An amusing sneak preview of the upcoming Nazis-on-the-Moon movie Iron Sky:
It’s partly amusing because they use a pretty good replica of an Orion as the “Liberty” spacecraft, and partly because they appear to be leavening the lampooning of Sarah Palin with some mockery of Obama. That suggests to me that said lampooning is done in fun and not malice, like a Hollywood film would handle it.
And yes…the space Nazis have an Autobahn on the Moon.
I hope this movie ends up being as fun as it looks, but then Dead Snow (with zombie Nazis, as it happens) looked this good in trailers and previews, too.
Having seen large portions of several of the old and new movies over the Thanksgiving holiday, I can add one more to the list: Obi-Wan Kenobi is a despicable “hero”.
Prior to the release of the prequels, I always had this impression of the character as being a wise and noble mentor to the young Luke Skywalker, a father figure whose efforts to help the latter learn his true nature and value are cut tragically short. In November I watched Episode 3 and most of Episode 4 back-to-back, and found Kenobi now comes across as dishonest and incompetent hack (or worse):
His incompetence and inattentiveness regarding the young Anakin’s training and his failure to recognize the blatant, flashing-neon warning signs of the latter’s willfulness and disobedience led to Anakin’s temptation to disallowed romance and his corruption to the Dark Side. He was too young, inexperienced, and headstrong himself to take on such an important and demanding task, but he did it anyway, even begged for it.
He walked away and left the maimed and burned Anakin to die, without properly finishing the job of killing him – finishing Anakin off was his responsibility, since his failures had led to Anakin becoming what he had become and because he was the one who had cut him to pieces. It was his duty to make sure the threat was eliminated, and having gotten to the point he did, and being a supposedly noble Jedi, it was his duty to exercise the virtue of mercy by finishing Anakin off instead of leaving him to suffer in agony for minutes or hours longer. This is where the “or worse” comes in – his incompetence let Anakin survive long enough to be rescued, but his leaving Anakin in agony revealed a cruel indifference to the latter’s suffering if not a vindictive satisfaction with it.
When he first meets Luke in Episode 4, he lies to him regarding the fate of Luke’s father. In hindsight, this is as much a self-serving lie to cover up his own involvement in Anakin’s fate as it is the white lie for the not-quite-ready-to-know-the-truth Luke that it always used to seem.
If we accept that his duty while in exile (as established at the end of Episode 3) was to conceal and protect Luke, how do we reconcile that task with the fact that Kenobi lived in a remote dwelling far away from the Lars farmstead, too far to keep watch on Luke, and that he had apparently never had contact with Luke for the first eighteen years of his life? Why was the Jedi master not training the boy from childhood to use the Force to protect and conceal himself incase he himself were to be discovered or to die? Again, incompetence…had Luke been better prepared, he would have been more effective in confronting the challenges that faced him.
When entering the cantina, Kenobi would have been smarter to have used his “Jedi mind tricks” to persuade Luke’s two harassers to leave him alone rather than to lop off one of their arms and thereby draw unwanted attention to himself and his companions. Incompetence, and another instance of indifference to the suffering of others (specifically, others he has maimed with a light saber).
Finally (though there are no doubt more instances to be found), Kenobi lies to Vader when he boasts that he will “become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”. It was all braggadocio – he never followed through on that threat.
It was all very disappointing to notice these elements in a character I used to like. But, it just goes with the territory when you’re talking about the Star Wars franchise.
UPDATE: Brian Preston responds, on behalf of science fiction fans. I should add for my part that I don’t agree with Shaidle’s attacks on science fiction as a genre, just with some of her criticism of the Star Wars movies. Some were good, and fun, but not great, and when you look at them with a critical eye towards character development and such, they really suffer.
Some brief thoughts on the Tron sequel/reboot, which I watched last night:
Having not been to a movie in a theater in over two years, I was surprised at how obnoxious the pre-movie advertising has become. Gone are the still slideshows with instrumental music, which one could at least chat over, having been replaced with an uninterrupted stream of video ads with blaring music, voiceovers, and strobing imagery which render socializing with friends nearly impossible.
The plot of the movie was somewhat thin, but plenty enough to tie together the luscious CGI effects, which were truly impressive throughout the movie (with one exception).
In hindsight, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen the entire original Tron movie. I recommend watching it before seeing this one, as there seemed to be a few references to the earlier film that they expected the audience to understand without added explanation. Overall one is expected to be familiar with the basics of Tron, but aside from that nothing I’m referring to was a major problem — rather, a viewing of the original would simply enhance the experience of the new film at the detail level.
