone knew would never get followed up on, but Bennett had his ideas of where he'd like to take the franchise. He knew what Daisy was frantic about when she came to Mario and Luigi for help. Applebaum and Hoss got Eryk Donovan on art and Super Mario Bros. 2 was born.

Only the first chapter is finished, but it's pretty fascinating to look at. It keeps the gritty, post-apocalyptic style that makes the movie so head-shaking, but fits it with the world of Super Mario Bros. 2. Toad is reverted to his human form and acts as Princess Daisy's hulking, gasmask-wearing bodyguard. Badass Shy Guys are shown riding dinosaurs as they enter from the mysterious third reality (the dream world, perhaps?). The final panel shows what has to be the all-but-forgotten Mario end boss King Wart as a morbidly obese supervillain.

I never cared for the movie, but I have to admit, I'm drawn in by where this could go next.

So what other comic book sequels did I neglect to mention that are worth discussing? I know that there's one for Repo Man, but sadly, I have yet to watch the original movie. I should probably get around to doing that.

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing!

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing!

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing.

Say what you want about the devil, he’s got good taste. Zoe Saldana, come on down. As Minnie Castavet said in the original Rosemary’s Baby, “He chose you, honey! From all the women in the world to be the mother of his only living son!”

Now, I personally have a thing about “baby bump” stories, but hey, this is an infernal occasion. NBC will initiate Zoe Saldana into its new four-hour miniseries, Rosemary’s Baby. Zoe Saldana, who is best known as the new Uhura on the rebooted Star Trek and in 2009's Avatar, will take the role to term in Paris this time. The original took place in New York City. The Rosemary’s Baby miniseries is based on Ira Levin’s 1967 horror novel. The screenplay is being written by Scott Abbott and James Wong. Saldana is also executive producing.

Quinn Taylor, Executive Vice President of Movies, Miniseries and International Co-Productions at NBC Entertainment said “Zoe has proven that she is one of our most gifted actresses and we think she has the perfect combination of spirit and gravitas to take on the title role from Ira Levin’s infamous novel. With Zoe leading the cast under the direction of Agnieszka Holland, this reimagined event mini-series is off to a great start.”

Minnie Castavet believes that Zoe’s sweet roles in the past are no obstacle. Castavet said the role could have gone to “Anyone! Anyone! It didn't have to be a no-good slut straight from the gutter. Just as long as she is young, healthy and not a virgin!”

I hope the baby has his Father’s eyes.

SOURCE:Variety

Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that's your thing.