The Matrix Resurrections- Makes A Zombie

A common trope in stories of resurrection is that the body comes back to life, but the soul does not come back resulting in a moving but lifeless corpse, a zombie. The Matrix Resurrections attempts to revive a long dead franchise with imperfect results. It's not a bad film, the plot holds together, there's some neat effects and some good jokes, but it doesn't really have a pulse. There is no purpose or meaning. It moves, but it's not really alive.

While watching this movie I kept thinking about Isn't It Romantic, a rom-com parody starring Rebel Wilson. In that movie, Rebel plays a woman who hates rom-coms who finds herself living in a world that runs on rom-com rules. It's a delightfully meta movie that never forgets that as much as it pretend to hate the genre, it is very much a rom-com and ultimately a love letter to the genre. The Matrix Resurrections frequently parodies its own status as an overly late franchise revival, but unlike Isn't It Romantic, it thinks it's better than the glut of reboots that have taken over Hollywood in the past decade. But like the rest of these movies, there just doesn't feel like there is any reason for this movie to exist other than to sell movie tickets by capitalizing on established brand. The Forky Problem is taking over Hollywood and it shows no sign of relenting. In a moment of self-parody that does not feel intentional the movie devolves into a zombie movie with no acknowledgement that the movie itself is a zombie.

Philosophy has been an important part of the franchise from the beginning. The original film was an unabashed retelling of The Allegory of the Cave with touches of Simulacra and Simulation. Reloaded's philosophy could be summed up by that scene where the king of Zion looks straight into the camera and asks "What is control?" Revolutions was about learning that two side of a conflict often have more in common than they realize and there is more to be gained by cooperation than repeating the same fights again and again. There were multiple books and college courses about the philosophical depth of these films. Resurrections says that most people want to be controlled and it never actually debates the point. It just offers that some people are special and can make their own choices. There's no depth to the argument. It's just there to check the box that "this movie needs some philosophy." I don't think any professors are going to be putting this movie on their syllabus. If they really wanted to make that the theme, then they should have set the film at the start of the new matrix when the people were choosing between freedom and captivity. Give me Neo vs. Hobbes' Leviathan. 

As I watch this sequel to a movie where the actor's names have changed, I can't help but to wonder when did we all become John Mayer whining about his lunchbox being thrown away and pining for 1983 (in this case, 1999)?

I just revived this blog after a long time to make a point I have more or less made twice before. Did I just Fork myself?

The Official Pixar Rankings

These are the official No Spoiler Tags Pixar Rankings. All other Pixar rankings are wrong and should be ignored.

• The Classics

1. Toy Story 3
2. Toy Story
3. Up
4. Inside Out
5. Finding Nemo
6. Coco

7. Luca

• The Very Good

8. A Bug's Life
9. Toy Story 4
10. Onward
11. Brave
12. Toy Story 2
13. Wall-E
14. The Incredibles

• The Better Than Average

15. Finding Dory
16. Cars 3
17. Soul
18. Incredibles 2

• The Not Bad

18. Monsters University

19. Turning Red
20. The Good Dinosaur
21. Ratatouille
22. Monsters, Inc.
23. Cars
24. Cars 2

In a previous version of this list, I made a comment that Cars will "bring about Pixar's inevitable demise" and  I would like to take a moment to explain that position. It's not that Cars or any of its sequels are "bad". Pixar has to date never made a bad movie. The problem with Cars is how much money it made and how uncreative it is. Cars is Pixar's most profitable franchise and it's least challenging to write. Early Pixar reliably delivered great characters and original stories. Half of the post-Cars Pixar films have been sequels or prequels as they are clearly trying to capitalize on their established characters rather than creating new ones. Cars created the Forky problem at Pixar.

Forky is the new key character created for Toy Story 4. The character came about because the writers keep throwing partially completed scripts in the trash because they could not find a reason for Toy Story 4 to exist. (Toy Story 3 was a perfect end to the Toy Story story and the existence of Toy Story 4 makes the ending retroactively worse, even though it is a fine film on its own.) That is the central problem at modern Pixar. Pixar is financially motivated to make these meaningless sequels rather than tell new stories. So far, they have all come out okay, but they will eventually go downhill.

The Wandering Earth- I, For One, Welcome Our New Chinese Overlords

I know more about China than the average American. This began two years ago when I started dating and eventually married a Chinese citizen (legally) living in the United States. I have learned a number of Chinese folk tales and traditions. I can speak and read a non-zero amount of Mandarin. I have recently returned from more than a month in China, much of that time, in areas not frequented by Western tourists. I have seen a number of Chinese movies which have not attracted a Western audience. I eat most of my meals with chopsticks and since my mother-in-law came to visit Mandarin has become the primary language of my household. I have also seen most of Dragonball, and all of Dragonball Z, GT and Super. (That's an inside joke between me and 老婆.) 

I have also read The Three Body Problem Trilogy, a series of books written by Cixin Liu, who also wrote the short story The Wandering Earth is based on. (For the record, I actually started reading The Three Body Problem before I met 老婆 and convinced her to start reading it. She has not yet finished them.) The Three Body Problem and this movie share a number of similarities. They are good in both general quality and that they follow the rules of sci-fi. They are epic space tales involving enormous times scales. They lean heavily to the hard sci-fi side of the scale. (The Wandering Earth is softer than The Three Body Problem, but still much harder than the typical Hollywood fair.) They have a huge cast of characters which barely get developed. Both feature Alpha Centari and Jupiter, as well as, an AI which alternates between ally and antagonist. (老婆, this is No Spoiler Tags. It's your fault for reading this.[Yes, I wrote this entire paragraph just to be a dick to my wife. I love you,老婆.] )

All of this is to say that what I have to say about China in this piece does not come from a place of total ignorance. My feelings about China are mixed. I have serious problems with the way the Chinese Communist Party suppresses free thought, abuses human rights, and uses their military to bully their neighbors. I do not see China as a threat to the United States, at least, not in anyway I care about. My interactions with the Chinese people have been overwhelmingly positive and collectively they seem to have only two major character flaws, which I will discuss later.

The Wandering Earth is set about 50 years in the future (It is after the 2044 Shanghai Olympics. Presumably, China is the only country on Earth foolish enough to host the Olympics by then.) with the sun about to explode. So, humanity does the only logical thing and packs up their mobile home, the entire fucking planet, and starts moving to the next star over. On the way out of the solar system, Earth needs to get a gravity assist from Jupiter, which is when things go wrong and plot ensues.

