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The Future of Today, According to Robert Heinlein
Back in the February, 1952 issue of Galaxy, Robert Heinlein set down some predictions for the ensuing 48 years. He revisited them in a 1966 collection, but died before he could see them come true. (Or, fail, in some cases.) Now, sixty years after he wrote them… let’s see how accurate they are. At predicting the world of 2012, much less the world of 2000.
Long-ass post going over list of 19 predictions after the bump.
Appendix N: Metamorphosis Alpha Redux
Metamorphosis Alpha has enough recurring tropes that there are several good sources for inspiration; science-fiction RPGs have less of a “seminal work” motif, so it’s hard to tie everything to a single novel/series (The Lord of the Rings) or character (Conan). Non-Stop by Aldiss is the best (at least, in my opinion) because of how much it influenced Metamorphosis Alpha creator James Ward, but there are many other sources.
It’s a wonder anybody builds generation ships… haven’t they read, seen, or played any science fiction? Like utopian enclaves and underwater cities patrolled by diving-suit monsters, it will only end in tears. Similarly—I’m expecting you to realize that “generation ship” = “main plot twist is zOMG We’re In SPAAACE!!!” every goddamn time, so no complaints about spoilers.
Texts:
- Robert Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky (1941, revised 1963) was the original generation starship. Pre-technological civilization forms after a revolt on said starship, along with mutants and the need to develop swords as the main armament. A bit simpler, more straightforward, less weird and grim vision than Aldiss’ story. Then again, it came from a simpler and more straightforward time, when mutants were men with two heads and not hideous abominations or psychic rats.
- Harry Harrison’s Captive Universe (1969) is another generation starship with primitive humans tale; the difference here is that the inhabitants are Aztecs who discover their society was constructed to maintain order over the course of their generation starship’s flight. From what I can gather, it’s more into the cultural immersion of an Aztec valley constrained by the ship rather than people running amok in overgrown corridors, where the “generation ship” is meant to be this huge reveal that I just spoiled.
- Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun (1993-1996) consists of four novels set on an ancient generation starship its inhabitants refer to as the Whorl (world/whirl); they have created a Renaissance-ish civilization, along with bits of scattered future technology, having been stuck on it for time immemorial. This decadent but decaying society has lost all knowledge of its past. Wolfe is well-known for baroque jargon rivaling Jack Vance and a love of magical realism and supernatural elements, and these come forth in such forms as ancient cybernetic (and otherwise partly modified/artificial) humans differentiated primarily by Wolfe’s lexicon, and a series of rogue Artificial Intelligences that the Whorl’s inhabitants worship ala Greek gods. (That these AIs are capricious, vague, and scheming—and that the protagonist is a priest who uses haruspicy—gives an ancient fantasy feel to some dense science fiction.) Wolfe’s work is not always accessible, being complex and cerebral, but if you can get over those hurdles there’s a lot to be gained from this brilliant series. Long Sun happens to be my favorite, though I’d say Wolfe’s done better works.
- Greg Bear’s Hull Zero Three (2010) is the closest I’ve seen to Metamorphosis Alpha in book form that’s not Non-Stop. A man wakes up expecting to see his port-of-call and sweetheart; instead, he’s freezing to death and half-naked, on his transport starship filled with monsters. Even his other survivors are paranoid and dangerous. It’s also close to the underrated Pandorum, which came out the year before, though Bear strikes with more complexity and thoughtfulness. A middling effort from Bear from its adherence to genre tropes—generation starship + amnesiac protagonist recovering memories and language + space monsters—but it’s still an interesting read.
Film:
- The Starlost (1973-74) was a failed Canadian science-fiction series devised by Harlan Ellison; thanks to budget cuts and shoddy execution, he invoked a contractual clause that removed his name entirely from the project. Science adviser (and fellow SF writer) Ben Bova was not so lucky. Not an ideal candidate, but it has some interesting ideas. The generation starship is this time a generation starship with bio-spheres; its inhabitants aren’t mutants but the Amish. Its protagonists get branded as heretics and are the only people who can save the ship from flying into a sun. I’ve heard it’s hard to watch, but I haven’t actually seen any of it yet. The award-winning script treatment is now a graphic novel.
- Pandorum (2009) was a failed science-fiction/horror hybrid that was really more of a trashy action movie, but for a trashy action movie I don’t think it was half bad. If you could shut your brain off enough to enjoy the Underworld or Resident Evil series, you should get through this one unscathed. It’s what Metamorphosis Alpha would be if it were made today: a generation starship’s crew wakes up to find that instead of arriving at their new-Earth paradise, they’re trapped in the black void. Worse, their ship is rusting, broken-down, now unmanned. Worse, it’s populated by mutant cannibals. Worse. There’s a deep-space madness named pandorum. Disjointed, but a fantastic idea mine.
