Prometheus (2012) redux

When I first reviewed Prometheus, it struck me that the film wasn’t saying anything. The film made a big deal of religion versus atheism, but it never went beyond some ham-fisted “is true” “is not” dialog that didn’t seem to add up to much. Recently, I’ve given this film a lot of thought however, and I’ve concluded that Prometheus is actually an attack on militant atheism.

Interpreting a film is always difficult because you end up reading a lot of tea leaves the writer may not have intended. In fact, the writer here may have intended nothing more than to throw in some pro/con-religion dialog just to make you think the film is deep. But I have noticed several things that create a consistent pattern, and patterns usually mean intent. What I found is the consistent message that militant atheism is rotten. Observe:

● Who Survives: Sometimes the most obvious example of what the writer favors comes from which characters survive the movie. In fact, this touches on a well-known theory that characters who behave morally survive slasher flicks and those who don’t die. Here, two characters ultimately survive. One is Shaw, the only openly religious character. The other is David, the android, who is religious as well (discussed below).

Further, the first to die, and die most horribly, are the two scientists (Millburn and Fifield) who openly mock Shaw for going against Darwinism. The next to die horribly is Shaw’s boyfriend Holloway, who also mocks Shaw’s faith and tries repeatedly to get her to abandon it. The last two to die in highly visible and ignoble ways are Vickers, who shows utter disdain for “true believers” and can’t even tolerate the Captain putting up a Christmas tree, and the Engineer, who is the most militant of the atheists (discussed below). The Captain, who honors the symbols of Christianity (like putting up a Christmas tree) but only expresses limited faith, dies nobly to save humanity. The rest die off screen.

That means all the aggressive atheists die horribly, whereas those who express some faith die nobly or survive. That suggest meaning. Specifically, in film speak, it suggests that the aggressive atheists are bad and the believers are good.

● Who is right?: Another way to tell what a film is pushing is asking which characters are right. Shaw represents religion and the other scientists represent militant (mocking) atheism. They claim that she’s a fool to believe that humans were “created.” She’s proven right, however.

● What does the neutral observer say?: When a film involves competing sides, there is often an unaligned observer who suggests which side is supposed to be right. In this case, we have David the android. We are told that David cannot appreciate the concept of God because he’s not human and cannot take things on faith. Yet, we get two interesting moments on this issue from David.

First, before David poisons Holloway, he and Holloway have a quick discussion about what Holloway hopes to discover from meeting his creator. Holloway says he wants to know why they made us. David then asks Holloway why humans made David and Holloway says, “Because we could.” Interestingly, David, who is supposed to have no ability to appreciate the idea of God, notes that this answer would be really disappointing to hear. Translation: David is disappointed because he sees something sacred about life, even his own.

Secondly, when the Engineer kills Weyland, his dying words are, “There is nothing,” meaning there is no God. David responds with “I know. . . have a pleasant journey, sir.” This is fascinatingly contradictory. On the one hand, David is agreeing that Weyland is right that there is no God. But then he wishes him a pleasant journey in the afterlife, which wouldn’t exist without a God. To understand what this means, you need to realize that David humors the humans throughout. Whenever they give him an order he doesn’t agree with, he says “yes” and then does his own thing no matter what they told him to do. I think this is the same here. Weyland is telling David, “There is no God,” so David responds like a good android and confirms what he has been told to believe. But once David has humored him, he acts according to his own belief and he wishes Weyland a pleasant journey on his way to meet his maker in the afterlife. That makes David religious, and that means the neutral observer says the religious side is right. It also means David is treating Weyland, who is now an atheist, like a fool.

● Hypocrisy: Beyond how they die, Prometheus also shows the atheists as hypocrites. Take the case of Holloway. He keeps telling Shaw that she needs to abandon her faith because there is no God. Yet, Holloway also argues, “God does not build in straight lines.” So he’s a hypocrite because while he wants everyone to be an atheist, he still accepts the idea of God.

Millburn and Fifield are another example of hypocrisy. They claim to be rational thinkers who accept Darwinism because of the evidence. Yet, when they are proven wrong about Darwinism when they find the body of the Engineer, they don’t act like rational thinkers. To the contrary, despite being confronted with clear evidence that would wipe out Darwinism and necessarily lead to a re-alignment of science, these two scientists refuse to examine the evidence and don’t even talk about its implications. . . instead, they talk about tobacco. They are hypocrites in their claim to be rational thinkers.

There’s another aspect to Holloway as well. At one point, Holloway tells Shaw that the fact that the Engineers made humans means there is no God. This is logically false and Shaw calls him on this by saying God made the Engineers. Holloway doesn’t respond by telling her there no God, which would be the true atheist position. Instead, he agrees with her (“Exactly”), but then wrongly says that because of this, we can never know anything about the nature of God. He then uses that assertion to tell her that she should stop worshiping God because we can’t know anything about God. His position is logically wrong, but more interestingly, think about what his position says logically: there is a God, but let’s ignore him. This fits Holloway’s attitude throughout the film. What bothers him isn’t that others believe in God, it’s that they worship God. In effect, he’s not anti-God, he’s anti-worship. . . the same characteristic of militant atheists who’s real beef isn’t that people believe in God, but that they act on that belief.

