It’s Friday again, but this one is pretty special and marks a big milestone: Only seven more days until Star Wars: The Force Awakens! Awesome, right?

Sadly, you do have to wait just one more week for the awakening. You can do it! Until then, don’t worry. We’ve got a brand new episode of The Flickcast to help you pass the time.

Here’s what you can expect from this week’s episode: Star Wars! John Carpenter! The Thing! Escape from New York! Agents of SHIELD! Wayward Pines! The Dark Tower! and a whole lot more! Don’t worry, we’ll stop using exclamation points now.

Picks this week include Chris’ pick of the Syfy Channel series The Expanse and Joe’s pick of the AMC martial arts action drama Into The Badlands.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship, or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook, Google+ or via email.

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Marvel is all over this “Marvel Now” stuff and has been coming out with quite a few new comics. One upcoming comic is Matt Fraction’s FF. Here’s some more info on it plus a few preview pages:

Kicking off the all-new ongoing series from the blockbuster creative team of writer Matt Fraction and artist Michael Allred! With the Fantastic Four embarking on an epic journey, an all-new substitute Four, handpicked by original members – Ant-Man, She-Hulk, Medusa, and Miss Thing – stand ready to guard and protect Earth and the Future Foundation for four minutes! What could possibly go wrong?

Look for this one to hit stores and digital on November 28. Check out the preview pages after the break.

Film remakes are something that we’ve all grown accustomed to over the years but with two major releases last week both being remakes, Footloose and The Thing, have we reached the breaking point? Is no film safe from a remake? Is it only time before we see Howard the Duck remade with a CGI duck a la The Smurfs? The new pop-culture debate show GeekDown discuss the pitfalls and necessary evils of remaking classic, or not so classic, films.

Jonathan London of Geekscape.net sits in the guest chair this week to give his insight on why piracy is causing the massive influx of remakes in recent years.

The trailer for Joss Whedon’s Avengers hit the internet this week and fanboys around the world had to change their pants. We manage to calm ourselves for a few minutes and dissect the trailer to make sense of why Thor is about to bring the hammer down on Captain America, why there’s so much Tony Stark, and why Loki hates cars so much.

If that wasn’t enough for one show, Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer is also up for discussion. After a drawn out “will they, won’t they” situation worthy of any sitcom, BioWare finally announced that they will have multiplayer in next year’s hotly anticipated Mass Effect 3.

Is it the final step towards making the game of the year or is it just an afterthought to sell more $10 online passes? Find out what we think on this episode of GeekDown after the jump.

For those who thought this weekend would be a relapse into the mid 1980s with the Footloose remake and reboot/prequel of The Thing, they should have taken into account how awesome gigantic, fighting robots are.

That’s right, after receiving mixed reviews for the first week of the film’s release, Real Steel managed to steal the #1 spot once again, bringing in $16.3 million for the weekend, and a total worldwide gross of $73.8 million so far. Not totally unexpected for a movie starring Wolverine, Evangeline Lilly, AND robots.

Taking the #2 and #3 spots this weekend were the send-offs to the 1980s. Paramount’s Footloose pulled in $16.1, just inches behind the #1 spot, where as the prequel/reboot venture of The Thing from Universal managed to underwhelm audiences and only make $8.7 million.

Finally, the indie comedy The Big Year, starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin just squeaked into the top 10 with $$3.3 million. Hard to believe the film made that much considering the complete lack of a marketing strategy Fox made for it.

Is it a sequel? A prequel? A remake? A premake? Yes.

Director Matthijs van Heijningen, Jr. (yes, that is a real name) takes a lot of inspiration and most of the story from John Carpenter’s 1982 classic, the only ostensible difference being that this film takes place in the Norwegian camp immediately before the events of Carpenter’s.

The Norwegians unearth the titular Thing and call in some American paleontologists, among them the comely Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a young graduate student whose major qualification is that she provides a reason for the movie to be in English.

And from there, it plays out as you’d expect.