The Sci-Fi Lounge

Barsoom

2012-01-12T22:49:00.000-08:00

Back when I was in grade school, my father worked for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory during a time when they were beginning to explore the nearby planets in our solar system. He used to bring home photos of flybys over Jupiter from the Pioneer 10 and 11 satellites and had a whole collection of Mars and Venus flybys from the Mariner days. These were high quality photo prints which I was able to grasp were not only historically important but rare to obtain in the format I was seeing them. I can still remember the day when he brought home a set of photos of the surface of Mars, the first ever taken, from the Viking program. Viking had two vehicles, an Orbiter and a Lander, and my Dad was on the Mars Lander team. You just don't forget things like that.

Mars came to my mind again recently when reading an article that mentioned the upcoming release of a sci-fi film called John Carter of Mars. What got my attention was that he talked as if it was a long awaited event, and yet I hadn't heard of it before. I looked it up and discovered it is an old series from the first half of the 20th century created by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Although that name sounded really familiar, I couldn't quite put a finger on it, so it was back to googling again and then a surprise when I found the origin of my recollection - Burroughs also created the original Tarzan series! That put the upcoming film in a new light, because it is clear now that we have a story that has some staying power, written by someone with proven success. According to the Wikipedia link, Burroughs grew up during the pulp fiction era of American literature and actually wrote a great number of science fictions stories and serials which were published in parallel with his Tarzan adventure series. Long awaited indeed.

It's kind of amazing how much of a role our nearest planetary neighbor has played in the history of sci-fi literature. I managed to find this fairly comprehensive survey of this very topic. What's really neat about the list is that, for each entry, it describes how the red planet itself and its Martian inhabitants were depicted. Two things about it stick out for me. One is the wildly speculative nature of works prior to the satellite programs in the 1960's. The second is the vast array of authors that have dabbled in the subject. All the big names are there - Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury (of course), Wells (of course again), and even Philip K. Dick. Also listed there with a range from 1912 to 1943 is Burroughs own series in which Mars is referred to as Barsoom by its warlike inhabitants.

Now I don't expect to find much thought provoking science fiction in JCM. Both the film trailers and the nature of the period in which they were written (Buck Rogers, etc.), tells me it is more of an adventure story than anything else, a Tarzan in space, if you will. Add to that the Disney label and you have a nice family adventure film. I'm eager to see if they will try to explain away the imaginative world of E.R. Burroughs on this 100 year anniversary of the first work, or just throw reality unapologetically out the window. The historic nature of the material means I am compelled to go see it and if it proves worthy of comment, I'll come back and finish this entry.

Size Matters

2011-11-19T22:26:00.001-08:00

As a kid growing up in L.A. county, my family and I were able to visit Disneyland about once a year. It still seems like a dream being able to get in for $12.50 back in '82. One of my favorite rides at the time (second after the old Submarine Voyage) was called Adventure Thru Inner Space. It was a perfect mix of serious science and fascinatingly creative theater. There is a really accurate digital re-creation of the ride here on Youtube that I think anyone who's never experienced it should take a look at. It remains a neat experience, even if the science is a bit outdated by today's standards. Its entrance way is now replaced by the Star Tours ride, but most of it originally went underneath Tomorrow Land and came out on the other side of the walkway. The fact that the bulk of that space has been converted to a ride modeled after a video game (Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters) illustrates the chasm between Walt Disney's original vision for Tomorrow Land, which was to inspire people's imaginations about the future of our society, versus what it is today.

I was able to finally introduce my 4 year old to Disneyland recently and unlike back then, now have the opportunity to let him re-live the experience of his favorite rides via online videos. I found myself also showing him the rides his Dad went on when he was a kid, and he really loved Adventure Thru Inner Space too. Now he asks me questions about atoms and molecules, which is pretty cool. But the point of all this is to talk about the possibility of miniaturization, the basic premise of that old Disney ride, and the topic of several science fiction films over the years. The one in particular that I think stands out above the rest is 1966's Fantastic Voyage, about a journey into the human body.

What makes Fantastic Voyage unique is that it could possibly be the only attempt by a science fiction film to take the idea seriously and remain successful for its time. Miniaturization has been the realm of fantasy since as far back as Lewis Carroll's trip to Wonderland. But most attempts at mixing the idea with science today end up as comedy. The reasons for that will be touched on later, but the opening text in Voyage (quoted below) makes clear the intended purpose:

"The makers of this film are indebted to the many doctors, technicians, and research scientists, whose knowledge and insight helped guide this production"

You can sense here a certain pride in being affiliated with science that permeated the Apollo Program era. It's no coincidence that the tone of Fantastic Voyage feels similar to the Inner Space ride which opened at Disneyland a year after the film came out. In it, the team that is sent out to save a diplomat's life by entering the man's body is made up exclusively of scientists of different disciplines, and you can just watch how the plot is designed to illustrate all the latest medical knowledge of that time, much of which is still basically accurate even though we've come quite a long way since. Unfortunately, the film was too ambitious for the special effects capabilities of the day. It is rather amusing now to watch various body parts and functions resembling cellophane and cotton balls, the clumsy overlays, and the obvious wire suspensions. That said, some of the footage still holds up well even today. Plus, it has a pretty good dramatic profile based on both the perils of the journey and some Cold War Era spy infiltration themes, performed by some then big names in film like Stephen Boyd, Edmond O'Brien, and of course, Raquel Welch in her heyday. The trailer below illustrates the visual effects well, but you have to see it to get the more scientific side.

Although miniaturization is a fun concept, its biggest problem is being really tough to swallow scientifically. The problems are just too numerous to go into, but let's look at a few. Most stories depict the shrunken targets as being much lighter than the originals. That not only violates the conservation of matter and energy law, but the masses of all the fundamental particles, like electrons and protons, are physical constants tied up with all sorts of atomic and chemical processes. Thus, the idea violates the entire basis of particle physics. If you ignore that, the fundamental forces like gravity and electromagnetism fortunately scale down just fine, but then you have the interface issue to deal with. A shrunken person's tiny molecules would no longer be able to chemically interact with the larger ones in the environment. They could not breathe normal air or eat normal food. They could not even expose their bodies to a normal environment due to the enormous relative pressures and temperatures provided by the larger molecules with huge relative momentum. In Voyage, the crew is miniaturized inside a vessel with a closed environment. If that environment were miniaturized along with them, it could push the problem out to the hull, but there are even worse issues after that. If the molecules had reduced mass, that would affect their energy levels and completely change how they interact with light and other EM radiation, making it impossible for their retinas to see anything. All this just represents the problems inherent with the final miniaturized state, but what about the miniaturization process itself? What possible mechanism could accomplish such a feat? I should also add that each of these issues apply just as well to the opposite process, namely, expanding things to larger than life size. Is there a name for that like "enlargification"?

Apparently, James Cameron and Shawn Levy are working on a remake of Fantastic Voyage as we speak. I'm not expecting the scientific angle of any remake to measure up even to its 1966 inspiration, but I believe there is a way one could pull it off. There is a hot area of research today where the word "miniaturization" meets reality, namely, Nanotechnology. This is where people are actually building machines at the molecular level. Often featured in sci-fi stories are armies of nano-robots that work together to accomplish a task. Although it would require more advancement in tiny antenna and data storage and processing technologies, it is not inconceivable that a remotely controlled mini-robot could become a reality. The next step might be using the mini-robot as a surrogate so that you could experience the world from the robot's perspective, and do things like travel vicariously into a human body to assist medical treatments. Given Cameron's past disregard for real science in his sci-fi undertakings, I don't expect he'll take anything close to that approach for his remake, but it might be an interesting idea on which to base a novel. Any takers?

Warp Drives and Wormholes

2011-08-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

What would science fiction be without some means of interstellar travel? It's true that some aliens can be imagined as hidden in our own solar system, such as the ancient guides of Kubrick's 2001 or the underground Selenites from First Men in the Moon, and some may already be here on the earth, hidden from view, such as the pilots in War of the Worlds, or the NTI's in The Abyss. But most aliens we read of come from much farther away. If they are to interact with humans, either they need to come to us, we need to go to them, or we both need to meet somewhere in the middle. In most cases, this needs to happen within a reasonable time frame, and this is the fundamental problem. You can't simply call upon some highly advanced technology to explain it because the laws of physics prohibit anything from traveling faster than light. Speedy as that may be, it is not fast enough. It still takes over 4 years for light to reach us from our nearest solar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. Thus, all sorts of creative fiction has arisen to help us accept that a space ship can hop across the galaxy and get back in time for dinner. I thought it would be fun to take a closer look at some of them. This entry is thus dedicated to the impossible ubiquity of short duration interstellar travel.

Traveling involves basically three physical variables: speed, distance, and time. To get somewhere faster, you must either increase your speed, shorten the distance to the destination, or somehow slow down local time for the traveler. Let's take a look at how each of these methods have been utilized by writers in the past.

GOING FASTER

This is the method of choice for two of the biggest franchises in sci-fi - Star Wars and Star Trek. Star Trek alone made the term warp speed a pop culture substitute for describing anything going really fast. But what exactly is it? Roddenberry's literary team had a real knack even back in the 60's for coming up with fictional names for technologies that sounded almost plausible. Just the term "warp" brings to mind relativistic concepts of bent space or time. I always assumed that they were simply fractions of light speed, but that made the stars which would fly off the edge of the view screen seem ridiculous. Apparently the intent was to represent multiples of the speed of light. This Wikipedia entry states that the very first pilot episode of TOS, The Cage, refers to the warp drive as producing a time warp, which gets around the Einstein limit but not the method used to accomplish it. Later episodes link warp speed to subspace, which is also used to explain how communication messages can get back to Starfleet faster than light travels. But subspace is just a made up term with no analog in the world of science. Of course, the opposite of subspace would be the equally made up hyperspace, which is the method of explanation chosen in the Star Wars franchise, enabled by the so-called hyperdrive.

SHRINKING THE DISTANCE

The only way to find a path shorter than a straight line between two points in space is to just bend the space, which is theoretically possible thanks to General Relativity. The only viable candidate in existing theory to accomplish this is an Einstein-Rosen bridge. It is a kind of tunnel through space-time, commonly referred to as a wormhole. We see this method used for example at the space stations Babylon 5 and DS9. What always made me chuckle is that an E-R bridge lives at the center of a black hole, where ordinary matter would be crushed under the enormous gravitational forces. Also, there's no way to control where you might end up on the other side, and even if you could enter it, the journey would be almost instantaneous, not through some long swirly corridor as is often depicted. I've recently read about more stable types of wormhole theories, but they require an exotic form of negative energy that probably does not even exist. There does seem, however, to be enough wiggle room at the boundaries of physics (see this link) with which you could build a barely plausible wormhole fiction.

SLOWING THE CLOCK

The final way to shorten interstellar travel time is to slow down the aging process of the traveller, and the most plausible method has more to do with biology than physics. I'm talking about the cryogenic freeze, as we encounter aboard the Nostromo in Alien, or the Hunter-Gratzner in Pitch Black. Of course, this doesn't really count as "speedy" interstellar travel because even if the crew doesn't age, the rest of the world outside still does, and it doesn't make the actual travel time any shorter. But at least it is within the realm of future technological advancement. If you take a more physics level approach you can slow down time itself by traveling close to the speed of light, where Special Relativity says you won't age as fast as the world outside. But you don't escape the problem of everyone you know back on Earth dying of old age before you reach your destination. And besides, traveling at that speed requires so much energy you couldn't do it by bringing fuel along (as illustrated in this cool analysis of the Relativistic Rocket).

Think of any science fiction book, film, or series that involves space travel and you'll most likely encounter one of these methods being used. Anything else is bound to start crossing over into pure fantasy.

2011-08-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

As I pondered what to write about next ;), I decided to re-watch a fun little film that I originally put aside because it did not really seem like science fiction per se. I was almost shocked when the opening credits stated it was based on a story by one of the great authors of science fiction, the prolific Philip K. Dick. It is amazing how many of my favorite films turn out to be based on his stories once I take the time to look into it. The film is simply called Next and was released in 2007 starring Nicolas Cage in the lead role, who I've always liked for reasons I can never quite pinpoint.

The story the film claims to be based on is called The Golden Man, but a quick read of the plot synopsis reveals that the connection is quite tenuous. Dicke's story is about a future world of mutants oppressed by normal humans, almost like something out of the X-men series. The only common thread between the two works is that the lead character can see into the near future. The writers, led by Gary Goldman who also wrote the screenplay for another Dicke adaptation, Total Recall, took that one idea and expanded it into an entirely original story set in the present day. Without so much as pondering how it could happen, they ask the question: "If a man was born with the ability to see a few minutes into the future, what would he do with that ability? What would his life be like?". Such a question can only be answered by parable, and the story they produce illustrates the idea wonderfully, even if it does fall short in other areas.

=======================[spoilers below]=======================

Cage plays a character named Cris Johnson who is born with the ability to see 2 minutes into the future, and only his own future. But there is a catch that is summarized in this key quote that is heard via his own narration at the beginning and end of the film: "The thing about the future is, every time you look at it, it changes... because you looked at it. And that changes everything else." Dicke's story actually likens it to a chess match where the opponent looks at all possible strategies 5 moves ahead and then chooses the one that has the most favorable outcome. We first find Cris employed as a small time Vegas magician with a typically cheesy stage name of Frank Cadillac. In his show he uses his skill to predict what will happen to guests. By passing his skills off as mere magic tricks, he is able to hide his true ability and lead a somewhat normal life. Given the unbelievable nature of the gift, it is a very believable way of coping with it.

Seeing the immediate future can be very handy in Las Vegas, so Cris plays the tables to make a little cash on the side. He bets modestly to avoid attention. When that doesn't work, he has no problem escaping the guards before they get to him. One of the fun choices of the director was to sometimes trick us by showing us the future as if we're seeing the present, then backing up and showing how Cris actually avoids the scene we just witnessed by taking another course of action. For example, he is being chased by the police in a car which gets hit by an oncoming train as he tries to cross the track - Boom! No more Cris. Suddenly we're back 15 seconds when he actually foresaw that event. He then steps on the accelerator and just misses the train, leaving the police stuck behind it. Such a trick by the director might normally bother me but it doesn't in this case because I realized that it's a much better way to illustrate what is going on in Cris' head than trying to interrupt the story with silly dream sequences. Just as long as it is not overused. But even the big twist at the end just made me grin at the cleverness of it all.

The story involves a love interest (played sincerely by Jessica Biel) that Cris cannot seem to escape, and an FBI chase after a group of terrorists who have stolen a Russian nuke and intend to use it. One agent (a mean Julianne Moore) has followed Cris and believes he is the answer to their problem, and that complicates his newfound romance. Overall, the plotline and the characters are not very convincing, but what redeems it is how Cris uses his ability to achieve his intended goals. It is just great to watch him in action and try to figure out how he did it. For example, he's leading a group of soldiers through dangerous territory and suddenly stops and tells them "Wait, sniper overhead!". You know he just saw himself getting shot a few seconds ahead. They ask him "Where is he?", and he says "I'll locate him...". We see only Cris concentrating for a few seconds and then he reports the sniper location. What he actually did was move out in several different directions in the future and see where he felt the bullet, and then used triangulation to determine the sniper's location - or something like that. You have to think a few steps ahead to follow it all, which makes the whole film worth a second viewing.

Believability aside, I think this film would be squarely placed in the sci-fi category if there had been some attempt to explain the phenomenon. Imagine if Cris instead had a device that could see a few minutes into the future - like a time machine. That, of course, would change the plot dynamics since the parties in question would be after the device rather than after the man. It also would add more complication to an already confusing concept to put on screen. I think the authors left it out so they could focus on the main character's life and how his gift affects everything he does, and that was in my opinion a good decision.

Westworld

2011-08-10T00:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last entry, and I'm forced to conclude that I have now written about almost everything in science fiction that has piqued my interest in the past. It kind of amazes me that it actually took some 90 entries to reach this point. This entire excursion has exposed me to a lot of science fiction material that I would have never heard of or would have passed over, and so I find myself beginning to follow these many leads to see what is "out there". In some ways, it is like trying to find tiny diamonds in a giant pile of coal, but it can be fun. And I have pledged to myself, and to any readers, not to write about anything that I would not want to read myself. Any suggestions, of course, are welcome.

So after several pass overs I finally came across a 1973 film called Westworld. The first thing that caught my interest was that it was written directly for the screen by one of my favorite authors of the genre, Michael Crichton. Not only that, but it was directed by Crichton too, his first Hollywood film! So we already have some historical significance there, but was it any good? I would say yes, quite good, thus exhibiting Crichton's natural ability for both screenplay writing and film directing very early on in his career.

Westworld is about an expensive amusement park which promises an experience like nothing you've seen before, but then something goes terribly wrong and causes all sorts of mayhem. Sound familiar? Yes, it is the exact same story structure as Crichton's much later novel Jurassic Park (1990). In Jurassic, he explored the possible dangers of an emerging technology of the day: genetic engineering. In Westworld, he explores the possible dangers of an emerging technology of that time: computers. In 1973, personal computers were still a few years away, so Westworld was run by a fully staffed underground central computer facility. That facility controlled three fantasy lands: an ancient Roman city, a medieval castle, and an old American Western frontier town. These were populated with lifelike robots that guests could interact with in whatever ways pleased their fancy, all for $1000 per day (this was before the hyperinflation of the late 70's). It's not a very complex plotline, but it contains enough originality and enough well timed suspense to keep it moving along. Although it is strange to see Yul Brenner as the menacing robot, he plays it almost perfectly - not too human, but not too robotic either.

The special effects look dated but most of them still hold up rather well even today. I particularly liked the low flying shuttle jet that transports our protagonists in the opening scenes. It has a really unique design and reminds you right off the bat that the film is set in the future. Also a neat transitional shot where they remove Brenner's face to reveal his circuitry. The new technology concepts, however, often leave you puzzled. I don't know if it is because of the lack of computer knowledge in the 70's, but there's so many things in the film that just make you think "Why are they doing it that way?" and "Wouldn't it be easier to do this". For example, Brenner's character ends up being a bigger problem because he just went through an "upgrade" service to give him infrared vision and ultra-sensitive hearing. What possible added value does that provide to the guests? Another big problem is that the scientists end up trapped in the control room because the power goes out and they can't open the electronic doors or keep the oxygen flowing. Huh? What happened to fire escapes and general building safety? And I still can't figure out why is it that, if the guns can't shoot anything with a heat signature to prevent human shooting human, the robots have no problem using them to shoot and kill real people? Someone explained to me that this was part of the malfunction too. That seems like an awfully convenient coincidence to help out the narrative.

But the central cause of all the mayhem turns out to actually be the most prescient of all. They never use the term virus, but they postulate the problem is some type of malfunction that is spreading from one machine to the next, like a "disease of machinery". Until the 1980's, the computer virus was only an idea in the mind John Von Neumann. That just about makes up for all the other silly concepts. Either way, I think Westworld still works for both sci-fi lovers and general audiences.

The Mind Machine Interface

2011-06-27T01:34:00.000-07:00

The human brain is a fascinating topic. Isn't it ironic that the one part of our bodies which seems to be the most closely linked to our first hand experience, the one associated with our very thoughts and awareness, is the same part of our bodies that we understand the least about? It is this striking contrast that makes speculation about the brain the subject of so much interesting science fiction material. Even as the pace of our knowledge about it increases, it seems such material is in no danger of becoming obsolete. The recent film Inception delved into the nature of dream states in a way that was original, even if not connected to any recognizable science. Other subtopics include mind control, psychokinesis (ability to move things by thought), telepathy, remote viewing, states of consciousness (e.g. Altered States), memory (e.g. Dark City), and many others.

One of the most common sci-fi topics in this category is the interface between the brain and machines. Although many writers use it simply as a story telling mechanism embedded into some larger context, there are still many films that employ it as a central theme, especially in recent years. Witness the list below in reverse chronological order:

Source Code (2011)
Tron Legacy (2010)
Surrogates (2009)
Avatar (2009)
Minority Report (2002)
The Matrix Trilogy (1999-2003)
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Lawnmower Man (1992)
Total Recall (1990)
Dreamscape (1984)
Brainstorm (1983)
Tron (1982)
Forbidden Planet (1956)

The question I wish to explore here is, given that we understand the technology side of this interface, which is just information processing, does what we know or do not know about the brain today make such future technologies plausible, or are they another impossible ubiquity of the genre? The answer I arrive at for myself is that it really depends on which type of technology it is. I'd like to try to explain some of my reasoning behind this belief and then how it applies to various future technologies. I sincerely hope it is worth the read.

If we liken the functions of the brain to a modern computer, we can identify many things that both computers and brains can do: logical computation (thinking), memory storage (remembering), retrieval (recalling), and erasure (forgetting), interfacing (communicating), and data processing (recognizing). These are important categories because they represent functions that in principal could be duplicated by a computer. Let's list them again:

Computer-Like Brain Functions:

thinking (as in deductive reasoning)
remembering
recalling
forgetting
communicating
recognizing

There are several other functions that seem to be unique to human beings, such as the following:

Human-Like Brain Functions:

choosing (as in free will) - Computers make choices based on predetermined conditions, which is the same as computation. For this reason, there are many who believe free choice to be an illusion.
feeling
imagining - This is a very interesting one. It refers to creating or recreating an experience in the mind.
dreaming - Similar to imagining but without the same level of conscious awareness.
insight - Understanding that is greater than the sum of the evidence.

In fact, anything we can refer to as subjective experience, in my opinion, is a uniquely human trait. It is wrapped up in what we often refer to as consciousness. I read a fascinating book recently by physicist Roger Penrose called Shadows of the Mind in which he lays out what I think is a water tight proof that consciousness cannot be the product of computation and therefore it will never be attained by computer systems or even any system based on known physical laws. He believes that consciousness arises from yet undiscovered physical laws which the brain is utilizing. Once discovered, he believes a machine could be constructed based on those laws that does attain consciousness. But Penrose also leaves open one other possibility, the one to which I subscribe, which is that consciousness is a metaphysical phenomenon that is outside the realm of scientific explanation. This short summary regarding my views on consciousness is here to help explain where my own conclusions about the futuristic technologies below come from.

Let's now take a look of some technologies or capabilities related to the brain that commonly appear in sci-fi literature:

Mind Reading - Unlikely Yet Possible
What I refer to here is a transfer of thoughts from one mind to another, or telepathy. It is a capability frequently portrayed by alien characters or even enhanced humans. It includes real time telepathy as exhibited by the Psi Corps of Babylon 5, and memory reading as employed by the Vulcan mind meld. I believe that these capabilities are not a huge stretch given our own experiences today. How many times have you "known" what someone is else thinking? If we can do this via external clues such as expressions and body language, whose to say you couldn't learn to do the same from an EEG or other type of signal? A connection from one mind to another does not require any real understanding of the mechanism underlying that connection, which is why I leave it open to the realm of at least metaphysical possibility.

Mind Viewers - Almost Certainly Impossible
It's one thing to know what another person is thinking, but the term mind viewer refers to constructing a representation of a person's thought's into actual images that can be viewed. This does not mean seeing what someone else is seeing in real time, which could be accomplished in principal by attaching tiny cameras to their eyeballs. Rather, we are talking about translating what a person is imagining into real images, or even reconstructing things that were seen in the past from stored memories. This seems to me a much more difficult proposition, yet it is amazing how often it is portrayed. How many episodes of Star Trek feature aliens who "reconstruct" artificial Earth environments from the minds of their human subjects? The earliest mind viewer I can recall is in Quatermass and the Pit, where Dr. Roney has invented a device that fits over a person's head and allows others to see their thoughts on a CRT monitor.
It is easy for us to conceive of such a technology because when we imagine things, it is like we are re-living an actual experience. As mentioned above, I believe that this subjective experience within the brain is inaccessible to any physical process or device in principal. What is accessible is the movement of the electrons within the cells of the brain at the time a person is imagining something. I also do not believe that images are stored in the brain in the low level representation of light pixelation. That would be extremely inefficient. Rather, it is stored as a set of modifications in the neural network at sites associated with the content of the images that are seen. I also believe that each person develops this network in their brain differently, like a fingerprint, making it impossible to find a mapping from the brain structure back to the original image content. Thus, mind viewers in my opinion are completely outrageous, and they always seem to make me wince when I encounter them in stories.

Memory Erasure - General Memory Possible, Specific Memories Not Possible
Men in Black features a "neuralyzer" device that selectively erases the last X minutes or so of a person's memory. We already know that getting bumped in the head can cause people to forget things. If we know that memories are stored in the brain by altering the neural connections, it is certainly possible that by some form of deliberate brain "damage", one can cause someone to forget things. The question is, how do you know which parts of the brain to fiddle with? Erasing the most recent memories seems plausible since those changes could probably be identified in some way. However, trying to selectively erase a particular memory, or all memories of a particular subject, would be quite impossible for the same reasons given for the viewer technology above, unless you had been there to record the changes at the time the memories were formed.

