Surrogates: A Movie I Want to See

I want to see this movie for two reasons. First of all, Bruce Willis is in it. Secondly, I think its theme is representative of what's causing the decay of our culture and society.

The story, as far as the trailer says, is that people are able to live their lives through robot surrogates. Their physical bodies stay plugged in to a Matrix-esque computer uplink that they control the robot bodies through. There is some sort of plot or conspiracy going on where people start dying. It almost happens to Bruce Willis and he is forced to "unplug" from the surrogate world and do his job as a police officer with his physical body. From the previews it looks like they've done a good job making the surrogates appear fake and plastic, and it is a stark contrast to the real body of Bruce Willis, which looks rough, unkempt and out of shape. He is forced into facing reality but is still living in a world full of people that are willfully detached from reality. There is an ominous "something" that is threatening the world, and everyone is either clueless about it or apathetic because they don't believe the warnings.

Isn't that some type of metaphor for what's going on right now in our world? We may not have robot surrogates, but we have plenty of other things we distract ourselves with and as technology gets more and more advanced, these distractions will only become more and more enticing. We will reach a point where they are too much better than real life. That was always my problem with the holodeck from Star Trek: TNG. If you really had something like that, people would be in it all the damn time. People might even prefer it to interaction with real people.

We already have people killing themselves over video games. We have an entire subculture of people that has sprung up around games like Everquest and World of Warcraft. Some of them live their personal lives through their online avatars and even go so far as to dress up like them and meet at events like DragonCon as their online characters. Granted, everybody's got hobbies, and many of them are a type of escapism. It can be good to unplug every now and then, take a break and let off some steam. Some might say it's even necessary. But how far is too far? I think we are currently in the process of finding that out first hand.

"Surrogates" interests me because it's a window into a possible future. Jonah Goldberg has talked about the difference between the worlds of Brave New World and 1984. The first is a type of feminine, nanny state environment while the second is a masculine, harsh and tyrannical environment. Goldberg makes the case that where we're headed is the Brave New World type of life. I disagree. We might be headed that way for the moment, but I think that type of system is always destined to fall apart. Somebody somewhere has to be working their ass off so that other people can slack off and live their fantasy lives, whether they live them through video games or Soma holiday. There have to be people working, producing, and ready to defend society as members of the police and the military. When nobody wants to do any work or grow up, either your society falls apart or becomes vulnerable to invasion from the outside.

Right now we're seeing a mix of both. Our society is largely obsessed with pop culture and amusements and is ignorant about what goes on outside of the latest episode of Jon & Kate Plus 8. At the same time, we're under attack from socialists and Islam. We can look at Europe right now and see what the near future holds for us with both of these paths, yet people refuse to see or believe. When you learn what's going on out there and you try to tell other people, don't you feel a little bit like Bruce Willis in Surrogates? You're running around this fake world full of indifferent people who view you as some sort of bothersome anachronism, yet the whole time you're really trying to help them.

I've been very disappointed with most movies I've seen in recent years. I hope "Surrogates" will be a pleasant surprise. I am never able to go out and see movies in the theater anymore, so I will probably have to catch this on DVD. If anyone else sees it in the meantime, I'd love to hear your (spoiler free) impressions.

Why Matters, Star Wars Does

"A more elegant weapon, for a more civilized age."

I was all set to pick this entire movie apart for this post, even watch the entire trilogy to get enough reference material if I had to. Turns out I only had to watch about the first half hour because the scene below is the only thing I need to refer to. Skip to 3:00 in:



For those that may not remember, Luke Skywalker is just a hick. These droids have found their way to his family and one insisted on delivering a message to Ben Kenobi, who is merely an old hermit as far as Luke knows. Once the message is delivered, it’s a whole lot bigger than Luke ever thought it would be. R2-D2 is carrying inside of him the only hope that the Rebellion against the Empire has. If they don’t get the Death Star plans, and soon, it’s over. “This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” Can’t get much plainer than that.

Look at Luke’s face after the message, though. What’s his reaction? Is he ready to run out and do whatever he can to help? No, there is just an uncomfortable silence. It’s almost as if he knows he is supposed to do something, but doesn’t really want to because it’s going to be so inconvenient. Obi Wan seems to be waiting for Luke to say something, but instead he just stares back, slack-jawed.

Obi Wan finally says that Luke has to come with him to Alderaan because he can’t get this done alone. Luke's reaction is, “Uhhh…sure is getting late.” He’s got too much work to do, it’s so far away, etc. By the end of the scene he has completely forgotten about Princess Leia’s plea and starts grumbling about how he’s going to explain to his uncle where he’s been all day. This is all despite the fact he was arguing with his uncle the day before about letting him leave and go somewhere else. Once it's time to put his money where his mouth is, he chickens out. This sure does bear a striking similarity to a recent post I read. In fact, I’m very surprised nobody Over There picked up on this and used it to shame we geeks into writing more.

The theme of Star Wars is the theme of the underdog. It’s the theme of fighting back against impossible odds, not because it looks like you’re going to win, but because the only other choice is death or submission. It’s the theme of the responsibility of those who know what’s going on to do whatever they can about it. I’m sure I will catch some grief for this comparison, but in a way it’s On the Waterfront in space.

Now I don’t want anybody to misinterpret what I mean by making that comparison (Vickles, I’m looking at you). I am not saying Star Wars is better than or equal to Waterfront, that Mark Hamill is better than Marlon Brando, that George Lucas invented the theme of the reluctant hero, or even that Star Wars executes that theme better than any other film in the history of cinema. What I’m saying is that both films share a theme that is vitally important in our country right now, and that both are good in their own right.

