Whiplash: A full throated defense of physical and emotional abuse

"Are we having f*cking fun yet you simpering, whiny little b*tch?!?"

The film is about achieving greatness, and uses two characters to tell the tale: Andrew (Miles Teller) and Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons).

Andrew's a young drummer who dreams of being the next Charlie Parker, so he joins Fletcher’s elite jazz band class at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York City.

Fletcher's tyrannical and emotionally abusive, but also a gifted perfectionist, He runs his class like a demented, obsessive compulsive drill sergeant with a Masters Degree, but it is to a purpose: Fletcher's monomania pushes Andrew past his limits to greatness.

It’s an agenda driven film with a strong point of view.

Our dear, driven Andrew wants to be all that he can be, musically, so he willingly lets Fletcher subject him to pure hell. Andrew even chucks his directionless girl friend overboard so he can dedicate more time to music.

Because music über alles!

There are suicide bombers with less zeal.

Shaffer is an elite school. The best in the country, or so we're told by Andrew. And Fletcher's class is the best of what Shaffer has to offer. Students are ‘free’ to quit and walk away at any time. And yet, they’ve invested copious amounts of money to attend, and it is the path to prestige employment, the realization of their dreams, so… not so simple.

Obviously there is a need to push people to the extreme at elite institutions. It builds toughness and weeds out the weak, which serves a purpose, especially in the military. They strip people down and then rebuild them as part of an integrated team, not only so they can carry out their orders, but better survive them.

But once you accept the filmmaker’s message, where does it lead?

Many of us now work in a global marketplace. People living in areas with a high cost of living must compete with people living in areas with much lower overhead.

So jobs get outsourced overseas.

Because capitalism is competition.

It’s like nature: the best win, the losers become extinct. So to survive, companies must push employees. Hard. That's the mantra of Tiger Moms and drill sergeants. It’s also the message of Terence Fletcher, or more to the point, writer and director Damien Chazelle.

If you don't want your job to go abroad, you'd better be great.

How do we achieve greatness?

Why, Chazelle just gave us the answer: tough love, aka emotional and physical abuse.

Fletcher (the writer / director's mouthpiece) lays it out for us in a monologue:

"Parker's a young kid, pretty good on the sax. Gets up to play at a cutting session, and he fucks it up. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he's laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night, but the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And he practices and he practices with one goal in mind, never to be laughed at again. And a year later, he goes back to the Reno and he steps up on that stage, and plays the best motherfucking solo the world has ever heard. So imagine if Jones had just said: "Well, that's okay, Charlie. That was all right. Good job. "And then Charlie thinks to himself, "Well, shit, I did do a pretty good job." End of story. No Bird. That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that's just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying."

It's good, if blunt, dialogue. The film is full of it.

Whiplash is a full throated roar to bring Basic Training to every workplace. Why? Because if we don’t, we’ll fall behind. We’ll be out competed. Only the hardest will survive.

To the films credit, the cost of this approach is not skipped over: students break down, they cry, and one even commits suicide. As a result, the worrywart administration and the coddler brigade intervene.

The teacher, Fletcher, is sanctioned and driven out.

A safe environment is restored.

Yay.

Butterflies out of bums.

But in the last few seconds of the film, this narrative is inverted with a snap so hard it will give you… well, you know: whiplash.

It's all in a look exchanged between teacher and student, one which signifies realization: Andrew has emerged through the crucible, fully realized, and has now achieved true greatness. Fletcher, the erstwhile villain, is vindicated. The worrywarts and school administration are revealed as simpering weaklings standing in the way of achievement, the very thing an educational institution should be promoting. Instead, they're holding people back from achieving their full potential.

And don't we all want to fulfill our potential?

From a film making point of view, it's brilliant. It breaks the 'Save the Cat' structure that has become so ubiquitous. The entire movie builds to a nonverbal exchange that occurs in the last thirty seconds.

So the film presents us with a choice: you can either have greatness through 'emotional and physical abuse', or you can give up on greatness in order to avoid the harshness of 'tough love'.

"Just relax and enjoy, you worthless, limp-dicked, pansy-assed piece of shit!!!"

The two opposing views have built-in defense mechanisms, starting with slanders: you’re either an abusive tyrant (and I imagine a few other appellations, probably the catch-all 'Fascist') or a simpering weakling, a 'worthless, friendless, faggot-lipped little piece of shit whose mommy left daddy when she figured out he wasn't Eugene O'Neill, and who is now weeping and slobbering all over my drum set like a fucking nine-year old girl!’

As Mr. Fletcher might say.

In fact, he does say that.

Such a charmer.

I'd pay money to see this guy teaching nine-year olds while screaming that they cry like five-year olds. Maybe in the sequel: Terence Fletcher Goes Grade School, Eight Dead, Film at Six.

Get them while they're young, right? In fact, excellence starts in Kindergarten. Fletcher's next monologue practically writes itself...

The real kicker? 

The omission: there is not a single woman in the class.

Fletcher does invite the five-year old daughter of a former student to join his band, though.

Boy, does she have something to look forward to.

Chapter 9 of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

Happy Magnum Mayhem Monday! Here comes an extra big serving of Magnum Thrax, thanks to our sponsors: caffeine, carbohydrates, and cigarettes. Remember, I eat unhealthy so you don't have to.

The laboratory was a vast domed room, strewn with machinery in various states of disassembly, vehicle parts mixed with computers, reploboxes, scanners, generators, and the rusted, partial frame of a robot colossus. Thrax’s buddy Kal Ecto Grammer stood in a small oasis at the centre of the clutter, bent over an atomic analyzer.

Thrax weaved his way through canyons of teetering junk to reach him.

“You have to do something about all this crap,” said Thrax, gesturing at the teetering piles.

“Kal exhibits all the signs of a hoarder,” observed Darwin. “A mental dysfunction of obsessive compulsive personality types. Somehow it remains in the gene pool.”

Kal took off a pair of bulky goggles that were attached to the analyzer by wires.

Thrax looked at him. Kal had narrow features, a beak like nose, and a wild shock of red hair. His eyes bulged in their sockets. Freckles speckled his face like a red Milky Way. He was a genius, and Thrax knew he also had a dozen quantum processing units implanted under the skin of his neck, allowing his mind to hold a thousand times as much information as the one hundred terabytes of an ordinary human mind. A fan of ancient attire, Kal wore an oil stained white shirt, waistcoat, and black slacks.

He was such a nerd, thought Thrax.

“I may need this stuff,” Kal finally replied, irked. “Soon as you throw it out, you need it. Murphy’s Law.”

Thrax settled on a stool across from Kal, who pointed at a black sphere resting on top of an old operating table. The sphere gave no reflection. Light drowned in it.

Kal tapped it with a mag-screwdriver. “You see that? What do you think it is? Aht! Don’t ask Darwin!”

“A big black basket ball?”

Kal snorted. “Shows how much you know, monkey man. That, my friend, is a top of the line Dynamic Matter Corporation Anamorphic Multi-Function Battlefield Superiority Robot.” Kal caressed it with affection. “A nanite shell with three hundred different configurations, guided by a diffuse quantum AI, onboard nanofactory that can produce its own ammunition, or drones. Deployable electromagnetic rail gun or five hundred gigawatt lasers.” He whistled. “Thing of beauty.”