Mind Control - Possible, To A Degree
In The Wrath of Khan, the villain uses an alien worm creature to control Chekov. The worm somehow attaches to the subject's brain and makes them succumb to commands. This is not unlike hypnosis, and certain drugs are known to make people more open to suggestion. But hypnotists and even cult leaders know that without the subject's willing cooperation, they could not control anyone's behavior entirely. Recent research, for example, suggests that the parietal cortex is the place where decisions about movement are made, but it is not that simple. Stimulating this region either makes people have the desire to move, or makes them think they moved when they in fact did not. Stimulating the premotor cortex causes them to move involuntarily, but they are aware that they did not intend it. I believe the actual decision to move originates in the will, which is a metaphysical event. Thus, I think certain degrees of mind control may be possible, but the human will can never be completely subdued. Fortunately, most writers seem to agree with this and allow their mind controlled characters to break away from their captors given sufficient willpower.

Virtual Reality Systems - External Easy, Internal Not
This theme has appeared a lot in modern times, with The Matrix serving as the poster-child example. We know that virtual reality is easy to accomplish if you do it by sending sensory data directly into a person's senses, and this is how it is often portrayed. The interface in Matrix is instead a direct connection to the brain. This means it requires stimulation of the sensory input centers of the brain in such a way as to re-create the desired sensations. However, Matrix has the advantage of creating an interface that each person grows up with from birth, and therefore would have the opportunity to "teach" the brain how to interpret its signals. The big problem there, of course, is that it would render your real senses useless. Once unplugged, it would most likely be impossible for your brain to re-wire itself to experience the real world through eyes, ears, and skin. The system in Surrogates does not have this limitation, but it presents an even more problematic technology based on some type of digital telepathy.

There is so much that could be covered on this topic, but I decided to try to keep it to one long entry rather than a lot of short ones because it is not the main focus of the blog. It is, however, a relevant topic in science fiction literature that won't be going away any time soon. I'm sure there are a lot of other opinions out there if you care to share them.

The Thirteenth Floor

2011-06-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

Sometime close to the beginning of 1999, I remember seeing a TV trailer for a movie called The Thirteenth Floor. It was about a machine that you could plug into and enter a simulated virtual reality that seemed quite real. I only saw it once, and then trailers for The Matrix began to appear all over the place. The concept seemed so similar that I kept wondering if the first trailer I saw was for the same film, but it just faded away like a dream. I even wondered if they had changed the movie title in post production or something. To this day I believe this film was simply overshadowed by the Matrix phenomenon that took the sci-fi world by storm just two months before it was released. It is not anywhere near as good, but decent enough that I think it should get at least a little notice.

In the Thirteenth Floor's simulated world, the people who inhabit that world are all just programs, but you can download yourself into any one of them, much like the agent programs of the Matrix do, except in reverse. That world is set in Los Angeles in the late 1930's, and one of most redeeming qualities of the film is the portrayal of the era. The sets, costumes, and entire production is done as well as any Hollywood period piece. And to give it a little flare, elements of film noir are thrown into the story, including a fatalistic love interest and murder mystery. In fact, it is the solving of the mysteries that really moves the story along right up to the very end, with lots of little twists and turns. About three-quarters of the way through, we encounter a twist that is so convoluted it is actually a bit corny. It is precisely at that point that the quality of the script goes downhill. But if you keep watching through the last few plot twists, it kind of redeems itself just for being so fun.

While the budget for set production was ample enough, very little was spent on special effects, with not much more than some CGI and laser light. But it doesn't really matter because the story works without requiring much that is out of the ordinary. As you can see, I'm not giving too much away in case you choose to watch it for yourself at this link (with several short interruptions). I don't know if this full movie link on youtube will last but while it does, enjoy.

Bugs in The Source Code

2011-06-10T22:44:00.000-07:00

As a software developer by trade, I was already put off going in watching the recent sci-fi film Source Code simply because any writer/producer who would employ such a title for a film that has absolutely nothing to do with actual source code must not be very technologically inclined. What then, can be expected from the rest of the script? The sad reality is, a whole lot more fiction than science. Yet, the film is entertaining enough, and the idea original enough, that it deserves some credit to allow for movie goers enjoying it as a pure fantasy rather than the sci-fi thriller that it presumes to be.

======================<<spoilers below>>====================

Let's face it, you can't say much about the plot of this film without spoiling a lot of the surprises that actually made it enjoyable, so I'm putting in the alert early. The main "bug" in that respect is the believability of the experimental technology that forms the film's backdrop. It is already stretching the imagination to think that one could read the mind of another living human being in such a way that you could view their memory like it was a video recorder, but that's nothing new to Hollywood sci-fi. Now try that with someone who's already died in a train accident. Take the dead person's brain and somehow create a virtual reality playback of the final minutes of the accident that you can interact with.

Has anyone left the room yet? Ok, now we find that this virtual reality playback machine allows you to see things that nobody actually witnessed and therefore would not be in the memory of the subject in question's brain to begin with. What a nifty technology, but there's one little problem: only another dead person can actually use it. Huh? Let's back up. The explanation is that it's not memory playback at all. The mind somehow accesses parallel realities for a brief period after death. It does this via some type of quantum bifurcation (yes, there are theories about such things - see Penrose's Orch-OR theory). As the inventor puts it, "Source code is not time travel, it is time re-assignment". So they somehow capture this capability from the accident victim's brain and then link it in to another almost dead person's brain, creating some sort of bridge. We're probably well into fantasy territory by now, but that's nothing compared to what happens at the end of the film. I'll leave that to whatever imagination you may have left by then.

Now with all that off my chest, I will say that I did enjoy the movie. It is well directed, and the performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Vera Farmiga (the operator named Goodwin, not the girlfriend), and the relationship that forms between them, are quite enjoyable. The suspense that is created is well crafted and almost non-stop, making it a fun thrill ride, which is fitting since most of the screen time is spent on a moving train. If you decide to see it, just sit back and enjoy the ride.

After Earth (A.E.)

2011-05-21T23:01:00.000-07:00

Suppose you take a story that begins with the destruction of Earth and the near annihilation of the human race by aliens. Given the depressing nature of such a premise, you decide to cheer it up a bit by hiring George Lucas to write the script as an action-packed space opera and then to turn it into an animated feature film with a top notch animation crew that combines the best hand drawn talent (a la Walt Disney) with the best CGI people (a la ILM). What you'd turn out with might look something like Titan A.E.

Titan A.E. is the only fully animated film in my collection (Tron contains live action). It only barely made the list, and I think it is there just because it's one of those very unique celluloid creations. I decided to watch it for the second time last night and would like to attempt to describe some of that uniqueness. The first thing that stands out is the animation style itself. It is probably the best integration of hand drawn and CGI work I've ever seen. The hardest thing to do in CGI is create convincing human characters, so why not just hand draw them and leave the space ships, planets, and the robot-like hostile aliens in CGI format? Motion capture is also utilized when animating people in space suits. In order to smooth out the integration, most of the immediate environments of the main characters are also hand drawn. Although you can tell which is which, it is difficult to notice where they meet.

Staying with the animation theme, it seems that the set designers in the film had a love for space-scapes and created several very beautiful scenes, even though most of it is not at all realistic. A swamp lake covered with giant glowing spherical "hydrogen pods" extending via a network of vines from the surface. A cave-like nebula dust cloud that the ship flies through accompanied by "wake angels", creatures that, similar to dolphins on a ship's bow, like to ride the "energy wake" of space ships.
"Ice rings" which consist of giant computer generated star-shaped crystals that continually collide with each other and crumble as they do. The crystals were done with CGI and feature detailed ray tracing on the reflective surface faces. The other scenes were yet another skillful amalgam of CGI and hand painting. All very nice eye candy.

In general, the whole thing was given a top billing production. The original score was a combination of classical and modern rock pieces as is common in modern animated dramas, but the plot and characters are just a bit edgier than your average family film. The voice casting was so well matched and well performed that I didn't even realize I was listening to the voices of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, and many others I should have recognized. In short, a lot of cash was spent.

I found myself less happy with the script on this second viewing. Although I love the colorful characters which are up there in stature with any Lucas creation, the dialogue and situations are really no more than you might expect from a typical pop culture animated feature. I like the originality in working the angle of humans missing the home world and feeling marginalized, even though it is a bit oversimplified. But the big flaw that tips it on its side is an attempted plot twist where a few of the good guys turn out to be bad guys. The revelation is too abrupt and too soon, and then one of them turns back into a hero at the end which is even more crazy. The villains are very one-dimensional - basically robots bent on wiping out the human race (sounds a lot like the Cylons from BG doesn't it?). But they have some real neat controlled plasma like technology that allows you to "melt" into walls and come out on the other side.

According to Wikipedia, it didn't do well at the box office and recouped only about half of its $75M production cost worldwide. I can understand why. They really didn't know what audience they were targeting. The heavy plot premise is a bit daunting to begin with, suitable for hard-core sci-fi fans. The space action and love interest sidebar between Cale and Akima targeted teens, and the cutsie supporting characters were portrayed as if targeting young children. For me, it is this juxtaposition of approaches that actually adds to its originality. But it also makes it hard to predict who might actually enjoy it and who might cast it into the trash in disgust. You'll never know unless you watch it for yourself.

The Iconic Forbidden Planet

2011-05-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'd never really taken much interest in the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet. I think the main reason is that the story plays more like a monster movie, the majority of which have no other plot than to just get scared, kill off the monster, end of story. In this case the monster is not even an alien or the result of some experiment gone wrong - it's just the manifestation of someone's mind. What really puts it into the science fiction category is the fact that it takes place in the future, on another planet, and the technology that causes the raucous was left behind by an alien race which we hear nothing else about except that they invented a bunch of cool gadgets. Change the mode of that last point and we could set the same story in any other place and time. But given the status of the film in the genre's history, I had to try to explore what it is that puts it there in the first place. So here goes...

You can't deny that the much of the appeal of the film, and also its subsequent influence, is attributable to the "look and feel" of it. The space ships, suits, and planet terrain all have that great 1950's retro look without feeling campy. The special effects were very well done for that time, particularly the animated layovers of the monster and the design and operation of the robot named Robby.

Robby was probably the first popular depiction of a robotic character that was friendly rather than fearsome, to be followed up in later years by the very similar looking robot from Lost In Space and of course, C-3PO and R2D2. Given the amount of money spent on production, it is no accident that they did a good job in that department. The robot costume continued to appear as various characters and cameos in many films following, up into the late 1980's. I also tend to wonder if the films references to Freudian concepts of the subconscious may have been more generally known and accepted in American culture at that time.

That's the extent of my prior knowledge, so I continue now with some gleanings from the Wikipedia entry. I've always known that the script was well put together from a purely literary standpoint, and it appears that's a generally held opinion. Some people see parallels with Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is made even more significant when you consider that most sci-fi films of the 1950's had pretty horrible scripts. Another thing that is mentioned is that it was the first film to take place entirely in deep space. I thought Buck Rogers spent most of his time out there, but maybe that doesn't count because it was a serial rather than a full length film. And going back to the special effects, it won the academy award for that year in the category. A sci-fi film winning for special effects? What else is new? It seems to me that what gives the film its status is that because it was such a well done movie in both script and production, it lent credibility to many of the story telling devices that would later be copied and used again and again. Force fields, transporters, laser weapons, it's all there. That kind of influence deserves some credit simply because of the osmosis effect. You can get a feel for the sets from the trailer below. Notice the Star Wars like introductory text moving off in the distance:

As a final follow up, I took the time to re-watch the film in its entirety. I found that I could enjoy it more as an adult than when I was a teenager, and I was able to notice a few more things that stuck out. The first was that there is no musical score per se. The soundtrack is a strange combination of electronic computer sounds, mostly resembling the computers of the 1950's. I'm not sure about its effectiveness but it certainly is unique. The other surprise was how cerebral the script seemed. Everyone was always giving analytical conjectures and explanations of things which were not particularly interesting and that kind of took away from the drama at hand. It was also interesting to see how future technologies were represented in that era when real thought was put into it. Imagine using a bona fide flying saucer as a future earth ship a decade later, after the flying saucer came to represent alien technology rather than human. In the beginning, the ship is supposed to be traveling at light factor speed, but when they have to land, they all get into this transporter like device which makes them disappear during the deceleration period. I thought it was very cool, since no script writers today even bother to tackle the g-force problem in high speed space travel. In this film, they created a new technology to take the humans out of the equation. The new device may be just as implausible, but at least they had enough respect for the audience to take it into consideration. Anyway, after this second watch, I would not change anything I've said about this classic piece of sci-fi film history.

Our Shields Are Down!

2011-04-21T01:57:00.000-07:00

One of the earliest and most common future technologies that is featured in sci-fi literature is the force field. It is easy to conceive of future weapons that involve beams or bursts of energy, so naturally, the good guys of the future must have a way to defend themselves against such attacks. If physical arrows are blocked by physical shields, it seems reasonable to block energy weapons with a "shield" of energy. But that is as far as reason gets us, because the mechanism to "generate" such a defense has never been satisfactorily explained to general audiences. This entry is dedicated to the near impossible ubiquity of force fields.

A force field must produce a repulsive force. As far as we know today, there are only four types of fundamental forces. Gravity is attractive only, so it is out of the running. The weak and strong nuclear forces both act over such tiny distances (like atoms), that there does not seem to be any conceivable way to harness them on a macro scale. We are left with electromagnetism (EM). In fact, the whole idea of "shielding" was probably born from analogy with EM shielding. It is possible to deflect charged particles with an electric field and magnetic particles with a magnetic field. Is that how they do it?

I doubt that sci-fi authors are envisioning such a mundane mechanism for creating force fields. In most fictional stories, the fields repel any type of matter, not just charged or magnetic stuff. Certainly space ships and people would not be stopped by an EM field. You could not keep a prisoner behind bars with such a field, nor could you stop projectiles like bullets. What about those beams of energy? Could they be stopped? Possibly, but you must still then explain how such a field would be generated. If you are not using elements on either side of the field (cathode/anode, etc.), as is usually portrayed, then you are left with generating a complete EM field in all directions. Instead of blocking the incoming energy, you would in fact be deflecting it around you. This is how the earth uses its magnetic field to deflect the charged particles of the solar wind. Of course, a field that strong would probably end up bending your space ship out of shape (magnetic) or short circuiting all the controls (electric). There's no way to get around immersing yourself in it, and that's not really the way force fields are portrayed in film and books anyway.

There are current theories that postulate a fifth force which is causing the universe to expand more rapidly than expected. But this can only be felt over galactic sized distances so you can rule that one out too even if it exists. How about plasma? That's what the original Star Trek always attributed such things to. But for a shield, the plasma must still be held in place by an EM field, and then you're back to square one again. What about momentum? You can stop matter if you shoot something at it in the opposing direction, but that is not a static shield. It requires a constant flux of matter or energy in the outward direction. For example, meeting an energy beam with an opposing energy beam would be enough to stop it, so why do our protagonists always need impossible energy shields? All they really need is computerized targeting technology and they are quite nicely protected while using a heck of lot less energy.

One final word on a related topic. If you reverse the direction of the force you get another ubiquitous future technology usually referred to as a tractor beam. Although one could use electromagnetism to reach out and grab a metallic object, it would not be possible to control the object's trajectory as is usually portrayed, and it would be more of a wide field (a net) than a beam. Again, no one actually attempts to explain how such a thing would actually work.

So the next time you encounter a story that features the use of force fields, just remember that although there is some wiggle room to work with, the existence of such a thing is extremely improbable even in the distant future. I have yet to encounter an author that has even attempted to come up with a merely plausible explanation. If anyone out there finds one, please leave a link for me.

The Sci-Fi Drama

2011-04-20T01:09:00.000-07:00

Most of the great works of science fiction go for the big ideas. You know, the future of society, the limits of mankind, the nature of reality, etc. But there are a lot of science fiction stories that are just that... stories. Many of them copy ideas from those that came before, and many are there just for entertainment value, but once in a while a science fiction story comes along that is also really good drama. What makes such a story exceptional is that it uses a science fiction backdrop not as a way to engage the mind so much as a means of touching the heart. Somehow, that seems to make it even more memorable than it would otherwise have been. I'd like to dedicate this entry to some sci-fi films that I remember mainly for their human element, rather than for their science. None of these are classic material, but all are original and left an impression for me.

Frequency (2000) - Jim Caviezel plays a New York cop who, thanks to a highly active electromagnetic storm in the upper atmosphere, connects with his deceased father (Dennis Quaid) in 1969 using his Dad's old ham radio, the same one his Dad was using 30 years ago when a similar electrical storm occurred, and just a few days before his tragic death in a warehouse fire where, along with his fire fighting squad, he had rushed in to save a victim. The story turns from sad to sweet when the son manages to save his Dad from death and instantly change their personal history, even though the son still remembers the old history as in a dream. But changing history is fraught with peril, and the new turn of events puts his mother in grave danger, as well as several other women who become victims of a serial killer who otherwise would have died. Feeling responsible for several more deaths that shouldn't have been, father and son now work across time to prevent them from happening with the aid of the case file that the son is able to access through his precinct. Whew, that's just the beginning of the plot turns and twists, which all work pretty well until the last 15 minutes of the film when it gets a little twisted out of shape. But on the way, there is some decent acting, story telling, and character development. I think what made it stick for me was the heartfelt way the relationships between father, mother, and son are portrayed. This was also the only film that ever played with the idea of watching history change in real time as you influence it by talking to someone in the same location 30 years ago. That was a very neat trick.

Enemy Mine (1985) - This film takes a common war theme, that of two enemy soldiers stranded somewhere who must learn to work together to survive, who soon find that they are not that different and become the best of friends. In this case, we are in the year 2092, and the warring factions are humans and a race of reptilian-like aliens called Dracs (from Draconia - the most overused enemy alien world name). The film surprises you in just how far it takes the relationship of these two characters, one of which, believe it or not, is played by Dennis Quaid again (see above). And Louis Gosset Jr. puts on a great performance as the alien. During the years of making do on the planetoid upon which they had crashed, they save each other's life and learn about each other's cultures. Dracs give birth asexually, and this one ends up having a kid while dying in the process of childbirth. But his human friend has promised to raise the Drac child and bring him back to Draconia. Thus ensues a surrogate father relationship of sorts between Quaid's character and the Drac child in which the former ends up having to rescue the kid from slave labor and eventually get him home, all the while being suspected of treason by his own race. I know it sounds ridiculous, but somehow it works. It makes you think, and draws you in. Once again, the ending gets a bit out of hand, but I suppose space dramas suffer from climax envy.

Cocoon (1985) - Released in the same year as the above, this film was a little more light hearted. It centers around a group of senior folks living in a rest home. Some of them like to sneak out at night for a dip in the pool next door. One day, that pool becomes a fountain of youth for them as a result of it being used as an incubator for a visiting group of aliens coming back to retrieve their lost brethren. What is memorable about this film is that despite its alien underpinnings, it really spends most of its time dealing very poignantly with questions about our desire to cheat death, and whether that is right or not. It is also interesting in how it contrasts the maturity of the aliens with the immaturity of the residents. Of course, then it really blows it at the end by letting them all hitch a ride on the space ship to enjoy youthful bliss despite their having ruined the aliens mission with their self-centeredness. I think Ron Howard just likes happy endings.

Starman (1984) - Here is a film about a romance between a woman and an alien which could have been a cheesy mess, but which rises to a higher level thanks to the careful handiwork of director John Carpenter, who takes the material dead seriously. The characters are well performed and mostly convincing, including Jeff Bridges' portrayal of the tender-hearted alien who takes the form of his acquaintance's recently deceased husband. Carpenter has enough respect for his audience's intelligence to try to capture some sense of believability, and also use the story to make a statement about the best and worst of humankind. It takes place mainly during a long road trip through the heart of southern midwest America with beautiful cinematic shots of the landscapes. The moody, Vangelis-like electronic score also seems to work well with the story. It might not work for everyone, but somehow it leaves you with a good feeling.

For the sake of completeness, I've listed below some of the films in this category that were neither good sci-fi nor good drama:

Batteries Not Included (1987) - It's hard to ignore a Spielberg sci-fi film, but this was another post-ET attempt to mix aliens and cuteness that just didn't work. Who can really get interested in a story about a bunch of people in an abandoned apartment building fighting the evil developers who want them out? Getting help from some tiny extra terrestrial flying saucers that come out of nowhere doesn't make it any more interesting.

Silent Running

2011-04-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

The early 1970's, specifically the period between 2001 and Star Wars, was a very interesting period in American science fiction film. Prior to the Spielberg/Lucas revolution that occurred in the later years, most science fiction films were dark and thought provoking. Many drew some inspiration from Kubrik's successful masterpiece. I mean, look at this lineup:

Colossus: The Forbin Project - 1970
The Adromeda Strain - 1971
The Omega Man - 1971
THX 1138 - 1971
Soylent Green - 1973
Logan's Run - 1976

These were all very original works that imagined the human race in serious trouble, at a time when the country was going through its own trials and tribulations. There's one more that I did not list which falls into the same category and which I've always thought of as the most strikingly unique of the bunch, even if not very much else. That film imagined a world where humans had trashed the earth so badly that they had to send all their natural resources out into space until they could get things in order. I'm not speaking about WALL-E, but about 1972's Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern in the lead, and almost exclusive, role.

Make no mistake, this film's message is unabashedly environmentalist. The title track and montages are written and performed by none other than Joan Baez, the prominent musical voice of the 60's flower child movement. When I said natural resources, I meant huge intact landscapes of forestry and entire ecosystems preserved in giant temperature controlled domes, transparent to allow the sun's light in. Dern plays the head gardener, Freeman Lowell, on his particular ship, assisted by several small helper robots. His goof-off shipmates seem not to care about the payload they are carrying, which is portrayed as the typical attitude of earth's general population in this future. Dern's performance seems odd at times. He preaches to his shipmates about how no one cares anymore about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, and does it with such passion that he comes across to them, and to us, like a mad-man. But the great irony is that given the circumstances, the imminent loss of all that is beautiful on our planet, his words do not sound crazy to us at all. We would be saying the same in his shoes, and we would be acting just as desperately if no one else seemed to understand or care.

==================<<spoilers below>>========================

The big plot setup comes when the ships are called home because they are needed for another "more important" mission and they are ordered to jettison and destroy their payloads. While the others are ecstatic to be able to go home, Lowell is horrified and after watching a few domes explode in space, he decides to save the last one, at the expense of his 3 colleagues' lives. The tension never really goes away in your mind about whether it is right or wrong to sympathize with Lowell's actions. People are more important than plants and animals, but are 3 people more important than the last remaining wildlife on earth? Lowell must continue to put on a ruse with ground control about it being an accident and that his ship is uncontrollably slipping behind Saturn and very likely toward destruction as it passes through the rings (Why they are near Saturn is never really explained but see my comments further down on the special effects). Well, he makes it through the rings and then into deep solar orbit where he finds he must set up a lighting system in the forest to make up for the lack of sunlight. Lowell's ingenuity continues to impress when a rescue party locates him and prepares to board. He decides to commission his droid assistants to take care of the forest and jettisons it out into space on its own journey. He then destroys the ship, himself aboard, to wipe out any record of what occurred, thus giving the fledgeling ark of nature a chance to survive without being pursued. A simple, yet powerful story.

The special effects crew on this film were quite impressive. Producer Douglas Trumbull was a special effects director for 2001. Several others on the visual effects team went on to join ILM and work on the original Star Wars. Although you can see the obvious miniaturization in places, it is rather good for its time. The ships have the freight train-like design of the Discovery - long thin body with large round cabin section at front and engine in back. The choice to put the ships near Saturn was mainly so that they could use space scenes that were created for 2001 but never used. The sets are filled with interesting things like hexagonal storage containers, go-cart transport vehicles, and round pool tables equipped with a robotic opponent for practice.

But by far the most interesting effect is the operation of the droids, affectionately named Huey, Duey, and Louie. On first viewing, I could not figure out how they did it. The movements look too organic to be fully remote controlled, yet they are too small for a person to fit inside. I later found out that they employed four paraplegics (no legs) on the set, who would get into the specially made suits and walk around on their hands. How's that for ingenuity?

The Three Laws

2011-03-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Sometime in my early school years, I remember reading a short essay on the Three Laws of Robotics, made famous by Asimov's classic compilation I, Robot. The original form of the laws are listed below:

First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or by inaction, cause a human being to come to harm.
Second Law: A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

At the time, I was impressed with both the simplicity and the reasonableness of the laws, and of the idea that robots would need to be unalterably programmed with such prime directives in order to allow them to interact in society. We would need to have some basis for public trust. Although I have not read much of them, I hear several of Asimov's stories explore the ramifications of these laws in great detail. To get an idea, you can quickly read the plot synopsis of his first essay called Runaround.

