Director Michael Bay recently revealed that the next installment in his Transformers film franchise may be the last. As much as that news saddens us (not really), we were more intrigued by what little was revealed of the plot: the story will center around the U.S.-Soviet space race, which apparently involved our friends from Cybertron! This fact, combined with the knowledge that an ancient Cybertronian weapon resides in one of the great pyramids, makes us wonder: how long have the aliens been influencing our history? What other historical events could they have played a part in that we didn't know about? We scoured our high school textbooks and read between the lines to find the unexplained moments where shape-shifting techno-organic beings from outer space set the human race on a different course.

Is genetic engineering rigidly regulated because of what we're worried the modified creatures will do to us, or what we'll do to the creatures? That may be the question Cube director Vincenzo Natali asks in his new film, Splice. Or he may simply be asking the question, "What if two kind of messed-up geneticists went off the reservation?" Because that's what happens in this film, and the situation they've created for themselves spirals out of control in a way that is frightening, sad and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. But while some of the laughter comes from legitimately humorous moments, much of it comes from shock, as the film toes the line in several scenes then calmly strides right over it. Depending on how squeamish you are, the laughter may also manifest itself as squirming uncomfortably in your seat, and your feelings about the movie will have everything to do with whether or not that sounds like fun to you.

First of all, let's give a moment of thanks for scientific experiments, especially scientific experiments gone awry. Without them, movies would be much more boring. First of all, we would have very few superheroes: Spider-Man, the Hulk and the Fantastic Four wouldn't ever have existed. But even outside the world of superheroes, science is often the villain in movies, with cold logic warping the minds of the bad guys and reckless tampering with nature leading to bloodshed. The latter seems to be at play in the new genetic-modification horror film Splice, and we've been inspired to put together a list of some of our favorite scientific disasters in movies. Do not duplicate these tests!

An interesting piece of news coming out of Cannes is that future cop Judge Dredd will be returning to theaters. Those who remember Sylvester Stallone's 1995 flop judge it to be either an innocent action-movie pleasure or a guilty bastardization of a long-running British comic book, but either way it was not a successful film at the box office. With the director of Vantage Point, the writer of 28 Days Later and concept art by the co-creator of The Losers, not to mention a smaller production budget, it looks like this version has the potential to become a franchise, but the film needs to learn from history. We've come up with three laws the production needs to follow in order to avoid the stiff sentence the last movie got.

Since you all are soooo looking forward to a third Transformers movie (What will blow up this time? Will Shia LaBeouf meet robot God again? Tell us!), we thought we'd help share a particularly sexy bit of casting news: Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey will appear in TF3 as Megan Fox's boss. (Presumably, he's not also a transforming robot, but we've learned never to assume.) Now, the Transformers and Grey's Anatomy may not seem like a logical connection, but there's actually more than meets the eye here than just a cheap grab for more female audience members. No, Dempsey is perfect for the franchise, and here are five reasons why.

It's Earth Day, and while a large percentage of Americans will be thinking about saving the planet, an equally large percentage will be thinking about leaving it. Those are the ones who will be rushing out to buy the blockbuster sci-fi epic Avatar on Blu-ray or DVD, which releases today instead of on a traditional Tuesday. Living up to the film's ecological themes, the film's studio has promised to plant a million trees around the world, but they've pruned the DVD a bit, as it won't have any special features or bonuses. We talked to the movie's producer, Jon Landau, to find out the thinking behind the release, what we can expect in terms of Avatar DVDs down the road, and what's next for director James Cameron's Titanic.

It seems like George Lucas has finally grown tired of other people making fun of his creations, both with and without his permission, and has decided to do it himself. Lucasfilm will create an animated comedy series based on the Star Wars franchise, with the help of the Robot Chicken creators, who have already done two one-off parodies of their own. Although, when you think about it, it's amazing that anyone finds anything to joke about in this bleak, depressing series of films. The movies have light moments, sure, but they mostly deal with such ponderous topics as war, betrayal, genocide, patricide, incest, amputation, manipulation, bureaucracy, mental disability and dying in childbirth. If Star Wars can inspire this much comedy, then why not other depressing films? We came up with some comedic TV pitches for some of our favorite gloomy films and think we've got a few winners.

When we heard that plans were in the works for two sequels to the sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day, both starring Will Smith, one thought crossed our minds: How will they abbreviate it? The original was inexplicably shortened to "ID4," so the next one would be, what, "ID4:2"? "ID4B"? "ID5"? Then we realized, who said it had to take place on the Fourth of July? After all, what are the odds that a battle with aliens would take place on the same day of the year twice in a row, let alone three times? Slim to none. However, to maintain the appropriate level of patriotic fervor, it's gonna have to take place on some sort of patriotic holiday. After all, how else will we convince the rest of the world to celebrate our holidays unless aliens attack on them? Here are our suggestions for some red, white and blue sequels.

James Cameron's game-changing sci-fi epic Avatar comes out on DVD next month, but you may want to hold off on buying it, because the movie may get an extended version when it's re-released in IMAX 3-D this summer. After leaving those theaters early to make way for Alice in Wonderland, the studio wants to go back in there and make more money, and they're going to do that by having Cameron add in another ten minutes or so of footage. (They can't add too much more, due to projector restrictions.) Now, I don't know about you, but if I'm going to sit through another 2-and-a-half hours of Avatar to get ten more minutes of story, it'd better include one or more of the following deleted scenes.

Cementing his love of the offbeat, Tim Burton -- along with his 9 partner Timur Bekmambetov -- has announced that he will produce a film adaptation of the just-released book Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. The screenplay will be written by the book's author, Seth Grahame-Smith, who also wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is also being made into a movie (albeit one directed by Natalie Portman). While former presidents have been used as great comedic devices in past films, (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Dick), rarely do their biopics stray too far from the recorded histories. We'd love to see more movies like this, ones that take our favorite historical figures and have them do more exciting stuff than attend state dinners. Here are a few suggestions for former presidents.