You can argue that They Live: Collector’s Edition (Shout! Factory) would have been a perfect Halloween week release. And you’d be right, of course. John Carpenter’s skewed invasion movie is witty and weird and has the most extreme knock-down, drag-out fistfight ever.

But I have to say, it’s weirdly even more perfect as an election-day release. Because really, who are these economic invaders from outer space but… Mitt Romney and the 1%.

Before I get inundated with hate-mail from conservative-leaning readers, let me make clear that, although Romney was nowhere in John Carpenter’s mind back in 1988 when the film was released, the politics were always pointed in his direction. The story is science fiction but Carpenter was driven by the inequities in society where the rich were getting richer, the middle class was disappearing, and the economic game was rigged by those with money and power. It was timely then and looks even more prescient now.

Roddy Piper’s working class hero John Nada, a man with no politics and a deep-seeded belief in the tenets of hard work and essential fairness, becomes a two-fisted activist when the veil is lifted (thanks to a pair of high-tech x-ray glasses). Piper is a brawny, broad presence, not much of an actor but spirited and likable, and Keith David is marvelous as his reluctant partner in rebellion, providing a moral grounding to Piper’s B-movie activism when the lie is revealed. Earth has become a third world colony for interstellar “free enterprisers” who preach the gospel of unregulated capitalism and the promise of advancement through hard work and perseverance while insidiously sabotaging all human efforts to get ahead. Their main took for control: subliminal messages, media control, and consumerist greed.

And two-fisted is the operative term here, as confirmed in the entertainingly interminable knock-down, drag-out alley brawl between Piper and Keith David. This is a classic example of genre filmmaking with a political punch, albeit in broad, sloganeering terms. “I’m here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I’m fresh out of bubblegum,” shouts Nada in blue-collar guerilla mode when he steps into a bank and starts blasting the skull-faced aliens. It’s a ridiculous line and, weirdly, has become something of a pop culture slogan among a certain breed of genre geek.

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The Amazing Spider-Man (Sony) – Street Date: Friday, November 9

Barely a decade after Sam Raimi first launched the “Spider-Man” film series and helped ignite the superhero big screen bonanza, the comic book hero’s story is rebooted and retold in a universe far from “The Avengers.”

Andrew Garfield takes on Peter Parker this time as a decidedly hipper high school nerd and Emma Stone is spunky girlfriend Gwen Stacy, a pair of bubbly personalities that help buoy this second run through the same basic origin story (high school boy bitten by radioactive spider, sudden powers, death of beloved Uncle Ben, yadda yadda yadda).

Director Marc Webb attempts to retool the whole thing with a more authentic (or at least contemporary) cliché of high school culture and the screenwriters add a conspiratorial twist to the death of Peter’s parents that leads to a potential ally, Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans), and the film’s new villain, The Lizard. (Fans of the comic book expected The Lizard to scramble out in the first series, what with Dylan Baker appearing as Connors back “Spider-Man 2,” but that’s another issue.)

None of this approaches the exhilaration of the first thrilling swings through New York City or the guilt, the rush, the angst, the responsibility, the teen emotional life that Raimi brought to the first “Spider-Man” origin. Webb brings momentum and splash to the film without actually pulling us into the charge of Peter’s new power and tosses us into yet another showdown between plucky misfit hero and monstrous supervillain with a personal stake in the fight.

Five years after Raimi closed the original trilogy, the superhero movie has changed the big screen landscape and it’s no longer enough to pretend it’s all happening for the first time in a world where superheroes don’t exist. Give Webb credit for the terrific chemistry between Garfield and Stone, but otherwise this rehash that adds nothing new to what is fast becoming a familiar formula.

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Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (Warner) – In 2007, 25 years after Ridley Scott’s visionary reworking of Philip K. Dick’s novel flopped at the box office (and was subsequently reborn as one of the preeminent cult movies of the past three decades), Scott delivered what he promises is his final take on the compromised classic.

The setting is the near future, where the only escape from a planet-wide urban blight is the promise of the off-world frontier advertised on ever-present floating billboards, but five Replicants (slave clones with genetically stamped short shelf lives) have returned to Earth in search of themselves. Harrison Ford is a throwback to the classic Hollywood P-I in a futuristic film noir, a rumpled loner detective sent to hunt down escaped Replicants in the polyglot cultural stew of the rain-slicked streets in the ground-level slums. Much of PKD’s original story is discarded, but the densely realized street subculture looks more prescient than ever, and Scott’s sensibility turns the pulp story into a dystopian odyssey.

