After Earth (A.E.)

Suppose you take a story that begins with the destruction of Earth and the near annihilation of the human race by aliens. Given the depressing nature of such a premise, you decide to cheer it up a bit by hiring George Lucas to write the script as an action-packed space opera and then to turn it into an animated feature film with a top notch animation crew that combines the best hand drawn talent (a la Walt Disney) with the best CGI people (a la ILM). What you'd turn out with might look something like Titan A.E.

Titan A.E. is the only fully animated film in my collection (Tron contains live action). It only barely made the list, and I think it is there just because it's one of those very unique celluloid creations. I decided to watch it for the second time last night and would like to attempt to describe some of that uniqueness. The first thing that stands out is the animation style itself. It is probably the best integration of hand drawn and CGI work I've ever seen. The hardest thing to do in CGI is create convincing human characters, so why not just hand draw them and leave the space ships, planets, and the robot-like hostile aliens in CGI format? Motion capture is also utilized when animating people in space suits. In order to smooth out the integration, most of the immediate environments of the main characters are also hand drawn. Although you can tell which is which, it is difficult to notice where they meet.

Staying with the animation theme, it seems that the set designers in the film had a love for space-scapes and created several very beautiful scenes, even though most of it is not at all realistic. A swamp lake covered with giant glowing spherical "hydrogen pods" extending via a network of vines from the surface. A cave-like nebula dust cloud that the ship flies through accompanied by "wake angels", creatures that, similar to dolphins on a ship's bow, like to ride the "energy wake" of space ships.
"Ice rings" which consist of giant computer generated star-shaped crystals that continually collide with each other and crumble as they do. The crystals were done with CGI and feature detailed ray tracing on the reflective surface faces. The other scenes were yet another skillful amalgam of CGI and hand painting. All very nice eye candy.

In general, the whole thing was given a top billing production. The original score was a combination of classical and modern rock pieces as is common in modern animated dramas, but the plot and characters are just a bit edgier than your average family film. The voice casting was so well matched and well performed that I didn't even realize I was listening to the voices of Matt Damon, Drew Barrymore, Bill Pullman, and many others I should have recognized. In short, a lot of cash was spent.

I found myself less happy with the script on this second viewing. Although I love the colorful characters which are up there in stature with any Lucas creation, the dialogue and situations are really no more than you might expect from a typical pop culture animated feature. I like the originality in working the angle of humans missing the home world and feeling marginalized, even though it is a bit oversimplified. But the big flaw that tips it on its side is an attempted plot twist where a few of the good guys turn out to be bad guys. The revelation is too abrupt and too soon, and then one of them turns back into a hero at the end which is even more crazy. The villains are very one-dimensional - basically robots bent on wiping out the human race (sounds a lot like the Cylons from BG doesn't it?). But they have some real neat controlled plasma like technology that allows you to "melt" into walls and come out on the other side.

According to Wikipedia, it didn't do well at the box office and recouped only about half of its $75M production cost worldwide. I can understand why. They really didn't know what audience they were targeting. The heavy plot premise is a bit daunting to begin with, suitable for hard-core sci-fi fans. The space action and love interest sidebar between Cale and Akima targeted teens, and the cutsie supporting characters were portrayed as if targeting young children. For me, it is this juxtaposition of approaches that actually adds to its originality. But it also makes it hard to predict who might actually enjoy it and who might cast it into the trash in disgust. You'll never know unless you watch it for yourself.

The Iconic Forbidden Planet

I'd never really taken much interest in the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet. I think the main reason is that the story plays more like a monster movie, the majority of which have no other plot than to just get scared, kill off the monster, end of story. In this case the monster is not even an alien or the result of some experiment gone wrong - it's just the manifestation of someone's mind. What really puts it into the science fiction category is the fact that it takes place in the future, on another planet, and the technology that causes the raucous was left behind by an alien race which we hear nothing else about except that they invented a bunch of cool gadgets. Change the mode of that last point and we could set the same story in any other place and time. But given the status of the film in the genre's history, I had to try to explore what it is that puts it there in the first place. So here goes...

You can't deny that the much of the appeal of the film, and also its subsequent influence, is attributable to the "look and feel" of it. The space ships, suits, and planet terrain all have that great 1950's retro look without feeling campy. The special effects were very well done for that time, particularly the animated layovers of the monster and the design and operation of the robot named Robby.

Robby was probably the first popular depiction of a robotic character that was friendly rather than fearsome, to be followed up in later years by the very similar looking robot from Lost In Space and of course, C-3PO and R2D2. Given the amount of money spent on production, it is no accident that they did a good job in that department. The robot costume continued to appear as various characters and cameos in many films following, up into the late 1980's. I also tend to wonder if the films references to Freudian concepts of the subconscious may have been more generally known and accepted in American culture at that time.