I also remember hearing that in I, Robot, things go terribly wrong with the Three Laws. It wasn't until I saw the recent film starring Will Smith that I finally got to see this illustrated. It is a decent film in its treatment of some of Asimov's ideas, although as usual it is pumped up on action sterioids and the more thoughtful elements become somewhat lost in the shuffle. But the main problem in the movie's version is linked to the fact that someone decided to create a master control system that allowed all the individual robots to be coordinated to achieve a central goal. You would think that would be ok as long as the central computer obeyed the Three Laws, which it does, and would therefore use its great power to protect humanity, which it also does. But the central control system, which undoubtedly has access to global information, is smart enough to observe the fact that we humans harm each other each and every day. Given that this is inevitable, the only way to prevent us from harm is to protect us at all times from ourselves. The master computer decides the only way to do this is to take control of society and of the lives of everyone who could potentially cause harm to someone else.

The first objection that comes to mind regarding this solution is that robots are supposed to obey us, not the other way around. But if you look at the Three Laws, the directive to obey us is second, while directive to protect us from harm is first. Thus, it is perfectly consistent for the robot to take actions to protect us even if it goes against our wishes. That, in essence, is the flaw in the Three Laws which is thus illustrated. The fact that this solution looks suspiciously like what occurs in a political overthrow, or revolution, is a poignant reminder of how such events in human history are often driven by people who must think they are acting for the good of society, and of how compelling their logic must seem to them.

Now that I've taken some time to think about it, I find myself asking about what other flaws might be lurking in the Three Laws of Robotics. They are written using terms that seem clear to us, but which are not necessarily well defined to a logic driven machine. For example, when I read the second law, I interpreted "harm" to mean imminent harm. We might expect a good person to try to save us from a dangerous situation, one that presents an immediate risk. We would not expect them to shelter us from any possible harm that might come to us. Would it help to add the word "imminent" to the second law? It may help, but it would not fix the problem. How do you define "imminent"? Computers work in terms of probabilities. How probable does the harm have to be to make it imminent? What if there are several people involved and saving some means harming the rest? The laws provide no guidance here, and in fact, our own consciences would have trouble deciding what to do. Do you take the course that saves the most from harm? If the odds are even, do you pick one at random?

Now, these laws are not presumed to be all that a robot is about. Each system would have a set of directives that tell it how to make value-based decisions on all sorts of things. Whole industries would probably have their own mandatory laws that any robot that works in that industry must adhere to, just as we have similar laws for humans. The point is to find a universal common denominator that makes robots suitable for interaction with humans. Given this, I must question the point of the third law, i.e., that robots must have a self-preservation instinct. I can understand manufacturers requiring it so that they don't lose an expensive piece of equipment, but if it is purely an economic decision, it won't always go that way. If a manufacturing plant is run exclusively by robots, you would want each of them to be willing to sacrifice themselves in order to keep the plant from blowing up and destroying them all. Whatever the reasons, it does not seem like a good candidate for a mandatory universal law. Of course, if you take it out you only have Two Laws, which doesn't have that fundamental ring you get with three.

So I'll take a stab at my version of the fundamental laws of robotics. I think the first part of the first law is sound, so lets keep it:

First Law: A robot shall not take any action which may lead to harming a human being.

The slight change in wording ensures that the robot must project its actions into the future to determine probable indirect consequences, rather than just direct consequences. There are still problems of course. We would need to replace "may lead" with a minimum probability or the robot may never do anything. We would also have to specify how to define and determine what constitutes "harm". But it is a start. I would then skip the second part of the first law and avoid all those difficult moral dilemmas. We don't automatically expect people to act heroically, so I don't think any one would expect a machine to, which leads us to the second law:

Second Law: A robot shall obey any orders given to it by its registered owner, unless doing so would conflict with the First Law.

The original second law requires a robot to obey anyone without regard to the person's authorization. How would it handle conflicting orders from different people? Requiring it to obey only the registered owner resolves that problem and provides a few other benefits. We now know who is responsible for the robot's actions in case it is called into question. If the robot robs a bank during the night, investigators know where to start to find out who is involved. Owners also now have a sense of control over their robots. They may grant access to others or to the general population in varying degrees, but they always have priority thanks to the second law. There would also have to be rules about how to authorize a transfer of ownership and what to do if the owner dies. The only catch is making sure an identity thief can't take control of the robot. But thanks to the first law, neither the owners nor a thief can use the robot as a weapon. And if someone is in danger, it will be up to the owner to direct the robot to save them, which means it is really the human in command who is intervening. And as mentioned, the original third law would be chucked.

Now the whole robbing a bank idea is something we might want to rule out altogether. I think in order for our robotic friends to get along in society, we would want to require them to be law-abiding citizens. If you require the robot not to break the laws of the land in which it resides, you have essentially put it on a trust level equal to, and perhaps greater than, any person you might meet on the street. The robot could not steal property or use it without permission, could not cheat when preparing someone's taxes, could not lie under oath, etc. This would be a great candidate for a second law, but it would require all robots to have knowledge of all local, state, and federal laws. You could not pre-program it since laws change across time and location. That opens the door to incorrect instruction and there goes your trust factor. No, our indelible laws must be universal in nature in order to work.

There is at least one behavior that I think would qualify as universal. Something that we all inherently expect robots to do is tell us the truth, but they can certainly be programmed to deceive just as easily as anything else, or they could be allowed to use deception of others in order to achieve a goal. We humans all agree that deception is not a valid means to an end with certain important exceptions, like to save one's own life or someone else's. I think we could safely bar the robot from deliberate deception except if it conflicts with the first law. Knowing that all robots are required to tell the truth provides another crucial step toward gaining the public trust. I would also not allow the robot to be commanded to decieve. This is why it must be the second law in priority. And since robots normally deal in probabilities, we should couch it in those terms. Finally, this does not mean that a robot must be compelled to answer any query. It just must answer truthfully when doing so. So below is my final version of the three laws of robotics:

First Law: A robot shall not take any action which may lead to harming a human being.

Second Law: When conveying information, a robot shall communicate the information as accurately as possible, unless such action conflicts with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot shall obey any orders given to it by its registered owner, unless doing so would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

In addition, there would need to be a set of rules about how precise human commands to robots must be in order for them to actually follow those commands. Otherwise, you get into the kind of ambiguous interpretations that caused the problems in the first place. Apparently, a lot of thought has gone into this topic over the last 50 years since Mr. Asimov introduced it, and that is fitting, because I'm sure the day will come when we will indeed face the need to implement such a program. I would have loved to have had this conversation with him if he were still with us.

Notes on the Battle of L.A.

2011-03-14T19:12:00.000-07:00

I went to see Battle Los Angeles this weekend. As I was checking times, a young lady buying tickets asked the teller, "Is it true that it really happened?". The guy behind the glass looked up and, holding back a smirk, confirmed to her that it indeed actually happened. I'm sure she figured it out about 10 minutes into the film. The real Battle of Los Angeles was an interesting incident in 1942 that has captured the imagination U.F.O. followers ever since, but it has absolutely nothing to do with this film. I really didn't expect to be saying anything about it here, but it caught me by surprise in a way that I thought should be commented on. You see, I was expecting a science fiction film. What I saw was a very nicely directed war film. There wasn't the slightest trace of what sci-fi fans usually go to see, and that is a good thing. Who needs to be teased? If this is a war movie, then by God, let me put on my marine helmut and enjoy it as such. In other words, the movie earned my respect for NOT trying to be science fiction.

It was a very clever idea. Being from L.A. myself, the idea of seeing a bona-fide war film set right in my own backyard is something that I'll admit can draw me in. Even if I believe it will be cheesy, the familiarity factor is enough to interest me. But you could not pull off an invasion from another country of the world without also offending entire neighborhoods in this town. In a city where you find just about every nationality there is, the only invader that could get them all rooting for the same team would have to be from outer space. To create a war scenario, the invader would need to be of hostile intent from the first moment so there is no time to bother trying to communicate with them. The cadets at Camp Pendleton would be called upon immediately to engage. And this is exactly what happens. Any information that is obtained about the alien's biology or weaponry is used as intelligence to better strike against them. Although their weapons are advanced, none of it is all that unusual. The intent of the creators is to produce the same experience as might be expected when fighting any new enemy where one must learn how they think and what their military capabilities are. On top of that backdrop, you have all the elements that make war films worth all the carnage. Heroic sacrifices, camaraderie born out of shared suffering, dealing with the ghosts of past memories, and getting a bunch of people to work together to overcome seemingly impossible circumstances. There are also some scenes with a family they are trying to rescue that were touching enough to bring me to tears. Like I said, it's no Saving Private Ryan, but I think war movie buffs will eat it up.

So my hat goes off to John Liebesman for having a clear vision for what he was trying to do and then doing it well. Yes, this is a Marine pride film, but not in the usually cheesy manner that these guys are sometimes portrayed in Hollywood. No, this is one that does a decent job of actually honoring the soldier hero. Hoo-aah.

Cowboys and Aliens

2011-02-25T02:08:00.000-08:00

This is the first time I'm going to talk about a film that hasn't opened yet. You've probably already seen the trailers for Cowboys and Aliens which is slated for release in late July. When I first saw it, I had one of those moments of realization where you think, "It's so simple, why didn't anyone think of it before?". There are many film genre's that are based on historical periods - Victorian, Medieval, World War II, Ancient Rome, even Prehistoric, and of course, Westerns. Stories that are set in these periods usually stick to their own historical turf, even though they are completely fictional. Once in a while, science fiction writers will dabble in these other genre's via time travel tales, where someone from the present travels back to an earlier era. But in that case, the story setting is really the present and includes only an intrusion into the past. The thing that really made me stop and think was that I still cannot recall any serious science fiction work that actually takes place in a former historical period - an earth period of course, not just "A long time ago...".

To some degree, this is understandable. Science fiction writers are a creative bunch, and they like having a blank slate to draw on. That is why many of their works are set in the future. Even in period stories where characters make early discoveries of known science and technology, because the discoveries are not new to the reader, these are not really classified as "science" fiction. On the other hand, alien invasion films, from War of the Worlds to the many film and TV offerings coming out just this year (Battle L.A., Falling Skies), are always classified as science fiction. This is because it is usually assumed that such an epic event has to be set in the near future, and that works better anyway because it gives the humans a fighting chance and hits closer to home. But if aliens are allowed to exist and visit earth in present day, there's no rule that says they could not have visited earth in some other time period. After a century of alien invasion films, someone has finally decided to give it a shot. And thank goodness it is not just anyone.

I am not surprised at the specific names I'm seeing involved. Among the many contributors, Spielberg and Ron Howard appear in the producer list (of about 15!), and Harrison Ford managed to get on the ticket. These are all people who know how to sniff out an original story concept. At least 8 people are named as screenplay contributors, including the guys behind Star Trek reboot and Men In Black. It's quite a big production. What they are trying to accomplish is not just a new setting for an alien invasion movie, but a merging of two film genre's. You can tell from the trailer that they want to duplicate the sets, style, characterization, and flavor of a bona fide Western. The point is to convince an audience that has grown accustomed to modern Western film making that they are in familiar territory so as to enhance the impact of the new material. Will they succeed in this? My guess is they could overdo it. With a production crew this polished, the tendency will be to try to iconize the look and feel but miss the texture. Witness the film title, which would sound truly corny if it weren't for the ground breaking nature of the material (and of course the graphic novel). It indicates that they are perhaps too aware what they are trying to do. But as I said before, I'm glad it's these folks rather than some nobody. It will give it enough credibility to pave the way for future experiments. I hope they can come up with a decent script. The fact that it was born from a graphic novel does not guarantee its quality.

There is one old film that originally broke ground in merging sci-fi with a Western called The Valley of Gwangi. Here it was the introduction of a "lost world" with dinosaurs into the wild west. You can see a clip of it on one of my earlier entries here. That's another idea that is traditionally classified as science fiction which could also be extended to other time periods. How about a dinosaur rampaging the Medieval World before anyone knew what dinosaurs were? Of course, they would most likely just call it a dragon. What about a Roman army going up against alien invaders? The door could be wide open now.

Deja Vu

2011-02-19T23:43:00.000-08:00

I've recently realized a symmetry regarding the nature of time. It is illustrated in the graph shown at left. Under normal circumstances, you and I travel forward in time. Our relationship with the future is not that we know it, but that we move into it, we experience it. On the other hand, our relationship with the past is the reverse of this. We see the past through the eyes of our memory. We know it, but we cannot move into it. The paradoxes of time arise when you try to reverse either of these relationships. If you try to move into the past, you end up creating alternate histories that cannot co-exist with each other. I in fact wrote about the impossibility of backward time travel at length in a previous entry. Likewise, another type of paradox arises if we try to see into the future. Once you know what is to come, you then have the power to prevent what you have seen. This, of course, is less paradoxical than trying to change history. If the future you see does not come to pass, you can always argue that what you saw was never really the future in the first place. But the main point I'm making is that there are philosophical paradoxes associated with traveling into the past and seeing into the future, but there is no paradox associated with traveling into the future or seeing into the past.

Now the real insight for me came when I realized that the non-paradoxical scenarios could be stretched and extended and still remain non-paradoxical. Traveling into the future at a faster rate than everyone else is accepted by physicists as perfectly possible... if you are near a black hole or traveling near the speed of light. It may be a nearly impossible feat to actually accomplish, but theoretically achievable. Similarly, you can collect all the information you wish about the past without running into any sort of philosophical conundrum. The idea of seeing into the past never caught my attention as did the idea of traveling into the future because it seemed so ordinary by comparison. All you have to do to see into the past is spend lots of time in a library. With the help of video and audio recording you can experience the past as if you were actually there. But this whole attitude was turned on its head when I first saw the film Deja Vu. Ok, I know that's an awfully winded introduction for a movie review, but I had to describe all this before getting to the point because I don't think this film gets enough credit for the concept that it's writers so crisply and cleanly introduced to moviegoers. I think it deserves a little respect, and with that, on to the film...

The plot line of this film is quite simple. A ferry in New Orleans carrying over 500 Navy sailors, friends, and families explodes and kills all on board. Denzel Washington plays an ATF agent named Doug Carlin who is sent to investigate the accident. When it is discovered to be the work of a domestic terrorist, the FBI gets involved and, noticing Carlin's keen detective instincts, recruits him to join the investigation. Most of what follows is your basic who-done-it crime drama, with one interesting twist.
The FBI, it turns out, is using the case to test a new technological gadget. It is actually an area wide system connected to remote satellites that allows them to obtain detailed and close-up real time monitoring of any location within a certain radius. That doesn't sound too far from today's satellite technology, except that they are able to use it to monitor such locations at a different point in time, one that is about 4 days in the past. It is a type of time window, but they say they have no way to change the time range of the window. They can record what they focus in on, but they cannot move the window backward or forward in time, and it is video only. It is like being able to watch what happened 4 days ago as it evolves. It is impossible to view every location at once, so they must try to focus on what is important to the investigation. This is where Carlin's help comes in handy.

You might ask yourself, why not record everything and then sort through it after the fact? It is not a stretch for me to believe that the amount of data required for such a feat would be too huge to manage. Even if you could find enough storage capacity to hold all the information, it would be impossible to beam it to one location, whether direct or by satellite, at any usable rate. There is only so much bandwidth available and that restriction is based on the laws of physics. No, it makes sense that one would need to focus on specific locations at a time. Focusing technology does not suffer from such physical limitations. Why they can only see a fixed time period in the past is never explained, and of course is completely arbitrary, but it makes for an exciting detective story. Remember, they only have 4 days worth of history leading up to the crime that they can work with.

=================< spoilers below >=========================

Carlin focuses on one of the victims, a woman named Claire, who is discovered to have been killed before the accident and therefore might have come in contact with the assassin prior to it. If you like detective stories, there's a lot of good material here, but its more than just CSI style puzzle work. The writers really delved into the real time aspect of this time window system. One of my favorite scenes is a type of car chase. In the time window, the terrorist is driving the woman to his hideout outside the city, which is supposedly out of range of the FBI's system. They have an extender device in the form of a helmet with a visor that shows what is happening at your current location 4 days ago. Carlin decides to try to "follow" the suspect by driving the freeways with this helmut on. In the harrowing chase that follows, we see from the detective's viewpoint. One part of the screen shows the suspect's car that Carlin is trying to follow from 4 days ago, and the other part shows the current traffic in the windshield in front of him. The traffic patterns in both windows are completely different, making it a delightfully unnerving sequence to watch as Carlin tries to dodge the real cars, ignore the imaginary ones, and still keep the suspect's car in his viewer. There is one point where the cars stop and it appears like the killer is looking straight at Carlin even though that is really just coincidence. Nice touch. In fact, you can watch most of that chase sequence here.

As I mentioned, this whole system is free of paradoxes. But the writers decided to challenge themselves a bit more and allow objects to be sent back into the time window. There are only two instances of this in the film. The first involves sending a piece of paper to the desk of Carlin's partner telling him where to find the suspect. This ends up getting his partner killed, something that was already known to have happened but no one knew why. The detective blames himself. Once they catch the criminal, the second incident involves Carlin convincing the team to send him back so he can save Claire, whom he has begun to care about. They send him to a nearby hospital bed with the words "REVIVE ME" written in large letters on his chest. Very clever. Carlin ends up not only saving Claire but also preventing the entire incident from occurring. What is really neat is that here again, the writers have shown us everything that Carlin's time travel affected at earlier points in the movie. As he intervenes in the time line, you see and understand the reasons why everything was this way or that way when you saw it before, including messages he wrote to himself. In other words, we only ever saw one time line to begin with, except for the very beginning when the boat actually explodes. In the changed timeline, the boat is saved.

Personally, I consider it a really well crafted script. Not only does it keep track of the clues to the crime, it also keeps tabs on the alternate time loop so as to minimize the paradox effect. The only detail to tie up is the fact that two Doug Carlin's exist at the same time now. This is neatly handled by causing Carlin to heroically save the ship at the expense of his own life, leaving his alternate future self to meet Claire under more favorable circumstances, and leaving her as the only one knowing all that actually happened. The film did not do very well at the box office, so maybe there aren't as many people out there who appreciate a good puzzle as much as I do.

Total Lack of Recall

2011-02-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

I am not ashamed to admit that I really hate most films directed by Paul Verhoeven. The main reason is similar to the reason I hate a lot of Stanley Kubrik's work, which is that these directors like to take the tools of cinematic art and use them to jerk the audience around just to make a point. This usually involves gross exaggeration, gratuitous sex and violence, and ridiculous attempts at satirical humor. But whereas Kubrik does this with serious intention, Verhoeven just likes to see how far he can take the joke without the audience catching on and then laughing behind their back. He's like the Andy Kaufmann of film directors. Verhoeven pulled this off to maximum effect in Starship Troopers, where his main target was our attitude toward the military and war films (and also Heinlein's book). In Robocop, I'm guessing his target was police action films. In Total Recall, I've recently begun to believe that he was targeting the Hollywood production machine. Before I explain that, let me say a bit about this really bad 1990 sci-fi action film.

I can't just skip over a film that was supposedly based on a Philip K. Dick short story, but I've heard that the film not only diverges from the book but leaves out most of what makes the story interesting in the first place. You can see seeds of Dick's ideas in the whole dream vs. reality themes that are explored, but I've learned that this script floated around Hollywood for many years but never got produced for one reason or another. It went through lots revisions and I don't suppose many directors wanted to get involved. I will guess that this created a situation where Hollywood had invested a lot of capital into trying to get this movie made and was quite frustrated. They were willing to throw a lot of money at it to get it done. I think Mr. Verhoeven saw this as just too tempting. His thesis on this project would be to illustrate Hollywood's tendency to think that the more money you put into a film, the better it will be. He would take a script by a respected intellectual author and turn it into an action bonanza complete with stupid one-liners and lots of explosions. He would get one of highest paid actors in Hollywood at the time, Mr. Schwarzenegger, chosen precisely because of how well he represented the high paid low talent Hollywood star. He somehow managed to have tons of money spent on special effects which more often than not turned out looking like cheap puppetry, toy models, and cartoonish claymation. He got them to pay big bucks for a nice Jerry Goldsmith score. He littered his screen with blatant product placements and lots of gore and violence while leaving a lot of plot points and story details in the dust. All this he did while keeping a straight face, and then laughed it up under his breath as the film debuted as number one at the box office and the Hollywood executives all patted him on the back.

Alight, maybe I'm being a little over the top, but I'll wager not by much. There is really not much worth remembering about Total Recall (no pun intended) except the possibility that its director was pulling a number on the executives, and maybe the audience, just like he did with several other of his films before and after. I'm sure I'll get some flack for this, but at least you can't say my perspective isn't unique.

Overlords of Mortis

2011-02-08T00:35:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned once before, I have been faithfully watching the Clone Wars series which is now in its third season. They are always a treat to watch for reasons I explain in my earlier entry, but this week Mr. Lucas decided to go epic and create a whole new strand of mythology. It is such a great offering I had to just comment on it.

It is a three part sub-series of which two have already been released. The three main characters on the good side, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan, respond to a distress call which turns out to be some type of artificial planetoid in the shape of an octahedron. It looks more like a prison, which in fact it is, but is also a conduit though which "the force" of the universe flows and is somehow amplified. Whatever the explanation, it is a pretty freaky place. You have a trilogy of beings living there - one of light, one of darkness, and one that provides balance between them who is referred to as their "father". They are interested in Anakin because they suspect he is the "chosen one".

Now remember I'm comparing this with the entire Clone Wars series, not the rest of the sci-fi world from which it kind of rips off a lot of material. I could comment on the Avatar like floating rocks, the parallels with Christianity, Excaliber, and Greek mythology (Gargoyles and Griffins), or the fact the "chosen one" idea was overused even before The Matrix. But we love them anyway because they hit close to home. The fact is that the themes of this trilogy and even the animation and flying camera angles are just a step above the previous offerings. We even see visions of past figures both true and deceptive, and ones of the future.

It's not completely out of scope either. Since the early days of The Phantom Menace, the jedi have talked about Anakin being the the one who will bring balance to the force according to some ancient prophecy. He is put to a test here by these beings so they can decide if he is the fulfillment, one that requires he tame both the creatures of light and darkness, and he passes. Yet some events transpire which create an imbalance in the force toward the dark side. We of course know that this portends the evil days that are coming. It all has a rather mysterious flavor to it that is a nice departure from the norm. The story accomplishes the dual goal of revealing a new aspect of the mythology of Star Wars that is still anchored to the whole, while also chronicling a key set of events in its history. It is one of those rare glimpses into the world that began in Mr. Lucas' mind. It makes you wonder if it was grafted in recently or was there all along. The full episodes have been removed from the Star Wars official site, but the preview info is still there. And you can try the links below if they are still available (and ignore the foreign subtitles):

   Episode S3E15: Overlords
   Episode S3E16: Altar of Mortis
   Episode S3E17: Ghosts of Mortis

The Fifth Element

2011-02-02T23:51:00.000-08:00

Aaahhhh! Ok, ok, I'll do it. I'm practically dragging myself to write an entry about this crazy film, which I did enjoy watching the first time and again as I reviewed it recently. The reason this is so painful is that I'm accustomed to honoring works that hold some intrinsic value. The Fifth Element has little of it and yet I can't seem to shake it out of my head. It reminds me a bit of Hitchhiker's Guide, yet different. Alike in that in that it borrows elements from other science fiction movies, but more as a tribute than in any way a spoof. Alike in it's comedy, but more as a side attraction than as the main objective. Alike in its European flavor, but more French than British. And in addition, it aims at one point to convey a message about the worth of mankind being more in the way we love than in the wars we fight. Well, maybe that's stretching it a bit. But no matter what I may think about it, I can't seem to help enjoying it. As a film that claims such close kinship with the sci-fi genre, this has to be the place to write on it, and so I write.

This movie has guts. Its unconventionally flamboyant sets, costumes, and visuals work because of sheer creativity. Its cartoon-like characters work because they end up satirizing various aspects of human society. Its completely ridiculous mythological backdrop works only because it is designed to touch some place in your heart and soul. All the reasons why it should be bad, somehow end up working. And what is really weird is that it seems to flow naturally from the director's own style rather than feel like it was all thought out in advance. Maybe this is the first sci-fi film in which my recommendation would be to just sit back and enjoy it without thinking about it.

I have no desire to describe the story details as they are much better when viewed, except for one symbolism that I picked up at the end on this most recent viewing (small spoiler here). At the end, the five elements must all be opened in order to fight the evil force that threatens the world. The heroes, which include Bruce Willis' character Korbin Dallas, discover that each element stone must be opened by supplying it with a sample of itself - earth to earth, fire to fire, etc. In addition to the usual four elements of ancient lore, the fifth element is said to be a human being, a female, pure and innocent. We find that she is "closing up" with despair after learning of the evils of human history. She must be opened as well, and this is accomplished when Dallas confesses his love to her, which opens her heart and completes the 5-fold energy force to combat the evil. You see, the fifth element is love. The human being was just the "stone" that was meant to hold it. With themes like that, who needs to analyze?

The Philadelphia Experiment

2011-01-30T02:25:00.000-08:00

Back in high school, I remember hearing from some buddies about a World War II era effort to cloak our battleships from enemy radar. The last phase of this involved an experiment in Philadelphia with a fully staffed battleship that was subjected to some type of energy field. The program was then terminated, and a set of urban legends arose regarding this event which came to be known as the Philadelphia Experiment (follow the link to Wikipedia for more info). Some of the post experiment claims my friends talked about were reports of sailors phasing in and out of existence and sometimes materializing within solid matter, even days after the event. Some of them reportedly went crazy. It turns out that the entire program is probably a myth as the Navy denies it ever existed, but it did capture my imagination at the time.

