Who's the most evil character on Game of Thrones?

This is a toughie.

There are lots of rotters on the show (and I'm explicitly discussing the television adaptation here), from icicle Night Kings to face swapping assassins and sadistic tyrants.

Complicating things further is how you define evil. Is evil in the intent, or the outcome? Is it the scale of the horrors inflicted, or the depths of sadism reached?

We'll try and balance between the two.

Without further ado, here are the candidates and their tongue-in-cheek rating:

"Hey baby, I'm the king. Want to go torture some kittens with me?"

King Joffrey
One of the most hated characters on television in his prime, King Joffrey was our go-to guy for on-screen cruelty. He was a petty, vicious little sadist, and therein lies his saving grace: he thought small.

Going out of the castle and conquering and exterminating entire peoples was out of his comfort zone. He'd be perfectly happy staying home, eating cake and torturing people to death.

Think about all the nasty little things he wanted to do to Sansa, such as presenting Rob Stark's head to her in a box at their wedding. Clearly the little inbred bugger put a lot of thought into that idea. He was inordinately proud of it.

He liked to torment the people around him, emotionally and physically, and the intimacy of their individual level suffering is what he fed off of. The bigger stuff was just a distraction from his real, petty interests.

Besides that, he was a sniveling coward.

So while Joffrey is still my favorite character to hate on the show, his evil is narrow, petty, and small in scope. He's most dangerous to the people in his immediate sphere of influence, not necessarily to the country as a whole, which he mostly left to his grandfather, Tywin, to administer.

Evil Grade: A-

"What do you mean? I AM smiling."

Tywin Lannister
A nasty piece of work, Tywin was smart enough to reign in his viler impulses, subordinating them to a sense of duty and obligation to family. He hated and detested Tyrion, for example, but refrained from killing him because he believed family ties took precedent. This restraint makes him one of G.R.R. Martin's most interesting creations.

A Machiavellian long term thinker, Tywin was tremendously effective and made alliances with his enemies whenever it suited his purposes, then broke them when they didn't. He advanced the interests of the Lannisters Clan with tireless, ruthless, methodical efficiency and got Joffrey, his grandson, seated on the Iron Throne.

A spiritually ugly person, personally immoral and politically amoral, he nevertheless had an interest in maintaining peace and stability in Westeros. He would be what is referred to as a 'Stationary Bandit': it was in his interest to protect the lives of the citizenry. He can't tax dead people. Only the White Walkers can do that.

So he doesn't make the cut either.

Evil Grade: B+

"Don't you know who I am?"

Cersei Lannister
Nasty, petty, and mean, Cersei believes herself immune to repercussions due to her position of status and power. Her thwarted ego makes her feel simultaneously both persecuted and privileged. More focused on small slights and winning control over her brood, Cersei lacks the reptilian emotional disconnect of her father, and is positively indignant when she doesn't get her way. She believes she can play with the best power brokers, but she is too focused on short term gain, and inclined to let emotion taint her judgement. She arms the faith militant, for example, which gains her immediate benefit (bringing down her rival for Tommen's favour) but at a huge long term cost.

Unlike Tywin, she's not able to parse consequences clearly, and as a result hobbles herself.

She wants what she wants when she wants it. And that's generally where her thinking ends.

On the other hand, she did have her husband King Robert murdered, setting into motion a chain of events that would convulse Westeros and lead to tens of thousands of deaths. So that counts for something.

Evil Grade: C+

Oh Ramsay, you are such a wag.

Ramsay Bolton 
A man who gives Joffrey a run for his money in terms of sheer depravity. Ramsay is more hands on than Joffrey, and takes greater risks. He's willing to get his hands dirty, get down in the muck and blood and hack heads off. He enjoys hunting human beings. He spent an entire season torturing Theon, cut the fallen aristocrat's wang off, and then ate a sausage in front of him. Don't say he hasn't got a sense of humor.

But like Joffrey, Ramsay is limited by his own petty, sadistic pursuits. He'll get his hands dirty if he has to, but he'd much prefer to spend his time inflicting emotional and physical pain on people under his immediate control. Every season he spends torturing one guy in his keep is one season less he spends laying waste to the countryside. Nor does he initiate high level action, unless it is practically forced upon him.

He's not a strategic thinker.

He's got potential, though, and his story hasn't yet been brought to a close.

But the odds are against him.

He's clever, not smart.

Evil Grade: A-

Even he looks bored.