“Huh. Hurts my eyes. Does it work?”

Kal sighed and gave it a smack. “Of course not, stupid. Totally inert.” He skipped back to his analyzer and perched on the padded seat. “Three hundred and twenty-seven hours and thirty-two minutes.”

“Sorry?” Thrax wasn’t getting it.

Kal grew cross and gestured at the sphere. “Hours! Try to keep up. That’s how long I’ve spent trying to reactivate it. Thrax my friend, with this puppy we could take over the continent. The world! If we just had the right command nanites. But we don’t. So it just sits here, taunting me!” He leapt to his feet. “God it’s so frustrating, you have no idea! Confounded at every turn.” He ticked off points on his fingers. “Tried forging, reverse engineering, hacking, rebooting, everything. Even then we don’t have activation codes or passwords.” He slumped down on the stool again and looked at Thrax wearily. “No rest for the wicked, pal.”

Thrax shrugged, playing dumb. “So it is useless. Throw it out.”

Kal started to go apoplectic, then stopped as if a switch had been thrown. “What do you want, Thrax? I’m very busy with the universe and stuff.”

Thrax smiled inwardly and slipped the dodecahedron out of his pocket. Tossed it in the air, casually, like a coin or marble.

Kal’s eyes narrowed with mild interest. Then opened wide. “Benefactor balls,” he hissed, and snatched the dodecahedron out of the air. He placed his nose an inch away from the tiny device. Grabbed an analyzer and set it against his eye. Gaped. “Can’t be. Yet... the level of precision is incredible. A thousand times the best machine accuracy.”

Bingo! Anything tech was catnip for Kal. Thrax’s heart leapt. Perhaps it was something valuable. Valuable enough to save his family. Maybe even something that worked. “It is important, isn’t it?”

Kal looked him in the eye for a moment, like Thrax had just said the most insane thing possible. The look turned to one of pity for an intellectual ant. Thrax could feel the disdain. Kal stood up and raced over to a pile of junk, throwing bits of machinery aside as he dug.

“I don’t like the look he gave us,” commented Darwin. “I’ve tried sending in probes through your finger tips into the object. It destroyed them on contact. Searching through databases. Still no match.”

“What?” said Thrax aloud. “What is it, anyway? A smaller version of your sphere, only with corners?”

“Sit still!” shouted Kal over his shoulder. “Don’t move a muscle. Don’t even think. And turn Darwin off.”

“Aw, hey, he’s not gonna...”

“NOW! Do it!” There was an edge in Kal’s voice. Even panic. It sent a chill down Thrax’s spine.

“Of all the nerve,” muttered Darwin. “He’s locking me out of the mainframe.”

The lights dimmed. Massive blast doors began to grind shut over the exits. Air vents slammed shut, drains clacked closed. A sphere of energy engulfed the black battle sphere. The room was doused in red light. Thrax tripped the neural trigger and shut Darwin off. Again. “Okay, okay. Done. You’re freaking me out.”

Kal raced back, holding a short tube. There was an impression at one end.

“You should be. God in a droplet of metal. ‘One ring to rule them all.’ G.R.R. Martin. Where did you find it?”

Thrax shrugged. “Android gave it to me.” “Android? What android?”
“There was a...”

“Yes, yes,” Kal waved his hands and shut his eyes. “Got it. Downloaded the recordings. Nice shot, by the way. Fascinating. They’re waking the android up now. Eight-Oh-Nine. Hmm. I want to take alook at his cortex. Nope, blocked.” Kal opened his eyes. “You showed this to anyone? I didn’t see it in the feed.”

“Pocketed it before I got out of the snail squid’s guts. Only you know.” said Thrax, rubbing the dodecahedron between his thumb and forefinger.

“Easy now,” said Kal. He placed the tube atop it; the impression fit the dodecahedron perfectly. “Fits. One point, Kal. Put it down on this.” He bent down and knocked a bunch of junk off a small containment field platform, a low cylinder about a foot high.

Thrax gently did so, and they both kneeled over it conspiratorially. “What does it do?” Thrax whispered, as that seemed the right thing to do.

There was a crash behind them, followed by a loud, thrumming hum. They both slowly looked behind them as a domed, cylindrical robot with a tapered bottom rose up out of a pile of junk, its old antigrav pods emitting a high pitched, strained whine. Cables and wiring cascaded off and fell into a jumble below. Six photon receptors clustered set in the oil streaked dome flicked open, lit, and focused on the dodecahedron. Steam jetted out of heat sinks on its flanks. Beneath, the air shimmered and wobbled.

“Friend of yours?” asked Thrax.

“I’d hoped. My pet cryobot,” said Kal a hushed voice. “Not so dead after all...” “Does anything you have work?”

Six circles on the surface of the bot unsealed, three per side, and ribbed tentacles whizzed out, tipped by black pods packed with gleaming manipulators. The tools deployed and clacked and buzzed and sparked while the arms undulated in the air before the two humans.

Thrax stood up. “Uh, Kal? Do I kill it?” Robotic eyes buzzed and focused on Thrax.

“Of course not,” hissed Kal, alarmed. “Don’t let it hear you. I’ve been hoping its repair cycles would turn over. Do you have any idea how valuable an antique like this is? Some crazy sorcerors would pay primo for this. Even before the collapse they were rare. Obsolete, really.” He bent down and edged towards it, peering at a circular window recessed in the sculpted belly, coated by a film of semi-opaque ice. There was a hint of a face behind it. “Hey, baby. How you feeling, huh?” He grinned back at Thrax and rubbed his hands together in glee. “This is awesome. Systems seem back on line. Maybe a little disoriented.” He waved at the little window. “Hey in there. Welcome back, Colonel...” He peered at the name engraved beneath the window, “...Stephen Houston!”

Thrax was unimpressed. He had no interest in some long dead head-in-a-bot. Thing could prove dangerous. Might way a ton, maybe two. No obvious weapons, but those arms looked nasty, and the sheer weight of the thing alone... He looked about nervously. “Kal, buddy, you got any weapons here?”

“Eh? Sure, all over the place. But none of them work. Be quiet! You’ll spook our friend,” Kal tutted. “These machines were used to preserve terminally ill humans, like a cryotube, only ambulatory, independent, run by an uploaded version of the patient’s personality. Cryostasis for paranoid types.” He turned back to the cryoborg. “No offense intended.”

The cryobot’s vocoder belted out a series of gruff, unintelligible sounds. Aggressive sounding. It began to edge forward. Junk beneath its antigrav field jittered, spun and spat outward.

“You know, I’m not sure the Colonel is entirely with it.”

“I’m thinking the Colonel’s hostile. He’ll take over The Pit. Let me blow it up.”

“Wait. Just... wait, okay? ‘Blow it up.’ That’s your answer for everything.” Kal tapped his forehead with an open palm. “Must have been reactivated by...” Kal paused in midsentence. He looked back at the dodecahedron, then at Thrax. “That’s not good.” He lunged and hit a stud on the containment field cylinder.

A force field sparkled to life, shimmering around the dodecahedron.

