I know that Lem has many fans, including among the readers here. But I’ve never looked behind the stories I’ve read (which are few). Here’s a video that tlks a little about Lem’s biography and how it shaped his writing. I think I’m going to have to read some more Lem.
Tag: sci-fi
2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 1
When reality collapses under a landslide of madness:
- POTUS exposed as a human vegetable
- Cost of living now requires selling kidneys for gas money
- Illegal aliens and homeless drug addicts now the two largest voting blocks in some blue states
- Kamala Harris imagining herself as president unencumbered by anyone wanting to vote for her.
- Morning Joe both extols Joe Biden as the sharpest he’s ever been and begs him to step aside to avoid defeat.
Well then, it’s time to take off the pundit cap and try to enjoy life a little.
I’ve always been partial to watching movies. My tastes probably fall somewhere in the middle. I’m definitely not part of the avant-garde by any means. I’ve never enjoyed Cinéma verité and the various other European schools that abounded in the 1950s and 1960s. They always just looked like low budget crap that someone made with a home movie camera and no money. But by the same token I think that at least 80% of the output of Hollywood in its heyday was pretty poor stuff.
I totally believe that cinema is not a single subject. There are several distinct things that get lumped together as movies. Hopefully they all contain the characteristic that they entertain. But beyond that I think one kind of movie makes you feel and another makes you think. Now that is not to say that a movie that makes you think doesn’t also engage your emotions. That would be odd in a movie created by humans. But what I’m indicating is that many, even most movies don’t really make you think. And that is not to say that only high-brow art-house movies can delve into the human condition. Far from it. Even someone as populist and popular as Frank Capra can capture a character or a moment that makes you think about the big questions.
So, I think I’ll divide my discussions about movies into two main categories; entertainment and enlightenment. And let’s start with entertainment. Because it is the summer and that is the season when we want to enjoy the beautiful weather and make believe that the world is a happy place where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are just cartoon characters who dress in primary colors and get chased around by the Tasmanian Devil and eventually eaten. So, let’s see.
Well, first things first, we’ll divide and conquer. Let’s divide things into genres:
- Science fiction
- Fantasy
- Action/Adventure
- Comedy
- Drama
Science Fiction
I’ll list what I think are among the best or the most popular or the most interesting sci-fi movies in approximately chronological order. I’ve reviewed almost all of these movies so if you want my detailed opinion you can do a search on the site.
- Destination: Moon
- The Thing from Another World
- Them!
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- The Time Machine
- The Day the Earth Stood Still
- War of the Worlds
- Forbidden Planet
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Blade Runner
- Alien
- Terminator
- Starship Troopers
- Independence Day
- 12 Monkeys
- Jurassic Park
- The Matrix
- Contact
- Firefly
- Serenity
- The Martian
- Dune
Now this is just my list. Your list will be different. I left out Star Trek and Star Wars. I consider Star Wars fantasy and I consider Star Trek mostly awful. But the same could be said for several of the movies I put on my list. I hope my list will inspire a million spirited comments. Everyone has their favorites and their turkeys. Unlike politics we can all have our opinions on sci-fi movies without fear of doing any damage. Have at it.
Thoughts on Current SF&F in Cinema – Part 1
When I was much younger, I remember wondering if there would ever be a time when the state of the art in “film” would allow a decent version of the Lord of the Rings to be made. When Ralph Bakshi’s cartoon over live action was made in 1978, I was quite surprised at how good it was. And I hoped that he would continue the project to finish the complete story. But he never did. Maybe he didn’t make enough money or maybe he got bored. And so, it would be another twenty years before anyone tried again.
Peter Jackson did a remarkable job both visually and artistically of capturing Tolkien’s story. And I think he proved that we have reached a point where regardless of the unreal or fantastic nature of the story CGI can produce a convincing visual representation of that story on the screen. And that was an important moment. For a fan of science fiction and fantasy this is the promised land.
And yet, what have we got now? For every film like Dune where the story faithfully reproduces a worthwhile piece of fiction, we get ten movies like “The Marvels” or “The Last Jedi” or “Madame Web” where the visuals are successful but the story and the acting are unwatchable.
Well, that’s reality. The cultural and societal standards are pretty awful so even if some interesting topic like the Second Age of Middle Earth (Rings of Power) or Harry Seldon’s Psychohistory (Foundation) are being filmed chances are that the result will be terrible.