The original release featured dreary voice-over narration and a happy ending that made hash of the whole polluted planet premise, and the original VHS home video release featured the longer, international cut of the film. A workprint discovered in 1990 (and briefly released before Scott pulled it back) inspired a 1991 “Director’s Cut” version, sans the narration and happy ending and featuring a unicorn dream. But that was still a compromise version, as far as Scott was concerned, and he came back one more time for “The Final Cut,” a definitive version full of minor adjustments (with subtle reverberations) and major corrections (Scott reshot the death of Zhora to get rid of a glaringly unconvincing body double), and the digital enhancements both refine the special effects and deliver a sparkling image. The remixed sound adds more density to the experience.

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E.T.: The Extraterrestrial – Anniversary Edition (Universal) – Steven Spielberg’s suburban fairy tale for kids who think they are too hip to believe in fairies debuts on Blu-ray in its original, uncut, untampered form.

Henry Thomas is Elliot, an emotionally bruised kid suffering under his parents’ separation who finds and bonds with another lonely, lost soul, a benevolent alien left behind when his spaceship leaves. “I’m keeping him,” says Elliot, but meanwhile an army of government men search for him. As E.T. grows homesick and just plain sick. Elliot and friends need to help get E.T. home.

It’s a fantastical adventure with a grounding in the modern suburbia of divorce and adolescent anxiety, and E.T. is the ultimate imaginary playmate come to life. Part pet, part best friend, part guardian angel with an emotionally symbiotic connection to Elliot, this funny looking stranger in a strange land (think of a squat, mutant teddy bear with lizard skin and monkey fingers and voice between a growl and a purr) is a wizened old grandfatherly being with the trust and playfulness of a child.

Steven Spielberg is a technical wizard without a doubt and he seamlessly brings actors and effects together, but none of the special effects have the charge of Henry Thomas laughing in joy as his bicycle takes flight over the forest and across the full moon. That image has since become the corporate logo for Amblin Entertainment and it’s a little tainted for it, but the excited, spontaneous shouts of pleasure are as genuine as ever.

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Ridley Scott has taken pains to explain that Prometheus (Fox) is not a prequel to Alien, but a film that comes from the same DNA. That’s a bit disingenuous, considering how meticulously (and often very cleverly) it sets up the building blocks of Alien, but his pointed use of the term DNA is telling. It opens with a very different answer to Genesis, where Earth is seeded with alien genetic material, and then jumps ahead a few billion years to follow a crew of scientists (including Noomi Rapace) retracing an ancient trail through the stars left behind by the ancients.

Mirroring Alien, we have a colorful crew (this time mostly scientists), a corporate directive (monitored by Charlize Theron), and an android (Michael Fassbender, superb) on the bridge charged with completing that directive, but otherwise this is far from the gothic monster movie of the 1979 original. At its most ambitious, Prometheus plants suggestions of the extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth, a Godlike race sowing genetic seeds across galaxy, and even an Old Testament-like sense of retribution, or at the very least a feeling of failure that calls for a reboot.

With all this happening, I’m left with a nagging question: How can Ridley Scott have such a sophisticated visual intelligence, creating screen worlds engineered in such detail as to suggest entire cultures behind the designs and technology, and then fill those worlds with characters who are supposed to be scientists yet act like kids in a playroom? Seriously, the reason these supposedly top scientists of the late 21st century keep yelling “Don’t touch anything” to each other is because otherwise they’ll fingerpaint their way through the most important scientific discoveries since the mapping of the human genome.

The script fails to match its ambition, but at least give it credit for big ideas, unexpected conceptual turns, and a dense and dramatic visual experience. “Prometheus” hints at something bigger, more cosmic and philosophically daring, than what the characters actually manage to grapple with on screen. And for all its failures in the realm of human behavior, the cosmic mystery behind the story is enigmatic and remains so to the end. In leaving us with mysteries, it offers something far more satisfying than a reductive answer. It leaves us with possibilities.

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Karate-Robo Zaborgar (Well Go) is, in the words of the promotional poster, “Part motorcycle, part karate expert, all robot!” It doesn’t lie. This self-conscious, tongue-in-cheek tribute to the robo-heroes of the seventies Japanese movies and TV embraces the gee-whiz innocence of the uncomplicated stories of transforming mechanical creations and the earnest young heroes who operate them.

Directed by Japanese B-movie specialist Noboru Iguchi (of “RoboGeisha” and “Mutant Girls Squad” fame) on a low budget, it features a young cop who inherits a transforming robot warrior built by his father from the DNA of his dead twin brother, a criminal organization of flamboyant and ridiculous henchmen, a robofemme fatale, and a twist of robot love that leaves our human hero abandoned and alone. There’s clearly more love and affection than talent and cleverness here, and I can’t imagine that anyone not already predisposed to this kind of cult filmmaking would find much of interest here (especially at almost two hours, where the good-natured riffing gets a little repetitive), but for fans of transforming robots and cheap genre exercises, it’s a tongue-in-cheek valentine. Go, Zaborgar, go!