Even though this is a defense of Star Wars, I must point out that Waterfront has the better and ultimately more courageous hero in Terry Malloy, despite the lack of a lightsaber. Consider that Luke Skywalker really did nothing special. When he had a choice, he chose to stay at home and not make waves. Only the Empire murdering his family convinced him to leave with Kenobi, but at that point Luke had nothing to lose. Terry was admittedly motivated by the fairer sex, and men do irrational things when put in that position, but he still had a lot to lose by going up against Johnny Friendly. Both Luke and Terry may have become heroes to those around them, but only Luke has to live with the knowledge that if he had gotten home a little earlier or if the storm troopers had been a little more patient, he would have died and the Rebellion would have been crushed because of his cowardice.

I think Star Wars is the better metaphor for what is happening today, for my generation, anyway. Trying to get many of them interested in what is going on right now is like Obi Wan asking Luke to come with him to Alderaan. They just don’t want to be bothered with all that stuff and would much rather go to Tachi Station and pick up some power converters. As sad as it is, people from my generation (and definitely the younger generation) can probably relate more to Star Wars than Waterfront because they know more about fictional sci-fi lore than they do real American history. Tragic, but if nothing else they need to understand the urgency of getting off their asses and doing something. Sure, they'll still need to see the big picture, but that's where we come in. Then, one day, they will be able to appreciate Waterfront; it's a process. Hopefully nobody’s aunt and uncle has to be murdered by a death panel before they start caring, though, because by then it will be far too late.

Also, the space battles are cool:

X-Files

Mystified am I. (A Yoda thing for all you Star Wars thingies...).

You love cartoons. Why don't you have any interest in the X-Files?

I loved the fact that Scully was so trigger happy. I loved Mulder. Who reminds me of me. I loved the fact that the X-Files skirted the edge of the plausible and genuinely unknown. Hey: explain away this email from a friend of mine, Lloyd Pye, whom I've met and quarrelled with bitterly but who is by no means an idiot:

"1) I'll be on Coast to Coast radio with George Noory this Friday night, Sept. 18th, the first two hours, 10 pm to 12 midnight PST. We'll discuss the latest developments with the Starchild, updates about it, etc. We'll also discuss the recent "alien" body revealed on Mexican TV by Jaime Maussan. That "alien" is the tiny being that the farmer claims he drowned in 2007.For details check: www.coasttocoastam.com

2) Incredible result! You'll recall my last message to you was about the Daily Mail of England spiking a full two-page story about the Starchild scheduled to go out to 6 million readers on June 24th. I also mentioned that I had heard nothing about it from the Daily Mail since they spiked it. That message to you, my mailing list, was picked up by a number of UFO websites and blogs around the world, one of which was Mania.com in England itself.

www.mania.com/235-degrees-mission-starchild-part-deux_article_117560.htm

That link is to Part Two, my follow-up, which was similar to my follow-up to you apologizing for making it sound like I was begging for $20 from each of you. I hope we all have that squared away now. I need you to buy the new eBook and make yourselves familiar with its contents so you can become the smartest person in the room if anyone starts talking about UFOs and/or aliens. I need as many of you as possible to KNOW as many of the facts about it as possible. The new eBook is the best way to go about that, guaranteed. Okay?

www.starchildproject.com/starchild_ebook.htm

(NOTE: At the end of Part Two on the Mania site is a bare-knuckled intellectual brawl between me and a couple of the usual skeptics who inevitably patrol websites or blogs where people "trash" their precious status quo. If you have time to read those exchanges, you'll see what happens when two individuals who haven't even bothered to visit the Starchild website try to tangle with someone who has been living it, eating it, and breathing it for over ten years! It's not pretty, but it was... satisfying."

I'm thinking you all aren't so brave in person as your imaginations are. You like science fiction as long as it's definitely ABSOLUTELY fiction. Lloyd has pauperized himself pursuing a scientific study of an inexplicable but genuine artifact. Yet I'm guessing you'd mostly write him off as a lunatic even as you plunge happily into your usual mud wrestling about sci fi movie icons.

There really are "X-files." All over the place. I have it on good authority that they're even going to risk another attack from the Darwinistas "Over There" sometime soon. With prejudice.

But you'd rather talk about comic books.

God love ya.

P.S. btw, X-Files was dramatically superior to most of what you spend your time celebrating and defending here. Better written. Better acted. Filled with a foreboding mood that occasionally even got delivered on.

But you prefer comic books. Faugh.

Did Somebody Say..."Racism"?

The Punisher: he's not worried about Miranda rights.

Continuing the thread. Now is the perfect time for this post as racism is in the air. In the last comic-related post I found an issue from around 1991 where the theme was related to Rodney King. To spice things up a bit I found another issue from a different comic around 1991 where the theme is related to, uh, Rodney King. I said it before and I'll say it again: the left is patently unoriginal.

This happens to be an issue of the Punisher. Penny mentioned him way back in the comments that inspired the Underverse. At the time I couldn't remember why I soured on the Punisher, because I enjoyed things like the excerpt above a great deal. Then I came across this issue in my garage and it all came flooding back to me.