But the only good thing I can say is that the potential exists for a rogue force like Elon Musk to come along and fund an independent studio to produce some exciting projects. So, eventually we will get good movies. Eventually the profit motive will succeed. Who knows we may be forced to watch Chinese or Hungarian movies in subtitles but it will come. So, patience, patience.
And what might make a good project? Well, based on what we know would sell, how about space opera that is a lot more interesting than the Star Wars universe? How about a project to film the Lensman series? A few updates to the technology might be needed and the chronology might need to be tweaked but then the story would be easily turned into a series of films. It has likeable heroes, awful villains, interesting aliens and plenty of space battles. And best of all, not a girl boss in sight. Just classic square-jawed heroes saving the day and rescuing the damsel in distress. I would guess that the Lensman saga would be easily as popular as Star Wars and in fact more so.
Now another popular film idea would be the Heinlein juveniles. There are several good candidates. As a first choice I’d go with, “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.” It has all the requisite ingredients for a good young adult movie; human interest, suspense, adventure, pathos, humor and the resolution of a coming-of-age story. As a second choice I’d recommend, “The Star Beast.”
It’s an interesting thing to reflect that a really satisfactory movie version of a Heinlein book has never been done. The only one he ever had a hand in was Destination Moon. And while technically there were interesting aspects to the production as a movie it was pretty cut and dry; more of a primer on rocket flight than work of fiction. In terms of popularity, I guess Starship Troopers is the best of those produced, even though the director made it in the spirit of a mockery of the underlying philosophy of the book. A faithful portrayal of Starship Troopers would be an amazing idea for a movie.
And rounding off my picks for Heinlein would be, “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.” I think this story would make an excellent film too. I’d especially enjoy seeing the rail gun attack on Earth on the big screen. And I think the friendship between Manny and the artificial intelligence Mike would work great on the screen.
I’ll have to think of some other classic sf&f books that would make good movies. If you can think of any you’d like to see made, leave them in the comments.
Sequential Horror
Hollywood seems incapable of making anything original and all the sequels and reboots they make suck mightily. So, I have decided to step into the breach and provide the ultimate in sequel mashup awfulness.
Movie Treatment: Cosmic-Horror-Palooza
Rick Deckard is at home with his wife Rachael having breakfast before he heads off to work as head school crossing guard at the Philip K Dick Elementary School in Portland Oregon. Rachael is pregnant with their first child and asks Rick to bring her some sweet gherkin pickles on his way home. She chastises him briefly because this is the third time he’s forgotten. He absorbs the abuse kisses her on the forehead and heads out the door while absently loading .45 shells into his revolver.
When he reaches the security office, he notices on the various video surveillance screens that a protest has set up shop in the intersection adjacent to the northwest corner of the school. A mostly crossdressing mob of activists with signs that say REPLICANT-PHOBIA IS HATE were chanting and marching in one of the crosswalks. This would not be an easy day.
Suddenly an energy bolt blazed across the screen and struck one of the extremely plus-sized blonds-wigged transwomen in spandex and left a visibly gaping hole through his body before collapsing onto the asphalt. Several other energy bolts followed in quick succession wreaking havoc with the chant as deep bellows and hoarse screams erupted from the targeted activists.
Deckard bolted for the door and sprinted toward the crime scene. As he approached, he could see that the attack was coming from a tree located fifty yards from the corner. He approached warily, shielding himself from view with the side of the building and ending up very close to the base of the tree. Peering carefully around the corner of the building he could see a shimmering patch of foliage that was the source of the deadly beams. As he watched he could make out what looked like a humanoid form and aiming for the head he unloaded with his .45.
The shimmering patch fell to the ground and Deckard ran over to it. What he saw there startled him. A man shaped creature lay on the ground but the inhuman head had insectoid mandibles. The .45 slugs hadn’t done the head any good but Deckard added a couple more through the cranium just to be sure. Looking around on the ground he found a long rod with a blinking light at one end and what probably was a trigger near the other end. Picking it up and sighting through the blinking light device he aimed at the tree and pushed the trigger. A bright red bolt drilled a two-inch round hole precisely through the 36 inches of the tree trunk and elicited a respectful whistle from the impressed former blade runner.