So I was glad when I heard a few years later that a film was out that was based on the incident, called simply The Philadelphia Experiment. I don't know what I had expected it to be, but I do remember that I enjoyed the film. It was a kind of a mix between a traditional sci-fi story and a heart-warming drama, and that is all I could remember of it. Thus, I looked it up on Netflix and found it available for instant viewing and watched it again. I found my opinion hadn't changed much, so here goes.

First, the science fiction backdrop of the story is actually not bad at all. You have the connection to the myth in 1943 as an anchor, and then a wormhole of sorts that connects to 1984 (the year the film was released). I remember thinking that was a rather arbitrary coincidence until you find out later on that it is the same scientist performing the same type of experiment in 1984 that causes the link, and that very neatly closes the loop. Two of the sailors from 1943 abandon the ship and end up falling into the future. One of them gets pulled back but the other has to find his way back home. It turns out that the wormhole in '84 won't close up and is threatening to suck the world into it. The hole, it is said, won't close due to an energy source from the other side. That energy source is the field generator in the battleship which never got shut down, and our hero must go back in to complete the job and save the world. Yes, it sounds crazy but it has a logic to it. If the wormhole was created by the second experiment in '84, then if the guy who actually shut down the generator in '43 now gets sucked into the future, history has now been changed by the precise event that would have caused the wormhole to close. Thus, the only way to fix the problem is to shut it down from the '84 side, which paradoxically fulfills the shutdown that orginally happened in '43. The best guy for that job is the one who was supposed to have done it in the first place. Make sense?

The first thing I like is that the story has such balance. Where most science fiction would focus on the scientist and his experiment, this one focuses on the two navy boys who get caught up in the fray. These are just simple guys with a bit of military training that comes in handy in a fix. The story arc that involves the two friends, both past and future, and their unwitting companion, gives it some heart. In fact, the hero falls for an 80's chick and their whole relationship is quite silly and poorly acted, but it gives him a reason to return back to the future after completing his mission. The characters are developed just enough to allow the film to move quickly and stay interesting throughout its short 1:40 run. The old "fish out of water" device is utilized just enough to be cute (and dated!), but not so much as to take away from the story flow. The special effects are surreal enough to still hold up pretty good, and the pyrotechnics, sound, and wind tunnel work is all done well too. The music sounds like a typical orchestral television drama of that era plus a few 80's style pop hits, enough to get by.

Finally, I just love a time travel film that makes an effort to stay consistent and tie up all the loose ends. You see, since the main character only goes back to the past briefly and then returns to the future, there is no real chance for a paradox to develop, even though you are kept guessing about that until the end. He stays only long enough to correct the one mistake and then goes back to 1984. His friend does not stay in the future long enough to be able to affect it when he returns to the past, and his story about what happened is never believed. You sit and watch all the little facts that are revealed and then neatly resolved by the end. I would not call it a high quality piece of film making, but it is nonetheless a really well executed piece of story telling. I've also discovered John Carpenter was, interestingly, on the executive production team so it makes me wonder if that could have been a factor.

The Good, The Bad, and the Mediocre

2011-01-29T00:45:00.000-08:00

Well, I keep running into sci-fi related films and series that I feel should be commented on, and yet I find I have nothing significant to say about them. It's not just a matter of being bad. Sometimes a really bad film is interesting to talk about simply because it is so bad. In fact, much of the material in the vintage sci-fi category is great because it is bad, or at least in spite of it. But I sometimes feel the need to explain why I'm not interested in some item that is obviously in the sci-fi category, and so I have decided to dedicate an entry to list all those topics I don't want to blog about with a short commentary on why. Then when someone does a blog search for it, they'll at least get an opinion, and then maybe they can comment and convince me to actually write about it. There is no way I will be able to cover the huge amount of sci-fi material that gets put out every year, but I'll try to revisit and expand this entry as time goes on.

Here's the list in alphabetical order:

Donnie Darko (2001) - I actually liked this odd but well directed little film. Some classify it as a creepy thriller, others as a time travel sci-fi piece, but I don't think it really fits in anywhere. More to the point, the only science-ish element is the attempt to explain time travel, but it's all just a bunch of silliness, intended to be taken more as fantasy than anything else.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) - Set in a dystopian future where information is the most precious commodity and in order to keep it from being stolen, it is transported via couriers who have the data uploaded into their brains and downloaded upon arrival. Of course, that means the couriers are targets themselves. Keanu Reeves plays one of these couriers in a pre-Matrix lead role in a story that doesn't have much point to it. It has a cyber-punk feel and I guess it played for me like a juvenile comic book story - you know, filled with outrageous yet stupid ideas. Hey, some people love that stuff though.

Lost in Space (1965-1968) - This light comedy-adventure series was a bit of a phenomenon, like Leave It To Beaver meets Robinson Crusoe in space. They even owned a pet robot modeled after the one in Forbidden Planet. Anyway, the only memorable character besides the robot was the cowardly Dr. Smith. Otherwise, it was the usual tepid network material.

Mad Max Series (1979-1985) - Another adventure in a dystopian future. Before I get the flack for it, I'll give credit to the original film for introducing the concept of post-apocalyptic science fiction to a new generation of filmgoers. It tried to be epic, it tried to be touching, but just didn't have the quality to achieve either. Most of the characters are just cartoonish. The sequels were more of the same.

Solaris (2002) - I really tried on this one. The film did not seem interesting enough for me to watch except to blog about it, so I did. I even researched the original 1961 book by Stanislaw Lem. It's definitely bona-fide science fiction, especially the book, and the topics have a certain intellectual interest, but I just can't get into it. I forced myself to write a whole blog entry and after 5 days with absolutely no hits decided to delete it. I'd rather write about things that I really love and not simply out of obligation.

Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007) - When I saw the original Stargate film in 1994, I remember thinking it was quite interesting for the first half hour or so until the exploration team stepped onto the new planet, after which it became a really stupid Egyptian alien influence meets mediocre action film. I left thinking it was entertaining but forgettable. To this day my jaw still drops that it actually turned into a wildly popular TV series that lasted a whole 10 years! I've never watched much of the series so maybe someone will someday point me in the right direction. Maybe if I watch the film again I'll see something I missed. Who knows?

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) - I don't know why this is such a classic of science fiction except that maybe it had a well written script. But the story was just another atomic angst film that used an alien to convey the message. My reaction to it has always been a big "Who the hell cares?". The same goes for the remake in 2008 with Keanu Reeves.

The Terminator Series (1984-2009) - I really enjoyed T2 when I first saw it, mainly for the great direction and never before seen stunts and special effects. What else might you expect from a James Cameron film? Arnold was also still pretty cool back then. But there's not much more to say about it. All the sci-fi related ideas are just re-hashed from other films. After watching the other installments, I still think T2 is the best one of the bunch.

Waterworld (1995) - I suppose this is a dystopian futuristic adventure as well. I had hope for this one because the concept was promising. What would life be like if the world was covered with water? But it doesn't really explore much of that and just spends time on unbelievable characters and situations. That makes it even harder to forgive the fact that if the polar ice caps did actually melt completely, the ocean would only rise about 200 feet, which would cover maybe 20% of the land mass.

X-Files (1993-2002) - Only a portion of this weirdly outrageous TV series was actually pure science fiction. Most of the time the writers dabbled in the supernatural and other things in a way that harkened back to an old show from my childhood called Kolchak: The Night Stalker. But I could never take it seriously as real science fiction.

Dark City

2011-01-23T23:21:00.000-08:00

If you were to try to name the best merging of science fiction and film noir, many people would first think of Blade Runner, but I have another film in mind. A year before The Matrix introduced stylish trench coats and dark alleys to the genre, it had already been superbly done in Dark City. This is an extremely unique film with very neat sets and cool visuals. The story line is pure science fiction, which means that the World War II era film noir elements are done mostly for effect and as a kind of tribute, but the reason they are there is the same, even if on a much deeper level. Ok, if I sound like I'm speaking in riddles it is to reflect the mysterious nature of the film and before I get to the plot synopsis I should warn that it is better not knowing anything before you watch it for the first time. So please note the spoiler alert.

==================<<spoilers below>>=================

A man wakes up in a hotel room bathtub with amnesia and a brutally murdered prostitute in the bedroom. He receives a call from a stranger who tells him some people are coming for him and he must leave immediately. He flees as a group of men in black hats and overcoats arrive to take him. And so the adventure begins. It turns out that the ominous men in black are aliens who are using human bodies (borrowed from the deceased) to get around and who have the power to move and shape things with their minds, including causing their own bodies to fly and rendering people unconscious with the wave of a hand. They call it "tuning". But it's even worse, because these aliens are conducting experiments on humans to try to understand what makes us tick. Why? Their race is dying and they think humans may have the key to their survival. You see, they are like a hive species with a collective mind and they believe that acquiring individuality, in essence, individual "souls", is the answer. They don't realize that by treating their subjects like lab rats they are preventing themselves from ever attaining that higher nature. So they create a city from the memories of people and use their tuning powers to shape and re-shape the city each evening at midnight. During this process, everyone is rendered unconscious and they inject a whole new set of memories into their brains (with a syringe no less), so they can see how each person responds to each new situation they are placed in. In fact, the entire city is actually an isolated laboratory in space, surrounded by a force shield, that is always in darkness because the aliens cannot stand the light. Thus, each person lives out each evening with a new set of memories oblivious to what occurred the night before. It sounds so ridiculous you would think it would be hard to pull off, but it works mainly because the themes that it plays with are so fundamental to the human condition, and although it has a concrete story framework, it plays on screen like a dream, a fairy tale, something we are meant to interpret symbolically more than anything else.

Our main character, John Murdoch, is eventually found to somehow possess the same tuning abilities as the aliens and so they want to either destroy him or study him and sometimes can't decide which. He's also wanted for a string of murders that he did not commit. It was just another programming experiment that he happened to wake up from too early. William Hurt very nicely plays the film noir staple detective trying to solve the murder case and so he too is after Murdoch. Murdoch slowly learns of his situation from a very strange doctor named Shreber, played by Keifer Sutherland, who works for the aliens to create the memories that are implanted into their human subjects. His wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) is willing to believe his story, even though she is only his wife as of that evening due to the last memory transfer, and the detective eventually gives him the chance to prove his claims by going in search of Shell Beach. That is the place where his memory tells him he grew up and Murdoch spends most of the film trying to find it. It is so amazingly dream-like how every time he asks someone about it, they say they know of it, or have been there, but when asked how to get there, they are surprised when they find they have forgotten the specific directions. Eventually they come to where Shell Beach should be, and find just a poster on a brick wall at the edge of the city. Behind that wall, they discover, is empty space.

The aliens eventually capture Murdoch and think they can use him to find their answer but Dr. Shreber pulls an ingenious trick that allows Murdoch to battle them and take over the city. This could of course turn into a hollow victory, since not only have the human subjects lost their home planet, they have also lost any memory of their real past and true identity. But John Murdoch does not succumb to despair and remakes his own world into one in which he can begin a new life. You see, the story is really about the triumph of the human spirit over even existential circumstances. The entire setting is meant to convey the dreary existence of psychological captivity. The humans believe they are free even through in truth they are not. The film noir motif has always been designed to convey a sense of the futility of the human condition, and so it serves to poignantly connect this concocted fairy tale to our own lives. The aliens are portrayed in numerous ways as being quite soul-less, from the subtle (as in their being named after inanimate objects like Mr. Book and Mr. Hand) to the symbolic (as in their society being focused around a huge machine), to the horrifying (as in the willingness to use mind control and even rape and murder as a way of studying the human condition).

There a lots of technical details you could pick at. Why are all the alien's bodies male? How do they stop traffic and move buildings around without killing the unconscious subjects? Why does Keifer Sutherland sound like he's out of breath every time he talks? But I think you will find yourself not worrying about all that since it is not the real point of the film. Some point out similarities with The Matrix, but they are mainly surface level, and since Dark City came first, the point is a bit moot. You can watch it and judge for yourself below.

Moon Movie

2011-01-14T00:19:00.000-08:00

Several months ago some friends recommended that I watch a recent science fiction movie that had just become available for instant viewing on Netflix. It was called simply Moon with Sam Rockwell playing the lead role. In fact, it is almost the only role save for a computer named GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey, and obviously tailored to recollect HAL from 2001 down to the round camera eye with a glowing dot in the middle. Spacey is a good choice in that respect because he is able to mimic the calm and calculating voice of his predecessor computer quite well, but there are two glaring deviations. For one, the camera eye has a blue dot, not a red one, and second, the computer is so uncannily intuitive in its understanding of emotions and proper responses to them that it is difficult to believe it is actually a computer at all. It even uses emoticons to display its computed "feelings". It seems to genuinely care about Rockwell's character, also named Sam. This I believe is designed to provide a contrast that makes us wonder, up until the last minute, about whether the computer really does have Sam's interests in mind or not. But let's back up a bit.

Sam, it appears, is the sole inhabitant of a space station on the moon about 20 years in the future set up by a company called Lunar Industries for the purpose of mining Helium-3. Let's just stop there a minute since this is the only real science oriented aspect of the film. Why go through all that trouble to mine an isotope of Helium? I credit this film with actually prompting me to research this since it is not actually explored in great detail in the film. It turns out that H-3 can be used as an energy source in a fusion reactor. "So what?", you say, "I though fusion took too much energy to get started for it to be worth the trouble". And so it is with H-3, however, it has at least two desirable properties. It is a clean nuclear fuel, which means it does not produce toxic waste that must be disposed of (or at least a great deal less of it). It can also spontaneously generate electricity from the fusion reaction because of the release of a charged proton, in addition to the usual heat energy to make steam to run a generator. Apparently, a small amount can go quite a long way. I don't know all the details but the point is that people have seriously looked into this as a viable technology. There is one major problem, however, which is that H-3 is a very rare isotope, and producing it artificially takes too much energy to be useful. And this brings us back to the moon, which has been found to be relatively rich in H-3, especially on the dark side, which is where Lunar Industries has set up their mining operation. At least someone did their homework, except for the fact that the amount of H-3 that would be required to operate even a major city would require several tons of the stuff to be transported back each year, and it's not even clear it could be mined in that quantity. Still, it is an interesting possibility, one that has a well written entry about it on Wikipedia.

So how does one man run an entire mining operation? Well, he doesn't. Most of the station is managed by GERTY the super computer and a fleet of automated harvester mobiles. Sam's main job is to perform maintenance and collect canisters of H-3 from the mobiles to send via launch capsule back to earth. We start at the end of his 3-year term where he is eagerly awaiting his trip home, and then something goes terribly wrong. The rest of the film involves a crazy set of disconnected events that have both Sam and the viewer trying to figure out what is going on, which turns out to be a huge ruse partly foisted on him by GERTY. I don't want to spoil this one too much here because half the fun is in the mystery, and it ends with some nicely heroic acts by both Sam and his computer companion.

Is it a good film? At first, I didn't think too much of it except that it was kind of fun and kind of original. It almost doesn't take itself seriously - like an allegorical satire. But I found that it grew on me over time. There are several notable aspects besides the ones already mentioned. Despite the other-worldly environment, it has a very real feel to it because Sam's character is written, initially, to be nobody real special. Just some guy passing the time. His frustrations and responses are sometimes clever, sometimes desperate, but always things you or I might actually do or say, and this is conveyed very nicely by actor, director, and writer. It allows them to do things that would normally be taken as straight satire and make us laugh as if it were happening to the guy next door. The writers also do not try to over explain things by putting dialogue in the characters' mouths. There are times when Sam has figured things out before we do and yet we can only guess this by his behavior. Other filmmakers might be tempted to have the protagonist think to himself out loud or something. Regarding Sam's character, there is also some amazing camera trickery that I still can't even figure out. The sequences on the moon's surface are executed rather nicely (except for a very obvious goof with the starfield backgrounds). The images of the harvesters silently spewing moon dirt behind them which rises much higher than normal due to low gravity still sticks in my mind. Finally, the soundtrack is pretty neat throughout. So, all in all, I think it is a better film than it might be given credit for. At least you can say it is unique, and one I think I would recommend as an evening's entertainment. All the stuff I have not gone into I'll save for the comment section later on down the road.

Tron Legacy Review

2010-12-30T23:58:00.000-08:00

In my article on the original Tron, I noted the upcoming sequel and stated that from the trailers it appeared this very late follow up would have none of the elements in it that made the original a classic. Now that I've seen Tron Legacy, I can confirm the truth of that statement. The unique computer animation styles seen in the first Tron are replaced by slick CGI graphics. Very polished, but so ubiquitous to moviegoers that it is simply expected to be part of any sci-fi film today. The visuals, characterization, and score have taken on a heavier and darker feel. Given the conceptual connection between Tron and the The Matrix, it is not surprising that this new version seeks to capitalize on the latter's successful fusion of sci-fi and stylism, sometimes rather gratiutiously (the original film took no interest in flaunting beautiful girls in tights). Every visual that was employed before has been fed into a computer and embellished in great detail. It adds nothing to the telling of the story except flashy visuals that are even less appealing than the simpler forms from which they were derived.

You would think with Lisberger in the producer's role they might at least maintain the ingenius allegorical parallels between the real and computer worlds. Alas, most is just sloppily borrowed and what is new does not try very hard to maintain the symbolism. I almost dropped my popcorn in one scene where Flynn's son is discovered to be a user because of what looks like anti-gravity blood droplets coming from him after an injury on the playing field. If he is only a programmatic representation of himself, would that really include a bleeding program? Does Flynn have a simulated dinner with his guests just for the nostalgia of it? The original games in Tron were there because the system running the matter transfer experiments happened to belong to an arcade gaming company and the evil master program was using the game programs to carry out his plans. In this film, the games are spectacles of entertainment for the sole pleasure of the inhabiting programs. This is explained as the creation of an evil twin program of Flynn's that has created some sort of perfect society in something called "The Grid" (yep, Matrix was already taken). However, the actual connection to the word "perfect" is never really illustrated.

Once I had accepted that this sequel would not be like the original, I at least held out a little bit of hope that an original story might allow it to take on a life of its own. Here is where we find the greatest disappointment. In 1980, the story in the real world was an interesting plot in its own right, and the computer world simply paralleled it in a way that actually made some sense. In this film, the reverse has happened. The evil plot comes from the computer world and intends to invade the real one. Instead of a clever allegory, we have the usual one-dimensional villain-wants-to-take-over-the-world idea. So much time is spent on the battles and flashy special effects that there is only minimal room for character development, which is a shame because it is the characters and their relationships that aim to be the meat of the story this time around. All the other peripheral characters are nothing more than a means to some end. Tron himself is only seen in a last minute Han Solo type rescue without ever really interacting with him (probably because programs aren't supposed to age like Boxleiter's character in real life does). The supposed helper, Zeus, who turns out to be a turncoat was never anything more than a silly showman anyway. How disappointed can you be at a betrayal when you never took the guy seriously? I'm afraid the script is of no real significance.

One new concept is introduced which is the supposed appearance of independent programs with an emergent consciousness. They are called bio-morphs and are portrayed as having child-like innocence. Of course, we are denied any exploration of this since they are all wiped out by the bad guy before we arrive. The one surviving specimen, played by Olivia Wilde, is by far the most interesting character in the film. It is refreshing to see a beautiful lead female play a character that is not essentially a love interest, although she is definitely loved. She plays the innocence angle very convincingly and I think we will be seeing more of her in future films. On the positive, the CGI work was integrated with some really nice sets in a way where you could not tell what was live set and what was not. All said, in spite of the huge promotional effort, I recommend waiting for the rental unless you want to see the 3D effects (I did not), which might prove entertaining.

Minority Report Futurama

2010-12-24T00:51:00.000-08:00

One of the intriguing things about Minority Report is that it represents at least three different story telling motif's, each of which could be lifted out and placed in some other context that would work just as well. On the one hand, it replays the familiar theme of a murder in which the innocent protagonist gets framed and spends the rest of the movie trying to prove his innocence while being chased by the authorities. The bad guys turn out to be part of the system that's meant to protect the little guy. Does that sound just like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive? Now let's add a twist and say that the murder hasn't happened yet, but it has been predicted to happen. In fact, the "system" in this case involves a society, even a police force, that relies on such predictions to prevent murders before they happen. They use clairvoyants, referred to as precogs, whose gifts have been enhanced by technology. Although the framing motif still remains intact, now the methods by which someone can be framed for a future murder become a lot more interesting and different. Note, however, that although this sounds like science fiction, the central mechanism, a pre-supposed belief in clairvoyance, is a paranormal phenomenon, not science. Also, the concepts of free will and determinism that it plays with are more philosophy than science as well.

So if the plot is pure action and drama and the twist turns it into a psychological thriller, where is the science fiction? Basically, it is in the setting in which the story takes place, which is simply human society in the relatively near future (2054 A.D). But unlike most other futuristic tales, this one attempts to be believable, and that alone is what makes this film stand apart from the others. Since the story line, which took some ideas from a short story by the always intriguing Philip K. Dick, relies only remotely on the setting in which it takes place, the creators did not have to mold the future to serve the plot. In fact, Spielberg conducted brainstorming sessions with scientists in various fields to get their predictions about what society might look like 50 years in the future. That's the kind of stuff sci-fi is all about and I'd rather spend a little time looking at what they came up with than doing just a run-of-the-mill movie review. After all, there's lots of that already on the web.

One of the first things you see is Tom Cruz in front of a huge transparent screen sliding images and data around and commanding various operations by making particular gestures with special laser gloves. This is a very natural extension of today's computer technology of course, and it featured in 2002 a multi-touch type of interface at a time when Windows Surface was just an idea in a few people's heads. It was finally unveiled in 2007 and there's great demo video here on youtube. This "surface" detects commands via camera image from below, which is actually more like the action-at-a-distance featured in the film than a touch screen device like the Apple iPad. Anyway, this technology is featured in a nice opening sequence that plays like a digital symphony with Cruz as the conductor. In fact, the opening music track is a symphony that is cleverly worked into the action on screen - check it out here.

Another thing that struck me as quite insightful was the portrayal of the continuity of brand names. Many companies come and go but the ones that last tend to last a long time, and their images will change with the times. For example, car companies are so integral to society that they tend to hang around even when they almost go bankrupt. In the film we see a whole new transportation infrastructure but the same car companies building and selling the cars, often with the same or similar logos. Communications companies like AT&T have lasted forever also because of their importance to a working society. If you look at the number of companies today that were around 100 years ago, it is not hard to imagine them and others like them still being around 50 years from now. You would think this would be rather obvious and yet I've never seen it portrayed like in MR. And it's a win-win because the companies can look real cool and futuristic while Spielberg gets to collect the royalties.

The same goes for architecture. Many homes look the same as today because people like living in houses that look old and traditional and will keep them basically unchanged for many decades, even as more modern offerings are built. The creators really looked back in history to determine not only what might change, but also what might stay the same. That is just plain genius.

One thing that MR does not hold back on is the idea that human nature does not change even as technology advances. Cruz's character is shown going through a divorce and becoming addicted to some type of drug. The delivery mechanism and drug itself has been refined out of physical side effects, but the effect on a person's life is just the same. Crime will not disappear and so neither would the police, even if their methods change. Instead of fingerprint identification they use iris imaging in MR. If you can be identified instantly by your iris signature, the existence of a black market in eye transplants does not seem like a stretch to me.

Another thing that I think MR got spot on with is the steady encroachment of commercial advertising into our daily lives. We've seen this with every new technology that has come along. Telephones and telemarketers, radio and TV commercials, and now email spam and internet pop up ads. It makes sense in the context of free capitalism. If there's a way to use technology to make a buck, companies will do it. They will avoid public outcry by introducing it slowly so consumers can become acclimated. One of the more memorable moments was when Cruz walks into a mall and is greeted by personalized computer sales pitches based on a remote iris scan that is done as soon as he walks in. It really hits you just how real that might become someday, even if they use a simpler method to identify you.

There are just so many thought provoking ideas to throw around in this film. One of them that struck me as a little ahead of its time was the maglev transportation system. It will take some time to move from oil based infrastructure to electric battery while still keeping the current road system. But to build a whole new road infrastructure in the major cities and mass transit based on a whole new car technology that matches it seems closer to a 100 year development to me at least. I'm not even counting the extension of the road system to allow it to go straight up the sides of the buildings and into your apartment on the 47th floor. We're talking major integrated city planning. The helicopters used by the police don't require an infrastructure like that, but whether rocket powered vehicles like that could appear in 50 years is still up for debate. And of course, the little spider bots that search out people is way far off, but easy to do with CGI.

