Chronicle- Of A Death Foretold

Chronicle hit the theaters without much fanfare or promotion. I went in not expecting much and what I got was one of the best superhero origin stories I've ever seen. It was far from perfect. The acting simply wasn't very good and the found footage style sometimes got in the way (although it was the best part of the film when it worked). The movie was very predictable, but in a good way. There are too many movies that let unnecessary plot twists get in the way of telling a good story.  (Head over to the Cypher post for one example.) Chronicle gives you exactly what the trailer advertised: a found footage film of some kids given psychic powers starting with a series of pranks while one of the kids slowly becomes Carie.

Since I first saw American Beauty, I have thought it might be interesting to try constantly filming my life. The opening of Chronicle explains why I never followed through with the plan as Andrew is accused of being a creep, beaten up and generally harassed multiple times in his first day with the camera. (I also thought that I would find that my life is truly boring on film.) It's through this opening and Andrew's later confession that he wanted to be a barrier between himself and the world that the found footage style becomes less of a gimmick and actually integral to the story.

I've seen The Specials, but you know what? I do want to hear your origin story. The fact watching how someone got super powers, learned to control them, made a choice of how to use them, and then taking on the fight against evil is intrinsically more interesting than watching one super being representing good fighting another super being representing evil. But the only thing resembling a twist in Chronicle is that it's not really a superhero origin story, it's a super-villain origin story. Andrew is the most complete, realistic and empathetic character in the film. (His character feels especially resonant as I am writing this from the Columbine Valley, home of the most infamous high school in the world.) It's not until very late in the movie, after Steve dies (Yep, the black guy dies first. I told you this movie was predictable.) that the focus starts to shift to Matt who is presented as the heroic character.

Early on, Matt is obsessed with with philosophy. In the first 15 minutes, he references Schopenhauer, Jung and Plato, but after they are granted their powers he goes oddly silent on the subject. This is very weird given that they have become Nietzsche's Superman. In fact, Chronicle could be considered a sci-fi adaptation of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (A man granted extraordinary abilities begins to view the rest of humanity as a lessor species deserving of contempt.) in the same way that The Matrix is a sci-fi adaptation of The Allegory of the Cave. Andrew's new found powers amplify his innate hatred and contempt for the rest of humanity until he loses total control, while Matt and Steve who are capable of maintaining healthy relationships before their super powers are able to stay grounded and rational.

Chronicle was very realistic in how the kids would behave if granted super powers. Think about it. If you got super powers would you go out and fight crime right away. You might say so, but what you'd really do is what the Chronicle boys did. You'd start by testing out your abilities in increasingly elaborate ways probably pulling a few pranks along the way. (These pranks were delightfully hilarious and nicely balanced what could have been a very dark film.) Then, you'd use them for greedy purposes represented by Steve and Andrew's sexcapades (Steve was reportedly very successful off-screen. Andrew's results were not as good.) and Andrew's eventual turn to crime. Finally, Andrew's freak out forces Matt to take action to defend the innocent.

One parting question of complaint: why didn't the cops shoot Andrew? During his rampage, Andrew probably kills dozens of people (no clear on-screen deaths, but his intent was murderous and it is improbable that no one died) and does millions of dollars in damages. The cops had clean shots on multiple occasions, but they never fire a shot. Maybe bullets wouldn't have hurt Andrew, but it couldn't hurt to try. (Except for Andrew, it might have hurt Andrew to try.) The cops are also surprisingly aware that the other guy flying around wreaking the city is on their side.

(Parenthetical Statements: I used way to many of these in this post. (This is getting meta. (I'm going to stop. (Eventually. (Maybe. (It seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no. (So don't tell me I might just let it go. (I'm done.))))))))

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan- And The Number of The Counting Shall Be Six

Before we jump into Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, a few words about the original TV series. It was for a large part responsible for creating modern-day sci-fi and every space tale since its premier owes a debt of gratitude to Gene Roddenberry. There was simply nothing like it on TV before it came out, but what is truly remarkable about the series is this...