Looking into the foreground he could see a shimmering area about twenty feet down the sidewalk. Suddenly four of the humanoid creatures approached with their right arms raised in the universal sign of respect for a successful warrior’s victory. They came bearing a large blue lawn dart which one of their comrades had claimed as his trophy over a human in a 1968 Cincinnati Ohio suburb.
But before they could bestow this trophy on Deckard, other creatures poured out of the dimensional portal that the four earlier beings had opened. These creatures were decidedly unlike the first ones. They were about eight feet tall with extremely elongated heads with two sets of jaws, one inside of the other. They had long claws on the feet and hands and a long, pointed tail. Deckard instinctively knew that the saliva dripping from the creatures’ jaws was molecular acid and that this wouldn’t end well.
About twenty of the creatures attacked the four earlier visitors and an enormous battle ensued. The bug-jawed warriors put up a hell of a fight with their energy weapons and the lawn dart but there were just too many of the xenomorphs (Deckard somehow sensed this was what these other creatures should be called). Seeing that the battle would soon be over Deckard called his office and ordered his team to lock down the school and call the authorities. Then he sprinted over to the protest site to warn them away.
Unfortunately, the activists had repurposed the event into a day of rage against transphobic energy-beam wielding haters and they had begun turning over cars and torching them. They had formed a kind of funeral pyre for their fallen comrades but it hadn’t really done a thorough job of consuming their bodies so a very questionable pile of remains remained. Seeing Deckard running toward them carrying the energy weapon they assumed he was the killer and they charged toward him. He stopped and looked around. Behind him the remaining ten or so xenomorphs were coming up quickly in his direction. With the two groups converging on his position imminently, he did what any clear-thinking individual would do. He ran sideways and hoped for the best.
And that worked extraordinarily well for him. But much less well for the angry mob that suddenly intersected with the xenomorphs. It turns out xenomorphs are not transphobic. In fact, it turns out they’re transphilic. In fact, I think they even enjoyed eating the wigs. It wasn’t pretty.
Deckard took the opportunity to sneak over to an entrance to the school and punch in the entry code and head for the security office. When he arrived, his crew updated him on the current state of the “battle.” The xenomorphs were somewhat leisurely feasting on the four warriors and the fifty some-odd rioters. Deckard tried in his mind to come up with a strategy to hold off the xenomorphs until Space Marine troops could be summoned. But nothing occurred to him. He did remember that he had to get those gherkins for Rachael but that didn’t really seem to improve the situation.
But then a very odd thing happened on the screen. One of the corpses of the warriors suddenly stood up and metamorphosed into something that was a combination of the xenomorph and a rioter. It looked like a xenomorph wearing a yellow wig. But it grew to five times the size of one of the xenomorphs and began eating the other xenomorphs. And each time it ate one of them it got bigger. The xenomorphs never ran away and kept fighting but one by one they were swallowed by the shape-shifting creature. At one point a xenomorph managed to rip an arm off the shapeshifter and throw it to the ground. The arm sprouted six spider like legs, a mouth full of teeth at the shoulder and proceeded to attack the xenomorph. Within half an hour the battle was over and the shapeshifter and the walking biting arm coalesced into an amorphous mass of protoplasm. After a short time, the blob flowed over to the school and covered it in a layer of pulsing goo.
Deckard watched in horror as all the doors began to slowly ooze rivulets of the creature. He sent his crew to the doors and they used CO2 fire extinguishers to freeze the jelly as it attempted to enter the building. Things were looking quite bleak as the extinguishers one by one were emptied of their frozen contents. But suddenly the ooze retreated from the doors and the creature flowed off onto the nearby street and reformed into the shape of a yellow wigged transwoman complete with alarmingly overstretched spandex body suit. The creature was apparently asleep. As Deckard watched the sleeping form evaporated completely. At that point he saw that there was a similarly sized shape on the ground about ten feet from where the sleeping creature had been.
Gathering his courage Deckard walked out of the building and approached the shape on the ground. When he got near it, he saw that it was what looked like a giant seed pod. And as he watched it burst open and slowly a living being pushed its way out. When it had exited the pod, it was seen to be an identical blond wigged transwoman; spandex and all. Deckard stood his ground, pointed the energy weapon at the creature and asked it to explain what had just happened.