The cryobot reacted immediately: it bellowed a stream of guttural synthetic machine expletives and plowed forward like a self-propelled brick. A tentacle spun out, snagged Kal by the scruff of his neck and flung him into a junk pile. He toppled off and fell down into a rusted tub. He grabbed the rim, tried to haul himself up, only destabilized the pile in the process. It collapsed with a roar; he spilled out and was carried helplessly away on the junk avalanche, spinning over metal grates.

The cryobot stopped before the dodecahedron. Tentacles slashed repeatedly against the energy field to no avail. Thrax approached, then suddenly feinted forward, drawing limbs towards him. “Come on, corspicle head!” He chucked a wrench at it, and glanced off the dome harmlessly. The cryobot turned and jabbed with its metal tentacles. Thrax anticipated, and dodged easily, then ran down a junk tunnel, scanning for useful items. Lasers. Blasters. Kinetic energy weapons. Rocks. His heart leapt when he spotted the grip of a maser canon. It was jammed under a washing machine. With all his strength he pulled at it, freeing it. His triumphant grin faded when he noticed the front firing nozzle was gone. He dropped it with disgust, grabbed a crowbar, and prepared to face his enemy. “This wouldn’t be happening if you threw out your damn junk, Kal! Just saying!”

On a pillar of shimmering steam, the cryo-cyborg or cryobot or whatever it was closed in.

“Emergency. Command nodule,” its vocoder blared. “Release. Priority. Release nodule. Comply. Alternative: termination. Acknowledge.” The machine blocked the tunnel, all six arms deployed before it, each manipulator pod whirring with deadly diamond saws. “Addendum: medical assistance required.”

Thrax scanned the junk tunnel walls and noted two key points as tentacles launched forward, testing his reflexes. It moved forward, closer. Thrax struck with his crowbar, not against the cryobot but the junk, knocking out lynchpoints on the left and right tunnel wall. The piles collapsed inward in front of him, burying the bot. It blared alarm. Steam poured out from the jumbled mass as he clambered up and over it. “Take five, buddy,” he said, patting the junk mountain. Hot wet air seeped through it and drenched his clothes and hair. “Kal! I took care of the stiff.”

“Here!” Kal was crouched by his workbench, trying to speed reassemble an antimatter pistol. “Keep it distracted!” His hands trembled as he put the primer into the suspension clasp. “Knew something like this would happen,” he muttered angrily. “Stupid! The other way around. Should have seen it, so should have... Course they all would!” The primer slipped and fell to the floor. “Shit!”

Thrax tried to reply, but a clatter behind him drowned out his voice. The cyber-thing wasn’t beaten after all. Thrax’s combat sixth sense buzzed; he flung himself into the air. Three tentacles struck where he’d been standing, plowing through the floor plates. Coolant jetted upward from a ruptured pipe. Buzz saws screamed and cut metal. Foam spilled out of the hole and dried in place. Thrax landed awkwardly, hurting his ankle. But the foam gave Thrax an idea. He ran to the edge of the central clearing where Kal stacked his emergency safety tools. Fire extinguishers, dampners, the works.

The cyborg’s vocoder squawked again. “Life support system malfunction. Urgent. Activate insurance policy. Do not interfere. Imperative.” It rotated in place, turning back to the dodecahedron. “Surrender. Obey. Martial law: invoked.”

Thrax grabbed a spray sealant canister.

The cyber-whatever returned and hovered beside the shielded dodecahedron. It tossed away a cut out section of floor plating and pushed a tentacle pod tip inside. Buzz saws severed the power lines. The containment field faltered and winked out. Manipulators spilled out of a tentacle pod and snatched it up. Another tentacle edged toward it, unfolding an infoport.

“This is bad! If it accesses that, we’re all dead!” shouted Kal. His fingers trembled. He couldn’t finish the reassembly! If he didn’t...

The infoport connected. Strange, mechanical sounds came from every corner of the lab. Machinery that had been inert for centuries slowly began to throb back to life. Lights flickered on. Engines whined. Weapons primed themselves.

“We’re too late! It’s going to have the ultimate robo-trash army,” breathed Kal, horrified. He slumped. “We’re totally dead.” He looked about for his flask for a last drink.

“Never say die,” replied Thrax fiercely, and he catapulted forward, clutching the canister. He dove between the cyborg’s slashing tentacles and pressed himself against its hull, then shoved the spray nozzle into its heat sink and closed the contact. A great gush of foam filled the hot slats. Excess flabs of goop poured out. Thrax pushed around the rim, ducking tentacle blows, sliding the nozzle erratically up and down. The cryocyborg’s heat alarm sounded. Four-fifths along the canister sputtered and died. “Kal!” shouted Thrax, frustrated. He threw it down and rushed for the rack. “Dammit, Kal, these are supposed to be kept full!” 

Buzz saws arrayed themselves around Thrax, hemming him in.
The black sphere on the table top trembled. Its surface began to bubble.

“It’s preoccupied,” said Kal softly. “Maybe...” He finished the reassembly and snapped the breach closed. Took aim. “Hey!” he called. “Colonel Houston!”

Robots and war machines loomed up behind Kal menacingly as the cryborg spun around. Within its central cryochamber, the face of a hideous, dessicated human could now be seen, wreathed in ice crystals, eye sockets empty and hollow, lips peeled back in a rictor grin. “Colonel Houston currently indisposed. Leave message.”

Kal fired.

The shot blew the cryochamber apart, igniting the processing unit attached above, causing catastrophic failure. A series of loud explosive whumps reverberated inside the metal shell as the interior blew itself to pieces. Then flames shot out the top, and showers of sparks jetted out from the slave linked robots. The whole lot shuddered and the room’s lights flickered. Processors, turrets, and heads emitted high pitched screeches, then exploded. Shrapnel flew in all directions. Thrax dropped to the floor and covered his head while Kal just gaped, an odd little smile on his face.

The crocyborg slammed to the floor with a tremendous clang, followed by the other machines. Tentacles shuddered and went limp. Acrid black smoke curled out of every aperture and slit.

The mechanical trash army was somnolent once more.

Thrax scrunched his nose. The acrid stench of burning plastic was overpowering. There was a distant dull clunk, the twang of enclosed metal sheets, and then a soft steady rush of air as automatic systems activated.

“Wooo!” cried Kal, arcing his back and howling at the ceiling. “How’s that! Shot to the kisser!”

“About God damn time,” said Thrax, climbing to his feet. He rubbed his irritated nose. There were cuts all over his torso from the microsaws. He ran soft finger tips over them, smearing blood. His fatigues were shredded. Ruined. That was a bigger problem. His mom had sewn these fatigues by hand, old school. The cuts? They healed as he watched. Thrax shot Kal a cross look. “What took you so long?”

“Dramatic timing, my friend.” Kal sauntered over, spinning the pistol on a finger nonchallantly. He quickly lost control and the weapon flew off into a junk pile, falling between cracks, into likely oblivion. “Shit.” He dusted off his prim waistcoat and held up a hand. “Not in the face! Back off! I just saved your life.” Tension flooded out of his shoulders. Kal looked around at the mess. “Teach me not to keep functional weaponry around,” he added, and poked at the ragged crag that had been the stasis unit. “What a waste,” he sighed. “Hauled this thing out of the North Pyramid, you know. Remember that place?”

