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Posts Tagged ‘science fiction’

A new Star Wars movie came out last weekend, and apparently nobody cares. Star Wars: Clone Wars opened 3rd at the box office with a gross of $14.6 million. That’s lower than Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and people still reach for torches and pitchforks at the mere mention of that film. I’m still on the fence on whether to see it, but I don’t think I’ll enjoy watching Rip Taylor in Hutt form, or having a Jedi Padawan use words such as “Like, totally!” in normal conversation. I think it’s safe to say that what has kept us interested in Star Wars as a universe and franchise has gone for good. Recapturing the magic of the trilogy, or even building on it is going to be next to impossible with the way things are run right now. All that’s left is for fans like me to ask: What went wrong?

Was it the Flash Gordon clichés, with ships and lasers whooshing across space? Was it the Nietzschean interpretation of history? It doesn’t look like audiences had a problem with thing like that. Was it the Han shooting second? Jar-Jar? Close, but they’re only symptoms of a much larger problem. If you ask me, it all started when Lucas decided to make Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia brother and sister.

When Luke and Leia’s blood relationship was revealed, the love triangle between them and Han Solo was essentially frozen in carbonite and thrown into the deepest, darkest gas giant, never to return. Plus it made subsequent viewings of Empire Strikes Back a whole lot creepier. It makes perfect sense as a story decision, Luke desire to protect Leia almost made him turn to the dark side of the force at the climax of Return of the Jedi and it allowed Leia to get together with Han. However, it was kind of a cop-out. Before ROTJ came out people were still wondering if Leia was going to end up with Luke or Han. By the end of the movie Leia doesn’t go with Han because of anything specific about his personality or the way they relate, it was because she didn’t come out of the same womb that he did.

When you consider that the biggest character driven plot-line of the trilogy was resolved essentially by default, subsequent creative decisions about the films suddenly make sense. We could see through the prequel trilogy that Lucas abhors ambiguity about all things. There’s either a dark side or a light side of the force, people either love each other or they don’t. The lack of ambiguity works for Star Wars. When a bad guy dies, you want feel good about it. However, ambiguity shouldn’t be confused with facing a hard choice, which is what happened here.

The Han/Luke/Leia relationship was full of ambiguity because both Han and Luke were likable people, each with their own particular personality traits. If Leia chose either of them, it would be a hard choice to make and not everyone would be happy in the end. Lucas decided that Star Wars should be about choosing between Good and Evil, not Good and Good, so in came the deus ex machina of Leia being Luke’s sister, which left everyone happy even if they felt a little icky inside. From then on, Lucas’ films take on a deterministic feeling. It’s almost as if he feels that something like the Han/Luke/Leia triangle wouldn’t read well to audiences and we’ll all just tune out. He didn’t count on us sensing the insincerity behind that approach and just tuning out anyway.

The Han/Luke/Leia triangle gave us some of the funniest scenes in the trilogy (Han: So do you think a girl like her and a guy like me…? Luke: NO!). It turned Star Wars into less of technical demo and more of a date movie. Love triangles produce a lot of suspense, chemistry and character development. People are more themselves in a relationship than in any other situation. Creators who use this to their advantage can write their own ticket to stardom and fan fiction writers insane.

Sara and I finally used our Famous Players gift certificates to catch “Wall-E” just now, but with all the pandemonium surrounding “Batman: The Dark Knight” we probably could have snuck in for free. The film was, in a word, wonderful. Sure, the robots were cute, but the force of the ideas in that movie was something you would expect to find in a classic hard science fiction novel rather than a Disney blockbuster.

When the movie came out everyone wondered whether the conservative hate machine was going to go on a rampage the way they did with “Happy Feet”. There were those who passed off the film as leftist propaganda. But strangely, Wall-E started to become a hit among other conservative bloggers who were won over by the little guy’s crusade against a large oppressive organization and (even stranger) his love of showtunes. In fact, some left wing bloggers decided that they were really clever and decided to bash the film for the plastic merchandise that it generates or its linkage of obesity with environmental problems.

The director, Andrew Stanton, did a lovely job of sidestepping the issue in an interview with New York Magazine.

“I knew that I was going into territory that was basically the same stuff, but I don’t have a political bent or ecological message to push. I don’t mind that it supports that kind of view — it’s certainly a good-citizen kind of way to be — but everything I wanted to do was based on the film’s love story, the last robot on Earth, the sentence that we first came up with in 1994. I said, ‘I have to get everybody off the planet, and do it in a way that audiences get it without any dialogue.’ So trash did that. You look at it, you just get it. It’s a dump, you’ve gotta move it — even a little kid understands that.”

