The 2021 So Bad It’s Good Blogathon is an event devoted to films commonly perceived as bad, yet enjoyable, hosted by Taking Up Room. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the link at the host site.

Fantastic Four (1994)

YouTube viewing

I don’t recall where I first learned there would be a movie based on Fantastic Four, my favorite childhood comic book—in one of Stan Lee’s editorial “Bullpen Bulletins,” perhaps. I specifically remember seeing a flyer at my local comic shop announcing the guy who played Reed Richards would appear for a signing. 

As time passed, and it became clearer the movie would not come soon to a theater near me, I was disappointed. This was before the renaissance of comic book movies that began with Blade and X-Men and Spider-Man and continued with Iron Man and the cinematic universes of Marvel and DC. Films like Batman and Robin and Superman IV taught me to lower my expectations.

Then the FF film went straight to video, and bootleg copies popped up at conventions. At one, a dealer played it on a small TV screen and I finally caught a snippet.

I believe it was the scene with the Human Torch flying. (I say “the scene” because it’s the only one in the movie!) I recognized it as the Torch; that was encouraging, no? Maybe it would’ve looked better on a big screen. Maybe it needed to be seen from the beginning for me to truly appreciate. It wasn’t fair to judge based on an out-of-context clip from a bootlegged copy shown at a noisy and crowded comic convention.

Besides, I had seen a few photos of the cast: they got the costumes right (except the “4” logo was so low it was practically on their stomachs), the Thing was massive and rocky like he was supposed to be (even if he kinda looked made out of papier-mâché), and they really overdid it with the grey in Reed’s hair, but the most important things were the acting and the story. As long as I could believe in the whole thing, the rest wouldn’t matter. One day I would see it and judge for myself.

It couldn’t be that bad, right?

...and that was just January.

What a month, huh? Our long national nightmare is finally over, though the mess DT left behind will take years, if not decades, to clean up, and a whole lot of people out there will try to impede the process... but now that adults are in charge of America again, we stand a good chance at making some progress. To ease us back to movie-related discussion, if you haven’t seen this video from Arnold Schwarzenegger—the former California governor, remember?—take a look at it.

—The Midnight Sky. George Clooney and a little kid are stuck on an Arctic base but they’ve gotta send a message to a spaceship returning from a scouting trip to another planet, telling them not to come home because the earth is effed up. This was done well and all, but man, I’m tired of all these depressing space exploration movies: Interstellar, Gravity, First Man, Ad Astra. I realize SF can’t all be action-adventure shoot-em-ups, but space travel used to represent hope. What happened? Clooney also directs and produces; as an actor, he’s in full-on Grizzly Adams mode, and everyone’s grim and silent and sad. Just the kinda thing we all need right now, isn’t it?

Spider-Man (1977)
YouTube viewing

Ever since the Spider-Man film rights were acquired by Marvel Studios, their signature character has seen some changes. He got himself a suit of armor designed by Tony Stark. He became an Avenger and travelled with them to outer space. He’s met versions of Spider-Man from parallel universes, including a black kid, a girl, even a cartoon pig!

In the comics, back in the 70s, he was still recognizable as Peter Parker, college kid and part-time freelance photographer—living with his Aunt May, fighting the Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus, getting no respect from J. Jonah Jameson and the Daily Bugle. He began the decade mourning the death of girlfriend Gwen Stacy at the hands of the Goblin, grew four arms for a brief time (don’t ask!), became more of a stud with the chicks than in his high school years, first proposed to Mary Jane Watson (no relation), only to get shot down, and ended the decade in a relationship with a burglar called the Black Cat, who only loved him as Spider-Man and could’ve cared less who was under the mask.

At the same time, Marvel Comics’ inroads into Hollywood grew deeper. You may remember the early animated series from the 60s, including the Spidey series with the awesome theme song. Marvel continued to pursue this avenue, but they also looked into developing live-action material for television. The success of the live-action Batman and Wonder Woman series from the Distinguished Competition was no doubt an impetus for them.

If you’re from my generation, you may remember the Spidey skits on The Electric Company, for example, but that was kid stuff. Marvel wanted something that could play in prime time.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
YouTube viewing

I think it’s a shame the superstar actors and filmmakers of the Golden Age of Hollywood—the Bogarts, the Hepburns, the Wilders—rarely, if ever, made sci-fi or fantasy or horror movies while in their prime. Genre material such as that wasn’t taken as seriously back then. What kinds of films might we have gotten if it had been? Who knows.

