Some Thoughts on The Last Jedi

There was a time in December of last year when I considered having an opinion about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But Star Wars has never really been my thing. It is my third favorite among the ‘Star’ science fiction franchises (behind Star Trek and Stargate). And though a generally entertaining movie, one that was not spectacular yet not completely undercut by its many flaws, it didn’t seem to merit more attention than I had already given it merely by viewing. But as I continued to notice the buzz around the film, the conflicting opinions of film critics and fans, the expanding presence of Star Wars as a cultural touchstone (something it had always been), a tendency in social media to dismiss legitimate criticisms of the film, and the recent suggestions by some that the film should be remade, I decided that examining The Last Jedi in context of these developments might be worthwhile after all.

There is an element of criticism directed at The Last Jedi that is totally lacking in any redemptive qualities, and this is the white, male fanboy determination that the latest round of Star Wars movies (The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi) represent some sort of cultural apocalypse due to the inclusion of protagonists who are other than white males. They aren’t even bright enough to say “we want to make our own Star Wars movie” as they prattle on about remaking The Last Jedi, a movie they apparently hated. We can dismiss these whiners without any consideration, and judge the adventures of Rey, Finn, Poe and Rose strictly on their own merits. Are these characters compelling on their own? Have the writers, directors and actors done them justice? It’s a mixed bag, as one would expect, but none of the flaws are inherently tied to the ethnic, gender or racial identities of the characters.

Still, it is an actual problem with the film that the characters lack much in the way of either development or consistency. But as I pointed out here, Star Wars really doesn’t do that. Rey, as the heart of the new trilogy, fares better than most in The Last Jedi, but seems to have lost some of her agency, ping-ponging between her relationship with Luke, and her attempts to get him to train her/help the resistance, and her relationship with Kylo Ren, first as a hated adversary, then as a possible redemption project, and finally as an adversary again. She’s either stuck on the island at the mercy of Luke’s obstinacy, or stuck on the Supremacy as a pawn of the conflict between Snoke and Kylo Ren, but she seems to have lost much of the initiative she had in The Force Awakens. She wraps strong, I guess, utilizing Jedi powers she hadn’t really been trained in to save the Resistance, but her character arc lacks impact.

When Finn awakens from his coma, his big character motivation is his obsession with Rey, finding her, protecting her, whatever. He meets Rose, another questionably motivated character, when he tries to desert a cause he only marginally ever joined. Do they need him? Why do they care? But because someone had to write something for Finn and Rose to do during this movie we get that abysmal journey to Canto Bight. Rose is partially motivated by the death of her sister (which we see in the film’s opening), but I’m not sure why she needed that extra incentive, given she was already part of the Resistance. Is refrigerating a female character more acceptable if it is done to motivate another female character? And apparently the only lesson she learned from her sister’s sacrifice was that making a sacrifice for the greater good is pointless, so she wrecks Finn’s moment at the end by knocking him off his suicide run at the mini Death Star.

Of the new characters, Poe fares the worst. He’s been part of the military structure of the Republic and the Resistance for years, but for some reason has no respect for the chain of command. So, he runs his little side op that eventually undermines Vice Admiral Holdo’s escape plan and gets some significant fraction of the remaining Resistance forces killed. Maybe that was the point of his character arc, don’t be a self-righteous douchebag. But once you make him that, you really can’t redeem him, can you? The opening scene of Episode IX should be the execution of Poe Dameron for treason. General Leia and Vice Admiral Holdo do a poor job of managing Dameron, and apparently enough other Resistance members that he is able to recruit them into his mutiny. Was this really the dumb story they wanted to tell? The actors do a fine job with the material that they are given, but much of that material is so poorly developed and downright stupid that no performance can make it good.

Luke Skywalker, of course, is another problem entirely. This is the character that accepted what Joseph Campbell referred to as The Call to Adventure way back before Star Wars movies had episode numbers. He joined Obi Wan on the journey to Alderaan. He initiated the rescue of Princess Leia. He blew up the Death Star. He followed Obi Wan’s instructions and sought out Yoda, who trained him in the ways of the Force. Then, upon learning that his friends were in jeopardy, abandoned that training to launch a one-man rescue mission. He joined with them again to rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt and volunteered to join the critical mission to Endor. He left that mission to protect his friends from Vader, and then facing the Emperor, invested his whole self into the belief that Darth Vader could be redeemed. Luke Skywalker was the ultimate optimist. Until The Last Jedi, when he just sort of gave up. And I might have bought that, if they had shown me why, but a few flashbacks to a burning temple and attempted murder don’t cut it. You have to earn such a drastic alteration of a character’s wants and motivations, and the producers of The Last Jedi come nowhere close to doing that. And even then, while you might have convinced me that he would abandon the Jedi Order, or the Republic, or the galaxy as a whole, I will never believe that Luke would not run to help the princess the moment that she called.

I don’t come to a property like Star Wars (or even Star Trek, Discovery producers) wanting my expectations subverted. I come wanting to watch a damn Star Wars movie. If you are going to subvert my expectations, you need to do a hell of a better job giving me something worthwhile. If you are going to have characters make uncharacteristic choices, you need to lay a foundation that explains the change. And don’t hide the competence of new characters to force me to identify with ‘heroes’ that turn out to be wrong. Vice Admiral Holdo driving that cruiser down the Supremacy’s throat was a spectacular display, but it didn’t make up for the missteps with her character made along the way.

If the producers of the new Star Wars films had really wanted to do something different they wouldn’t have fallen back on that old light-side/dark-side Republic/Empire dichotomy in the first place. Renaming the Empire the 1st Order and calling the Rebel Alliance the Resistance doesn’t really change the nature of the conflict. It doesn’t matter whether or not the discount Emperor calls himself a Sith or the Emperor or the Supreme Leader, he’s essentially the same guy, creepy old dude tempting force adept youngsters into joining the dark side. The fact that they are essentially just recasting the old conflict, the endless Star War of light against dark, proves that this is the only thing Star Wars can be about. So, trying to nuance some kind of Grey Jedi idea wouldn’t work anyway. Once the tension between light and dark, Jedi and Sith disappears, Star Wars doesn’t have anything to be about. If it did they could have left the Republic intact and have these new heroes face some other challenge. This is why Star Trek is the superior product. It can be about science, exploration, conflict, culture, communication and a myriad of other topics. Star Wars is and always has been just a cartoon about Good vs. Evil.