The back story is that, for some reason, the Punisher needed plastic surgery (supplied by a genius surgeon who was also a hooker...or something) and the surgeon made him black, which he was not expecting. I think the only reason this event happened is so the sequence below could exist. Join the action as the Punisher arrives in the city limits of Chicago:


Uh-oh. The all white police force of Chicago has appeared out of nowhere to pull over a black guy who swerved a little bit. One of them even sounds like a southerner (they are everywhere, you know; like cockroaches) as he gives life to Maureen Dowd's unspoken "boy". I wonder what will happen next?


If you guessed "group of white cops beating helpless minority", award yourself ten points. Things really get interesting when Luke "Power Man" Cage happens to show up because his path is impeded by the four police cars parked in the middle of the exit ramp while they beat someone senseless in broad daylight, as is routine procedure for all random traffic stops. Just so you know, Cage's powers include super strength and virtual invulnerability. Being a fellow super hero, how will he handle this situation? He'll probably find out what's going on and not just charge in half-cocked, right?


Not so much. Well it seems that things are getting out of hand, here. It's high time that the cool head of the Punisher prevails. After all, he punishes evil, and looking at things purely objectively, he was in a stolen car with no ID, was legally pulled over for swerving all over the road, and he did knock the crap out of a cop. Technically the Punisher is the lawbreaker in this situation. I'm sure Frank Castle will get things under control before they go too far.


Hm. Or perhaps he will murder a cop. The Punisher...murders a cop. Then again, the cop was a racist so he deserved to die. Isn't that the lesson for the kiddies here? Well maybe the Punisher and Cage weren't thinking straight for some reason and are going to come to their senses and be wracked with guilt afterwards?


Damn. Wrong again. Looks like they will rest easy tonight. By the way, did you notice where they are headed? To the south side of Chicago, of course, adopted home of Obama. How quaint. It's almost as if they were visiting the manger Jesus was born in, except that Obama wasn't born in Chicago and he wasn't famous when this was written. But if he was, it would be like that.

The only other noteworthy happening in this issue is that Cage demands that nobody die when he and the Punisher take out a gang that has been dealing crack to the neighborhood. Got that, kids? Racist cops: okay to kill. Murderous crack dealers: they deserve mercy (and really, they are victims, too).

Penny, if you're reading this, I think this issue was the exact moment when the Punisher went PC. I at least know it's the last issue I ever bought.

That's NOT LIKE THE BOOK!!!1!

As some of you are no doubt aware, as is the case in many religions and other assorted belief systems, there exists in the sci-fi community a core of strict, even virulent orthodoxy with regard to the translation of a beloved story from one medium to another.

While this is certainly also true of other genres, We the Geeks seem to take our chosen passion very, very personally. It's an affront to us when the entire Tom Bombadil segment gets dropped from LotR. It is absolutely criminal that Dr. Manhattan takes the fall for Ozymandias, instead of a giant alien space squid. Might as well just slap my momma if you're gonna go THAT far.

The psychological explanations for this are many and are no doubt explored elsewhere in excruciating detail. For purposes of this discussion, I'm not interested. It just is. What interests me here are the conditions under which a rabid fan is willing to make an exception.

I got to thinking of this after Marvin the Paranoid Android became a recent fixture of discussion over at the grownup table. It just so happens that this very evening, I completed a listening of the complete five-series BBC Radio 4 production of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I'm a huge fan of HGTTG. It's one of the first sci-fi series I ever read. The Infocom game for the Apple was the first computer game I ever played. My dad and I used to listen to the original BBC radio show on tape during long drives through the night on family vacations. It never got old. The mice still crack me up.

This more recent production was absolutely freaking marvelous, and I can't recommend it highly enough to any fan of Adams' work. The voice acting was all wonderful and believable, they stayed true to the main storyline while throwing in the random updated reference (custom cell phone ringtones are a pretty neat idea, digital watches are right out), the shift of exposition to character dialog was handled adroitly, and the expanded sound effects and production values tied it all together nicely.

But here's the thing: they completely, totally, utterly changed the ending.

Note: spoilers will follow. Do not proceed without prior knowledge or peril-sensitive sunglasses.




Still here? Good.

Now, normally this sort of thing would throw me into an absolute rage. How dare they presume, especially after Douglas Adams' death, to twiddle the (admittedly bleak) ending of Mostly Harmless just to make it more audience-friendly? Yeah it was bleak, but so what? The man himself said he intended it that way, though he'd apparently had second thoughts after publication. This sort of presumption usually makes a rabid fanboy pen strongly-worded letters to the responsible parties, imagining the wrath of their broken sentences impacting the hapless target like anthrax ink on semtex foolscap. They will pay.

But...this worked. It was a complete rewrite. Disneyfied, almost. No bleakness. Everything's okay. Look, they're all fine! All the main characters and a bunch of secondary bit players! Why, even Marvin's back, and he shuffled off the mortal (ignition) coil back in Book 4! Happy days are here again!

Absolutely MADDENING, right? Wrong.

They did it with style, and they did it with respect. This wasn't the ugly exploitation of a cultural touchstone for a meager profit, animating a corpse and putting it in a funny hat to parade it around with a tin cup (I'm looking at you, Brian Herbert). This was an act of love for Douglas Adams' work and it was reflected in the quality of the result. He might've written it himself, given the chance, he wasn't above the odd Deus ex Machina now and then

The distinction between "OK" and "OMFG" is an intangible, and it's what I'm trying (at length) to grasp. What makes the difference? Is it purely subjective - I want to like it, so I excuse what would normally drive me nuts - or is there an objective measure by which the average fan determines how much change they'll deal with? Because we've all done it. You've never, ever, ever seen any book, comic or otherwise, adapted to film without substantial change, and you never will. But barring completely outrageous butchery we usually accept the result, albeit with some grousing.