Blu-ray and DVD, in Japanese with English subtitles, with a collection of bonus short Zaborgar films.

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Terra Nova: The Complete Series (Fox) is another exhibit in case against the big networks launching big budget science series. While they tend to have big budgets and an eye for spectacular (at lest for the small screen) images, they also have a tendency to chase big audiences by dropping high concepts into familiar formulas and narrative formats.

In this case, the premise is simple: in a future polluted and overcrowded to the point of near social breakdown, a wormhole to the prehistoric past has allowed small groups of hand-picked citizens to escape the dystopia and colonize a pristine prehistoric world. Jim Shannon (Jason O’Hara) and his family are essentially stowaways to the past, escaping not just the pollution and crime but the restrictive laws that limit family size. Three kids is apparently a felony in this future.

With Steven Spielberg on board as an executive producer and a concept evokes “Jurassic Park” as the new frontier, the producers of “Terra Nova” play up the visual promise of human beings living in a dangerous jungle world of dinosaurs (thanks to a handy time travel gimmick). The human colony (and it is a colony, self-sustaining and essentially cut off from the poisoned future) is part military outpost, part communal village carved out of lush jungle wilderness, part Swiss Family Robinson theme park, and every episode features at least one visit from a prehistoric creature, large or small. There’s no secret where the budget is going.

What’s so disappointing is that, with all the potential such a premise offers, the story comes down to a civil war between the colony, led by old-school military man Commander Nathaniel Taylor (Stephen Lang, essentially playing a warmer and more morally ambiguous version of his “Avatar” character), and a rebel faction that stages raids from their refuge in the jungle.

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Fringe: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner) opens by sending the cast of the brainy weird science fiction show of parallel universes and dimension-hopping villains into a whole new alternate reality where Walter (John Noble) is a little less stable and Peter (Joshua Jackson) never existed, until he pushes his way back in to reality. The war between the dimensions turns into an increasingly cooperative détente as they work together to stop the villain opening the cracks between the worlds, and even the two Olivias (Anna Torv) end up in a measured truce, both learning a little bit more about themselves through that distorted dimensional looking glass.

The slow romantic waltz between the hopelessly-in-love Peter, who bursts into a world that forgot his existence, and the emotionally closed-off Olivia, who starts to absorb memories from another life, is more than a love-conquers-all storyline. It’s mirrored in love stories and unlikely friendships across dimensions (see Astrid reach out to her OCD counterpart on the other side) and the healing of the damaged, guilt-ridden Walter all over again. But the most fun is had in a flashforward episode to a totalitarian future ruled by a society of Observer overlords who run the Earth like a supernatural mob. Hints of things to come in Season Five?

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Terminator Anthology (Warner) gets a jump on the holiday gift sets by boxing up all four films and more than ten hours of supplements in a five-disc set.

Arnold Schwarzenegger remade his career as the unstoppable juggernaut of James Cameron’s original “The Terminator” (1984), a hard-wired hardware time travel thriller about a cyborg from the future sent back to the eighties to kill the hope of the future (Linda Hamilton). Michael Biehn is the twitchy, haggard human who risks all to save her and he runs through the film with the over-amped desperation of a paranoid schizophrenic on his 12th cup of espresso.Cleverly plotted and stoked with sly bits of black humor, this grungy little low budget sleeper looks even more primitive next to its sleek mega-budget sequel.

In “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” (1991), mechanical marauder Schwarzenegger has been reprogrammed and sent back in time to fight on the side of the humans and he teams up with Linda Hamilton’s suspicious Sarah Connor to save the once and future hope of mankind—her son, John Connor (Edward Furlong)—from the next generation of Terminator, a liquid metal creation that is almost unstoppable. It was a technical marvel in 1991 and still a pretty impressive tech-noir thriller, and this edition features both the 137-minute theatrical version and the 152-minute extended edition, and the first ever full length scene specific commentary by James Cameron.

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The Hunger Games (Lionsgate), the first blockbuster hit of 2012 (it grossed almost $400 at the U.S. box-office), is poised to be the first blockbuster home video release of the season.

Lionsgate is hoping to stoke the flames of fandom by giving the Blu-ray and DVD its own separate release date (it goes on sale at 12:01 am on Saturday, August 18) with special release parties organized at select video store and other disc retailers (in the tradition of the “Harry Potter” books).

