March 22, 2008 - 8:44 pm - Posted by Administrator
Any movie where New York City is one huge ghost town is alright with me. However, I Am Legend feels like a re-write too many on a concept that’s nearly overdone at present–the concept that thinking, feeling humans have disappeared and the world is populated by mindless, blood-thirsty beasts, devoid of emotion and feeling.
Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, the last known survivor of a plague that began as a viral cure for cancer. In 2009, the plague nearly wipes out the human race. Neville is left as the lone remaining human in New York City, the rest of the inhabitants having been transformed into ‘zompires’ by the virus. OK, they’re not really called ‘zompires’ but they might as well be. I Am Legend’s screenplay was co-written by co-producer Akiva Goldsman–producer of such winners as Deep Blue Sea, Starsky and Hutch, and Poseidon. Goldsman’s screenplay was in turn based on a screenplay by John William Corrington for 1971’s Omega Man starring Charleton Heston, which was in turn based on the novel by Richard Matheson. Why the studio would decide to bring a classic science fiction novel to the big screen by borrowing from a badly-done version of the story from the seventies is beyond me. Perhaps it’s Goldsman’s penchant for lame remakes. Note to Goldsman: you’re standing on the shoulders of giants and ruining what they’ve achieved.
Couple the remake-prone producer Goldsman with a director [Francis Lawrence] whose only credits are music videos, and you’ve invited disaster. I look forward to the day when movie studios understand that classic science fiction stories need to be produced and directed by auteurs with singular uncompromised vision, not thrown together from fragments of screenplays and helmed by whomever happens to be free to direct/produce at the moment that fits the studio’s schedule. It’s about more than money.
Robert Neville spends his days in New York City hunting for food and having conversation with his only friend… his dog. He maintains a sense of normalcy by watching DVDs–one at a time–which he faithfully retrieves from a video store each day, talking to the mannequins he’s arranged in the store as if they were real humans. He has recorded a message which is repeatedly broadcast on the radio–a plea for anyone who hears it to meet him on the pier at midday. His wait for a response stretches into it’s third year, and Neville keeps busy by continuing his work as a biologist in his basement lab, working on a cure for the virus which has turned nearly six billion people into “darkseekers”–blood thirsty mutants with compulsively violent urges. They are powerfully allergic to light and stay inside in the day, coming out at night to feed on blood.
The problem with movies like I Am Legend is, there is only one reasonable outcome… the lone survivor of the apocalypse will eventually discover he’s not alone. Knowing that in advance, it can get pretty frustrating waiting for the other humans to show up when the story moves at a snail’s pace like this one does.
There are lots of great special effects, and the city of New York makes a great character, even when it’s empty, but the story just didn’t hook me. The computer-animated nature of the “darkseekers” gives a sense of artificiality to villains who would have been far scarier had they been more human. Neville’s flashbacks to his prior life are annoying as well. The whole movie I kept thinking they would have been better-served to have just told the flashback part of the story first, then progress to the post-apocalypse part of the story in linear fashion instead of flashing back and forth the whole time.
In the end, making this bad adaptation of Richard Matheson’s story only ensured one thing–that this story will eventually be adapted again. Let’s hope they get it right next time.
Posted in 2007, Pandemic, Post-Apocalypse, The Future, Two Star Rating | No Comments »
March 9, 2008 - 9:35 pm - Posted by Administrator
Looking at the Mad Max trilogy as a whole, a few unusual things stand out. First, it’s one of the rare series flicks where episode two [The Road Warrior, aka Mad Max 2] was seen by a vastly larger audience than the original. And second, despite going through a transformative series of changes in tone, the Mad Max trilogy has single-handedly re-defined the post-apocalyptic film.
Director George Miller reportedly worked as an Emergency Room doctor in his native Australia to raise the money to film Mad Max. Through wise use of story and setting, the lack of funds barely shows–or at least not any more than your avergae low-budget movie. Max [Mel Gibson] is an Australian cop in a near-future where society is at it’s last stand. Roving gangs of bikers and hot rodders roam the highways of the Australian outback. Max and his fellow officers are the final hand of authority, attempting to maintain order from behind the wheel of their police interceptors.
Early in the movie Max chases down a gangleader named “The Night Rider”. With a methodical patience he hounds the Night Rider on the highway, bumping him from the rear, eventually causing him to lose control and crash in a fiery explosion. When Max’s family is killed by the gang in retaliation, he dusts of his ultimate pursuit vehicle, the co-star of the movie, the Ford Falcon Coupe XB GT, a car which has been manufactured by Ford in Australia since 1960. Not be confused with the US or Argentinian vehicles of the same name.
