SciFi Sacrilege?

I just posted this on a movie thread on the Starship Modeler board:

He (paraphrased): 2001: A Space Odyssey put me to sleep twice and when I did watch it all the way through I didn't get it.

Me: "That's because it's not a good movie.

It's a spectacular visual cornucopia of snippets of input wrapped around a story it never tells you, but as a movie, it's crap."

There.  I said it.  Well, I typed it.  And because opinions are free I'll list a few more classic items my SciFi tastes tend to run counter to, although in these cases I don't think it's because they're bad books or movies...

• Dune.  Hated it.  Overly long, dense, and boring.  Never bothered with the rest of the trilogy. At a friend's urging I read a little more Herbert, but found it unbearable.
• Neuromancer.  Got interrupted with 2 pages to go, never bothered to finish it.  An utterly forgettable sampling of a subgenre that never appealed to me.
• Blade Runner. Might as well call it Nap Runner. I've slept through parts of it both times I tried to watch it - theater and rental, and a movie where the sets are more interesting than the characters is not my thing.  Still, this one I should probably dial up again just to see if I can see what the fuss is all about.

O, to be such a heretic!

In Which I Realize that John Scalzi is Not a Very Good Author

Picked up the third book in Scalzi's Old Man's War series: "Last Colony".  It's not good.  I don't mean that in the "it didn't work for me but I can see how others might enjoy it" sense, either.  I mean it in the "wow, this book is not competently structured, paced, or edited" sense.

Example: The book is essentially 3 Acts:

1. Intro, and develop need for new colony planet.
2. Colonize planet with some surprises and complications.
3. Reveal real reason for new colony; resolution and climax.

One of the complications in part 2 is the realization that there is already a sentient species on the planet the newcomers have colonized.  And they are hostile!  And dangerous!  And eat humans!  and have spears!  And move silently! (I don't know if they could Bend Bars and Lift Gates, but I suspect so!)  And they look like...  like... like...

Wait for it...

Werewolves!  Yeah!  Fast, ninja-moving, spear-carrying werewolves that eat people!  And they're right next door!  And they even murder one of the more slightly-interesting secondary characters right in front of us at the end of Act 2!

I'd tell you more, but that's the last time they're ever mentioned in the book, even though a large part of Act 3 takes place on the colony.  I was hoping that they were being deliberately minimalized because there was a way to clumsily shoehorn them into the rather predictable climax at the colony, but no, they were just tossed aside, unresolved and unremarked.

That's just one of the examples, but probably the easiest to describe.  It's a problem that decent writing would not have created and that any competent editor would have redlined, but there it is.

This was my fourth and last Scalzi.  I liked "Old Man's War" and I think I liked the sequel.  I thought "Redshirts" was pretty shitty.  I took a chance on "Last Colony" because I figured his core storyline would be okay.  I was wrong.  I guess Scalzi ended up having one story to tell well.  He wrote it.  I read it.  I liked it.  But now I'm done.

Star Wars II: "Ahmm, a Jedi, eh? Whaddya know?"

EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES

Original Thoughts

I'd mellowed considerably on Star Wars by the time AOTC was announced and Trailered. I kept my geek on "simmer" and avoided any preconceptions other than

a) the title was kinda clumsy
b) there appeared to be a few Jedi fighting in it

I hadn't completely absorbed George Lucas' "it's like a cheesy Saturday morning movie serial, see?" for his title choices yet, and, busy with work and life, I simply missed the trailers that showed glimpses of dozens of Jedi hacking at crap.

But when me and some friends hit the theater, I was, more than anything, psyched to see a new Star Wars film - what, was it NOT going to have flashy lightsabers and whizzy starships? What I didn't realize was that it was also going to give me some pain mixed in with its delight.

Things I liked:

1) Different flow. The "big chase" scene being in the first act, and the last action act being relatively continuous was something not seen since the original movie, really. (Star Wars/A New Hope, - all a single space battle at the end; Empire - escape scene mixed with duel, followed by pursuit scene; Jedi - trio of space/land/saber battle, all at end; Phantom Menace - repeat of Jedi; AOTC - land
fight then land battle followed by duel then duel; Sith - double saber duels.)