Roose Bolton
The man holding Ramsay's leash, he's a colorless calculating machine who'll do whatever is necessary to advance the interests of his house. Practical and opportunistic, but not a high level manipulator. He parasites advantage off the machinations of his betters.

He's got the imagination of a brick, and everything he does is reactive.

A harsh ruler, he just lacks the depraved zeal for evil of Ramsay or Joffrey, although flaying people alive as a house practice takes him from a C to a C+.

Evil Grade: C+

The alpha ape stare.

Gregor Clegane
Otherwise known as The Mountain, Gregor is a beast of a man, but ultimately he's just hired muscle. He might as well have mush for a brain, because he's just going to do what Tywin tells him. Of course, Tywin's a good judge of men, and he knows what Gregor is good for: raping, killing, pillaging, burning, and busting sh*t up. The Mountain enjoys it, and Tywin has need for it. It's win-win. The Mountain is a tool for enforcing the Lannister 'peace', nothing more.

Interestingly, the difference between the living Gregor and the undead, Dr. Franken-Maester monster Gregor is mostly in the complexion.

Evil Grade: C+

"Big brother barbequed my face."

Sandor Clegane (The Hound)
A brute and a thug who believed he lived in a dog-eat-dog world, and had the experience to back up that cynical world view. His brother shoved his face in a fire when he was a kid for taking a toy, and his dad didn't seem to have much of a problem with that. But he grew and grew and went on to be an enforcer for the Lannister clan, like his big bro. He's seen, and done, nasty stuff. While no one would ever call him refined or tender or particularly nice, he had a conscience.

Evil Grade: E

Should I have the chicken, or the beef? Where are my advisors when I need them?

Stannis Baratheon
Stannis is a stiff, colorless and uninspiring. When growing up and playing with his brothers, you can imagine he was always the last kid to be picked to be king. Ambitious and rigid and a stickler for the rules, Stannis is torn between ambition and entitlement and what remains of his tortured conscience. Stannis internalizes events. He can psyche himself up to commit evil acts if he convinces himself it necessary (killing his brother, burning heretics alive, including his wife's brother. Best not to be a brother around Stannis), but his conscience always comes back and nags him.

I'm betting the guy doesn't sleep very well.

He's willing to listen to advice, which is wise, and relies heavily on two people: Melissandre (dressed in blood red) and The Onion Knight. One represents ambition and power and the other conscience and decency.

Eventually Stannis will break with one of them.

The great complicating factor here is that Melissandre believes the real struggle is going to be against the White Walkers. The fire god obviously has a role to play in this battle (as do a certain three dragons), with the fate of humanity at stake. So one could argue that the small scale evils Mel demands (all the human sacrifice, burning people alive, killing your brothers) are small potatoes when the lives of everyone on the planet are at stake. Very Cabin in the Woods. And 'The needs of the many outweigh…'

As is typical, Stannis hasn't made his final decision yet, but I suspect he will have to sooner or later, pushing his grade up or down.

Ultimately, I suspect he's just too conflicted to really, wholeheartedly endorse a path of untrammeled evil.

UPDATE: Wow, was that the wrong call. Mel did warn him he'd have to betray everything he'd ever loved to be king, in which case, why would you want to?

But Stan ruhly, ruhly wants to be king.

I wonder if it will taste like ashes?

Evil Grade: A

"I wants it, I wants it right now. Now, now, NOW!"

Viserys Targaryen
Mad, bad, and entitled, Viserys would have been a great monster if he'd been given the chance to bloom into full adult awfulness. Unlike Joffrey and Ramsay, Vis thought big. And he was a selfish, egomaniacal brat, a preening narcissist who he was willing to sell his own sister into sex slavery to advance his own bid for the Iron Throne. I mean, this guy literally pimped out his sister to conquer the world.

He combined the best of micro and macro level evil.

If he'd managed to lead the Dothraki back into Westeros, you can be sure he would not have been kind to the people he conquered.

There's just one problem: Viserys was an impatient idiot with the emotional sophistication of a five year old. And there are inanimate objects smarter than he was.

His irrepressible sense of entitlement and gargantuan emotional need for recognition and power vastly exceeded his ability, and he just couldn't wait to grow into his ambition. He wanted everything now, now, NOW. Ultimately his ADD egomania undermined and cut short a very promising career in evil.

Sure, petulance and lack of self-control got him a gold crown; it just wasn't the kind he was looking for.