A core element of Vulcan and Chinese philosophy is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. (The downside of this collectivism is that the Chinese are completely intolerant of any criticism or humor directed towards them from the outside. This is character flaw number one.) With their lengthy history, the Chinese also seem to be able to think and plan on very long timelines. These ideas permeate this movie time and time again, as character after character sacrifice themselves for the good of the mission. An element of The Wandering Earth Project involves wiping out half of humanity before we even get our planet moving, something everyone on Earth, apparently, just accepts. #ThanosDidNothingWrong (Oddly, this is the first time this blog has recognized the MCU.) Two of the characters make plans for a fishing trip that their descendants will take in 2,500 years. If these elements of Chinese thought become universal, there's a chance humanity will be around long enough to take that fishing trip.

One thing that impressed me about this movie is the budget: $48 million. That's a big budget in China, but it barely buys a rom-com in America. Justice League had six times the budget and it looked six times worse. There were places were the imperfect CGI showed through, but Hollywood would struggle to match the visual quality of The Wandering Earth at any price under $200 million. Prices in China are ridiculously cheep from an American prospective and this movie is just another example. I have seen some Chinese movies from the recent past with awful visual effects, but The Wandering Earth proves that China has closed the gap with Hollywood very well.

There is one thing I absolutely hated about this movie: the subtitles. This isn't a complaint about subtitles in general. I prefer them to dubbing as it preserves the emotion of the original performance. I hate the actual physical subtitles used in this film. The subtitles were in both English and Chinese characters with more of the screen real estate devoted to the Chinese. The font size was tiny, apparently to make enough room for both languages without covering too much of the screen. I am a fast reader and I frequently struggled with how quickly the long lines of complicated text would flash by. Worst of all, they were in white with only the thinnest of black outlines. A horrible decision for a film which takes place primarily on an ice planet. It was like a picture of snowman in a blizzard with a tiny novel you have to read on it as you drive by at 40 MPH. They were easily the worst subtitles I have ever seen.

Here's the part that might get me death threats. (Possibly, from my wife.)  I am about to explain the second character flaw that seems so prevalent in China. The Chinese have no qualms about being openly racist to anyone who is not Han Chinese. And it shows in this movie. The movie centers around an international organization working together for the good of humanity. Hollywood would use this opportunity to build a diverse cast representing all of the G20. (Okay, yes, the Americans would be the most awesome heroes who would tell everyone else to steep aside while the white guy or Will Smith saves the day. But, that's not the point right now.) The Wandering Earth had exactly one and a half non-Chinese characters in non-background roles. This was especially noticeable given the size of the cast list. These two were a Russian and a half Australian. The Russian endangered the entire human race by building a sill on the space station humanity needed to survive. The Australian  was a moron, comic relief character. It's also subtly implied that he is a rapist. Neither character does anything that could be considered important to the plot. In the fourth act of the movie, it appears that all hope is lost and the Earth will be destroyed, but luckily the Chinese are smart enough to make a new plan to save us all. We see Americans, French, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Indonesians, Russians, Brits and more giving into despair as their feeble minds and weak wills are crushed. (The Israelis also had the idea, but only the Chinese had the will, courage and determination to try.)  Then, when all hope seems lost again, it is a middle school Chinese girl who proves that she has larger testicles than all of the non-Chinese men on the planet combined by delivering a speech that would make the President from Independence Day cry, rallying the rest of the planet to help the Chinese save the world. None of this is subtle or an accident. This is the subtext the film makers want you to see.

Now, that I've told you how much I enjoyed this openly racist film with dreadful subtitles, as well as, express my love for China and my Chinese wife, here's an enjoyable openly racist song about loving a Chinese girl with could be better subtitles.

Happy Anniversary/Spring Festival/Valentine's Day, 老婆! I love you! Please don't murder me!

[Update] My wife has now read this and translated it to her mother. Based on their responses and having some more time to think about what I wrote, I want to make a few clarifications.

1. I am currently neither murdered nor divorced.

2. My wife and mother-in-law generally agree with what I wrote. Their biggest complaint is with the comment about Mandarin being the primary language at my house. But I talk less than the average man and they are two women, so you do the math. (Why not throw some sexism on top of all this racism?)

3. Hollywood has a very racist past and a somewhat racist present. The writing and casting choices in this movie with regard to race are more like Hollywood of thirty years ago than today. Making the one minority in film a rapist would not fly in modern Hollywood.

4. In the piece above, I attribute several personality traits to the Chinese people, some positive and some negative. Making sweeping generalizations about entire groups is the definition of racism. Their are 1.4 billion people in China, some of them will fit this description to a T, others will follow it loosely and some are the complete opposite. These traits are common, not universal.

5. Finally, a bonus song I think everyone should hear.

Update 2: I recently rewatched this movie with 老婆 and she pointed out some details I missed the first time through that changed my view of this movie a little. She noticed that throughout the movie there are subtle hints that many other people are also struggling to save humanity. There is a line about other astronauts breaking out on the space station, the engines around the world are re-ignited, and the aforementioned line about the Israilis having the idea to ignite Jupiter, as well as other hints. It's some pretty neat storytelling that adds a lot of depth to the world, but I still contend that the movie portarys the Chinese as the only ones with the abilites and bravey to get the job done.

Also, Netflix fixed the subtitle problem from the theatrical release.

I'll leave you with this Because Science video about what it would actually take to move the Earth with current rocket tech. 

 

L. A. Confidential- Hush Hush

L. A. Confidential is a period piece. It is set in a time before we knew Kevin Spacey is a child rapist. This is one of those No Spoiler Tags posts that pretty much ignores the film and discusses something tangential to it. Today's topic: Can art be separated from the artist?

Other than the aforementioned Spacey, here is a short, off the top of my head list of men in the film industry who have committed sexual misconduct: Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Roman Polanski, Woody Allan, Lewis C. K., Jeffrey Tambor and Morgan Freeman. (That's a lot of names I can think of without trying to think or research.) These names show up in the credits of a lot of good movies and TV. #Timesup for watching them? (I feel bad about that line, but it stays in.) Do I need to throw out my DVD of The Shawshank Redemption? I say no. I think the art speaks for itself separate from the artist, but the art can be tainted and changed by the artist.