Classy stuff, but he’s not fooling anyone. Nor should he have to.

In British Columbia we’re a little more cognizant of the climate change issue than say, a place like Arizona. We have swathes of dead trees where the Winter has failed to kill off the pine beetle. The glaciers we like to ski on so much are shrinking. Stanley Park looked like a war zone after the wind storms of 2006. From our perspective, the time for being classy about the environment has passed. It’s not a controversy, it’s a real problem.

Yesterday Al Gore threw down a challenge for the United States to get off Carbon Fuels within 10 years. Sure, it seems like it’s on the border of daring and daft, but I would rather see the US fail at something like this than keep going on its present course. However in the comments section of every article on this issue there seems to be a league of twits pointing and laughing at Gore because he was a Democrat or his house sucks up enough juice to power Bangladesh. On the other side there’s the the “Gee-Whiz Mr. Gore, I’d love to help” articles where the commentator gleefully whips out a bunch of statistics about why it can’t be done.

I have had enough of people who would rather feed their own smug egos than do what must be done. People like the Wall-E animators make the case about why we should help the environment. People like Al Gore come up with plans on how to save it. I subscribe to their beliefs because the only constant I have lived with in my adult life is change. My life, and the life of everyone else on that planet will change over time because that’s how the whole concept of time works. In the past five years alone I’ve graduated University, worked for many companies, got another diploma and got married. Even their predictions don’t come true, it’s still not as foolhardy as pretending there is such thing as a status quo.

You can find out more about Al Gore’s Green Challenge Here: Link

At 6:30 this morning I said good-bye to my wife, who is going to camp on Gibson island with her school until Wednesday. Herding 150 kids onto a ferry may seem like a daunting task, but I’ve seen her handle a room full of kids. After 5 years of performing what they call “classroom management”, she carries herself with confidence and authority in situations where most of us would be hesitating and later cowering in a corner pleading the children to leave us alone. Nonetheless, I will at the ready Wednesday night with Sara’s favorite magazine and ice cream.

As the day drew on I realized that if I had to contend with an empty house much longer, I would be fashioning a life sized replacement Sara out of throw pillows and misplaced cashews. So I opted for a movie night out. Science fiction double feature, as the old song goes. The features in question being Indiana Jones and the Incredible Hulk.

If you haven’t seen the new Indy movie yet, for God’s sake go. It’ a fun ride and if you have problems digesting the paranormal stuff, it’s important to note that this is the movie franchise that chased for and found a fully functional Ark of the covenant, Holy Grail and Indian Sankara stones. After studying the Hollywood development process and being part of a few other development processes myself, I think I’m way less nit-picky about movies. And it feels great. I had a lot of fun tonight. I didn’t exactly leave my brain in the parking lot, but I forgave a lot of the missteps I would’ve called out at a different time in my life. In summary it’s Indiana Jones movie. Go and have fun.

In between the two movies I noticed a couple of things. Namely a couple with a newborn. Walking into the Incredible Hulk. It was like I was in the middle of some sophomore comedian’s joke routine in between the sticky floors and the guy yammering on his cell phone. However, that baby stayed silent throughout the entire picture. Perhaps the bass of the movie has a soothing effect, I don’t know. But if I didn’t see the kid myself at the end of the movie, I would’ve thought that the stroller and bassinet were merely an ingenious snack smuggling system.

Anyway, about the Incredible Hulk. You know, the original movie seems to get worse every time I hear about it. It won’t be long before there’s an article about how the original Hulk was so bad that people emerged from the theatre with their eyes bleeding and screaming in tongues. I enjoyed the original, and no amount of pompous hipster bitching is going to change that. So quit it already.

That being said, this is the better film. It starts off with Bruce Banner on the run, just like in the TV series and the better part of the comic series. This movie has a better grip on what it is to be Banner and the Hulk. Edward Norton is perfectly cast. His loneliness is portrayed as genuinely heartbreaking. When he turns into the Hulk, the smashing is fun and perfectly satisfying. And then there’s the integration with the Marvel Universe at large. Captain America! The Avengers! Tony Stark! Oh my God! I’m geeking out to eleven!!

Okay it seems I have issues, and I’m not talking about Amazing Spiderman #563. But the truth is, I wonder why the idea of cross-overs wasn’t brought up sooner in the process, like right after X-men and Spider-man were verifiable hits. We now know that such cross-overs would make money no matter what the quality of the actual movie is. Aliens vs. Predator is a good case in point. However, a quick imdb.com search reveals to us the tangled web (no pun intended) of movie rights attached to all of the major Marvel properties. Everything was held back by traditional corporate short-sightedness and the simple panicky nature of deals that are worth potential billions. Now, an Avengers movie would be a huge step forward, but I think a redefinition of the block-buster is in order, particularly for the digital age.

