Micro Horror Story, "Martians"

            The first human trip to Mars was seen as the most important event in history.  Funded by a coalition of nations to set down near the southern most patch of ice that had been located by previous satellite missions in a space craft that was the largest ever constructed.

            It was an accomplishment, spectacle, and dream all at once.

            Drifting thru the space between worlds observations of the sun and the stars were conducted and every aspect of the landing was discussed again and again.  Every part of it was down in their minds.  When it came time for their little science orchestra to play, they would hit every note.

            They were smart, brave, and heroic.  All the things you would want the rest of earth to aspire to.

            They orbited Mars, gazing at the tiny moons and letting out little pods to gaze down on them, to await their return to the main ship in a matter of weeks.  Bits of the ship that had been packed for months snapped off and drifted down to the planet, some piloted by the crew, some trusted to land near enough to the target sight to be picked up later.

            The landing was gentle, measured, and went off without a hitch.  The work back home and on the way had all come together.

            The first walk out on the red planet was done with suits made for the mission, carrying tools created for their experiments, in vehicles designed for the area.  They took photos and video of each member of the crew standing on the edge of a glacier dozens of acres wide and along dry river beds hundreds of miles long.

            The world was unspoiled, beautiful, and scary in a way that none of them never would have anticipated.

            It was in the caves that they found it.  Where they found them.  Bones.  Human bones.  They were wearing a suit that had been made for the mission.  They held in their hand a tool that had been used to leave a message on the wall.

            “It is happening again.”

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Movies of 2013, Science Fiction, pt3, Europa Report

Logically I should have paired this movie with "Gravity" but I only just watched it and decided to add it to the now nearly complete list of movies I have gone over.  So I am going back to Science Fiction with a very small movie that made very little money.

Europa Report, or "The space movie from 2013 that really does not measure up to Gravity"

Overall: 6/10 (kind of ruined by its fake-documentary style)

Surprisingly hard science.

            "Compared to the breadth of knowledge yet to be known... what does your life actually matter?"  Which is kind of bleak when you think about it.

            I don't really like the framing device of the movie.  It is a documentary made from the footage of a lost mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter (one of the four important ones, there are dozens of moons around Jupiter the short bus cousin to Sol).  It justifies the found footage nature of the story by having cameras everywhere on the space vessel.  Inside the ship, outside the ship, and the totally unnecessary inside the helmet (I guess they wanted to show the actors acting at the things they are seeing, but they can do that with their voices just fine without the excessive close up).  It is the quick breakdown of literally months (22 and some change) of this voyage which captures all the classic problems of the found footage style and the science fiction genre.

            You start with the initial 20 minutes with the characters, though I will freely admit they are better characters than most of these types of movies give you, "Sunshine" for instance focused on mental nut-bars and assholes for the most part, and "Gravity" only had smarmy George and whimpering Sandra as the key characters, with Ed Harris' voice giving us authoritarian if you are generous.  Europa One's crew members have roles on the mission, but nobody is transparently the daredevil or the coward (even though that is suggested with interviews at the start of the movie), they act like actual people.

            The middle section is the mini-boss, the issue that shows the dangers of the environment cropping up before you even get to the actual mission.  In this case a routine maintenance procedure that goes bad.  You can see prior examples of this with "Mission to Mars" (which this movie with very few tweaks might as well be a sequel to), in which micro meteors result in their ship getting banged up and nearly rendering the ship destroyed.  The mini-boss in "2001: A Space Odyssey" was HAL or the concept of the audience being really bored.  The mini-boss underlines a major problem with the movie though: things told and shown out of order.

I consider this to be a rather underrated movie, and while similar in plot to Europa, this one has a much lighter tone.

            The crew land the ship on Europa, then they cut back to before they landed.  This cut is to show what happened to one of the crew members, the mini-boss incident that upped the stakes for the crew.  Why did they cut backwards in time?  That is just confusing.  I thought that I had accidently clicked on the player's progress bar.  If this was a real documentary that wouldn't happen, so why is it in a fictitious documentary?  That sort of thing doesn't happen in most movies unless strange editing in the gimmick ("Pulp Fiction" or "Memento").

            The third part of the story is the mystery of Europa.  Exploring the surface, feeling the immensity of what happened (landing on a moon of Jupiter, biggest event in history up till then), and the tension and creepy nature of an alien world.  It is pretty cool, and I would have liked it a lot if not for the documentary style breaking in to ruin the flow and practically telling the audience outright how to feel.