Book Review: Artemis by Andy Weir

One gets the impression, with his sophomore effort, that Andy Weir, author of the bestselling novel The Martian, is likely to only ever write one sort of book, a meticulously researched technothriller, set in space, that lurches paper-thin characters from one disaster to another. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Much like John Clancy, with his more earth-bound technothrillers (starting with The Hunt for Red October), Weir has created a new sub-genre of fiction that we didn’t know we needed. And Artemis proves that he is still its master.

Artemis is about Jasmine “Jazz” Bashara, a petty criminal living on the moon at some unspecified time in the future. Why people are living on the moon, in a collection of domes that form the city of Artemis, is never quite explained, but Jazz spends most of her time smuggling cigars and other contraband while trying to earn enough money to pay off a personal debt. When a wealthy customer recruits her to sabotage the competition, which would allow him to take control of local aluminum production, things inevitably go bad, leading to murder, mayhem and a technically detailed “heist” that will set things right and save Artemis.

One criticism that Weir probably heard often in response to The Martian was that his characters were too good. They were too noble, and too component, and just all around too decent. Characters need flaws, because we all have them, and complete fictional characters should cast an accurate reflection of the human condition. Weir’s response to this criticism was to make the main character of his next book a criminal, and to give less-than-honorable motivations to many of his secondary characters. But his approach to characters has a sort of check-the-box result that lacks any real depth. Jazz has a history, a family, relationships and ambitions that all seem to point to the existence of a well-drawn character, but that for some reason don’t really add up to one. She has her flaws, almost painted in big letters across her forehead, but that doesn’t make her a more well-developed character than Mark Watney (The Martian). And that’s okay. Nobody reads an Andy Weir novel looking for deep characterization. They come for geeky space tech and the thrills of the adventure.

Andy Weir, like his characters, brings a great deal of technical competence to his work. Artemis, like The Martian before it, is an eminently readable and well-paced novel. The plot is logically constructed and leads to an ultimately satisfying conclusion. It offers nothing in the way of a profound statement on humanity or our place in the universe, but it is a very entertaining and engaging piece of fiction. A-

Binge Watch: Lost in Space Edition

There is always a risk involved in revisiting the past. Too often you find that the things you thought were great when you were young just don’t stand the test of time. This can be especially true of the things you liked as a child. Case in point, Lost in Space. The campy 1960’s TV show about a family, their arm waving robot, and a wayward saboteur named Dr. Smith seemed much more entertaining in the 1960s than it did decades later, or more accurately differently entertaining. What once seemed like a great science fiction adventure became a hilariously campy study in Jonathan Harris’ chewing up of the papier-mâché sets with his over-the-top performance as the aforementioned doctor. The series didn’t hold up nearly as well as Star Trek. But in Hollywood these days everything that goes around eventually come around again, and like the Lost in Space movie from the 1990’s starring Joey from Friends, this idea has come around again, this time as a Netflix series.

Lost in Space, like the series that inspired it, is about the Robinsons, John (Toby Stephens), Maureen (Molly Parker), Judy (Taylor Russell), Penny (Mina Sundwall) and Will (Maxwell Jenkins), a family of space colonists who lose their way while en route to a colony at Alpha Centauri. Of course, the original series was not all that original, being based on Johann David Wyss’ novel The Swiss Family Robinson. The colonial expedition, composed in this version of several families (each assigned a Jupiter style spacecraft), falls victim to an unplanned disaster, sending several of the smaller ships (including the Robinson’s Jupiter 2) down to the surface of a picturesque but hostile planet. The next ten episodes find the Robinsons, their fellow colonists, an alien robot, and the felonious Dr. Smith, trying to survive all the hazards the planet can throw at them while trying to find a way to get back to the colony ship Resolute and Alpha Centauri.

Lost in Space is almost great television. It is certainly good, but the potential to be great gets lost in its tendency to indulge in the excessive jeopardization of its characters. Often it seems as if they are thrown into dangerous situations just for the hell of it, and having characters get dragged toward the edge of a cliff by a half-inflated windblown weather balloon, or driving into a tarpit and sinking, begins to feel a bit contrived. That said, the series is a solid science fiction adventure. Like most televised (and filmed) science fiction, actual science takes a back seat to the needs of the plot, but this version does better on that count than the previous incarnations. The plot goes in circles that largely involve finding enough fuel to get the Jupiter spacecrafts off the surface to rendezvous with the Resolute. The sudden pending uninhabitability of the planet that adds a ticking clock to that endeavor. The “I have a solution, there is another problem” pattern, like the jeopardy issue, weakens the story by playing out a little too often. This was probably a five-to-seven-episode story arc that had to be stretched out too far to fill the ten episode order.

The best thing about the new Lost in Space is the characters, and the underlying performances that support them. Maureen Robinson is no longer just the mom, although she is the center of the family, but is a lead scientist and planner of the expedition. She’s definitely the brains behind the operation, and her excessive competence might have gotten annoying if not for an outstanding performance by Molly Parker. Toby Stevens also does a good job playing against her as the estranged husband John. That estrangement seemed a little too contrived at first, but it played out well by the end of the season. All of the Robinson children are well cast, but Mina Sundwall stands out as Penny, bringing a credible amount of teen rebellion and angst to the role. Parker Posey, who plays the gender flipped Dr. Smith, is, well, Parker Freakin Posey. The role is more understated than Harris’ original, and the backstory has been significantly altered, but those moments when Dr. Smith is being duplicitous and manipulative are brilliant. Don West’s (Ignacio Serricchio) backstory has also been revised. The actor is competent, but I’m not sure that the discount Han Solo transformation was all that effective. The Robot is also given a different origin in this series, as an alien AI with a dark past that befriends a lost Will. Many questions about the robot remain unanswered at the end of the season, but the design is well done, and the robot’s delivery of the “Danger, Will Robinson” line is chilling. As for the series, Lost in Space is not everything that it could have been, but overall it is an entertaining addition to the Netflix lineup.