● Who is the bad guy?: Finally, we need to ask who is the bad guy. In this case, the bad guy is the Engineer. . . and he is the most militant atheist. It’s true.

When the film begins and the Engineers create humans, the whole thing appears religious in nature. They are wearing robes and the whole event has a ceremonial feel to it. This is how movies convey religion. So the Engineers, when they are good guys, were religious.

By the time we find the dead Engineer, things have changed. At first, I was confused by the giant statue of a head they seem to be worshiping in the pyramid. This struck me as evidence they were still religious. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that worshiping a statue of your own head is not a symbol of religion, but is a symbol of atheism. It is basically a declaration that man has thrown away God and now worships himself. And now that they are atheists they have decided to kill off the human race. That makes them bad guys. Translation: atheists are bad, genocidal people.

But there’s more.

For one thing, we need to ask why they wanted to kill off the humans. The film doesn’t seem to answer this, but there is a huge clue I missed the first couple times. When they carbon date the dead Engineer, they place it “around 2,000 years ago.” Think about what 2,000 years ago means in popular culture... Christianity. And don’t forget, they find the Engineer on Christmas Day, according to the Captain. In movie-speak where everything in a film is relevant, this tells us the Engineers were happy with us for tens of thousands of years when we worshiped them until Christianity came along. Once we found God, the Engineers because so angry with us they decided to kill us all. Basically, they are so militantly atheistic that they decided to wipe out humanity just because they didn’t want us believing in God.

Even the scene with the living Engineer suggests this. He doesn’t freak out and attack the humans when he first sees them or even when Weyland’s guard roughs up Shaw (the religious believer). He’s fine with those things. He only freaks out after David tells him that they have come looking for their creator. Now, we don’t know what David told him exactly, but he does use the word “Creator.” Translation: once David tells him they have come seeking God, the Engineer attacks them and decides to carry out his mission to wipe out humanity. I think it’s very reasonable to believe from this that the Engineer wants to eradicate the humans because they are religious, i.e. he’s a highly militant atheist. What’s more, in the final scene of the movie, the now-dead Engineer spawns the evil alien creature, which looks suspiciously like Satan.

All in all, I think this adds up to the film’s message being an attack on militant atheism. I don’t see an attack on atheism per se, but definitely the militant variety.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus is perhaps one of the most anticipated films of modern times. Tantalizingly premised on the Alien universe and directed by Ridley Scott, who has redefined science fiction a couple times, this was a film everyone wanted to see. So how was it? Well, that depends.

** MAJOR spoiler alert **

The Plot

Prometheus opens with a truly inspired scene where a human-like creature kills himself so he can release his own DNA into a waterfall. This was the creation of the human race. Flash forward to two scientists (Shaw and Holloway), who discover a cave painting in Scotland, which they think tells us where we can find the beings who created humanity (“the Engineers”). Flash forward a couple more years and we are onboard the Prometheus, a spaceship on its way to that planet. The Prometheus belongs to the Weyland Corporation, the corporate quasi-villain of the Alien series. Weyland Corp. hired Shaw and Holloway to lead the expedition, but the ship is actually under the control of a woman named Vickers (Charlize Theron), though confusingly the ship also has a captain. So it’s not really clear who is in charge. Also among the crew are several scientists and android David (Michael Fassbender).

When they get to the world they are seeking, they find a man-made structure and they investigate. Inside, they learn that some disaster has befallen the Engineers. Some people die. Some twists happen. We learn the evil truth about the alien and the Engineers. The credits roll.

Where The Movie Excelled/What Sucked

This film is stunningly beautiful. It looks like science fiction should look. And if you know nothing about Alien, and you can ignore some problems, then you will also find this film to be quite impressive. The film builds a mystery quite nicely and it leads to some shocking moments. Its pacing is good. Its writing is solid for what it offers. The Engineers are beautifully designed (though the makeup to make Weyland look old is pathetic). There is a little tension now and then. And Fassbender does an excellent job of presenting us with a robot without morals.

The film also does an excellent job of raising really great issues. What if we were created by an alien species. Would that mean there is no God or just that there is a different God than we thought? The Engineers seem to be rather evil, quite frankly, so does that affect our nature? The film also raises the issue of the Engineers creating us and then deciding to kill us off. Why? Are we just a lab experiment that has run its course? Do they want the planet for something better? Did we turn out to be too dangerous? These are great questions. Too bad they’re never developed.

Indeed, this film has some serious problem, especially if you know Alien. If you’ve seen Alien, then forget everything I just said about the film creating mystery because none of the surprises will surprise you. The moment they say, “Gee, it looks like something came out of this Engineer’s chest,” you know exactly what that means and the mystery ends. From that point on, it’s just a matter of watching the alien evolve from worms to snakes to giant face huggers to finally the familiar form, though annoyingly, the film keeps acting like it’s surprising you with each step.