That's the extent of my prior knowledge, so I continue now with some gleanings from the Wikipedia entry. I've always known that the script was well put together from a purely literary standpoint, and it appears that's a generally held opinion. Some people see parallels with Shakespeare's The Tempest. This is made even more significant when you consider that most sci-fi films of the 1950's had pretty horrible scripts. Another thing that is mentioned is that it was the first film to take place entirely in deep space. I thought Buck Rogers spent most of his time out there, but maybe that doesn't count because it was a serial rather than a full length film. And going back to the special effects, it won the academy award for that year in the category. A sci-fi film winning for special effects? What else is new? It seems to me that what gives the film its status is that because it was such a well done movie in both script and production, it lent credibility to many of the story telling devices that would later be copied and used again and again. Force fields, transporters, laser weapons, it's all there. That kind of influence deserves some credit simply because of the osmosis effect. You can get a feel for the sets from the trailer below. Notice the Star Wars like introductory text moving off in the distance:
As a final follow up, I took the time to re-watch the film in its entirety. I found that I could enjoy it more as an adult than when I was a teenager, and I was able to notice a few more things that stuck out. The first was that there is no musical score per se. The soundtrack is a strange combination of electronic computer sounds, mostly resembling the computers of the 1950's. I'm not sure about its effectiveness but it certainly is unique. The other surprise was how cerebral the script seemed. Everyone was always giving analytical conjectures and explanations of things which were not particularly interesting and that kind of took away from the drama at hand. It was also interesting to see how future technologies were represented in that era when real thought was put into it. Imagine using a bona fide flying saucer as a future earth ship a decade later, after the flying saucer came to represent alien technology rather than human. In the beginning, the ship is supposed to be traveling at light factor speed, but when they have to land, they all get into this transporter like device which makes them disappear during the deceleration period. I thought it was very cool, since no script writers today even bother to tackle the g-force problem in high speed space travel. In this film, they created a new technology to take the humans out of the equation. The new device may be just as implausible, but at least they had enough respect for the audience to take it into consideration. Anyway, after this second watch, I would not change anything I've said about this classic piece of sci-fi film history.

Our Shields Are Down!

One of the earliest and most common future technologies that is featured in sci-fi literature is the force field. It is easy to conceive of future weapons that involve beams or bursts of energy, so naturally, the good guys of the future must have a way to defend themselves against such attacks. If physical arrows are blocked by physical shields, it seems reasonable to block energy weapons with a "shield" of energy. But that is as far as reason gets us, because the mechanism to "generate" such a defense has never been satisfactorily explained to general audiences. This entry is dedicated to the near impossible ubiquity of force fields.

A force field must produce a repulsive force. As far as we know today, there are only four types of fundamental forces. Gravity is attractive only, so it is out of the running. The weak and strong nuclear forces both act over such tiny distances (like atoms), that there does not seem to be any conceivable way to harness them on a macro scale. We are left with electromagnetism (EM). In fact, the whole idea of "shielding" was probably born from analogy with EM shielding. It is possible to deflect charged particles with an electric or magnetic field. Is that how they do it?

I doubt that sci-fi authors are envisioning such a mundane mechanism for creating force fields. In most fictional stories, the fields repel any type of matter, not just charged or magnetic stuff. Certainly space ships and people would not be stopped by an EM field. You could not keep a prisoner behind bars with such a field, nor could you stop projectiles like bullets. What about those beams of energy? Could they be stopped? Possibly, but you must still then explain how such a field would be generated. The strongest EM fields require something on both sides of it (cathode/anode, etc.). If you are trying to create a field that surrounds you, as is usually portrayed, then you are left with generating a complete EM field in all directions. Instead of blocking the incoming energy, you would in fact be deflecting it around you. This is how the earth uses its magnetic field to deflect the charged particles of the solar wind. Of course, a field that strong would probably end up bending your space ship out of shape (magnetic) or short circuiting all the controls (electric). There's no way to get around immersing yourself in it, and that's not really the way force fields are portrayed in film and books anyway.

There are current theories that postulate a fifth force which is causing the universe to expand more rapidly than expected. But this can only be felt over galactic sized distances so you can rule that one out too even if it exists. How about plasma? That's what the original Star Trek always attributed such things to. But for a shield, the plasma must still be held in place by an EM field, and then you're back to square one again. What about momentum? You can stop matter if you shoot something at it in the opposing direction, but that is not a static shield. It requires a constant flux of matter or energy in the outward direction. For example, meeting an energy beam with an opposing energy beam would be enough to stop it, so why do our protagonists always need impossible energy shields? All they really need is computerized targeting technology and they are quite nicely protected while using a heck of lot less energy.

One final word on a related topic. If you reverse the direction of the force you get another ubiquitous future technology usually referred to as a tractor beam. Although one could use electromagnetism to reach out and grab a metallic object, it would not be possible to control the object's trajectory as is usually portrayed, and it would be more of a wide field (a net) than a beam. Again, no one actually attempts to explain how such a thing would actually work.

So the next time you encounter a story that features the use of force fields, just remember that although there is some wiggle room to work with, the existence of such a thing is extremely improbable even in the distant future. I have yet to encounter an author that has even attempted to come up with a merely plausible explanation. If anyone out there finds one, please leave a link for me.

The Sci-Fi Drama

Most of the great works of science fiction go for the big ideas. You know, the future of society, the limits of mankind, the nature of reality, etc. But there are a lot of science fiction stories that are just that... stories. Many of them copy ideas from those that came before, and many are there just for entertainment value, but once in a while a science fiction story comes along that is also really good drama. What makes such a story exceptional is that it uses a science fiction backdrop not as a way to engage the mind so much as a means of touching the heart. Somehow, that seems to make it even more memorable than it would otherwise have been. I'd like to dedicate this entry to some sci-fi films that I remember mainly for their human element, rather than for their science. None of these are classic material, but all are original and left an impression for me.

