The Force Awakens: fun but no classic (SPOILERS).

The Force Awakens is like the popcorn, pop, and candy I had during the film (I skipped lunch): Tasted great at the time, but afterward, I didn't feel so hot.

Faux-food.

Empty calories.

That's The Force Awakens: instantly forgettable fun.

And considering how insanely fast the film was put together, we're lucky it's as good as it is.

So go see it, enjoy, and don't think about it again.

The first third of the film is great, and the new characters are even better: Rey, Fynn, BB-8 and Kylo Ren are fun, fresh, and interesting. Poe's a little flat (the script doesn't give him as much to work with), but all the actors deliver a level of craft and energy that hasn't been seen in a Star Wars film for awhile (Sadly the prequels had a cast of cardboard).

We open with a massacre and then segue into quiet mood setting that's the best part of the film. It feels like Star Wars. It builds up your faith. Then BAM: it's onto the action-sequence roller coaster. I got flashbacks of Star Trek: Into Darkness. It doesn't let up, and it's draining. JJ Abrams loves breathless pacing, but sometimes you get the impression the story's being told by a phenomenally gifted, ADD eight-year old. On the positive side, you're invested. You care about Rey and Fynn and lil' BB pretty real quick; they're very appealing and charismatic portrayals. That gives the action meaning.

Which is brilliant.

The lightsaber battle at the end of Phantom is technically impressive and visually spectacular, for example, but it's empty, meaningless calories because you don't give a spit about Qi-Gong Bargain Bin, or whatever his name was. And Ewan McGregor was untouchable; there was never any fear his character was going to come to harm, and so no suspense.

No emotional investment.

Here, there is.

The film gets faster and faster paced as it goes on, which is generally how it goes, but here it's on turbo. It's about going so blindingly fast you don't notice the flaws. Think about the scene in Star Wars where they're planning the attack on the Death Star. It feels real. Grounded. They based it on how bomber crews in the Second World War were briefed. Best of all? You knew the pilots were afraid by their questions. They were tense, which is what you'd expect them to be if they were real people instead of extras. In The Force Awakens, the planning session more resembles a bunch of ten-year olds at play. No one acts like they're about to put their lives on the line.

That was one of the brilliant things about Star Wars' lived-in universe: Little touches of the ordinary to keep the fantasy grounded and relatable. Star Wars had power converters and a whiny teenager who wanted to escape his small town. The second film had Luke at summer swamp camp and Han and Leia on the road trip from hell. The beginning of Awaken tries to ground us, too, but gravity gives way by the end for the sake of fast pacing.

Kasdan and JJ could have gone anywhere with the story. The possibilities of our galaxy far, far away are almost endless. It's a wildly imaginative storytelling playground.

Or it should be.

The biggest disappointment of the film is that it recycles large chunks of Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back.

Disney executives invested four billion in the Star Wars franchise and they want to make that money back.

Remember that Hollywood execs took 'Mars' out of the title of John Carter because other films with that unmentionable M-word in the title had bombed? They concluded that people didn't like movies with the word 'Mars' in the title.

That's how they think.

It's a bit voodoo.

Like trickle-down economics theories.

That's going to inform how they approach the Star Wars: was the first film a success due to excellent story telling, or… because it had a desert planet? Probably story, but when there's this much money involved, why not hedge your bet?

The first film starts with the bad guys hunting down missing plans. That means… so does this one. The first film has a desert planet, which means this one does, too. The plans are put on a droid in the original, so they do the same here. The droid in the first film got picked up by a scrap dealer, so the droid here is… also picked up by a scrap dealer.

The first film had a planet destroying battle station, which means this one does, too. The first film had a bit about turning off the tractor beam, so this one has a bit about turning off the force fields. Star Wars climaxed with an attack by X-wings on a battlestation. So this one has the very same thing.

And when they had a big emotional punch moment in Cloud City ("Luke! I am…"), it happened over a great void. So this time, the emotional moment also happens over a great void.

And blaster fire erupts after the big moment and people scream, 'nooooo!'