You could say the The Hunger Games, based on the first book in the young adult dystopian trilogy by Suzanne Collins, is Lionsgate’s effort to create a franchise from a hot young adult series, more mature than “Harry Potter” and grittier  than “Eclipse.” And on the balance I’d say they made a pretty good effort.

The story of Katnis Everdeen, a teenage girl forced to be her family’s provider and protector in an impoverished household in a bleak future that resembles Depression-era Appalachia — and then suddenly yanked from her home and dropped into a modern gladiatorial ring to kill or be killed — succeeds in its big screen incarnation thanks largely to Jennifer Lawrence. She plays a character not unlike her breakthrough role in Winter’s Bone (the film could have been her audition for the role of Katnis) and if she’s just a little too old for the part of a girl on the verge of womanhood, she’s still a ferocious figure in a feral world, a survivor discovering that, at her most alone, she’s actually part of a bigger community.

I confess that for all my issues with the film (and there are many), I more impressed at how much it got right. The adaptation borders on slavish, to be honest, with subplots shaved down or simply cut out and new scenes added to show us what Katniss (who narrates the novel from her perspective) couldn’t see, but it also hones in on the personalities, the culture, and the sense of overwhelming corruption and control beyond the comprehension of this girl from the provinces.

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Misfits: Season One (BBC), a British series about a group of troubled teens imbued with super powers after a freak electrical storm, is not a superhero series, at least not in the conventional sense. These are troubled kids, each with their own issues, and the powers are extensions of their own private demons, fears, and identity issues. The shy, introverted Simon, for instance, becomes invisible when he feels especially vulnerable. It could be really tiresome if it wasn’t handled intelligently and this is a pretty smart series. Like the best kinds of genre TV, it uses the conventions of fantasy as a way to get at human issues.

Lauren Socha, Robert Sheehan, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Iwan Rheon, and Antonia Thomas star as the five teens tossed together in community service, not friends in any way but forced to pull together when the powers manifest, and not just in their group. When their probation officer turns feral and attacks them, self-defense makes them conspirators to murder. I mean, it’s not like anyone is believe this group of misfits, even if they’re not the only ones changed in the storm.

These kids are not particularly likable in the first episodes, but they are compelling and they grow on you. They’ve essentially been abandoned and, for better or worse, this is the first time they’ve belonged to a group As they learn to stand up for one another, it’s the first time that some of them have ever really made a commitment to anyone besides themselves. Comparisons to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Heroes” are inevitable, but this distinctly British take is more raw, less pulpy, and filled with anger and resentment. It’s also filled with sexuality, foul language, and bad behavior, along with some violence.

The show has completed three series in Britain with a fourth ready to run in the fall. This set of six episode collects the complete first series from 2009. Six episodes on two discs, plus the featurettes “The Making of Misfits,” interviews, and “Simon’s Films,” a collection of the videos made by the character in the show. DVD only.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation – Season One (Paramount)

In 1987 Patrick Stewart took the helm of the Federation flagship, the Starship Enterprise, as Captain Jean-Luc Picard and led his multi-racial crew where no one had gone before.

It was a choppy beginning to what became a seven-season voyage, with the writers still trying to chart their own course and find the characters. The feature-length pilot, “Encounter at Far Point,” leans heavily on the god-prankster Q (John de Lancie) and a moralizing tone that was awkward even at the time, and so many subsequent episodes feel like rehashes of the original “Star Trek. And in terms of the crew, Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) comes off as a new-age psychic spouting the obvious, First Officer Ryker (Jonathan) looks rather like a smug, grown-up frat boy (the beard came later), Data (Brent Spiner) is clearly the Spock substitute, and what’s with Worf’s (Michael Dorn) hair? Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) is no Bones McCoy but a veteran Starfleet officer and single mother with a bright son (Wil Wheaton) who makes the Captain uncomfortable. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby), the insecure security officer, didn’t even survive the debut season, killed off when the producers couldn’t figure out where to take the character. (To give the show all due credit, Crosby returned to much better effect in later episodes.)

But the season has its moments, especially in the later episodes of the season. “We’ll Always Have Paris” (where Picard runs into old love Michelle Phillips while trying to repair a rip in the fabric of the Universe), “Conspiracy” (a paranoid “body-snatchers” thriller that was unwisely wrapped up in a single episode but remains a rollercoaster trip), and the season finale “The Neutral Zone” (the Romulans return!). We were introduced to Lore, Data’s evil robot twin (not the most original of ideas) in “Datalore,” but also Picard’s film noir holodeck fantasy escape in “The Big Goodbye,” the first of many creative uses of the holodeck. Even Q got easier to take with time. The show finally got its space legs somewhere in the second season and hit warp speed in the third.

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