Frequency (2000) - Jim Caviezel plays a New York cop who, thanks to a highly active electromagnetic storm in the upper atmosphere, connects with his deceased father (Dennis Quaid) in 1969 using his Dad's old ham radio, the same one his Dad was using 30 years ago when a similar electrical storm occurred, and just a few days before his tragic death in a warehouse fire where, along with his fire fighting squad, he had rushed in to save a victim. The story turns from sad to sweet when the son manages to save his Dad from death and instantly change their personal history, even though the son still remembers the old history as in a dream. But changing history is fraught with peril, and the new turn of events puts his mother in grave danger, as well as several other women who become victims of a serial killer who otherwise would have died. Feeling responsible for several more deaths that shouldn't have been, father and son now work across time to prevent them from happening with the aid of the case file that the son is able to access through his precinct. Whew, that's just the beginning of the plot turns and twists, which all work pretty well until the last 15 minutes of the film when it gets a little twisted out of shape. But on the way, there is some decent acting, story telling, and character development. I think what made it stick for me was the heartfelt way the relationships between father, mother, and son are portrayed. This was also the only film that ever played with the idea of watching history change in real time as you influence it by talking to someone in the same location 30 years ago. That was a very neat trick.

Enemy Mine (1985) - This film takes a common war theme, that of two enemy soldiers stranded somewhere who must learn to work together to survive, who soon find that they are not that different and become the best of friends. In this case, we are in the year 2092, and the warring factions are humans and a race of reptilian-like aliens called Dracs (from Draconia - the most overused enemy alien world name). The film surprises you in just how far it takes the relationship of these two characters, one of which, believe it or not, is played by Dennis Quaid again (see above). And Louis Gosset Jr. puts on a great performance as the alien. During the years of making do on the planetoid upon which they had crashed, they save each other's life and learn about each other's cultures. Dracs give birth asexually, and this one ends up having a kid while dying in the process of childbirth. But his human friend has promised to raise the Drac child and bring him back to Draconia. Thus ensues a surrogate father relationship of sorts between Quaid's character and the Drac child in which the former ends up having to rescue the kid from slave labor and eventually get him home, all the while being suspected of treason by his own race. I know it sounds ridiculous, but somehow it works. It makes you think, and draws you in. Once again, the ending gets a bit out of hand, but I suppose space dramas suffer from climax envy.

Cocoon (1985) - Released in the same year as the above, this film was a little more light hearted. It centers around a group of senior folks living in a rest home. Some of them like to sneak out at night for a dip in the pool next door. One day, that pool becomes a fountain of youth for them as a result of it being used as an incubator for a visiting group of aliens coming back to retrieve their lost brethren. What is memorable about this film is that despite its alien underpinnings, it really spends most of its time dealing very poignantly with questions about our desire to cheat death, and whether that is right or not. It is also interesting in how it contrasts the maturity of the aliens with the immaturity of the residents. Of course, then it really blows it at the end by letting them all hitch a ride on the space ship to enjoy youthful bliss despite their having ruined the aliens mission with their self-centeredness. I think Ron Howard just likes happy endings.

Starman (1984) - Here is a film about a romance between a woman and an alien which could have been a cheesy mess, but which rises to a higher level thanks to the careful handiwork of director John Carpenter, who takes the material dead seriously. The characters are well performed and mostly convincing, including Jeff Bridges' portrayal of the tender-hearted alien who takes the form of his acquaintance's recently deceased husband. Carpenter has enough respect for his audience's intelligence to try to capture some sense of believability, and also use the story to make a statement about the best and worst of humankind. It takes place mainly during a long road trip through the heart of southern midwest America with beautiful cinematic shots of the landscapes. The moody, Vangelis-like electronic score also seems to work well with the story. It might not work for everyone, but somehow it leaves you with a good feeling.

For the sake of completeness, I've listed below some of the films in this category that were neither good sci-fi nor good drama:

Batteries Not Included (1987) - It's hard to ignore a Spielberg sci-fi film, but this was another post-ET attempt to mix aliens and cuteness that just didn't work. Who can really get interested in a story about a bunch of people in an abandoned apartment building fighting the evil developers who want them out? Getting help from some tiny extra terrestrial flying saucers that come out of nowhere doesn't make it any more interesting.

Silent Running

The early 1970's, specifically the period between 2001 and Star Wars, was a very interesting period in American science fiction film. Prior to the Spielberg/Lucas revolution that occurred in the later years, most science fiction films were dark and thought provoking. Many drew some inspiration from Kubrik's successful masterpiece. I mean, look at this lineup:

Colossus: The Forbin Project - 1970
The Adromeda Strain - 1971
The Omega Man - 1971
THX 1138 - 1971
Soylent Green - 1973
Logan's Run - 1976

These were all very original works that imagined the human race in serious trouble, at a time when the country was going through its own trials and tribulations. There's one more that I did not list which falls into the same category and which I've always thought of as the most strikingly unique of the bunch, even if not very much else. That film imagined a world where humans had trashed the earth so badly that they had to send all their natural resources out into space until they could get things in order. I'm not speaking about WALL-E, but about 1972's Silent Running, starring Bruce Dern in the lead, and almost exclusive, role.

Make no mistake, this film's message is unabashedly environmentalist. The title track and montages are written and performed by none other than Joan Baez, the prominent musical voice of the 60's flower child movement. When I said natural resources, I meant huge intact landscapes of forestry and entire ecosystems preserved in giant temperature controlled domes, transparent to allow the sun's light in. Dern plays the head gardener, Freeman Lowell, on his particular ship, assisted by several small helper robots. His goof-off shipmates seem not to care about the payload they are carrying, which is portrayed as the typical attitude of earth's general population in this future. Dern's performance seems odd at times. He preaches to his shipmates about how no one cares anymore about the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees, and does it with such passion that he comes across to them, and to us, like a mad-man. But the great irony is that given the circumstances, the imminent loss of all that is beautiful on our planet, his words do not sound crazy to us at all. We would be saying the same in his shoes, and we would be acting just as desperately if no one else seemed to understand or care.