Movie Review: A Quiet Place

The first trailer that I saw for John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place did what all good movie trailers are supposed to do, put the movie on the list of films I wanted to see. The concept presented, one of people being hunted by an unknown predator who tracks its prey through sound, thereby requiring the characters to avoid speaking or making any noise, seemed to offer something more interesting and complex than the average horror thriller. But the finished product, while certainly competent and entertaining, tilts more toward the average than the interesting and complex.

A Quiet Place opens post-apocalypse, with a family of five rummaging quietly through a wrecked and abandoned store for medicines and supplies. On the way back to the farm the youngest child activates the world’s noisiest space shuttle toy and is quickly devoured by a creature. From there the film advances over a year, and finds the family living the peaceful life (literally) on their farm. The father, Lee Abbot (played by director Krasinski) works to maintain the farm and its defenses. In his spare time, he sends Morse code signals on various radio frequencies and works on fixing a hearing aid for his daughter. The mom, Evelyn (Emily Blunt) focuses on standard gender roles involving laundry, food and being pregnant, but she’s such a badass later in the film that it doesn’t matter. Daughter Regan (Millicent Simmonds) is deaf (as is the actress) and feeling guilty about letting her brother keep a noisy toy without making sure he didn’t take the batteries. Son Marcus (Noah Jupe) does math and reluctantly learns survival skills. An array of video screens and whiteboards in the basement tell us little about the predatory creatures other than that they are blind, hunt through sound and are armored. When things get noisy, mayhem ensues.

As horror thrillers go, A Quiet Place is certainly above average. The characters don’t break any new ground, but are well-written, and within the confines of the script (it’s practically a silent movie) the acting is excellent. Emily Blunt may be out of John Krasinski’s league in a number of ways, but he manages to keep up. The characters make mistakes that put them in jeopardy but are not particularly stupid in the standard horror movie way. While you get the impression that the film might explore topics related to guilt, loss and the pressures related to being forced to live in silence, it spends the majority of its time being a creature feature. Although their origins are unexplained, once we get a good look at these things, they are not camera shy, and the design is effective. Tension is well-developed throughout, and some of the individual scenes evoke genuine dread and terror. While all stories tend to be composed of coincidences, there are more ‘what are the odds’ moments in this film than were likely necessary. But that may only be a problem if you think too much. Otherwise, even though it doesn’t deeply explore the psychological depths that the story offered, A Quiet Place is still a good movie and a great scare. B+

Complain of Thrones

Here there be Spoilers!

For the last few years, after the season finale of Game of Thrones has aired, I have usually written a post to this blog complaining about the quality of the most recent season (read Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!, When Good Television Goes Mediocre, and Why I’m Done With Game of Thrones (On Television Anyway)), and calling into question whether or not I will watch the next. This post will carry on with part of that tradition, as I am here to complain about some of the flaws of season seven, but I will not pretend that I have any intention to skip over season eight, the series’ last. In this far, I may as well go to the end.

It was never certain that I would watch season seven of Game of Thrones, not as it aired anyway, but I had already subscribed to Sling TV earlier in the year in order to watch Fargo and Better Call Saul, and figured I’d just extend my channel lineup for a couple of months to include HBO. That would also give me chance to check out WestWorld. And more important, it would allow me to again watch Game of Thrones on Sunday nights.

Season seven is probably the worst season of Game of Thrones. It is also, paradoxically, one of the most entertaining. The so-called Loot Train Attack was something of a cinematic masterpiece. But much of the rest of the season seems to have been about checking off boxes. Stark reunion 1. Check. Stark reunion 2. Check. Finish off Dorne story-line. Check. Finish off Tyrell story-line. Check. Stark meets Targaryen. Check. The fate of Littlefinger. Check. Let’s just get all of this shit out of the way so we can focus on the end. The more boxes they routinely checked off, the more muted the impact of each of these resolutions became. Not that it wasn’t satisfying to see Littlefinger get his throat cut, but the drama leading up to it was manipulative and trite, and his end was hardly worthy of his Machiavellian genius.

Other characters didn’t fare much better. Tyrion hasn’t been a fraction as interesting as he was when they were writing scripts from the source material, even if Peter Dinklage continues to put in a great performance. Daenerys alternated between channeling her father, Mad King Aerys, and swooning over Jon Snow, with only brief moments of queenly behavior. And Snow, nothing if not consistent, was as blandly honorable as ever. He also did a lot of stupid things without consequence, at least to himself. Between them, Jon and Daenerys proved very useful to the Night King, delivering the dragon he needed to destroy the Wall.

Of course, it is impossible to ignore the various flaws in the storytelling, Euron Greyjoy’s perfect ambush of Yara’s fleet, the chess game precision of Lannister armies abandoning Casterly Rock and arriving at Highgarden, the supersonic speeds of ravens and dragons and Gendry. The US military rarely delivers air power as absurdly quickly as Dany’s dragons appeared beyond the wall. And then there is the whole Wight Dragon problem. It seems the Night King set a trap, but how did he know Jon Snow would venture beyond the wall, or that Daenerys would mount a rescue mission? How many events did he manipulate to ensure that Dany and her dragons would be in Westeros in order for him to kill and turn one? Did he have any plan to get past the Wall in the event his spear missed its mark? I’m sure the dragon vs. dragon fights in season eight will be spectacular, but I have a feeling that the writers haven’t really thought this through as well as they should have.

I can’t say that I didn’t see this coming, the continued deterioration of what was once an excellent program. I wrote three whole posts about it after all. But I guess the quality of those early seasons keeps me coming back, even in the face of such overwhelming mediocrity. I want to know who will survive, who will die and if anyone in a place as fucked up as Westeros is ever going to get a happy ending.