The creature adjusted its costume, scratched at its beard and explained that its species sent spores throughout space that land on planets and produce seed pods that mimic other life forms and then replace them with their own individuals. And slowly they replace all individuals of the local dominant species and thus take over that world. However, because of all the various different cell types that were present in this individual’s new body, life on Earth was just too painful for it to continue and it begged Deckard to finish it off as a mercy killing. And Deckard promptly obliged it using the alien energy rod. At that point the creature evaporated into the air (except for the spandex suit and wig).
When the police finally showed up, they wanted to know what the hell was going on. All that remained of the battle were the few burned out cars and the spandex suite and wig. Deckard started to tell the whole story then thought better of it and just said there had been a protest that sort of got out of control and left it at that. One of the officers asked him about the energy rod and he said it was a prop for a school play. The police did a walk around and cited the school for a safety violation because of the empty fire extinguishers and Deckard had to fill out a lot of paperwork and give some of his staff a mental health week off to keep them from quitting.
He didn’t get home that night until ten thirty and when he walked in the door Rachael asked him how his day was. He said it was okay. But then she looked at him and said, “You forgot the gherkins!”
So, he turned around and headed off to the grocery store with his walking stick blinking along. She said after him, “Men are so easily distracted.”
You and Here
Because of their neurological abnormalities many Leftists are truly miserable people and therefore pathologically envious of normal people for being happy. And that’s why a big part of the leftist project is to make us miserable.
Taking the fun out of our lives is a very big part of their work. That is specifically why they are always in our faces about everything they don’t want us doing. We can’t enjoy sports or activities or entertainment the way we want to because they have to decide how those things get done. And worst of all they say we can’t do them without their participation. And that’s why they especially hate things that they can’t share in. That’s why shooting ranges and normal families are anathema. Those things are bad fun because they exclude them categorically.
And so, whenever we are happy, in a real sense, we are measurably hurting the leftist project. So, there is the justification for the “pursuit of happiness.” But over the last half century it’s gotten harder and harder to just enjoy life. Too many components of it have been compromised and degraded by the Left.
But that makes it more important than ever to find the means to bring joy into our lives. Even if you are a “happy warrior,” fighting the culture war 24/7 is not a recipe for hilarity. Sure, mocking the Left can be fun to some extent but there is a definite tendency to become a grim, glum purveyor of gloom and doom.
And I find that this very syndrome has infected me to a greater extent than I like. And thinking about it today I realized I need to begin prioritizing a lot more fun into my week. Chronicling the outrages of the week is mostly a dour and depressing occupation. Even schadenfreude over some leftist’s misfortune is a weak substitute for some constructive endeavor or even some mindless fun like watching a goofy movie.
As I’ve said previously, I’ll be trying to wean myself off the outrage stuff. To start with I think I’ll start publishing parts of my stories on the site and adding more content on creative topics like photography and science fiction/fantasy. I’ve lately been reading about how difficult it is to get genre fiction discovered on Amazon because the algorithms are specifically calibrated for authors who release materials exclusively through the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. In addition, the algorithms are optimized for book series that release a new volume every month. For that reason, authors now write at least three series novels in advance in order to get noticed by that algorithm. Now this sounds like madness to me. Following that logic, an author should probably write a decalogy series all at once before finding out whether anyone wants to read it. And in fact, it seems that a really mediocre series has a much better chance of being a hit than a single novel even if it is remarkably well-written and interesting.
Well, we do live in a strange world. So, I figure I should start putting my stuff out there and at least have the satisfaction of publishing it on my own platform. At least I’ll get some constructive feedback from the sf&f fans on the site. And it’ll be fun.
H. L. Mencken is quoted as defining puritanism as, “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” And I think he was exactly right. We need to enjoy life. We will still have to fight the culture wars but we can’t put our lives, our happiness on hold until we win. So let the someone, somewhere being happy be you, here.
What Are the Best Science Fiction Movies?
Reviewing Aliens and hearing from folks who remembered it fondly got me thinking about what readers here consider the best sci-fi movies. So, of course, I went to YouTube. And here’s the list.