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The big plot setup comes when the ships are called home because they are needed for another "more important" mission and they are ordered to jettison and destroy their payloads. While the others are ecstatic to be able to go home, Lowell is horrified and after watching a few domes explode in space, he decides to save the last one, at the expense of his 3 colleagues' lives. The tension never really goes away in your mind about whether it is right or wrong to sympathize with Lowell's actions. People are more important than plants and animals, but are 3 people more important than the last remaining wildlife on earth? Lowell must continue to put on a ruse with ground control about it being an accident and that his ship is uncontrollably slipping behind Saturn and very likely toward destruction as it passes through the rings (Why they are near Saturn is never really explained but see my comments further down on the special effects). Well, he makes it through the rings and then into deep solar orbit where he finds he must set up a lighting system in the forest to make up for the lack of sunlight. Lowell's ingenuity continues to impress when a rescue party locates him and prepares to board. He decides to commission his droid assistants to take care of the forest and jettisons it out into space on its own journey. He then destroys the ship, himself aboard, to wipe out any record of what occurred, thus giving the fledgeling ark of nature a chance to survive without being pursued. A simple, yet powerful story.

The special effects crew on this film were quite impressive. Producer Douglas Trumbull was a special effects director for 2001. Several others on the visual effects team went on to join ILM and work on the original Star Wars. Although you can see the obvious miniaturization in places, it is rather good for its time. The ships have the freight train-like design of the Discovery - long thin body with large round cabin section at front and engine in back. The choice to put the ships near Saturn was mainly so that they could use space scenes that were created for 2001 but never used. The sets are filled with interesting things like hexagonal storage containers, go-cart transport vehicles, and round pool tables equipped with a robotic opponent for practice.

But by far the most interesting effect is the operation of the droids, affectionately named Huey, Duey, and Louie. On first viewing, I could not figure out how they did it. The movements look too organic to be fully remote controlled, yet they are too small for a person to fit inside. I later found out that they employed four paraplegics (no legs) on the set, who would get into the specially made suits and walk around on their hands. How's that for ingenuity?

The Three Laws

Sometime in my early school years, I remember reading a short essay on the Three Laws of Robotics, made famous by Asimov's classic compilation I, Robot. The original form of the laws are listed below:

•  First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or by inaction, cause a human being to come to harm.
• Second Law: A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
• Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

At the time, I was impressed with both the simplicity and the reasonableness of the laws, and of the idea that robots would need to be unalterably programmed with such prime directives in order to allow them to interact in society. We would need to have some basis for public trust. Although I have not read much of them, I hear several of Asimov's stories explore the ramifications of these laws in great detail. To get an idea, you can quickly read the plot synopsis of his first essay called Runaround.

I also remember hearing that in I, Robot, things go terribly wrong with the Three Laws. It wasn't until I saw the recent film starring Will Smith that I finally got to see this illustrated. It is a decent film in its treatment of some of Asimov's ideas, although as usual it is pumped up on action sterioids and the more thoughtful elements become somewhat lost in the shuffle. But the main problem in the movie's version is linked to the fact that someone decided to create a master control system that allowed all the individual robots to be coordinated to achieve a central goal. You would think that would be ok as long as the central computer obeyed the Three Laws, which it does, and would therefore use its great power to protect humanity, which it also does. But the central control system, which undoubtedly has access to global information, is smart enough to observe the fact that we humans harm each other each and every day. Given that this is inevitable, the only way to prevent us from harm is to protect us at all times from ourselves. The master computer decides the only way to do this is to take control of society and of the lives of everyone who could potentially cause harm to someone else.

The first objection that comes to mind regarding this solution is that robots are supposed to obey us, not the other way around. But if you look at the Three Laws, the directive to obey us is second, while the directive to protect us from harm is first. Thus, it is perfectly consistent for the robot to take actions to protect us even if it goes against our wishes. That, in essence, is the flaw in the Three Laws which is thus illustrated. The fact that this solution looks suspiciously like what occurs in a political overthrow, or revolution, is a poignant reminder of how such events in human history are often driven by people who must think they are acting for the good of society, and of how compelling their logic must seem to them.

Now that I've taken some time to think about it, I find myself asking about what other flaws might be lurking in the Three Laws of Robotics. They are written using terms that seem clear to us, but which are not necessarily well defined to a logic driven machine. For example, when I read the second law, I interpreted "harm" to mean imminent harm. We might expect a good person to try to save us from a dangerous situation, one that presents an immediate risk. We would not expect them to shelter us from any possible harm that might come to us. Would it help to add the word "imminent" to the second law? It may help, but it would not fix the problem. How do you define "imminent"? Computers work in terms of probabilities. How probable does the harm have to be to make it imminent? What if there are several people involved and saving some means harming the rest? The laws provide no guidance here, and in fact, our own consciences would have trouble deciding what to do. Do you take the course that saves the most from harm? If the odds are even, do you pick one at random?

Now, these laws are not presumed to be all that a robot is about. Each system would have a set of directives that tell it how to make value-based decisions on all sorts of things. Whole industries would probably have their own mandatory laws that any robot that works in that industry must adhere to, just as we have similar laws for humans. The point is to find a universal common denominator that makes robots suitable for interaction with humans. Given this, I must question the point of the third law, i.e., that robots must have a self-preservation instinct. I can understand manufacturers requiring it so that they don't lose an expensive piece of equipment, but if it is purely an economic decision, it won't always go that way. If a manufacturing plant is run exclusively by robots, you would want each of them to be willing to sacrifice themselves in order to keep the plant from blowing up and destroying them all. Whatever the reasons, it does not seem like a good candidate for a mandatory universal law. Of course, if you take it out you only have Two Laws, which doesn't have that fundamental ring you get with three.