It's like they took the first two films, put them in a blender, and poured out a milkshake script.

This kind of thinking results in three Death Stars blowing up over the course of four films. Honestly, when I saw Starkiller base, the first thought wasn't 'wow', or 'that's impressive'. No, my first thought was: 'Oh sh*t, not another f*cking Death Star!'

Those pesky things are more ubiquitous than cathedrals on a tour of Europe.

A whole galaxy of wonderful inventiveness, and all they can do is blow up Death Stars, over and over and over again.

The reason why Empire is so good is because it didn't just scale up the ending of Star Wars; instead of zigging, it zagged and went for a powerful emotional punch at the end. To allow the emo-twist to hit harder, they pushed the big battle sequence up to the beginning of the film, letting both sequences breathe.

Here, they don't trust their storytelling enough to allow that. Instead, they mash the ending of Star Wars together with the ending of Empire. Spectacular battle scene is intercut with powerful emotional twist. The hope is that this will have double the impact, but it doesn't. They just cancel each other out. There's too much.

But the execs want to cover all the bases, and not leave anything to chance.

So they shoved in both: scaled stunts and emotional punch.

Which leads inevitably to a dead end.

Think about it.

The first Death Star was big. The second was five or six times bigger. The third is larger than the second by an even greater order of magnitude. What will be the fourth? The size of a sun? What comes after that?

Then what?

Spielberg once said that in any sequel to Raiders of the Lost Arc, the stunts would have to be even bigger. But if the stunts in the first already push the limits of credulity, stretch the bubble of disbelief to breaking point, where are you going?

Where does it end?

I'll tell you where: farce and inadvertent self-parody.

It ends with blowing up ever-bigger Death Stars, over and over, ad infinitum.

It ends with John Wick being a redressed Equalizer. It ends with the audience not being able to tell which movie they're watching anymore: White House Down or… the other one. It's Die Hard in the White House. It's Die Hard in an Airport. It's Die Hard in an Ocean Liner. It's Die Hard in an office tower.

Otherwise, identical.

It's Avengers I being the same blazingly quick-cut action-blur as Avengers II.

It ends with sequel after sequel that is almost indistinguishable from its predecessor. Just bigger.

It's the cinematic equivalent of changing the packaging, or letting out a suit, and calling it all-new.

That's why Empire is so good: it builds on Star Wars. It doesn't recycle. The characters grow and go new places, rather than just repeating the same journey they took the first time.

Empire is how you build a lasting franchise. Not Jedi.

And not The Force Awakens. 

The hollow core of the new film bodes ill for the future. The characters are enormously appealing, but the story's messy and sloppy and full of coincidences to the point of absurdity. It's only there to provide a segue into the next action sequence.

And yet, Empire, our critically beloved darling, is the lowest earning of the whole set, adjusted for inflation. The Phantom Menace the highest.

Did JJ achieve what he needed to? You bet. He's made an entertaining film that's far better than any of the prequels. The film will make a ton of money. That's the bottom line.

Did he create a modern classic? A story that will stand the test of time? Given the constraints the film was made under, that probably was never in the cards.

In ten years, people will still be looking back to the original trilogy as the best.

Some random thoughts:

• During the film I strongly felt that Rey (Ray of light!) was Luke's daughter. But there's another possibility: she's the twin sister of Kylo Ren, spirited away by Luke or Maz without Han or Leia's knowledge, or even knowing she existed (they seem to have no knowledge of a daughter, missing or otherwise). Which doesn't make much, or any, sense, because she was just dumped on Tatooine (Jakku, whatever) without a protector. Yet if Rey was Luke's daughter, surely they'd have mentioned the mother in the setup… wouldn't they? Maybe not because…

• I don't understand what the First Order even was, how it related to The Republic, if there was a Republic (they mention Senators in a throw away line), or how The Resistance fits into the mix. I don't know what was going on, other than that the First Order was bad, and the Resistance good.