Today, multiracial casts are commonplace. In fact, a show which doesn't include minorities is bound to be called out for it. But, Star Trek hit the air in 1966. The Civil Rights Act wasn't even signed until 1964. And, four key cast members are members of a repressed group. When Sulu, the Japanese man, first took the helm, it was 21 years after World War II. Uhura is both black and a woman. During the third season, Kirk kisses her for the first televised interracial kiss. Spock is mixed race when many states ban interracial marriage. And, the world is terrified of the nuclear threat from the USSR, when Chekov, the Russian, joins the cast for the second season. This inspired casting was what the series was all about.

Unfortunately, Chekov was a moron and he really proves it in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. When the story begins, Chekov is serving as the first officer on the Reliant looking for a lifeless planet to test the Genesis device and they think Ceti Alpha Six is a good candidate. During the series, Kirk dropped Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan off on Ceti Alpha Five. Chekov was on the Enterprise at the time and remembers the incident clearly. Between that episode and this movie, the real Ceti Alpha Six blew up making Ceti Alpha Five uninhabitable and adjusting its orbit so that the Reliant mistakes Ceti Alpha Five for Ceti Alpha Six. (We won't discuss the physics of planetary explosion, its subsequent effects on planetary motion, or the convenient timing of such events other than to say it strains credulity.) Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-deep breath-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan takes advantage of Chekov and his captain's mistaken visit to the surface to escape and get wrathful.

All Chekov had to do to prevent all of this was to successfully count to six. Spock and all those researchers die because Chekov is incapable of counting numbers that require more than one hand. Ceti Alpha Six wasn't Pluto. This wasn't some technical change in designation. There used to be six planets in the Ceti Alpha system and now there are five. There should have been debris from the explosion as well. If they had just noticed something odd and rather obvious, like the fact that there was a missing planet, they would have proceeded with more caution and Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-gasp-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-snack break-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan wouldn't have had his opportunity.

Of course, this isn't the only movie were single digit counting has proven problematic...

Paper Clips- I Feel So Bad For This

I feel incredibly guilty criticizing this film, but they left me a huge opening and I would feel re-missed if I did not give it some very serious and legitimate criticism. Paper Clips is a documentary about a middle school in Tennessee that collected paper clips as a symbol for those that died in the Holocaust. It like one of my favorite children's books, How Much is a Million, except much sadder. As someone who works with very large numbers everyday and spent most of the past decade specifically training to understand them, I can tell you the human mind is really not capable of understanding how much a million actually is. So when the millions of paper clips, each one representing a human soul dead because of hate, are being poured, making a sound I may never forget, into the cattle car memorial at the end, it is a jarring and unsettling image.

The project began with the goal of collecting 6,000,000 paper clips to represent the Jews which died in the Holocaust and the number 6,000,000 is mentioned dozens of times during the film. Where this movie deserves to be criticized, is its single mention of 11,000,000, the total number of victims of the Holocaust. And when this single mention occurs it sounds like, "We collected 29,000,000 paper clips, but 29,000,000 doesn't have anything to do with the Holocaust. Let's use 11,000,000. That has some meaning." For a film primarily focused on tolerance and acceptance for people who are different, this single passing mention of the 5,000,000 non-Jewish Holocaust victims seems extremely disrespectful.

Now that the serious criticism is over, some dark humor:
-Collecting all those paper clips (human souls) required a lot of meticulous record keeping.
-At one point, the principal said the students were "very selective" about which paper clips (human souls) they rounded-up and put into a cattle car where they will rest stacked high on top of one another for all eternity.

One unanswered question:
What happened to the 18,000,000 paper clips that weren't included in the memorial? Have they been released into the wild? Have I been using office supplies with a human soul bonded to them like their an Elric brother?

For the record: I never made fun of the Holocaust or any of it's victims. I just made fun of some kids making a Holocaust memorial.

Nope, still feel like a bastard.

Cypher- Motive Matters

Cypher is a over-elaborate, high-tech tale of corporate espionage. In this world, large corporations are above the law (a statement which also applies to the world of this movie) and their is a feud between Digicorp and Sunways.