So I'll take a stab at my version of the fundamental laws of robotics. I think the first part of the first law is sound, so lets keep it:

First Law: A robot shall not take any action which may lead to harming a human being.

The slight change in wording ensures that the robot must project its actions into the future to determine probable indirect consequences, rather than just direct consequences. There are still problems of course. We would need to replace "may lead" with a minimum probability or the robot may never do anything. We would also have to specify how to define and determine what constitutes "harm". But it is a start. I would then skip the second part of the first law and avoid all those difficult moral dilemmas. We don't automatically expect people to act heroically, so I don't think any one would expect a machine to, which leads us to the second law:

Second Law: A robot shall obey any orders given to it by its registered owner, unless doing so would conflict with the First Law.

The original second law requires a robot to obey anyone without regard to the person's authorization. How would it handle conflicting orders from different people? Requiring it to obey only the registered owner resolves that problem and provides a few other benefits. We now know who is responsible for the robot's actions in case it is called into question. If the robot robs a bank during the night, investigators know where to start to find out who is involved. Owners also now have a sense of control over their robots. They may grant access to others or to the general population in varying degrees, but they always have priority thanks to the second law. There would also have to be rules about how to authorize a transfer of ownership and what to do if the owner dies. The only catch is making sure an identity thief can't take control of the robot. But thanks to the first law, neither the owners nor a thief can use the robot as a weapon. And if someone is in danger, it will be up to the owner to direct the robot to save them, which means it is really the human in command who is intervening. And as mentioned, the original third law would be chucked.

Now the whole robbing a bank idea is something we might want to rule out altogether. I think in order for our robotic friends to get along in society, we would want to require them to be law-abiding citizens. If you require the robot not to break the laws of the land in which it resides, you have essentially put it on a trust level equal to, and perhaps greater than, any person you might meet on the street. The robot could not steal property or use it without permission, could not cheat when preparing someone's taxes, could not lie under oath, etc. This would be a great candidate for a second law, but it would require all robots to have knowledge of all local, state, and federal laws. You could not pre-program it since laws change across time and location. That opens the door to incorrect instruction and there goes your trust factor. No, our indelible laws must be universal in nature in order to work.

There is at least one behavior that I think would qualify as universal. Something that we all inherently expect robots to do is tell us the truth, but they can certainly be programmed to deceive just as easily as anything else, or they could be allowed to use deception of others in order to achieve a goal. We humans all agree that deception is not a valid means to an end with certain important exceptions, like to save one's own life or someone else's. I think we could safely bar the robot from deliberate deception except if it conflicts with the first law. Knowing that all robots are required to tell the truth provides another crucial step toward gaining the public trust. I would also not allow the robot to be commanded to decieve. This is why it must be the second law in priority. And since robots normally deal in probabilities, we should couch it in those terms. Finally, this does not mean that a robot must be compelled to answer any query. It just must answer truthfully when doing so. So below is my final version of the three laws of robotics:

First Law: A robot shall not take any action which may lead to harming a human being.

Second Law: When conveying information, a robot shall communicate the information as accurately as possible, unless such action conflicts with the First Law.

Third Law: A robot shall obey any orders given to it by its registered owner, unless doing so would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

In addition, there would need to be a set of rules about how precise human commands to robots must be in order for them to actually follow those commands. Otherwise, you get into the kind of ambiguous interpretations that caused the problems in the first place. Apparently, a lot of thought has gone into this topic over the last 50 years since Mr. Asimov introduced it, and that is fitting, because I'm sure the day will come when we will indeed face the need to implement such a program. I would have loved to have had this conversation with him if he were still with us.

Notes on the Battle of L.A.

I went to see Battle Los Angeles this weekend. As I was checking times, a young lady buying tickets asked the teller, "Is it true that it really happened?". The guy behind the glass looked up and, holding back a smirk, confirmed to her that it indeed actually happened. I'm sure she figured it out about 10 minutes into the film. The real Battle of Los Angeles was an interesting incident in 1942 that has captured the imagination of U.F.O. followers ever since, but it has absolutely nothing to do with this film. I really didn't expect to be saying anything about it here, but it caught me by surprise in a way that I thought should be commented on. You see, I was expecting a science fiction film. What I saw was a very nicely directed war film. There wasn't the slightest trace of what sci-fi fans usually go to see, and that is a good thing. Who needs to be teased? If this is a war movie, then by God, let me put on my marine helmet and enjoy it as such. In other words, the movie earned my respect for NOT trying to be science fiction.

It was a very clever idea. Being from L.A. myself, the idea of seeing a bona-fide war film set right in my own backyard is something that I'll admit can draw me in. Even if I believe it will be cheesy, the familiarity factor is enough to interest me. But you could not pull off an invasion from another country of the world without also offending entire neighborhoods in this town. In a city where you find just about every nationality there is, the only invader that could get them all rooting for the same team would have to be from outer space. To create a war scenario, the invader would need to be of hostile intent from the first moment so there is no time to bother trying to communicate with them. The cadets at Camp Pendleton would be called upon immediately to engage. And this is exactly what happens. Any information that is obtained about the alien's biology or weaponry is used as intelligence to better strike against them. Although their weapons are advanced, none of it is all that unusual. The intent of the creators is to produce the same experience as might be expected when fighting any new enemy where one must learn how they think and what their military capabilities are. On top of that backdrop, you have all the elements that make war films worth all the carnage. Heroic sacrifices, camaraderie born out of shared suffering, dealing with the ghosts of past memories, and getting a bunch of people to work together to overcome seemingly impossible circumstances. There are also some scenes with a family they are trying to rescue that were touching enough to bring me to tears. Like I said, it's no Saving Private Ryan, but I think war movie buffs will eat it up.