- The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
- Aliens (1986)
- Jurassic Park (1993)
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
- The Matrix (1999)
- Children of Men (2006)
- Planet of the Apes (1968)
- The War of the Worlds (1953)
Now, right off the bat, I disagree with several of the picks. Neither “Planet of the Apes” or “The Day the Earth Stood Still” would be on my top ten movies list. Planet of the Apes isn’t my idea of a sci-fi movie. And The Day the Earth Stood Still is commie propaganda. So, there’s that.
Some of the other movies are pretty good ones. Now as for the order and any additional movies to pad out the top ten I’ll have to give it some thought. But I think it’s a good talking paper to inspire discussion of what each of us considers to be good sci-fi movies.
Now here’s another list (see below). This is IMDB’s “TOP 100 Sci-Fi Movies of All Time.” There are a few commonalities between the top ten of this list with the former list. But one interesting thing I noticed is that once you get past the top of the list the sequels start piling up. Between sequels to “Back to the Future,” “Planet of the Apes,” “Predator,” “Jurassic Park,” “Star Trek” “Alien,” “Terminator” and “Star Wars” we’re looking at a lot of retreads.
What it made me think was that there really aren’t that many really good science fiction movies. There are definitely a lot more good science fiction books than there are good movies. Which I guess is kind of hopeful if you’re an optimist. For instance, I saw that they’ve made a movie out of Asimov’s Foundation stories. I saw the coming attractions. Honestly, I couldn’t tell anything about it at all. It could be great. It could be awful. But at least it’s a new movie. It’s not a sequel.
So, I guess being a science fiction movie fan is all about being an optimist. And in the larger world of science fiction/fantasy movies we were rewarded in the early 2000s with the Lord of the Rings movies. So that tells me miracles can happen. Maybe one day a true fan of Heinlein will reboot “Starship Troopers” without the nazi iconography or might even film “Have Spacesuit Will Travel.”
So, this will be an open thread to get some comments. If you’d like to give your top sci-fi movie list or what story you’d like to see filmed in the future put it in the comments. Later on, I’ll add some more of my own thoughts on what is a proper science fiction movie and what isn’t.
A last question for the audience. Is “Escape from New York” really science fiction?
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The Terminator
- Planet of the Apes
- Alien
- Blade Runner
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day
- The Matrix
- Back to the Future
- Aliens
- Interstellar
- Contact
- Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
- The Road Warrior
- Predator
- The Thing
- The Man from Earth
- Edge of Tomorrow
- District 9
- Dark City
- Blade Runner 2049
- A Clockwork Orange
- Gattaca
- Jurassic Park
- Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
- Mad Max
- Starship Troopers
- Minority Report
- 12 Monkeys
- Inception
- Back to the Future Part II
- Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
- The Abyss
- Looper
- T. the Extra-Terrestrial
- Star Trek: First Contact
- Stargate
- Ex Machina
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
- The Truman Show
- Children of Men
- The Martian
- Avatar
- Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
- The X Files
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind
- Rise of the Planet of the Apes
- Cube
- Star Trek
- RoboCop
- The Time Machine
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers
- War for the Planet of the Apes
- Prometheus
- Total Recall
- They Live
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- Sunshine
- Moon
- Super 8
- I Am Legend
- Signs
- The Fly
- Escape from New York
- Pacific Rim
- Dredd
- Oblivion
- Cloverfield
- Pitch Black
- Godzilla
- Back to the Future Part III
- Limitless
- Deja Vu
- War of the Worlds
- The Matrix Reloaded
- Elysium
- Enemy Mine
- The Butterfly Effect
- Predestination
- I. Artificial Intelligence
- Logan’s Run
- Another Earth
- Independence Day
- The Arrival
- Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
- Predators
- Outlander
- John Carter
- Alien³
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- Phenomenon
- Predator 2
- Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
- Riddick
- Cloud Atlas
- Armageddon
- The Running Man
- The Fifth Element
- Waterworld
- The Day After Tomorrow
- Mimic
Aliens (1986) – A Science Fiction Movie Review
It’s a funny thing I had never seen Aliens in its entirety until today. Somehow, I missed the first half hour of the movie and only came in when the main action was beginning. So finally, I have the correct basis on which to judge it.
I won’t synopsize the plot because it’s an Alien movie so the plot is for Sigourney Weaver to outlive the rest of her fellow humans battling the aliens before ultimately jettisoning a xenomorph into the vacuum of space.