• Rey picked up her knowledge of the force, and lightsaber fighting, from Kylo Ren when he tried to probe her mind. She probed right back and gleaned knowledge of The Force. That's my guess.

• Captain Phasma was beyond lame.

•  The Starkiller Base super weapon was ridiculous.

• Why was nobody working for the First Order over thirty? Don't they trust them?

Machiavelli on the pleasures of reading

“When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. 

On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born.

And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. 

And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.”

Niccolò Machiavelli

Star Wars as postmodernist film: SLATE

I enjoyed this post over at Slate:

"In fact, Star Wars­­­—the original 1977 film that started it all—is all these things. It’s a pastiche, as mashed-up and hyper-referential as any movie from Quentin Tarantino. It takes the blasters of Flash Gordon and puts them in the low-slung holsters of John Ford’s gunslingers. It takes Kurosawa’s samurai masters and sends them to Rick’s Café Américain from Casablanca. It takes the plot of The Hidden Fortress, pours it into Joseph Campbell’s mythological mold, and tops it all off with the climax from The Dam Busters. Blending the high with the low, all while wearing its influences on its sleeve, Star Wars is pretty much the epitome of a postmodernist film."

Read the whole thing.

Want more?

I wrote about Star Wars over Empire Strikes Back here, and about the series here:

"The Empire Strikes Back went seriously over budget and threatened to bankrupt Lucas. It was, and is, the least financially successful of all the Star Wars films, pulling in $100 million less than the original. It's the lowest earning of all six. Think about that. Lucas tilted towards the safety of toys and marketing for a reason. It's a stressful business and you can easily lose your shirt (to top it off, Lucas was going through a very expensive divorce at the time). Lucas himself reedited Empire to be action-oriented and appeal more to children, but it didn't work and he abandoned the effort.

By the time Jedi came out, the Irvin Kershner and Lawrence Kasdan tag team was sundered and story was no longer king. Merchandising took story out behind the barn, beaten it up and shoved a toy in every orifice. 

Jedi made $50 million more than Empire, and was bolstered further by solid merchandise sales. And if you equate box office with quality, the best film of the whole set is The Phantom Menace, with $1,027,044,677 worldwide.

That's how our wallets voted, at any rate.

Star Wars was the biggest film event of my childhood, and I don't think anything since has shaken up cinema (and merchandising) as much. The Matrix was a seminal film, but was more adult oriented.

When you're under ten, films have a bigger impact.

You've not been filled up with decades of hype and media and tropes and twists and characters being killed only to be revived by the end of the episode, or cynical reboots of major franchises every couple years. Everything is fresh and shiny and new and never seen before when you're young and bright eyed."

Preparing for The Force Awakens with White House Down

So it's time to get ready for the biggest, most-hyped movie premiere of the new millennium: The Force Awakens.

If you want to ensure a happy, satisfying movie going experience, there are a number of steps you can take. Don't leave your enjoyment to chance, or just the quality of the film: bolster it!

Get insurance.

'But Gene, how is that possible?' you ask.

A very good question, my friend.

Allow me to explicate.

It's easy, actually: watch the worst movies in cinema history in the days leading up to the Star Wars film.

How many bad films?

That depends: the more you watch, the better The Force Awakens will look by comparison.

At the same time, if you watch too many dreadful, neuron-killing flicks, you'll be put off movie watching entirely.

So you need to strike a very, very careful balance.

Personally, I've prepared by watching White House Down, which is a truly terrible movie, at least from my point of view. It plays like a rejected Die Hard script. A lot of craft went into it, of course, and there's some great stunt work, but I am not the target audience.

Males between ten and fifteen might be.

Which is a frightening thought actually, as they're also the primary target audience of The Force Awaken, if you really think about it.

So don't.

You could watch The Phantom Menace, but that'd just be depressing and sour your feelings towards the entire franchise.

Sorry, George. I love ya man, but that one was a stinker.

Perhaps a Transformers movie. I've never managed to sit through one. This is a very edgy choice, however: the risk of being turned off cinema forever is just too high. I wouldn't go that far, personally.