Imagine, if you will, a group of film school drop-outs who got sick of shooting dying flowers in time lapse and set out to re-engineer the summer blockbuster. Armed with the latest digital tools they are able to super-impose over reality with the skill of renaissance painters. Budgets are no problem when you can create whole cities within a computer the size of a large toaster. The scripts contain multi-layered story-lines that take trilogies to carry out, but the central conflicts are simple and read easy up on the screen. The actors are complete unknowns, but they have enough method training to meld completely into their blue-screen surroundings. The movies are distributed instantly over torrent networks at $10 a download. It’s played simultaneously in theaters in “road-show” style events, where the cast and crew can go on tour and meet their audience. Tickets to these shows are sold over social networking programs. With 200 of your closest friends, the premier suddenly becomes the event of the summer. Say, is anyone taking this down?

It took a quarter century, but it looks like we now have a true sequel to Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. Best known to those of us in the states as the first season of Robotech, Macross was a landmark TV series in terms of character arcs, ideas, and gee-whiz animation. Repeating the success of the series has not been so easy. First there was the Direct-to-Video series Macross II, which was relegated to “parallel universe” story status by fans and creators. From what I’ve seen, Macross 7 is essentially a 49-episode music video. The closest we’ve come to sequels have 1994′s Macross Plus and 2002′s prequel Macross Zero, which were stunning, yet all too brief. For a while there it seemed like Robotech was doing a better job of continuing the series by splicing two other anime series into the continuity. But then came Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, and the less said about that again the better. After all that, it seems like we’ve got a series that takes the ideas of the original Macross in new directions while at the same time keeping true to the original. That series is Macross Frontier.

The show takes place 50 years after the original Macross. The human race was almost wiped out in the first series by a war with the Zentraedi, a race of alien giants. After the armistice, the two races decided the most sensible thing to do would be to repopulate the galaxy. The construction of huge colonization fleets began, as well as further military development to keep the fleets safe from rogue Zentraedi fleets, or anything else that might come along. The fleet called “Macross Frontier” is the focus of the show. The protagonist is 17-year-old Alto Saotome, who enrolled in pilot’s school against the wishes of his Kabuki star father. This involves learning to fly in power-suits known as EX-gear, which serve as a basic interface for any aircraft known to man (I want one!). Alto and his stunt flying team end up doing a show for a rock concert starring “Cheryl”, the latest pop idol who’s taking a galaxy-wide tour of all the Macross fleets. During the concert, the fleet is attacked by mysterious bio-mechanical creatures known only as “Vajra”. A few of the space monsters make it back the colony fleet and start wreaking havoc. In true mecha anime fashion, Alto has to commandeer a damaged Valkyrie transformable fighter with his EX-Gear to protect Ranka Lee, the sister of Ozma Lee, the squadron leader trying to protect the fleet. Alto eventually finds out the squadron leader, along with his high school friends are working for SMS, a private military contractor that handles the jobs that the regular military is too hidebound to do effectively. He must make the difficult choice to join SMS and protect himself and his loved ones.

It’s been a while since an anime series has caused me to geek out like this. It was the balance of realism and the fantastic that got me into anime in the first place, which I guess makes me different from the fans who were attracted by the intricate power fantasies of more popular shows like Dragon Ball Z or Pokemon. I’m really glad we get to see how full-grown Zentraedi fit in to this Post-Terran society on the far reaches of space. Private Military Organizations like Blackwater security are active in real war zones today, so transposing the concept to a starship fleet is also interesting. The animation and mecha are bar-none the best I’ve ever seen. The love-triangle storyline of the original is also present, with both Ranka and Cheryl vying for Alto’s attention. Despite his pretty-boy looks, Alto is so typically male that he’ll be able to fuel romantic misunderstandings for the rest of the series.

There are a few nits I’d like to pick though. Some of the characters seem “borrowed” from the original series or other anime series entirely. Alto, Michael and Luca are basically Vermillion Wing from Macross, only prettier. Ozma Lee is essentially the same as Roy Fokker (although fans of the original must have got a great scare when he uttered “I’ve lost too much blood!”. That was how the original character died). I also hope that some of the major mysteries of Macross get solved, such as the fate of the SDF-2 Megaroad, which went missing 6 years after the original series taking most of the original surviving cast with it. Anime Directors have this obsession with ambiguity that prevents them from properly ending series. The term may come to be known as the “J.J. Abrams’ Lost Syndrome”. Despite all of this, Macross Frontier looks like it will be one of best anime mecha series in a long time. It’s too bad that due to some legal SNAFU with the production company it’s not going to be released until Satan skates to work.