As in the original “Alien” movie Sigourney Weaver is Ellen Ripley a commercial astronaut who works for the evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Fifty-seven years after the first Alien attack Ripley is discovered still in suspended animation in the shuttle craft that she used to escape the destruction of her ship the Nostromo.
The evil Weyland-Yutani Corporation was very unhappy about her blowing up their ship but when they find out that their terra-forming colony on the planet that the alien was found on has gone silent they send “space marines” and Ripley to fix things. They also send Paul Reiser playing smarmy corporate yes man, Carter Burke to provide the requisite “greedy corporation wants xenomorph for bioweapon” subplot. And finally, they throw in an android to show that despite what happened in the first movie, androids can be pretty swell people too.
And finally, to soften up Ripley’s Rambo impression, they throw in an orphaned little girl named Newt that Ripley rescues a few times over the course of the movie, proving that a modern woman truly can have it all.
So, the producers pull out all the stops. Aliens are popping up everywhere in the industrial complex that serves as the venue for this first-person shooter game. Bits of aliens and “molecular acid” are sprayed everywhere and one by one the marine platoon is picked off by the monsters. Until finally we’re down to Ripley, Newt, android and the pick of the Marine crew, Corporal Dwayne Hicks played by the ever-popular Michael Biehn. But during the final rescue of Newt on the planet Hicks is wounded by molecular acid and from then on, all the heavy lifting is done by Ripley. Which she performs with panache, culminating in the above mentioned obligatory spacing of the mother alien (of course there’s a mother alien).
So, what did I think? Well, I have some quibbles. The plot contrives it that the marines can’t use their heaviest weapons because the industrial plant is a “thermonuclear” power plant and if any of their explosive charges rupture a heat exchanger line the whole plant will detonate. Since it’s a cinch that all the colonists (except Newt) are already dead why are they bothering to throw away their lives in this death trap. As Ripley so astutely recommended, “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” Also, they overdid it with the strong female characters and weak male ones. Yeah, I know, I know. “There’s nothing wrong with that.” But honestly it is insulting and stupid.
But taken all in all the movie does provide an exciting action-adventure/science fiction/horror experience. I won’t claim it’s my favorite but it is a worthy representative of its genre. I will give it a recommended status.
Ad Astra (2019) – A Science Fiction Movie Review
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
Ad Astra (Latin for “to the stars”) is a science fiction movie starring Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride whose father Clifford McBride (played by a decrepit looking Tommy Lee Jones) is inexplicably firing anti-matter particles back at Earth from the orbit of the planet Neptune. The anti-matter will eventually destroy Earth so Roy is supposed to go to the Moon to catch a ride to Mars to broadcast a message to his father asking him not to destroy Earth, or something. The why and how of all this is very odd. Clifford has been MIA for twenty years on a mission called Lima that was somehow supposed to be looking for extraterrestrial intelligence (from somewhere near Neptune!).
Eventually we learn that Clifford murdered his crew long ago because they figured out, he was crazy. When Roy gives his message on Mars Clifford doesn’t agree to cease and desist so the military outfits a mission to nuke Project Lima to erase the threat. Somehow (but not believably) Roy stows aboard the rocket (after it blasts off) and without really trying he kills the whole crew that were trying to kill him. Now he flies to Neptune and confronts his father who is completely nuts. He sets the nuke and thinks he’s convinced Clifford to return to Earth with him. But when push literally comes to shove, Clifford unshackles himself from Roy and heads off into empty, empty space.
Finally, Roy uses a hatch panel to protect himself while he takes a shortcut through the rings of Neptune and then somehow the nuclear blast that destroyed Project Lima was able to provide most of the kinetic energy to return him to Earth before Roy dies of old age. And despite all the astronauts he killed getting out there the military decides to forgive and forget and so Roy finishes off by reciting some kind of humanistic spiritual affirmation statement of some kind or other and then gets back together with his ex-wife Liv Tyler.