Gaming:
- Warhammer 40k took the whole “space derelict” thing and turned it into a subgenre: Space Hulk, named after a 40k board game of the same name. At this point the term’s a catch-all for any massive derelict ship in space, with a surprising number of tie-in novels, scenarios and adventure modules. The theme’s similar enough that I can see a lot of overlap—what happens when your primitive generation ship inhabitants bump into something that’s trying to scrap and salvage their world?
- The Phantasy Star series for the Sega Genesis had a heavy overlap of fantasy/science fiction, usually involving characters who were the colonizers from a generation ship, or were stuck on some kind of ship/artificial world/colony world overrun by mutants/aliens/whatever. Not a direct inspiration, of course, but the games always come to mind when I think Metamorphosis Alpha—blending psionics and rayguns with D&D style monsters. Only, in a Final Fantasy way, and on the ground instead of in space. They have some good, inspiring ideas at least.
Appendix N: Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss
Way back in the day—1976!—a little company recently named TSR Hobbies published a little roleplaying game. It’s not the roleplaying game they’re most famous for—that would be Dungeons & Dragons, mom—but one important for its place as the first science-fiction roleplaying game (and predecessor to the more successful and more popular Gamma World): Metamorphosis Alpha.
The game takes place on a generation starship named Warden, struck by an unknown event that killed most of the colonists and crew, released most of the life-forms it carried, and left them careening about in space. The characters are descendants of the survivors, part of a primitive culture which believes the ship to be their world, unable to comprehend the technology around them. Their “world” is filled with strange plants and mutant animals that rove its metal floors and lurk between its many layers; the characters must progress, finding new and interesting “lost” technological devices and fighting off successively more dangerous mutants and rogue robots. In short: it’s a dungeon crawl on a wasted spaceship.
It’s an interesting idea; at this point, D&D was just a glorified dungeon crawl, and dropping that into a science-fiction milieu was a great take on the dungeon-crawling RPG. The setting, as creator Jim Ward is quick to point it, was heavily influenced by an earlier science fiction novel: the 1958 novel Non-Stop by British writer Brian Aldiss, retitled Starship (idiotic title) when it released in the States.
The original 1958 UK hardcover edition really showcases the scale of weirdness.
The similarities are legion. (Spoilers, but the North American title is one of the biggest spoilers here.) The novel takes place on a generation ship that, centuries ago, was struck by cosmic radiation, killing most of the crew; the survivors degenerated into a primitive society living in the growing ‘ponics (hydroponics), beneath constant fluorescent lights and between rusting metal walls and decks. The characters are all from one primitive tribe, led by their local priest on a quest to find the mythical control room (thanks to the priest’s light fingers and questionable morals, he purloined an ancient deck-plan schematic). In many ways, it’s a reaction to Heinlein’s Orphans in the Sky.
As the novel progresses, it introduces some weird-ass elements, such as a race of technologically advanced giants living in secret passageways between the decks (with knockout-gas pellets and future-weapons), or the collective of intelligent rats that have captured some of the more passive animals with psychic talents (rabbits) and attempt to use them to interrogate the protagonist.
Most reviewers comment on the “weird shit” ratio in the book that defies suspension of disbelief; maybe I had Metamorphosis Alpha in mind, but it all made too much sense to me. It’s the calculated weirdness I’d expect in an RPG. Non-Stop hinted at the crazy, where Metamorphosis Alpha went full-bore gonzo with weirdness, introducing things like the ancient robots with corrupted AI systems, and the various plants which have developed sentience and mobility.
The book is eminently readable; it has some stoic and clunky prose at points, but it’s one of the best 1950s SF books money can buy. The plot and characters are well done; the pacing is odd—a large middle section spends time wandering around exploring, then the third act is a rapid-fire finale of unexpected awesomeness—but it’s a book worth tracking down. I read and reviewed it back in January if you’re curious. It’s a win-win on two fronts: excellent reading, and a good look back at RPG history and inspiration.