So my hat goes off to John Liebesman for having a clear vision for what he was trying to do and then doing it well. Yes, this is a Marine pride film, but not in the usually cheesy manner that these guys are sometimes portrayed in Hollywood. No, this is one that does a decent job of actually honoring the soldier hero. Hoo-aah.

Cowboys and Aliens

This is the first time I'm going to talk about a film that hasn't opened yet. You've probably already seen the trailers for Cowboys and Aliens which is slated for release in late July. When I first saw it, I had one of those moments of realization where you think, "It's so simple, why didn't anyone think of it before?". There are many film genre's that are based on historical periods - Victorian, Medieval, World War II, Ancient Rome, even Prehistoric, and of course, Westerns. Stories that are set in these periods usually stick to their own historical turf, even though they are completely fictional. Once in a while, science fiction writers will dabble in these other genre's via time travel tales, where someone from the present travels back to an earlier era. But in that case, the story setting is really the present and includes only an intrusion into the past. The thing that really made me stop and think was that I still cannot recall any serious science fiction work that actually takes place in a former historical period - an earth period of course, not just "A long time ago...".

To some degree, this is understandable. Science fiction writers are a creative bunch, and they like having a blank slate to draw on. That is why many of their works are set in the future. Even in period stories where characters make early discoveries of known science and technology, because the discoveries are not new to the reader, these are not really classified as "science" fiction. On the other hand, alien invasion films, from War of the Worlds to the many film and TV offerings coming out just this year (Battle L.A., Falling Skies), are always classified as science fiction. This is because it is usually assumed that such an epic event has to be set in the near future, and that works better anyway because it gives the humans a fighting chance and hits closer to home. But if aliens are allowed to exist and visit earth in present day, there's no rule that says they could not have visited earth in some other time period. After a century of alien invasion films, someone has finally decided to give it a shot. And thank goodness it is not just anyone.

I am not surprised at the specific names I'm seeing involved. Among the many contributors, Spielberg and Ron Howard appear in the producer list (of about 15!), and Harrison Ford managed to get on the ticket. These are all people who know how to sniff out an original story concept. At least 8 people are named as screenplay contributors, including the guys behind Star Trek reboot and Men In Black. It's quite a big production. What they are trying to accomplish is not just a new setting for an alien invasion movie, but a merging of two film genre's. You can tell from the trailer that they want to duplicate the sets, style, characterization, and flavor of a bona fide Western. The point is to convince an audience that has grown accustomed to modern Western film making that they are in familiar territory so as to enhance the impact of the new material. Will they succeed in this? My guess is they could overdo it. With a production crew this polished, the tendency will be to try to iconize the look and feel but miss the texture. Witness the film title, which would sound truly corny if it weren't for the ground breaking nature of the material (and of course the graphic novel). It indicates that they are perhaps too aware what they are trying to do. But as I said before, I'm glad it's these folks rather than some nobody. It will give it enough credibility to pave the way for future experiments. I hope they can come up with a decent script. The fact that it was born from a graphic novel does not guarantee its quality.

There is one old film that originally broke ground in merging sci-fi with a Western called The Valley of Gwangi. Here it was the introduction of a "lost world" with dinosaurs into the wild west. You can see a clip of it on one of my earlier entries here. That's another idea that is traditionally classified as science fiction which could also be extended to other time periods. How about a dinosaur rampaging the Medieval World before anyone knew what dinosaurs were? Of course, they would most likely just call it a dragon. What about a Roman army going up against alien invaders? The door could be wide open now.

Deja Vu

I've recently realized a symmetry regarding the nature of time. It is illustrated in the graph shown at left. Under normal circumstances, you and I travel forward in time. Our relationship with the future is not that we know it, but that we move into it, we experience it. On the other hand, our relationship with the past is the reverse of this. We see the past through the eyes of our memory. We know it, but we cannot move into it. The paradoxes of time arise when you try to reverse either of these relationships. If you try to move into the past, you end up creating alternate histories that cannot co-exist with each other. I in fact wrote about the impossibility of backward time travel at length in a previous entry. Likewise, another type of paradox arises if we try to see into the future. Once you know what is to come, you then have the power to prevent what you have seen. This, of course, is less paradoxical than trying to change history. If the future you see does not come to pass, you can always argue that what you saw was never really the future in the first place. But the main point I'm making is that there are philosophical paradoxes associated with traveling into the past and seeing into the future, but there is no paradox associated with traveling into the future or seeing into the past.

Now the real insight for me came when I realized that the non-paradoxical scenarios could be stretched and extended and still remain non-paradoxical. Traveling into the future at a faster rate than everyone else is accepted by physicists as perfectly possible... if you are near a black hole or traveling near the speed of light. It may be a nearly impossible feat to actually accomplish, but theoretically achievable. Similarly, you can collect all the information you wish about the past without running into any sort of philosophical conundrum. The idea of seeing into the past never caught my attention as did the idea of traveling into the future because it seemed so ordinary by comparison. All you have to do to see into the past is spend lots of time in a library. With the help of video and audio recording you can experience the past as if you were actually there. But this whole attitude was turned on its head when I first saw the film Deja Vu. Ok, I know that's an awfully winded introduction for a movie review, but I had to describe all this before getting to the point because I don't think this film gets enough credit for the concept that it's writers so crisply and cleanly introduced to moviegoers. I think it deserves a little respect, and with that, on to the film...