The obvious first step with these men is to throw them out of Hollywood and that seems to be happening. I don't think I would watch a new movie staring Spacey, but I am watching the new season of Arrested Development where Tambor plays a role in the ensemble. (So, I guess I'm a hypocrite.) I don't think Arrested Development is hurt by Tambor's presence because he has a relatively small part in a large cast and he's playing basically the same character he does in real life.

L. A. Confidential is a great movie and Kevin Spacey was good in it. It may not have been his best work, but he also didn't have a very large or well-developed part. The accusations against Spacey do affect how I see the film. At the time it came out, his character's pursuit of justice for a homosexual (who wasn't actually homosexual) murder victim was supportive of gay rights. But, now it is a reminder of how Spacey attempted to use coming out of the closet as an excuse and distraction to try to get away with his crimes. Mostly, I found myself trying to find hints of the monster behind the mask. But, Spacey had a knack for playing slimy characters who weren't quite what they seemed, so his presence always had me searching for a twist.

To illustrate why I think these films are not irreparably ruined let's jump over to another form of entertainment: sports.

Joe Paterno won a lot of football games...or did he? As a quick refresher, Joe Paterno was the head coach at Penn State and he hired Jerry Sandusky as his defensive coordinator. During this time Jerry and Joe were winning football games, Jerry was also making the time to rape a lot of children. Paterno was at a minimum aware of Sandusky's crimes, if not actively protecting him. This makes the pair of them the worst sort of awful examples of humanity. Because he was such a dreadful person, the NCAA decided that Paterno's wins didn't count. (Eventually, a judge forced the NCAA to give the wins back because this decision had financial ramifications for people unrelated to the crimes or the cover-ups.) Penn State was right to smash Joe Paterno's statue, but the NCAA was wrong to erase his wins. The fact is the record books are full of the feats of rapists, drug addicts and some, I'm sure, are good people. There is no asterisk next to Roberto Clemente's 3000 hits saying "And he was a great guy." Jameis Winston won the Heisman Trophy while leading the league in rape allegations. Oscar Pistorius is the fastest murder on no legs. If the NFL kicked out all the domestic abusers, could they even make one full team? The record book is not a place for moralizing. It exists to tell history. What is on film is our record book. What happens off screen is backstory for the commentary tracks.

Hey, this is random. But what do you think of this painting?

It's nice, right? Maybe it's not the best painting you've even seen, but it wouldn't seem out of place in your grandma's house, a doctor's waiting room or the lobby of a mid-priced hotel. If you see this in your doctor's office, you should really find a new doctor, because that's a Hitler original. It made me uncomfortable enough to instantly delete it from my hard drive, but it's still objectively a decent painting. Other men who made the transition from entertainment to Nazism and acts of barbarous cruelty include Charles Manson and Donald Trump.

In L. A. Confidential, Exley is introduced as the annoyingly and unerringly ethical cop. And yet, by the end of the film, he's shot a fleeing suspect, fucked a hooker, shot another suspect, with his hands up, in the back, and agreed to hide the extent of police corruption in order to get a promotion. The first act could be considered a heat-of-the-moment forgivable transgression and the last two were arguably necessary in the cause of justice and cleaning up the police force. (The fucking the hooker bit was not a crime, an obvious trap and incredibly stupid.) Do these dips into the moral grey grounds make him a villain? I don't think so. Do they make it harder to call him a hero? Absolutely. Should they build him a statue? No. If they built, him a statue to keep African-Americans in their place in the 1960s, should we tear them down today? No, I think that would be a reminder of a point in our history were we decide to build such a statue. (Needless shoehorn.)  In my opinion, his ethically questionable choices do not wipe out the good he did. Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Acknowledging that Hitler made some decent paintings does not mean you approve of everything he did.

Perhaps you draw these ethical lines in slightly different places. That's ok. There are no definitive answers to these questions. As long as we can agree that all of the non-fictional characters mentioned are dreadful people, who should not hold elected office, we can chose to watch or ignore their work as we see fit. (And have a friendly argument about the ethics of the fictional characters.)

To play us out, welcome Micheal Jackson singing about how he should really cut back on the pedophilia.

In conclusion, every man connected with the entertainment industry is probably some kind of monster.

Happy Death Day- Babies R Us

Happy Death Day is a movie with a fun premise and a really dumb name. The central conceit is that a sorority girl is trapped in a time loop until she can stop her own murder and presumably become a better person. Along the way, the filmmakers make a series of interesting decisions, some good and some bad, that contribute to the uneven feel of the movie.

The smartest choice of the movie was making it more of a comedy than a horror film. We knew from the trailer that the protagonist was functionally immortal. This killed any sense of suspense throughout the film, so trying to make it scarier was never going to work. However, they should have taken this farther.  As it was, Happy Death Day couldn't quite decide whether it wanted you laughing or screaming.They probably should have made it a bit funnier and done a better job marketing the funny side of the film. And a lot of horror fans could have come away disappointed by the lack of good scares.

For a mystery, it was pretty predictable. I made a suspect list on the first time loop. Number one on my list was the roommate. (I was right.) Resting bitch face was a big clue. The other clue was the immediate attitude she gave Tree when she entered the room but then ended the conversation with sugar, both literal and figurative. For the record, suspect two was the dad. (Posited theory: He also killed mom and was coming back for his daughter. Evidence: Father/daughter estrangement and the amount of anger about her skipping dinner.) This would have been a much darker film. Suspect three was Carter, the guy she woke up with. (No real reason. Just sets up a potential twist.) Every suspect Tree listed was an obvious decoy.

The movie did fool me at one point. In the fourth act, Tree decides that the serial killer is her killer. Throughout the movie, we see that the Babyface is slightly larger than Tree and not very muscular or agile. The serial killer was noticeably more capable at killing. Babyface was also focused on keeping her identity concealed, while the serial killer did not care. The biggest clue to this decoy was that Babyface clearly knew her personally, but I thought the movie might be dumber than I was giving it credit for and I fell for the eating the cupcake fake happy ending. This twist and the ultimate revel of the killer was the best part of the movie.

It's a little unrealistic that Tree took so many loops to beat Babyface. After all, as noted above, Babyface wasn't that physically intimidating or skilled and Tree had the advantage of foresight. This could be explained if Babyface was also looping through time, especially if she was somehow causing the loops. It would also explain the seemingly supernatural nature of some of her kills. But, by the end, they make it clear that Tree is the only one looping through time.