Book Review: Say Nothing by Brad Parks

Say Nothing, Brad Parks' first standalone novel outside of the Carter Ross mystery series, is a fast paced, compelling thriller that delivers an unexpected emotional impact. The novel starts with the kidnapping of the twin children of Federal Judge Scott Sampson, a crime orchestrated to force a particular verdict in a particular case. After Sampson performs as requested on a test case, his son is released, but his daughter remains in the hands of the kidnappers, leverage for a ruling on a case involving a pharmaceutical breakthrough. As Sampson and his wife Allison try to maintain a façade of normalcy, they start looking closely at the people around them. No one is above suspicion, not even each other.

Say Nothing is set in southeastern Virginia, in locations ranging from the Middle Peninsula to downtown Norfolk. Parks handles the setting effectively, but never really evokes a sense of the place. The novel isn’t afraid to stretch credibility, sometimes to the breaking point, and like many modern novelist, Parks likes to throw one or two more obstacles into the path of his protagonist than are strictly necessary for the story. He also interrupts a strong first-person narrative with short one-to-two page third-person chapters focusing on the kidnappers, which really don’t add anything substantive. We get all the terror we need from the scenario through the messages and ‘gifts’ sent by the kidnappers. In spite of these minor flaws, Say Nothing offers a well written narrative, compelling characters, and a satisfying resolution. B

Movie Review: Hidden Figures

Of all the unsung heroes of America’s heroic efforts to win the space race in the 1960’s, few are as unsung as the African-American women who did the math that computers were not yet ready to do, calculating the trajectories and orbits of space capsules. With the publication of Margot Lee Shetterly's Hidden Figures, and now the release of Theodore Melfi’s eponymous film, the extraordinary story of the vital role these women played in launching American astronauts into orbit and toward the moon has finally been told.

Hidden Figures focuses on three of these women, each of whom would go on to long and distinguished careers with NASA, Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), a math prodigy from an early age, Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer), an unrecognized supervisor who becomes a computer expert, and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe), a young woman with the then unheard of ambition (for an African American woman) to become an engineer. Of course, in addition to actually doing the hard work required to get these jobs done, these women had to deal with the racism and sexism that was still a pervasive feature of American society in the 60’s. Johnson is the primary protagonist, and we follow as she is assigned to a work group that is trying to calculate the trajectory that will allow John Glenn to become the first American to orbit the Earth. Working with a group of people who barely recognize her existence, she manages to create the math that allows Glenn to succeed.

Hidden Figures has a rather light tone, which works well in telling a story about the triumph of intellect and hard work over prejudice, and highlighting the absurdity of rules that segregated restrooms and coffeepots. The performances are in line with the tone, but uniformly excellent. The leads have great chemistry, and Kevin Coster, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons and Mahershala Ali all excel in supporting roles. Although never heavy handed, Hidden Figures deals honestly with the American legacy of racism and oppression, and shows how talented and capable individuals overcame that legacy to achieve great things. A-

Movie Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

With the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the third coming of the Star Wars saga has broken the prequel curse placed on the franchise by creator George Lucas. And although none of the marketing for this movie ever used the P-word to describe it, the chronological setting, in advance of the events of the original Star Wars (later subtitled A New Hope), does indeed make the film a prequel. While this film does not reclaim the high-water mark Star Wars established with The Empire Strikes Back, it does prove that the new crop of producers are not likely to sink to the depths of Episodes One through Three.

Rogue One is the story of a McGuffin, those original Death Star plans that Princess Leia sent down to Tatooine inside the memory banks of R2D2 at the beginning of Star Wars, an event that pulled a farm boy named Luke and a retired Jedi named Obi Wan into the rebellion against the evil Galactic Empire. This film tells the story of how those plans were stolen in the first place. Jyn Erso (Felicty Jones), a criminal of some sort who was separated from her parents at a young age (when her father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), was forcefully recruited into the Empire’s Death Star project), is sprung from an imperial prison by the rebels and recruited into a mission to find her father. The rebels want some information on a rumored new super-weapon that the Empire is about to deploy. Some of them also want Galen dead for his role in the development of this weapon, but they don’t tell Jyn that. The path to the plans lead through a rebel extremist (and Jyn’s former guardian) named Saw Gerrara (Forest Whitaker), a rain soaked Imperial Base, and finally a planet that looks like Hawaii. We know somewhat how the story will end, because Star Wars.

Rogue One has the redeeming quality of being fairly smart for a Star Wars movie, much smarter than last year’s The Force Awakens, which treated the concepts of both space and time with singular contempt. Sure, it is still a space fantasy, but at least it all makes sense within the context of the Star Wars universe. Rogue One focuses more on the war aspect of Star Wars, and features harrowing sequences of ground, air, and space combat. The film introduces us to a whole cast of new characters, but fails to develop them significantly. For all of the dumbness and repetition, at least The Force Awakens had heart. There is a lot of fan service in Rogue One, and some of it may be pointless, but it wouldn’t have been a problem if the characters had been developed better. But for anyone who is a fan of the series, or just enjoys a good science fiction adventure, Rogue One provides plenty of entertainment. B

The Wright Brothers: Book Review

The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough, tells the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneers who solved the puzzle of powered flight and changed the world forever. McCullough, best known for his lengthy biographies John Adams and Truman, delivers a briefer book to tell the story of the Wright Brothers, but it is no less compelling or lacking in the detail one has come to expect from his works.

The Wright Brothers provides the obligatory look at the Wright’s early life in Dayton, Ohio, introducing the reader to their family, including a mother who died young, their father, Bishop Milton Wright, and their sister, Katherine. The book also briefly covers their entrepreneurial efforts, the bicycle repair and manufacturing shop that helped pay for their aviation experiments, but focuses mainly on their efforts to design and build a flying machine. The Wright’s were meticulous experimenters, working with gliders at Dayton and later at Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was at Kitty Hawk that they would achieve their goal, powered flight, but the story didn’t end there. Skepticism that the Wrights had accomplished anything at Kitty Hawk followed them for many years, but they knew they had to perfect their techniques and engineering. They were unwilling to rush through their experiments, and eventually their patience and attention to detail paid off. Their demonstration flights in France and Fort Meyer, Virginia became the stuff of legend. 

Like his books on Truman and Adams, McCullough has again produced the definitive biography of his chosen subject, providing a well-researched and informative history of the birth of powered flight and the men who perfected it. The Wright Brothers tells an inspiring story of the triumph of American ingenuity.