Thrax grimaced. “Try not to.” Bad memories. He rubbed his chin. “Right. Let’s get armed. Who knows what that cube thing will set on us next. We gotta ditch that thing.”

“Dodecahedron,” corrected Kal. They walked over to the containment cylinder. “No ditching. Don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

“That’s okay. After what just happened I’m not listening to you.” Thrax moved towards the little metal bauble.

“Thrax, Thrax! Relax! Hear what Houston said? Called it a ‘command nodule’. Well, if this lil’ puppy really was acting against us, it’d have activated everything, or at least picked something better than an old, half-dead cryocyborg. I got lots of top of line stuff here.”

“So? None of it works! Explain.”

Kal shrugged. “I thought you didn’t want to hear my opinion.” He settled down again before the mysterious metal lump.

“Fine.” Thrax knealt beside him. “Just this once.”

“Cryoborg was in conservation mode. Probably had passive sensors on. Detected the nodule. Nodule is power. Hope. So it threw everything it had left into a bid to secure it, nearly icing us in the process. Probably trying to get back to his health provider, which no longer exists, so it went bananas. Yeah. You see that sphere?” whispered Kal, turning and pointing at the inert black sphere.

“The black basketball of doom? Yeah,” said Thrax, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t like looking at it. “Sucks light in like it’s got no freakin’ surface.”

“Yeah. Well, this,” he said in a hushed voice, jabbing at the dodecahedron, “could control it. Along with everything else here of worth. If it worked and had a will. In which case we’d all be toast. It’s an Alpha Omega Unit.”

“So?” The term meant nothing to Thrax.

“So?!?” gasped Kal, as if he were regarding a retarded dog. “Don’t you watch banned threevee recordings?”

“No, they’re banned.”

“Whatever. With this, you can command anything. Anywhere. Everywhere!”

Thrax looked down at the small, unassuming metal object and smiled. This thing would save his ass after all.

Why I hated The Hateful Eight

The flick follows a bounty hunter, John 'The Hangman' Ruth (Kurt Russell), who picks up Major Marquis Warren (Samuel Jackson), another bounty hunter and former cavalry officer in the Union Army, and the new town sheriff, Chris Mannix (Or so he says… he's a racist ex-Confederate raider, and he sure don't seem trustworthy) on the way to a haberdashery as a deadly blizzard closes in.

Russell and Jackson have bounties with them. Jackson's are dead, but Russell has a live one: a foul mouthed woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh). She's worth a cool ten thousand dollars, and Ruth means to see her hang.

The owners of the haberdashery are mysteriously away, leaving it in the care of Mexican Bob (Demian Bichir). Major Warren is immediately suspicious.

There are three others at the habedashery : the local executioner (Tim Roth), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), and an old Confederate general (Bruce Dern).

John Ruth is suspicious of everyone; he's paranoid and sees threats to his bounty everywhere, leading to tension and, eventually, conflict.

It might have been titled The Hateful Snore, which would have explained the five minute overture. The first half is all introductions ("I know you!" x 8), followed by Intermission.

The second half is a badly written stage play drenched in blood and brains.

It's Tarantino at his most self-indulgent: crass, vulgar, hateful and ugly. The film wallows in the sick side of humanity with the glee of a pig in a mud pit.

For three hours.

Which would be fine if it was entertaining.

Instead, it's tedious.

This is no fault of the actors, who give it their all, including the bit players.

The cinematography was fabulous (it's shot in 70mm), the score even better (it's Ennio Morricone), and the main set, a haberdashery (a word Quentin seems very fond of), was delightful in its detailed eccentricity. 

Kurt Russell's mustache is so magnificent it deserves an entry in the credits.

But the film doesn't gel.

The always lovely Zoe Bell shows up and is quickly dispatched, along with Dana Gourrier, Belinda Owino, and Gene Jones.

Tarantino's a visionary with in-depth knowledge of the medium. He's one of the most idiosyncratic voices in cinema, along with Wes Anderson and Kaufman.

But even the greats can misstep.

It's all the saaaaame!!!

According to John Yorke, over at The Atlantic:

"A ship lands on an alien shore and a young man, desperate to prove himself, is tasked with befriending the inhabitants and extracting their secrets. Enchanted by their way of life, he falls in love with a local girl and starts to distrust his masters. Discovering their man has gone native, they in turn resolve to destroy both him and the native population once and for all.

Avatar or Pocahontas? As stories they’re almost identical. Some have even accused James Cameron of stealing the Native American myth. But it’s both simpler and more complex than that, for the underlying structure is common not only to these two tales, but to all of them.
Take three different stories:

A dangerous monster threatens a community. One man takes it on himself to kill the beast and restore happiness to the kingdom ...

It’s the story of Jaws, released in 1976. But it’s also the story of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem published some time between the eighth and 11th centuries.

And it’s more familiar than that: It’s The Thing, it’s Jurassic Park, it’s Godzilla, it’s The Blob—all films with real tangible monsters. If you recast the monsters in human form, it’s also every James Bond film, every episode of MI5, House, or CSI. You can see the same shape in The Exorcist, The Shining, Fatal Attraction, Scream, Psycho, and Saw. The monster may change from a literal one in Nightmare on Elm Street to a corporation in Erin Brockovich, but the underlying architecture—in which a foe is vanquished and order restored to a community—stays the same. The monster can be fire in The Towering Inferno, an upturned boat in The Poseidon Adventure, or a boy’s mother in Ordinary People. Though superficially dissimilar, the skeletons of each are identical."

Huh.

Read the whole thing.

For the book length version, see The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. 

 

It's good.

Chapter 8 of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

Once more Monday rolls around and rears its ugly head; but don't worry, there's another installment of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom to add further insanity to your morning.

(Pardon the glitches with the paragraphs. For some reason it's not picking them up properly when I paste it in from Word.)

“Ma, that was stupid,” said Thrax as he righted an over-turned chair. “I told you to keep Sally inside during day hours.”

“Thanks, Mr. Obvious,” said Megan from the kitchenette. Thrax sighed. Mom always did this.

Occupied her mind with chores when stressed. Cooking food channeled her nervous energy into productive activity. It could have easily been generated, piping hot and aesthetically styled, instantly by a Drexler box, but not his mom. She preferred the old ways. Touch vegetables with her hands. Cut them with a knife. Something about home cooking, real cooking, a certain taste, that the boxes couldn’t duplicate. She’d even tried to teach Thrax to cook. “Trill sold us out. She wants our unit.”

Sally sat quietly on the couch while Thrax prowled back and forth. “If I hadn’t gotten back when I did, Sally’d be gone, ma,” said Thrax.

“He had a warrant,” snapped Megan. She stepped out of the kitchenette and jabbed a spoon at him. “And you’d be just as invalid as your sister if I hadn’t broken every rule.”

Thrax went slack jawed. “Say what?”

“Nothing.” Megan stirred the pasta with quick, sharp jabs.

“No seriously,” Thrax pressed, growing petulant. “I want to know.”

“It means,” sighed Megan, “that I spent over a year on you. Snuck into the labs and slaved over your DNA, swapping exons, programming transposons, adding custom retroviruses. Made you as perfect as I could. Stole threads from the donor bank, wove them in, too. We have Presidents, movie stars, and athletes in the banks. Bigwigs. Alphas. Taboo against using them is just stupid. Legacy laws” She shook her head angrily. “No lawyers anymore so what the hell. But if any of the other DNA Jockeys had found out... You’d have been discarded. Either way.”