Moreover, the film is totally predictable if you’ve seen Alien v. Predator, because it’s the same movie. Swap out the Predator for the Engineers, set the movie in space, and you’ve got the exact same film: minority chick/scientist hired to lead expedition, Weyland comes along seeking a form of immortality, they find ancient pyramids where there shouldn’t be any, all ancient Earth cultures worshipped these creatures as gods, unleash aliens, run from aliens, scientist-chick fights back and saves the day, and aliens fight each other to the death. Same plot... same story arc... same characters. Unfortunately, this makes it very easy to guess what will happen next in scene after scene.

There are other problems too. Scott keeps trying to reach back into the prior films to take things that worked well before, but he doesn’t ask if they work here. For example, in Alien, the crew constantly argued because they were sick of each other and they were in the middle of a contract dispute. Hence, they were surly. Scott tries to recreate that here, but it doesn’t make sense because this crew consists of scientists who have only just met. Why would they in-flight and treat each other with contempt for no reason whatsoever? Scott also tries to repeat the idea of the crew being blue collar, as they were in Alien even though it makes no sense this time because this is a scientific crew, not a space freighter. Thus, even though they are all scientists who are put into stasis the moment they board, they show up dressed like grizzled lumberjacks and truck drivers in dirty work boots and flip-flops and they act like longshoremen. It doesn’t make sense.

Another problem is that most of the characters are meaningless. You could remove everyone except Holloway, Shaw, David and the Captain and not a thing would change in the story. Basically, it’s red-shirts galore. That means most of the setup, like the tension between Vickers and everyone else or between the various scientists is just pointless filler.

Even worse, there’s a frenetic twenty-minute period toward the end of the film where everything completely falls apart. It begins when Holloway is poisoned and turns into a monster and needs to be killed. Strangely, only Shaw is freaked out about this; everyone else acts like nothing happened. Would real people not care? Shaw then immediately learns that she’s been impregnated by an alien (through Holloway) and she wants it removed from her. David, however, decides to freeze her against her will. The reason isn’t given but presumably he wants to preserve the specimen -- the same idea as in Aliens. This makes sense at first, but a moment later he mysteriously lets her run away after beating up two doctors and he doesn’t even chase her. No one else tries to stop her either, or even follow her, even though they know she’s infected with something. That makes no sense.

She then reaches the surgery pod, which you would assume would be part of the ship, but they pointlessly made a big deal of it being something Vickers brought on board herself. Shaw climbs into the pod and has the alien taken out of her. It’s still alive, so she hits the decontaminate button and walks off. . . never waiting to see if it’s actually dead. What? She then stumbles around the ship like she’s dying since she just underwent major surgery until she happens upon Weyland himself, who faked his death and came aboard the ship secretly. Huh? The guy owns the company. He owns the ship. No one would tell him he couldn’t go if he wanted. So why do this in secret?

Bizarrely, neither Weyland nor David nor any of the new crewmembers with them act at all surprised to see Shaw, nor are they alarmed by her ill appearance. They chat as if nothing is happening, with the infection/freezing alien issue entirely forgotten. Shaw then leaves again to wash up. After she leaves, we learn that Vickers is Weyland’s daughter, and we just don’t care because it means nothing to the story. Not only does Vickers add nothing to the story, but her being Weyland’s daughter is never used in the plot in any way.

Suddenly, we’re off to see the last living Engineer. Once they find it, it chooses to attack them for no apparent reason. . . actually, the reason is that if it spoke to them, then it would need to say answer some questions and Scott didn’t want to answer questions. At that point, the plot returns to a simple chase film and sanity is restored. For about 20 minutes though, nothing in this film made any sense – not the actions of the characters, not the things they said, not the plot itself.

Finally, while there’s nothing wrong with science fiction films leaving ideas unexplained so the audience can fill them in, it is a cardinal sin not to at least give the audience some clues. This film, unfortunately, does this all the time. For example, it raises the issue of how the meaning of God would change if we were created by mortal beings, but it never addresses it beyond asking the question. By comparison, Tom Sizemore gives a four or five line speech in Red Planet that is deeper and more meaningful than all the discussion on this topic in Prometheus. Another example is why the Engineers would create us and then decide to kill us? Sadly, we don’t know. The film never even speculates as to a motive. Thus, there’s nothing to debate except “why might someone want to commit genocide?” which isn’t really that interesting of a question as it’s too abstract. It also strikes me that the Engineers must be clones, but that’s never mentioned. Intellectually, the film is a complete disappointment. It’s like someone suggesting topics you could discuss and then walking away without saying anything further.