Where Everyone Has Gone Before

Much in the same way that Star Trek Into Darkness lacked any genuine darkness, so does the latest film in the rebooted Star Trek franchise fail to live up to its title. There is little new, or original, or beyond in Star Trek Beyond, but it does have the saving grace of not being quite as stupid as its predecessor. It also manages to have moments that are truer to the heart of the original Star Trek series than any in the two previous films. But while these moments are evocative of the original, they also lack much in the way of originality.

Star Trek Beyond opens on an Enterprise three years into its five year mission, and like the prime universe James Kirk in the episode The Paradise Syndrome, NuKirk (Chris Pine) has grown a little weary of his mission, so much so that he is considering transferring to a vice-admiralty position on a shiny new star base called Yorktown. In a scene mirroring one in The Wrath Of Khan (a film that the new productions have been obsessive about restaging one scene at a time) Kirk and McCoy (Karl Urban) have a drink and discuss birthdays and career options. In the original Kirk was lamenting the promotion that had taken him out of the center seat, while in Beyond it’s the captaining he wishes to escape. The film might have broken new ground with the introduction of Sulu’s (John Cho) new status as a gay man, but for Star Trek, that was on the cutting edge of promoting tolerance and acceptance of different people all the way back in the 1960’s, this could qualify as a case of ‘too little, too late.’

Word of a ship in distress leads Kirk and the Enterprise crew through an uncharted nebula to the planet Altamid, where they are attacked by a swarm of small ships that quickly rip the Enterprise into pieces, leaving most of her crew dead or captured. Kirk reaches the surface with Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and the alien captain who had requested assistance, while Spock (Zachary Quinto) and McCoy crash a swarm ship they had appropriated into a different location. Scotty (Simon Pegg), the only other crew member not captured by the aliens, runs into an orphan/scavenger named Rey Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) who promises to help him locate the crew if he will assist her with some engineering problems. Sulu and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) are prisoners of the alien antagonist, Krall (Idris Elba), who is looking for the component of an “ultimate” weapon that was stored on the Enterprise, and that Kirk was able to hide before leaving the ship.

The film follows each group as they overcome injuries and obstacles to reunite and figure out away to stop Krall. Quinto and Urban as Spock and McCoy prove the most adept at channeling the essence of the original characters. Jaylah leads Scotty to her home, the long lost Federation starship Franklin, which is repaired, and as the crew are reunited becomes a means of both escape and of thwarting Krall’s plans to use his new weapon against Yorktown. There are a ton of continuity problems with the Franklin that might annoy hardcore fans, but the real problem is how uninteresting the whole story is. There is a twist on Krall’s identity that doesn’t have much impact. His whole beef with the Federation is rather vague, and is not significantly clarified when we learn who he is. Elba does as much as he can with the part, but even with the twist there is not much to the role. Jaylah might have been a more interesting character if we’d not already seen an orphan scavenger with superior technical and fighting skills six months ago in another movie.

Of course by Hollywood Summer Tentpole Blockbuster logic the film has to end with massive property damage, this time inflicted upon the over-designed Federation Starbase Yorktown, the home to millions of beings. Yorktown looks very cool, but the station’s M. C. Escheresque design is neither practical nor likely possible. I won't spoil the resolution but nothing very original happens. Some of the visuals even reminded me of Guardians of the Galaxy. At the best it is all adequately entertaining if inevitably forgettable. But it was nice to see a glimpse of the old Star Trek again, even if for the most part it was buried under the layers of noise that pass for film making in Hollywood these days.

Alien Motivations

I finally got around to seeing Independence Day: Resurgence, the sequel no one asked for to Roland Emmerich’s 1996 alien invasion/catastrophe flick Independence Day. Emmerich is back as director, with Jeff Goldblum and other actors reprising roles they played in the original. It was nice to see Brent Spiner getting work again, but it was evident that Will Smith was wise to steer clear of this particular project. The film’s five writers did not generate an original or intelligent idea between them. Independence Day: Resurgence may be one of the stupidest movies ever made, but then stupid has never been a crime in Hollywood.

You don’t need to look far to find the stupid early in this film, but if you wait long enough you find out that the reason the aliens have returned and parked a 3,000-mile spaceship over the Atlantic basin is to drill a tiny little hole down through the layers of our planet to extract our molten core. Why they need a 3,000-mile spaceship to drill a single hole into a single spot along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is never explained, but we are told that they likely want to use the energy of our planetary core to power their spaceships and industry. While it was just generally stupid for them to have traveled across the universe to strip mine our planet of natural resources, the motivation given for the original invasion in ’96, coming all that way to use the core of the Earth as an energy source is a very specifically stupid thing to do.

Of course the core of the Earth has a great deal of energy, and even tapping into near surface level energies of the planet makes a lot of sense for those of us already living here. But the universe, the universe that these aliens traveled through at a great cost of energy and resources, is full of bright and shiny nuclear reactors called stars, the weakest of which generate many times the energy that you can find inside the Earth. And even if you are too stupid to figure out how to utilize that energy (not something likely in a species that has mastered interstellar travel) there are plenty of other places in the universe to find it. Gas giant planets like Jupiter generate enormous levels of energy. There is no deficiency of energy in the universe that would make coming to Earth to drill a tiny hole to tap our core a reasonable alternative.

But what about the original premise of the Independence Day franchise, that the aliens came to Earth to strip our planet of its natural resources. Again, the universe is a big damned place, full of rocks, gas, dust, asteroids, comets and uninhabited planets that are composed of the various naturally occurring elements that we find on Earth. Even the most rapacious consumers of these raw materials would find enough available within their own solar system, or nearby uninhabited systems to satiate their appetites. But even if they did decide to drop into our neighborhood looking for such resources, they could probably more easily mine them out of the asteroid belt, the planets Mars, Venus and Mercury, or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, than they could from the Earth, a planet that has already been mined of much of its natural resources by the natives. Why bother with an invasion when you can take what you want without a fight?