Movies like Frankenstein or House of Wax really stand out amidst the mountain of schlock, but they also made stars out of the actors in them—Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, respectively, as opposed to stars coming to such movies. That’s not a bad thing, though, and it’s something we still see today, as Daniel Radcliffe and Kristin Stewart, for example, will attest.

Also, with so many old movies being rediscovered and reappraised by younger generations, “stars” are created retroactively by film nerds like us. In googling about the SF/horror flick The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, I noticed one of the movie’s stars, Virginia Leith, died last year. I didn’t think she was big enough to warrant an obit in The Hollywood Reporter, much less one that would use this movie as a selling point—I had certainly never heard of her. (She was in Kubrick’s first film, Fear and Desire, and had smaller parts in TV and film.)

Flash Gordon
seen @ The Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, Queens NY

I think I saw Flash Gordon when it came out, but I would’ve been  only eight, so I’m not sure. It probably was on my radar then; I was aware of comparable movies from around that time like the original Clash of the Titans and Superman, so if I saw it advertised on TV, I would’ve begged my parents to take me to see it.

It seemed every sci-fi/fantasy film in the 80s wanted to be the next Star Wars, and Flash was one of many pretenders to the throne. It had elements of both: outer space and alien planets mixed with sword fights and kingdoms—and no one cared that much about scientific or historical accuracy or making everything look “realistic” because they were too busy having fun with the subject matter.

Everything in Flash screams over-the-top—the costumes, the props, the sets, and especially the performances—but watching it again for the first time in decades, at MOMI, I realized as unlikely as it seems, it’s still watchable. More than watchable, in fact, even in an age where we demand a certain level of “realism” in our comic book movies, to the point where they’re almost ashamed of their four-color origins.

Not Flash, though.

One thing I wasn’t prepared for regarding the latest Star Trek series was the hype. Discovery was an unknown property, with new characters in what was a kinda-sorta familiar Trek setting, but it wasn’t your parents’ Trek! It represented a new look and a more modern direction for the franchise, and while CBS gave it the hard sell, Fandom Assembled received it with a great deal of trepidation.

Picard has been different, and not just because it’s the return of a familiar and beloved character—its reach has gone lightyears beyond the fandom, and much of that is because of Patrick Stewart. In the eighteen years since the last TNG film, Nemesis, he’s become a huge celebrity, but it’s the kind where his real-world persona has become as important, if not more than, his roles: his presence on social media, his charitable work, his talk show appearances, his friendship with Ian McKellen, his knighthood. Virginia, who is not what you’d call a Trekkie, was giggling over that country music video of Stewart’s to the point where she actually bought the CD.

That’s exactly the sort of thing I mean. On the one hand, stage work aside, Stewart is ensconced as a genre actor now; he doesn’t make as many non-SF/F movies as he used to (Conspiracy Theory, LA Story, Jeffrey, etc.), but because his reach has extended deep into the mainstream, he has transcended Trek and genre in general in a way only William Shatner, and arguably George Takei as well, has done.

The difference, I think, between Stewart’s fame and Shatner’s is the former appears more selective in the projects with which he involves himself. No one will remember Shatner for things like $#*! My Dad Says or War Chronicles, but I think Shatner’s motivated very differently. Between the acting, the writing, the spoken-word CDs, the commercials, and more, he seems determined to do it all. Stewart doesn’t strike me that way.

Ad Astra
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

I hope this doesn’t spoil the movie for you, but don’t expect aliens to appear in Ad Astra. This shouldn’t be a spoiler because director James Grey has alluded to this point in interviews, for one, and it’s important to know because it’s easy to imagine this as the kind of movie that might have aliens, coming as it does after Interstellar, The Arrival, Contact, The Abyss, and similar movies where their presence fills the protagonist(s) with awe and we don’t know what to expect from them because they’re so far advanced from us. Ad Astra seems like it’s in that vein—but it’s not.

That said, I wasn’t as blown away by it as I had hoped I would’ve been—at first. Brad Pitt’s an astronaut in “the near future,” the son of Tommy Lee Jones, who was a legendary astronaut in his day. Jones went on a deep space mission years ago, vanished, and was presumed dead. Now there’s evidence he may be alive and stirring up big trouble, so Pitt is sent to investigate.