I liked the feminist prospective to the film. The damsel wasn't in distress. She went full on commando. Whenever a guy was in a position to potentially help, they were quickly offed. Tree once even sacrifices herself to save Carter. Carter is possibly the only prize boy I have ever seen in a movie, as I can think of nothing he ever does to earn Tree's affection other than not being a rapist or a thief. (Or at least he lied about not being a rapist. He did apparently remove her pants.) There was an overt jab a campus rape culture and the movie passed the Bachdel Test.

Why did Bayfield college pick the baby as its mascot? What college would chose a mascot that does nothing but cry and shit their pants? Are all of the other B nouns taken? These questions were extremely distracting and totally took me out of the movie at times. Presumably, the filmmakers picked the creepy baby mask first and then needed some reason why other characters would have the same mask to set up some fake outs, but the mask makes no sense in universe.

Going in, I was not looking forward to listing to that annoying 50 cent song from the trailer on repeat. Unfortunately, they used even more annoying jingle to be the I Got You Babe of this Groundhog Day. Presumably because they could not afford the royalties to play In Da Club on repeat in the movie. (Apparently, Happy Birthday To You is public domain now and Warner Brothers spent years collecting millions of dollars on an invalid copyright claim. I learned something while trying to find out how much they paid up for the music box gag.) Tree is avoiding her birthday and her dad because of the painful memories they bring up about her mom, so illogically she changed her father's ringtone on her phone to "It's your birthday. You know you gotta pick up the phone." (Also, when? When did she have a chance to do this?)

If I ever wake up to this song, I'm just going to assume that my actions have no lasting consequences and go from there.

Moana- Can You Hear What The Rock Is Singing?

This is my fourth post on Disney/Pixar princesses. I like to compare these two sister studios. I did it with my very third post on Tangled. In that post, I argued that Disney should stick to traditional animation and let Pixar handle the computers. Since then, Disney has produced Zootopia, Wreck-It-Ralph, Big Hero 6 and Frozen, while Pixar has made mostly unoriginal plots and sequels. (I still say Pixar has never made a bad movie, but Cars 3 is coming.) But Disney is still a rocky road. I loved Moana (the character) and the plot, but not the movie.

Back when I wrote about Brave, I criticized Disney for building up an action-adventure princess and then having her save the day through sewing. Moana also uses sewing skills at a key moment in the movie, but she uses them to repair her boat and kick off a badass sailing sequence past a raging lava monster. I am officially crowning Moana the best role-model Disney princess of all-time. She sails. She does parkour. She has engineering and leadership skills and realistic body proportions. She defies male role-models, in choosing the path which is best for her, all while remaining respectful. She doesn't even has a romantic sub-plot. Now Disney must play the challenge round, put all of Moana's traits into a character with a healthy romantic relationship. Bonus points: lesbianism.

My main problem with this movie is that it was a movie musical when it should have been a movie and a musical. I am sucker for soaring operatics, but the songs were too slow and they didn't fit with the action driven plot. The final battle features Moana singing the anger out of the lava monster. It would have been a great stage moment, but I wanted to see Moana use her kickass parkour to win the movie. It's also how boy Moana would have done it and that's a small deduction from the movie's feminism scoreboard. (She also figured out the mystery and then called the rampaging lava monster over to her and stared it down, so still she's still a badass.) I wish for a re-cut of this movie without the songs and a Lion King on Broadway style stage play.

Moana also seemed uncertain if it was a comedy or not. It certainly wasn't funny. The best joke was an after the credits Little Mermaid reference. A few rewrites either way could have produced something much funnier and sillier or something more serious. I would have liked to see the serious version, the funny version would be an easier sell, but either would have been better.

Today, I took a break from catching Pokemon on a fictional version of Hawaii to watch an animated movie set in a fictional version of Hawaii. I am a tropical themed man child.

Moana features a character from Hawaiian mythology called Maui. If you're unfamiliar with him, here's a primer in song from.

(That song is by that sumo Hawaiian man you saw in the video. His name is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Listen to his cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow sometime and picture that tenor voice coming out of that giant man. It's an uplifting and confusing experience.)

Independence Day: Resurgence- Fear and Nostalgia Near Las Vegas

Independence Day: Resurgence is a movie which depends heavily on hoping you will care about the child characters from a twenty year old movie without giving you a reason to care about their adult versions. As you might expect, this doesn't really work. At a key point in the movie, fear caused the President to make a bad decision which nearly doomed us all. This reminded me of my favorite modern philosopher, Dante Shepard of Surviving the World, and one of his favorite themes, that fear and nostalgia are two of the most destructive forces in the world today.

The destructive power of fear is easy to understand. Fear is why we have so many guns because we fear all the other people with guns. Fear is why we demonize immigrants and Muslims giving them more reasons to hate us leading us to more reasons to hate them. It's part of the reason why the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union which will lead to Scotland and Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom. Fear is what gave us Candidate Trump and all the destruction that comes with him.

The first alien spaceship to appear in Independence Day: Resurgence came to make friends. They had good reason to be afraid. After all, the last time aliens came, it did not go well. But, there were signs everywhere that the ship was a potential ally. The experts encouraged patience and negotiation. The President took the path of fear instead of the path of thought.

Fear is easy. Fear is natural. Courage is hard. Thought is hard. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway.

The danger of nostalgia is less evident.  Nostalgia is about remembering what is good about the past while forgetting what sucked. Classic rock radio stations are awesome, but it's not really that music was better in the past, they just don't play the bad stuff. A lot of those bad songs were more popular than the good ones, but they have gone to the dustbin of history leaving the good behind. It's hard to believe sometimes because we are listening terrible pop songs of current events, but for the vast majority of humanity, there has never been a better time to be alive. War, crime, addiction, poverty, hunger, and disease are all at or near all time lows. We have everyday technology that was in the realm of science fiction when the first Independence Day was released. We are at full employment and the stock market is hovering around all-time highs. There are certainly many ways things could be better, but any objective look at the world says it's actually really good. And yet, there are forces around the world encouraging us to go back to a past which never existed. I am afraid if we do not stop fearing the future, we will wind up with a future worth being afraid of.

I have previously argued on this site that the 90's represented the peak of American civilization and I'm not sure I'm wrong about that, but I also understand that what made the 90's great was that they occupied a unique moment in history and that there were also many things about the 90's that were worse than today. I expect to vote for another President Clinton in a few months, but I would be naive to believe that would bring back the good parts of the 90's. We must make a better future through a new future.

Speaking of things that were better in the past, this speech from the first movie...