            Ultimately there is a disaster, that is pretty clear from the nature of the movie, and the final part of the tale is the cool and scary discovery.  Then the documentary keeps talking.  Once you have the money shot of the crew's suicidal last grasp at knowledge, talking doesn't help the audience.

Said every viewer of this movie walking into the theater.  HA!  Walking into the theater!
Nobody saw this in the theater.  They watched it on Netflix months later.

            You want to know what would have fixed this movie?  Issues 1 to 100, the found footage is not necessary, and stupid documentary style takes out all of the mystery.  You know that nobody makes it out.  How about instead you just make the same story with the same cliché beats and just make it play out like a real movie?  And have some ambiguity as to whether the discovery makes it back to Earth.  Thru most of the movie the communications are not working, but we are watching a documentary, so we know that the chronicling of their mission makes it back, but if you had the last act of the crew be the daring attempt to send the message back to Earth (which is part of the climax) but leave it open ended as to whether the message made it off Europa, so that the characters and the audience don't know if the world will ever learn of what happened, that type of ending forces people to think a little.  Maybe even worry.  Really, this is the same flaw as "Gravity" which has no ambiguity to its final scene, it is excessively tied up in a neat little package.

            Problem 101, the editing of this movie is awful.  As previously mentioned cutting back and forth between months of time (even with the hard to read time codes) does nothing to help the story.

            But, whatever, instead we can just tell the audience what happened and explicitly end the movie with the words, "We now know that our universe is stranger, far more alive, than we had ever imagined. The crew of Europa One changed the fundamental context in which all of humanity understands itself. I don't know what greater measure of success they could have achieved."  As if you the watcher could not have put that together by yourself.  It is like a really good movie spliced together with a current generation History channel "documentary" (those quotes are to indicate sarcastic condescension).  It is worth watching.

I actually dislike the idea of aliens having come to Earth in ancient times to teach humans things.  It is a very colonial mindset in the realm of science fiction, the idea of the civilized people teaching the primitives the glory of technology.  Also the idea robs humans of a lot of their agency.  Humans are intelligent and should be accomplishing things rather than being spoon fed.

Movies of 2013, Science Fiction, pt2

Science Fiction

Star Trek Into Darkness, or "Damon Lindelof seriously needs to stop 'contributing' to franchises I like."

Overall: 6/10

Most of the posters suck.  This one is okay.

            I have talked about this movie before.  And have emphasized its studded nature.  The idea that it has a lot of symbols and iconography to give it the semblance of meaning without actually being meaningful.  This is practically the trademark of Damon Lindelof, creator of "Lost", whose one true gift if giving characters distinctive voices, and whose much lesser gift is throwing a lot of shit at the wall to see if it sticks.

            This movie has more twists than pretzel bread, and each makes less sense than the last.  It robs itself of emotional and intellectual resonance by immediately undoing huge plot developments.  Background characters have more visual personality than the main hero, leaving me wanting to hear their story rather than another story about Kirk.  And you know what, I am kind of tired of these characters.  I am a huge fan of all of these actors, but I am tired of these characters because the reboot is doing nothing with them.

            Christopher Nolan took a 70 year old comic book franchise and used it for complex discussions about perseverance, iconography, order and chaos, the nature of fear, and the role of security and privacy.  "Star Trek Into Darkness" rehashes stories and ideas to say nothing.  The idea of WMD's and terrorism were done better in the "Iron Man" franchise.  The idea of a villain who is out to protect his people was done better in the "X-Men" franchise.  "Star Trek" (2009) was given a pass on saying anything because it was a reboot, it showed the new visuals, it showed the new tone, it introduced the characters, this movie does not have that excuse, and by putting in shit like a tribble, and rambling about the Prime Directive makes this movie really stupid regardless of how pretty, exciting, or well acted.  That is not okay.

            Either have it be a fun adventure movie, or have a movie with intrigue and complex discussions, having both is like mixing ice cream and mashed potatoes.  It doesn't work!  At least not on any level that will last or stick with the audience.

Ender's Game, or "Would I like this movie better if I had not read the book?"

Overall: 6/10

Posters are overall better for this movie.  But some of them suck a lot.

            Compliment 1: This is a visual triumph.