Badly fumbled.

All need, no ability.

Evil Grade: D for dumb

"Would you like to see my boobies?"

Melisandre
A sorceress ('She's a witch!'), dedicated to the Lord of Light, Stannis Baratheon the-one-true-king, and burning people alive, Melisandre likes to screw people and produce murderous shadow demon babies. No one uses sex as a weapon quite like our red hot religious fundamentalist tamale. Or rather, the offspring of sex as weapons.

And yet, ultimately she may be acting to save humanity from extinction, if her one-true-god really is true and a god. The Lord of Light is not a nice god, however, demanding human sacrifice and burning heretics at the stake. But if you have to choose between total extermination at the hands of the White Walkers and the loss of a few gay aristocrats to leeches and shadow demon babies, well, I imagine most people in Westeros are willing to have a few less in the ruling class.

Cabin in the Woods, however, made the opposite choice, picking total extermination.

It's an interesting and ugly moral question: how morally compromised can you be and keep living?

In the world of Westeros, pretty damned f*cking compromised.

But it doesn't get Melisandre any higher a grade.

She's a servant, acting not for her own glory or advancement, but on the instruction of higher powers. She expends lives when it is useful, and is intolerant of other faiths.

Of course, Melisandre's god may just be an evil poseur, and the real salvation will come in the form of Danerys and her dragons. I'm not sure that would surprise me. But Game of Thrones leans dark, so…

Evil Grade: C+

"My distant ancestors will become used car salesmen."

Littlefinger
Now here's a guy who marries Machiavelli with the impish charisma of a Baltimore politician. He seems so obsequious, like the Brit star of the original House of Cards. So unctuous he sets your teeth on edge, yet at the same time he's manipulating rings around you.

If Ned Stark thought one step ahead, Cersei thinks two steps ahead, Danerys thinks five steps ahead, and Tywin thinks ten steps ahead, then Littlefinger thinks a hundred ahead. He's figuring out the end of the chess game from your first move.

Littlefinger has been manipulating events in Westeros from the very beginning. He was in on getting Robert Baratheon assassinated (which got the whole bloodbath-brawl for the crown going), betrayed and brought down Ned Stark, and helped kill King Joffrey. He's had his sticky little digits in just about every murderous machination in the last five seasons.

G.R.R. Martin has set up Littlefinger and Varys as polar opposite manipulators in the Royal Court: Varys represents order, and Littlefinger chaos. It was spelled out in no uncertain terms when the two sparred over their visions for the country in an otherwise empty throne room. Littlefinger says flat out he views chaos 'as a ladder' and as such seeks to foster and benefit from it as much as possible.

And he's right. Chaos is a ladder. A mechanism for injecting murderous psychopaths into the very top rungs of society, because the rules fall into abeyance, social niceties no longer need be obeyed, and the most ruthless and cutthroat can unleash their inner monster and let it run roughshod over the world. Which is why someone as conniving, ruthless, amoral, ambitious and manipulative like Littlefinger likes disrupting the status quo. The system would otherwise freeze him out.

As an outsider, Littlefinger had no chance of ruling Westeros. Under King Robert, it was unipolar. By killing the king, the country became multipolar, divided, and chaos unfolded. Pieces were removed from the board one by one in a very bloody process, as we've seen unfold over the last three seasons.

Now he's closer to actual power than he ever was before.

Littlefinger's willing to murder both intimates and faceless millions so long as it advances his agenda and clears out the corrupt aristocracy in the process.

But he cannot be trusted at all.

Littlefinger is smarter than Tyrion, more manipulative than Cersei, more ruthless than Tywin, more charismatic than Roose, more likable than Ned, and more resourceful than Varys.

Unlike many of the other characters, Littlefinger has taken a weak hand and turned it into a strong one. He's like the McGyver of chaos, able to bring down governments using an elastic band and piece of chewing gum. His competitors, such as Joffrey, wouldn't be able to seize power and influence unless it was handed directly to them.

Littlefinger creates opportunity (ie. chaos).

He's the uber character, and the recent wars in Westeros wouldn't have happened without him.

Unfortunately, Littlefinger's incredible skill set make him come across more as a plot device, an engine to move the plot forward, than a real human being. Ultimately he is too cool a cucumber, too perfect in his manipulations to seem fully real compared to flawed, fallible characters around him. His abilities are preternatural, and his inside knowledge of the world seems more like that of the writer himself than a character contained within it.