Easily, one of the best monologues in movie history, but I don't remember much else from this movie which is kind of my point.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace- This is Not The Star Wars Movie Review You're Looking For

It is December 18th, 2015, so of course, it is time to discuss the most anticipated Star Wars movie of all time: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

In this blog, I have expressed some fairly controversial views. Here are some highlights: the elimination of fossil fuels is not technically possible with modern technology, people with cancer should just shut the fuck up about it (I actually don't know if I meant this one satirically or not.), we should probably do something about wealth inequality, you probably suck at everything and maybe shouldn't go to college, and the war on terror is destroying America's soul. I'm pro-racism (very specific forms of racism, in which, the greatest damage is to racism itself), pro-gay marriage and pro-polygamy, but anti-interspecies relationships. All of this build up is because I am about to make the most controversial statement in the history of this blog...

The Phantom Menace is not a terrible movie. It is actually kind of good.

You probably haven't seen it in a while. Here's a recap.

I will start my defense of this film with an admission of some stuff that didn't quite work in this movie. The dialog, especially the lines given to Anakin and Padme, was a little awkward. Portman was a bit stiff in her role, but unfortunately, too much of this movie relied on the acting talents of Jake Lloyd, who played little (soon-to-be) orphan Annie, and he just couldn't handle the job. I get the appeal of casting an unknown into the role and it's tough to get experienced, talented child actors, but I can't help but feel that Haley Joel Osment or Johnathan Lipnicki (i.e. that kid from Jerry Maguire) could have done it better.

There is one part of this movie which is irredeemably terrible. It is, of course, Jar-Jar Binks. Which brings me to the first of two keys to enjoying this film. Just ignore Jar-Jar. He doesn't do anything important. Whenever he comes on the screen just close your ears and avert your eyes, you won't miss anything.

There is a clue in the title to the second key: Keep an eye on Palpatine. Everything about this movie says "watch Anakin, he's Vader," but it's The Phantom Menace, not the obvious menace. Anakin is like the magician waving his arms on center stage while off to the side Palpatine, the beautiful assistant, is hiding the rabbit in full view of the audience. During the course of the film, he engineers a crisis to take advantage of the fears of his fellow senators and a naive young girl to rise from a representative of a backwater world to ruler of the galaxy and sets up a fake civil war to further consolidate his power. It's the greatest Jedi mind trick ever played. Outside of the pod racing sequence (which even critics agree is pretty fucking good), The Phantom Menace lacks the visceral entertainment of the other Star Wars movies. It should not be watched as a popcorn flick. Instead, view it as a political drama. Despite the Jar-Jar, The Phantom Menace is the most adult Star Wars film.

I conclude my case with the best part of the movie: Darth Maul. Vader is a slow asthmatic, but he's big and strong and seemingly unstoppable. It feels like no matter how fast or far you run every time you turn around, Vader will be there ready to crush you, and that makes him terrifying. It's the same aesthetic captured by Jason in the Friday the 13th films. Darth Maul is the only other villain in Star Wars that feels like this and is consequently the only one to approach his villainous cool.

Here are the official No Spoiler Tags Star Wars standings: 5 4 3 6 1 7 2.

Chappie- Smart People Do The Stupidest Things

Long time Russian Spambots will remember how angry and curse-filled these posts used to be. That's because many of the early films covered by this blog pissed me off in a very specific way. It's been a long time since a movie has gotten under my skin that way. Welcome back to No Fucking Spoiler Tags.

Chappie is an original tale about a robot becoming sentient and going out of control and transferring consciousness into computers and new bodies. Let's start out by acknowledging that there is nothing original about either of those things. The very first use of the word robot came in a story about a robot becoming sentient and going out of control. In truth, the concept is much older stretching back to Jewish folklore with stories of the Golem, a clay statue brought to life by magic. Stories about uploading brains into computers are newer, but there are still hundreds of examples. There really isn't any new land to mine in either of these concepts and Chappie definitely didn't find any. The most important philosophical question raised in this film came in tank top form: "Who need tits with a ass like this?"

What really pisses me off about Chappie is that is a story where very smart people do very stupid things. A fuckton of really fucking stupid things. We will start with the most important person, the corporate person, Tetravaal.

Tetravaal Corporate Strategy- Tetravaal's primary failure in terms of corporate strategy is its insistence that it is a weapons manufacture. It has three groundbreaking technologies with broad ranging capabilities (the mechanics behind the Scout and the Moose, the programming of the Scout, and the mind-reading helmet) that they have chosen to limit to their military purposes.

Walking robots are fucking hard to make. Really smart people have been trying to make them work for decades and have succeeded in making things that are very heavy and slow. The Scouts are fast and strong. They aren't especially heavy or big. They have created a nearly indestructible, but disposable labor force of supermen. The possibilities for a humanoid robot are endless. Anyone with a dangerous, physically demanding or repetitive job could very quickly find themselves out of work. You could use one for domestic work. Slap some skin on one of these and you've got a fucking sexbot. (I'll take three!!!!!!!!!) There's a reason slavery stuck around so long and still persists to this day (but let's just keep ignoring that issue). Slaves are pretty fucking useful. They're even more useful if you don't have any pesky moral issues to deal with and you don't have to feed them or let them sleep. It all comes down to the right programing...

Being a cop is hard. As human officers seem intent on proving, figuring out who to shoot and when is not an easy task. Police officers are asked to make dozens of potentially life-or-death decisions everyday while dealing with unpredictable people and complex situations. Scouts are shown improvising tactics with both human and non-human officers using non-verbal communication and informal language. (If that sentence doesn't blow your mind, you don't understand computers.) Scouts are also shown driving cars. Google has been working on a self-driving car for a decade now and they still won't let it on a real street. If they can program a robot to be a cop, no one's job is safe.

Tetravaal has also invented a helmet that can read the thoughts of a human (or a robot because, ugh, same thing) and instantly translate them to mechanical motion. Pair that with their robotic tech and you have the holy grail of prosthetics. It could be adapted into a VR platform. Used in microsurgery. Connect your brain to the stock market and make trades at the speed of thought. Oh, and it can upload your brain into a computer making your mind effectively immortal. There might be a market for that.

Tetravaal has also failed to properly market the Moose, a robot designed for breaching hardened military targets. It has no place in the hands of a civilian police force and yet Tetravaal insists on trying to sell it to the South African police. They should be selling to Americans.

Saginaw PD is wondering if they can get a bulk discount.