I think the hardest idea to swallow was the way they portrayed the precogs. Even if you could find three people with such abilities, and even if they were willing to dedicate their entire lives to police work, could they really withstand floating motionless in a half dream state for their entire existence? That's just crazy, and even raises some ethical concerns. However, I do think that Jessica Capshaw did an excellent job portraying precog Evanna when she actually had to wake up and do something. I just discovered that Capshaw is Spielberg's stepdaughter, interestingly enough. But I will close here by saying that Minority Report remains a bit of an enigma. How can a film that contains so much fascinating insight suffer from such a one-dimensional plot line? Then again, it is a Spielberg film.

Dark Star

2010-12-21T23:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I knew at some point I would have to write about Dark Star. This is one oddity that anyone who likes sci-fi should see at some time or another, not because it is good sci-fi, but because of its place in sci-fi history, its smart sci-fi satire, and its raw honesty and originality. You could call it comedy, but that would not quite do it justice.

By history I am referring to it being a collaboration by two college kids who would later become influential figures in the world of Hollywood sci-fi, fantasy, and horror - John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon. Among other films, Carpenter would hit it big time with The Thing and O'Bannon with the script for Alien. They made this film as a college project at USC on a budget of about $60K. Some of it was even filmed in studios on the campus. It was originally a 45 minute short that got such great response at film festivals that a producer grabbed hold of it, had the guys extend it another 40 minutes, and released and distributed it as a feature film. That extra time causes the film to drag in places but the director's cut took most of it back out, the opposite of what normally happens in director's cut versions. The acting is bad, the special effects are gloriously bad, but the writing, dialogue, and even some of the directing is quite original and entertaining.

The film was made in 1974 when the only serious space travel film on anyone's mind was 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the more realistic yet sometimes unnerving aspects of 2001 was the long drawn out zero-gravity sequences. Dark Star sort of pokes fun at that idea by portraying a crew that is so bored with the endless tedium of space that they either start finding odd ways to pass the time or just drift off into their own fantasy worlds. One of them keeps a pet alien that looks like a beach ball with feet, probably because that is exactly what it is. And instead of HAL, the ship's computer is named Mother. That still makes me laugh.

Due to the low budget, many of the sets were built from whatever the crew could get their hands on - like having ice cube trays pass for console control buttons. But the highlight is the smartly oddball humor, like the mysterious death of their beloved captain Powell, who turns out to still be available enough for some advice in a crisis. And of course, the crisis itself which has to do with a smart bomb malfunctioning and deciding it wants to blow up while still attached to the ship. The acting captain, Lt. Doolittle, manages to keep the bomb busy thinking about epistomological questions such as "How do you know you even exist?". That exchange between Doolittle and the bomb is enough to make the film worth the sit through. So if you are a science fiction fan and haven't seen it, and you ever get the chance to do so, I recommend taking it. Of course, you'll know for sure by gauging your reaction to the trailer below:

Human Or Alien?

2010-11-29T00:29:00.000-08:00

One of the more common speculations that occurs in science fiction is not just whether life exists on other planets, but if it did, what on earth (pardon the pun) would it look like? If we assume that such life forms evolved independently, we would no doubt expect them to be so foreign and in fact, unexpected, that they would truly fit the meaning of the term "alien". The reason, of course, is that life on our planet, when we discover new forms, constantly surprises us with its strangeness, even though it is all based on the same basic chemistry and DNA-based machinery. Thus, life forms that arose in a completely different environment than that of earth would surely be even more foreign that what we find on this planet, incredible as it is.

Many classic sci-fi stories have explored the idea of the nature of alien life as a central theme, such as The Andromeda Strain, Alien, War of the Worlds, and countless others. Many more have explored the even less likely possibility of entire races of intelligent beings, focusing on their foreign technologies, cultures, and languages. Given the obviously much longer evolutionary time frame it would take for any type of intelligent life form to emerge in our universe, the opportunities for the biological substrate upon which this intelligence eventually sits to deviate from our own would be more numerous than any non-intelligent form of life by comparison. What I am trying to say is that if two intelligent races have absolutely no connection or commonality of origin prior to their first encounter, logic dictates that the biological makeup of these two races should be more different from each other than the two most radically differing creatures one might find on our own planet. This is why it is so ridiculous to see so many alien races depicted in sci-fi films and TV serials looking like slightly modified human beings. This entry, after that long introduction, is dedicated to the impossible ubiquity of humanoid aliens.

Now I realize that there is a practical reason for this resemblance of alien characters to us, at least on film, which is simply that it is much cheaper to dress up a person in a suit than to attempt something more difficult and costly, and probably even less convincing. In the earliest films, like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, the alien races were not much more than people with fancy wardrobes.

In the sixties, Hollywood's makeup skills improved enough so that they could try putting people in crazy looking suits. There are numerous examples of this in various TV series like Outer Limits and Star Trek, as well as the various monster films of the decade. But even if we excuse the early film and television sci-fi for insufficient technology or budgets, this would not explain the persistence of these humanoid aliens up to the present day. I believe there is a much more subtle explanation, and it has more to do with artistic laziness than anything else.

I first thought to use Star Wars as a modern example of this phenomenon since it spans several more recent decades, but then I realized it is really an anomaly. You see, Star Wars claims to take place in a completely different galaxy where you would expect every living creature to look nothing like an earth being, yet all the most important characters look exactly like us, and most of the others are close cousins. The obvious assumption one must make is that artistic license is being used to portray the main cast like ourselves so we can relate to them, including things like their emotional makeup and sense of humor, etc. But this breaks down when you see, mixed in with the human-like cast, all manner of alien beings with very different biological forms, including the intelligent ones! Certainly Yoda is a central character, as is Chewbacca, and Jabba the Hut has an even less human-like form, even though the behavior of the aforementioned characters is still quite human. I suppose you could characterize this as artistic license at best, or else as arbitrary, or worse still, schizophrenic.

So lets pick some of the more recent television series like Bablylon 5 and Star Trek (pick your spinoff). In all of these, various episodes will center around intelligent life forms that differ greatly from life on earth, which often constitutes the main point of the story. However, all of them have regular cast members that are aliens which look like modified humans. Klingons, Romulans, Narn, and Centauri; All of them very human like in form and especially so in psychological makeup. The one more striking exception being the Vorlons, which not only hide their form behind a cloak and communicate with musical sounds, but also seem to be more other-worldly in their manner, beliefs, and customs. Why are the regular cast so much like us? I believe the main reason is simply convenience. The easiest way to get an audience to relate to a main character is through mental and emotional connection, and so any type of intelligent interaction needs to hit close to home. This extends to the character's facial expressions and body language, which is most easily interpretable if they use the same expressions and body language as our own, and that implies a similar looking face and body. And this of course allows the actors not to work as hard at portraying the characters. Trying to weave an effective story without these tools takes a lot of extra thought that is less important than the day to day drama upon which most serials thrive. If my theory is correct, it means humanoid aliens are here to stay, despite their unlikely existence.

Once in a while, a serial will attempt to explain this commonality among the races. In the the original Star Trek series, it happens in one of the early episodes of season 3, and one of my own favorites, called The Paradise Syndrome. In the beginning, the crew discover a planet with a culture exactly like early Native Americans, and the flora and fauna look exactly like earth as well. They comment on the striking resemblance right in the beginning. Near the end, Spock discovers the people were relocated there from Earth by a group of ancient beings called the Preservers, who supposedly went around relocating groups of less advanced people/aliens deemed unable to survive on their own planet. It is Dr. McCoy who makes the key observation: "I've always wondered why there were so many humanoids scattered throughout the galaxy". Aside from being an interesting case of political correctness way before its time, it is a rather far-fetched invention by the writers to explain such a hugely important detail in one fell swoop. However, it is certainly not as distasteful as the ridiculous explanation attempted by Star Trek: TNG. In one episode, they receive a message from some ancient alien race which produces an apparition in the form of a basic humanoid-shaped being. It tells an audience of various races that the reason they all look alike is that their DNA was seeded by this original race throughout the galaxy aeons ago and they've finally become mature enough to be informed about their mutual brotherhood. To top it off, the message was supposedly hidden all these years in our DNA code. Ugh! I try to pretend that episode never happened.

The Abyss

2010-11-10T23:29:00.000-08:00

My family at some point acquired an informal Thanksgiving Day tradition back when most of us (5 out of 7) were still young and single. My mother would invite us over for a fully loaded turkey lunch. Yes, it was a lunch because she somehow always had to work on Thanksgiving Day and would be out of the house by two o'clock. Nurses were needed every day of the year, and I think this was a tradeoff designed to free up Christmas Eve. We feasted on turkey, yams, potatoes, and many other delicious contributions, and after chatting for hours and digging in to the pies and desserts later in the afternoon, the married siblings would leave around 4 to 5 o'clock and head to the in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner. The rest of us would then start voting on what movie to go see. With Mom gone it certainly was not rude of us to leave, and the theaters were all open and barely occupied. It was the only time in the year we all got to go to the movies together. There were even some years that Dad came along too.

Today my mother is retired, my father and one brother are no longer with us, and more of us kids are married or live farther away. So although Thanksgiving is still celebrated, the movie tradition has ended due to mere logistics. But it was on one of these holiday outings in 1989 that we decided to simply go to a nearby single screen theater and just watch whatever was playing that day. It was an underwater science fiction film that none of us had heard of called The Abyss. It turned out to be a film that would leave such an impression on me that I would remember it vividly for years afterward along with the odd circumstances under which I had discovered it.

The Abyss was both written and directed by James Cameron, half way between his first two Terminator movies, and 3 years after Aliens. Given the quality of the film and the reputation of its creator, I am still amazed at how little attention it ever got. One thing I share with Cameron is a love for the ocean and its underwater inhabitants. As a lifelong swimmer and now scuba diver, I have always loved to watch underwater filming. This movie takes place almost entirely beneath the ocean. It is definitely a Cameron film. What do I mean? For one, it is long (e.g. Titanic). It's original run time of 3 hours had to be cut back to 2 1/2 hours for the studios. Second, it contains lessons about the errors of mankind (e.g. Avatar, Terminator), the evidence of which was completely cut out for the theatrical version. Third, it is a well crafted story that is masterfully told. Fourth, it contains lots of suspense to keep you on the edge of your seat. Fifth, it had phenomenal sets (e.g. Titanic). Sixth, it pushed the envelope of film and special effects technology for its day (e.g. all of the above). Do I rest my case? It also contains several difficulties in the credibility department which is always one of the big weak spots in Cameron's sci-fi ventures.

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There are several advanced underwater technologies that were explored in the story. The first is the idea of a submersible oil rig. The rig resides at the bottom of the ocean under 2000 feet of water. It has sealed control rooms and living compartments. It can be unhooked and towed at hover distance from the bottom with a small deep sea submersible in order to change drilling locations. Since it supposedly takes 3 weeks to depressurize at that depth, the only way to allow open dive operations is to keep the air pressure in the rig at the same pressure as the surrounding water. This is the first big credibility issue. The deepest open air dive on record is not much past 1000 feet, and the subject experienced severe HPNS (high pressure nervous syndrome). Although this is mentioned in the film, only one character falls victim to it while the others go weeks without a single symptom. At the end, Bud is supposed to dive to depths in excess of 17,000 feet and experience no more than temporary disorientation! I'm sure at that depth he'd be toast in no time, even if he was breathing liquid. A more serious problem is that you can't actually breathe air at that hyperbaric pressure due to oxygen and nitrogen toxicity, so the air in the cabins would have to be mixed with a careful balance of low oxygen and helium or other substitutes. This can be achieved with a controlled feed from a tank, but to achieve it in an entire cabin may prove impossible as the gases would separate. Also, if the pressure in the cabins and subs is the same as the surrounding water, then leaks would present a slightly lesser problem than depicted in the movie because the water would only rise to the level of the leak, not fill the cabin like in a submarine.

Another experimental technology which is part reality is using hyper-oxygenated fluid to allow deeper dives without a hard suit. High pressure compresses the air in the lungs, making it impossible to breathe at excessive depths. If you could breathe liquid instead, the compression problem goes away. There is an actual demonstration in the film of a rat breathing this hyper-oxygenated fluid, but it has only been tried on humans in clinical settings where a pump is used to aid the breathing process. A big problem is that there is no easy way to expel the carbon dioxide back out of the lungs without the assistance of a machine. So the free breathing of the fluid shown in the film is probably not realistic. It's a really neat idea though.

=====================[more spoiler stuff]========================

The production of the film must have been a complete nightmare, and such has been admitted by director, cast, and crew. The dive shots were all actually filmed in a flooded grain silo with the set built into it. Actual ROV's (remote operated vehicles) were incorporated into the plot and featured frequently. Submersibles and other more difficult shots were done with miniatures that somehow had live action film seamlessly integrated so it appeared like you were looking at real people inside the craft from the water outside.

And the famous ILM operation provided some very beautiful CGI renderings of the NTI's, which stands for non-terrestrial intelligence. This was a central part of the plot and another very original idea to add to the annals of science fiction. I don't know of any other film that was built around the idea of an intelligent race of beings that evolved in parallel with humans on earth but never made contact because they live exclusively in the unexplored regions of deep ocean trenches. Their technology is based on the control of water, which is also quite a stretch. Cameron takes great liberty with the idea that aliens are allowed to magically perform whatever impossible feats the story requires. There is one scene where the aliens supposedly investigate the rig using a column of water that can suspend in mid air and bend around corners. It is a touching moment and looks really cool, but that's about it.

Seeing the film for the first time is quite an experience as there are so many scenes involving heart stopping suspense. There is tension between the oil rig crew and the navy seal team sent down to assist the rescue operation which involves an armed nuclear warhead and a paranoid team leader made so by an HPNS affliction. An example of the crazy pace is when a hurricane develops at the surface and the underwater crew need to unhook the cable to the topside ocean liner so it can leave. This requires an external operation with the mini-sub, but the seal team has taken the sub for a secret mission and so they don't get to the cable in time. The storm drags the ship liner off position and the attached rig begins sliding toward the bottomless trench they are parked next to. Before this problem develops further, the tension in the cable causes the crane up top to break off in a spectacular crash scene. The rig below is warned that the huge crane is coming down toward them. We see the thick cable outside the rig window coiling as more of it hits the bottom and the crane gets closer. It is a very effective moment of suspense as the camera remains in the cabin with the crew during the entire brace for impact. The crane narrowly misses the rig when it hits, but while the crew is still cheering, the crane slowly falls over the edge of the trench, and we now see the cable following it down, still attached to rig. You barely have time to breathe, so to speak.

Probably the most unique feeling I came away with was an intense sense of claustrophobia achieved by some great direction. Cameron makes sure you don't get to see the surface for most of the film. You get a real palpable feel for what it is like to actually have to work under 2000 feet of water for days on end. Many scenes involve people diving through narrow compartments, getting trapped in rooms filling up fast with water, and you can usually hear the characters breathing, or trying to. This, I believe, is one of the more remarkable achievements of the film. Given the cold war time frame, part of the plot also depends on a Russian scare and concern that our nuclear sub technology is subject to espionage. Ironically, the Cold War Era came to an abrupt end just a few months after the film's release as the Berlin wall crumbled. It is amusing to see the U.S.S.R. portrayed in 1994, 5 years after it was in fact dismantled. There is a cheesy but convincingly told love connection between the two married main characters who go from the brink of divorce to finding their groove again. Ed Harris is a good fit for the part and plays it well. And the musical score is also quite lovely. With all that and more packed in, what more could you want?

I do remember viewing the director's cut of the film sometime much later and I believe it does provide a little more depth, however, it still does not fix the most serious flaw, which is the abrupt ending in which the aliens magically make everything all better. That ending does, however, have the effect of making you breathe easier as the entire cast finally breaches the surface. And I have to mention one other disappointing flaw, which is that we see absolutely no living creatures in the water for the entire film, other than the CGI beings. That, of course, would be too much to ask technically for that time, but all deep sea footage in the real world is teeming with the most interesting creatures on the planet. Such a shame.

I watched it again in order to do this review and I have to admit that the impact is not nearly as powerful when you actually know what is going to happen next, but it is still an enjoyable film which, despite the scientific challenges, has enough heart and originality to find a place in the annals of science fiction.

Colossus, WOPR, and Skynet

2010-10-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

The three names in the title all have something in common. They are all names of intelligent computer systems that were given complete control of the United States military arsenal. Well, in the movies that is, and in each case it proved to be a bad idea. On the contrary, it always proved to be a great idea for the plot of a sci-fi thriller. The fear of what might happen if the human race comes to rely too heavily on machines has been a recurring theme in science fiction all the way from Metropolis to I, Robot. But with the dawn of nuclear ballistic missiles during the Cold War Era, the possibility that man could destroy the entire world at the press of a button became a reality. So which is more risky: Allowing humans, prone to rashness and corruption, to decide the fate of the world, or relinquishing that power, and all its consequences, to a logical, yet just as unpredictable, computer? It is easy to understand the pros and cons of both of those alternatives.

Not too long ago, I discovered a somewhat forgotten little film from 1970 called Colossus: The Forbin Project. It gives a good picture of what an AI super computer would look like to someone who lived prior to the dawn of the personal computer. Despite developing uncanny abilities to perform monumental speech and video recognition tasks, the system communicates primarily via slow teletype ticker output, either on paper, data terminal, or a large NASDAQ like text scroller, at least until someone hooks up a speech generator. But lets back up a bit. This system is supposed to take over the U.S. nuclear arsenal and is meant to run autonomously. It is a huge computer by even 1970 standards, taking up several long halls which are sealed up behind a maximum security concrete and steel fortress with internal radiation fields, etc. There is no way to get in, because that is the best way to ensure no one can break in via an inside job. Say goodbye to security clearances right? It has its own self-contained nuclear power source and can monitor all types of communication channels from the outside world. It is not hidden, as any attempt to bomb it would be detected and pre-empted. Yes, they included ballistic missile interception even before the Reagan era. The president, who in fact resembles J.F.K. from the audience's recent memory, announces to the country that they have handed over the arms race to a veritably perfect decision maker.

----------------------------[ spoiler warnings here down ]-----------------------------------

One of the most memorable scenes for me was immediately after the cameras go off, Colossus begins repeatedly displaying the message "WARNING: THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM". It was so off the wall that it stumped me just as much as the characters in the film, until the explanation came. Those dirty Russians had been secretly developing their own version of the perfect AI weapon system called Guardian, and it was on line too. Colossus asks for a com link to Guardian so it can know more, which naturally raises some security concerns, but with precautions in place they decide to allow it. Colossus begins setting up a common language between the two systems and they begin to exchange information, ultimately deciding to work together to take over the world. Ok, maybe I jumped ahead there, but the fact is that the first half of the film contains some believability, but it becomes more and more ridiculous as things progress. Not only does the computer learn faster than they had ever anticipated, but it begins using its control of the missile arsenal to blackmail everyone into doing its bidding. It's thirst for power and obstinate behavior is just too human to make any sense, but the message of the film manages not to get lost.

One of the most striking aspects of The Forbin Project is its ending, which leaves the computer systems in control and the humans without any hope. This was only two years after the successful Planet of the Apes with its famous dark ending, so I'm sure Hollywood followed suit here when they ended the film with Dr. Forbin clenching his fist and cursing at Colossus. A few other notable mentions is the very interesting soundtrack which maintains a sense of urgency even when nothing is happening, a cool performance by Eric Braeden, and of course, getting to see Marion Ross (Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days) in the role of a serious computer lab assistant. It's a pretty good watch, and available on Youtube below:

The next big film to handle this topic was very different. This time, it was a fun family film with a happy ending. WarGames, starring Matt Broderick and Ally Sheedy, came out in 1983, right smack dab in the midst of the home computer revolution. In Forbin Project, everyone in the computer room was an adult, because at that time computers were owned and operated by businesses and governments. By the early 80's, the concept of the "computer whiz kid" entered the pop culture. In fact, 1983 also saw the start of a TV series about a group of computer hackers called simply "Whiz Kids". In WarGames, Broderick plays the hacker who gets into the DOD computer system, WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), which now controls the U.S. nuclear arsenals. He manages to accidentally trick the system into thinking a nuclear attack is imminent and the rest of the film revolves around trying to prevent World War III from happening. That's a pretty wild premise on which to hang an entire story, but it works because it is a well written script that is well directed, and the characters are all so colorful too. WOPR is a much more rational computer than Colossus, and the message in this film is that even a computer can learn enough to eventually understand the futility of a nuclear war. My favorite quote is the one that everyone remembers at the end. After comparing nuclear war strategies to the game of tic-tac-toe, the computer finally declares "Interesting game, the only winning move is not to play".

Of course, after that, the Terminator series took over and ran well into the 90's with its more Colossus-like system called Skynet. It too became power hungry the day it went live and never looked back. With robot armies and time travel, I think the message gets a little lost. But that is all the subject for another day, or should I say, for judgment day (sorry).

War of the Worlds

2010-10-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

I consider H.G. Wells to be quite a fascinating science fiction writer. Not only are his stories and writing style intellectually stimulating, but also quite prescient given the time they were written. Wells lived from the mid 1800's right to the end of WWII. He lived smack in the middle of the industrial revolution. Having a strong sense of compassion for humanity, most of his fictional stories were meant as warnings about the consequences of man's folly. It is this social aspect of his works that really establishes them as true classics in my opinion, even though I'm sure I would disagree with many of his views at the time.

One of his more famous novels, War of the Worlds, was written right at the turn of the century. As a born and raised British citizen, he witnessed British colonialism, which is a form of imperialism. War of the Worlds acted as a warning against imperialism by turning the tables and creating a race of imperialistic aliens with the humans in the role of the conquered. The aliens completely out power the humans, but they are ultimately defeated by nature. By putting all their trust in their war machines, and having no respect for the indigenous world they were rampaging, they neglected to become knowledgeable about that world and ultimately succumbed to their own ignorance. It is a powerful allegory. What is amazing is that it was written before airplanes, tanks, and heavy artillery, yea, even before the first world war. Yet here we find a global war waged using armored vehicles, chemical weapons, and "heat ray" technology.

War of the Worlds was always a bit of a enigma for me personally. I remember as a kid seeing some old movie posters for the original 1953 film and thinking how cool it looked, but it never seemed to come up on TV or anything. All I could ever find out about the story was that it was about Martians invading Earth, and although it looked cool, I wondered how in the world anyone could construct a full length story around such a concept that had any real depth to it. Then I learned it was written at the turn of the century and marveled that someone could come up with such ideas that early on. War of the Worlds was in fact the first science fiction novel about a full scale alien invasion. Because of that, it shaped the early images of that genre concept for years to come. So I had this interest in the concept of the story, but never any real interest in the story itself.

So I guess it is odd that it was only in recent years that I actually rented and viewed the original George Pal film. Pal replaced the mechanical tripods with floating submarine-like ships, and he removed a lot of the more gruesome aspects of the story, like the aliens feeding on human blood. All I remember was that I found it enjoyable. Although the special effects are dated, they seem pretty good for their time period, and even the script is pretty well put together. One interesting addition that reflects the cold war period is that nuclear weapons are used against the aliens as a final futile attempt to destroy them, something that Wells had no knowledge of.

Along comes Steven Spielberg with an updated version of War of the Worlds in 2005 starring Tom Cruz and Dakota Fanning. It definitely had a Spielberg blockbuster feel to it - lots of action, impressive special effects, while the character development gets lost behind all the ruckus. Spielberg actually brings in some of the original Wells concepts, including the "red weed" that covers the landscape and feeds on the vegetation, and the separation between the main character and his spouse. But he also creates his own back story by adding the kids, new situations, and lots of extra details. It is definitely his own telling of the tale and great fun. However, I can't say that it adds anything of real value to the Wells legacy.

And The Trek Continues...

2010-10-19T00:18:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have to wonder if the Star Trek franchise will ever go away. You can almost break it down into these surges of activity. If TOS (1966-1969) and the subsequent films (1979-1991) was the first wave, TNG (1987-1994) and its films (1994-2002) would be the second, and the DS9 (1993-1999) and Voyager (1995-2001) spinoffs the third. I almost could not believe when yet a fourth wave came in the form of Enterprise (2001-2005), which was a prequel to TOS of which I never watched a single episode. Then, lo and behold, in 2009 I witnessed a teaser trailer for the latest Star Trek film, which appears poised to engender another batch of future sequels. That teaser trailer reminded me of the teaser for the first Star Trek film: The Motion Picture, as have other ad campaigns. It is like seeing the same dream over and over again. In any case, there is a great write-up in Wikipedia on the entire franchise.

My purpose here is to give some thoughts about the latest film, which was billed as a Star Trek reboot. It turns out that word was carefully chosen, and it actually took me until close to the end of the film to figure out the reason. This film was a type of prequel that explored the early Starfleet careers of the original Enterprise crew. The word was that the film was being produced by a group of people that loved Star Trek since they were kids and that they intended to stay very close to the actual history alluded to in the TV series and prior films. They knew that Star Trek fans were meticulous about the intricate details of the Roddenberry created Universe, and it showed. There were lots of things in that movie based on obscure references that even I had forgotten or was not aware of. That deserves some credit.