Now maybe that sounds quite odd for a science fiction story. And it is. This is a somewhat confusing rigamarole. So let me give my thoughts on it. The visual effects are quite good. Some scenes in low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and aboard spacecraft are a lot of fun to watch. But there are (I kid you not) space monkeys! Which I kinda/hafta frown upon. So, two points off. Brad Pitt’s character starts out as an apparently emotionless robot who always saves the world from disaster without getting his pulse above eighty. By the end he’s crying about his crazy father being crazy. Tommy Lee Jones’ character is crazy so there’s not much there. Donald Sutherland has a small part and he’s always crazy. So, this movie doesn’t make a lot of sense. For instance, how is Tommy Lee Jones investigating other life in the universe from Neptune. Neptune is too incredibly cold for anything to live there. And it’s not like it’s any closer to the stars than Earth. Alright, I’ll stop making fun of the movie. It’s a crazy movie, but like “2001: A Space Odyssey” it’s a visually enjoyable movie if you don’t care too much about the plot. I recommend it for hard-core sci-fi film lovers who can live with space monkeys.
RoboCop (1987) – A Science Fiction Movie Review
Paul Verhoeven directed this sci-fi adventure movie. Strangely he made it to be a satire of the violence of law enforcement during the Reagan administration but audiences liked its anti-crime message.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
RoboCop opens up on a police precinct in Detroit (Metro-West). It’s some kind of futuristic present (1980s) where the dystopian crime-ridden Detroit is being addressed with the introduction of robotic police. The first prototype is being demonstrated at an executive board meeting of OCP, a technology company that surprisingly also has links to the underworld. Unfortunately, the robot gets a glitch in his programming and kills one of the officers of the company during a demonstration. This reflects poorly on Dick Jones, the senior vice president and also secretly, the contact for the underworld figures involved with OCP. The failure of the prototype allows Jones’s competitor, Bob Morton to steer the company toward a different robot cop concept. Morton’s version is a man whose brain has been destroyed in an accident and whose body can then be retrofitted with robotic limbs and an electronic brain.
Enter Alex Murphy a young cop with a wife and young son. He’s just been transferred to Metro-West where he’s paired with street smart woman cop Anne Lewis who, of course, has a heart of gold. They head out to do good and get involved with a criminal gang headed up by Clarence Boddicker (played by Kurtwood Smith, who played Topher Grace’s father, Red on “That Seventies Show”). Boddicker is Dick Jones’s criminal partner. He’s also a sadistic maniac. When his gang captures Murphy, Boddicker personally mutilates him by blowing his limbs off with a shotgun. Then his men finish him off with their guns. Lewis escapes and goes for help.
In the next scene Murphy’s body has been converted into a cyborg that has been named RoboCop and assigned to Metro-West. He has four prime directives
- Serve the public trust
- Protect the innocent
- Uphold the law
- Never arrest an officer of OCP
Of course, the last directive is a secret one built in by OCP to allow them to break the law with impunity.
Now RoboCop begins to discover the link between Boddicker’s gang and the murder of Officer Murphy. Although RoboCop is not supposed to have any memory of his former life it does start to creep into his consciousness. During this time, he captures several of the gang members and discovers the link between OCP and Boddicker. At this point in the story Dick Jones has Boddicker murder Bob Morton.
Finally, RoboCop manages to arrest Boddicker and his gang but Jones has them released. Identifying Jones as the OCP link to Boddicker, RoboCop attempts to arrest him but discovers prime directive four prevents him. Now RoboCop is attacked by the OCP SWAT Team and escapes after being damaged. Officer Lewis hides him in a factory where she assists him in repairing himself.
The final showdown against Boddicker’s gang includes the use of rocket powered grenades that OCP has provided to Boddicker. After a drawn-out battle RoboCop kills the whole gang. Boddicker offers to surrender but RoboCop tells him “I’m not here to arrest you.” And so, he kills Boddicker in cold blood. Apparently, his restored memories have superseded some of his programming.
Finally, RoboCop shows up at the OCP board room to expose Dick Jones as a criminal. When Jones takes the Chairman of the Board hostage RoboCop reveals to him that he cannot arrest any OCP executive. The Chairman says, “Jones you’re fired.” And RoboCop immediately dispatches Jones with a full clip of bullets that drive him through the window of the skyscraper penthouse to his death on the pavement below.