What's your breaking point? What went too far for you, and why? Or, alternatively, what did you gloss over and deal with?

They Just Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

SPACEHUNTER! ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE!

Can you even imagine a title like that on a movie turned out by the slick, suave, modern Hollywood? I mean for God's sake just look at it. How gauche! Even Michael Bay would cringe at the very idea.

Get a load of this premise: three completely helpless bimbos in shiny space-lingerie are stranded on a desert planet after their ship explodes, and immediately fall captive to the horrible evil population of mindless drones and their horrible evil overlord. Naturally, it falls to some unshaven square-jawed clod to ride in, blow everything up, and save the day with his erstwhile sidekick and an underage girl.

Where's the nuance? I do declare, I may get a case of the vapors.

As seen above, there is HAIR! OF! THE! FUTURE!, the likes of which haven't been seen by your author since his unfortunate exposure to Battlefield Earth. There are deformed midgets, who may or may not be radioactive. There are explosions. There are Road Warrior-inspired cars, trains, motorcycles, and snowplows(!). There are Amazons and dragons and blobby pasty human grub s. Michael Ironside rocks the Nosferatu facepaint and six-foot-long robotic claw arms, hamming it up on a crane hoist.

How's all this come together? I already told you in the second paragraph. That's not the 100-word pitch, that's the freaking screenplay. This movie has all the depth and complexity of the grounds-laden rime of sludge steeping in the office carafe at 5:30pm.

I think I like it not so much for what it is, but for what it isn't. It's refreshing, in a way. Peter Strauss is not some conflicted, brooding bad boy with a troubled past, he's just this average guy. Ernie Hudson's character isn't a "magic negro" full of obscure wisdom or a "token negro" with streetwise moves and cunning, he's just a companion. Molly Ringwald isn't La Femme Nikita the wily innocent-faced assassin or Short Round the wisecracking plot device, she's just a dingy sorta scruffy kid. Ironside isn't out to destroy all mankind and rule the universe with an iron claw, he's satisfied with his one little planet, some half-naked slavegirls, and dumping the occasional hapless slacker in his Running Man industrial death maze.

I can't really say whether the movie was intended to be taken seriously. The title suggests self-parody, but the film isn't overtly played for laughs. The effects are 80s cheesy, but some of the makeup - particularly the blobby human grubworms - is unexpectedly effective, in that sense of "whoa, that's not CGI, that's a dude in a slimy rubber fat suit. And he is really emoting!"

Yeah, it's trash cinema. Mike and the robots would tear it to shreds. That doesn't mean it can't be a good time. Guilty pleasure? Perhaps. Not guilt on par with listening to ABBA, but maybe somewhere between a Broadway production of "Cats" and certain tangentially related works in the Paul Schrader oeuvre.

Overdog: stranger danger.

So...Cat People...Really?

Cat People wasn’t as bad as I’d hoped, but neither did it live up to the hype . It is not the best horror movie ever and certainly had nothing to do with sci-fi despite the autopsy scene (if that one scene makes it a sci-fi flick, then The Little Mermaid might as well be one, too). But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it was bad, just that there are bad parts that mix with some good parts to form an overall mediocre experience.

The Bad:
First of all, it’s not even original. It is virtually a remake. Weak. Secondly:

The score is so good it could tempt one to think that the whole film is simply a teaser for the song played during the closing credits…

Uh, no. What score? The drum machine or the guy alternating between two dissonant chords on the synthesizer for 10 minutes at a time? Saying this movie has a great score is like saying every episode of Law & Order has a great score…if the music were performed by Wang Chung. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. I recommend tracks two, four & eight.

Third, and perhaps most troublesome, it’s not really “scary”. Dark, creepy, disturbing? Sure, but mostly because of the whole incest thing. Suspensful? A little. Scary? Nope. To be truly scary a movie has to get inside your head and haunt you. You have to be thinking about it for a good day or two after you’re done watching it, and not just because there were a lot of tits or blood & gore. There should be something that really got to you that makes you think, “Damn, I would not want to be in that situation.” Surviving the Cat People universe would be simple: bring a gun.

The Good:
McDowell and Kinski were great, although I don’t think McDowell was in even half of the film, which is a waste. Real horrorshow, you might say. Let’s be honest, too: the real reason we’re fond of this movie is Kinski’s nudity, who is hot despite her ‘80s "little boy" haircut. That threw me off a bit, by the way, because in one scene I thought it was her waking up naked in the bathroom but it turned out to Malcom McDowell. Not sure I’ll ever get over that:


Also, the setting was good. No one can argue with New Orleans as a good horror setting, although I thought The Skeleton Key was a much scarier movie as far as horror movies set in New Orleans go. Again: the haunting thing. The implications of the plot twist at the end of that movie were that some really nightmarish, evil shit happened to those kids. Imagining that still bothers me. I’m already over Cat People.

Finally, the story did not follow the cookie cutter horror genre plot. I did not guess the ending. You can wipe this part out if it ends the same way as the original Cat People, though.

So am I here to simply slam this movie and not bring anything to the table myself? No, I have my own offering as best horror/sci-fi movie of all time: Event Horizon. It’s got everything but chicks gettin’ nekkid, which may disqualify it out of hand for a few people, but it’s got everything else. It has a freaky story, a great setting, good acting, a splash of gore, space ships, and it gets inside your mind (the video from the original crew: wow). I can’t vouch for the score, but if our gold standard is Cat People then I don’t feel like I really have to.