Image courtesy of the Macross Compendium
Macross Frontier © 2007 Big West/Macross F Project, MBS

I’ve been checking out the Young Adult genre for the past little while now. Harry Potter and his ilk have completely changed the publishing industry and apparently “saved reading”, so I wanted to find out what the fuss was all about. Harry Potter was okay, but not without certain nitpicking flaws. James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series was so inexcusably bad that I couldn’t make it through the first few chapters. Sara introduced me to another series by Rick Riordan called Percy Jackson and the Olympians and surprisingly, I couldn’t put it down.

It’s the story of Percy Jackson, a dyslexic, ADHD twelve-year-old boy who one day finds out that his long lost biological father is none other than Poseidon, Greek god of the sea and earthquakes. After a desperate escape to a demi-god summer camp in upstate New York, Percy is assigned a quest to retrieve the Thunderbolt of Zeus from the Underworld, which is now in LA (Mount Olympus is respectively now on the six hundredth floor of the Empire State building. It’s a long story, read the book already). It was heavy on action and self-referential humour, but it was complex enough to get me to read all three books in the space of a week.

Now, as I was going through all of these books for “young” adults, I realized I had gone sour on most adult books of the same genre. Truth be told, most of my friends had as well. The Author of Old Man’s War, Jon Scalzi wrote a really neat post on what is happening to the industry. Without mentioning titles, YA Science Fiction titles are outselling adult titles two to one. YA Fantasy outside of Harry Potter is outselling adult Fantasy by four to one.

So, Young Adult authors are moving books like gangbusters, and we can reasonably assume that an increasing portion of that readership is made up of adults (including yours truly). The question is why? It’s not because the books are shorter either. The Harry Potter series topped out at 900 pages. There hasn’t been a Percy Jackson book under 200 pages. The answer then, is hidden in the adult books.

I’ve also been doing a long, painful parallel study into adult science fiction novels, particularly David Brin’s Uplift War, Verner Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky and Greg Bear’s Forge of God. In all three books I found ideas that would blow your mind. A Galactic culture based on cultivating animals into sentient races, 1000-year-old computer programming traditions, and roving fleets of self-replicating killer robots. The problem is that the books are an utter pain in the ass to read.

In all three of these books, the authors seemed more concerned about getting the science and social concepts right rather than concentrating on writing an entertaining novel. The ideas in these books are great food for thought. You could debate for hours on how the societies and technologies in these books actually work. Unfortunately the characters are either unlikable or unremarkable, the language is obtuse and the conflicts are unsatisfying. In Uplift War, everyone except the sentient chimpanzees speak the same “alien” dialect that’s devoid of any slang or color. If you’ve heard Mr. Spock open his mouth at any time you know what I’m talking about. The Qeng Ho space traders in A Deepness in Sky were so insipid that by the time they had defeated the Fascist Emergents, I just didn’t care any more. I feel really bad about Forge of God, because I loved Greg Bear’s Blood Music. But in this book, so many of the characters are just stalwart experts and scientists. I can’t properly tell the astronomer advising the president from the geologist held in quarantine at the Airforce base. The President in this book decided to lay down arms in front of the impending alien invasion, but the description of his thought process was so mushy that I wasn’t aware of the decision for about two chapters.

It’s important to note that all three of these books are Hugo award winners, the top honor among literary science fiction. Some fans out there may scoff my claims, that these books are too advanced for my primitive brain to handle. However, all of these books are guilty of the sins described in George “1984″ Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language”.

In the essay, Orwell writes that difficult prose with too many long words, jargon and adverbs is not only difficult to read, it might as well destroy western civilization. By making political speeches and decrees unclear and lacking of any strong imagery, you can justify any monstrous action you can imagine. Take George W. Bush’s definition of “freedom”, for instance. The same rules apply to fiction, only we don’t use it to pick leaders, we just don’t want to get bored at the bus stop. It’s impossible to enjoy yourself when you’re puzzling over what “circumlocution” means.

It wasn’t Harry Potter who saved reading. That series was only a conduit, a lightning rod for a public that was tired of bloated prose, threadbare imagery and indulging author’s neuroses. We should keep in mind that it’s enough just to keep it simple, stupid. The very best of the genre will walk the edge of pandering and indulgence. Most Adult SF and Fantasy are on the indulgence end of the equation. If the genre is to survive, then this time a little bit of pander is in order.