Best stick to something bearably awful, like Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Crimson Peak, GI Joe, Divergent, and Jurassic World are all titles I'd recommend if you want to pummel your love of cinema.

The Force Awakens will be brilliant.

Magnum Thrax: Chapter Five

It's Monday, and that means it's time for another batcrap-crazy chapter of Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom, the weirdest sci-fi-fantasy book you'll ever read. The book is an exercise in both eccentricity and excess, a mad mash of genres that overloads readers with dense, alienating oddity. I know, I know: What the heck was I thinking? But that's what came out, and while different is not the synonymous with good, I had a lot of fun writing it. And I learned a good deal. Like, writing is hard, and, being Canadian, I'm always getting American spelling mixed up with my English/Canadian spelling. Like Reeses Peanut Butter cups, only considerably less tasty.

I could tell you more, but that'd be boring.

So now, without further ado… Chapter Five!

The winged beast soared over the prairie wastes. A monstrous creature ripped out of myth, it had been grown in a ceramic vat. Its scaled dragon body was topped by the head of a great white shark, its slack maw filled with rows of razor sharp teeth. Unblinking, dead eyes roved over the landscape ceaselessly. Black flecks swarmed beneath its great wings, enabling the oversized beast’s flight against all the rules of physics.

The rider on its back was gaunt and hooded, with skeletal, silver hands. It wore a spiked crown bearing an emblem of a castle growing out of a ringed sphere. To the right of the sphere was a tiny trademark symbol. Within the hood were only buzzing black dots and two small, glowing red orbs: laser emitters. A skull and crossbone badge was pinned to its chest with the label ‘Chief Operating Officer’.

Far below, two red dots flitted over an escape pod that lay at the end of a streak of churned up earth.

Finally. With a thought, The Wraith Director sent its dragon-shark into a dive. It spiralled downward, circling around the white speck.

As it neared, a small flock of grazers, tall, semi-intelligent devolved humans with stilt like legs, elongated necks, and small craniums, looked up. Seeing the dragon-shark and rider, they scattered.

The Wraith scanned them for metals, and finding none, ignored them. Wooshing and buzzing, the beast’s wings sent up gusts of dust as it landed.

The Wraith paused. It augmented passive scans with targeted sweeps of suspicious objects. The pod was half embedded in dirt. Black scorch marks ran along the upper surface from where it had been hit by energy bolts.

No threats identified, the Wraith slipped out of the saddle.

Its legs dissolved into a cloud that carried its body over to the pod’s open hatch, where they reformed.

A clawed finger ran along the open hatch with a hair-raising scratch, examining the interior and gathering data. A rent had been ripped on the underside, not visible from the outside. Enough damage to interfere with the pod’s operations, even bring it down eventually.

No sign of blood.

It noted a discarded and empty medkit. Several injection packets missing. Running through its database, the Wraith identified the medkit model: antiviral.

The target had been infected.

The Wraith bent its bulk into the pod itself, and placed a palm against the ship’s interface, transferring flight information. Images of spinning earth and sky, then the android occupant flashed through its neural net. It discarded the former and stored the latter for analysis.

The destination coordinates: 39 degrees north, 105 west.

Outside Denver.

Near the monastery.

An involuntary shiver went through The Wraith, as much as a shiver could. The android knew.

Most unfortunate. The Wraith activated its psychic ansible and sent out a high priority alert.

The response was immediate and expected: the android must never reach the Monastery of Nike alive.

Slipping out of the pod, The Wraith divided its two red orbs into a dozen, then a dozen dozen. A burst of red beams radiated outward, sweeping the ground methodically, then locked on to a string of faint footprints leading east.

Jackpot.

Satisfied, the Wraith skimmed over the churned earth, back to the waiting great white dragon-shark.

****

Deep below the surface of the earth, a sterile, flourescent lit chamber echoed with blubbery shouts of panic.

“Get it out! Get it out!”

Thrax, held down by three buxom, mini-skirted sexbot nurses, gaped at his arm in horror. Under the skin something visibly squirmed, like an amorphous worm, growing steadily in size.