As for Metamorphosis Alpha? It’s always been one of my favorite ideas, even if its execution and rules were clunky and unexceptional across all four of its editions. (There’s a reason most people don’t remember it.) While its similarities with dungeon-crawling are unmistakable—a mythic underworld of monsters and treasure, but IN SPACE—I prefer Metamorphosis Alpha because its questions and answers run a bit deeper. A dungeon inevitably has players asking what’s in the next room? followed by who put all this stuff here?, and Metamorphosis Alpha one-ups that with why did it get to be in the shape it is? and can we do anything about it?—two questions Non-Stop answers in a hard and unique way. And it’s those layered questions, the players trying to unravel their decayed history and fix their horrible situation, that moves the game from “dungeon in space” to something greater.
When you get to the end of a dungeon, you fight Diablo and either die in a horrible fashion or get a pile of swag for your efforts. I’d like to think there’s a control room at the end of Metamorphosis Alpha. Whether or not the players have figured out a way to use it, of course…
Prometheus and Bad Science
In the wake of Ridley Scott’s new film, Prometheus, science-fiction fans have been quick to point out the many, varied ways in which science is butchered for the sake of plot stupidity. As in, ignoring not just Einstein but Newtonian physics, idiotic scientists, B-movie style mindless alien monsters, and one of those laughable scenes where something big and inanimate (a spaceship) chases a character (Charlize Theron) who runs along its path instead of going sideways. After it drops straight out of the sky, instead of, y’know, falling in an arc, like Newton’s laws of inertia proscribe. (Also in last link, the CEO going on away missions was an implausibility Star Trek got rid of in its second series.)
RUN. SIDEWAYS. YOU. MORON.
Needless to say, the criticism has been bagging on the movie’s scientific inaccuracy. And more often than not, someone will point out that the film is science fiction, emphasizing the FICTION part. Well… yes and no.
Science fiction has always had an elitist edge about it, holding the genre and its components to the highest standard. (Sad truth, it can be really blatant elitism with some authors/historians, though for most it’s more about adhering to science fact.) I’d say that that rigorous elitism, that staying true to science, is what makes science fiction. It’s why people derisively referred to film, TV, and other visual media as “Sci-Fi” instead of science fiction—because of its lower scientific rigor, considering it more low-brow entertainment, and later, because the media referred to it as Sci-Fi.
The genre’s founder, Hugo Gernsback, was an enthusiastic immigrant engineer; in his Amazing Stories magazine, he promoted didactic “scientifiction” designed to educate as well as entertain, full of technocrats emerging from their ivory-tower meritocracy to dispense scientific wisdom and technological inventions to the masses… while fighting off bug-eye-monsters and protecting nearby comely young ladies.
The man who formed science fiction as we know it today was John W. Campbell; his idea for SF was to write what popular fiction of the 2500s would be like; he revolutionized the genre, moving it away from Westerns with their horses traded in for spaceships and sixguns replaced by blasters, and away from the didacticism of Gernsback. He was also something of an egotistical blowhard. Read any of his introductions to Analog short-story collections and you’ll see him arguing that SF is the hardest genre to write in because it has to adhere to science as we know it, yet say something meaningful about the human condition. You’ll hear him say that Science Fiction is the greatest genre, because it is every genre, or hear the glories of prophetic science fiction—the fans of one of Campbell’s best-remembered authors, Robert Heinlein, are quick to point out Heinlein’s successive “prophecies” compared to his contemporaries.
Heck, the entire genre from the mid-40s to the early ’60s was heavy into the benefits of science—glorious new devices, utopian futures, with brilliant super-scientists leading us ever onward.
True, the ’60s and ’70s saw SF turning away from Campbell’s mold—the rise of Soft Science Fiction, focusing on the soft science: anthropological science fiction, social science fiction. Authors like Delany and Zelazny and Le Guin and Philip K. Dick asked deep, biting questions about the human condition, something that Campbell’s authors often gave only a second glance to. But even in the Soft SF revolution, science as we know it—often the soft sciences, but the “hard” physics and engineering sciences as well—are adhered to. While its protagonists are often no longer scientists, they’re still pretty smart and capable. Yet it was Campbell’s ideals SF returned to: social science fiction merged into the tech-savvy, fight-the-power anarchy of cyberpunk, whose technological focus helped bring about a return to the hard sciences.
(Consider science fiction’s reflection of its eras, progressing views of science pushing back the boundaries of the unknown and impossible. In Gernsback’s lifetime, humanity had introduced cars, airplanes, radio, and dozens of other brilliant technologies which fascinated him; he introduced science fiction in his Modern Electronics magazine, as something for fellow engineer-futurists, who became some of its earliest authors. Campbell’s boom years were after the War, when millions of Americans took advantage of the G.I. Bill to get a college degree, and when scientists praised future glories of the recently split atom. Hence, scientific optimism and super-educated scientists. Soft SF arose during an era of change: the Civil Rights and Women’s Lib movements, anti-conformity and fighting the establishment, hippies, free love, recreational narcotics. What does Prometheus say about the 2010s?)
pretty pretty pretty visuals.