Before I finish up, I would like to hand out a few awards to the film. The award for Best Foreshadowing in a Scene goes to the one where the camera rests a little too long on the extreme close up of the prod strapped to Ed Begley Jr.’s arm. It’s a “what could possibly go wrong?” moment.


Next, the Most Awkward Romance Award goes to John Heard and Kinski. Starting with the truck ride out to the bayou there is indecisive petting, nervous conversation, truly bizarre dialogue such as, “You know how to stop alligators? We should make love!” and the whole true love after knowing each other for half a week syndrome.

The Barack Obama Theme Song Award goes to David Bowie's "Theme from Cat People":

Putting out the fire with gas-o-line!

Last but not least is the Sacrificial Lamb Award, which goes to Yeatman. As soon as he’s introduced you know he’s a dead man walking. He comes out of nowhere, you cannot possibly develop any emotional attachment to him, and there's no reason for him to be in the movie to begin with. “This is my, uh, older male friend who helped me build this shack and apparently lives here, too…or something.” Come on, at least make him Oliver's uncle. They didn't even give him a first name! Or did they not give him a last name? Sadly, we'll never know. Ah, Yeatman. We hardly knew ye:


That’s my take, anyway.

If Hollywood Produces "Ender's Game"

Over the years I've heard several suggestions that Hollywood may be trying to produce a feature-length film of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

If it ever happens, I think it'll go a little something like this:

1.) Ender will be an non-caucasian genius child from a remote, self-sustaining agricultural village, probably in Africa.

2.) After waterboarding half the African continent to locate Ender, the entirely-caucasian western military-industrial complex will kidnap him to battle school, incidentally murdering the remainder of the peaceful, unarmed villagers with depleted uranium and burning the village down with napalm in order to hide their acts.

3.) The Formics - who will never, ever, ever be referred to as "buggers" lest we think they're homosexuals - will closely resemble furry dolphins. Their peaceful intent to save us from global warming by teaching us how to satisfy our entire civilization's energy and industrial needs with nothing but bamboo and kudzu will be violently opposed by big coal, big oil, big steel, big labor, and big brother.

4.) Bonzo Madrid will be the blonde son of a prominent Klansman.

5.) The Battle Room will be the same as the Battle Room in the book, except things will explode, constantly, for no apparent reason. Fortunately, the kids will only be thrown onto their faces in slow-motion, and suffer no other physical harm.

6.) At the last minute, Ender will determine what's actually going on and try to warn the Formics about the MD Device. The Formics agree to surrender. Once they've disarmed their weapons, Hyrum Graff will destroy their planet anyway. And probably laugh.

7.) Scene disintegrates into vengeful students versus oppressive caucasian Battle School teachers. Ender kills Graff in violent, bloody, prolonged hand-to-hand combat. Mazer Rackham kills Petra. Final showdown, Ender has Rackham at his mercy but spares him. Ender turns around, Rackham draws a hidden gun from his boot, Bean leaps across Ender to take the shot and is mortally wounded. Ender snap-kicks Rackham down a huge air shaft and out an airlock.

8.) One year later. Earth is a paradise. Last remnants of Battle School staff have been chased into the depths of space, but they'll be back, repeatedly, for every sequel.

Comments and additions are invited.

UPDATE, Courtesy of Eduardo:

Ender will have a side-splitting, talking animal companion entirely rendered by CGI named Gar-Gar Blinx. He will provide most uproarious humor and comedic relief. He will talk silly, slip on things and fall down, and most importantly will have his own spin-off show on Nickelodeon with a complete line of action figures & accessories.

Avatar

Has anyone seen the Avatar trailer? It looks gorgeous, but I don't know anything about it. Do any of you?

IMDB's Top 15 Movies of the Millennium

Here's their list:

http://www.imdb.com/features/poweroffilm/

There are definitely sci-fi movies here, and you get to decide which ones they are.

But what do you think?

Taking My Bait?

That's right. Over There, CP said Cat People was the greatest Sc-fi/Horror movie of all time. I agree. Vent below.

You Slackers...

Saw three sci-fi pieces over the weekend. I'm not going to explain or review them. That would be your job, O you sci fi wunderkind. Of course, if you screw it up, I'll give you the lamebrain explanation, which you won't like at all.

"Knowing. " Angels, ETs, and GPS coordinates. A hearing aid, a little girl who could be the dead ringer for Tim Rice's weird wife as a girl, and a blatantly asked and apparently unanswered question about the meaning of the universe. Go for it. As a footnote, guessed every single major plot development before it happened, incluiding the tree in the final scene. But it was still better than some the icons I've heard you all prating about.

"Suspect Zero." Excellent cast,good acting, more GPS coordinates, and a plot premise I was familar with beforehand. I know "remote viewing" when I see it. And I know the U.S. military actually used it. So, why is it, as the better half said, far-fetched?

"Rise." Okay. Vampire pic. Different, though. Lucy Liu, Michael Chiklis, Cara Gugino, and Robert Forster Interesting take actually, if not actually a good take. Vampires who are only slightly more powerful than human beings. much sloppier eaters, and far less prevalent in the population at large. Or was the whole thing an excuse for Lucy Liu to be nude a lot? Or am I supposed to be cheered by the lack of GPS coordinates? (P.S. Michael Chiklis is not only a wimp with vampires; he's also short.)

I don't know. You're supposed to tell me. What do you tell me? Nothing.