Of course other fictional aliens have invaded Earth for other things, such as water, breeding stock and tasty, tasty humans. Water is again a relatively common material in the universe, and if you were coming to our solar system to find some you might try catching snowballs in the Oort cloud or draining the seas of Europa. And while Mars may need women and To Serve Man may be a cookbook, it is not likely that any aliens would be biochemically compatible enough with us to make either mating or digesting possible. It just wouldn’t work. So there really isn’t anything on Earth that is unique enough or useful enough to any alien species to justify an invasion. But who knows, if they’ve been getting old episodes of the Jerry Springer show they might just do so on principle.

The Lobster: Movie Review

The Lobster may not be the weirdest movie I’ve ever seen, but it is surely in contention to be one of the top five. Directed and co-written by Yorgos Lanthimos, the film stars Colin Farrell as a man who has been dumped by his wife. This, in and of itself, might not be so unusual, except that Farrell’s character (David) lives in some bizarre alternate universe where being single is not tolerated. He is sent to a hotel like prison where he has 45 days to find love or be turned into the animal of his choice. He chooses a lobster because of their longevity and lifelong fertility, though we’re never given a clue as to why the latter may be that important to him. Life in the hotel is very regimented, and does nothing to inspire romance among its residents. A disastrous attempt to hook up with a ‘heartless’ woman leads David to escape into the forest, where he meets up with a group of ‘Loners’ that includes a woman played by Rachel Weisz.

This satire is not about human relationships per se, but is rather about the social pressures and traditions that exist within human societies regarding when, who, and how people should enter into romantic relationships. The movie is very on point with its criticisms, showing us not only a social order obsessed with forcing people into relationships, but also a counter culture that is equally obsessed with enforcing singleness. The problem is not that the film doesn’t make its point, it’s that it does so in a manner that undermines its satiric qualities. It lacks all subtlety and grace. There are moments of jarring violence, some that you can see coming a mile away, that make the film hard to watch. None of the characters have much depth, although that is one point of the film, that the superficial qualities people may share are not a good foundation for a relationship. In spite of strong performances by Farrell, Weisz and the rest of the cast, the film lacks emotional depth and is too heavy handed to be effective as satire. C+

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice - What the Flick Reviews

Below are two video reviews of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice by the reviewers over at What The Flick. The first review is spoiler free, but the second is not, so choose wisely. I may eventually share some of my own thoughts on the film, but for now these reviews are as close to my own opinion as any.

Spoilers Below:

10 Cloverfield Lane: Movie Review

10 Cloverfield Lane is not a sequel to J.J. Abrams' 2008 movie about an American Kaiju (read giant monster) attacking New York City. In fact, outside of the title and a few little JJ verse references (there is a gas station named Kelvin, a name scattered throughout his oeuvre), this film has little in common with Cloverfield. Of course the title kind of spoils what it does have in common, since not knowing what was going on outside of the bunker might’ve made things a bit more interesting.

10 Cloverfield Lane is about Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a woman on the run from her boyfriend until an auto accident sidelines her into an underground shelter belonging to Howard (John Goodman). Howard explains that he found her in her overturned vehicle and brought her to his shelter to save her life, since there was some kind of unspecified attack (chemical? nuclear? biological?) that had rendered the world above uninhabitable. Unsure of Howard’s credibility, Michelle spends most of the movie working on one escape plan or another, and ultimately escapes from the bunker to discover the truth, a truth in the title that doesn’t leave much room for suspense.

The big problem with 10 Cloverfield Lane is that it doesn’t know what kind of movie it wants to be, a tense psychological thriller about a young woman trapped in a bunker with an ambiguously threatening John Goodman, or a post apocalyptic monster movie. It shines at both in moments, based largely on the performances of Goodman, Winstead and John Gallagher, Jr. (as third wheel survivor Emmet), but you never really get over the feeling that you are watching two different movies. B-

Deadpool: Movie Review

Deadpool is a superhero/comic book movie that dares to be different, except when it doesn’t, which is most of the time. Based on the Marvel Comic book, ostensibly inhabiting the same universe as The X-Men (who are present) and The Avengers (different studio), Deadpool is the story of wiseass mercenary Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) who seeks radical treatment for advanced stage cancer only to emerge with Wolverine style healing powers and a serious case of the uglies. Motivated by revenge against the generic slimy British guy who cured/cursed him and the need to rescue his girlfriend, Deadpool dons his red and black suit and kills a whole lot of people. He does this in the most graphically violent way possible, and unlike most comic book movies there in no sanitation of the violence, language or sex. This movie earns its R rating. It also manages to be funny, and is full of self-referential moments and Deadpool’s trademark shattering of the fourth wall, which is all fairly entertaining.

Warning: this redband trailer contains violence and language.

But Deadpool never manages to swim out of the shallow end with regards to character or story. Outside of the title character almost everyone else feels like a prop. The prop villain. The prop girlfriend. The prop superhero sidekicks. They all have their little moments, but none of them ever add up to much. Leslie Uggams cameos as Blind Al, Wilson’s sightless roommate, but for some reason she gets less screen time than his pointless bartender buddy Weasel. And the story follows the same standard superhero origins outline we’ve seen dozens of times now, even leading to the big final showdown set piece where the hero saves the day. Sure the budget must’ve been too small to destroy an entire city, but they still manage to cause significant property damage, not because that was remotely the best way to conclude the story, but because all of these productions are trapped in that ‘massive property damage’ paradigm. So for all of the boundaries it pushes with regards to violence and language Deadpool only ever manages to be a standard superhero/comic book movie. B

Riffling Through the X-Files

I was never a fan of The X-Files. I rarely watched any of the episodes during its first run on FOX and had only seen a handful as reruns or on DVD in the intervening years. But with a new season of six episodes scheduled to debut on January 24th, I embarked on an effort to catch up with the series on Netflix late last year. I was aided in my endeavor by this Reddit page: The Essential X-Files, which lists the episodes that are most important for understanding the mythological arc of the show, the one dealing with the alien conspiracy and Fox Mulder’s search for his sister, who had been abducted as a child. The list also features some of the ‘monster of the week’ episodes not related to the mytharc.