The point being? Rigorous adherence to known science has always been a cornerstone of the genre; it’s an expectation of many of its adherents, hence why fans hold science fiction films to higher expectations. Get rid of the science, and you can still have science fiction. Thanks to subgenres like “space opera” and “science fantasy,” essentially dumping ground terminology for science-lite science-fiction, fans can still enjoy John Carter and Star Wars by holding them to a less rigorous set of expectations. But without the “science,” you don’t have science fiction: you have fiction. Which is something I don’t think Hollywood has realized, in its bad writing and misguided marketing.
And, more to the point: by promoting shitty writing, dull plotting, impossible science, and idiotic characters, is Prometheus promoting anything beneficial for either science, science fiction, or even film? No. It’s promoting lackluster, bad, and stupid filmmaking under the veneer of pretty visuals and hoping the viewers don’t notice, building high expectations which are rudely squashed. I’m ashamed that it has a 74% on Rotten Tomatoes and didn’t get a fraction of the scathing other, better SF films often get. Not every science fiction film can be Blade Runner or Moon or Inception, but it’d be nice if they tried.
Pathfinder – Distant Worlds
One thing’s for sure, Paizo has kept up an impressive quality level on its world-building supplements, keeping its Chronicles/Campaign Setting books on the same bar as the best 3.5 supplements—and often raising that bar. I found the various 3.x “fluffier” books hit or miss, and got into the habit of avoiding them. So it’s been a pleasant shock to find some of the best (e.g., my favorite) Pathfinder supplements have been the “fluff” ones: Guides to Darkmoon Vale and Absalom, Cities of Golarion, Dungeons of Golarion, Lost Cities of Golarion, and now… Distant Worlds.
A lizard-riding lashunta woman on Castrovel beset upon by a Shobhad giant from Akiton – awesome art by Karem Beyit
If you haven’t guessed from the title, this softcover deals with the other planets in the same solar system as Pathfinder’s core world, Golarion. This include’s Golarion’s moon; Castrovel and Akiton, analogues to the pulp Amtor (Venus) and Barsoom (Mars) of the 1930s-40s; the apocalyptic Eox the Dead, which turned to undeath to survive its evaporating atmosphere; Triaxus the Wanderer, a planet whose slow orbit takes several centuries, seeing the rise and fall of many species and cultures in one planetary year (ala Brian Aldiss’ Heliconia Trilogy); and several gas giants with a multitude of inhabited moons. There’s a couple other planets, and the book even touches on the sun (!) and an asteroid belt (remnants of demolished planets).
Lizard-riders!
Right from the start, the book has a more science-fiction feel, through quantifiable realism—the planets have mini stat-blocks noting their rotational speeds, relative size to Golarion, etc. And that’s something I really enjoyed: seeing the fantasy world, complete with its magic, gods, and monsters, under a slightly more realistic and logical approach. Keep in mind, this is still Pathfinder, and still fantasy. There’s no rules for spaceships, computer networks, netrunning, or other modern technologies, though there are some robots, and a few of the races use guns or other magi-tech style “advanced fantasy” devices. Thus, while it deals with inhospitable gas giants and other astronomical features, they have things like space whales and energy creatures living on them. Science fantasy is a good descriptor.
The Introduction jumps to attention, dealing with how the gods and the multiverse affect and exist on other planets, and covering why most species on these foreign planets are bipedal humanoids.
From there, we have the lengthy Chapter One, going over each planet in brief. Distant Worlds is done in the gazetteer style, giving each planet’s major cities and adventuring locales, then a brief overview of its terrain, flora, and fauna. Add in some planetary history and some info about the planet’s humanoid life-forms, and touch it off with a map showing the planet’s two sides. There’s enough here for GMs to get the general idea of the setting, a firm baseline and plenty of room (and ideas!) to build adventure hooks out of.
Chapter Two takes us back to short chapters again; it details more of the “rules” style stuff, including vacuum and void, gravity, and most important of all, some hooks and ideas of how to get players to the stars. It has a few spells and one piece of equipment to help characters survive in the void. Chapter three moves on to monsters. There’s a nice list of Pathfinder monsters that would fit into the space setting, and the straightforward hint to re-skin monsters. It rounds the book out with six monsters, including Pern-esque dragons, blue Barsoomian giants, titanic space whales, and modular robots.
SPAAAAACE WHAAAAALES!