He's flat.

But that's just a quibble.

Evil Grade: A+

"Yeah, that's right, look what I can do, biatch."

The Night King
The big bad of the entire series, the 'ice' in A Song of Ice and Fire, the Night King's full potential is yet untapped. He hasn't had more than two or three scenes in five seasons, so his ability to express his inner evil has been seriously limited. Stuck in the barren tundra, he hasn't been given the opportunity to shine, at least, not yet.

The question is whether or not we should judge him as a character or as a force of nature. We know so little of the White Walkers. What are they? Can we judge them as humans, or are their interests so different that the ordinary rules no longer apply? Do they think, or just act? Does the guy even talk?

Does it even matter?

His capacity for destruction is obviously great, as we saw with the zombie avalanche last week. But what about betrayal? Lies? Deceit? Sadism? Cruelty? All those evil things. Does this guy do anything other than kill people and raise them up from the dead to kill more people? That's evil, but it's kind of boring, one-minded evil.

I mean, why is he even doing this? Will we ever know? Does he even know? Does George?

I suspect the White Walkers are more of a primordial force, an expression of Thanatos itself, much as The Lord of Light is an expression of fire, the passion of life, which puts them outside our usual moral evaluations.

The effect of a meteor strike might be described as evil, but as a force of nature there was never any intent. It had no choice. No free will.

The lack of motivation and the single-mindedness of The Night King's actions makes him less interesting than Littlefinger, his nearest human competitor.

The worst thing would be if Littlefinger became The Night King.

Now that would be delightfully bad.

Being determined and focused in your evil can be a good thing for a villain, but The Night King takes this too far and becomes less interesting because of it.

Evil Grade: A

So there you have it.

Littlefinger is, hands down, the most evil man in Westeros. He's a medieval fantasy world mish-mash of Machiavelli, Josef Stalin, Mao, and Hitler all rolled into one compact, mousy package.

Ed Wood's Attitude

Some days, don't ya just feel like Ed Wood? Like you're meeting Orson Welles, only you're in dress?

Fabulous scene.

My other favourite has Ed on the phone with a studio executive:

"Worst film you've ever seen, eh? Well, my next one will be better!… Hello?"

Magnum 'Mad Max on Crack' Thrax available FREE for limited time!

It's a wild, insane trip into a post-apocalypse where fantasy and sci-fi superscience collide. As Arthur C. Clarke said, it's hard to tell the difference between the two at a certain point. You know, depending on your perspective and all that sort of lovely subjective perspective thang.

See the result of human peccadilloes powered by limitless technology, of our highest aspirations and accomplishments being harnessed to facilitate our most base desires. Hello, internet! It's the goofiest, silliest, most relentlessly action filled rocket into funtime you'll read all week.

Well. Depending on what else you read. It's subjective, after all, this opinion stuff. So don't read any Pratchett or Douglas Adams. Or any of the Python crew. Or anything you think is really, really funny. That could bugger my whole claim. Just read, I don't know, Martin Heidegger and instruction manuals or something.

Preferably instruction manuals by Martin Heidegger.

Anyway, the madcap lunacy is all wrapped up in tons of pulse-pounding action and sprinkled with outrageous, dry humor.

That's right: outrageous, dry humor. It can be done. Give it a read. You'll see. Green eggs and ham, baby.

You might like it.

Sale lasts only until June 8th, 2015.

Time is running out, my friends, in more ways than one: the apocalypse could be upon us at any moment, and afterwards you'll be too busy spray painting your hockey gear black and gelling your mohawk to get any reading done.

Get your copy.

Game of Thrones: Hardhome review

What you got?

SPOILERS aplenty.

The dam has broken.

For awhile it was feeling like the show was going nowhere, just running in place like the Red Queen.

Now the setup is paying off.

Last week we saw the tables turned on Cersei (Lena Headey), everyone's favorite ice queen (she and the Night King should really get together. They'd create some lovely, icy blonde babies together).

Cersei's been playing with fire for some time now, unwisely arming the Faith Militant and unleashing them on the city of King's Landing for her own selfish purposes. They've taken down her rival for Tomen's affection, Margaery, but now the Faith Militant have turned upon her and chucked her into a cell. Adding to the sting, Cersei had just gloated over her imprisoned rival, and even approved of Margaery's dreadful prison conditions.

Whoops.