It is probable that my lack of interest in The X-Files stems from a certain dislike for Flying Saucer stories. Sure there is a lot of science fiction available that stretches scientific credibility, but none ever did so as much for me as the idea that intelligent aliens would travel vast distances across the universe to flatten crops, mutilate cows and probe rectums. And why are the aliens always naked? Who explores a possibly hostile environment without a protective suit of some sort?

Another factor in my lack of interest in the series came from a general impression of the two main characters and how they interacted with each other. Mulder, the true believer, never seemed much in awe of the fantastic things he was seeing. Scully, the eternal skeptic, never wavered in her stance no matter how much evidence she was presented (at least not until the later seasons). My imagined interaction between these two always played out like this:

*Fantastic SFX UFO hovers in the sky* 

Mulder (deadpan): Look, Scully, a UFO.

Scully (equally deadpan): I’m sure there’s a valid scientific explanation for this, Mulder. 

*UFO flies away*

This perception may not have been entirely fair, although now that I have watched a considerable number of episodes I can’t say that I was that far off on my original assessment.

I did mange to finish The Essential X-Files, watching all the way to the last episode of the ninth season. I found enough of the series entertaining that I was willing to go to the end, even if the last four seasons were rather weak. The series leads, David Duchovny (Mulder) and Gillian Anderson (Scully), did an excellent job portraying their respective characters, as did the supporting cast from The Smoking Man to The Lone Gunmen. I found Scully’s occasional lapses into poetic monologue rather overwrought and laughable, which I assume was not the point. The show did have a good sense of humor, especially in the ‘monster of the week’ episodes, although not enough of one to keep from taking itself too seriously. I can’t say that I was particularly satisfied with the resolutions to the questions about Mulder’s sister, Scully’s cancer, the alien conspiracy, the super soldiers or Scully’s baby. Like Lost it was another series that drew out these long deep storylines only to resolve them in the most trivial way possible. Although my experience with this series does not make me regret missing it the first time around, I’m glad to be prepared for the upcoming season, which I won’t miss.

Yet now I have another beef with this series. I wonder how much it has contributed to the rise of conspiracy theorists and anti-science propaganda. It wasn’t just that the series promoted the idea of being open minded about unexplained phenomena, but that it posited an active conspiracy by governments and the scientific community to distort facts and deceive the populace. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be vigilant about potential conspiracies to deceive the public (Iraq War), just that the series’ may have inspired the people behind the 911 truther movement, various false flag paranoias, the anti-vaccine movement and climate change denial. Of course the rise of the Internet as a resource contributed more to this nonsense than The X-Files, but the series probably provided inspiration for many of the crackpots out there looking to advance their loony version of the truth.

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

My original intention for the first post of 2016, marking the rebranding of my blog from Tabula Rasa to Four Mile Circus, was to write a critique of director JJ Abrams’ questionable understanding of outer space. Abrams has the distinction of directing movies in two of the largest space-based film franchises ever conceived (Star Trek and Star Wars), and has done so with very little understanding or respect for it as a setting. But apparently since the science in Star Wars has always been atrocious (and it has been) Abrams’ scientific failures are off limits when discussing the film. That is some of the feedback floating around on Twitter anyway. It is still my intention to write about the topic, but I will probably wait a month or two until The Force Awakens has become less of a sacred cow. 

Overall, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a solid Star Wars movie. It may be the most inherently Star Warsish Star Wars movie since the original, as The Empire Strikes Back aspired to be greater than the first and all of the other sequels and prequels aspired to be less. The new characters, scavenger Rey, ex-Storm Trooper Finn and pilot Poe Dameron, are paper thin and questionably motivated but great fun, as are the returning characters of Han, Leia, Chewbacca and the droids. The plot has been wholly recycled, down to the droid carrying important data, a planet destroying superweapon and a visit to an alien filled tavern (although I always felt that it was somewhat unfair to declare that no movie could ever feature a bar filled with aliens without being accused of ripping off Star Wars). The villains of the piece, genocidal maniacs based on their actions, never generate much in the way of fear or intimidation. Darth Emo is in no way as complex or compelling as people think he is. Tantrums do not equal conflict. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a fun and fast paced film, but it really doesn’t add up to much more than that. B+

The Martian: Book Review

The Martian, by Andy Weir, a science fact heavy science fiction novel about an astronaut abandoned on Mars, started life as a self-published freebie available on the Internet. In October it will debut as a science fiction blockbuster film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. In between, one of those unlikely ‘self-published book becomes bestselling novel’ things happened that had everyone talking.

The Martian of the title is Mark Watney, an American astronaut blown away from his crewmates in the middle of a dust storm, and left for dead when said storm forces an evacuation of the planet. With no means of communicating with Earth (the main antenna having been destroyed in the storm) Watney has to figure out how to survive alone on Mars until the next mission arrives four years later. Fortunately for him, his skill sets include both botany and engineering, which come in handy for growing food and re-purposing equipment. 

The Martian is a very technical novel, providing a detailed look at the challenges Watney faces on Mars and the solutions he comes up with to survive. The character has little depth beyond his wisecrackery and technical skills, and seems to operate in two modes, “Holy shit, I’m going to die” and “No, wait, I’ve thought of a brilliant solution.” I imagine the mental toll of living alone a year and half under the constant threat of death would be enormous on a real person, but the novel never really explores much more than the technical challenges of Watney’s survival.