What ensues is a violent chase movie, set against the backdrop of rural Australia. Which brings me to an aside… In The Road Warrior [aka Mad Max 2] and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome [Mad Max 3], George Miller’s story, co-written by Byron Kennedy, does explain the post-apocalyptic nature of the setting to some degree, however Mad Max appears to happen in a world that is not-quite-post-apocalyptic–the grass is still green, crops are still growing, and most social order still exists. And then at the open of The Road Warrior, the world has been destroyed by a nuclear war. Unless I’m figuring wrong (which I could be), a nuclear war happened some time between Mad Max, and The Road Warrior. They should make a movie out of that story!
The real thrill of Mad Max is the amazing chase scenes and dozens of crashes, explosions, and violent death scenes. Max pursues the members of the gang relentlessly, never giving mercy, and never feeling a thing. Mad Max wasn’t a sensation at the box office, but it should be noted Mad Max arrived at about the same time as HBO and exposed a whole generation of young fans to a movie they probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise. And an interesting side note, the movie was originally shown to American audiences with Mel Gibson’s voice dubbed because producers were afraid Americans wouldn’t understand his Australian accent. The voice track has since been restored to Gibson’s original.
In essence Mad Max is a car movie. The soundtrack is little more than pistons and percussion, plus the cop sirens sound badass and futuristic somehow. Add in the right-drive Australian pursuit vehicles, and it’s a car-lovers paradise. As a childhood fan of movies like Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, and Vanishing Point, this one sat well with me growing up.
The tone and story are considerably different in each of the sequels, and if you’re like me, you may find yourself liking one and disliking the others. Originally, the sequel was released in the United States as “The Road Warrior” and only recently was it re-titled Mad Max 2, presumably to maximize DVD sales of Mad Max to an audience which has never given it more than cult status.
**** Four Stars ****
Posted in 1979, Environmental Disaster, Four Star Rating, Post-Apocalypse, The Future | No Comments »
March 1, 2008 - 10:04 pm - Posted by Administrator
I first became familiar with John Titor’s story due to the Above Top Secret forums. In 2000-2001 a man appeared on the internet claiming to be a time traveller from the future. At first he used the nickname TimeTravel_0, eventually adopting the name “John Titor”. He weaved an elaborate story through a series of message board postings and then, after announcing that he would be returning to his own time, he vanished. Never to be heard from again.
As a fan of science, fiction, and science fiction, I was captivated. Unfortunately, I think he was a hoaxer. I came to that conclusion based on his many contradictions, as did many others. Perhaps you disagree. Cheers. That’s why I love discussion.
As a matter of fact, if you could somehow prove that John Titor wasn’t a hoaxer, I would truly be overjoyed… because Titor’s story intrigued me endlessly. I would be thrilled if we could say that such a fantastic story is undeniably true. I could not come to that conclusion.
In the process of reading John’s entire library of posts several times over the last several years, I came to arrive at the opinion it was a hoax, but I also began to get the impression that I know this person. The postings of John Titor were reading like a character in a novel by a writer at the top of his game. When I was younger and read Stephen King novels voraciously, I always marveled at how he could write a character that made me think “God, I know somebody just like that”.
I found myself feeling that way as I read and re-read the postings of John Titor, except in this case, I would argue the believablility of his story is due to the fact that what we’re reading is flavored by the opinions and biases of the real person behind the John Titor postings. The complete John Titor collection of posts seems to suggest a highly creative false-premise, filled-out with glimspes of the real person behind the posts. As such, I believe we can create a “profile” of John Titor–the real author of the posts–based on the content of said posts.
Let me add a disclaimer: “I have some minor experience with profiling, I have some family members in Federal law enforcement, and I have other family members in the Federal penal system. None of that makes me an expert on profiling. Just my opinion.”
John Titor is a conservative white male, quite possibly a senior citizen. This conclusion is based on his apparent reverence for all things old-fashioned and his tendency to wax nostalgic about the good old days when he’s supposed to be describing what it’s like in the future. What he’s really describing is his own personal Utopia.
- The people that survived grew closer together. Life is centered around the family and then the community. I can not imagine living even a few hundred miles away from my parents.
- People spend more time talking because life is more centered around the community. I’ve noticed the same type of effect here when the power goes off. People tend to come out of their homes and actually spend time with their neighbors. There is a lot more personal trust and less paranoia.
- People spend much more time reading and talking together face to face. Hats are more common in the future and flashy colors are less common. Dress is much more functional and we “dress up” whenever we get a chance.
- Religion is taken seriously.
Those are but a few examples of dozens.