For a gazetteer, this is doing well: 64 pages isn’t a lot to work with, but Distant Worlds feels packed. Yet it’s still missing key pieces: there’s no playable races yet, many of the species introduced aren’t detailed, and the stellar bodies are wide-open, their overviews brief. It’s also lacking in landscapes and scenery art; I like seeing characters and monsters up close, but I’d kill to see a view of tidally-locked Verces, with its sustaining life-belt trapped between the planet’s dark and light sides. If wishes were horses; the book does an amazing job at what it’s doing. It will hold me over until the release of a Distant Worlds hardback (or, better, one for each planet, or in small groups/pairs), where those “key pieces” would be better suited.
I’m a bit biased as a pulp SF junkie, having waited impatiently for this book’s arrival since I saw the solar system overview in the 3.5 Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Not only did it meet my expectations, it surpassed them. Without a doubt, this is one of the best RPG supplements I’ve bought all year, one of the best Pathfinder supplements in 2012, and my favorite Pathfinder softcover. James Sutter did a remarkable job packing 64 pages with material while leaving enough to inspire GMs. Since it’s mostly fluff—there’s around ten pages with rules—I can also see using it with any system, making it a more of a utilitarian reference work for my space opera/sword-and-planet needs. And the wheels have been turning on that front.
Now, if only someone can convince the Paizo staff (James Jacobs cough) to let James Sutter loose on a larger version…
Edit 6/21: Apparently the Distant Worlds stock has almost sold out, according to James Sutter… so get it while you can.
The Hunger Games
Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s something built into my jaded generation, but I end up assuming everything will be a steaming plate of shit and chips unless it first provides certification of its not-shit nature. In triplicate. Such was my assumption about The Hunger Games; when I first heard about it, my reaction was Didn’t I already read/watch this when it was called Battle Royale? An attempt to reformat the Japanese original’s totalitarian state and teenage gladiatorial death arena for the palate of Western audiences, namely the post-Potter Twilight generation?
Yeah. I should stop assuming things.
The setup is pretty straightforward. Generations after a failed uprising/civil war, the post-apocalyptic remains of North America have restitched themselves under the control of the victorious state of Panem. As punishment for their attempted rebellion, the outlying areas have been divvied up into districts, operating as combination collective farms and industrial plants and kept in a state of suppressed poverty. Once per year, two teenagers—a boy and a girl—are chosen from each district to compete in the Hunger Games: a futuristic deathmatch where these Tributes fight to the death, with the Panem and District citizens watching the ordeal in a rapt fervor. Twenty-four teenagers enter, one teenager leaves.
Katniss Everdeen lives in District 12; when her younger sister is chosen, she volunteers in her stead. A talented archer, she manages to overcome the prejudices weighted against her district through unconventional tactics. See, well-to-do viewers may sponsor the participants with air-dropped gifts, such as medicine or food, and the Games are equal part survival course, combat mission, and showboating for fans. District 12′s other Tribute, a strapping young lad named Peeta, manages to showboat a little too far when he reveals he has a secret crush on Katniss—snap! I wonder what her boyfriend back home thinks about this?
Their drunken advisor—Woody Harrelson, since Woody Harrelson is in freaking everything—urges them to play up this star-crossed lovers angle. Even as they get into the meat of the film—the third act is the Games themselves, after some long and bloated setup—their relationship develops onward, despite the foregone outcome that one of the two will die. The hope is that Katniss will get more sponsors this way… because they’re all guessing Katniss is the only one with a chance, and needs all the help she can get. Their strained relationship ebbs and flows during the game, but by the end, it becomes both the foundation and moving force of the film.
On the one hand, this is a grim futuristic dystopia with a Young Adult love-story that can appeal equally to girls and boys. On a deeper level, this film a scathing satire of our glorious technological future. Contrast the pastoral, 1950s-drab outlying Districts with the glitz and glamor of the Capital City, an amalgam of the stereotypical worst excesses of D.C. insiders and the Hollywood elite, the One Percent turned to eleven—it’s a modern-day Metropolis gone Lord of the Flies.
And note the connection between the Hunger Games and modern society, with their sponsors and mass-media appeal, the vicarious viewers whose emotions are played by this reality TV show gone Thunderdome. It’s in the same vein as Battle Royale, yes, but also treks back through the history of the totalitarian dystopia through Logan’s Run (check out those jumpsuits!), Orwell, and Huxley; it emerged with many similarities, but still has something new and interesting to say.