Thrax felt cold. “Never told me this before.”

“You’re a genetically engineered superman! I thought you’d have figured it out on your own. I made you smart. Not smart enough, I guess. No Santa Claus, m’dear.”

Thrax bristled at that. “Leave Santa out of this.” He’d loved Santa Claus as a kid. The benevolent, immortal ancient, who might still be alive. Why was he any more unrealistic than flying entelodons with diaherrea? Ridiculing it was her way of saying there was no Nirvana, no happy ending, no easy way out. The world was a cluster fuck, suffering and pain and struggle and blood and sweat. Red in tooth and claw. On a certain level, Thrax rebelled against that. He’d make the world a better place somehow. Someday. Even if it was only a tiny pocket of sanity in a sea of madness. “Anyway, why didn’t you—,” he started, pointing at Sally. The question was so obvious it didn’t need to be said.

Megan glared at him and slammed down the spoon. “Why do you think? Because I got caught!” She shook with anger. “Do I have to explain everything?”

Thrax waited. He felt ashamed.

“You’ve no idea what I’ve had to do to keep us safe, so don’t you lecture. It’s a pitiless world.” Megan walked back into the kitchenette and leant over the pot of pasta, let her face be caressed by steam. Moisture gathered on her chin. “So what will happen now?”

Thrax, reeling emotionally, rubbed his eyes. “Execution.”

Darwin’s disembodied voice filled his head, “According to the colony’s multilayered codes, you and your sister will be executed, while members of your extended family will be exiled, without trial. I can find no records related to DNA tampering on your record, although several inquiries along this line were made by Guardian Ghatz.”

“I need options,” said Thrax.

Megan stood still for a moment. “We could run.”

“Could,” said Thrax dully. “Wouldn’t get far. Ghatz. They’d come after us.”

“If we sabotaged the base first,” said Sally, piping up. “Cause chaos. Set things on fire. Send up the sewer worms.” Her eyes gleamed.

Thrax gave her a worried look. Sometimes he wasn’t sure just who his sister was.

Megan crossed her arms and smiled, leaning against their prehistoric fridge. “That’s my baby.”

Thrax felt a sudden tingle and looked down at his arm. Something vibrated in his pant pocket. He fished into it with his hand and pulled out the dodecahedron.

“What’s that?” asked Sally, looking at the small metal object as he turned it over.

“Not sure. Maybe a bargaining chip.”

He activated his interphone and thought a connection.

“What?” answered a sharp, clipped voice. “This better be good, I’m swirlin’ substrate foam.”

“Kal, it’s Thrax.”

“I know, stupid. What do you want, throwback?”

“Coming down to the lab. Got something I think you’ll want to see.”

****

“They attacked me,” sputtered Ghatz. He was still angry over how wrong the confrontation had gone, and the impertinence of their resistance. It was unacceptable that a lower class creature such as Thrax should be stronger and better looking than Ghatz, light of the new Guardian generation. It upset the natural order of things. “And my bouncers,” he added as an afterthought. “I demand satisfaction, Senator. I demand it!”

He stood in a softly lit, wood paneled room, right out of a 19th century gentleman’s club. Red padded chairs with exquisite mahogany frames, separated by ornate tables, were set beneath elegant chandeliers of the finest crystal. Sparkling, semi-transparent holographic nudes danced in and out of the lights, smiling and laughing silently. Gold framed paintings of steamy erotica by Gustave Courbet decorated the walls.

An overweight man, coddled by plush upholstery, sat before Ghatz. Ghatz thought the man looked like a cross between a bloated corpse and a beached whale, but didn’t dare say so. This was Senator Lacus, the real power and ruler of Pleasurepit Five, who owned fifty-one per cent of the company stock. Supposedly descended from a real United States of America senator, too. Ghatz idolized and hated him. Lacus was fat, lazy, indolent. Yet within all that bag of blubber and cholesterol was a ruthless, capable mind. One that would help Ghatz seize ultimate power. Until then, he wouldn’t cross the senator.

Lacus idly swirled his glass of brandy, watching the rolling surface of the liquid. He had two chins and a low brow that set sharp calculating eyes in shadow. On the table beside him was a tray of snails and oysters in porcelain cups. He grabbed one and sucked down the oyster in a single gulp, then smacked his thick, sensuous lips. He wiped the oyster juice on his smoking jacket, then downed his brandy and waited.

A dutiful sexbot waitress stepped forward and refilled the Lacus’ glass while Ghatz stood and tapped his foot impatiently.

Senator Lacus patted the sexbot’s bottom. “Hmm. How nice, yes. Come see me after, my dear, won’t you?” said Lacus, flashing crooked teeth.

She bowed and strutted away.

Ghatz watched her go, eyes glued to her buttocks, appreciating the hypnotic curves. He’d have to summon her later, after the senator was done. Then wipe the records so the senator didn’t know. Strange how insatiable he was. He’d slowly peel back her bustier...

“Ahem.” Lacus cleared his throat. “Focus, my boy.”

Ghatz flushed red and blurted, “Do I have to spell it out for you? Revenge! I want revenge!”

“And you’ll have it, my dear, beautiful boy. Fret not. Soon,” he said softly, and took a sip of soothing, thousand year old brandy.

Ghatz stalked back and forth in front of the senator like a caged animal. “I swear you are always favouring them,” he complained. “Same as last time. Pack animals! Dross! They’ve no loyalty to the greater colony. To the team. Just a primitive family unit. Such base loyalties weaken the whole. You taught me that!”

“True, my boy, but the old ways do die hard,” replied Lacus.

Ghatz exploded: “They’re aren’t! In case you haven’t noticed. When’s the last time you went into the lower levels? By the Founding Fathers! I am, we are, fighting to achieve, to realize the ideal, to free ourselves from nature and savagery, to renew the world,” he sputtered. “We are the first mover of the re-enlightenment, who are pushing the envelope of change. Everything depends on me! Us! We need to get our ducks in a row. Does that struggle mean nothing to you?!?”

“Manage your expectations,” Lacus groaned and shifted in the chair. “Ideology can become tiresome. Think of it more as a tool, a lever that can move the masses. And remember, the easiest path between two points is not always the direct one.”

Ghatz rolled his eyes. “Don’t weave your philosophical nonsense with me,” he spat. “What does that even mean?”

Lacus slipped a snail in his mouth and bit it. A little juice jetted out and dribbled down his chin. “Perhaps I’ve overestimated you. The lower levels have less influence and fewer numbers every generation. They pose no serious threat. Now. We don’t want to calcify, do we? Of course not. An element of chaos keeps society healthy. And we need a miserable bottom rung to keep the rest in line. Show them where they might wind up, as it were. Remember, my dear, it’s about the greater happiness, not the individual.”

“They’ve nothing to do with me. They’re disgusting,” said Ghatz. “Spiritually. Physically. Ideologically. Gushing like a pack of dogs, yeah? And that abomination, Thrax! Thinks he’s above Guardians. Above us, the rightful authorities! He even tried to hit me. Me!” He jabbed a finger at his chest and nodded for emphasis, shaking with outrage lit by frustration. “That little demon girl electrocuted two of my bouncers with their own prods! It’ll take days for them to recover.”