Foresight and wisdom are not Cersei's strong suit.

Always with the short term thinking, Cersei is, unlike her Machiavellian father Tywin (Charles Dance) who played the long game and stayed his hand when it came to short term gratification of his personal hatreds.

Cersei? She just can't help, or stop, herself.

Now she's in the same state as Margaery (Natalie Dormer), just a different cell, and facing far, far more serious charges: incest, treason, and murder.

In fact, murdering the king would count as High Treason.

Now, G.R.R. Martin has always been good at giving characters interesting and contrasting traits, and then educating us all by letting the consequences play out. That's what good storytelling does.

In Hardhome, Cersei finds her usual coping strategies (death threats, sweet lies, faux sympathy, assassination) don't work on her religious fundamentalist jailers. She's alienated so many people no one is keen on rescuing her. The only exception to that, her brother Jamie, has problems of his own: he's in a cell himself.

Cersei is advised to confess by her Dr. Frankenstein-esque pet Maester, but her contempt for the High Sparrow prevents her from considering confession as an option. Given that she's licking water off a filthy dungeon floor, how long that will last is an open question.

Not long is my guess.

Tomen is obviously doomed by narrative logic. He's not going to survive any effort to free his wife or mother. Cersei's efforts to secure her own position and undermine Margery will kill her last, precious boy as surely as if she'd stabbed him in the heart herself. That's the iron law of irony, more sure and certain than any motto governing the Iron Islanders.

Not that Cersei will accept any responsibility for this. She's very good at sloughing that sort of thing off onto others (Tyrion) and then trying to have them murdered.

Danerys has a scintillating one on one meeting with Tyrion (Peter Dinklage), which doesn't disappoint. I was concerned given some of the plot oddities and sub-par dialogue in recent episodes. For example, the slavers were going to sell Tyrion's cock for a fortune, until they let it go for a coin. And the slave owner who purchased them had his whole stock slaughtered in a qualification fight. How's that profitable? Nor did the last meeting between Littlefinger and Cersei sit well with me. Wasn't up to the show's usual standards, in my opinion. She just swallowed his scheming lies whole, and she's usually less trusting and more cynical than that. In a minute or two, just on his say so, she's sold out her allies in the north and made Littlefinger the new warden-to-be.

What the?

Thankfully the dialogue between Danerys and Tyrion crackled and felt real and authentic to the characters.

This looks like the beginning of a great friendship, as Captain Renault might say.

And Tyrion gave some decent advice regarding the doomed Jorah Mormont, who's being consumed by creeping grayscale. The actors played the scene well; Danny got across deep hurt and Jorah the final resignation of a doomed romantic.

Their friendship is over and there's just no bringing it back.

Arya's beginning to explore her new, more casual relationship with identity, swapping them in and out as directed by the Many Faced God's minion Jaqen. She seems to enjoy her new role as actor slash assassin.

Back in the far north, Sansa confronts Reek over his betrayal of her and her family, and surprisingly, he reveals he did it to protect her. He's been so crushed and demolished as a human being he believes Ramsay knows all and sees all, and that if she'd tried to escape, she'd just be tracked down by Ramsay and nailed to an X and tortured for a whole TV season. Theon's a miserable creature, on top of being despicable, and he's brought it all on himself with overweening ambition, hubris and treachery. He betrayed his friends, seized Winterfell, and murdered little boys. I'd actually forgotten about that. He burned two innocent little kids to cover his incompetence at losing the Stark boys.

He had it pretty good and he threw it all away to try and please his unpleasable biological father, a grumpy hard-ass.

Meanwhile the flesh flaying Boltons are looking to sit tight in Winterfell and let 'King' Stannis freeze in the snow, which is a solid strategy given that Stannis doesn't seem to have much of a supply system going and they can't live off the land in the barren north during winter.

Ramsay, however, is looking for a little glory of his own, and proposes a commando mission with twenty men to presumably, assassinate Stannis.

I doubt the show runners will let Ramsay die far away from Winterfell and out of sight of Sansa. It wouldn't be as fulfilling. Theon and Sansa should at least be present at his death, and I doubt he'll take them along on his mission. Nor is it likely Ramsay will be the one to kill Stannis. Wouldn't be dramatic enough.

He's chum for Brienne.

Hard home from the air

The best part of the episode was the most contrived in terms of timing. No sooner has Jon arrived at Hardhome and convinced a fraction of the Wildlings to join the Crows than the White Walkers attack. Perhaps a little too convenient, but then, last second timing is de rigeur in film and television.