As the first installment of a trilogy, it has that problem where unique and interesting concepts are introduced but left undeveloped. For example, the Games take place in an artificial, controlled environment, and Gamesmasters are shown to have the ability to drop in new threats to herd, or weed out, the participants… something that’s used about twice. I’ll bet that comes back in the sequels, since it’s a concept that shouldn’t be so woefully underused. There are a number of blatantly obvious questions, many about the setting, that are never answered, and any social criticism is left in the allegorical stage, buried under the surface-level narrative.
An actual film complaint—pretty much my only one—is that is uses the bane of today’s moviegoer… the shaky-cam. Imagine dropping a half-dozen teenagers, a camcorder set to record at full zoom, and some pit bulls into a cement mixer, and you have The Hunger Games‘ fight sequences. The first time it’s used, it can follow its purpose: that would be the initial slaughter when the Tributes are released into the Games, the scrimmage over the supplies left before them. Reflecting the stress and chaos of the moment, with distanced sounds and nervous breathing, it works, without obscuring the action too greatly. And the scenes in the Games have these hand-held, documentary look, which could reflect Katniss’ unsteady nerves or whatever, so there’s already some unsteady-cam action going on.
After that, it does pretty much what shaky-cam cinematography always does: acts as a crutch for inept/lazy directors and/or actors, obscuring the lack of choreography. “You actors, just sprawl around on the ground slapping each other while Bob films from inside a tumble dryer; don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post.” The fight sequences are a muddled mess of close-ups and jerky handheld cameras and bad lighting; as either consolation or an addendum, they’re also way damn short.
The teenage actors all did admirable performances. Josh Hutcherson stumbles occasionally as Peeta, but he gives an all-around solid performance that I can’t complain about. Supporting cast such as Lenny Cravitz, Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland are excellent, and Stanley Tucci hams things up as the Games’ newscaster/reporter. But it’s Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss who steals the show; her ability to emote is sublime, which is in high demand in The Hunger Games, with some emotionally powerful scenes. She also manages to pull off a strong, independent Tomboy who’s still sexy—and since the traditional genre stereotypes are thrown on their heads, with Katniss caretaking an injured Peeta, we have yet another solid female rolemodel from a science-fiction-tinged action movie.
Within The Hunger Games we have an entertaining action film, a Young Adult love story, a dystopia, a cunning social satire, a modern parable for the 99% generation, and probably two or three other things I left out. It’s one of those few films that appeals to teens and adults without compromising—the thematic allegories are vague, not dense or bludgeoning; the action is frenetic, but not the focus; the love story is engaging, not sappy. The effects are slick, and the film’s vision is sweeping and uncompromising, if under-detailed. Its pre-Game half grew long, and the shaky-cam sequences are shit, flaws marring an otherwise solid movie.
I don’t think it’ll go down in history as a landmark film—save for making bank at the box-office—and it might not be the one 2012 movie you remember ten years from now. But The Hunger Games is certainly worth watching.
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale – Again
Okay, I’ve been pretty skeptical about this one, dating back to when I first heard they were remaking it. I mean, the Schwarzenegger one wasn’t brilliant, but it managed to keep Philip K. Dick’s paranoia and questioning of reality intact inside an entertaining ’80s trashy action movie. Probably one of the top three PKD book-to-movie adaptations… behind Blade Runner, of course, and I’m growing to like Spielberg’s Minority Report more than the original story.
And Hollywood has a tendency to make… well, really shitty “sci-fi” movies out of hot-shit science fiction properties (anyone else remember Surrogates? Cowboys and Aliens? Predators? Green Lantern? Need I go on?). For every District 9 or Inception, we get a good number of science fiction films that are forgettable, or best left forgotten. Just look at all the failed attempts to turn Dick’s novels into films—don’t get me started on Paycheck or Next. (I’ve realized that the irony of The Adjustment Bureau is that they didn’t develop the concepts far enough; probably why Rango, which went far enough and then some, beat it down at the box office.)
So, yeah, after seeing the trailer, I’ll eat some crow and say the new Total Recall looks pretty damn good. As in, see it opening day damn good. The visuals are astounding, for one, and the plot seems as Dickian as Dick’s original story. Also, the cast is pretty stellar. Colin Farrell stars, with support from Jessica Biel and Bryan Freaking Cranston as antagonists, and Ethan Hawk, Bill Nighy, and Kate Beckinsale in support.
The whole Mars subplot has been dropped, but honestly, what made the story interesting was Dick’s surrealist paranoid mindfuckery. The Mars angle was great flavor, but the meat of the story wasn’t the Martian rebellion, it was Dick’s eternal attempts to define reality and humanity, the sense that you never knew what was the true world and which was the implant. Something the poster hypes up:
Well, you know how to market a Philip K. Dick-based film and stay true to Philip K. Dick’s overarching vision; you have my interest.