It lurched towards his elbow.

“Holy Jesus Flakes! Cut it off!” he cried, leaning back, trying to distance himself from his own arm without effect.

Sterile fluorescent light made him look sickly green as he lay on the advanced medbunk. It had moulded itself to his body.

“Oh stop being such a damn baby,” said Jez, rolling her eyes. She and Andromeda looked on without much concern.

Candy bit her nails, eyes agog at Thrax’s arm. She had more empathy than she knew what to do with at the best of times.

“Always liked that laser bore of his,” whispered Jez to Andromeda. “Electron Dynamics. Top quality.”

“I heard that. You can’t have it,” snapped Thrax. “I’m leaving it to my little sister.” Jez shrugged. “She’s useless. I’d make better use of it.”

“Remain still, sir,” cooed a nurse. “Everything is going to be okay.”

Thrax gaped: “You don’t know that!”

“A death from battle wounds,” interjected Andromeda, “is a noble death, Magnum Thrax.”

“Patience. The doctor will be here soon,” added another nurse.

“Oh, for crying out loud, he’ll be dead by then,” snarled Jez. She snatched a butcher’s knife from a wall clip and hefted it in her hand, testing the weight. It was that kind of flexible, ad hoc adjunct medical bay slash butcher’s shop.

“Are you insane!?” Desperately, Thrax looked about for the doctor.

Through a seamless window he could see the main operating theatre, where a glowing Health Tech Life Cocoon encased the wounded android, keeping him in a suspended animation environment while studying his infection. An unseen operator caused ripples to flood over it as scans were performed.

Thrax cursed. “Froogin’ android gets better treatment than I do!”

They only had one cocoon. And Thrax was less important. Such bullshit. “Thanks for nuthin’. Jerks.”

Candy stammered an objection. “I don’t, hey, that’s not...”

“Shut up. I’ll get it.” Jez spat on the blade and smirked. Her eyes met Thrax’s. She smiled. “Don’t worry, you’ll learn to use the other hand for... you know.”

The nurses looked at each other in alarm. “I don’t think she’s licensed.”

Andromeda jutted out her chin, planted her hands on her hips, pushed her ample chest forward and declared, “If you die, Magnum Heironymus Thrax, we shall avenge you.” She cast a fierce look at the cocooned android.

Thrax groaned. “You always–wait!”

Jez raised the knife up high. Her face glowed with anticipation. “Ready? Three... two...” “Stop!”

The medpod’s doors slid open and Doctor Helen waddled in. Portly but compact, her skin was badly mottled, and her radiation ravaged body was encased in a cybernetic exoskeleton of incredible power.

“I do the cutting here, thank you very much,” she asserted, taking control of the situation immediately. This was her element, and nothing happened in the operating room without her say so. “No room for amateurs. Step aside. Make way. Shoo, shoo.”

She pushed Jez aside like she was made of feathers.

The domdroid stumbled sideways, her combat high heels clacking against the tiles, and backed into a tray of bedpans with a crash.

She scowled and glared daggers at Helen, who didn’t bother to notice, which just made Jez scowl more.

She looked to see if anyone had noticed, or laughed. That would be unacceptable.

No one dared.

Jez relaxed and resumed a calculated, nonchalant pose of self-possessed awesomeness.

“Everyone calm down,” soothed Doctor Helen, her voice authority itself. “Just calm down. Now. What do we have here, Mr. Thrax?”

She activated her eyepiece data feed and neural tap which was tied in to the medical bay’s equipment. Automated robotic arms shifted and hovered over Thrax, bringing their instruments to bear at her direction. She paused and bit her lip.

“It’s growing,” yelped Thrax. “Hurry it up, Doc!”

“Yes, yes,” replied Helen, absentmindedly. “Just relax, now. Some kind of synthetic infection... Changing as I speak. Never seen a faux bug like it. Deep breaths, Thrax. Deep breaths.”

She pulled out a transparent scanning sheet and held it over his arm. She liked the old ways best.