John Titor also appears to have had an agricultural upbringing. I believe this is corroborated by his multiple fond references to the ag arts and his anti-bioengineering stance.
- you willfully eat poisoned food
- Do not eat or use products from any animal that is fed and eats parts of its own dead
- I suppose an average day in 2036 is like an average day on the farm.
- Water is produced on a community level and we do eat meat..that we raise ourselves.
- One thing we did not do was create more hybrid seeds. What are people thinking???
John Titor is college educated and highly intelligent. He makes multiple references to complex scientific concepts in his posts, seems to harbor a snobbish opinion of the undereducated, and may have a post-college background in engineering or mathematics. Again in describing his “future”, Titor says:
- everyone can multiply and divide in their heads.
It’s quite likely Titor’s own technological glory days were about 1975 or so, and it seems equally likely that he either held a job where he was exposed to early computer technology or was in some other way powerfully influenced by the IBM 5100, causing him to incorporate that particular model of computer into his writings.
- I was sent to 1975 to get a computer system and take it back to 2036.
- On my world line, it is known that the 5100 series is capable of reading all the IBM code written before the widespread use of APL and Basic. Unfortunately, there are none left that anyone can find on my world line.
It has been suggested that this is one of Titor’s blunders. He claimed to be sent to 1975 to obtain a computer which was new at the time, and had a price tag of $20,000. With the pace of computer technology in the seventies and eighties, he could have gone back to 1980, the 5100 would have been nearly as easy to find, and the unit would likely be sitting in an engineer’s closet by that time, making it less likely to be missed if it were to disappear. Even so, there are clever hidden themes, double entendres, and forward-thinking mixed with his blunders and contradictions.
John Titor’s political and social opinions make him a few steps short of the radical localist views of the Posse Comitatus–a movement which enjoys a strong following among those with agricultural backgrounds. His posts make reference to survivalism, strong local, county, and state governments, and a strong disenchantment with the federal government, the public school system, transportation, the American Banking system, and healthcare. At one point he even uses the term “American Federal Empire” which is a term that is known to anti-government types.
- Titor on Decentralized Government - The powers of the national government are more defined and reside more at the county and state level.
- Titor on the Federal Government - The war is a result of faulty politics and desparation from Western leadership during the US civil war
- On the Government in 2036 - I think the new government is good. However, since the concept of nationally subsidized welfare is gone, most people here may not appreciate it.
- Titor on the Constitution - While you sit by and watch your Constitution being torn away from you…
- Titor on the Constitution - The Constitution was changed after the war.
- Public Schools - The education system has been through many changes. School in 2036 is no longer a political indoctrination system.
- Public Schools - I was home schooled.
- Interstate Commerce and Migration - If a family wanted to move from one community to another or if a son or daughter wanted to move to another community, they must apply and be interviewed by the community leadership council. During this process, the family or individual is evaluated as to whether or not the work or skill they have is required or necessary to that individual community.
- The Banking System - Banking is based mostly around the community structure. There are no multinational banking or computerized economic systems. There are also no income taxes.
He also seems to exhibit many of the characteristics of a religious fundamentalist, and shows a distrust of huge organized churches and religions. Taking into account occasional hints of racism and xenophobia which appear in his writings, he may be a subscriber of Christian Identity, although his actual religion is inconclusive.
- Yes there are [social prejudices in 2036]. However, as odd as it may sound, it serves a useful purpose in my time.
- Yes I believe in Jesus Christ and we pray to God in churches. There are some differences you may be interested in. Religion is a major part of peoples life in 2036. Pain and change tend to bring people together andcloser to God. However, religion is far more personal than it is now. There are no huge, centralized religions and people talk openly about their beliefs. It might also interest you to know that the day of worship is Saturday, the day God meant to be the Sabbath and the 10 commandments have been restored to the “10″ that God gave us.
In closing, John Titor seems to paint a portrait of a world where “in the future” all of humanity’s shortcomings have been remedied to more closely resemble Titor’s vision of how the world should be. Reliance on self, strength through manual labor, the near-elimination of an evil federal government, the fortification of local and county governments, and a society which when viewed in totality, to me resembles a “worker’s paradise” that I’d like no part of.
Call me crazy, but I don’t want to have to go before a panel of community leaders to ask permission to move to Jacksonville, Mr. Titor. Although I’m sure those county board members in the place where you live would probably like a governmentally approved council that could legally keep those pesky brown-skinned folk from moving into your town. Your ideal for our “future” will never come to pass. Although you intrigued me with your story “about the future”, I don’t share your pessimistic view of our current world and society.
Posted in reality scifi | 2 Comments »