And if you ever say, "I'm right behind you, I promise," well, you won't be. Narrative law. Just don't say it. Especially not to cute kids and without a signed contract for more than one episode.

But that's a quibble.

The sequence more than makes up for the convenient timing with audacity and originality. It's freaking magnificent.

At first, no one is sure what's happening. The subtlety here really makes it.  It just looks like a kind of avalanche of dirty snow. People stand about gaping, but before long, we realize it's a tidal wave of undead flinging themselves over the cliffs, and then all hell breaks out and the running and screaming starts.

The ensuing battle is great stuff, feature film level, even better than feature film, and top line feature film at that (better than World War Z or Age of Ultron, effects wise and in terms of direction and editing), the best and most disturbing (think zombie kids) battle sequence since Stannis stormed King's Landing way back in season three.

My favourite part? Wun Wun stomping on a skeleton, turning it into skelepancake. He's effortlessly badass.

More Wun Wun! More!

Jon's mano-a-mano deathmatch with the Walker is also great, especially that look they share before one goes down for the count, and it gives a much needed personal scale element to the whole fight.

As Jon and his friends escape back to their ships, he locks eyes with the series big bad, the Night King himself, who raises up all the freshly butchered Wildlings as fresh wights.

What a show-off.

For every man the living lose, the White Walkers get stronger. Now they have the largest army in the world.

The episode repeatedly hits on the issue of belief: Jorah believes in Danerys, Danerys gives Tyrion reason for living. Cersei believes she will soon be freed, her captor believes in her righteousness, Olly believes in Sam, Sam believes Jon, Jon believes in the common interests of humanity, the Wildlings believe in Giantsbane. I love how the show runners are structuring the episodes around such compelling themes: betrayal, belief, loyalty, power, trust, etc. Love it! Shows real depth of thought and challenges the characters in ways many shows don't.

That's all topped off by Maester Frankenstein who dryly says: 'Belief is so often the death of reason.'

Ain't it, though?

Reason is emotion's bitch, as another more pointedly put it.

And of course, the undead minions of the White Walkers require no faith. They are beyond faith, following without question, hope, pain, food or shelter.

And after taking Hardhome, there are an awful lot more.

If they get beyond the wall, I wonder if the writers can come up with a plausible way to stop them.

The one word that comes to mind?

Dragons!

When killed, his clothes turn to ice along with his body.

Come to think of it, I think Dr. Hibbert on The Simpsons once had wise words regarding fire...

UPDATE: Check out how it was made:

Fan-freaking-tastic!

Episode six, you are forgiven.

First lady of the Post-Apocalypse: The Statue of Liberty

Since at least Planet of the Apes, the Statue of Liberty has been a staple of post-apocalyptic fiction. It's now a de rigeur cliche to include her, in all her battered copper glory.

According to the People's Oracle, otherwise known as Wikipedia, the statue represents the Roman goddess Libertas and holds a tabula ansata, upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence.

From heel to top of her head is 111 feet. If you include the raised arm, she reaches a staggering 151 feet and one inch and weighs in at 450,000 pounds.

That's 53 feet higher than the Colossus of Rhodes (98 feet), and 48 feet higher than the Colossus of Nero (103 feet). Still dwarfed by the largest statue in the world, The Spring Temple Buddha in China, which is a staggering 420 feet high.

But no one bothers blowing it up onscreen.

That honour belongs to Lady Liberty, and she's been at it long enough she should have her own IMDB page.

She's been dismembered by giant monsters, blown to bits by aliens, tossed about like a plaything by super villains, frozen, buried in the desert, submerged beneath the ocean, and otherwise ill treated.

For my money, Planet of the Apes is her finest performance. So stoic. After that, perhaps Cloverfield (the rolling bowling ball head was an unexpected, gutsy choice), then A.I. (she held back here, giving an understated performance that only included her raised torch. Classy.), Deep Impact, and then perhaps Independence Day. She's been in a number of exploitation and knock-off films as well, but we won't talk about those.

You can see some post-apocalypse Lady Liberty below, culled from book, film and concept art.

She does lose her head frequently. 

Looks like she lent her arm out to A.I. at this time.

There it is.

It does get around.

A collection of Lady Liberty's appearances.