Lacus shrugged. “Never been impressed with those mindless thugs. Serves them right. And you should be more careful. Guardians must be constantly vigilant with helots, my boy. Never let them get the upper hand. Consider this a valuable lesson.”

“Explain to me why I can’t execute the lot of them, or I’ll do it anyway. Effectual truth. At the end of the day, the law will support me.”

“Oh, please! Don’t be so melodramatic,” soothed Lacus. “Have a drink. A Guardian must act from reason, not emotion, and yours are out of control. Quite shamefully so, if I may say.”

Ghatz froze. That struck home.

Lacus looked down into his brandy glass. “I checked the surveillance feed. Thrax received something from that android, outside, you know. Ran it through the databank. It’s fragmentary, of course, but preliminary analysis suggests it might be... valuable. I removed that section from the feed. Mum’s the word. You’ll leave his family alone until we find out exactly what it is.” He waved a chubby finger in a complex pattern, and a hologram of the main council chamber, centred on the android, flicked into view before them.

Ghatz frowned at the shimmering scene, resenting it beyond words. “And if it isn’t important?”

“Why then, my boy,” said Lacus, emptying his snifter, “you can execute the lot of them.”

Classic Doctor Who Level Two: What to watch.

The only way some people will watch Doctor Who.

Level two is for viewers with even greater tolerance for cardboard, corridors, slow pacing and dodgy effects.

But you will be rewarded with lots of retro-sci-fi and fun whacky weirdness.

See Level One here.

There are a good number of Jon Pertwee episodes in this set. He's the Patrician Doctor, the action-hero alien Buddhist exile with the fashion sense of a dandy and the combat skills of Bruce Lee.

Hubris is his weakness.

But as a little kid, I always found him reassuring.

I don't see Pertwee going along with 'The Doctor lies' or the angle that he turns his companions (the stand in for the children watching) into weapons.

A former comedian, Pertwee loved the role and took it seriously, believing that acknowledging the silliness around him would annihilate the suspension of disbelief.

He made a closet and cardboard into other times and planets.

Thank you, Mr. Pertwee.

Third Doctor

Weeping Angels aren't the only ambulatory statues on the show.

The Daemons 
Story: A tomb is unearthed in rural England and a demon, who turns out (naturally) to be an alien, is awoken.

The Master turns up leading a Satanic cult that aims to gain the demon's powers.

The Doctor is aided by the charmingly guileless Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and the UNIT crew, including Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney), Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton.

The story includes Nicholas Courtney's favourite line: 'Jenkins. Chap with the wings there. Five rounds rapid.'

The Good: Jon Pertwee's favourite story, and widely regarded as a classic, The Daemons is a fun but subdued riff on super-science as sorcery. Sort of Childhood's End, only on a village scale.

The production team was petrified they'd be denounced as endorsing and promoting Satanism to children, and toned down the original script. There was no outcry. A practicing witch did vet the script for accuracy.

Best of all, to summon the demon, The Master recites Mary Had a Little Lamb backwards.

The Bad: Natas Sivel!

"They're so cute. Let's adopt them!"

The Green Death (AKA My Little Maggots)
Story: A scheming and megalomaniacal corporate computer, BOSS, gets uppity and decides to take over the world. The industrial plant it oversees for Global Chemicals also produces deadly toxic waste that results in over-sized maggots.

Because WTF!

Originally I thought the giant maggots were part of the BOSS computer's plan to take over the world, but they're just an awesomely gross side effect. 

The Good: Giant, wiggly maggots. Regular maggots make my skin crawl. When they're three feet long and spit acid I like them even less.

The story also features Jo's departure and great Welsh bit players.

This pissed off the Welsh.

The Bad: The giant dragonfly. Some of the background maggots are actually inflated condoms.

They don't really look like that. SPANX works wonders.

The Claws of Axos
Story: An alien ship lands, crewed by beatific beings in spandex bearing gifts of free power for mankind. Of course they're not. They're really alien parasites that look like human hearts on legs with explosive tipped tentacles, all part of Axos, a seemingly mellow gestalt organism that's set on absorbing the earth's energy. And Axos has got The Master prisoner it's pulsing innards.

It was originally titled The Vampire from Space.

See Lifeforce.

The Good: The Trojan horse aliens: their true appearance is wonderfully hideous, if you remember the budget and the effects typical for the time. The gestalt nature of Axos struck me as a pretty wild idea when I was five.

Also, Jo Grant flashes her knickers.

The Bad: The blue screen behind Benton and Yates when they flee in their jeep is impressively bad, even for Who.

Exxilon: The Dalek's Vietnam / Afghanistan

Death to the Daleks
Story: The Doctor and Sarah Jane wind up stuck on an alien planet, as the TARDIS has been sucked dry of power by an empty alien city. Daleks and humans are also stranded on the planet, and they must cooperate to free themselves from the city's deadly grip. The humans must also get a cure for a deadly plague back to their planets, adding time pressure. Millions are dying every second.

The Good: The City. A sentient, power sucking edifice that destroys its creators reminded me of one of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles stories. The short term cooperation with the Daleks allows for some unusual scenes, but Daleks are too one note to be interesting, and the uneasy alliance doesn't last.

The first episode of the story I found especially atmospheric.

The Bad: How the Daleks manage to still function when they have no energy is explained away as 'psycho-kinetic power' which always struck me as silly. They produce kinetic weaponry… how did they do that without power? Do they have a telekinetic factory? On top of that, an Exxilon is left wandering around the interior of the TARDIS, and has been left there seemingly to this very day.

Fourth Doctor

Cybermen give a great back rub, but it isn't enough to win The Doctor over and they must resort to cruder methods.

Revenge of the Cybermen
Story: Our intrepid travelers arrive on a space station under quarantine, most of the crew killed by plague. Or is it? Soon mechanical men arrive to take control and dragoon our heroes into carrying explosives to the gold planet of Voga below.

The Good: Best costumes for the Cybermen until the new series. They look big, powerful. One helmet wobbles as the actor is shorter than the other, and they recycle sets for The Arc in Space, but that's Who for you. The bickering between the bad guys and not-so-bad guys is fun, too.

The Bad: Christopher Robbie's bombastic Cyberleader. Many people hate the character, but I thought he was great as a hydraulic-brained villain. Quirky. Which is more interesting than any of the other Cyberleaders, who are uniformly bland emotionless megalomaniacs.

Take this exchange:

(The Doctor has been tied up back to back with Sarah.)

LEADER: The Beacon is approaching Voga at ten thousand light units. It is time for us to leave.

DOCTOR: Bye bye.

LEADER: You two are especially privileged. You are about to die in the biggest explosion ever witnessed in this solar system. It will be a magnificent spectacle. Unhappily, you will be unable to appreciate it.

(The Cybermen leave.) 

I mean, come on, this Cyberleader is a real card!

What a dry sense of humour.

Sadly, I am the only one who thinks this.

Anyway.

The episodes' logic is dodgy thanks to a big last minute rewrite, and it shows.

Worse, the invulnerable Cybermen get another vulnerability: gold.

Previously they were vulnerable to gravity.