Thrax took a deep breath. Exhaled. His arm stopped moving.

He managed a small smile.

“How’s your mom?” Helen took out a nano-injector and loaded it with a probe packet.

“What? Oh. Good, thanks,” replied Thrax. “Those pills really did the trick.”

“Tell her she can pay me back by programming up a Don Juan medic for me. A sexy one,” said Helen with a smile. She glanced at the nurses. “This lot? Useless.”

The foxy nurses exchanged concerned looks.

Thrax shook his head. “Sorry. Mom programs people code, not android.”

“Oh yes. Remember now. Artificial DNA five point oh,” mused Helen. “Pity.”

She injected the packet.

The infection began to squirm again.

“You’ve riled it, Doc!”

“Shush. Quiet. I don’t want to sedate you.”

“Sedate me!” demanded Thrax. Wounds were one thing. Things crawling around under his skin were quite another.

“Doc, it’s going for his brain. I can sense it. It’s going to eat his brain!” warned Candy, growing hysterical. “I’ve seen it in vids. It’s always, like, always the brain!”

Helen turned to Candy. “Should I sedate both of you?”

Candy blushed. “I was just saying it’s going... Sorry.”

The writhing subcutaneous lump inched around the elbow and around the bicep.

“Hurry, dammit. I like my brain!” exclaimed Thrax.

“Not impressed with it myself, but you make do with what you’ve got,” Doc leaned in close, her bulbous nose a mere inch above the mysterious intruder. She tapped it with a finger. Ripples spread out.

“Is he going to die?” asked Candy, grabbing hold of Thrax’s uninfected hand. Her model’s deep seated empathy programming was going into hyperdrive. “Save his brain, Doctor Helen.” A makeup laden tear trickled down her face. “And his other parts!”

Helen swung over an old, heavy piece of machinery that hung from the ceiling and directed an aperture at Thrax’s elbow. The device hummed. “Stop alarming him, Candy dear. You know better.”

The bump began to fade.

Helen frowned. “Oh dear, that’s not good.”

Thrax’s eyebrows shot up. “What? What’s not good?”

“Not good at all.”

Mechancial arms swooped in, grasping Thrax’s arm and peppering it with surface probes.

The lump was gone, as if it had never been.

“Not even stretch marks,” mused Doc Helen.

She paused a moment, her eye darting rapidly at data streaming through her eyeglass no one else could see, then snapped off her rubber gloves.

“What are you doing?” asked Thrax. “Aren’t you going to get it out?” “Too late.”

“What do you mean ‘too late’?” repeated Thrax.

Helen shrugged. “Already in your bloodstream, your brain. Medbots don’t seem to even notice. Sophisticated stuff. Level three, maybe four. The bump was just a temporary factory site. But don’t fret. Amputation would be pointless.” She patted his arm and gave him a wink. “I’ll see if we have any Hunter Killer packets.”

“You’re just guessing,” muttered Jez, bitterly.

“Pot, kettle,” snapped Helen. She nodded to her nurses. “Do something useful for a change. Clear this lot out of the medical bay.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They started to shoo everyone out. Two approached Jez, who hadn’t budged, but were stopped in their tracks by a glare that’d kill a mutant moose. They backed off. Jez smiled, warmed by her victory, then strutted jauntily towards the exit, nose in the air. “Didn’t want to stay anyway. My subbies will fill me in.”

Helen rummaged through nano-medipackets piled on a tray. “Thrax, I want to keep you here for a little while,” she said over her shoulder.

“How long?” asked Thrax.

“Couple hours.” She nodded towards the window and the cocoon beyond. “At least until I find some answers.”

“What kind of shape the android in?”

She tapped the injector against her chin. “Not good. His artificial genetic code is unraveling. Syntelomeres degrading at a rapid rate. Capped them for time being, but he’s not got long. Perplexing.”

Thrax grunted assent.

She turned a little packet round in her chubby fingers. “Ah, here we go: HK’s.”