So, here’s hoping that screenwriters and directors have figured out the proper way to adapt PKD to film, rather than skimming the surface-value concepts into another formulaic, chase-scene-rific shitty action film. (I really hated Paycheck and Next, okay?)
Prometheus Unbound
If you haven’t guessed from a few nerdy, deep-cut hints, this is Ridley Scott’s return to SF, a film long rumored to be a loosely-connected prequel of sorts set in the same universe as Alien. That may or may not include xenomorphs. But does involve a ship similar to the one found at the beginning of the first film; you know, the one with the alien eggs and the space jockey, which is one of the hints keen-eyed viewers might have spotted in the video above.
I’m interested to see how it pans out, because a return to the world of Alien—and a dark, mysterious, high-quality return like Prometheus seems to be—would be hella. We don’t see enough good SF/horror hybrid films. Scratch that, we don’t see that many good SF films in general.
Though if it is a prequel, it suffers from the same prequel problem that made the Star Wars prequels such a terrible idea. (No, not wooden acting, or bad ’90s green-screen effects.) The technology and spaceship look loving amazing, but it’s way more advanced than anything in the Alien universe so far. Hell, the ship’s actually got sub-orbital flight capabilities; all the other Alien films involved people using shuttles or dropships to get down. How could it be a prequel to the first film, when the Colonial Marines sixty-plus years after the first film didn’t have tech half this advanced?
This also depends on it being a prequel, which Scott has been tight-lipped about, so maybe he’s just using similar aesthetics to fuck with us. Or maybe it’s actually a loosely-connected sequel (gasp). And I’d buy the excuse that the Nostromo was an old-school industrial-grade klunker, and not a high-tech scientific research vessel. But still, between our advancements in (and expectations for) day-to-day technology and the high quality of movie SFX today, prequels for ’70s SF movies will never look like prequels.
Regardless, it looks awesome; whatever its connection (or lack thereof) to Alien, it looks to be a tense thriller in its own right. Since it opens in June, I’ll have something to watch once Avengers is through.
John Carter – less a review and more an analysis
I’m not really sure if I should bother reviewing the film, considering everyone seems to have made up their minds before it even hit theaters.
John Carter’s fared poorly with critics, even though most of them gave mixed but somewhat positive reviews. Leonard Maltin gave a very balanced review before encouraging anyone interested to see it. Richard Corliss at Time ended with “I’m glad Stanton made John Carter; I just don’t know why he did,” after dishing out both praise and complaints (also stealing my “transcend or subvert the genre” line). There’s a legion of uninspired and unimpressed reviews, though, and a bunch of negative ones—the most critical being the one at Slant magazine, which was half review and half lengthy ad-hominum, calling the movie “a dollop of oatmealy, sick person’s poop.” (For balancing reasons, I’ll put Mark Holcomb’s glowing review for the Village Voice here.)
No, the film is not Casablanca, nor Citizen Kane. Nor is it on par with SF greats like 2001 or Blade Runner, or Avatar, a movie relative to John Carter in aesthetics, theme, and time. But oatmealy, watery poop? That’s the kind of derision I’d heap on a Star Wars prequel, or a direct-to-DVD release from some shithouse production company like Asylum—who happened to release Princess of Mars a few years ago, with the production values of the most insipid of SyFy TV movies and porn star/Juno Reactor eye-candy Traci Lords as Princess Dejah.
John Carter’s apparent sin is that its overinflated budget—$250 million, or more—only resulted in an above average, retroactively derivative, but most of all fun, blockbuster that’s failing to bust blocks. While it looks good, it doesn’t look as good as Avatar. And it’s got a long, long history of defying filmmakers, from Loony Tunes producer Bob Clampett, to Ray Harryhausen, to Robert Rodriguez and John Favreau and a half-dozen others, as a bad legacy to overcome. Add in that director Andrew Stanton worked magic on Pixar’s Finding Nemo and Wall-E, which translates to high expectations on behalf of viewers.
But the film feels like it was destined to fail. Disney’s lead-up marketing was half-hearted, starting with the decision to cut “of Mars” from the title, leaving us with the listless “John Carter” which tells the viewer nothing. Some too-little, too-late ads couldn’t make up for the lack of hype, the best of which being the ones for a Comedy Central special preview, proclaiming “John Carter / The Original Badass.” Plus, it was released well in advance of summer blockbuster season. And with its hyperinflated budget, the film needed to open to $100 million in order to spawn the franchise Disney was hoping for—a longshot given how badly the film was mis-marketed. Most of these relate back to the film’s director being brand new to live-action, and its executives being new on the job. The numbers are back in, and it broke $30.6 million in the US, charting second after The Lorax, plus $77 million overseas, leaving it the bomb critics proclaimed it as well before its release.