Ultimately, what you get here is a film which is probably excellent for anyone who hasn’t seen Alien, but is weaker if you have. I enjoyed the film a good deal and it held up to being watched a second time. But I can’t help but feel let down. This is a film with so much potential throughout, but it always feels lazy to me. They raise ideas, but don’t address them - they don't even tease them. They constantly swipe from the prior films (almost every scene steals from prior films, right down to the heroine walking around in the same underwear Sigourney Weaver’s character wore). In fact, if this had been a film outside of the Alien universe, people would be angrily denouncing it as “a total ripoff.” They establish ideas they then ignore because they didn’t want to bother making them work. And ultimately, little in this film matters. You don’t care that any of these people are dead. There is no sense of terror that something bad will ultimately happen. And there’s no sense of wonder or the type of thought provoking that usually happens with good science fiction. That makes this a bit disappointing, especially as I think each of the mistakes was avoidable.

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Smart Thinking, Mr. Scott!

I am a big believer in breaking the mold and trying new things, especially when it comes to films and television. But Hollywood isn’t really into doing things differently. One of the things I mentioned sometime back was that the networks should use their cable channels as a testing ground for programs and then bring the best performers to the networks. Well, they aren’t doing that, but get this. . .

Ridley Scott, perhaps you’ve heard of him, has entered into a partnership with something called the Machinima network. I’ve actually never heard of them before, so here’s their website: LINK. They appear to be a web-based content distribution group.

Under this partnership, Scott is looking to produce a series of 12 science fiction “shorts” which will be shown on Machinima. That in and of itself is kind of cool because (1) the world needs more sci-fi and (2) Scott’s got a great track record of providing it. Even better, Scott’s got access to 80 rather famous directors in his company and the word is that several of them will be involved. So this could be some good stuff.

But now it gets better. This is where someone stepped out of the box.

According to Scott, the idea is to take the short(s) that generate the most positive responses and turn those into series! This is brilliant! This is essentially a show of pilots. What’s more it’s guaranteed to get the target audience watching the pilot because they’re going to tune in each week looking for the latest and greatest ideas in science fiction. Honestly, this is the sort of thing Hollywood should be doing all the time. . . but they don’t because they lack the creativity to come with even simple, obvious ideas like this.

Now, there are a couple potential downsides here. For one thing, I’ve often felt that one of the problems science fiction films face is that shows like the 1990s Outer Limits really plundered the genre of ideas (and misused them) and made it hard for filmmakers to come up with original ideas for films. This series may make that problem worse. Also, it’s possible that what works in a “short” won’t work in a series. Indeed, if I recall correctly, the Masters of Horror series in the 2000s, resulted in pretty much nothing memorable and nothing that anyone translated into a series or film – though I don’t think anyone was thinking that would lead to anything.

Still, all in all, I think this is a great idea. I’m happy to see that there will soon be more science fiction. There really is a shortage of genuine science fiction these days. And I wonder if an idea like this might not have prevented most of the garbage the networks have specialized in when it comes to science fiction over the past couple decades. In that regard, Scott is at least saying all the right things. He talked about this being “a tremendous opportunity for pushing the creative boundaries for both our filmmakers and the audience,” which are words network people usually can’t say without giggling, but which should be music to the ears of sci-fi fans everywhere. Also, they are targeting males between the ages of 18-34, which means this stuff shouldn’t be very soapy or like most of what you see on the Syfy channel, which apparently targets women.

I’m hopeful.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Alien (1979)

Alien is one of my favorite horror movies. It’s also one of my favorite science fiction movies. This is a film which does everything right in both genres, and that’s really impressive. It’s also really rare. And what makes this film work is what Ridley Scott doesn’t show us. Let’s talk about this classic film.

Directed by Ridley Scott, Alien is the story of the crew of the commercial towing vessel Nostromo. They are returning to Earth with a cargo of twenty million tons of ore. As the film begins, the crew is awoken from stasis when the ship detects lifesigns on a nearby uninhabitable planet. They are required to investigate. On the planet, one member of the crew has an alien creature break through his helmet and attach itself to his face. It appears to die, but as the crew is about to find out, they now have an alien problem.

The Perfect Horror Movie

What makes a film the perfect horror movie? The obvious answer is that it scares you. But there’s more to it than that because there are three different types of fear. The first is shock, such as when something jumps out at you. Horror movies need this to give the film a pulse. Alien does this extremely well. In fact, Alien is full of surprises and Ridley Scott often manipulates the level of surprise by teasing the audience with false tension, which he releases right before landing the real surprise. This catches the audience right after they’ve let their guard down and makes these shocks all the more effective.

The second is akin to dread or instinctual fear. This is achieved by putting the audience in a position where our natural instincts cause us to feel uneasy. Examples of this include our fear of the dark, fear of being in tight spaces or being trapped, fear of being in spaces that are too large for us to monitor and control, and fear of the unknown. These are harder to achieve on film because it requires pulling the audience into the film. But once again, Alien does this perfectly. In fact, the ship is perfectly designed for this. It is far too vast for the crew to monitor and control, yet at the same time, wherever the crew is at the moment feels confined, with no easy escapes. What’s more, Scott was smart enough to never show you enough of the creature to take away the mystery or to let you get accustomed to it. Thus, the full extent of the threat itself remains unknown, and that scares us.