Tetravaal HR- Having an open carry policy in your offices is fairly questionable, but isn't necessarily a terrible idea. (It probably is.) However, if one employee where to physically assault another, verbally threaten their life and then dry fire a pistol in their face in front of a dozen witnesses, that should be grounds for immediate dismissal in any corporation. ("I walk around with a handgun all the time. I verbally and physically harass my co-workers. But the gun's not loaded. This is an office. I'm not crazy."-Vincent)

Tetravaal Security- If your entire company is essentially built around a single engineer, it's generally a good idea to assign him some security, perhaps one of your killbots, in the roughest city on the planet. Especially, if you are going to tell everyone that this is the guy that designed and built the robot police force. The success of the Scout program is largely dependent on the Guard Key, which keeps anyone from reprogramming the robots. It is so important that there is only one copy which is kept behind multi-level security and access is limited to a small number of employees. They didn't know it was missing for three days. They never knew their killbot, equipped with GPS tracking was missing, until it made the news. IT security is so soft that the entire robot police force could be destroyed in seconds and an outside user could design and a build a brand new model robot within their factory.

This is already one of the longest posts in No Spoiler Tags history and there is still so much more to make fun of in this movie. So let's move on to the idiocy of a couple genius engineers...

Deon- Deon's first blunder was attempting to pitch the fully autonomous AI to the CEO on its philosophical merits. The correct choice was to point out the potential adaptability of the Scout platform in non-military fields and to state that programing is the only obstacle to selling millions of units. He could then remind her how costly, slow and difficult the development of the cop program was. This is when he offers up his adaptive learning software as a solution. A robot could be taken into the field and taught to do a job in a matter of days then the program for how to do that job could be copied thousands of times. Some users may even want a model that they can re-train and adapt on the fly. And that is how you get the CEO of a weapons giant to make robots that can paint.

Skip ahead a few minutes and Deon's kidnapped and threatened by the gangsters. They've found the robot and they want Deon to fix it. The correct response in that situation is "I can't." Look, I know it sounds risky, but it's not. Everyone knows that machines can be damaged to the point they can't be fixed. And this gang is actually kind of smart and tech savy which Deon should know based on their plan and their awesome stereo set-up. The robot at this point is in multiple pieces, has a big hole in its chest, and stamped with stickers saying it should be destroyed. Deon doesn't have the tools and software he has at the factory. Deon should be able to convince these people that the robot can't be repaired.

So Deon fixes the robot. Why does he reprogram it? Chappie is being scrapped because it's going to break down in five days. Rebuild him to spec and unleash your robot supercop on your kidnappers. (Actually, that's a better idea than saying "I can't fix it.") Instead, Deon cripples Chappie with his consciousness software and making him worthless (at least in the short-term) both to himself and his captors. You've got a fucking killbot, Deon. You've also got people to fucking kill. Use your fucking killbot, Deon.

After reprogramming Chappie, Deon has to tell the gang that he's going to be worthless at first. What he doesn't have to say is that it will breakdown permanently in five days. "This robot is going to run like shit for a few days, but right when it starts to fucking work, it's going to fucking quit forever." These are the last words Deon should have ever said.

After inexplicably surviving this encounter, Deon decides it's okay to leave a killbot and the key to reprogram all of the city's other killbots in the hands of a violent street gang. The correct choice is running back to Tetravaal and saying you were kidnapped and coerced into stealing a Scout and the Guard Key for the gang. It's barely even a lie. Tetravaal then swoops in with their army of killbots and any potential crisis is averted.

Vincent- It's easy to dismiss Vincent as a fucking nut because he's a fucking nut, but he's also a genius. Vincent invented the Moose, a brilliant if slightly under-armored piece of military tech, and the mind-reading helmet. He is not a moron, but he does some pretty stupid shit.

Vincent has gotten a little too invested in office politics. He is upset that his pretty awesome Moose is being overshadowed by the even more awesome Scouts. He's right to be upset. The Moose is not a failed project. Tetravaal has failed the Moose. Instead of trying to convince Tetravaal to properly market the Moose or looking for alternate uses for the helmet, Vincent has decided to discredit Deon. At one point, Vincent learns Deon has stolen a Scout and the Guard Key. This is his opportunity. Go and knock on the CEOs door and tell her. Deon is fired. The end. There is no need for him to destroy the Scouts.

Jumping ahead, Vincent has Chappie in the van, he is going to take the Guard Key and kill the robot. For no good reason, he grabs a saw and chops of Chappie's arm. Much faster just to cut off it's head. Mission accomplished.

I'm going to throw in this ode to stupidity here as a break, because somehow, beyond all reason, there is still so much more material to cover.

This next segment is called "Do You Have What It Takes To Join A South African Street Gang?"

You have threatened the designer of the city's killbots into giving you your very own killbot. The designer expressed a desire to undermine your plans to make said killbot into a criminal killbot. The designer keeps coming back to further undermine your plans. Do you?
                A: Shoot him and be done with it.
                B: Allow him to keep coming back.

Your killbot is self-aware and emotional. It is strong enough to punch or kick trough reinforced masonry. You are with it in an small enclosed metal space. It is hours away from powering down permanently. You have been lying to it saying you intend to fix it. Do you?
                A: Continue lying and allow it to run out of battery life.
                B: Confess and tell it that you never intended to help triggering a bout of intense rage.

You are preparing to enter a combat situation. What do you wear?
                A: Dark colors or camouflage.
                B: Brightly colored armor. I even painted my guns. Fashion is everything.

If you answered B to all these questions, welcome to the gang.

Our final segment covers distracting directorial choices.

• By my count, there are eight key members of the Chappie cast. Every single one of them has a different accent. For some reason, the fifth most articulate cast member needs subtitles.
• There are exactly three black people in South Africa.
• The merchandising department decided to slip a Chappie T-shirt into the wardrobe for the final battle in the most distracting occurrence of self-referential product placement in cinematic history.

Finally, we're done. We'll end with a musical tribute to that woman who tried to flirt with the robot cop to get out of a ticket (when she was actually being carjacked).