On the flipside. It’s been tracking very well with viewers, what few actually went to see it, and it has 70% user approval ratings at every site I’ve glanced at (Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, a B+ on CinemaScore, et al.). And that vocal minority is getting active, not just on the review aggregates but in the Blogosphere and on Twitter. With very few exceptions, the changes to the novel’s plot, and addition of elements from the second book, Gods of Mars, went over well with fans—good, because for the most part, the movie needed most of them. They leave John Carter capable but not superhuman enough to plow through each challenge undeterred (as he does a little too often in the first book), with Dejah Thoris more of a competent individual and not a lost romantic macguffin.
Two white apes of Barsoom show the SFX is pretty good.
As for the movie itself? It’s fun, it’s enjoyable, it’s nowhere near an outhouse joke. But it’s not the cure for cancer that its price-tag might indicate. (Of course, this is Disney; they can afford to banter around with budgets in the triple-digit millions. Why should the film’s budget matter?) The effects are fantastic, with some amazing computer wizardry powering the machine-city of Zodanga and a variety of flying contraptions, plus all sorts of motion-capture Barsoom natives. The set and equipment design is spot-on amazing, giving a strong feel of the alien world, yet staying accurate to its source material (in essence when not in literal presence). I do wish there’d been more details to differentiate the Tharks, since there’s less feeling of individualization among them compared to Avatar’s Na’vi; the motion-capture work is good, but they’re like carbon copies. It’s easier to tell the humans—err, Red Martians—apart, even under their intricate costumes, henna-like tattoos, and British accents.
Taylor Kitsch, as Carter, does an admirable job, but it’s Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris who really pulls things off. A strong supporting cast, including William Dafoe, Thomas Hayden Church, Dominic West, and Mark Strong, round things out: all told, there’s no complaints about the acting. Kitsch isn’t my first choice for Carter, and I’m not sure he’s the perfect actor for the job, but he gave a good show of things. His chemistry with Collins is lacking, but passable; I think her performance was strong enough to make it work.
My big complaints would be that the movie has a surfeit of introductions, some of which should have been tossed to get Carter on Mars faster—the Arizona sequences are somewhat true to the book, but more a failed attempt to generate early-film action than a useful intro; they add nothing, except a woefully underused Bryan Cranston. Second, many of the action scenes are just too short: one of the longer ones is the vaunted gladiatorial sequence shown in the trailers, which tops out around 12-15 minutes. Including some setup. That gives the film a very disjointed feel, with lengthy sections of exposition that lead to overly terse action scenes. And as a PG-13 blockbuster, it needs those action scenes long and involved for the male teen audience. Third, see my aforementioned complaints about the generalized CGI Tharks. I can also see how the film would be confusing, throwing plenty of Martian terminology and history at the viewer; it made me giddy as a fanboy, but not everyone’s familiar with the source.
Taking Burroughs' 8th Ray-powered airships and making them into solar-paneled dragonflies was a fine idea.
I did really like the film; it’s accurate to its source material, it’s entertaining, it’s got a good sense of humor and solid enough characters backing up cool visuals and an eclectic, action-filled plot. But it just didn’t give me that mind-blown sense of wonder that I got from seeing Star Wars as a kid, or Avatar just a few years ago. (To be fair, I went into both of those with no set expectations at all, knowing nothing about them, while I’ve read Burroughs’ first novel two or three times in the past fifteen years, most recently just before the film released.) This is the kind of slightly-campy, fun adventure movie I’d shelve next to The Mummy or Pirates of the Caribbean.
What we’re left with is an entertaining, fun film that doesn’t push the boundaries of cinema: it’s an enjoyable SF romp that isn’t as memorable or spectacular as it should be, but isn’t the motion picture equivalent of having your teeth pulled like everyone says it is. It’s less Howard the Duck and more Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or whatever your preferential fan-favorite box-office-flop is. (I also thought John Carter was a stronger film, and truer to its source, than Disney’s previous franchise-killing flop, Prince of Persia.) It’s a niche genre film that cost too much and has a hard time appealing to those outside the SF nerd demograph. If you like no-nonsense, pulpy SF adventure, suspending your disbelief for some implausible thrills, go see it while you still can: it is worth seeing as a SF fan.