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But perhaps it is this attention to historical accuracy that threw me off regarding the reboot idea. You see, the film begins with a mission in which George Kirk, the father of yet unborn James T. Kirk, is the first officer and whose wife, also on board as part of the crew, is about to give birth to the future Kirk when all of a sudden, a Romulan warship from the future appears out of a wormhole and threatens to destroy the ship. George manages to save the crew but sacrifices his own life in the process. Now, the key element here is that because this event was the result of time traveling Romulans, it never actually occurred in the original Star Trek history. Thus, a chain of events is set in motion that alters the course of that history. Let me give a few examples. Since Kirk now grows up without a father, he is portrayed as a rebellious youth who wants nothing to do with Starfleet until captain Christopher Pike challenges him to live up to his father's reputation. Yes, that is the captain Pike of the original series pilot The Cage who was originally shown as an invalid, but his history gets altered as well.

Then the Romulan ship, whose captain is bent on revenge against Spock, decides to blow up Spock's home planet, and ultimately succeeds! This does two things: First, the enterprise crew is thrown together much earlier than they would have been as they are called to duty as Starfleet cadets in order to investigate this emergency. Second, the loss of his planet is supposed to be so overwhelming for the emotionless Spock that even he is at his breaking point. This causes Uhura to develop feelings toward him born from empathy for his situation, and Spock actually finds himself succumbing to her. With Spock on edge and Kirk a young punk, this creates some heavy friction between the two otherwise good friends in another life. How's that for a reboot?

So how about the film then? I think it was a really good sci-fi action adventure story that even someone who never watched a Star Trek episode in their life would enjoy. But there was also plenty of nods to the original series for the fans, and maybe even a bit too much. Let's go through the character list. Chris Pine did an almost haunting job of recreating Shatner's mannerisms. Quinto certainly looks very much like Nimoy, especially with the makeup, but there were some glaring inconsistencies in Spock's personality. He always seemed to look angry, which is a pure human emotion, and his comments were often scathingly cynical, which is evidence of the underlying emotion of contempt. Scotty and Chekov looked nothing like their future incarnations, but I think they were chosen for their accents, which were spot on. Karl Urban also did a very convincing McCoy which was a delight to watch, even if he seemed too old for the part. Sulu was probably easy for anyone to pull off, and Zoe Saldana seemed a little too sassy for a young Uhura, but who knows right? The special effects were top notch and the action always kept me on edge, but the story convolutions required to bring Leonard Nimoy onto the screen was not worth the fan value. I also don't get why they had to do something as drastic as blow up the planet Vulcan. If that was just to give Spock a lost boy angst then shame on them! How long will this reboot go before yet another incarnation of Star Trek beams onto the scene once again?

Babylon 5

2010-10-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about the original Star Trek series was that, in addition to having well written episode scripts, the characters were played out with such passion. Ok, I know sometimes it turned into overacting, but I'd rather it go that way than become flat and boring. I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice that the next generation series that followed had an acting style that was a bit more cerebral. I guess you might expect that from a captain with a Shakespearean training background. The next few spinoffs continued this trend and the script writing degraded until DS9 finally began to convince me that the day of good sci-fi serials on television were over. That was until some friends at a gathering told me about Babylon 5.

At the time I was hanging out with a church group in Burbank that had connections to nearby Hollywood. Many of them worked in the entertainment industry. The friends I mentioned above actually knew Mike Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5, from a previous project. It was only a few weeks into the story, so I began watching, and my faith in television sci-fi serials was once again restored. While DS9 and Voyager were rehashing old material, this show featured a completely original set of characters and script ideas, and these characters actually had some blood running in their veins. The first episode I watched featured an almost hysterical in-your-face argument between G'Kar and Mollari. The acting seemed pretty good and even the alien makeup was pretty convincing. I became hooked. I watched every episode during its initial 5 year run and left the Star Trek spin-offs squarely in the dust.

There were five main ambassadors that formed sort of a council of worlds at that space station, all of them very different. The lizard-like Narn were an oppressed people with issues from the past, the Centauri were high society and its ambassador a conniving politician, the Minbari a peace loving race of philosophers, and the Vorlons were a mysterious ancient race with advanced technology yet difficult to understand and communicate with. The humans ran the station, led by the station commander Jeffrey Sinclair, who I thought was a likable character. But Sinclair only lasted one season and he was replaced by John Sheridan, played by Bruce Boxleiter (yes, the Tron guy), who took some warming up to. Sinclair disappears for unknown reasons and comes back at the end of the series as a key character, but I always wondered if they re-wrote the story to accommodate the original actor's departure. I still can't tell. Then there are several station personnel like Garibaldi, the security chief, who I always liked a lot. He was such a no-nonsense tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy. Other regular characters would come for a season or two and then go, but were always interesting. There was an agency called Psi Core which enlisted telepaths and trained them to use their gift for the good of society, or at least their definition of it. A regular Psi-cop on the show was played by Walter Koenig (Chekov).

The entire 5 year series has several story arcs that provide continuity. The main one involves sightings of mysterious shadow vessels that leave destruction in their wake. The explanation at the end of the series I thought was quite disappointing, like you've been led up to believe something horrible will happen and then everybody just shakes hands and goes home, but that does not take away the effectiveness of what led up to it. Another arc involves a past war between the Minbari and Earth that was mysteriously cut short and is tied up with Sinclair's relationship to their race. In addition, there were many one-off episodes that featured an isolated story, and these were often well written, interesting, and the whole series had a darker twist than you might encounter in the Trek world. It was rather addicting.

There is another thing that fans usually like about Babylon 5 which is its creative space ship designs. No models were used, only CGI, and to be frank, most of the computer generated images did not look very convincing. The thing that makes them stand out is the work that went into designing the CGI models. The space station itself is a rotating segmented monster of a structure with elaborately detailed features. All of the different races have unique ship architectures which just look kind of cool, even though they often don't seem like they would hold together in real life. It all looks pristinely clean but you just appreciate the work that went into it.

After the show's run ended, I saw ads for some spinoff mini-series, but they were on cable so I could not access it at the time. However, the entire cast was replaced for the follow-ups so what would be the point anyway? If you haven't seen this series and you like a good long running science fiction serial that actually entertains, you might just give the pilot a watch and see. Just make sure you've got the original series.

12 Monkeys

2010-10-03T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have always appreciated Terry Gilliam's films, both for their sense of humor and their creativity. From the classic days of Monty Python and The Holy Grail to some of my all time favorites like Brazil and Time Bandits. These were comedies that Gilliam wrote himself. In later years he decided direct some notable films with a more serious tone like The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys, both of which were written by others but to which he applied his unmistakably original directing style. In the case of 12 Monkeys, we have a brilliantly written science fiction story by a veteran screenplay writer named David Webb Peoples, who also co-wrote the screenplay for Blade Runner. Add to that some great performances by Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt, and you have a great film, one that also sits in my collection.

There are several elements of story telling that come together in the film. We start in the year 2035 after a virulent plague has killed most of the earth's population and the survivors now live underground. Convicts are forced to perform missions on the surface to gather samples and information for a group of scientists in their efforts to find a cure for the virus. The scientists have found a way to send people back in time and retrieve them again, and have instituted a program to send the prisoners on time travel missions in exchange for reduced sentences. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent on one of these missions. The hope is to decipher the origin of the virus and bring back a sample of the original from before it mutated. It is not explained how that would help them find a cure, and there seems to be no plan to prevent the catastrophe in the first place until something changes at the end.

The film presents several mysteries that keep you guessing via misdirection. First, we are misled about the cause of the catastrophe until the very end of the film. Second, Cole becomes confused about whether his future life is real or not and whether he is sane or delusional, and we the audience are provided clues that go both ways. The main directorial tool in this respect is analogy and similarity. The are many similarities between past and future, and many coincidental re-occurrences that make us wonder if Cole is actually making things up in his own head. For example, advertisements about the Florida Keys pop up in odd places as a suggestion of where they will ultimately plan their final escape. Cole hears a news story about boy caught in a well and correctly predicts that the boy is actually playing a prank and hiding because he saw the story as a kid. When he is confronted about it later he states that it could have been another story or that the kid may have seen the same thing and copied it. And then there is the constant thread of references that Gilliam includes throughout the film, like the numerous incidental TV programs that happen to be talking about time travel, or the ever-present monkey theme, as when a monkey is lowered into the well as way of reaching the supposedly trapped kid. These are not part of the story line but keep appearing throughout the film and give it continuity.

Cole ends up at first in a mental institution and meets up with Jeffry Goines (Brad Pitt). Pitt's performance as a crazy guy is absolutely amazing. He straddles the fine line between comedy and reality and creates this surprisingly consistent character. Willis is also great as a man trying to understand his situation and interpret a dream that is in fact a real happening that occurs at the end of the film and yet we see glimpses of it throughout, in slow motion, as a unifying thread that holds together Cole, his childhood, and his relationship to a psychiatrist named Dr. Kathryn Railly who is the only person that befriends him and ultimately comes to believe his story.

The most straightforward interpretation of the film is to take it at face value as a time travel drama, complete with time puzzles to piece together in addition to the other mysteries. Although there is plenty of "proof" to support this interpretation, there is one thing that does not fit in at all, which is a voice that talks to Cole every now and then out of nowhere, referring to him as "Bob", and speaking like he has gone through the same ordeal that Cole has and somehow knows how to beat "the system". Is the point here to simply throw us off track, or is there some deeper meaning? I think the writers gave us the answer within the film itself. In a scene close to the ending climax, Cole and Railly put on disguises in a dark movie theater as an old James Stewart movie plays on the screen. It is a strange scene where the actress is claiming she'd been in that place before. Cole starts mentioning how he thinks he saw that movie before as kid, and seems somewhat disturbed by it. In one of his most lucid moments, he says to Railly, "Its just like what's happening to us... like the past. The movie never changes, it can't change, but every time you see it it's different because you're different. You see different things."

In that light, I knew that there must be things I had missed and so I watched the movie again in preparation for this entry (my third time). It was in that viewing that I noticed the quote above, as well as many more of the incidental coincidences. I also noticed for the first time that the woman who sits next to the apocalyptic nut on the plane at the end is one of the doctors from the future. Did she go back in time to prevent the disaster after all? I also realized the obvious paradox that if Cole is killed in 1996, how is it that he can exist in 2035 in order to come back in time at all? I think part of the enjoyment of the film is the intellectual chase that it presents on so many levels.

Finally, I do like the main musical theme. It makes heavy use of dissonance and off beat rhythms to parallel the film's own assortment of double meaning. And it is actually played on accordian, the instrument of choice for street monkey vendors, and gives it a slightly humorous overtone. You can hear it below:

Pitch Black

2010-09-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

All I remember about my first view of the trailer for the movie Pitch Black (2000) was that it looked like just another excuse for a horror flick, albeit a good one. Who hasn't been afraid of what lurks in the dark at some point in their travels? It was just a teaser trailer that was mostly a black screen with people screaming and a few quick shots of creatures jumping at you. That was the last thought I gave it for several years until I saw it in a rental store and decided to give it a shot. The cover seemed to indicate it had a science fiction element to it. What an understatement that turned out to be!

Pitch Black is first and foremost an extremely well written and well directed science fiction thriller. Yes, there is a lot of scary monsters and situations to keep you on edge for most of the film, but the context in which it takes place gives everything a reason that makes good sense, rather than just an excuse to make you jump. Still, I would not recommend it for kids or the faint of heart. << spoiler warning >> Set in the future, it begins with a space craft crashing on the surface of a desert planet and killing most of the people on board, including the captain. If you really want to see how a crash landing should be done on film, you'll be blown away by this one (an impossible clip to find on the web, but this link will show you the first two minutes of the 8 min sequence). Right from the start, we are provided with at least two reasons to be nervous. First, there's an underground monster that causes some trouble and second, one of the few survivors is a dangerous convict who escapes. The convict is Richard B. Riddick, played very nicely by Vin Diesel who seems made for the part. In fact, this is the film that allowed Vin Diesel's career to take off.

The main plot involves the survivors' efforts to get off the planet alive. The first challenge is finding food and water, and this is difficult because the star system they have landed on has three suns which results in there being no night, no dark side of the planet, and no apparent clouds in the sky. They do, however, stumble upon an abandoned settlement with some supplies and a ship that needs fuel. They also find a working model of the trinary star system and, in a very cool scene, the acting captain, played by Radha Mitchell, winds the model forward and determines that they are about to be plunged into 30 days of darkness due to a planetary line up that occurs only once every 22 years. This event causes all three suns to be simultaneously eclipsed. How you can get a 30 day eclipse in a trinary system is beyond me, but I digress. When it finally happens, that's when the fun starts.

There is a huge population of voracious creatures that live underground because they cannot stand the light. I suppose it represents some type of underground ecosystem because there are several types of alien creatures. The ones that give them the most trouble are the flying types, including bat-like swarms and very large bird-like creatures. When the darkness hits, they all come out like a swarm of locusts looking to eat everything in sight. The CGI is a bit disappointing with regard to the creatures, especially when various survivors get eaten by them, but it is still effective.

Now I'm not going to claim that a lot of thought went into the science in this film, but the story plays out well partly due to the personalities of the characters and their interactions with each other. You have an antiques collector who is a nervous wreck, a holy man and his three sons who stop to pray to Allah every now and then, the female pilot who feels responsible for the ordeal, a young girl stowaway who is pretending to be a boy, the escaped convict Riddick and the bounty hunter who had captured him.
All these people must learn to work together to stay alive and I think how they do that is the most redeeming aspect of the script. They end up having to rely heavily on Riddick for two reasons. The first is that he is the most survival savvy of the bunch. The second is that his eyes have undergone a special operation that allow him to see in the dark, a remnant from his days in solitary confinement.

The film developed a following and since Riddick turned out to be such a bad-ass character they brought him back in a sequel in 2004 called The Chronicles of Riddick. The sequel is also a very good science fiction adventure film in its own right and was directed by the same guy, but it has very little connection to the first film except that it involves Riddick and a few of the other prior cast members. I'll mention what I thought were the most enjoyable aspects of the sequel. First, some of the best scenes in the film are the ones in the beginning involving Riddick's recapture and subsequent time spent in the jail from hell. It really establishes him as the true bad-ass of them all.

Second, the enemy in this story is a planet conquering race called the Necromongers that drive these giant space pylons into a planet, land and take over, and then try to convince everyone to convert to some half-living half-dead state or be killed. The main highlight is the initial invasion which really conveys a sense of "nowhere to hide" terror and I love the cool soldier helmets which completely cover the head with four mock faces looking in all directions. It looks quite intimidating. The rest of the story is pretty much your average defeat the bad guys fare so it doesn't quite measure up to the first script in originality, but it is still a good film and if you liked the first one, you'll certainly enjoy The Chronicles.

Starship Troopers

2010-09-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

The first movie I saw that was directed by Paul Verhoeven was Robocop, and ever since then I've pegged him as a guy who loves to fill his movies with gratuitous violence, even if just to make a point. This pattern continued with later films and I just found it annoying enough to avoid them altogether. However, in 1997, I saw a trailer for one his films called Starship Troopers that had scenes with thousands of giant CGI bug aliens marching over a desert landscape. My animation loving brother Vince and I both considered it such an awesome visual that we agreed to go see it together. There was one other draw for me and that was that it looked like an attempt to re-create the look and feel of a 1950's style sci-fi B-movie, only in color and with modern special effects. I was dying to see if it would be a tribute or a spoof.

There's not much to the story, written by Ed Neumeier who also scripted Robocop a decade before. It is basically a war movie in space, where the enemy is a race of aliens that look like giant bug like creatures. They have been somehow sending meteors toward earth which threaten to destroy major cities, so the human army decides to invade their planet and kill them off. True to Verhoeven form, any scene involving combat is loaded with gore, both on the human and alien sides. It is so over the top that it is actually funny. In fact, the entire movie is so tongue-in-cheek and overdone that I found it impossible to take any of it seriously and really thought it was just a big spoof. And it certainly has its share of poking fun at B-movie sci-fi lore. You just have to see it to believe it. The squadron arrives at an outpost where the entire army staff stationed there has been killed. The commander examines one guy with a hole in the top of his head and with a look of disgust, he exclaims "They sucked his brains out!!" I still laugh when I think about it.

The film seems to poke fun at military life, and thus at war in general, as mainly an exercise in mindless violence. The dialogue is deliberately cliché and predictable, and Verhoeven's direction is comical in many places, like when one of the main characters is talking by video phone to his parents about the situation back on earth without knowing that one of the meteors is heading toward them. Just before they sign off, the sky darkens, and the wife looks up and says, "Honey, why is it getting so dark?"

Now, it is only just recently that I have discovered that the book on which the movie was based was a famous science fiction classic (of the same title too!) by the legendary Robert Heinlein, who drew from his own experience in the military. It was written in 1959 during the cold war era and it is considered controversial because it makes a case for the necessity of a ground based military to defend a country, or world in this case, and in the distinction between what it calls a "civilian" and a "citizen", a distinction that Verhoeven pretty much makes fun of in the film. It is actually the only sci-fi novel on the official reading list of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and I hear it bears little resemblance to the film. So although Heinlein meant to treat the topic seriously, I think Verhoeven and Neumeier tried to portray it almost as a joke, but not so much so as to allow those he was making fun of to get the joke and thus prove his point. I guess that's called a satire in disguise.

What surprised me the most was how the critics took it so seriously. I guess now that I know the history behind the novel, that probably explains the attempt to seriously analyze the film. I remember it mainly for its outrageous audacity and recommend it only to those who like that kind of thing, and can easily laugh off the graphical nature of the footage.

Beam Me Up, Scotty!

2010-09-13T01:07:00.000-07:00

Rumor has it that Gene Roddenberry got the idea for the transporter in Star Trek from the movie The Fly, and that it was done that way to save both the screen time and set cost of shuttle landings. It was a pretty ingenious idea, and paved the way for transporter devices to become part of mainstream science fiction. Of course, they never really explained how it worked on the original series, and that was smart, because no satisfactory explanation exists given our understanding of the laws of physics today. This entry is dedicated to the impossible ubiquity of transporter devices.

When I reached the age where I needed explanations of some sort to help suspend my disbelief, I figured that transporters could only work using some sort of quantum teleportation technology. This is a real phenomenon based on something called the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) effect. You can read an overview about it here. For single particles, you can instantaneously transfer the quantum state of one object to another over a seemingly unlimited distance. The original Star Trek got something right in this respect, because the transported objects would freeze on the transporter and then appear in exactly the same configuration at the destination. Thus, the quantum state of a person's entire body was supposedly being preserved during transit. But there are many problems with trying to extend this effect to large objects. For one, even the EPR effect does not transport matter, only information, so it requires a duplicate substrate of matter on the other side. Second, the effect is destroyed once you get above the quantum level, which means it can only be done for a few small particles at a time. Trying to extend the effect to large objects would require enormous amounts of energy. I mean, we're talking about many times the entire output of the sun.

Then along comes The Next Generation and they try to pass off some fax machine type explanation for the transporter. They actually claim that a person's entire body is scanned down to the atomic, even quantum, level and then 'reconstructed' at the destination. This truly lame explanation now renders impossible any hope of suspending disbelief. Let me indulge myself. First, they still have the substrate problem. A fax needs ink and paper on the other side to reconstruct a copy of the original document. Also, the original still remains so it must be completely annihilated somehow. That sounds pretty painful. The human body is dynamic, so its entire state must be measured in one shot, kind of like a "snapshot" of you which includes both the position and velocity of all the atoms in your body. But that is physically impossible to achieve thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, which states that you can't extract both position and velocity information at the quantum level simultaneously. The TNG advisors actually try to explain this by making up something called a Heisenberg compensator device without any detail about its operation other than what the name implies. How lazy is that? Even if you could know the velocities of every particle, how could you set them in motion at the destination? In other words, how do you start the blood flowing and the heart beating, etc.? What nonsense! And yet, all the subsequent spinoffs maintain this type of explanation.

None of these problems go away by suggesting that the transported matter is converted to energy and then back into matter at the destination point. The information still needs to be encoded somewhere, and now you have the additional problem of how to contain all that energy. I just did the calculation, and 1 kg of matter equates to 1427 Hiroshima bombs. The average human weight is 80 kg. You do the math.

But no matter how impossible the technology, I do give credit to a writer who can at least find an interesting twist regarding the consequences of obtaining that technology. Probably the most interesting in this case is the possibility of duplicating a human being. There are several Star Trek episodes that explore this idea, like the duplicate Kirk in The Enemy Within, or the duplicate Lt. Riker in Second Chances.
But these treatments are not anywhere near as thought-provoking as the Outer Limits episode oddly entitled Think Like A Dinosaur. In it, humans can transport to other planets using a technology developed and operated by emotionless aliens (who happen to look dinosaur-like). It is a duplication technology that creates a copy of the person on the other side and then destroys the original. It is a temporarily painful operation, as might be expected. The transport happens from an isolated station on the moon with a human coordinator who helps to prepare the travelers. A supposed malfunction causes a woman's transport to be aborted, and she decides to go home because the experience was too traumatic. Later, it is found out that her duplicate got successfully created on the other side. The aliens ask the human coordinator to "balance the equation" by killing the woman left behind. As difficult as it seems, he must go through with it for a greater good, which is not to jeopardize the human's access to the alien technology. This access is rendered so important because of a ravaged earth back home, and since that includes his own family, it is personal too. After a heart wrenching sequence of events, he finally decides to trick her into being blown out of a space bay. Two years later, when the duplicate returns and remembers him as her coordinator, he chooses to feign ignorance. Is it because he is so overwhelmed with guilt about betraying her, even though she knows nothing of it? Or did the experience harden his soul to the point that he has become like the aliens, and is incapable of feeling guilt, or love, any longer? Wow! Although a bit contrived, it plays out nicely. You can watch it on Hulu here.

As a final note, the whole idea of technologically duplicating a person brings about the question of the soul and consciousness. If you believe, as I do, that our conscious awareness is not a physical entity, and not a consequence of physical processes, then you also must believe there is no physical way to duplicate it. If it were at all possible to teleport inanimate matter, I truly believe that any attempt to transport a human being would produce a lifeless body on the other side, with no hope of reviving it back to life. Any other outcome would require some sort of supernatural intervention.

The Last Starfighter

2010-09-07T00:49:00.000-07:00

I grew up knowing two brothers who were good friends of mine, and I still keep in touch with them today. The Walshe brothers, Ray and Alan, although 3 grades behind me, went to the same grade school, high school, church, and Alan came to UC Irvine where we roomed together during his last undergrad and my first graduate year. He is now a Norbertine priest and his brother is happily raising two daughters. They have always approached life with great passion. After my first year back from college, in the summer of '84, they told me about a film they had seen called The Last Starfighter and convinced me I had to see it with them again. I would not characterize either of them as science fiction fans, so I knew there must be something extra in this film that they knew I would like, and in fact they were right. Although the film borrowed elements from elsewhere, it is a truly original piece of work, and one that even made it into my collection.

Let's be clear, this film is meant to be fun. Although it borrows the Star Wars concept of an adventure in space thrust upon a lowly young kid who wasn't looking for it, the earth scenes have lots of well placed situational humor and the space scenes with plenty of exaggerated material meant to poke fun at the space adventure genre. Because it is portrayed through the eyes of a teenager in a hillside mobile home community hoping to break away and do something more important with his life, it really has a way of hitting home for the young male audience demographic. [spoiler warning] Just picture a guy who passes the time playing the only video game on the campus and one day hits the high score, only to find out that the game is a recruiting tool planted by one side of a cosmic war in space. His seemingly benign achievement gets him signed on with the good guys. The alien mentors he meets along the way are very colorful and very positive "you can do it" characters. That's just the thing an unsure-of-himself young man needs to help him turn into a courageous hero.

The film has one landmark achievement to its credit, which is that it is the first live action film to use modern CGI for the entire space battle sequences rather than models. A few years earlier, Tron had taken claim to the first all computer generated sequences. But since the objects in Tron existed in a symbolic world, they were not intended to look "real", so the techniques used were better referred to as computer animation. What is meant by modern CGI is the full rendering of objects by a computer into a scene that is meant to mimic real objects, which is what we are so used to seeing today. At the time, it was a very different kind of look, enough to leave an impression.

But it must be emphasized that the effects are just a sidebar. The real charm of the film is the way the story is told and the characters that are met along the way. Robert Preston does a wonderful job as Centauri, the cosmic salesman, in his last performance before he passed away. Is it science fiction? Well, it uses all the traditional elements of sci-fi, but never really takes them completely seriously. It's one of the few films in this genre that I can recommend to both fans and non fans and know they will probably have some fun with it.

Buckaroo Banzai

2010-09-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

To put it simply, you'll never see a sci-fi film quite like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai - Across the 8th Dimension. It is full of tongue-in-cheek and off-the-wall humor, yet pretends to be such a serious sci-fi action/drama that it manages to be something totally different than either, and quickly obtained a cult following. When I saw it shortly after release in college, I am embarrassed to say that I took it completely seriously and totally missed a lot of the hilarity that was pointed out to me since. I certainly hope I laughed along with John Lithgow's comical role as the mad scientist. But in general, there were only a few things that I actually remembered about the film afterward. The first was the creepy looking alien costumes, including one who was a rastafarian with dread locks. The second was one of the film's core concepts, which is that there could be other beings and worlds living in the empty space between conventional matter. Banzai gives a speech about how 99% of matter is empty space, which is quite true, and that he had found a way to use that fact to travel through matter. One of the opening scenes is a very cool experiment where Banzai drives a vehicle with a Blue Flame-like engine at high speed through a rock face and out the other side. Other than that, I didn't really give it much attention.