The plot line of this film is quite simple. A ferry in New Orleans carrying over 500 Navy sailors, friends, and families explodes and kills all on board. Denzel Washington plays an ATF agent named Doug Carlin who is sent to investigate the accident. When it is discovered to be the work of a domestic terrorist, the FBI gets involved and, noticing Carlin's keen detective instincts, recruits him to join the investigation. Most of what follows is your basic who-done-it crime drama, with one interesting twist.
The FBI, it turns out, is using the case to test a new technological gadget. It is actually an area wide system connected to remote satellites that allows them to obtain detailed and close-up real time monitoring of any location within a certain radius. That doesn't sound too far from today's satellite technology, except that they are able to use it to monitor such locations at a different point in time, one that is about 4 days in the past. It is a type of time window, but they say they have no way to change the time range of the window. They can record what they focus in on, but they cannot move the window backward or forward in time, and it is video only. It is like being able to watch what happened 4 days ago as it evolves. It is impossible to view every location at once, so they must try to focus on what is important to the investigation. This is where Carlin's help comes in handy.

You might ask yourself, why not record everything and then sort through it after the fact? It is not a stretch for me to believe that the amount of data required for such a feat would be too huge to manage. Even if you could find enough storage capacity to hold all the information, it would be impossible to beam it to one location, whether direct or by satellite, at any usable rate. There is only so much bandwidth available and that restriction is based on the laws of physics. No, it makes sense that one would need to focus on specific locations at a time. Focusing technology does not suffer from such physical limitations. Why they can only see a fixed time period in the past is never explained, and of course is completely arbitrary, but it makes for an exciting detective story. Remember, they only have 4 days worth of history leading up to the crime that they can work with.

=================< spoilers below >=========================

Carlin focuses on one of the victims, a woman named Claire, who is discovered to have been killed before the accident and therefore might have come in contact with the assassin prior to it. If you like detective stories, there's a lot of good material here, but its more than just CSI style puzzle work. The writers really delved into the real time aspect of this time window system. One of my favorite scenes is a type of car chase. In the time window, the terrorist is driving the woman to his hideout outside the city, which is supposedly out of range of the FBI's system. They have an extender device in the form of a helmet with a visor that shows what is happening at your current location 4 days ago. Carlin decides to try to "follow" the suspect by driving the freeways with this helmut on. In the harrowing chase that follows, we see from the detective's viewpoint. One part of the screen shows the suspect's car that Carlin is trying to follow from 4 days ago, and the other part shows the current traffic in the windshield in front of him. The traffic patterns in both windows are completely different, making it a delightfully unnerving sequence to watch as Carlin tries to dodge the real cars, ignore the imaginary ones, and still keep the suspect's car in his viewer. There is one point where the cars stop and it appears like the killer is looking straight at Carlin even though that is really just coincidence. Nice touch. In fact, you can watch most of that chase sequence here from 1:16 to 1:20.

As I mentioned, this whole system is free of paradoxes. But the writers decided to challenge themselves a bit more and allow objects to be sent back into the time window. There are only two instances of this in the film. The first involves sending a piece of paper to the desk of Carlin's partner telling him where to find the suspect. This ends up getting his partner killed, something that was already known to have happened but no one knew why. The detective blames himself. Once they catch the criminal, the second incident involves Carlin convincing the team to send him back so he can save Claire, whom he has begun to care about. They send him to a nearby hospital bed with the words "REVIVE ME" written in large letters on his chest. Very clever. Carlin ends up not only saving Claire but also preventing the entire incident from occurring. What is really neat is that here again, the writers have shown us everything that Carlin's time travel affected at earlier points in the movie. As he intervenes in the time line, you see and understand the reasons why everything was this way or that way when you saw it before, including messages he wrote to himself. In other words, we only ever saw one time line to begin with, except for the very beginning when the boat actually explodes. In the changed timeline, the boat is saved.

Personally, I consider it a really well crafted script. Not only does it keep track of the clues to the crime, it also keeps tabs on the alternate time loop so as to minimize the paradox effect. The only detail to tie up is the fact that two Doug Carlin's exist at the same time now. This is neatly handled by causing Carlin to heroically save the ship at the expense of his own life, leaving his alternate future self to meet Claire under more favorable circumstances, and leaving her as the only one knowing all that actually happened. The film did not do very well at the box office, so maybe there aren't as many people out there who appreciate a good puzzle as much as I do.

Total Lack of Recall

I am not ashamed to admit that I really hate most films directed by Paul Verhoeven. The main reason is similar to the reason I hate a lot of Stanley Kubrik's work, which is that these directors like to take the tools of cinematic art and use them to jerk the audience around just to make a point. This usually involves gross exaggeration, gratuitous sex and violence, and ridiculous attempts at satirical humor. But whereas Kubrik does this with serious intention, Verhoeven just likes to see how far he can take the joke without the audience catching on and then laughing behind their back. He's like the Andy Kaufmann of film directors. Verhoeven pulled this off to maximum effect in Starship Troopers, where his main target was our attitude toward the military and war films (and also Heinlein's book). In Robocop, I'm guessing his target was police action films. In Total Recall, I've recently begun to believe that he was targeting the Hollywood production machine. Before I explain that, let me say a bit about this really bad 1990 sci-fi action film.