Seepage, Part the Second

Continuing on from the last post, the left is not only in love with weak-kneed defeatism but they are also patently unoriginal. For example: Obama is Jimmy Carter is Huey Long is every other progressive politician. They don't even bother to change the language in their speeches nor observe that their ideology seems to be completely incompatible with a thing known as "real life" that most of them live outside of. In other words, many of these people do not have a single original thought in their head. That's why when they criticize the right, 9 times out of 10 they are just projecting their own shady behavior onto us. They think conservatives blindly follow the latest talking point without thinking because they follow the latest talking point without thinking. They think conservatives have a streak of fascism in them because they have a streak of fascism in them. Which brings me to the subject of this post: they think these health care protesters are violent, astroturfing mobs because their protesters are violent, astroturfing mobs. However, like all the rest of their thoughts, this is not an original one.

I recently started thinking about all of the leftie BS I was exposed to as a youngin'. Comics were a big part of that, only I didn't remember just how bad the propaganda was until I went out to my garage last week and thumbed through a bunch of old issues I've had sitting around in a box for years. Check out the below excerpts from an issue of the Avengers that is almost two decades old (circa 1991).

Our story begins:



Can you guess what real life event this is supposed to represent? It's very subtle and cryptic, isn't it? Let me explain: this is supposed to be like the Rodney King beating. And, just like Rodney King, there is a sober, 15 year old teenager getting viciously beaten by a gang of white cops while handcuffed and offering no resistance. SAME...EXACT...THING, little kids. This leads into a scene of a bunch of people protesting police brutality who are outraged. But look at what happens next:

Oh my goodness! There are white men with blonde hair who are disrupting the peaceful protest with their hate speech! And look: when they are challenged they respond not with civil discourse but by drawing weapons and threatening everyone else! Are they going to get away with this??









Not if the Avenger known as Rage has anything to say about it:


Study this page for a moment. The right wing racists about to spark violence in a tense situation. The formerly normal-looking face of the lead agitator suddenly transformed into something dark and twisted with the beady red eyes and almost fang-like teeth. The "constitutional rights" in air quotes. Can't you just see the smarmy, prog writer scribbling all this down with a smirk on his face, all the while thinking, "Yes...yes...oh yes...this is effing fantastic!" And above all notice the resolution: someone with superhuman powers needs to swoop down from on high and save the day. The ordinary people can't do it on their own. He effortlessly breaks their weapons and intimidates them into leaving.





Thus is order restored to the peaceful protest (after the obligatory Nazi reference is made, of course).

I mean, COME ON!! Is this not the absolute perfect illustration of what goes on inside a leftist skull?! People are out there, legitimately angry about being preyed upon by someone they are powerless to fight back against, in this case the police. When it seems that they might be getting their message out and turning things around, though, a tiny radical right wing group shows up with violence, hate, racism, and fear-mongering to stop the righteous revolution. The people are powerless against this threat, as they are powerless to do anything for themselves. Something or someone is desperately needed to step in and save the day. We may not have anyone with superhuman powers in our world, but we do have the government. Just replace the racist mob with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and replace the Avenger Rage with the fairness doctrine: same result. A great power swoops in, breaks their weapons (in this case, microphones) and silences them so the rest of us can get back to living in peace.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! During the story, Rage pleads with the other Avengers to get involved. He says that they should be helping out in situations like this, though it is a little unclear exactly what it is he wants to do. Beat up the cops? Beat up the racist protesters? Captain America and the Falcon tell him that this sort of thing isn't what the Avengers are supposed to get involved in, and Rage storms away in, well, a rage. Luckily, a reason is discovered for the Avengers to take action:

Now don't you see, kids? Something has been wrong with this radical right wing group all along, the characters just haven't been able to place their finger on it. Through tireless and possibly illegal background snooping, though, the truth has been smoked out. The leader of this group is much more than he seems. He has been involved with professional hate groups in the past. He owns guns! He is not merely some "average guy" as he wants us to believe. He is probably being sponsored by monied interests and a secret puppet master pulling the strings in the background. Furthermore, he is recruiting average citizens that would otherwise be harmless to lash out in blind hatred and become part of the problem. Perhaps if there was a flag@avengers.gov all of this could have been avoided before things got out of hand?

Finally, proof positive that these "protesters" are more than meets the eye:



Not only are these right wing extremists evil, violent thugs, they are not even genuine protesters. They are astroturfing! Their "special friend" has mailed them boxes of everything they need to carry out their dirty deeds.

In the end, it is discovered that this whole situation was brought about by some mutant that is capable of amplifying people's hatred. Isn't that the only possible progressive ending, though? The dissension is not real because it is astroturfed and also carefully controlled by some diabolical mind. If it weren't for that one person polarizing everybody for their own personal reasons, and the police, everything would be fine. Did I mention this comic was published almost twenty years ago?

Fast forward to present day. Same script: there is something wrong with these Obamacare protesters. If any of them were ever normal people, they have been whipped into a mindless frenzy of hate by Glenn Beck and Fox News. The Democrats are trying to get out their side of the story and the people want to hear it, yet this tiny minority of the population keeps showing up in town hall after town hall, disrupting everything, causing chaos and near violence and wearing swastikas all over the place like Nazis. How can they be in seemingly all of these places at once? Is it because they are genuine local citizens who know what the Democrats are trying to do and are legitmately angry about it? No way. They are being trained, coached and bussed all over the country to these events by people with ties to radical right wing organizations and corporations. That is, shadowy puppet masters pulling the strings in the background. The leftists know this is true, even though they can't find any evidence for it whatsoever. That's why all citizens are needed to report to flag@whitehouse.gov. There must be evidence out there somewhere and we will find it eventually, at which point we will scream out, "I knew it! I KNEW IT!" just like the Avengers' computer lady did. It doesn't matter if the method of finding the evidence is a little shady, either, because the ends justify the means (as long as George Bush isn't in office). And then, once the evidence is uncovered and laid bare, who will come to save us average and unworthy citizens in our darkest hour?

"AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!!"

It's up to us to heed His call. That is, the real grassroots activists:

Mission and Rules Discussion

As promised, here's what people were saying about a Mission Statement and Rules of Engagement earlier:

Gughunter said...

My suggestions:

For a mission statement, something along the lines of: 'about the possibility that pop culture phenomena like "Terminator" and comic books are where the human need for heroism, mythology, plot, and intense drama hide, or are preserved, when the official culture defaults its responsibilities to address these needs in the form of high art.' I read that earlier today and thought it was pretty good.

Rules of engagement: I'd suggest "obscenities and pornications" should only be used if they serve a purpose -- if they serve as something more than a profane version of "um" or "uh" or "smurf."

Another rule of engagement: the blog's definition of "science fiction" should be as broad as possible, both in terms of genre (e.g., horror, psycho-thriller, mystery, fantasy -- all of which my high school sci-fi teacher classified as subgenres of science fiction, and he was a good teacher, so there) and in terms of medium (movie, book, video game, multimedia experience, etc.).

roller74 said...

This is Eduardo, btw.

Question: is this going to be just about sci-fi or other elements of entertainment and pop culture? Not celebrity gossip, but things like music, other genres of books & film, general culture commentary, etc.

hiroantagonist said...

Post if worth posting...

Mission statement: To start at sci-fi, but to end at the rest of the Universe. Modern culture is worth thinking about and analyzing, but to think, we must talk -- there must be an exchange of ideas to create synthesis. This doesn't happen enough in Instapunk's comment rolls because of the intimidation factor, the desire to stop continually say 'yeah, me too', and the relative difficulty of keeping a conversation alive as current events push the daily posts down. Perhaps a new incarnation of the forum is what we need after all...

Rules? I'm with Gug -- let's keep it as broad as possible (as if we could help it).

Bear in mind that there is now another site where clearly non-sci-fi topics can be addressed. But that doesn't mean we can't talk about anything and everything here through the lens of sc-fi.

Let's hear your thoughts.

Missing Touchstones

I know most of you are too young to remember the earliest sci-fi movies. Forbidden Planet. The Day the Earth Stood Still. All the Japanese flicks, including Godzilla and Mothra.

Tell me when you first encountered sci-fi. Why did it matter? What moved you? I know when I finally saw Star Wars (4 years after the fact), I thought, "Who cares?"

Why do you care?

Ideological Seepage

I wanted to continue a previous discussion thread involving the defeatist attitude of the left and how it influences the media (it's in there; it's a long discussion thread). This post and this one are good to get a general idea of what I mean if you don't already know. The one about Spider-Man II is especially good because in Frank Rich's column he shares the notion that if you have superior power you should be extremely reluctant to use it, even if you are using it for a good purpose, including self-defense. You first need to do everything under the sun but use your power, which usually means talking and capitulating to demands a lot. If you do finally have to use it, you should be really unhappy about it the whole time and not be able to respect yourself afterward, because it's basically a failure in your diplomacy skills. That is, unless you're trying to push unpopular legislation through Congress, in which case anything goes.

Recent events in North Korea reminded me of an old Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that virtually mirrors what went down in Pyongyang and is also a great illustration of how this thinking has been seeping into our popular culture for a while now. The more I thought about it, the more I kept thinking of more and more things I was exposed to while growing up that had a decidedly leftist slant. Here is one example.

The TNG episode I mentioned is from the show's first season, so it's about 20 years old. In it, the Enterprise is dispatched to retrieve a badly needed vaccine from what Captain Picard describes as a "strange, alien world". Look at just how strange and different these people are:



Just in case the subtlety of the TNG writers and imagination of the make-up folks have confused you, let me clue to you in to the symbolism of this episode. This race of aliens has a tribal culture and primitive technology compared to the Enterprise crew, who has sailed through the sea of space on their ship. The aliens have a dark complexion while most of the Enterprise crew is light-skinned. Has it been laid on thick enough for you? I'm not going to give you any more hints, you'll have to figure it out on your own from there.

Picard and his crew could easily take what they want by force or even through some compassionate gunboat diplomacy, but in the future mankind is above stuff like that. They always find a way to talk things out, as the characters constantly remind us throughout this episode and others with their condescending remarks about "20th Century man" that really make you feel like crap. To be fair, though, if there's something you need that someone else has it isn't very nice to smack them across the face and take it. I can appreciate the value of a little fair market compensation, so I'm with the writers so far.

The first thing Picard does is bring the strange aliens up for a tour of the ship. For some reason this involves a demonstration of their security chief Tasha Yar's akido skills. This gets Lutan, the chief tribal alien, all hot and bothered because in their culture women are submissive and more or less stay at home and make babies. This causes a few more condescending remarks by the crew about how their society used to be like that, too, before they got super enlightened. Unfortunately, Lutan decides he really likes Yar and kidnaps her by suddenly grabbing her and transporting off of the ship and back to his planet. That is what some might call a "game changer".