The third is a true sense of terror. This is the kind of thing that sticks with you and makes you shiver days later. This is the Holy Grail of horror and few films achieve it, with Jaws and The Exorcist being notable examples. One would think Alien couldn’t really achieve this because its subject matter isn’t something to which we can related. Indeed, while any of us can imagine being eaten by a shark or possessed by something demonic, few of us think we’re going to end up fighting aliens in deep space. But Alien cleverly gets around this problem by giving the audience moments to which they can relate. For example, having the alien burst out of Kane’s chest is something humans can imagine because it fits right in with any number of urban legends about creatures laying eggs inside someone. This lets the audience relate to the horror, and the strength of this vision has been proven by the fact everyone continues to talk about that moment thirty years later.

This is why Alien is such a phenomenal horror movie, because it hits on all three types of fear. Few films manage to achieve this, and those that do tend to be remembered as classics. Alien is one of these elite few.

The Perfect Science Fiction Movie

Not only is Alien the perfect horror movie, but it’s also the perfect science fiction film. The most critical aspect of any science fiction film is that it presents a world the audience can believe is real. Too often, the worlds presented are shallow or make no sense. They include technological changes that would remake society, yet society hasn’t been remade. They present a world without laborers and people who own no personal effects. They talk about the elimination of money, yet still show people having jobs. And sometimes, they’re just dated, where our own society is now more advanced. Alien falls into none of these traps.

Despite the entire film taking place on only one ship and involving only seven people, Alien gives us an incredibly rich and detailed glimpse of their universe. Indeed, Alien tells us everything we need to know about their society. They have blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, and bosses. The interaction between the computer and the crew tells us that society very much remains a society which humans run, it is not automated. The suits at corporate still run the world. The crew worry about money and their contracts. They talk about food and grouse about work. They still think about sex and haven’t been “pair bonded” or some crap like that. The Nostromo is crawling with personal knickknacks. Their clothes are dirty. Their equipment is used. This is a real world, and we can visualize it, and these are real people with real lives, not science fiction prop-people.

Moreover, we get tantalizing glimpses of the rest of the universe. We see there are aliens in this universe, as we see two species – the alien itself and the alien corpse on the ship where they find the alien. We discover there are robots, and they look just like people. We know from the Nostromo that the universe is crawling with advanced spaceships. How do we know? To us, the Nostromo would be stunningly fantastic, but to her crew, the Nostromo is a piece of junk. It is a tired, common workhorse of a spaceship. That tells us there must be larger, more modern vessels ferrying people, exploring space, or even defending worlds. We know all these things without ever seeing them.

And that is the key point: what makes Alien such great science fiction is actually not what Ridley Scott shows us, it’s what he doesn’t show us. He shows us the usual things every science fiction film shows us: aliens, computers, and spaceships, but he never shows us too much.

We see enough of the alien to understand its more terrifying aspects, such as its acid blood, its murderous instincts, and its being impervious to extreme atmospheres. We are even given a hint of its life cycle. That makes this creature very real to us. But beyond that, we really only get glimpses and little real knowledge. That make the creature real and yet simultaneously keeps it a mystery. This results in a very satisfying creature because we feel we know it, yet we don’t know enough about it to disbelieve it. To the contrary, we know just enough to leave us hungry for more.

The Nostromo is the same. Spaceships often feel fake because they are designed for the sleek visual or built like mazes to accommodate the horror plot. . . cough cough Event Horizon. The Nostromo isn’t. It is built for a genuine task and its design is ergonomic. The part where the crew lives is bright and well lit. Its style and shape make sense. All of this makes the ship real to us because this is very much a ship that real people would take into space. Yet, at the same time, we know nothing about the ship’s size, shape or technology. This lack of knowledge actually helps us believe the ship is real because we don’t have anything to criticize and thus we can’t poke holes in the design.

This lack of knowledge also keeps the film from feeling dated. Consider the computer. While the computer interface feels somewhat dated, Scott does enough to make us think we aren’t seeing “the whole picture,” so we never get a chance to compare the supposed capabilities of this computer with our own. Moreover, since the Nostromo is a piece of junk, we know the computer is not the high end. All of this prevents us from laughing at the film when our own technological achievements surpass those in the film. Had Scott tried to show off how great this computer was, the film probably would be dated by now.

These were brilliant choices. By focusing on the personal relationships of the crew, while only teasing us with glimpses of the science fiction and leaving the rest to our imaginations, Scott lets the audience fill in the blanks and build the world in their heads. This makes the film remarkably adaptable because everything outside of the story itself can change with tastes and time. Thus, it will never grow stale and it will never grow old. This is a perfect formula and it’s amazing so few science fiction (or horror) films have grasped what Scott does here. And the key to what Scott has done is to give us just enough to make everything seem real, but absolutely nothing more.

Interesting.

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Some Thoughts On Blade Runner

There are seven known versions of Blade Runner. This weekend, I watched the three BIG versions of Blade Runner back to back to back. Yes, yes I did. Why? Because one of the HBO channels was showing them. It was fascinating watching all three and seeing the differences and this got me wondering about a couple things I’d like to discuss. Feel free to share your own views and add any other issues you’d like to discuss.