When we meet our main character, Morgan Sullivan, he is a Regular Joe who chooses to take a job as a spy for Digicorp. Digicorp attempts to brainwash him into becoming a better spy, but Lucy Liu shows up and gives him some drugs to stop it. He then convinces Digicorp that he believes he is brainwashed into thinking he is Jack Thursby and they kidnap him and set him up with a job interview at Sunways. At Sunways, Morgan/Jack fails the brain scanning portion of the interview and is found out to be a Digicorp spy. It turns out that Sunways hired this guy Rooks to get them a Digicorp spy that wasn't brainwashed. So, Morgan/Jack gets a job as a Sunways spy pretending to be a Digicorp spy. Realizing that he is screwed, Morgan/Jack contacts Lucy Liu so that he can start working for Rooks, too. Rooks wants him to plant a virus in Sunways' super-secret archive, but on the way to do so he is met by another Rooks operative who says he's actually working for Digicorp. This guy wants him to steal a file instead and since Morgan/Jack hadn't betrayed anyone for a few minutes and going along with whatever plan he's told has brought him this far, he does so. Soon after, Morgan/Jack learns that he was Rooks all along and that this was all planned from the beginning to steal that one file. Morgan/Jack/Rooks is a super-genius, mega-wealthy inventor who invented the brain scanning/washing technology in the first place three years ago (with an implication that he invented them with the intention of subverting them) and Lucy Liu is his lady-friend.

Believe it or not, the movie is going pretty well up until this point, other than the unnecessary twist of getting Morgan/Jack/Rooks to betray Rooks and that no plan with this many moving parts would work in the real world. Where it all falls apart is when we find out what was in that file and worth all this trouble to begin with. Is it a business opportunity worth trillions of dollars or proof of a scandal which will destroy the corporate oligarchy forever? No, that would feel disappointing at this point in the film. It was a Sunways death warrant for his lady-friend. He was doing it all for love. So they could live out the rest of their lives together in peace. How sweet! Unfortunately, it also makes his entire plan incredibly stupid.

First of all, how long did this plan take to plan and execute. Certainly no less than a year and if he invented the various technologies he subverts as part of his plan, it could have easily been over a decade. During which time, Lucy Liu doesn't die. Apparently, Sunways' preferred method of murder is old age.

Of course, to execute this plan Lucy Liu had to put herself in danger multiple times from both Sunways and Digicorp. So, his plan to get Sunways to stop trying to kill her involves getting Sunways and Digicorp to try to kill her. In fact, the person who comes closest to killing Lucy Liu is Morgan/Jack/Rooks himself who fucking shoots her because she was sleeping with Rooks which he learned about during that completely brilliant and necessary twist discussed earlier. Any plan where there is a danger of shooting the woman whose life you're trying to save because she's sleeping with someone who isn't you that actually is you has a few flaws in it.

Then, there is the matter of all the other things he could have done instead. He could have just taken his lady-friend and hightailed it out of town (which is ultimately what he did anyway). He had the money and power to disappear. Sunways is a corporation and all they care about is profit, so he could have tried buying her safety with either cash or technology. Or, alternately, gone to Digicorp to buy security. Fuck, he could have bought and trained his own private army more easily and cost effectively than what he wound up doing. Any of these plans would have been a better way to go.

There are really only three motives in the world: greed, politics and/or religion, and love and/or sex. Everything we do stems from one or more of these motives. While love is a more interesting motive than the other two, it is also the one which fits this film the worst. Had this been an elaborate heist, the credits would have rolled on an entertaining sci-fi flick, but making it about love brings this movie to a sudden screeching train-wreck ending that all but ruins all that came before it. And that's why motive matters.

Star Wars Uncut- SOPA is Dead! Long Live SOPA!

As SOPA and PIPA are officially dead, I may be a few days late posting this, but I have no doubt they will return someday in one form or another and it is up to us nerds to remain vigilant to ensure they do not. What truly baffles me about this legislation though is that the studios, MPAA, and RIAA don't understand that they are only hurting themselves by pushing for these kinds of laws.

As began this blog, I promised myself that I would only discuss a movie one time. (The Last Airbender series was one really long post cut into four parts.) But as I consider Star Wars Uncut a legally distinct entity from Star Wars, I decided it was ok to do a post on it, but as George Lucas may not agree I suggest watching it here ASAP.