RoboCop is a cartoon of a movie. The villains are cartoon characters. The hero is a robot almost completely devoid of personality. Even the good guys are cartoon sketches of cop movie stereotypes. The violence and weaponry are both over the top. It’s definitely a 1980s action movie. But within its genre and its intent it’s an enjoyable cartoon. Everyone is waiting for RoboCop to finally kill off the sadistic psychopaths that murdered his alter ego who once was a husband and father. I recommend this movie to fans of the genre. If you liked some of Schwarzenegger’s movies from that era, like Predator and Terminator you’ll probably like this movie too. If not then maybe not so much.
It Came from Outer Space (1953) – A Science Fiction Movie Review
I won’t put in the typical spoiler alert because it just doesn’t matter.
In this movie an amateur astronomer, John Putnam, happens to be out in his backyard in what looks like Arizona, looking through his telescope when what appears to be a meteor hurtles to earth in his vicinity. Being a man of action, John gets his friend Frank to helicopter him to the scene of the crash. And of course, he brings along his girlfriend Ellen.
When they get to the crater John goes down to the “meteor” and finds that it is a spacecraft with something alive in it. But somehow the ship causes a landslide that covers itself up. From this point on John attempts to convince everyone that he isn’t crazy when he claims there is a ship from outer space in the crater.
Only Ellen believes him and they go around town trying to convince the sheriff and the scientists from the local college. Eventually the aliens start kidnapping humans and replacing them with look-alikes. But because these aliens are so boring people start suspecting something is wrong. And here is where we meet the biggest “star” in the cast. One of the kidnapped humans is George played by Russell Johnson, better known to the world as the “Professor” on Gilligan’s Island. Johnson plays his part with all the acting skill that he would later demonstrate on that famous island. Amazing.
Anyway, eventually the rest of the town figures out that John knows what he is talking about and under the leadership of Sheriff Matt Warren they organize a posse to go and put the smackdown on these aliens. But by this point John has finally located one of the aliens and gotten their side of the story.
Apparently, the aliens crashed to Earth and have been attempting ever since to repair their ship. They’ve impersonated humans to obtain supplies for the repairs. Apparently copper wire is an important part of faster than light technology. The humans they captured have not been harmed and will be released if the aliens are able to repair the ship before the humans have a chance to interfere with them.
When John asks the alien why they don’t just come out in the open and meet the humans, he comes out of the cave he’s hiding in and reveals his appearance to John (1), (2).
Apparently, their appearance is so terrifying that John goes into hysterics for a few moments. Personally, I think it would be more likely that most people would break out into laughter if the aliens showed up in town. They sort of resemble what a giant Mr. Potato Head toy would look like if only one eye was stuck on where the nose should go and then asbestos was glued on as hair. After his hissy fit John agrees to help the aliens escape by preventing Sheriff Matt from rousting them out of their cushy lair in the convenient old gold mine outside of town.
It is while John is trying to prevent the sheriff from attacking the aliens that Matt makes a speech which was the only part of the movie I remember from when I saw it fifty some-odd years ago. Matt looks at the thermometer and says, “It’s ninety-two degrees! I remember reading that more murders are committed at ninety-two degrees than any other temperature. Below that temperature people are in their right minds. Above ninety-two it’s too hot to do anything. But at just ninety-two people get irritable!” I really enjoyed that scene. In fact, I enjoyed it more than the whole rest of the movie put together.
Anyway, the posse is rounded up and on the way to the mine they manage to kill one of the aliens driving a pickup truck. It was a pretty nice truck. John heads down into the mine first and one of the aliens disguised as Ellen tries to kill him with a laser wand. But John manages to shoot her and she falls into a puddle in the mine. Then John finds the leader of the aliens who is disguised as John(!) and talks himself into waiting before attacking the humans with his death ray.
John gets all of the hostages out of the mine and uses some handily placed dynamite to close up the mine entrance to prevent the posse from lynching the potato heads. As the posse and the freed hostages watch the space ship breaks free of the earth and heads back into space. And John tells us that one day they’ll return and human and potato heads will live in peace together.
Wow! This movie was based on a story by Ray Bradbury. I’ll have to go back and read that story. If it really resembles the plot of this movie, I’ll have to rethink my appreciation of Bradbury. Anyway, this is all harmless stuff from the early days of B-movie sci-fi. I’ll recommend this thing as campy nostalgia from simpler times. It would have made a good movie for a drive-in date. Something you wouldn’t have minded missing during the clinches. Your milage may vary.