Finally, she's gotten savvy. When the next disaster arrives, expect her to be well prepared:

An industry of extremes

The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) has released a report on writer income, and it's not good. On average, income has fallen 27% since 1998 (accounting for inflation). And writers say they are working harder to even make that.

"The Writers’ Union believes these results represent a cultural emergency for Canada. For 81% of respondents, income from writing would not allow them to live above the poverty line, and the average writer’s income ($12,879) is a full $36,000 below the national average. This despite the fact that writers have invested in post-graduate education in large numbers."

You can read the whole report here.

They paint a dire picture. Of course they would, given their role, but that doesn't mean they're wrong.

Nevertheless, 'cultural emergency' is obvious hyperbole.

The report also contains quotes like: “Making a living as a writer has become tenuous and precarious."

Now, let's be fair: when has that not been true?

Well. Advocates must advocate.

On the other hand, there's John Scalzi's recent book deal: Tor Books will pay him $3.4 million for 13 novels over 10 years.

Yowza! That's awesome. Awesome enough to have made mainstream news. Which is great for a sci-fi author. How often does that happen?

Giants and gnats, that's what we've got. Always been that way, always will be.

Nature of the arts.

In which case, am I really saying anything here? Things are the same, only more so?

A blogger's gotta blog.

Actor salaries have skyrocketed since Jack Nicholson scored a cool $20 million for Batman. Now we're also seeing polarization in film budgets. You can get a $200 million film made, or a $10 million dollar film, but not a mid-range budget film. At least, they're not as easy to get green-lit as they used to be.

Mad Max: Fury Road vs. The Avengers: Age of Ultron

Junkyard Wars Rising

Joss Whedon and George Miller are awesome. Creative geniuses, both.

But aesthetically, Fury Road kicks Avenger ass.

Fury has an absolutely stunning, incredibly coherent visual look, filled with magnificent vistas and worn-in costumes and machinery. The cinematography is awe inspiring in its simplicity: the color palette switches between hot orange, muddy metal, and cool blues.

It's GORGEOUS.

The ominous money shot: George knows when to hold it

Avengers: Age of Ultron, an even more expensive movie with greater resources to call upon, is hard pressed to compete. It's a mish-mash of looks, a cacophony of cluttered visuals flashing by at light speed. It tries to do too much and it's exhausting as a result. Great individual designs, but together they become overwhelming.

The vision behind Fury Road is laser sharp. The vehicles are characters in and of themselves, and the environments are emotionally evocative: the great fortress of Immorten speaks of power, egomania, and oppression, while the vast desolate wastes reflects Max's own emotional isolation. It's great.

With Ultron, you've got competing voices all struggling to be heard, which makes the film feel less cohesive. That and the fact they cut almost an hour from the run time of the first cut, which clocked in at over three hours.

Yet if anyone could pull off a blockbuster like this, Marvel's mighty flagship, you'd think it'd be Joss Whedon. As skilled as he is humble, he nevertheless struggled with this one:

"The story’s there, the structure’s there, everybody basically knows what they’re going through, but there’s still some scenes that absolutely need to be much better. This happened on the first one because I came in so late and it happened on this one because I am an idiot. I am a stupid. And so I have that to deal with, but it’s good because it makes me feel guilty about how late the script is when someone says, ‘What am I reacting to?’ and I say, ‘Something I wrote on another page that you haven’t seen yet, oops! It’s ok, I’m totally on top of this. I’m the leader of the whole movie!’”

Welcome to the chaos of movie making, where even the veterans are flying by the seat of their pants.

A surfeit of characters

Joss Whedon has talked openly about how he clashed with Marvel executives. To get scenes he liked (Scarlett Witch's dream), he had to put in one he wasn't so keen on (the cave).

Says Whedon:

"The dreams were not an executive favorite either — the dreams, the farmhouse, these were things I fought to keep … With the cave, it really turned into: they pointed a gun at the farm’s head and said, “Give us the cave, or we’ll take out the farm,” — in a civilized way. I respect these guys, they’re artists, but that’s when it got really, really unpleasant.”

There was a lot of compromise.

Working on a big budget studio blockbuster is unquestionably a stressful experience, requiring the diplomatic skill of a modern day Metternich, and Patton's instinct for knowing when and where to pick your battles. Something the young Josh Trank may not have been up to with Fantastic Four, unfortunately.

In some ways, it's amazing any of these behemoth films turn out. Ever.