The novel starts off with a strong first person narrative, in the form of Watney’s mission logs, but eventually resorts to a series of third person narratives for scenes involving NASA personnel and Watney’s crewmates. Some of these sections feel random and haphazardly placed. None of the other characters are more than paper-thin. Watney is the best-developed character in the book, and that is not saying much. There is no doubt that many of the obstacles to survival and rescue faced by Watney (and those at NASA trying to get him home) could have proved fatal, but by the end of the book it seemed like the author was just throwing in extra difficulties for the hell of it. Still, this mashup of Apollo 13 and Castaway is both compelling and entertaining and should make a hell of a movie. B+

Mr. Holmes: 100 Word Movie Review

There are some mysteries that even Sherlock Holmes cannot solve, mysteries of memory, age and human relationships that are not easily distilled into mere facts. In Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes the great detective’s inability to solve such mysteries catches up to him. Set in 1947, this film features a retired Sherlock Holmes living far from 221 B Baker Street, with his housekeeper and her son in a small farmhouse. He struggles to recall the details of his last case even as senility is robbing him of his famous mental faculties. The film flashes back 30 years to the case in question, as well as to a more recent expedition to Hiroshima, Japan, where Holmes seeks out a botanical remedy that he hopes will allow him to recover his memories. There are times when this film feels rather unfocused, much like Holmes’ mind, but the brilliant performances by Ian McKellan (Holmes) and the rest of the cast prove compelling throughout. And in the end Holmes learns that logic and facts will only take you so far, especially in regard to human relationships. A

*100 word reviews are 100 words long, more or less. Often more.

Skynet vs. Genisys: The War Between the Machines

The following is an analysis of certain story elements contained in the film Terminator: Genisys, and not a review of the film.

Warning: Spoilers

Terminator: Genisys, the fifth film in the 31-year-old Terminator franchise, offers us yet another version of the homicidal artificial intelligence known as Skynet, this one taking the form of a cloud based app called Genisys that is supposed to provide cross device connectivity for over a billion people. The screen writers apparently wanted to update the face of Skynet, and make it more relatable to a generation with little memory of Cold War thermonuclear brinkmanship but a great deal of familiarity with cloud based computing and connectivity apps. The producers of this film have indicated that Genisys may be a super aware version of the original Skynet, having seen the outcome of the war between man and machines across multiple timelines. But their creative intentions aside, my own theory about Genisys is that it is not a new version of Skynet at all, but rather a competing artificial intelligence who has been fighting its own war against Skynet through all of the Terminator movies since T2.

The Terminator franchise has been riddled with paradoxes since the beginning. Kyle Reese, sent back in time by his commanding officer, John Connor, to save Connor’s mother from the original Terminator, is actually Connor’s father, and was only there to father him because his son had sent him back to 1984 in the first place. Similarly, it seems that Skynet itself would never have been built if pieces of the first Terminator had not been found and adapted by Cyberdyne industries into the technology that would eventually become Skynet. Now, in Terminator: Genisys, something else happens as Reese is sent back to the past, John Connor is attacked by Dr. Who Genisys and assimilated into its collective. Connor, the great leader of humanity’s war against the machines has now become part machine, and is sent back in time to 2014 to initiate the creation of the Genisys program. Yet another ‘character’ that uses time travel to create itself.

But why 2014? In the original timeline the military control system Skynet “wakes up” and initiates Judgment Day (a launch of America’s thermonuclear arsenal at the Soviet Union, which retaliates in kind) in 1997, killing three billion people at the start of the war to eradicate humankind. The Genisys program that gets created almost 20 years later is more of a civilian system with military applications, a cloud based app that would seem to need human customers (one billion pre-orders) to work in the first place. It is a totally different program from a totally different decade than the original Skynet. It couldn’t have been created in 1997, so it needed to prevent Judgment Day from coming. It needed to prevent Skynet from being born. It did that by reprogramming Skynet’s own Terminators and sending them back in time to collude with John and Sarah Connor in changing history.

The premise of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was that Skynet, operating from a second time travel facility, sent an advanced T-1000 Terminator back in time to kill John Connor. Future Connor, somehow aware of this second Terminator, reprograms an older T-800 (Arnie) model and sends it back in time to protect himself. But Terminator: Genisys shows us John Connor being attacked by Adam (Genisys, also called the T-5000 in his human form) just as Reese is time traveling. The conceit of the film is that this is what creates the new timeline, and that Genisys had not assimilated future Connor is the previous movies. But what if he did? What if that was always what happened and it was always the Genisys controlled Connor sending Terminators back in time to protect himself. After all, where did Connor suddenly acquire the ability to reprogram Terminators? If Skynet’s assets were so easily manipulated, why wasn’t the resistance using them against Skynet in the war? No, Connor was able to reprogram the T-800 because he had already been integrated with Genisys, who was able to manipulate Skynet’s systems. Genisys sent the T-800 back to battle Skynet’s T-1000 to save John Connor, because Connor was vital to Genisys’ plans. John and Sarah adopted the mission to stop the 1997 Judgment Day after being rescued by the T-800, a plan that worked out to the benefit of Genisys and the detriment of Skynet. It was the T-800’s plan to destroy himself as well (even though he couldn’t self-terminate), ensuring that the technological foundations of Skynet would disappear from the timeline.

We could carry this logic forward to Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, with Skynet sending the T-X back to kill John’s future wife and lieutenants, and Genisys sending another T-800 back to protect them. Yes we’re told a story by the T-800 that Kate Brewster reprogrammed him after he killed John. But that could be a fiction created by Genisys to sell the story. Of course the Rise of the Machines timeline still had Judgment Day occurring in favor of Skynet over Genisys, so this film, removed from the canon by Terminator: Genisys, could at best be considered an alternate timeline in the war between Genisys and Skynet, one where Skynet triumphed.

Terminator: Genisys also complicates the timeline by sending Terminators back to Sarah’s childhood, where her family is killed by a T-1000 and she is rescued by the T-800 she calls “Pops.” This is just another battlefield in the war between Skynet and Genisys. In each of these conflicts the older model T-800 is successful against the more advanced T-1000. Why? What edge could the human leader John Connor have given these machines? Almost none. But the advanced artificial intelligence Genisys may have been able to provide intelligence and strategic assets that enabled them to consistently defeat a superior enemy.

Of course Terminator: Genisys ended with Sarah, Kyle and Pops destroying the complex that housed the Genisys project, believing that Genisys is just another version of Skynet that would seek to launch Judgment Day. But we never saw Genisys’ version of Judgment Day, so maybe that’s not the plan at all. Genisys seems more interested in converting humans into machines, and even Sarah wonders whether or not this is what will happen to them. After all, it may be possible that Genisys has won its time war against Skynet (since the mid credits scene did confirm its survival), but that doesn’t mean its plans for the future of the human race are significantly more benevolent.