Later on I began to hear about its cult film status and realized that, yes, there is a lot of really off the wall stuff in the film that's both funny and cool. The cast is pretty top notch. Peter Weller is perfect as Banzai, who is at once a neurosurgeon, rock star, physicist, comic book hero, and all around cool guy. No such comic book existed in real life, but issues were shown in the film nonetheless! He travels with his band group called the Hong Kong Cavaliers. The most remembered aspect of the film is its many off the wall quotes and comments that get thown in at seemingly random places. They are easy to miss if you're not paying attention. And I heard at one point the film garnered late night repeated viewings, akin to the Rocky Horror Picture Show phenomenon, with fans who would shout responses to the characters from the audience. From this film came the famous "Remember, wherever you go, there you are", and more amazingly, it wasn't uttered by Jeff Goldblum! For a sampling of some popular quotes, see this link. You'll see a lot of crazy 80's influence in the costumes, etc. Just check out the casting call at the end of the film (shown below) for a sample. I'd recommend it for a popcorn night, but you never know who is actually going to find it funny.

Surrogate World

2010-09-01T02:34:00.000-07:00

When I feature movies on this blog, I tend to focus on classic sci-fi films that have proven staying power, or newer films that are just real good. But anytime a sci-fi offering comes out with an original or unique idea, it is worth noting just for the discussion value. In fact, it is the new idea that usually gets the Hollywood execs on board to finance it. That is why it is such a tragic waste when that new idea is introduced into the public eye via a badly made film. It means we won't be seeing a good treatment of the concept, the way it should have been done, for many years to come.

Such is the situation with the recent film Surrogates, with the always wonderful Bruce Willis filling in the lead role. The overarching concept is quite intriguing, especially in this day of internet cafe's and avatar role playing games. What if we could use a robot as an avatar to the real world? This requires several leaps of technology:

1) The robots must have enough dexterity to allow us to accomplish daily tasks.

Today's robots have enough dexterity in the area of hand controls to accomplish complex tasks as delicate as surgery. The weakness today is in overall mobility - walking, running, jumping, etc., but not impossible to achieve sometime in the future.

2) Our control over the robots must be fine grained enough to allow easy manipulation.

The easy way to do this is to create a harness that detects actual movement, similar to current virtual reality systems. If you turn your head, the robot turns with you. If you move your arms, the robot's arms mirror the movement. The harness would have to capture a wide variety of body movements, so an even better method is to use a motion capture system like is done for computer animation on the big screen. All you would do is wear a suit with infrared reflectors all over it and a camera system that captures the position of the reflectors in real time and translates that into the robot's body movements. Of course, you'd still need something fancy to allow you to walk in place. Anyway, this would allow people to still get their exercise since they would actually be moving.

The film poses a much more difficult method, which is to control the robot with the mind. The "driver" sits still with a type of helmet that detects and interprets brainwaves and translates that into control commands. This is why the people need to continually exercise to keep from atrophying. Personally, I think that such technology is a long way off and perhaps not even possible. I think the only feasible way would be to train the machine by having it record signals it reads with actual movements you perform. Then duplicate those movements in the avatar upon detection of the same signals. Many brain studies show that when you think about moving your arm, the part of the brain that lights up when you actually do move your arm shows activity. Could we get the level of control required just by thinking? Maybe with practice, but then would your brain get confused about what it is controlling - your real body or your surrogate body?

3) We must be able to continuously control the robots from a remote location.

If you think dropped calls on your cell phone is annoying, how about losing control of your surrogate body due to bad coverage? It's probably not a huge leap to imagine something akin to a cellular grid that beams signals to nearby avatar robots, and has enough redundancy to be at least as reliable as the internet.

4) The robots must look and behave close enough to actual real human beings.

This requirement is really to enable one of the premises of the film, which is that a majority of the world's population choose to live vicariously through their surrogate robot rather than on their own. It's one thing to see a robot walking about once in a while, but if most of the people I interact with are behind their surrogates, then they had better well look human enough that I don't feel like I'm on another planet. This holds true even when I myself am using my surrogate. Of course, that does not mean you can't design your surrogate to be quite a bit stronger and more durable than a normal human, and that is illustrated in the film as well.

In addition to these technological advances, we would also need a social change that has everyone in a particular geographic area agree to interact via surrogate. The reason is that since a surrogate cannot feel pain, or even send pain signals back to its host (who would want that?), then a person using a surrogate could in fact use it as a weapon and hurt real people. Even with law enforcement available, I don't think most people would feel safe around surrogates unless they were safe behind their own mask. So in the film this is correctly handled by having no-surrogate zones so that people who don't want to use surrogates can live in peace.

But there are a number of things that you could not do with a surrogate. People still need to eat, and they will want to eat with friends. Since the robots do not need food, indeed cannot eat it, people will still want to meet in no-surrogate zones for dinner, parties, etc. In the film, I think it is assumed that people just don't go out for those things anymore, which seems unlikely. Using a surrogate, you would most likely lose your sense of smell, temperature, and pressure. What about sex? In the opening scene, it shows these dance club-like places where people meet and have sex with random strangers via their surrogates, but there is a serious problem with that. If the surrogate cannot send pain signals back to its host, then that implies it does not send pleasure signals back either. Even if such feedback was possible, how could you separate your partner's influence from that of the machine's interpretation of it? Ultimately, what is happening is two people are imagining having sex with the help of an intermediary technology, and that is pretty much equivalent to what is sometimes referred to today as cybersex. Would it happen? Sure, but it could not replace the real thing. People might use surrogates as a safe method of getting to know a new dating partner, but eventually they will want to interact in real life. The film doesn't really explore this except to show that married couples, since they live in the same house, can still take off their masks with each other.

One phenomenon of today's internet is that of people using the medium to represent themselves as something they are not. My favorite example of that is Second Life, an on-line virtual world where you can be someone else. That idea is touched upon in the film, at least on the surface. We naturally offer different levels of trust to people based on how they look, act, and respond. How would this dynamic change if we could not be sure of the true nature of the person that we are talking to without digging a lot deeper than usual? And why do people wish to change themselves? Such motivations are explored a bit in Surrogates. Some people do it to deceive, others may be ashamed of who they are in real life and want to portray a more ideal version of themselves. And as illustrated in the film, people might easily become dependent on their surrogate because, without any feedback from the world about the real you, your sense of confidence without the veil would naturally diminish over time. I suppose there are dozens more of these interesting questions that could be posed about how such a society would look.

There is a quick synopsis at the beginning of the film trying to explain the societal and technological changes that led to this surrogate world, but it is largely unconvincing. Then we are introduced to the main plot line involving a murder case, with Willis playing the FBI agent who investigates. The ultimate solution to the murder mystery is an over-the-top scenario of the original inventor going mad with jealousy and guilt and attempting to kill almost the entire world population. Does that sound like a campy two-dimensional comic book plot? Well, maybe that's because it is. The original story was adapted from a comic series, but unlike most such adaptations, they forgot to flesh it out so it could work as a film. I think the biggest problem here was just really bad script writing.

But it is still a fun movie to watch. Seeing things like surrogates in beauty shops getting literal makeovers by having their faces pulled off, people using generic "loaner" heads while their actual surrogate head is in for repairs, or seeing someone get their legs blown off and still be able to crawl away without even flinching. How about seeing someone lie down on their machine as one of the surrogates on the wall comes to life when they transfer over to it. Then they walk over and take a look at themselves on the machine. How's that for an out-of-body experience? This is the kind of eye candy that makes Surrogates good for at least a sci-fi rental escape.

Alien - Science Fiction meets Horror

2010-08-27T23:33:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between a monster film and horror film? For both, the aim is to scare the audience, and yet in different ways. I submit to you that a monster film's primary emotional tool is terror, the fear of that which you can see looming right before your eyes. Monster films are filled with young women screaming as they behold some horrifying creature, or crowds running through the streets. But a horror film's primary tool is what I will call dread, the fear of that which might happen to you. Heck, you don't even need a monster for that, just someone or something capable of hurting or killing you. That could be a robot, a serial killer, or a virus. The horrifying state of each unfortunate victim is usually displayed for the purpose of increasing your sense of dread the next time around.

There are hundreds of monster movies that try to stake a claim to the science fiction genre. Most of them don't really make it. If the only science pertains the origin of the monster (e.g. Frankenstein (1931)), then it is just a sidebar, a necessary artifact of the situation. But there are relatively few horror films that care to cross over into science fiction.

Vampires, for instance, are good candidates for dread because they can sneak up on you, and you fear the prospect of being bitten. But the vampire's origin is squarely a supernatural one. Because of this, the few films that attempt to marry sci-fi with horror are particularly interesting, at least to me. The best early example that comes to mind is The Fly (1958), which involves a scientific experiment that goes wrong. The resulting "monster" is really just a man fighting against the effects of his own experiment. But it's only real connection to horror are the horrifying images it presents. That is far cry from the kind of suspenseful dread that is generated in most horror films. There were a few original Outer Limits episodes that you might classify as sci-fi horror, like Wolf 359 and The Zanti Misfits. And that old sci-fi classic, Quatermass and the Pit, certainly had elements of horror in it. But these are really sci-fi stories with creepy images and some peril added in. To this day, I can't think of any film that has ever come closer to melding the worlds of science fiction and horror more perfectly than Ridley Scott's Alien. It's the only film I know that has one foot planted firmly in each camp, making it impossible to peg it one way or the other. That's just one of the reasons Alien remains a classic of both genre's.

Alien came out a few weeks before my 8th grade graduation. I had always made it a point to avoid horror films because I have quite an imagination and have never liked giving it material I don't want to keep around. It wasn't very hard to avoid such films either because there was no PG-13 rating at that time, so pretty much all horror material was rated R, and I was just 13. But my best friend's family, a more liberal minded bunch, thought it was a good film and offered to take us to see it. After getting fully hooked on Star Wars a few years back, I figured I might actually like it due to its being set in space. So I apprehensively went along to my first R-rated horror film. Well, I was on the edge of my seat for most of the film and, believe it or not, actually enjoyed every minute of it. This was not your typical horror flick trash, designed merely to make you jump or gross you out. Ridley Scott turned out to be a master of suspense, while putting it into the context of a truly interesting story.

In Alien we have a monster with just as much potential for dread, and just as much class, as any vampire. It is a stalking monster that waits in the shadows and strikes when you don't expect it to. That is a tried and true horror film motif used by everything from snakes to serial killers. End of story, right? Wrong. This is also a new species, an animal worthy of scientific study.

Every aspect of it's existence, from egg to parasitic first stage, to juvenile, to adult, from it's blood chemistry to it's killing mechanisms, are all revealed slowly and purposefully like a scientific study. What is ingenious about this scientific approach to the creature is that, where normally such understanding mitigates the audience's fear of the monster, in this case it is designed to increase it. Each new revelation makes the creature more dangerous and menacing, and never once does the crew gain the upper hand from the knowledge of it. Even the architecture of the space ship the creature is found in, which was inspired by the strange artwork of H.R. Giger, was intriguing enough, being perhaps the first successful exposition of an alien technology that was organic rather than just an advanced version of our own. That served to emphasize the animal nature of the alien rather than its intelligence. Add to that the usual sci-fi peripherals like it all taking place in the future and in deep space, and you have bona-fide science fiction film as well.

Another quite ingenious director's choice was the depiction of daily life on the space ship. This was not the pristine military operation you might find on a Star Wars battle cruiser. No, this ship was just an unimportant mining frigate (or so we are made to think for at least the first half of the film). The few advanced technologies that we find in the protagonists' camp are downplayed, and the more human aspects of daily life like eating, drinking, and sweating, are displayed without apology, much like you'd see on a reality TV show. In the first scene the crew wakes up from cryogenics looking totally wasted and go grab some grub and a smoke. They are shown bickering and arguing about various issues of ship management. This has the effect of making the characters much more relatable, despite the "alien" setting, and that's exactly the type of comfort you want the audience to slip into before all hell breaks loose. My hat goes off to director Scott for this one.

I can only think of two flaws that crossed my mind even at the time. The first was how the alien could grow from the size of a cat to a huge monster in a matter of days, and that without any apparent food source. The second was the cheap shock value of making the audience believe Ripley has escaped and the film is over, only to find the alien on board again. However, I can forgive the director for that one only because he planted the alien's head in full view of the camera without me noticing it was there until it moved. It's as if he was saying - "Don't blame me, you could have seen it coming!".

The success of the film spawned (=b) a bunch of sequels, which all ranged from just ok to horribly awful. I give some credit to the immediate sequel by James Cameron, entitled simply Aliens in plural. It was made 7 years later and had more of a Starship Troopers approach, with the military coming in to blow away the colony of creatures that have wiped out the humans. It is well directed, has good continuity with the first film, a few original ideas, and sadly, a lot of ideas borrowed quite clumsily from Scott's film, including the campy "double-ending" device. Of course, Cameron tailored the ending to his liking, making it look suspiciously similar to the ending of his recent film Avatar. The type of craftsmanship introduced by his predecessor is now absent, replaced by something more akin to that which brought Cameron success in The Terminator. As for the rest of the sequels, Sigourney Weaver was a saint to have stuck around for them all.

Trek Movies - Of Gods and Whales

2010-08-22T01:34:00.000-07:00

The fourth Star Trek film, The Voyage Home, was written as a continuation of the previous story arc in which the Enterprise crew had stolen the ship against Starfleet's orders and then sent it crashing to a fiery death. They are now on their way back to Earth in a Klingon warship to face the consequences. Lucy, you got some splainin' to do! Naturally, in order to redeem themselves, they would have to save the Earth from some horrendous disaster, and that becomes the focus of the film. The producers decided to take a more light hearted approach to the script, which was quite a departure from the more serious offerings of the previous trilogy, a daring proposal indeed.

After seeing the film, I remember feeling quite disappointed as I left the theater. It wasn't just because of the sometimes silly situational humor that pervaded the film, even at the expense of continuity. If this time around the goal was to let up on the heavy for a while, as long as it didn't become the focus it was tolerable. I could even forgive them for creating a story designed to preach a message about the need to preserve endangered species, with Humpback whales as their obvious proxy. Sure, it was kind of cheesy and not nearly as inventive as the prior scripts, but at least it was somewhat in line with what was often seen during the television series. No, what tipped me over the edge was the amount of incredulous nonsense that was presented as science fiction. Can we really imagine that the whales were visited by an ancient alien race and could intelligently communicate with them? If the probe they sent out can hear the whale song from space, as at the end of the film, then why did it need to evaporate the oceans in search of them? Let's move on from the whales and mention the highly problematic idea, actually taken from an earlier TOS episode, that you can travel back in time using some combination of warp drive and gravity. I'm sorry, but both of those phenomenon would take you into the future, not the past. Believing in the Klingon's cloaking device was tough enough in empty space, but how about it making the entire vessel invisible on the ground at close range? Absolutely no thought was given to credibility except that which was borrowed. Probably the most shameless ploy of all was the tongue-in-cheek way the script poked fun at all the cast members. That was like selling out the fan base for the sake of wider popularity. As a fan myself, I think perhaps my expectations had gotten too high to have avoided such a reaction. I was not alone. Many Star Trek fans didn't receive the film well, but it gained huge traction with general audiences, and perhaps that was the plan all along.

Leonard Nimoy was asked to direct again, but given more freedom regarding the content. I don't know if it was primarily Nimoy or Harve Bennett, but what was with all the favorite liberal references? Greenpeace style rescues of the whales from the evil whaling vessels, the liberated female who finally tells Kirk she doesn't need him around, choosing to land the ship in San Francisco, Spock's hippie outfit and reference to LSD, and even a side bar involving nuclear energy. The pattern was too obvious to ignore. Perhaps it was some sort of tribute to the fact that the original series came out in the 60's, or maybe just an attempt to showcase the writer's favorite politically correct causes. In short, the fourth film tried to make Star Trek into something other than it had been up to that point, and so it has to stand apart from the other films, despite the peripheral story line connection.

Two more movies would later be produced following the launch of The Next Generation. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, proved to be even worse than the fourth. This time, it was William Shatner that was given the role of director and was able to influence the script as well. The jokes are corny and bad, the script is filled with silly psychoanalysis, and the entire premise of the story is more theological than science fiction, in a way that satisfies neither. On the whole, it is, in my opinion, an embarrassment to the franchise.

I almost want to believe that Nick Meyer, who directed Khan and helped salvage the script of The Voyage Home, went on to direct Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, as a means of redemption. The sixth film was more like a traditional action sci-fi story and although not anywhere near the caliber of the earlier films, at least held up to the original series. The only thing that made me cringe was the stupid Shakespearean quotations uttered at inopportune times by the Klingon commander. Hey, that worked with Khan because he really believed what he was quoting, and he was a fellow human as well. The sixth film was also designed to fill in some history created by TNG, which is that Starfleet eventually makes peace with the Klingons. This film did a decent job of recording that part of the new lore and explaining how the new Enterprise could have a Klingon head of security (Wharf). It was at least a nice way of handing the baton from the old series to the new one, better than the few attempts at doing this in the subsequent Star Trek TNG films.

Trek Movies - Spock Returns

2010-08-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

From a writer's perspective, the third Star Trek film, The Search for Spock, really only had one objective - to bring Leonard Nimoy back into the franchise. For the backstory, they chose to go with the same formula as for Khan - a fight over obtaining the Genesis device, but this time between Kirk and a Klingon captain. You would think from that description that the film was destined to be a dud, but several factors saved it and allowed it to hold up as a worthy sequel almost as good as its predecessor. First, there was continuity. The script flowed naturally from the prior film, with a returning cast save for Lt. Saavik, now played by Robin Curtis. At first that was disappointing because Kirsty Alley played such a great Saavik in Khan, but I soon realized that Curtis did a better job of portraying her as an emotionless Vulcan as would be expected. And James Horner also returned to do the score.

Lieutenant Saavik

Secondly, Christopher Lloyd did a superb job as the villain Klingon Kruge. This was quite shocking to me. I've always loved Lloyd for his awesome comedic talent. I would not have expected him to do so well in such a completely different type of role, but he took it completely seriously. I did not even know it was him until the end credits. Finally, there were some big events that occurred to lend dramatic effect, like the crew turning against Starfleet, the death of Kirk's son, and the destruction of the Enterprise!

A character as central to Star Trek as Nimoy's could not be killed off easily. Likewise, it would not have worked to simply bring him back with the wave of some conjured up sci-fi excuse. Thanks to some foreknowledge, a few key scenes were added to Khan to allow a narrative to be built up for Spock's return that had some credibility (if not scientifically, at least within the arc of the story line). I think it was wise to bring him back slowly, with the culmination at the end of the film back on Spock's home world (it also probably helped to have Nimoy off screen for most of the film since he was directing). The final scene where Spock recognizes Kirk and begins to remember is especially heartwarming. They speak all the great lines that they did during the dramatic death scene, but in reverse order, and you realize that Kirk is taking him back from the edge of death to his old self again (see bottom). Also, the humor provided by McCoy having to deal with his annoying friend inside his own head is just classic. It was a good script, on par with the previous one.

I actually saw this film in a special screening in one of my college lecture halls at UCI. I remember as the credits rolled up and I sat pondering and listening, I realized how great the score was that I was hearing. The next morning I went over to the student book store and bought it. To this day, James Horner's score for The Search for Spock is probably my all time favorite classical soundtrack. Because he had more time (the Khan score had been written in 4 weeks), and he was basically embellishing upon music he had already written, he created an absolutely beautiful soundtrack. Just sit back and listen to the main title track.

I leave you with the transcript of Spock's death in Khan followed by the the end of Search. Remember that most of the quotes were set up earlier in the second Trek film and therefore are much more powerful when heard in context...

End of ST II:
Spock: Ship out of danger? Do not grieve, Admiral - it is logical: the needs of the many outweigh [Kirk: the needs of the few]....or the one. I never took the Kobayashi Maru test - until now. What do you think of my solution? I have been, and always will be, your friend. Live long, and propser.

End of ST III:
Spock: My father says you have been my friend. You came back for me. Why would you do this?
Kirk: Because the needs of the one... outweigh the needs of the many.
Spock: (as if remembering) I have been... and ever shall be... your friend.
Kirk: Yes.... Yes Spock...
Spock: The ship... Out of danger?
Kirk: You saved the ship Spock! You saved us all. Don't you remember?!

That last word - "remember" - was the word that Spock used to transfer his Katra to Bones and started the whole episode, and it provides the perfect end to the exchange.

Trek Movies - The Wrath of Khan

2010-08-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

The second Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan, like the first, was based on one of the original episodes (Space Seed), but instead of being a re-write, this was an actual sequel to the show about Khan's mad quest to take revenge on Kirk for stranding him and his followers on Ceti Alpha V. This provided a sense of continuity to the story right from the start, and Ricardo Montalban himself returned to play the lead villain. In short, the film was brilliant. I was completely drawn into the story both mentally and emotionally. First, Montalban's performance as Khan was wonderfully executed and was a perfect match against Shatner's character.

Secondly, you had an extremely well written script. This time they decided to notch up the adrenaline and make it into a Western style shoot out in space. There was a recurring theme involving a test called the Kobiyashi Maru, providing a literary device that carried real meaning both in the story and later in Trek lore. Kirk discovers he has a son who is now a young man, and whose mother invented a terraforming device that is now at risk of becoming a doomsday device. All these elements are woven skillfully into the main conflict between Kirk and Khan without distracting from it. Thirdly, the special effects had improved enough so that more detail of the space battles could be shown than ever before. It's with good reason that Wrath of Khan is often listed as one of the best science fiction films by fans, or at least the best of the Trek film series.

==================== Spoiler =========================

======== (for that Siberian tribe that doesn't know yet) ==========

Finally, I had heard going in that Leonard Nimoy wanted to leave the Star Trek franchise and would be killed off in this film. I had not yet heard that the studio had woo'ed him back by offering him the director's chair on the next film in the series. I watched Spock die with tears in my eyes. Not only did they give him one of the most heroic and touching death scenes anyone could have asked for, but believing Nimoy was leaving the franchise provided double the poignancy. The movie would have stood on its own without Spock having to die, but I think that was one of the factors that helped raise the film to classic status. Well, as soon as I left the theater, I somehow found out that same day that Spock was coming back in the next film. It couldn't have been more perfect timing - my grief only lasted just long enough to enhance the film experience. It never saw the light of day. That's just one of those crazy things someone like me would remember.

Khan
1967 to 1982

Once again, I fell in love with the soundtrack, this time written by James Horner. I've just learned that at 28 years of age, it was his first major film score. It's one of my favorite classical soundtracks, and ever since then, when I'm in the theater, I can often recognize Horner's style before I see the ending credits. The style is more subtle than the sweeping melodies of John Williams, and lends a more serious tone to the subject matter. He would come back to incorporate the same themes into the third film.

The Star Trek Movies

2010-08-14T01:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, there was a time, a very long time between 1966 and 1987, when Star Trek was synonymous with Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty. That time span overlapped my entire childhood up to and beyond high school graduation. Although I really liked watching The Original Series with my Dad, there was no such thing as a Star Trek movie until 1979 with the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. This came a few years after the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters, which managed to convince Hollywood that science fiction films could actually sell (again). At the time, it was a big deal, because after 10 years of silence, all the original cast members were going to reappear on the big screen, and Gene Roddenberry was coming with them! This state of affairs would continue for at least 4 feature films until Gene passed away, and then the cast would continue on for two more. The original series had established a working formula of characters and their relationships on a backdrop of great script material. Now with a larger budget, better direction, a more mature cast, and more time on screen to add depth to the script, those characters were brought to life in a way that could be more readily believed and accepted by audiences. This period of the Star Trek movie releases, particularly the first three (and partially the fourth), remains in my opinion the glory days of the franchise. What follows in the next several posts is my own impressions and experience of that period.

The first Star Trek film was a bit of a think piece. It was in fact inspired by one of the earlier episodes called The Changeling, about a robot probe named Nomad originally programmed for a science mission to investigate new life forms. It was abandoned to drift through space and got mixed up with another alien probe designed to sterilize soil samples on other planets. The more advanced probe beefed up the other's capabilities and the two missions melded. Nomad now thinks its purpose is to sterilize planets of imperfect life forms, including humans. Many elements, such as Spock's mind meld with the probe and Kirk's logical argumentation with it are included in the film, although now integrated into a much deeper and more complex story. It was definitely my kind of film, but not as easily consumed by general audiences.