It’s Pitt’s movie from start to finish, and he gives a wonderful performance, reminiscent of Ryan Gosling in First Man but much more reflective. In the pursuit of his goal, Pitt does some surprising things which seem justifiable at the time, but then you look back and think, hey wait, he really did that, didn’t he? His character is so invested in keeping his shit together, though, and not wigging out, you don’t think of him as crazy—and this is a vital point, because the nature of his profession requires him to maintain an even keel, and the strong possibility that Jones might have lost his marbles permeates throughout the film. Pitt does not want to be like Jones, who was absent for much of his life on account of his job, but Pitt can’t help but admire Jones for the things he has accomplished. Actually, working it out like that just now has made me get a better grip on the movie.


Right up until the movie’s climax, I expected some deus ex machina appearance by aliens. Jones’ mission was to detect the presence of extraterrestrials, and he’s pretty convinced they’re out there, despite the lack of concrete evidence. Some of us are like that, aren’t we? I’ve talked about that before. The possibility that humanity really is all alone in the cosmos—or at the least, that aliens are so far away they’ll never detect us—is scary; it goes against a lot of notions we’ve cultivated about ourselves and our place in the universe, many of them built up through our popular fiction. I don’t want to believe it, even now—and a definitive answer will likely not come within my lifetime.

I was going to say that Ad Astra was befuddling, but now that I’ve written about it, it seems less so. Don’t know if I’ll get a chance to see it again this year, but I hope I do. I would say more, but each person needs to interpret a movie like this for themselves.

And if I do see it again, I hope it’s with a better audience. The screening I attended had a mother with a teenage kid who might have had some mental issues, to put it kindly. He giggled intermittently and audibly throughout the movie, which had little that could truly be considered funny. All things considered, he could’ve acted much worse, but he was a distraction. He wasn’t in control of himself, though, so what could I do?


Don’t get me wrong; I’m sympathetic to parents of children with “special needs” and they should get to unwind like everyone else, but if they can’t get someone to look after their kid while they go see an adult film (not that kind of adult film), perhaps they should reconsider their plans. Ad Astra wasn’t ruined for me, but I couldn’t give myself over to it as completely as I would’ve liked—so know your kids before you take them to a grownup film... and if you think they can’t hack it, or will act inappropriately, do us all a favor and stay home.

Patel and James in Yesterday

Recently I had a burst of inspiration regarding my novel. Those of you who have been following WSW for a long time know this book has frustrated and challenged me in almost equal measure, but I had believed in the vision for my story, a baseball tale with a romantic subplot. One day, after reading a post about the need to declutter one’s manuscript, I asked myself: do I need the romance? I like it, I think it’s compelling, and it ties directly into the baseball stuff, but the more I’ve developed it, the more I’ve had the feeling it competed for attention with the baseball plot—and because it doesn’t have a happy ending, I can’t really call it a traditional romance (the romance book market has very strict guidelines for this sort of thing).

And here’s the kicker: when I first plotted this novel, I never thought twice about including a love story. My attitude came down to nothing more than “why not?” I think I even believed it was the sort of thing an audience expected. But is it really? And if so, why?

Avengers: Endgame 

The Time Machine (1960)
seen @ Landmark Loews Jersey Theater, Jersey City NJ

Last year I bought a used anthology of HG Wells stories: The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and today's subject, The Time Machine.  I haven't finished it; I started Time but other things distracted me, as they tend to do.

Wells' writing is different from modern fiction. It's sparser, but a bit more florid also. Time the book didn't necessarily bore me, but it didn't quite suck me in either. Maybe that was because I had seen the time travel genre to death, in many forms (especially recently), and he was practically inventing the genre when this was written.


Herbert George Wells, born in England in 1866, started out as a teacher and later a journalist and even an artist before he got into short story and novel writing, and not just SF. Of course, it is SF for which he's best remembered.

In Wells' day, science fiction was called "scientific romance," a term associated with writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne, as well as the filmmaker George Melies. Wells' approach to the genre revolved around grounding the reader in credibility, so that the incredible elements could be more easily accepted. He felt one crazy assumption, such as the possibility of time travel, was all you needed on which to build.

Time was not Wells' first time travel story. In 1888, seven years before Time, he wrote a short story called "The Chronic Argonauts," which was also about an inventor of a time travel apparatus. (Some say Wells was inspired by Thomas Edison.) Before even that, in 1881, a short with a different kind of time machine, "The Clock That Went Backward" by Edward Page Mitchell, ran in the New York Sun.