The CGI “exception” involved the younger versions of Jeff Bridges. The animation in most places is almost but not quite perfect. With the character Clu, one could forgive the animators a little imperfection (seeing as how the character itself is a digital construct). The scene in the beginning where the real-world Kevin Flynn is talking with the young Sam, however, contains several fleeting instances where the “uncanny valley” effect comes into play. Throughout the film, the tell is always in the movement’s of the mouth, whose movements aren’t quite accurate in some undefinable way. And knowing how the Clu character was played becomes a significant distraction during certain scenes, when he is repeatedly depicted from direct or 3/4 rear views so as to avoid the need to rotoscope the actor’s face.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to disassociate the person of Julian Assange from the character Zeus.
There were a couple of places where I think they could have improved the background story with a few extra lines of dialogue. In particular, the story of the “miracle” that led to Flynn being trapped in the Grid…had they tied it to, say, the exponential growth in information becoming interconnected through the ur-internet of the late 1980s, as a nod to the SF convention of a threshold of information and computing power triggering the spontaneous formation of an artificial intelligence, it would have been quite the slick bit of storytelling.
The gratuitous inclusion of a bit of global warming propaganda was disappointing, as were the other boilerplate expressions of anti-modern pessimism in the same exchange. But the exchange was also thankfully brief and (being wholly gratuitous) had no discernible effect on the rest of the story. It appears to me in hindsight to have simply been a recitation of talking points tossed in at an opportune moment in the film to scratch an irresistible Hollywood itch.
Overall it’s worth seeing for the entertainment value. The story isn’t all that deep, and some of the characters and performances are pretty standard-issue. But the effects are quite impressive, and should be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated. While many people said the same thing about Avatar, at least in the case of Tron:Legacy you aren’t force-fed a deplorable ideology and agenda along with the eye-candy.
Despite all the hype about it being the Best Movie EverMade! and The Ultimate Entertainment Experience! and whatnot, it looks like Avatar lost the Best Picture Oscar to Hurt Locker, a movie I hadn’t even heard of until about two weeks ago.
I actually used to like ST:TNG when it was first broadcast. Nowadays, I find any manifestation of the franchise insufferable. Bad acting, lazy writing, trite speechifying, cross-episode amnesia re:new discoveries/innovations, Patrick Stewart, etc.
That said, I caught a bit of Star Wars: Episode I in the hotel on Monday evening. I thought it was pretty weak when I saw it in the theater, but seeing it again made me cringe over how godawful it really was. The “Ewan MacGregor Jinx” was strong with that one.
Practice makes perfect, I guess – behold Roland Emmerich’s latest end-of-the-world apocacataclysmageddovaganza:
Vatican City? That’s innovative. Even Godzilla didn’t wreck Vatican City! And while everyone jokes about an earthquake sending California sliding off into the sea, has anyone actually showed it before? Nice.
I hadn’t realized from previous info that the film had “ships” of some sort in it – it isn’t clear whether these ships are spacecraft intended to flee the planet, or if they are (as hinted in glimpses) simply modern-day Noah’s Arks waiting out the catastrophe at sea. Either way, the premise one can glean from Emmerich’s trailer is vaguely similar to Martin Caidin’s 1987 SF novel Exit Earth, in which a looming planetary catastrophe triggers a similar response. Oddly enough, my copy from back in the day proclaims in bold type on the front cover, “Soon to be a Major Motion Picture!”. I’m glad in a way that “soon” wasn’t - the special effects in 1987 would have been pretty lame.
Some of the scenes are also reminiscent of the old classic, When Worlds Collide, specifically the panicked mobs rushing up the ramp onto one of the aforementioned ships - perhaps it’s Emmerich’s nod to George Pal. There was some talk a couple of years back about a remake of WWC, which makes me curious as to whether this instead was the project in question. Too bad, if so - having read the book WWC was based on, I was really looking forward to a faithful new adaptation…not least because the novel’s escape spacecraft were constructed in the wilds of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. (While the movie is considered a classic, beyond some of the effects it’s honestly pretty awful, especially given the potential of the book and its sequel.)
UPDATE: Well, it turns out a remake of When Worlds Collide is in fact in the works. Spielberg is producing it, and at least judging by the writing credits at IMDB, the source material appears to be the book rather than the George Pal movie.
A young girl sets out to prove herself by resolving a long-forgotten mystery. But when she gets close to the truth, what she thought was a harmless adventure becomes a threat to the future of the independent commercial settlements on Mars.