George Miller's visual feast cost a whopping $150 million, which allowed his imagination runs riot over the post-apocalyptic landscape. But that's the key thing: it's the imagination and vision of one man: George Miller. He conceived Mad Max, wrote and directed the first film, and is the first and last word on the whole Mad Max universe. There's nobody else. So the film isn't cluttered up by sops to an expanded universe. It isn't burdened by all the concepts and characters and plots created by dozens of other writers, over a period of several decades and across hundreds of issues of comic books.


I'd love to know what Whedon would have produced had he been given free reign. He can make almost anything work. He's like The Cleaner (from La Femme Nikita) of movies gone wrong, and has been parachuted in as a script doctor to save pictures that are spiraling out of control, such as Toy Story, which went on to become a huge hit and an iconic film. Thanks to Joss, it's known for having a Pixar perfect tale.

Unfortunately, Age of Ultron feels cluttered. Action scenes are lightning fast, with cuts so quick you barely have enough time to register what's happening. You have no time to savor the art. I don't know if this is to cover deficiencies in the CGI, reduce costs, or shorten playing time, but my old eyeballs had a hard time keeping up with the quick cut mayhem.

It was like being visually bludgeoned for two hours.

Which is not to say that Fury Road doesn't also indulge in music video paced quick cuts. It does, and lots: according to The Verge, Fury Road has 2,700 cuts in two hours, while The Road Warrior had 120 cuts in 90-minutes. So twenty two cuts per minute. That just seems to be the way it is now, and all I can say is that I hope it doesn't get any worse.

Yet Miller has the good sense to know when to slow down and let us soak up the wonder of it all. There's one particular shot of a magnificent oncoming storm where he pulls back and just lets the camera sit on it for a moment, letting the audience soak in the scale.

In terms of story, Ultron has too much, and Fury Road too little.

SPOILERS FOR FURY ROAD

Basically, Fury Road is the chase sequence from The Road Warrior expanded to feature length and lovingly shot with a massive budget. There's some story wrapping around it, but that's it, and it's not much. Instead of gas, it's people they're after.

It's an excuse for a two hour long chase scene.

From an emotional point of view, it's pretty slight, and not nearly as rewarding as the second Max film, which built up the characters more.

Which isn't to say they don't make an impression in Fury Road.

I loved the first scene Theron has with Mad Max, the way she played it with a slow, quiet, deadly burn. She looks at him the way a predator looks at prey; you can feel the killer intent behind her eyes.

The War Boy, however, stole the show, with his zany fanaticism and wonderful quips. 'Oh, what a wonderful day!' 

The pregnant bride of Joe was a close third. She used her body as a shield for the others, placing herself between them and Immorten's gun, daring him to do something rash.

Great stuff and deftly executed with minimal dialogue. Yet I wanted more.

On the other hand, Fury is visually magnificent. A feast for the eyes that deserves to be seen in a theatre, or even IMAX. The stunts alone are mind blowing.

Bungie catapult

But after two hours, even that gets a little wearing.

The art direction is flawless. Well. Except for the little girl Max sees which didn't blend well (admittedly I think it was deliberate) and that's a quibble. Everything else works perfectly. It's over the top, bat shit insane, but it works.

Ultron's story by comparison is muddled. Given the number of characters and everything they had to do, that's hardly surprising. Seriously, you'd need a miracle worker to prevent it from feeling cramped.

Unfortunately I never really understood what Ultron wanted, why he hated Tony, or why he went from wanting to seemingly destroy mankind to, instead, making humanity 'evolve'. Was he just a puppet of Thanos?

Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention.

There are great quips in Ultron, as usual with Whedon, and the cast does their duty.

The core characters of Age of Ultron. One, two, three, four, five...

Sadly Hawkeye and Black Widow pale compared to Tony, Banner, Thor, and even goody-two-shoes Captain America. Just not as compelling. The actors don't have nearly as much to work with, character or power wise. The bad guys have to be dialed back when they shift from pummeling demi-gods to mere flesh and blood humans.

With both films, honestly, I could have done with less action, and more character development.

Amazing. Can you believe I just said that?

It surprises me, too.

George Miller was on track at one point to direct a Justice League film, and that may be back on. Will he be as successful with DC's sacred babies as he was with his own IP, or will behind-the-scenes politics fracture the aesthetic integrity of the project?

Perhaps he and Whedon should go for a drink or two before he begins…

Next up: Apples vs. Oranges!