Issue One: To Narrate Or Not To Narrate. Not. When the film hit theaters in America, the suits decided the film needed a narration in the beginning where Harrison Ford explains who his character and some of the others are, what the world is like, what his mission is, and basically what you’re watching. This narration lasts sporadically for the first 5-10 minutes. This sucks. When you see the later versions, especially the final cut, there is no narration and it is much easier to get into the ambiance of the film. The world feels more real and your mind is more awake understanding what is happening. Moreover, all the actors are excellent, as is the direction, and you absolutely don’t need the information provided by the narration to understand everything going on, so it adds nothing at the cost of much. Leaving the narration off improves this film by an order of magnitude.

Issue Two: And They Lived Happily Ever After (Until They Were Killed Outside The Apartment). The studio also demanded that Scott add a happy ending to the original release. The final cut removes this and it works much better. Indeed, the happy ending makes much in the film nonsense. The atmosphere of the film works because you have a sense that the earth has been run down to the point we see on screen. If, at the end, Deckard can just hop in his car and drive off to beautiful countryside, then why is everyone living in Craptopolis? Doesn’t that undercut the whole dystopia?

Moreover, this blows a hole in the question of whether or not Deckard is human. Gaff would not have let Deckard go rogue if he was a Replicant. So when Deckard tells us that Gaff lets him and Rachel go because he thinks Rachel will die any minute, that tells us Gaff doesn’t think Deckard is a Replicant. Case pretty much closed. Except, Gaff still leaves an origami unicorn for Deckard to find. Doesn't this mean Gaff thinks Deckard is a Replicant? Indeed, in the final cut, Deckard has a unicorn dream, suggesting that Gaff knows his memories, just as Deckard knows Rachel’s, i.e. he’s not real.

Issue Three: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? So what exactly is a Replicant? The view most everyone seems to have held for years, me included, was that Replicants are machines. We’re told they’re manufactures and they’re called machines and skinjobs (i.e. metal covered by fake skin) throughout. They even appear to have superhuman skills. But upon further review, there are so many hints that Replicants are actually cloned humans. They speak at times of the Replicants being grown, and they use the term “bio” to describe them, suggesting living tissue. Moreover, none of the manufacturing comments at all preclude the Replicants being grown.

Issue Four: Who dat? Finally, I got to wondering, how would the film have turned out if they had used a different actor? Apparently, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood and even Arnold Schwarzenegger were considered. I think replacing Harrison Ford with any of these actors would have completely changed the tenor of the movie and it would not have been as effective. The one actor I could possibly see replacing Ford would be Kurt Russell, but that’s about it.

Thoughts?

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Film Friday: Screamers (1995)

I like Screamers. It’s a decent science fiction film about machines turning on man. The story is unique and inspired and the plot handles the story well. There really isn’t anything about this film I would change. Yet, I can’t call it a great film. In fact, if I were to rate it, I’d give it a solid B. I find that fascinating.

** spoiler alert**

Based on Philip K. Dick's short story “Second Variety,” Screamers involves a group of soldiers stuck in a genocidal war on a formerly rich mining colony. The year is 2078. A dispute over the profits from mining a rare mineral on Sirius 6B has caused Earth to split into two warring economic groups: the Alliance and the New Economic Block. War begins on Sirius. But the Alliance is outnumbered, so they invent a new weapon: the mobile autonomous sword (a screamer). These are power-saw- like robots that travel beneath the ground and kill anything living -- Alliance soldiers are protected by wrist bands which mask their heartbeats. The war devastated the planet and few soldiers remain on either side.

As the story opens, a N.E.B. soldier is killed outside the Alliance bunker. He’s carrying a proposal directed to Alliance commander Joe Hendricksson (Peter Weller) to negotiate a peace treaty. The mineral has been discovered on another planet and, thus, their war has become irrelevant. So Weller and a newly-arrived soldier (Private Jefferson) set out to negotiate with the N.E.B. commander, Marshall Richard Cooper. Only, they don’t find Cooper. When they get to the Alliance bunker, they find only three survivors. It turns out the screamers have been busy evolving and now there are several varieties. . . and some of them look human.

Here’s what fascinates me. I typically judge the quality of a film by asking how I would improve the film. The less I would do differently, the better the film. On the surface, Screamers is a film with little to change. The actors are good, the sets and effects are good, the plot works well and moves quickly. The characters are interesting and the twists are solid and unexpected. So I should rate this film very highly. But I can’t.

At first, this had me wondering if my test doesn’t really work. Could it be that some stories simply have a ceiling of how good they can be no matter how much you tinker with them? I’ve always worked on the assumption that you can take any story and keep adjusting it until you reach a point that it becomes a great story. But maybe that’s not true? Maybe a story like Screamers simply can’t ever become more than an average story no matter what you do differently or what you add to it?