Now it's a little unclear exactly what level of technology these aliens have because the plot is pretty convoluted. They apparently have very nice transporting technology and medical technology to rival that of Starfleet, but no space ships or weapons to speak of. And the crew constantly reminds us how primitive they are, other than the transporters and vaccines. The point is that the Enterprise is completely unopposed. There is no way these aliens can stand up to them, so at any time Picard could rescue Tasha and take the vaccine. If it were me, that's what I would do. No need to annihilate their planet, just get my crew member back and take the vaccine for my trouble. I am not as progressive as Captain Picard, however.

Instead of uncivilized brute force, Picard and his crew use their enlightened minds. After standing around and looking rather perplexed for a while, they discuss what course of action they should take, if any. Sure, a member of the crew was just kidnapped in an unprovoked act of violence and her life my be in danger, but Picard does not let his emotions get the best of him. Instead, he asks everybody what they think should be done. Data, the android, indicates that his memory banks say this alien culture has a great deal of respect for patience. Riker, the first officer, says that if that's the case then maybe the crew should just "wait [the aliens] out". Everybody thinks that's a pretty good idea and is relatively happy about the waiting, except maybe Yar and the people that desperately need that vaccine. They spend the next 24 hours doing absolutely nothing.

After a full day has passed, the crew starts trying to figure out why Lutan would have kidnapped Yar in the first place, which never came up in their initial discussions. They decide that it's a cultural thing they need to respect because it's some sort of way for Lutan to demonstrate his bravery in front of his people, and God Science forbid they make him look bad in front of his people. Shortly after that conversation, Lutan contacts the ship and tells Picard that he can have Yar back but he has to go through all of this cultural bullshit and formally ask for her back at the end of a long evening of celebrating. Naturally, Picard agrees, but unfortunately Lutan goes back on his word at the end of the celebration and says he is in love with Yar and wants to divorce his current wife and marry her. This makes his wife very angry, so she challenges Yar to a duel to the death using big, spiky, poisoned fists. Naturally, Picard agrees to these terms. Yar may or may not have been very keen to go along with that, but since she's not the captain it doesn't matter one way or the other.

For any of you oafish buffoons that think at this point Picard might have justification for taking Yar and the vaccine by force, you are in luck because there is a good 15 minutes of soul-searching dialogue where they talk about why they can't do that. Starfleet must be held to a higher standard, there's the Prime Directive to consider (which actually does not apply in this situation but since I'm rather embarrassed to know that I will save the commentary on why), there's the alien culture to respect, violence doesn't solve anything, they don't want to be mean, these guys aren't as advanced so they can't help themselves, and on and on and on. In other words, they can't take violent action against this culture unless it's violent action the culture wants them to take. Negotiations continue:



I won't waste time detailing the resolution of the story, but suffice it to say everything is neatly wrapped up, nobody dies in the death match, and the virtues of talking, waiting, and being a wimp are all shown to be superior to that of violence,except for the violence of the tribal culture, which is okay because that's different and stuff. Just like in real life.

It makes me wonder what would have happened if Kim Jong-Il said that Clinton could take the journalists home, but first they had to participate in a death match. He may have agreed to that if it was a mud wrestling death match and he had a front row seat. This also makes me wonder how much worse things are going to get for the U.S. Capitulating to North Korea is almost like what Picard did in this episode. We had two of our citzens kidnapped and while we were unhappy about it we sure weren't very proactive in resolving it. I wonder how much Obama really cared because he certainly did not talk about it a lot. Health care uber alles, you know. Bill Clinton goes over there, just a week or so after North Korea insults his wife, our Secretary of State, and we just cave in to whatever they want. We don't even pretend to act tough.

Is it any wonder that now Iran is upping the ante? It's always easier to start off as an asshole and gradually ease off than it is to start off as everyone's bitch and then try to get tough. That's another one of those "experience" things that Obama might know if he'd ever managed anything before starting with this country. This part of the article is my favorite:

The European Union, France and Britain all condemned the trial. The Swedish EU presidency said in a statement "action against one EU country, citizen or embassy staff, is considered an action against all of the EU."

Oooooo! Ahmadinejad's got the entire EU against him, now! Well, except for maybe this guy. How can any EU politician think they will be taken seriously when talking about something going on in a Muslim country when the EU won't even support the right of a Danish newspaper to print what it wants to in its own country? I'm sure Ahmadinejad is real nervous.

And yet, some people still think what we did in North Korea is a huge success and give points to Obama's foreign policy. Why? Maybe they are stupid, maybe they are partisan hacks, or maybe this type of thinking has permeated our culture for so long and their lives are so sheltered from reality that they are incapable of thinking outside of the last Star Trek or Law & Order episode. Or maybe it's just me.

My question is where did this defeatist line of thinking come from? You can find it all the back with Neville Chamberlain and the Sudetenland, maybe even earlier than that. It didn't work then, why are they so convinced it will work now? Have bad guys gotten less ruthless? Even in the TNG episode described above, the Enterprise crew eventually had to resort to violence to resolve the situation, so why not do it on their terms? Is there a single instance in all of known history where acting scared and being weak has worked out well in the end? If you hand over your lunch money to the school bully every day with no resistance, he will probably keep taking it but rough you up anyway, because he IS a bully after all. It seems that the only time this scenario ever turns out well is in the imagination of the left, whether it's sci-fi or another genre of fiction. Come to think of it, imagination is the only place most of their ideals work out well. Coincidence?

PS - Even if you have no other comments to make, please give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down as to whether or not this is the sort of thing we want to do here.

Try Try Again

Here we are. We'll post the Misson and Rules of Engagement when our computer problems are resolved,