She snapped the packet into the injector slot. She made a gesture and a floating interface terminal sheet glided over. Her fingers danced over it. “I’m going to leave them inert for now. Just there in case your little guests decide to do anything rash.”

Helen tapped his arm. “Pain?”

Thrax shook his head.

“Good.” She placed the injector against his bicep. There was soft click.

“Sit tight, I’ll be back.” Doc Helen headed for the door. She flicked her fingers. “Come along, girls. You’re moving our patient to the Council Chamber.”

The nurses skittered on their impossibly high heels after her.

As the door closed after them, silence descended on the med bay. Thrax became aware of soft hums of machinery, the gentle gush of air conditioning.

He waited. Wondered what time it was. Looked about.

Darwin! He remembered he’d deactivated the AI. With a thought he brought it online.

Darwin’s holographic image appeared in space before him. Facing away, with arms crossed. The virtual being was pissed.

Fuck, thought Thrax. Better get this over with.

“Hey, look, sorry about that,” he said.

No reaction.

He spread his hands out in supplication. It was gauling but had to be done. “What? You wouldn’t shut up and I needed to concentrate.”

“No small feat,” sniffed Darwin, “Given your ADD and stimulation addiction.”

“Fine,” replied Thrax. He needed to get Darwin back onside. Why couldn’t he have a normal digital assistant? Kal just had an insta-access database.

“Could have warned you.”

Here it comes, thought Thrax. “Go ahead and say it.”

Darwin shifted, then turned his semi-transparent face about, and pulled off his sunglasses for dramatic emphasis. “Turning me off might have doomed not only us, but the entire Pleasurepit Emporium.”

“Fine,” replied Thrax. “I fucked up. I won’t turn you off again.” He gave it a thought and added a caveat. “In a dangerous situation. Promise.”

Darwin nodded. “A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth. Turning me off is a violation of that, a statement of inequality.”

Thrax began to wish he hadn’t turned Darwin back on.

“Dude, you’re my best buddy. I couldn’t get through a day without you.”

This seemed to mollify Darwin. His shoulders relaxed, he took on a professorial air, and he began to pace the room. “The android is military, last model manufactured before the collapse. Aside from his serial number and designation, Eight-Oh-Nine, nothing. His code and immune system are protected by HK’s, which have hampered Doctor Helen’s efforts to save his life. Ironic. What was intended to protect him may kill him.”

“What the hell was he doing in that Squid? Why inject me with goo?”

Darwin walked about the med lab, examining the equipment. “Best guess? You were convenient. Facing imminent death, he decided to pass material on to you, to fulfill his greater purpose. Whatever that might be.”

“Yeah,” replied Thrax. He hopped off the bed. “Well. I’m out of here. Could dissolve any minute. Gonna find me a few experiences to take to the grave. An orgy or two.” As he made for the door he reconsidered. He had orgies almost every day, as often as his ration card allowed. If this was his last go around, he wanted something different. Out of bounds. Warrior sexbots: the forbidden fruit. Yeah!

Darwin rolled his eyes and put back on his sunglasses. “Rutting. Typical. You remind me of a monkey I once knew. Well. I think I’ll go dip in the theorem database for awhile.”

And he winked out.

Starship size comparison video

This is really well done. And illuminating: I had no idea how big Star Trek ships were compared to Star Wars (the Galaxy Class Enterprise is almost as big as a Star Destroyer) and the Death Star II is... five or six times the size of the first one, if this is accurate.

I had no idea.

How could I sleep at night?

It doesn't make any sense, of course: why waste more resources on a Death Star six times (roughly speaking, I'm ball parking) the size of the first one to do the exact same thing? It already had a planet destroying laser. Six times the diameter means the volume is cubed, so 216 times the volume of material.

And it would be much slower rotating that big superlaser to fire on attacking ships. Why not just attack it from the side where the super laser, you know, isn't?

It makes no sense.

But this is the wrong question to ask when it comes to Star Wars.

I know.