I can't just skip over a film that was supposedly based on a Philip K. Dick short story, but I've heard that the film not only diverges from the book but leaves out most of what makes the story interesting in the first place. You can see seeds of Dick's ideas in the whole dream vs. reality themes that are explored, but I've learned that this script floated around Hollywood for many years but never got produced for one reason or another. It went through lots revisions and I don't suppose many directors wanted to get involved. I will guess that this created a situation where Hollywood had invested a lot of capital into trying to get this movie made and was quite frustrated. They were willing to throw a lot of money at it to get it done. I think Mr. Verhoeven saw this as just too tempting. His thesis on this project would be to illustrate Hollywood's tendency to think that the more money you put into a film, the better it will be. He would take a script by a respected intellectual author and turn it into an action bonanza complete with stupid one-liners and lots of explosions. He would get one of highest paid actors in Hollywood at the time, Mr. Schwarzenegger, chosen precisely because of how well he represented the high paid low talent Hollywood star. He somehow managed to have tons of money spent on special effects which more often than not turned out looking like cheap puppetry, toy models, and cartoonish claymation. He got them to pay big bucks for a nice Jerry Goldsmith score. He littered his screen with blatant product placements and lots of gore and violence while leaving a lot of plot points and story details in the dust. All this he did while keeping a straight face, and then laughed it up under his breath as the film debuted as number one at the box office and the Hollywood executives all patted him on the back.

Alight, maybe I'm being a little over the top, but I'll wager not by much. There is really not much worth remembering about Total Recall (no pun intended) except the possibility that its director was pulling a number on the executives, and maybe the audience, just like he did with several other of his films before and after. I'm sure I'll get some flack for this, but at least you can't say my perspective isn't unique.

Overlords of Mortis

As I mentioned once before, I have been faithfully watching the Clone Wars series which is now in its third season. They are always a treat to watch for reasons I explain in my earlier entry, but this week Mr. Lucas decided to go epic and create a whole new strand of mythology. It is such a great offering I had to just comment on it.

It is a three part sub-series of which two have already been released. The three main characters on the good side, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan, respond to a distress call which turns out to be some type of artificial planetoid in the shape of an octahedron. It looks more like a prison, which in fact it is, but is also a conduit though which "the force" of the universe flows and is somehow amplified. Whatever the explanation, it is a pretty freaky place. You have a trilogy of beings living there - one of light, one of darkness, and one that provides balance between them who is referred to as their "father". They are interested in Anakin because they suspect he is the "chosen one".

Now remember I'm comparing this with the entire Clone Wars series, not the rest of the sci-fi world from which it kind of rips off a lot of material. I could comment on the Avatar like floating rocks, the parallels with Christianity, Excaliber, and Greek mythology (Gargoyles and Griffins), or the fact the "chosen one" idea was overused even before The Matrix. But we love them anyway because they hit close to home. The fact is that the themes of this trilogy and even the animation and flying camera angles are just a step above the previous offerings. We even see visions of past figures both true and deceptive, and ones of the future.

It's not completely out of scope either. Since the early days of The Phantom Menace, the jedi have talked about Anakin being the the one who will bring balance to the force according to some ancient prophecy. He is put to a test here by these beings so they can decide if he is the fulfillment, one that requires he tame both the creatures of light and darkness, and he passes. Yet some events transpire which create an imbalance in the force toward the dark side. We of course know that this portends the evil days that are coming. It all has a rather mysterious flavor to it that is a nice departure from the norm. The story accomplishes the dual goal of revealing a new aspect of the mythology of Star Wars that is still anchored to the whole, while also chronicling a key set of events in its history. It is one of those rare glimpses into the world that began in Mr. Lucas' mind. It makes you wonder if it was grafted in recently or was there all along. The full episodes have been removed from the Star Wars official site, but the preview info is still there. And you can try the links below if they are still available:

    Episode S3E15: Overlords
    Episode S3E16: Altar of Mortis
    Episode S3E17: Ghosts of Mortis

The Fifth Element

Aaahhhh! Ok, ok, I'll do it. I'm practically dragging myself to write an entry about this crazy film, which I did enjoy watching the first time and again as I reviewed it recently. The reason this is so painful is that I'm accustomed to honoring works that hold some intrinsic value. The Fifth Element has little of it and yet I can't seem to shake it out of my head. It reminds me a bit of Hitchhiker's Guide, yet different. Alike in that in that it borrows elements from other science fiction movies, but more as a tribute than in any way a spoof. Alike in it's comedy, but more as a side attraction than as the main objective. Alike in its European flavor, but more French than British. And in addition, it aims at one point to convey a message about the worth of mankind being more in the way we love than in the wars we fight. Well, maybe that's stretching it a bit. But no matter what I may think about it, I can't seem to help enjoying it. As a film that claims such close kinship with the sci-fi genre, this has to be the place to write on it, and so I write.

This movie has guts. Its unconventionally flamboyant sets, costumes, and visuals work because of sheer creativity. Its cartoon-like characters work because they end up satirizing various aspects of human society. Its completely ridiculous mythological backdrop works only because it is designed to touch some place in your heart and soul. All the reasons why it should be bad, somehow end up working. And what is really weird is that it seems to flow naturally from the director's own style rather than feel like it was all thought out in advance. Maybe this is the first sci-fi film in which my recommendation would be to just sit back and enjoy it without thinking about it.

I have no desire to describe the story details as they are much better when viewed, except for one symbolism that I picked up at the end on this most recent viewing (small spoiler here). At the end, the five elements must all be opened in order to fight the evil force that threatens the world. The heroes, which include Bruce Willis' character Korbin Dallas, discover that each element stone must be opened by supplying it with a sample of itself - earth to earth, fire to fire, etc. In addition to the usual four elements of ancient lore, the fifth element is said to be a human being, a female, pure and innocent. We find that she is "closing up" with despair after learning of the evils of human history. She must be opened as well, and this is accomplished when Dallas confesses his love to her, which opens her heart and completes the 5-fold energy force to combat the evil. You see, the fifth element is love. The human being was just the "stone" that was meant to hold it. With themes like that, who needs to analyze?