What about another director? Could Steven Spielberg make this a better film? Based on his adventures in the world of Dick with Minority Report, I doubt it. Minority Report left me deeply underwhelmed. Christopher Nolan handled complex questions of who you can trust well in Inception and Memento, but I also doubt he could help Screamers. And the reason I doubt Nolan can help is because I know what’s wrong with Screamers and it’s the same thing that’s wrong with Inception and with Minority Report: they lack humanity.

The film we should be looking at is Blade Runner. What makes Blade Runner so special isn’t the film noir feel brought to science fiction or even the new take on dystopia, it’s the humanity of Blade Runner. Blade Runner hooks us by asking us to find out what lays behind Harrison Ford’s tough guy veneer, to find out how Rachel deals with discovering she’s not human, and to learn what causes Roy’s epiphany at the end of the film. Blade Runner asks us what makes us human and then lets us peer deeply into the souls of three people to find out.

This is where Screamers and Minority Report went wrong. Minority Report is a shallow Tom Cruise film at heart. Despite the attempt to cram Spielberg-style emotional ploys into the film, there is no moment where we can really look into Tom’s soul. Watch the film a thousand times and you still won’t know anything more about him than you did staring at the poster before the movie began. But go back and watch Roy’s split-second change of heart or the shock on Rachel’s face as Ford lays bare the lie of her childhood or the anguish in Ford as he realizes he’s been taking genuine lives, and you’ll peer right into their souls.

Screamers fails this test. I like Peter Weller and his character. Jefferson is a fun guy to watch. The N.E.B.s are interesting too. Becker is a twisted psycho on the edge and Ross is a man whose nerves are so shot he’s visibly falling apart. But there isn’t a single moment in this film where you ever look into their souls or where you are shown the difference between a human and a machine pretending to be human.

To fix Screamers, it must be refocused on what makes Hendricksson human in the first place. Don’t just give us two minutes of dialog telling us about some old girlfriend or telling us what he drinks or what kind of music he likes. Show us what makes him tick. Show us how he resolved some emotional struggle so we understand him. Show us he has a soul, so we can peer into it at the key moment of crisis.

In fact, I am thinking this may be the key to all science fiction. Too often science fiction feels flat. And when I think of the films that did work, I realize that what worked was not the plot, it was the moments the characters became real. It was watching Sean Connery admit on a racquetball court that he needed to prove his own worth to himself in Outland. It was the brief moments mentioned above in Blade Runner. It was learning who Jim Kirk really was week after week in Star Trek and seeing each week’s main character deal with their own humanity in very inhuman circumstances on The Twilight Zone. It was watching the crew come together after bickering and picking on each other in Alien or the moments of bravery rather than bravado in Aliens. It was the flirting moments in Empire Strikes Back. Etc. These are the moments we remember.

So the lesson here is if you want to write enduring, quality science fiction, don’t write a story about a thing or place or event, write a story about people who happen to encounter a thing or place or endure an event.

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Film Friday: Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is brilliant. This is filmmaking at its best because it takes science fiction and stretches it to its fullest potential, both in terms of storytelling and as an intellectual experience. It’s also noteworthy for being massively culturally relevant because it redefined “dystopia” for a new generation, and in so doing, it signaled the end of the counter-culture’s influence in science fiction.

** spoiler alert **

Loosely based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner is the story of Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford), a police specialist who hunts down and "retires" escaped androids, known as Replicants. Deckard is pursuing four Replicants, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who illegally returned to Earth to find their maker, who they believe can extend their lifespans, which are artificially limited to four years. Despite the seeming simplicity of this summary, Blade Runner is a highly complex and innovative film. Indeed, it singlehandedly redefined the confines of science fiction as well as our view of dystopia.

Dystopia Lost, Dystopia Changed

Prior to Blade Runner, dystopian films invariably involved societies that appeared perfect on the surface, but were soulless underneath. From Logan’s Run to Rollerball to Fahrenheit 451, these societies appeared health, happy and peaceful, but something was always missing, some element of humanity was stripped away. This concept fit perfectly with the clash between the counter-culture and the conformity society created after World War II. But Blade Runner changed that.

The dystopian world of Blade Runner is dark, dirty and full of the twisted dregs of humanity. This is a world that destroyed itself, not with a bang but with neglect, where those who could escape to a better life moved to the off-world colonies, leaving humanity's flotsam to fester in the collapsing, polluted world left behind. Moreover, this dystopia came about because society fell apart, not because society was too tightly controlled, as was the case in prior dystopian films. Thus, whereas the pre-Blade Runner view of dystopia was the counter-culture’s view of the worst aspects of conformist society run amok, the dystopia in Blade Runner was society’s view of the worst elements of the counter-culture run amok. And with rare exceptions, this has become the view of dystopia which dominates films today. Blade Runner marks this serious shift in societal attitudes.

Where No Science Fiction Has Gone Before

Blade Runner also singlehandedly expanded the bounds of science fiction. How? By realizing that science fiction need not follow the trappings and conventions of science fiction, and by realizing that any story can be interpreted as science fiction. Indeed, nowhere in Blade Runner will you find spaceships or laser-gun fights or aliens and strange planets. Even the very dialog of Blade Runner is unlike anything that came before. For example, whereas science fiction always had a penchant for long, quasi-melodramatic dialog and grandiose plots, Blade Runner introduced the minimalism of film noir, with punchy but sparse dialog and inwardly focused plots.