Next it will be peanuts.

You heard it here first.

"Just trim a little off the sides."

Masque of Mandragora
Story: Malevolent alien entity meets Shakespearean Italy. The Beeb drags out their Renaissance costumes for a Doctor Who adventure that pits a prestidigitator and his power hungry patron against the rightful, enlightened ruler. Things get more complicated when The Doctor arrives accompanied by an unwelcome passenger: an evil energy helix bent on world domination…

The Good: The Beeb does Shakespeare better than anyone. Here, the village from The Prisoner doubles as San Martino. The massacre reminds me of Poe's Masque of the Red Death.

The Bad: The story is a bit slight and I don't like salami sandwiches.

The Doctor IS Sherlock Holmes. Mind = •BLOWN*

The Talons of Weng-Chiang 
Story: Young women are disappearing in Victorian London, and The Doctor (wearing a deerskin cap and affecting a very Sherlockian attitude) and Leela are on the case.

Of course Leela starts killing people.

I love Leela.

The Good: The supporting characters: the theatre manager Mr. Jago and Mr. Lightfoot are two of the most fun fellows to ever appear on the program. Apparently they were popular enough to inspire some spin-off audio adventures. Good for them. Wish The Doctor had revisited the pair, and the period. The BBC is best at doing Victorian era dramas, and this one hits the mark.

The Bad: A bit racist by today’s standards. As a kid, I had no idea the lead Asian character was actually a white guy in makeup. Yes, I was totally oblivious. It came as a bit of a shock when I watched it again as an adult. The giant man-eating Rat of Sumatra is pretty lame, too, even by standards of the day. It's an ambulatory fur coat with buck teeth and a bad attitude.

"Me? I don't know what's going on either."

Image of the Fendahl
Story: Quartermass and the Pit meets Lovecraft via Doctor Who. It's weird. I still don't really know what was going on, but there are giant man-eating lampreys that turn into a woman (make subtext of that if you dare), a glowing crystal skull, and deaths aplenty. The Doctor confuses the Fendahl by asking if it would like a jelly-baby but actually offering it a liquorice allsort. The man is endlessly diabolical!

The Good: The atmosphere of dread. At least, that's what I remember most. The last time Doctor Who was scary. "How do you kill death itself?" Good question. The answer, apparently, is salt.

The Bad: Painted eyelids.

"They let us out of the BBC closet. I can breathe!"

City of Death
Story: A lighthearted romp through Paris and time, with plenty of location shooting. The Doctor and his fellow Timelord traveler Romana (Baker's wife for a time) are pitted against an alien who's been splintered through time and is trying to get back to the beginning of life on earth and prevent it from happening. Why? His comrades tried to take off in a damaged spacecraft, which exploded and in doing so sparked terrestrial life. He wants to undo the 'error'.

The Good: Written by Douglas Adams on a diet of whisky and black coffee, it's as clever as it is ridiculous. John Cleeese makes a cameo as an art snob. Adams recycled much of the plot for Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which I enjoyed more.

The Bad: Hasn't aged well. Baker is at his silliest, which robs the serial of dramatic tension. It's a different era for the program. Where before it delved into gothic horror, here it veers towards whimsical satire. Which could be a good thing, depending on your point of view.

"If you're the lion, Romana is Dorothy, K-9 is the Tin Man, then that means… oh."

Warrior’s Gate
Story: Almost an experimental film, it happens in interstitial nothingness, an in-between place populated by lion men, slavers, and robot warriors. Mirrors serve as gateways into a black and white universe of static pictures. There's trippy dialogue, gothic sets and dead people at a banquet covered in cobwebs.

Some of the episodes of this story were directed by Graeme Harper, who went on to direct a dozen episodes of David Tennant's Doctor.

The Good: The trippiness. This is one weird story filled to the gills with WTF.

The Bad: The trippiness is a bit, well, too trippy at times.

Fifth Doctor

"Is that The Starship Titanic?"

Enlightenment
Story: The Doctor arrives on what seems to be an ocean going ship, only it's in space. It's part of a race around the solar system, with the prize being enlightenment: the answer to life, the universe, and everything. The human crews are led by Eternals, immortal beings who are bored out of their minds and desperate for distraction.

The Good: The whimsy. It's even more surreal than Warrior's Gate. And the Eternals are not depicted as implacably evil.

The Bad: The scenery chewing Black Guardian has a bird stuck on his forehead. Someone should tell him.

"This is the first time I've worked since you took my job."

The Five Doctors
Story: Multiple iterations of The Doctor are being lifted out of time and plunked into The Death Zone, an arena on Gallifrey where dangerous creatures fight for the entertainment of decadent Timelords. It's really just an excuse to assemble five ('Four, sir!') Doctors and more than a half-dozen companions in one story.

The Good: The story's a great nostalgia trip. Seeing Troughton, Pertwee, and Davidson interacting is a delight; the sniping between Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee being a highlight. Hartnell, who had passed away, is played here by a lookalike, while Tom Baker couldn't be bothered to show up and is represented by footage from an unfinished episode.

The Bad: The lame Cybermen pop in, muck about and get killed like flies. They're the most easily dispatched 'invulnerable' species ever. As Inigo might say, "This word, I do not think it means what you think it means." They're more tinfoil than steel.

The best line is also the worst: "NO! Not the Mind Probe!" We also get Sarah Jane flailing her way down a very, very slight slope as if it were a cliff. She gives it her all, but the slope's performance is… lacking.

"Can I get you some escargot?"

Frontios
Story: The Doctor and team (Tegan and Turlough) arrive on a forlorn planet where people are getting sucked into the earth by evil telekinetic snails. No, I'm not kidding. The monsters were inspired by woodlice that had infested the writer's apartment.

The Good: Six foot tall woodlice sucking people underground. This stunt will be revisited in the new series by ornery, sexy Silurians. As sexy as Scottish reptiles can be.

The Bad: The episode is dry even by Classic Doctor Who standards.


Still not enough?

You're kidding right?

No?

Then amp it up and delve deeper into time and space with… Level Three: Time Lord.

Coming next week.

Unless I forget.

The Force Awakens a Second Time Around

Saw Force Awakens a second time.

Still enjoyed it.

It's fast and fun, with great new characters, but the story's kind of sloppy and recycles much of the original film. As I said in my original review.

It's no secret that the film was rushed and produced on an insanely tight schedule. Disney execs may have needed to make back their four billion dollar investment sooner rather than later. Igor granted a six month reprieve, but the film might have done with a full extra year to gel.

io9 has a round up of ideas that were being tossed around during development. We might have gotten Kylo Ren as a full-out Darth Vader impersonator, for example, or visited Darth Vader's old castle, or dove underwater to the wreckage of the second Death Star.

The story was still evolving well into production. Poe originally died in the TIE fighter crash, then got brought back by JJ. Maz was going with Han to the Resistance base, then doesn't, and inexplicably disappears from the film.

There are many of these sloppy bits, and they seem to be the result of last minute rewrites.

Birth Movies Death, my favourite new movie review site, has some great articles about The Force Awakens.