Cool uber alles, and big, impressive planet destroying superlaser space stations are cool. Maybe The Emperor really was that immature. Or the Galactic Military Industrial Complex was more concerned with slush contracts than military efficacy...

Other than the Death Star, though, the gigantic Star Wars vessels (Star Destroyers, Super Duper Deluxe Star Destroyers, etc) are actually diminutive compared to other franchises, particularly Halo, which has a bad case of scale-creep gigantism.

And what the heck is Mass Effect, anyway?

But back to the Death Star. I mean... look at the size comparison. Yes, these questions are so irrelevant they make Latin look like a practical study choice, but still, this is important.

Because nerd!

Look, the military industrial complex needs contracts. Let's use 216 times the material for the next Death Star.

Crimson Peak vs. It Follows

I saw two horror films recently: the 'big' budget ($55 million) Guillermo del Toro flick, Crimson Peak, and a small ($2 million) indie flick called It Follows by David Robert Mitchell.

Crimson Peak feels like a Tim Burton film, with Gothic sets and steampunk machinery. Everything about it is highly stylized, and the film makes no effort at verisimilitude whatsoever. Young Edith (Mia Waikowska) falls for a charming, bankrupt aristocrat, Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston), and is whisked away to his creepy, delapidated mansion, where she's tormented by his demented sister Lady Lucille (Jessica Chastain). If you thought your in-laws were bad, wait to you get a load of her...

The indie horror film It Follows, on the other hand, is so disturbingly down-to-earth in its approach it's the anti-Crimson Peak. Granted, being a low budget indie flick, it doesn't have much choice. But it turns these limitations into advantages. Set in Detroit, the story follow the romance of bland teenager Jay (Maika monroe) and Hugh (Jake Weary); unfortunately all is not as it seems. Hugh has an alternate agenda: to pass on an ambulatory, homicidal STD. Things get weird and creepy and disturbing from there.

Crimson Peak is filled with 'Characters' whereas It Follows is populated by people. It's almost like they shot documentary footage of a bunch of real kids faced with a horrible, preternatural stalker. The acting and dialogue are so naturalistic you don't notice the performances.

It Follows also doesn't shove archetypes down your throat. Sure, one of the characters is a bit geeky, another is more studly, but these traits are subdued, overshadowed by the character's common humanity. It feels amateurish, in a way, as if it was just a bunch of friends doing a movie together as themselves. But it is enormously effective, particularly for this genre. The audience needs to project themselves into the characters, to feel the peril they are in. 

Best of all, the characters all behave in a realistic manner, as people might when faced with similar circumstances. In other words, the complete opposite of The Walking Dead and more like The Thing.

There are a few things in It Follows that don't make sense if you really stop and think about it, but none occurred until after the film was over. Crimson Peak didn't make sense to me while I was watching it. It's big and bombastic, and the characters here are more cartoonish than real.

Larger than life archetypes are often necessary in film as you have to convey a great deal of information in a very short period of time. They serve a function. Yet the capital 'A' acting in Crimson Peak is jarring and ostentatious when contrasted with It Follows.

That being said, the characters are more interesting in Peak. They're overwrought archetypes, scenery chewing lunatics, even, and intentionally and amusingly so. Which is the very opposite of what It Follows is going for. Here the cast is deliberately ordinary, even bland. We learn little about them beyond what is strictly necessary for the plot. This faint glimpse into character is about what you'd expect to get if you only spent an hour or two with someone. Hints of traits rather than full reveals.

While It Follows does drag (a little) in the middle, Crimson Peak is a slog the whole way through. The outlandish period sets and costumes can't make up for the mess of a story. Mia and Tom have charisma, but it's harnessed to a dead horse here. Del Toro recycles elements from his earlier and much better film, The Devil's Backbone, as well, with severely diminished returns. Backbone, in fact, is my favourite film of his, before he went Hollywood and big studio.

The CGI ghosts of Crimson Peak are obviously digital creations, and that just neutralizes their fright factor. By comparison, It Follows is as primitive as it is powerful and effective.

Sometimes less is more.

Advantage: It Follows.