All of this was new and it showed that any story could be told as science fiction, not just stories about rocket ships. In fact, I would argue that Blade Runner actually demonstrated that science fiction was not so much its own genre, as it had always been understood to be, but was really a setting in which other genres could be played out. In other words, Blade Runner showed there is no such thing as a science fiction movie, there is instead a crime story, or mystery, or comedy, or love story set in a science fiction world.

It’s Great Because It Expands Your Mind

Finally, let’s finish with what makes Blade Runner such a great film. Beside the obvious, i.e. great acting, super writing, and eye-catching settings, it was the philosophical questions that lifted Blade Runner to another level. The primary question Blade Runner asks is what does it mean to be human. It does this through an examination of three characters: Deckard, Rachael and Roy.

Rachael (Sean Young) is a Replicant who doesn’t know she’s a Replicant. She works for the head of the Tyrell Corporation, the creator of the Replicants, and her life seems real enough. She has an apartment, a job, photos of her childhood, and even memories of growing up. She walks, talks, breathes, thinks and appears to experience the complete range of human emotions. Yet, she is a machine. But does that really matter? She seems human in every way. She is emotionally aware. She has no expiration date like the rest. And she doesn’t even know she’s a machine. So what makes her different than the humans around her?

Roy is easily the most interesting of the three; he’s also the most human (intentionally so). Roy is programmed to be an assassin, and he knows he’s a Replicant. He also knows he’s designed to expire after a five year lifespan, a safeguard put in place because Tyrell discovered Replicants would develop full-blown emotions after five years. . . a quicker time than human children mature. Roy desperately wants more life, and the way to get that, he thinks, is to confront his maker. But when Tyrell tells Roy it’s impossible to extend his life, Roy kills his creator. He then decides to toy with and kill Deckard as a form of spite for his own pending death. But at the last moment, just before Roy expires, he suddenly realizes the value of life and he saves Deckard from death. In effect, Roy fully matures from a mere tool to an emotional child to a fully-mature adult, which is a remarkable transformation for a machine.

Here we are given several issues to consider. First, we are asked what makes Roy not-human. Unlike Rachael (or even the other Replicants who came to Earth with Roy), Roy has fully repudiated the false past he was given. He’s also thrown off his programming and set about becoming his own man. He's an independent being with free will, and he craves life and, ultimately, comes to understand its value. In this way, Roy becomes more human than many real humans will ever be. Yet, he is a machine. So is he alive or isn’t he? And what makes him so? Also, what of Roy’s relationship with his creator? What does Roy killing his creator say about Roy’s independence and ours? Would we lash out the same way if we learned that our creator was some flawed, mortal creature? Would that set us free or would it lessen us?

Lastly, we come to Deckard, the human we use for comparison. But there’s a problem with Deckard. . . we’re not actually sure he’s human. At no point does Blade Runner ever say or even openly suggest that Deckard is not human, but the evidence is there. He has no real life outside of his job and no past about which we learn. He has memories of childhood and photos, but they are very similar to Rachael’s packaged memories. He’s emotionless, cold, and functional, i.e. he’s machinelike. Moreover, the one character we know to be human, because he’s physically defective, is Gaff (Edward James Olmos), and Gaff treats Deckard with disdain much as if he knows Deckard is merely a deluded machine. So is Deckard human or not? We don’t know and that’s the beauty of the writing. We are left to try to justify his humanity in ways that differentiate him from Roy and Rachael, and in the process we explore what it is that makes us human and alive.

Finally, one last issue worth discussing is hinted at throughout the film: why make Replicants at all? Why not just make functional robots, rather than making them look and act human? One possible explanation involves the purposes to which these Replicants were put -- “off world hit squad” and “pleasure model,” i.e. because they would need to blend in. But what does that say about us? It’s easy to see these as purposes to which we would actually put androids, but that means we would be striving to put ourselves on a par with God, only to use our greatest achievement (creatures created in our own image) to satisfy our basest instincts or our most evil desires. That doesn’t say much for us, does it? And what does it say that we don’t even give these creatures free will? As self-made God, we certainly seem to come up short. So could we create real Replicants to achieve only our better instincts? Would we? And if they are alive for all practical purposes, should we even try to create them, given our obvious flaws?

These are the kinds of questions Blade Runner raises and we can spend hours debating them. Indeed, this is where science fiction draws its strength, in its ability to ask these questions without angering the audience by insulting their faith, or race, or gender, or whatever. And by injecting these kinds of questions into what would otherwise be a simple story about a police officer hunting some escaped killers, this film suddenly takes on a level of depth that makes this more than just a film; it becomes an educational experience, as we are asked to examine our own beliefs and thereby understand ourselves a little bit better.

And that makes it pretty darn cool.

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