I remember first seeing it with a good friend of mine named George Dimen who is a bit of an amateur philosopher and still my friend to this day. He loved it too and we spent a good deal of time discussing the philosophical implications that it raised. I think I remember us identifying about four different layers of meaning, each at a different level of abstraction, written into various lines that were spoken in the movie. Today I think we might have been reading more into it than was there. Somehow I managed to see the film four times (this was before VHS tapes), not because of any loyalty to Star Trek, but to go back and try to capture all those layers we had talked about.

I also bought the soundtrack and found that I really liked some of the pieces, which were written by Jerry Goldsmith, who also did Logan's Run and Alien. He chose to leave behind the famous opening from the TV series and write his own new theme piece, which later became the theme for the new series, The Next Generation, and is now what most people associate it with. One of my favorite pieces was the second track which accompanied the Klingon attack at the beginning of the movie. At the time I was experimenting with piano so I learned to play a simple rendition of it (amazing how much time you have when you're a teenager). I used to listen to it and imagine watching the entire attack sequence in full detail. It's such a good piece I once heard it playing on a classical radio station. This Youtube link has the complete orchestration from the soundtrack, and below is the movie clip including the opening titles - although the dialog track is missing.

Defying Gravity

2010-08-09T23:41:00.000-07:00

Traditional rocket enthusiasts can tell you what everyone already knows, which is that overcoming gravity requires a propulsive force in the opposite direction of the gravity field you wish to overcome. Hovering in mid air for an extended period of time can be accomplished by either 1) blasting matter in the downward direction or, 2) pushing against the air as with wings or helicopter like blades. If there happens to be a vertical electro-magnetic field available, there are ways to push against it as well. However, science fiction is filled with spacecraft that seem to hover without using any of these methods. The most ubiquitous examples are the flying saucers that appear in so many of the older and sometimes lesser quality sci-fi films. But it appears just as frequently in more recent films, like the huge mother ship hovering over South Africa in District 9, or the land speeders in Star Wars. In Close Encounters, we see a ship behind Roy Neary's truck hover and then move slowly overhead, and a huge alien mother ship hovering over Devil's Tower. No explanations are given as to how these feats are being accomplished. It's not just ships either, for we often see entire cities suspended in mid air like Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back, or the city in the the Star Trek episode entitled The Cloud Minders. It often makes me cringe when these things first appear on screen.

Now, I know that when it comes to the future or even alien worlds, writers have some freedom to present some pretty wild technological breakthroughs. But no one in this universe, whether from the future or some alien planet, can escape the laws of Physics, and gravity is one of the most foundational of them all. If you thought simulating gravity was tough, defying it turns out to be an even greater challenge. This entry is dedicated to the impossible ubiquity of anti-gravity devices.

The fact of the matter is simple, gravity cannot be turned off, shielded, or otherwise directly counteracted. For any physics buffs out there, Einstein did describe a theoretical anti-gravity device consisting of a ring of neutrons traveling close to the speed of light. The frame-dragging effect would render the center of the ring gravity-less. Of course, it would be impossible to build and would not even be self-levitating, so it's just a detail. By contrast, electro-magnetic fields can be generated, turned on and off, and shielded with various materials. I think it is the analogy to EM fields that cause many people to accept the possibility of finding ways to do these things to gravity fields, but it just ain't so.

The recent film Avatar featured a range of spectacular floating mountains, claiming that this was possible due to the planet's unusual magnetic field. Well, planetary magnetic fields fan outward at the poles. Any balancing act between gravity and magnetism would be highly unstable, especially while still in the planet's atmosphere. And since the field must weaken as you move farther from the planet, those huge rocks would be lined up in order of size, biggest on the bottom to the smallest up high. So much for the floating stairways. Hey, at least it looked real pretty!

Jurassic Park

2010-07-31T00:53:00.000-07:00

My father had a lot of Time-Life series natural history books with plenty of dinosaur renderings in them, so I kind of developed an early fascination for the prehistoric world. But this was not a hot topic when I was a kid. Sometime between kindergarten and first grade, the schools gave us these catalogs of books for children, mostly educational, to encourage us to practice reading and learn something at the same time. There was one book that was all about Dinosaurs, and it quickly became my favorite, one that I read over and over. The illustrations were authentic dinosaur scenes and the text contained then current scientific facts, presented in simple language but not "dumbed down" like many kid's books. When the teacher discovered how well I could read this one book even though it was well past my grade level, she ordered several copies, took a recording of me reading it, and then played it back on a headphone system for other students to follow along. In second grade, now at a new school, there was a learning center run by one of the nuns that had these circular discs with pictures on them. You inserted a disc into a machine and it would ask you to write down the word that matched each picture. Then you would turn it in for a score. Each disc revolved around a particular topic. The discs for the second grade level had relatively simple words, but I found one for the 7th and 8th graders that had pictures of dinosaurs. I would write down their names - Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, etc. I knew them from my little book. I still remember Sister Dorothy dropping her jaw when I got them all right.

Ok, so enough about my childhood. The point is that as much as I loved everything prehistoric, there was always so little material to digest at that age. In the early 1970's, that one little book was the only children's book I ever found that treated the subject seriously. The only one! There wasn't anything on TV about dinosaurs except silly comedies like the Flintstones. That's why I went crazy over Land of the Lost when it came to TV a few years later. I would also jump out of my seat whenever we passed that grand canyon prehistoric exhibit on the train ride at Disneyland. It features, among other great stuff, an animatronic battle between a T-Rex and a Stegosaurus with full sound effects. It's still there after all these decades and several makeovers. Here's a good video of the scene. I think the original audio was better, if I could only find it.

By the time I was old enough to be interested in movies, post 1976, I don't remember any films about dinosaurs in release at the time. It seems there were plenty in earlier decades - One Million Years B.C., When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, and even some great scenes in the original King Kong. A big deal was made about The Land Before Time in 1988, but that was just a stupid kid's film with talking dinosaurs in it. Then, one day I saw an ad for a book published by Michael Crichton in 1990 called Jurassic Park about using DNA sequencing to bring dinosaurs back to life to create an amusement park. That sounded cool, but the amusement park idea seemed a bit corny, so I just filed it away somewhere in my memory.

Then in 1993, it happened. When I saw the trailer for Jurassic Park I could hardly believe what I was watching. It wasn't just that somebody had finally made a serious modern dinosaur flick, but the dang CGI dinosaurs looked more real than I could have ever imagined. I kept thinking, "How on earth did they create those images? - I gotta see this film!" It was the first time I had reacted to a movie trailer like that since first seeing the original trailer for Star Wars, which also featured effects never before seen on film.

When I did eventually see it, I was not disappointed with regard to the visual effects. They are still quite stunning when viewed today. But I did feel disappointed that the story focused mainly on people getting chased by the dinosaurs rather than exploring some of the more interesting aspects of the story. Crichton's book does a better job of that, addressing many modern theories about dinosaurs, but much of it was left out of the film. For example, the puzzle about why the Triceratops was sick (in the book it is a Stegosaurus) turns out to be that it has a gizzard-like stomach that requires it to consume small pebbles for digestion, and the pebbles are found in the midst of some poisonous plants. The movie presents the problem but not the solution, using it simply as an excuse to split up the tour group. The whole film was rather "dumbed down" to make it more audience friendly. By contrast, it is Crichton's tendency to include a lot of science in his fiction that allows me to legitimately feature a dino film like this on a sci-fi oriented blog.

I made it point to read the sequel to the novel, The Lost World, as soon as it came out. I could tell that Mr. Crichton was a bit annoyed at how Hollywood had butchered his first novel, even though he had been involved in the screenplay. You see, for dramatic effect, in Jurassic Park they manufactured a factoid about the T-Rex, which was that it could not see you if you stood perfectly still. This was not in the book nor was it a conclusion of any current research. So in the Lost World novel, Crichton had one character get eaten because he erroneously thought the T-Rex would not see him if he didn't move. That kind of cracked me up.

The movie version of The Lost World was quite a disappointment and departed even more drastically from Crichton's second book. In fact, he was not involved at all in the production this time. It seems they thought that if they just put more dinosaurs on screen it would make it more successful or something. And they added a King Kong copycat sequence at the end where a T-Rex is captured, taken to a big city, and then escapes on a rampage. What a classic example of sacrificing the story line for some completely superfluous carnage. The third installment was written directly for the big screen and is at least worth watching, even if the dino chase motif has been taken to the most crazy extremes.

If I had to make a recommendation, I would point you straight to the two more interesting novels on which the movies were based. But I do appreciate that it was the success of the first film that, almost overnight, thrust dinosaurs back into the public eye. After Jurassic Park, it seemed like CGI dinosaurs were popping up all over the place, including material for children again. The Discovery Channel's landmark series Walking With Dinosaurs in late 1999 probably finalized the transition and brought dinos squarely into the new millennium.

Buck Rogers, Pulp Fiction, and the Serials

2010-07-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

Oh, how one thing leads to another. As I was researching for my last entry about Flash Gordon, I began to learn about some of the early history of sci-fi pulp fiction. I found it so fascinating that I just have to include a synopsis here. The first half of the 20th century saw a rise in popularity of short story fiction magazines referred to as pulp magazines due to the type of paper they were printed on. The first of these to be dedicated completely to science fiction, Amazing Stories, was launched in 1926, followed in 1930 by Astounding Science Fiction, which by paying the highest rates for its articles attracted the best writers like Heinlein and Asimov and helped launch their careers. In fact, it was these mags that were responsible for naming the genre science fiction, and were instrumental in bringing together a community of writers and fans.

This was also the time that science fiction comic strips appeared, the first being Buck Rogers in the 25th Century circa 1929. This was the first time a serial comic strip had been attempted, that is, a long continuous story from which a small episode was featured each week. The story was taken from the first two Buck Rogers articles which had been recently printed in Amazing Stories - "Armageddon 2419 A.D." in 1928, and "The Airlords of Han" in 1929 (The cover at left is a 1960 reprint). It turns out that the original Flash Gordon comic strip came out in 1934 to compete with Buck Rogers. So Buck gets the credit as the original science fiction serial.

And when serial programming came to radio, guess what science fiction serial first hit the airwaves? Buck Rogers of course - and it ran for 15 years, from 1932 to 1947! How about the first science fiction serial to hit the theaters? Gotcha - Flash Gordon became a film serial in 1936 thanks to Columbia Pictures, and Buck followed in 1939 out of Universal. Each had 12 episodes and the stories remained in their basic form from comic strip to radio to film. These were not stories that raised deep questions about man and society as the real meat of the genre would come to be known for, but we owe them much credit for accomplishing the impossible, namely, bringing science fiction to the pop culture and inspiring a generation of writers, film makers, and even astronauts to follow suit. And the era of science fiction that followed, often referred to as the Golden Age, was in part driven by this early popularization.

Almost in parallel historically, the modern remake of Flash Gordon in 1980 was preceded a year earlier by a modern remake of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I believe they were both motivated by the success of Star Wars, and that is deliciously ironic since George Lucas modeled his space opera upon the original space serials from his childhood. The basic characters and elements of the original are still relatively intact, and the film became a pilot for a TV series (i.e. modern serial) of the same name. The main difference from the original is a much more light-hearted approach to the subject matter, which actually had the effect of making it more entertaining. Gil Gerard plays Rogers very much like a cheesy version of Han Solo - a smug ladies man, hot shot pilot, and serious hero all in one. They added in a robot duo as comic relief, again thanks to Star Wars, one being a scientist in a box named Dr. Theopholis, carried around by a humanoid robot named Twiki, voiced by none other than Mel Blanc of Looney Tunes fame. Hey, if you thought Yoda sounding like Grover of Sesame Street was odd, try a robot that sounds like a character out of Bugs Bunny. Of course, we're not talking high quality acting or script writing here, but it's less corny than Lost in Space. I mention it here mainly to show the longevity of these historical characters.

I also admit to some reminiscing back to a simpler time in my life. The actresses who played the two main female characters from the original serial, the good Col. Wilma Deering (Erin Gray), and the bad Princess Ardala (Pamela Hensley), who is cast here as the leader of the Draconians instead of Kane, were both stunningly beautiful, and the show takes every opportunity to capitalize on this in ways you could only get away with in the 80's before AIDS hit the scene. As a young 13 year old lad, I really enjoyed it ;). And I still think it is more entertaining than most series you might find on SyFy channel today.

Flash... Aaahhh!

2010-07-25T01:34:00.000-07:00

Here I must tell you about one of my more indulgent film favorites. The Flash Gordon film from 1980 which I saw as a freshman in high school was billed as an adaptation of the original Flash Gordon comic strip, and I believe it stays truer to the comic book version than did the 1936 black and white movie serial. It remains in my book, and in my collection, a beloved cult classic.

Although some call it campy, you can tell that the film makers are fully aware of what they are doing. It is not a parody. Oh no. You might call it an all out celebration of the original comic strip. Everything is overdone - the acting, the colorful sets and costumes, the dialogue - but only within the acceptable parameters allowed in the world of comics. Even the silly jokes are just there for the darn fun of it. And if you had any doubts about my thesis, the final word is the soundtrack, which was written by 80's rock group Queen with the same serious gusto for the subject matter. The blog title is how the theme song begins - "Flash (aahhh!) Savior of the Universe!" - in full operatic chorus. It's just a fun film from start to finish.

I don't usually address comic book adaptations on this blog so why this one? Well, no one will deny the contribution that the original Flash Gordon serial from 1936 made to science fiction film history. Today all the crazy alien races from other planets featured in the series (Hawkmen, Sharkmen, etc.) would just be considered fantasy material, but at the time it was no crazier than many of the aliens encountered in sci-fi films today. I believe anyone who loves the genre as much as I do would fully appreciate and enjoy the tribute that this 1980 film pays to it, no matter how cheesy.

I've always liked Max Von Sydow. His role as Emperor Ming in this film is perfectly cast and played with such gusto. The same goes for the performance of none other than Topol (Fiddler on the Roof) in the role of Dr. Zarkov. I've always thought the opening scenes were reminiscent of H.G. Wells First Men in the Moon - with the hero, the damsel, and the scientist they meet taking off into space from his home laboratory. There's a whole group of really fun characters. But I think you just have sit down and watch it to really get what I'm talking about. If you do, please share your thoughts.

GATTACA

2010-07-24T02:10:00.000-07:00

In 1932, a book was publish by Aldous Huxley called Brave New World. It was required reading for me in high school and one that I actually found enjoyable. It was one of the first early sci-fi works to touch upon the idea of a genetically engineered society. Of course, the science of genes were not understood at the time so Huxley had people born in test tubes and modified by the addition of chemicals to cause them to develop in predetermined ways. Even this was quite prescient for its time, but the society he created was purposefully exaggerated in order to make a point about man's over-reliance on science. As the genetic sciences advanced, it opened up all sorts of very plausible future societal changes that could be explored in the literature. New ideas continue to pop up even today. Some films deal with particular abuses or experiments by corporations like The Island, Jurassic Park, and The 6th Day. But I've never seen a film that deals with the effect of genetic technology on society in general better than Gattaca (1997), a film that never got the attention it deserved and whose very title was constructed from the genetic alphabet.

It's kind of sad today to see so many sci-fi films use some kind of pseudo-scientific concept of DNA to explain away all manner of ridiculous physical transformations and manifestations. Two big offenders that come to mind from TV land are Star Trek: TNG and the modern version of The Outer Limits. But Gattaca is one of those few films that uses truly plausible technological advances to illustrate how those advances might change our society. Specifically, if we could instantly read a persons genetic code, from zygote to full grown adult, and from that obtain a wealth of information about them, from future diseases to physical traits and abilities, what would we do with that information? Would it affect the way businesses hire employees? How about university admissions, military recruiting, and dating choices? Naturally there would be privacy and discrimination issues involved, but in Gattaca we see a society that has fully accepted this information as no less public than a driver's license. And discrimination laws are not very enforceable.

In one of the early scenes, we see a couple consulting with a doctor about having a child. The technology exists that allows the doctor to collect both eggs and sperm samples from mother and father and then create via test tube a small set of zygotes free from genetic diseases and possessing the most desirable traits. He presents the possible child profiles to the couple and allows them to choose their future child's gender and other traits. Once selected, the chosen embryo would be implanted into the mother's uterus so she could carry the child to term. The scene was memorable to me precisely because of its haunting future plausibility. I love this quote from the doctor after the parents voice concerns about over prescribing their new child's future - "Keep in mind that this child is still you, but simply the 'best' of you. You could conceive naturally a thousand times and never get such a result". Who wouldn't go for that?

In the film, this form of conception has become the preferred method, although some people are still conceived the "old-fashioned" way, like our main character Vincent (played by Ethan Hawke), who at birth is determined to have a 99% chance of heart failure by the age of 30. Vincent wants more than anything to be an astronaut, which in this future is a legitimate profession as mission launches to other planets and moons in our solar system happen regularly. But his condition, which can be detected in any blood, urine, hair, or other sample, makes him ineligible. He decides to take on the genetic identity of a perfect specimen of a man named Jerome Morrow, who happens to have broken his back and is now consigned to a wheelchair. There is a black market for such people to sell their body samples so they can continue to make money while giving someone with a less fortunate genetic profile a chance to beat the system, but it means one man goes into hiding for the rest of his life and the other must put on a life long ruse to fool the world into thinking he is really the other person. For Vincent, this means daily rituals of shaving off his own body hair and scraping off the outer layer of his skin, while taking samples of Morrow's hair and skin to leave behind in his comb and keyboard. It means taking hidden packs of urine complete with catheters to provide live urine samples from his alter ego, and finger caps with substitute blood underneath to pass the entry doors, which use pin pricks to obtain genetic identity (fingerprints were abandoned in favor of this more accurate method years ago). The story of how Vincent pulls off his dream, a romantic interest, and a murder case all provide substance, but it is the relationship that develops between Vincent and Jerome that provides the most poignant dramatic thread. The only drawbacks I would name are a complete lack of originality in the musical score and overuse of narration, but these are minor. And be sure to catch Ernest Borgnine in a neat minor role and little tidbits like Jerome's staircase being shaped like a DNA helix.

This is a great piece of writing, and what a delight that it was not adapted from a novel but was created for the screen by Andrew Niccol and then directed by him as well. He also penned and directed/produced two other excellently written yet highly underrated films - Lord of War and The Truman Show. I hope in the future we see more screen writers of this caliber in Hollywood.

A.I. - The Movie

2010-07-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

To his credit, Steven Spielberg did direct some good sci-fi films in his later career to make up for E.T.. One of those was Artificial Intelligence: AI. Consequently, I just noticed the similarity in the title choices: ET: Extra Terrestrial. Both include the acronym and full spelling of a phrase representing a scientific term. Of course, except for the heart tugging elements involving a small boy, the two films could not be more different.

There is a lot to chew on in this film. You need only listen to the opening lecture by William Hurt's character Professor Hobby to get an idea of the sophistication that went into both the screen writing and the special effects. The professor uses a female "mecha" (the term in the film for human-like robots) for demonstration purposes, opening up her face to reveal the metal endoskeleton. The seamless switch between real actress and CGI robot is quite stunning, and similar effects are seen throughout the film (although I doubt the simple mechanisms shown could control all the subtle muscle movements of the human face). But as with any good sci-fi story, what is even more interesting is the future world that is presented and the concepts that are addressed. Lets take a minute to look at both of these.

==================== Spoilers increase as you go down ================

In this future world it turns out that global warming has caused the polar ice caps to completely melt. This in turn has caused the sea levels to rise by quite a lot, submerging most major coastal cities. I did a quick fact check and found that if all the ice on Antarctica and Greenland were to melt into the sea, it would raise ocean levels by about 220 feet (or 67 meters). That could put a good chunk of New York City and the coastal rim of Los Angeles under water, but the point is that a lot of people would be displaced. This along with climate upheaval causes massive demographic changes which somehow leads to tight governmental population control where families are only allowed a certain number of children. Robots become useful as replacements for human functions without needing food, or for that matter much clothing or shelter. Ok, so maybe the back story is a bit shady but it sets us up for the main plot line, which revolves around the concept of a child replacement mecha.

The initial speech scene is remarkably well put together as it both demonstrates and explains the consequential outcomes of creating machines that look and behave just like human beings, even in their simulated emotional responses. The professor stabs the female mecha's hand with an ice pick(?) and she yelps and pulls her hand away. As she puts it back on the table, he lunges again and she pulls her hand back as a learned response - but to what? He asks her, "How did that make you feel?". She replies, "I don't understand". He tries again, "What did I do to your feelings?". She cooly replies, "You did it to my hand". As a software programmer, I know it would be easy to make the robot pretend it understands what feelings are, but the scene does a nice job of illustrating the problem. The professor goes on to propose a new type of mecha that would be able to love. The technical dialogue that is meant to lure us into believing there is actually a scientific way to do this has that perfect mix of the foreign and the familiar to convince us that it would be something smack in between simulation and real love. What it actually means is still an open question for both philosophers and scientists today. But if a child robot could form a bond with a parental couple, it would allow people to have more children of another form. Yet if that bond is programmed to be irreversibly permanent (kind of like WORM memory), does the couple have the same responsibility to it as to a real child?

The first prototype of this new mecha is a young boy. The corporation, ubiquitously named Cybertronics, chooses to assign him to a couple who's only son has been in a coma for five years with no hope of recovery. The father obtains the mecha for his wife as a way for her to displace her unending grief, and she reluctantly agrees to try it. Later, their comatose son miraculously recovers. The real son doesn't take to the intruder well and gives the mecha an inferiority complex. Somewhat predictably, he attaches to the Pinnocchio story in his desire to become a "real" boy like his playmate. In the fairy tale, this is accomplished by the "blue fairy". But the mecha's attempts to copy the son become self destructive and raises safety concerns. The father, who always considered the mecha's purpose as a comfort for mom, then pressures her to return it to Cybertronics, where she knows it must be destroyed. Its permanent bond to herself makes it "unresellable". Well, on the way there she finds she can't bring herself to do the deed, so she instead decides, whether from pity, guilt, or love we do not know, to just drop him off on the roadside and leave. Thus begins the child mecha's journey deep into this new world in search of the blue fairy, so that he can become a real boy and his parents will take him back. It would sound hokey if not for the innocent disposition of the mecha child, played very nicely by Haley Joel Osment of The Sixth Sense. The implication is that the mecha never had time enough in this world to learn the difference between fairy tales and real life. All considered, I don't think you could ask for a better conceived plot set up than that.

One of the fun aspects of creating a new world in science fiction is exploring all the possible consequences that it might entail. We encounter pleasure mechas designed to be perfect sex partners. Inevitably, some will be abandoned to themselves and they end up in red light districts where they have taken over the prostitution business because customers prefer the robots to humans. It is also natural to expect that many people would be threatened by these robots which can so easily replace them, and so groups form which put on rodeo like shows called flesh fairs where abandoned mechas are destroyed in various ways as a hateful crowd boos and cheers. And mechas can easily be framed for crimes too.

Eventually, after several adventures and revelations, with the help of another mecha played nicely by Jude Law, the mecha boy finds what he was looking for, the Blue Fairy, a statue in front of a Pinocchio ride at a Manhattan Island amusement park submerged deep beneath the flood waters. I have to agree with the critics that the movie would have ended perfectly with the young mecha staring lovingly at the statue for eternity. But I guess that wasn't a happy enough ending for Speilberg so he added another 20 minutes to give the boy a more palatable fate. I considered it a complete waste of time since the new illusion is no more real than the first, and for a robot it would not matter.

The interaction between humans and robots has been a recurring motif in science fiction literature going all the way back to Asimov's I, Robot. This film presents a fresh and updated look at it with highly polished direction and cinematography that we've come to expect from Mr. Speilberg. It did not make my collection, but I would definitely recommend it to those who share my interest in "think" pieces.

E.T. Go Home!

2010-07-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

After Speilberg created his classic science fiction film in 1977, Close Encounters, I remember having high hopes for what seemed to be his next big sci-fi film, E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, in 1982. After all, Spielberg had up until then a great track record in Hollywood. In addition to CE3K, he had produced a wildly successful monster thriller (Jaws), and an equally successful adventure film (Raiders of the Lost Ark). What could go wrong?

Well, instead of science fiction film, I found myself watching what seemed like a kid's film about a family that finds a pet and takes it home. So the pet happened to be an alien, it was still nothing more than watching a Saturday film festival by Disney. For quite some time afterward, I struggled to understand where its popularity came from. It made more money than Star Wars! (On only 75% of the actual ticket sales - that's hyperinflation for you!). Both the critics and the audiences loved it. Just read through this synopsis to get an idea of the response at the time. Was it because of all the little kids that thought he was a cute alien? Was I, at 16, outside the targeted demographic? Strangely, however, there was never a sequel like with the other franchises mentioned above.

Although E.T. often gets voted into lists of the best sci-fi movies ever (and #1 in the Rotten Tomatoes poll), I can't even see this as falling under the category. The same goes for Back to the Future. These are family films that borrow some concepts from the genre but have no intention of taking the subject matter seriously. Yes, I am somewhat of a purist at heart, but that's part of why I started the blog. Whatever gets distilled out here helps me both understand and share with others this love of something that's just difficult to put a finger on. Perhaps someday I will watch it again as an adult, without expectations, and actually enjoy it, but only as a nice family film.