Frozen- Re-Heating an Old Debate

September marked the official start of No Spoiler Tags year four and like so many months of the past year September came and went without a new post. The past twelve months of my life have been the busiest of my life primarily occupied by moving twice, the second time leaving the Denver suburbs for the mediocre state of Texas, and getting a dog with a hundred intertwining side-plots which frequently threatened to overwhelm and destroy me. And while I haven't been watching or thinking about movies as much the past year that really isn't the reason I haven't written much. The original intent of No Spoiler Tags was to clear my mind of the detritus of twenty-five years and that goal has been more or less accomplished. In terms of concept, The Hunger Games is the oldest post on this site it was written circa 1995 and it and about half of the other posts on this blog sat like thorns in my brain until I found this tool to remove them. This is not the end of No Spoiler Tags, but the thorns are gone, the tool has served its purpose. I no longer need to write. As hard as it is to believe based on my actual update history, I have always tried to create a new post about once a month. This is my announcement to all my loyal readers Russian spam-bots, that No Spoiler Tags now officially operates on a rare, random and sporadic update schedule.

Now on to the movie...

Sometimes when something becomes a phenomenon, like Frozen, I like to avoid it and then come back to it later when the hype has died down and see it for the first time in hopes of a clearer perspective. The verdict: good, not great. Much like Tangled, Frozen was a traditional Disney animated musical done in a far inferior animation style, but the CGIce did look pretty cool. Disney musicals are usually dependent on the strength of the songs and jokes, and like Tangled, Frozen was pretty weak in these departments (Let it Go was solid and Olaf generated a few legitimate giggles.), but Frozen was carried through these weaknesses by a good plot and voice acting.

Every once in a while, a line is so well written, timed and delivered, that it elevates not just a scene, but an entire movie. "The cold never bothered me anyway" is one of those lines. It's fun and wicked, devilish and playful. In one line, Elsa describes her entire character arc. The rest of the song is just set-up and padding. In six words, she sheds years of repression and re-introduces her playful side while suggesting a villainous turn. It is one moment of perfection in an otherwise unexceptional movie.

Anna, in proud Disney tradition, falls instantly in love with the very first age appropriate man she ever meets. Hans rewards her love by hijacking her kingdom, two manslaughter attempts (First with "Sure, you can go alone and unequipped into an arctic blizzard to track down a powerful, out-of-control sorceress." and later with the refused kiss, in which he revels that he always intended to betray her.) and then an outright murder attempt on both her and her sister. Having learned a very painful lesson, Anna instantly falls in love with the second age appropriate man she ever meets.

In many ways, Anna was the women's lib princess that Princess Merida from Brave really wasn't. Anna goes on a daring adventure to save her kingdom, takes risks and proves herself useful in a fight. Ultimately, Anna saves the day by using her body as a human shield, rather than using a skill she learned in Home Ec. Sure, Anna was a little boy crazy, but she got called out for it in a major way. Merida looked like a female action star. Anna actually was. Put these two together and Disney is starting to get it right.

Olaf asked that I end this by asking "Do you want to bleep a snowman?"

Godzilla- Oh, No. They Say He's Got to Go.

First of all, I'd like to congratulate the makers of Godzilla for making a movie about three giant monsters fighting and knocking down buildings into the most boring movie ever featured on No Spoiler Tags. A list which includes a film about statistical analysis for the optimization of personal assets, two plodding spy dramas, two silent films, a movie based on a novel written by a guy who just wanted to try out these cool new languages he invented and a documentary about collecting office supplies. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to suck all of the fun and excitement out of such an inherently cool topic, but by Godzilla, they did it.

Up next on the No Spoiler Tags awards: Best City to Destroy. Washington D.C., Paris and Tokyo are out of the running. They have been done to the death of millions. New York City is a timeless classic which never grows old. Wreck anything in London built after 1900 and you're doing the world a favor. Not exactly the goal of your horrific rampage. Las Vegas is an interesting up and comer. Where else can you destroy the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Pyramids and the Space Needle in a single day? And the winner is...San Fransisco. Whether you're a natural disaster, a natural disaster which is really man's fault, a giant monster, from outer space or a giant monster from outer space, with such great structures as the Golden Gate Bridge, the TransAmerica Building and, of course, Starfleet Headquarters, when you're looking to level a city, this lovely seaside metropolis is the perfect place to go.

According to the trailers, this movie is about Bryan Cranston yelling, Godzilla and jumping out of a plane from an absurd altitude. In reality, Heisenberg did not make it past the film's fifteen minute mark, the HALO jump was shorter in the movie than the trailer and the two MUTOs which weren't in the trailer got more screen time than the King of All Monsters.

The reason they have to HALO jump is because the MUTOs can knock out electronics in a 200 mile radius. It must have been difficult to find a plane which could get them to this altitude as it is 100 miles above the atmosphere.

Suspension bridges work by bearing load of the road deck on a series of high tension cables. If a giant monster were to snap one of the main support cables, what would happen? If you answered, it would immediately crash into the ocean, you are correct. If you said, it would remain relatively unharmed until the non-load bearing road deck was damaged, you made this movie.

Godzilla and the MUTOs are explained as natural, prehistoric creatures which evolved in a more radioactive period in Earth's history. As natural creatures, they should obey natural laws. Chief among these is that animals are lazy. They do as little work for as much reward as possible. Which is to say if Godzilla went through all the trouble to chase the MUTO across the entire fucking Pacific and then fighting and killing two of them, it would, at least, eat them before he vanishes into the ocean. Also, a solo predator would not intentionally pursue a creature as large or larger than itself which also exhibits pack behavior.

I am very glad I followed the rules of 3D and saw this 3D convert in 2D. It was very dark in 2D. In 3D, they might as well not have even turned the projector on.

Right now, I really regret using the Blue Oyster Cult on Pacific Rim last year. So to close us out, here's Johnny Cash singing about subduction zones around the Pacific Plate.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2- With Great Power, Comes Great Irrationality

I broke audience rule number one of the rules of 3D. I saw a 3D converted movie. To make matters worse the The Amazing Spider-Man 2 frequently broke filmmakers rules one and three with fast action and camera pans counter to on-screen motion. As a result, all of the action sequences in this movie looked very shitty.

Oscorp, the world's most scientifically advanced corporation, is proud to announce the world's first electromagnetic power grid. Finally, you can throw out your old analog electricity. The all-new electronic electricity provides power at speeds approaching the speed of light by wave motion of one of the fundamental forces of the universe. Electricity now with magnetism.

Oscorp is also introducing new highly explosive uranium-238. No longer will you have to build a complicated nuclear bomb to destroy a city with an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. Spontaneously explosive plutonium: now on sale at all Terrorist Mega-Mart locations.

The next time I see a movie where a bullet causes an explosive decompression of a plane I will explosively decompress. That's just not how science works. The pressure difference inside and out of a plane is not that great. Bullet holes are too small to cause a catastrophic failure of a fuselage. Planes are made of metal and are pretty strong. This was ridiculous when it first started showing up in movies about 20 years ago and it just keeps getting worse. The Mythbusters have tested it. It's time to let this bit of stupid movie science go.