            And it is kind of distracting.  When reading the book the video games and simulations are barely described, I personally imagined them as something like 3D "Dig Dug" and "Space Invaders", games that are not about graphical presentation but about teaching the mechanics of the game and developing a skill set related to them (a completely useless skill set for the real world, but a skill set).  I guess the filmmakers had the freedom to make the video games and simulations look however they wanted, but when everything looks so real, it is really hard to believe the twist that they tried to throw at the end.  The idea that Ender would have believed what they said he believed is preposterous when looking at this stuff.  It undercuts the movie's message for the sake of looking much cooler.

            SPOILER (skip to next compliment): There is of course a way they could have done both things, show them playing simple games at first, and then after they reveal what those games were really about flash to the actual battle and show it.  It would have helped to illustrate Ender's revelation at what he had done.

I am having Deja vu again.

Is there only one art department doing spaceship designs now?

            Compliment 2: The story is technically proficient.

            There is a set up and pay off that existed in the novel, the use of human shields later pays off in the use of space ships to protect a particular weapon.  But elements of the story, numerous conversations about the ethics of using Ender like they did, and nearly everything having to do with the tertiary characters is lost, the story is proficient, but bare bones when it comes to introspection and insight.

            Compliment 3: The acting is not nearly as bad as I had been told to expect.

            Butterfield is the bedrock the movie is built on and he is a really good actor, they actually step on his acting at one point by talking over a moment of epiphany, but overall he is really good, and deserves more credit for adding depth to a script that does not have a lot of clever dialogue.  Ben Kingsley commits to his part really well, and shows a level of true professionalism that can be missed when huge talented actors get roles in science-fiction-or-fantasy-coming-of-age stories (which is a genre that is surprisingly robust).  And Harrison Ford, is kind of wasted, growly and pissed are the emotions that come across, but there was a sort of tough love that the role called for that I did not feel come through, he doesn't interact with Ender in way that shows the complexity of that relationship, really he needed a lot more to work with.

            No more compliments.

            That is pretty much the end of the good things I have to say.  This movie is kind of a turkey, especially when compared to the book which is a god damn masterpiece.  It has pacing issues that nearly kill it.  Characters are introduced and dismissed so quickly that they can hardly been said to have existed at all.  And while I can understand that removing the plot about Ender's siblings conquering the world via effective blogging (symbolically mirroring how Ender is coming to terms with his own duality as a killer and compassionate leader, it is a METAPHOR), the fact is, nothing is given time to sink in, nothing is given time to be understood on a level deeper than skin.  Also, the actress that plays Ender's sister, Valentine, has to angrily storm out of a room in one of her two scenes and she looks funny doing it, kind of killed the scene.

            There is also a slapped on environmental message about how the aliens are invading Earth because they need water... Which is stupid horseshit.  Water is an incredibly abundant substance that can be harvested from space (something we see the aliens doing in the movie), there is no reason to talk about scarcity in regards to a civilization that has interstellar travel.  Much like the needless pollution and global warming crap from "Pacific Rim", and the kind of pointless environmental message of Krypton's destruction in "Man of Steel", this is out of place in here.

            There is also a major omission from the book in the number of times Earth was invaded by the Aliens, and why Earth thinks that attacking in an all out scorched world strategy is so necessary to secure the safety of the human species.  In the movie there was one invasion, in the book there had been two.  And while the near annihilation of the Earth in the movie is shown to be a strong motivator for a counter attack, Ender brings up a point that is never properly addressed, "Why have the aliens built up a huge fleet, and not attack Earth again?"  It is explained in the book, not in the movie.  That is a problem with the narrative on a deeper level than it should be because it robs the military of a good bit of justification for what they end up doing.

            Another problem is with the training.  In the book, you understand what is happening, the rules, and why it works the way it does.  You also understand how and why Ender is seen as good and smart because of how he changes the way the game is played through exploiting rules and mechanics.  The movie doesn't explain the game well, so when Ender starts winning it comes off as an attributed ability, rather than a demonstrated ability (which breaks the rule of movie making, "SHOW DON'T TELL").  For a movie that is so visually rich this should not be an issue.

            Also, it is yet another movie that walks up to an important line of violence, and then backpedals.  In the book Ender murders another child that is physically abusing him.  And later on he murders another child.  Ender doesn't intend either murder, he is just fighting hard and without restraint to secure his own safety, this movie has him violently win a fight, but does not have that core idea, it doesn't kill the kids, and those actions foreshadow other events in the narrative that are important.  If you are committed to not showing this sort of violence then you should not make the movie.

            Overall, this should have been a cartoon series, giving it time to do all it needs to do rather than the extremely condensed narrative that it is.