Andrew Todd, a filmmaker himself, wrote the article Star Wars, Storytelling, and Fixing it in Post:

"I don’t know how Abrams believed he fucked things up. Maybe the film didn’t move fast or smoothly enough. Maybe it didn’t make sense. Maybe Lucasfilm wanted to save stuff for sequels. But Abrams (or Kathleen Kennedy) clearly did believe he fucked things up, as hasty fixes were obviously deployed in production and post production to rebuild the story. The result is a movie cobbled together out of multiple versions of the script (see The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens for more) and even of the production footage. When you watch the movie, you can occasionally feel that something just isn’t right. I guarantee you that J.J. Abrams feels it too.

"Now, I don’t want to be the guy who says “you can’t understand cinema until you’ve made a film,” because you totally can. But while you can identify filmmaking mistakes as a critic, as a filmmaker you feel them in your bones because you’ve probably made them too. You feel them in the weird omissions of information; in the equally weird over-explanation of other information; in the unmotivated cuts in the middle of scenes that could only exist to mask rewritten dialogue. Given that my only feature to date is Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws, which made all those mistakes and more, suffice it to say that I recognised nearly every mistake in The Force Awakens. And though our movie operated on a grossly different scale and timeline, I suspect that the creative problems were rather similar."

Read the whole thing.

Remember the lightsaber hand-off scene from the trailer that doesn't appear in the film? JJ's been open about that, too.

Kasdan and Abrams were pretty sparse with exposition, but I caught more on the second viewing.

They actually mention that the weapon the First Order has built is a hyperspace gun, so that explains how it can fire between star systems. Still a bit confusing: it's on a planet, right? Each time the gun fires, it consumes the sun. They were specific about that detail. When the sun goes out, it's ready to shoot.

But it fires twice.

Where did the second sun come from? Is this planet traveling about the universe? There was no hint of that. No sign of engines. If it can travel about easily, why does it need a hyperspace gun? It can just go to the target system. Resistance scouts found it easily, too, but wouldn't it have moved in order to suck a new sun? It wouldn't be where Fynn last saw it. That sun was consumed the first time it fired.

And if the Resistance has instant communication with the pilots attacking the Death Star III, why didn't they just email the map to the Resistance HQ? They seem fine communicating their attack information across the space waves, so why not the map? Where they in the same system?

A filmmaker should lay out where characters are to each other, so the action is intelligible. I think the same goes for planets.

So… still logic problems we shouldn't think about.

The first film had them too, but they didn't feel as obvious, and never bothered me.

Devin Faraci, the lead critic at Birth Movies Death and a guy with interesting and cogent views on film, has a great article up about the movie being, essentially, Fanfic:

"Most fanfic is, on some level, fan service. I’m speaking broadly here about a genre that contains billions of words and thousands of hours of fan films, but that’s mostly what fanfic boils down to - fans giving themselves what they want. Bringing together characters they like, killing ones they don’t, redeeming villains they love, exploring concepts barely glanced upon in the original property. They right perceived wrongs, give new endings and reconstruct emotions and relationships. Fan fiction often reminds me of masturbation - it’s the fans giving themselves what they want. That’s usually dramatically unsatisfying, and very often the best stories are the ones that drive fans the craziest. Getting what you want is fun at first, but it’s like letting a kid have free reign of the fridge - they end up with a bellyache and maybe even scurvy if you don’t step in soon enough. You gotta eat your vegetables, and fanfic rarely is interested in greens.

"George Lucas gets this. When asked what he thought of The Force Awakens he said “I think the fans will love it. It’s the kind of movie they’ve been looking for.” The kids, Lucas was saying, love getting ice cream for dinner.

"And The Force Awakens is ice cream for dinner. It’s full of familiar things, sometimes with just a new name on them. It’s filled with familiar characters, who have - in true fan fiction style - reverted to fan-favorite versions of themselves. Han and Leia have been reset to their pre-Jedi selves, a move that is enormously unsatisfying for people who want to see these characters grow and change but enormously satisfying for fans who want to see the characters behaving like their favorite versions of them. It’s a film by fans for fans, filled with endless winking references and stocked with recycled versions of unused concept art that will be familiar to the hardcore. When making the first Star Wars Lucas hated that Mark Hamill ad-libbed a reference to THX-1138; in The Force Awakens one of the main characters is named after George Lucas’ favorite experimental short in film school. Another is named after the company that published Star Wars books.

"At its best fanfic uses existing characters and settings as shorthand; you know Kirk and Spock, so a story featuring them allows you to get to the meat or explore emotions without doing a lot of heavy lifting. This is what The Force Awakens does as well, using the perpetual motion machine of nostalgia to power a story that’s all shortcuts. Even the new stuff is built out of the material of the old stuff, denying audiences the shock of discovery but giving them the comfort of familiarity. It’s a fan giving the fans what they want."

Hilarious! Read the whole thing.

Faraci also wrote a review of the film I'm simpatico with. It's well written and more observant than mine:

“It’s another Death Star,” says an X-Wing pilot at a briefing, talking about Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Starkiller Base. He’s immediately told it’s not - this thing is 17 times bigger than the Death Star, and it's not a space station, it's a whole planet. This sort of functions as a metaphor for the entire movie, which is kind of a reboot of A New Hope, but bigger and more sprawling and also containing elements of Empire and Jedi.

"The Force Awakens is the Star Wars movie for remix and remake culture. It’s not a remake or a reboot, but it’s a movie that tells a story not entirely dissimilar from the original Star Wars, except that many of the familiar beats and moments have a spin put on them. It’s not a princess who hides valuable data in a droid and is tortured for it, it’s an X-Wing pilot. This time it’s a Stormtrooper dressing up as a rebel. And the kid growing up on a backwater desert planet would rather stay there waiting for her family than escape and follow in their footsteps."

I had been thinking that it was too obvious Rey was Luke's daughter, and that they were setting up a reveal for the second film where Rey and Ren have a showdown. Rey gets to say, 'Didn' yew kill mah brotha?" And Ren says, "No, I AM your brotha!"

But watching it a second time, it seemed even more unlikely she was Leia and Han's daughter. There were just too many instances where she should have been brought up, if so. But then, if Maz new the truth about who Rey was (she says she does), surely she'd mention it to Han, and Han to Leia. If they've got Luke's daughter with them, that's a significant piece of information. Perhaps it was cut, along with the rest of Maz's footage at the Resistance base.

I was also thinking Ren's probing of Rey's mind is what awoke her Force abilities, but that's not so: Rey specifically says she does not understand how she knew how to pilot the Falcon during their thrilling escape from Jakku. She's got powers and abilities that appear out of nowhere, which she shouldn't have, and she knows it.

She sells it well enough I don't mind, but if this was a self-contained story, I'd say such insta-ability was antithetical to the creation of drama. Without training, she seems to have Force abilities greater than Anakin / Vader, Luke, Obiwan, Yoda, or anyone else, instantly. Luke's journey seemed slower and more difficult. But this is part of a trilogy, so I'm expecting there's an explanation as to what's going on, and that this is all part of a greater story arc.

Somehow the Force was awoken in her.

Force ghosts, perhaps? Good spirits? Guardian Vader?

I have no idea.

I'm just hoping they don't glide over it in the sequel.

The first one is still the best, as I argue here. For inside scoop on making the series, like the role his wife Marcia played, see this post.

Thinking of seeing Force Awakens yourself?

Read this before you do!