Star Wars Uncut is a project where the original movie was cut up into a series of 15 second clips, handed out to fans, and put back together into a single film with really great results. Every individual director brought a slightly to radically different interpretation of the original from strait-up to comedic to animated to bizarre. Some great running gags in the movie include Han Solo as Indiana Jones and Chewbacca as a dog. It was also great to see how many of the actors were part of the third generation of Star Wars fans. It is so rare for a movie to be so special to so many people so long after its release.

It was a little hard to spot through all the changes in styles, but Star Wars Uncut was also cut in the way that the Star Wars special editions should have been. It featured the additions that helped the movie such as the opening crawl, Jabba as a giant slug, and the additional creatures on Tatooine and left out those that didn't such as completely changing Han's character by letting Greedo shoot first and showing that Han had nothing to do with the destruction of the Death Star by putting in a Millennium Falcon entrance shot between Han's laser blast and the random TIE fighter crashing into Vader.

I find it absolutely ridiculous when content creators go after people involved in projects like this. They aren't trying to replace Star Wars. They aren't making fun of Star Wars. They are paying tribute to Star Wars. They want you to see Lucas' product, not just their own. They are the most die-hard fans you have, George. And their were a whole lot of them. Star Wars Uncut ran 2 hours and 3 minutes long. At 15 seconds a scene, that's nearly 500 scenes and with nearly all of them involving multiple actors, directors and/or cameramen, it's likely that the number of people involved in the project topped 10,000. And how do you think the people who worked hard to put this film together, not to mention the millions who will see it, will feel if you pull it off the net? If you didn't say, "Pissed off," chances are you are an industry lawyer.

Plus, projects like this are great press and good marketing. And George, you could really use some good press. Between the special editions, the prequels, and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, your name isn't quite what it used to be. But, Star Wars Uncut is a great reminder of the film we fell in love with. Did you see how many of the scenes involved officially licensed Star Wars merchandise? I did and so did everyone else who watched it. The fact is fan tributes, and as Joey Wheeler so eloquently points out even fan parodies, are only good for business. So, Lucas, for your own good leave Star Wars Uncut alone. 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy- I Swear This Has Never Happened To Me Before

I have to respect the makers of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy for something I've never before seen in any movie: a plot so incomprehensible that I could not follow it. (And, I've seen Primer.) Sure, I've missed a point or two in many films. I've had trouble dealing with plot holes. I've gotten a few characters mixed up. I've missed a subtle double meaning of a scene. But, I might as well have slept through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. After seeing the movie, this is all I know about it: British Intelligence is looking for a mole at the top of its organization during the Cold War (I got that part from the trailer.) and they eventually found him. (I'd like to spoil that part, but I don't know who it was.) Here is a loving look at how they managed to make a film so amazingly confounding.

Character Overload- I can keep track of about five distinct characters without any help. Beyond that, I need some way to tell them apart. Different races, genders, accents, missing body parts. I need the director to give me some clues. There were about ten characters of consequence in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, every one of them a white, British male.

Names?- These characters have names, right? How 'bout using them from time to time? I can only recall one character being referred to by name and seeing as he was the lead, his name was the least important to know for clarity's sake.

Time Travel and Body Swapping- Half of the film was told in flashback, told from the perspective of several different characters. It would switch timelines and perspectives far too often, usually with no clear indication of a transition.

The Subtly Sweet-spot- The Last Airbender was dragged down by, more than anything else, an overabundance of exposition, but it was completely comprehensible despite the fact that it took place in a unique fantasy world and had a fairly complex plot. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy lies on the other end of the subtly scale were it just isn't communicating any information. The subtly sweet-spot lies somewhere between the two. The opening sequence of Up, which shows a very clear and detailed Carl and Ellie's life together without using a word of dialog, is located perfectly in the subtly sweet-spot.

Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol- Impossible Is Right

I went into Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol expecting to see impossible physics, cars that explode in a stiff breeze, insanely complex technology with limited functionality, and other common ways action movies distort reality, but had this movie any relation to reality it would have been five minutes long. It is the sworn duty of this blog to call out Hollywood when it finds new and unusual ways to bend the laws of reality, so let's chat about some of the more inexplicable moments in the film.

Just to be clear, I don't mind when movies mess with reality in general. After all, almost all films take place in some form of alternate reality even if it's just that Random Character B exists. For example, there is a scene where Ethan and Brandt are trapped in an underwater car with bullets raining down from above. A common movie trope, which is Mythbusters certified confirmed, holds that diving underwater will protect you from bullets. And in reality, that pocket of air in the car would soon fill with water. However, without both of these elements the scene does not work and I can do my best to ignore these issues. In some ways, it is the more subtle ways that movie reality is distorted which bugs me more.

For example, the passenger elevators at the Burj Dubai apparently stop at every floor. The IMF team delays the bad guys by making it look like someone had hit the call button on the lower floors. Anyone who has ever worked in a decently tall building knows that not every elevator goes to every floor. If they did, the ride up to the 119th floor would take a mind-numbingly long time as the elevator stops for every press along the way. And, God-forbid, some brat hit every button on the way out the door. No, an elevator servicing the 119th floor would not stop on the 24th. There probably isn't even a door that could open on that floor for that elevator.

In one scene, Carter is pretending to be a bad girl selling nuclear launch code to a bad guy and Benji comes in pretending to be a bellhop. Now, I'm willing to accept that Carter and Benji have deceived said bad guy into believing who they claim to be, but why would bad guy and bad girl exchange diamonds for nuclear secrets in front of a bellhop? Nothing to see here. Just two people trading a bag of jewels for mysterious documents in a briefcase. Move along. No reason to be suspicious.

And, why is no one in Dubai prepared for a common atmospheric phenomenon like a sandstorm. Thanks to a helpful countdown clock, we know that the sandstorm was easily visible at least 26 minutes, and probably more like a full hour, before it finally hit. But, still everyone is still outside and the roads are crowded like they were caught by surprise.

At one point, the team must gain control of a server to save the world and the only way to get access to it is to jump into a magnetic safety net. I am willing to accept that there is an electromagnet powerful enough to stop a man in chain mail armor after a twenty-five foot fall and suspend him ten feet above said magnet and that this device is small enough and light enough to fit on that tiny robot, but what I will not accept is that such a strong moving magnetic field would not wipe out all the data on the server thus rendering the magnetic flying moot.

Hendricks believes that for the long term good of humanity, a lot a people need to die. And really, who can argue with that? I've often thought mass genocide would be a great thing for the species. But when the terrorist has complete control of the Russian nuclear arsenal, he only chooses to launch a single missile. He has the power to launch thousands of missiles and guarantee the war he wants, but he only uses one of them. Nuclear missiles are like potato chips. You can't launch just one. Use of a single nuclear weapon will inevitably lead to the use of them all. That was the entire concept of the Cold War. In fact, the only way using a single nuclear weapon on a nuclear armed country makes sense is if you are deliberately trying to trigger a nuclear war. The use of a single weapon points to nuclear terrorism rather than a sanctioned act of government. Thus, making a counter-strike unlikely.

But the real problem with the movie is the premise itself. A week or two before Hendricks ever launches a missile, the IMF knows that the Russian launch codes have been stolen. Why did no one just pick up the phone and tell them that their codes have been compromised? The could have done it right at the beginning, before the Kremlin blew up. Or really anytime throughout the film. Even if they don't really believe them, it would be foolish not to change them. Or maybe they did call and it went something like this...

IMF Agent: Hey, did you know some dude stole your nuclear launch codes? It might be a good idea to change them.

Russian General: Well, we would but my cousin Vladimir is out on a camping trip, way out of cell range. He's really good with computer stuff and no one else knows how to change them. He'll be back in two weeks.

IMF Agent: Oh, I see. Could you at least notify your commanders that your codes have been compromised?

Russian General: That would be so embarrassing.

IMF Agent: Yeah, I guess you're right. Well, let's hope no one tries to blow up the world in the next two weeks.