Spiderman is my favorite superhero, (Although, I am not a big fan of any of the film treatments.) but something occurred to me while watching this movie that I hadn't thought of before. How does Spideman work? His main power is his sticky skin, but he covers it in a full body suit. Why doesn't he have problems with random things sticking to him? Does he wake up in the morning curled up in a tiny ball and spend hours getting himself untangled? Can he turn off the stickiness when he's fucking Gwen? (Because ouch) If stickiness is conscious power, then how does he sleep on walls and ceilings as he does in this movie as well as other appearances? So many questions, so few answers.

Gwen narrowly escaped the 63rd floor with security guards nearly catching her at the elevator. If only the security personnel at Oscorp, home of flying jet wings, giant battlesuits and magic mutating drugs, had access to some sort of technology to communicate telephonically with personnel on a different floor of the building, they could have caught her as she got off the elevator. But, I guess such futuristic tech is still decades away.

I have been waiting for them to kill off Gwen since they introduced her and still caught me by surprise when they did. It's good to be back...

Dear Jack- I Am Jack's Malignant Blood

When No Spoiler Tags began every post was supposed to be all text, that very quickly went out the window and at one point having no clue how to wrap up post, I threw in a song. Somewhere along the way I started looking for music to put in every post and get a little disappointed when I can't find the right song. This is the first piece where the music comes first and the words are secondary.

I can't say Jack's Mannequin is one of my favorite bands, in fact, I find their studio albums a little flat and the songwriting a bit too sentimental for my tastes, but I have seen to about 100 live shows, including many legendary acts, and the best, most electric performance was from this plucky, little, now defunct band. Holiday From Real (included later in this post) is also on my short list for my favorite song. (I don't have a true favorite song.) And for that, they will always be special to me.

Now, having mentioned mannequins and recently defunct bands, I feel justified shoe-horning in a song from the band I have most wanted to put on this site from the very first time I ever posted a song. My favorite local band: Single File. Common Struggles. Great album. Buy it.

I have been wanting to see Dear Jack for a long time. I first learned about this film from a Daily Show interview with Andrew McMahon in 2008. As I remember the story from that interview, Warner Brothers had sent out a film crew to shoot a "making of" documentary for Jack Mannequin's first album and at one point Andrew stepped out of the studio to take a call. Thinking the call was from his agent the camera crew followed and accidentally filmed a call from his doctor saying "Get to the hospital now. You have leukemia. You are starting treatment today." A truly incredible moment caught on film. (I saw it. This footage exists.) Like the Zapruder Film, an attempt to film something fun and meaningless accidentally caught something shocking and profound. But, this awesome footage didn't even make it into the final cut of the film which was a shame as it would have been it's finest moment. In my imagination, this movie began with several minutes of generic "making of" footage before this call and a sudden left turn to a cancer documentary. What was in the movie was moving and a stunning portrait of one man's triumph over cancer, but the loss of this scene is inexcusable and a first act twist could have really made the film into something unforgettable.

The truth was Andrew knew he was sick before he got the missing call, (How sick he was was a surprise.) but he had been feeling weak for months before his diagnosis and references to illness permeated "Everything in Transit", the album he was writing. The most haunting lines are found at the beginning of Holiday From Real.

There are a critical shortage of people on the National Bone Marrow Registry. I signed up in 2008. I have twice been called in for secondary testing and am currently waiting to hear if I will be asked to donate. [Update: It's happening.] Please sign up. I don't have enough marrow for everyone. You could save the life of a musical genius or someone far less important like a nine-year-old. Be the Match.

We will close with one more thematically appropriate song about the prison-like nature of hospitals.

Gravity- Rides Everything

Whoa! That was intense. I have never found a movie so engrossing and suspenseful. At one point, I tried to dodge something on the screen at a 2D showing. (Remember the rules of 3D. Don't support 3D conversions.) A big shout-out to the star of the film: (Sandra Bullock's ass?*) Sir Issac Newton. The inertia in this film gave a great performance. It really deserved top billing over Gravity. This may have also been the most scientifically accurate movie about space ever made and it was the scientific accuracy that made the action as great as it was. Note to Hollywood: Science=Good.

*When did Sandra Bullock get hot? Sandra is currently 49 years old. She has been a famous actress since the late 80s. And while I acknowledge she has always been attractive, I have never had a lewd thought about her until today. I guess zero-G does wonders.

NASA training must be intense. (Too bad NASA no longer exists either in the short-term with 97% of NASA employees furloughed or the long-term with no manned space vehicle.) In six months of training, Dr. Stone, a medical engineer with no aeronautics background learned all the complexities of living and working in space, how to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, how to fly a Soyuz unassisted, reading Russian and Chinese, the layout of two space stations and Advanced Fire-extinguisher Aeronautics. (NASA does not use compressed gas fire-extinguishers for reason seen in the film.) Even though the mission only called for her knowing two of those skills. She also presumably learned something about the Space Shuttle she was supposed to be flying in and could land it blindfolded using only her feet. By the time Dr. Stone returns to Earth, she has used six different spacecrafts.

The odds of Dr. Stone making it to the Chinese craft and surviving re-entry were astronomical, but assuming she survived to the surface her odds of living to tell the tale were still really slim. The place where she landed was essentially random and because Dr. Stone was having "one of those days" the floats on her landing pod did not deploy forcing her to swim to land. A significant minority of the Earth's surface is land which would not provide Dr. Stone with a comfortable landing, but the majority of the planet is too far from shore. The world has 356,000 kilometers of coastline and surface area of 510,072,000 square kilometers. I have personally completed a one mile (1.6km) swim and I believe most reasonably fit people with no special training could do the same, but not much more than that. If I was in that landing pod, I would have a safe landing area of 569,600 square kilometers, a target I would have a 0.1% chance of hitting at random. If Dr. Stone's NASA training increased her swimming ability to 10km, more than six times my best distance, her odds of survival increase dramatically to 0.7%. The current world record for unassisted swimming is 112 kilometers held by Penny Palfrey. If Penny could match her 41 hour effort, she would have a safe landing area of 39,872,000 square kilometers, good for a 7.8% chance of survival. (Assuming she knew which way to swim.)

The beach where Dr. Stone landed appeared to be in North Korea. Some days you just can't win.