2) Big Clone battle on Geonosis. This just looked spectacular and I loved every second of it.

3) Again, Ewan McGregor's Kenobi. It's just fun to watch.

4) Natalie Portman's hinder. This just looked spectacular and I loved every second of it. It's just fun to watch.

Things I liked less:

1) The "romance". Yep, pretty painful, and unforgivingly-so. Clunky dialogue, bad giggles, super-powered angst coming from nowhere, and absolutely zero subtlety. George definitely should have had someone tag in here - a better director could have at least softened the cheeseball factors with better performances out of his leads.

And come on - I've known a few manipulative and downright mean chicks in my life, and yeah, they'd cook me a meal and invite me to a cozy firelit room to give me the Big Surprise Stop Sign, but even they'd never've donned a black bondage outfit to do so. I mean, they had standards.

2) Dooku's fighting style. You go out of your way to design a different saber that hints at and, in the geeky backstory, harkens to a one-handed classical fencer pose and style, and you even FX Christpher Lee's head onto a stunt guy anyway; but in the end it's still all big sweeps and swings instead of cuts and lunges.

Blu-Ray Hubbub

Same as TPM from last week; if there are any changes in the BluRay version compared to the DVD version, I'm the wrong guy to spot them. Sound still great, the picture is perfect (maybe they cleaned up some of the digital stuff in Palpatine's office? The reds seemed a little less fuzzy than I'd recalled). A nice feature in this BluRay release is that they've cobbled together an additional commentary track for each film. It says it's "archival", and is clearly snippets of interviews and quickie comments, and I suspect even pieces of commentaries they recorded but didn't use all of. Nice to hear a few comments from some actors who aren't an embittered Carrie Fisher, for instance.

(Maybe they should have CGId in a shawl for Amidala's "I dump you hotly" scene?)

If there's a down side to the BluRay it's the gorrammed time it takes to load each new section of menu - reminds me of booting up my dad's old 8086 PC. I know part of that can be my player, but man, it's annoying, and it's not even George Lucas's fault!

Overall

I like it. I know I'm supposed to hate the whole thing because of the flubbed romance thing, but c'mon - Obi-wan Kenobi fights a Harryhausen monster! With a spear, even! Does it feel cheesy to end up spending a buttload of time on "I'm never coming back to this planet again" (oh, but we are, Luke - in 5 out of 6 movies) sandy Tatooine? Sure. Is Lucas showcasing his ability to drag mediocre performances from capable actors? Sure. Does mommy-loss, adolescent angst, and stolen love seem like a solid base on which to build a black-armored badass who chokes his way through less-than-perfect friendlies like Pee Wee Herman in a chicken factory?

No. And that's the movie's biggest failing to me. I'm simply not convinced that Anakin Skywalker can become Darth Vader - not a bit. And since this whole overarching thing is the story OF Anakin's evolution into Vader, I'd say that's a pretty big problem.

Still and all, I think it works better than The Phantom Menace, and is ultimately visually more rewarding, hence...

My rating of its place in the pack, best-to-worst:

1 - XXXX
2 - XXXX
3 - XXXX
4 - Attack of the Clones
5 - The Phantom Menace
6 - XXXX

Next up, for the non-geeks: Revenge of the Sith.

Star Wars I: "Here - take-um this one!"

Disclaimer
I am a Star Wars nerd of immense proportions; probably well into the 70s on a scale of 1 to 100. Except for the actual Laserdiscs themselves, I think I have every version of the movies ever released in the U.S. on VHS and DVD and now BluRay. I've got all the original trilogy in pan&scan and then widescreen, the Japanese import DVDs of the Laserdisc transfers, the Special Editions (I think in VHS and DVD), I've got all the Clone Wars stuff, and I even have a fan-made lightsaber I bought off of Ebay (before the really cool ones were around).

Like I said: "nerd".

With the recent release of the "Definitive" collection of all 6 movies on BluRay, I thought I'd take this opportunity to geekify and offer some opinions that no one's asked for. I'll do one for each movie, and I'm sure that's a thrill for someone. :)

EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE

Original Thoughts

When I heard that there was going to be a prequel trilogy, I was seasoned enough to know that it might be less then hoped-for, but I was not prepared for my initial visceral hatred for the film when my butt was first in the theater seat. My initial complaints were

1) The overall story was just a retelling of the Return of the Jedi (in fact I usually refer to it as "Return of Return of the Jedi" - ain't I cute?), which by now all us geeks knew was Lucas' first attempt to go back to his original vision of his space fantasy climax that involved simultaneous land, space, and personal battles, all interleaved into the final climactic resolution. He'd only enough movie and money for the space battle part in Star Wars, didn't really write Empire, did a crappy version of it in Return of the Jedi, and here we had it again in Phantom Menace (TPM). I don't want such blatant James Bondian formulae in my Star Wars movies!

2) Jar-Jar. I'm actually going to try and keep my profanity low in these posts, so I won't say more, but I'll channel a little Captain Kirk commentary: "But I mean, really."

3) Kiddie muppet movie or slice-guys-in-half space opera? Give me one or the other, please.

4) Too derivative. Far too many (IMO) of the weapon, ship, or speeder designs in TPM can be seen languishing in the margins of the various "Art of" or "Sketchbook" books of the orginal trilogy. For instance, there's a quick scene in the final space battle that is pretty much a recreation of an iconic Ralph McQuarrie production painting for Star Wars which shows Y-wings diving from high above onto the northern pole of the Death Star. In the movie shot, the Naboo starfighters are in the same attitudes as the Y-wings in the painting, and the Federation starship globe their diving on subs in perfectly for the old Death Star. One or two of these things, I feel, is fun and/or cute, but too many gets old.

5) Midichlorians. Midichlorians? Sigh. We were doing okay 'til then with "Luminous beings are we - not this crude matter", but now your ability to cheat at dice and deflect blaster bolts is dependent on not having lazy Mitochondria. I mean Midichlorians.

Blu-Ray Hubbub

If the Master List of changes some fans have been hyperventilating about includes any TPM changes other than Yoda, I'm unaware of them. Overall the HD transfer is crisp and gorgeous, and the sound is great. And the CG Yoda they did for the BluRay looks 10 times better than the puppet they originally used in this movie; sorry guys.

Overall

Smashing cutesy-cuddly muppets into canyon walls at 200MPH doesn't seem to be a good combo to me, and I kinda wish things had moved in a different direction, but TPM certainly wrote in stone the vision that George Lucas has for his creation, and watching Ewan McGregor nail a perfect "young Obi-wan Kenobi" is a delight to watch. Also, the saber fight between Kenobi and Qui-gon and Darth Maul is one of the best-choreographed fights I've ever seen on film - those three guys definitely look like they're trying to kill each other and are quite capable of doing it.

So eventually I mellowed on the movie - it's got whizzy spaceships and flashy lightsabers, and not much else does, so I'll keep it, and enjoy it for what it is (without forgetting what it could have been).

My rating of its place in the pack, best-to-worst:

1 - XXXX
2 - XXXX
3 - XXXX
4 - XXXX
5 - The Phantom Menace
6 - XXXX

Next up, for the non-geeks: Attack of the Clones.

How Long is a Piece of Rope?

I coined a new phrase concept, at least new to me, the other day whilst discussing the 100 sci fi books list a few posts below.

There is a style of fantasy writing that is very popular that I simply cannot stand. Members of it include Game of Thrones, Circle of Time, the Feist stuff I commented about, and no-doubt innumerable others. They rarely are less than 10 books per series, with each book around 600 pages or so, and never seem to have an end in mind. The stories themselves are rarely driven by a plot, instead relying on richly-drawn character lines woven together into some sort of coherent whole that seems to be headed somewhere but is never in a hurry to arrive.

In short, rope. I don't like rope stories.

These books also seem to confuse "complexity" with "fun to read". I don't need to know how many nails are holding together a senator's chair to know he's got influence, nor do I need to follow every meal and every scolding of "the youth" to know what he's like as "the hero".

These kinds of books also seem to revel in constructing real hellscapes for the characters to run around in, full of tragic and flawed losers that fail and die off every other chapter or so.

Yay fun.

Anyway, it's just personal taste and nothing more, but, yeah.

Rope. Don't like reading it.