Did you know there's a deleted scene from Time? Wells wrote it at his editor's suggestion. The nameless protagonist goes even further into the future, past the era of the Eloi and Morlocks, and discovers a new species that resembles them both. Wells didn't like it, though.

I had seen the 1960 film adaptation before, but I had forgotten how entertaining it was. Screenwriter David Duncan, in adapting the book, fleshed out the protagonist's 19th-century buddies and his relationships with them in a way that really humanizes him.


Rod Taylor, under George Pal's direction, portrays the idealistic humanist well, in a way that made me think he might have been an influence in shaping Star Trek's Captain Kirk. And speaking of Trek, Wah Chang, one of the Oscar winners for the film's special effects, went on to work on the show as a prop man, designing the original tricorder and communicator.

I saw Time with Virginia. It was her first time at the Loews JC and she loved it, taking pictures on the mezzanine level and digging the Wonder Organ. I was thrilled to have her there in a place that means so much to me.

Ready Player One
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

I have so much to say about Ready Player One that I'm dividing this post into segments. It's much easier for both of us. Trust me.

1. The internet and internet culture

2. Ernest Cline's 80s vs. my 80s

3. Steven Spielberg's 80s

4. Columbus

5. RP1 the movie

Pacific Rim: Uprising
seen @ Movieworld, Douglaston, Queens NY

You know how in those old Godzilla movies, he stomps all over Tokyo but it's never as serious as it looks because it's SO OBVIOUS the sets are just models? Ever wonder what that might look like if it were real? Well, watch Pacific Rim: Uprising then, preferably on the biggest screen you can afford.

At first, seeing the jaegers (the robots) and kaiju (the monsters) battling it out amidst a giant cityscape is breathtaking as well as terrifying, though they do make a point of saying the population was safe in underground shelters, so one can watch the fights guilt-free!

After awhile, though, even these scenes have an air of artificiality to them, and not just because jaegers and kaiju don't exist (as far as we know).


They're almost too real. Jaegers, when operated by their two pilots, run, throw punches, even get tossed around like humans, even though they're hundreds of feet tall. It's the old comics cliche: how can something so big move so fast? As for the kaiju, you can see every scale on its hide, every tooth in its wide, wide mouth, every drop of water as it rises out of the ocean.

There ought to be some sort of medium in which these kinds of movies can look better than dudes in rubber suits yet maintain a level of... I dunno, low-budget, B-grade cheapness, for lack of a better term? Then again, maybe I'm still wedded to the way SF movies looked like back in the 80s, when I grew up. I'm sure that puts me in the minority. Fine, I'm used to it.


Uprising, regrettably, is little different from the first PR film. It wasn't until the final twenty minutes or so that I started to get into it. Eh. I knew this wasn't Black Panther. I just wanted a mindless action movie and that's what I got.

How about that John Boyega, huh? His ascension from no-name to rising action hero has been pretty quick, but that's what two Star Wars movies will do to you. Even when he played an inner-city hoodlum in Attack the Block, he had a certain magnetism that has turned into a youthful exuberance and strength that's nice to see. I hope he expands into other work: maybe a Shane Black-style crime comedy, or a Kathryn Bigelow-type war movie. He has definite potential.


There's this young girl in my writers group named Anna who has been hyped for Uprising for weeks, talking about the actors, the director, the previous film, all sorts of details, etc. Last Sunday, we talked about the movie and wouldn't you know it, she was let down big time.

We both agreed that Boyega was great, but killing [SPOILER] was a tremendous mistake. Anna also hated [SPOILER]'s heel turn, though it didn't bother me as much because I barely remembered the character from the first film. She said she complained to director Steven DeKnight on Twitter, saying he should've gotten her to write the screenplay! I guess that's the risk that comes with high expectations.

The Time Travel Blogathon is an event devoted to films with time travel as a plot point. Ruth and I thank you all for participating. The complete listing of bloggers can be found here and at Silver Screenings!

Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah
YouTube viewing

It will not surprise you to know a Godzilla store exists in Tokyo. It opened last fall, in the Shinjuku district, and though I don't read Japanese, I can tell from looking at the pictures there's no shortage to the depth and breadth of merchandise available. Take a look inside with this video (it's in English).

With the forthcoming release of the new Pacific Rim movie, now seems like a good time to talk about what the Japanese call kaiju, or as we called them when I was a kid, giant monsters. They wreak havoc on our cities in the movies, leaving mayhem and destruction in their wake, and we love them for it. What's the big deal, anyway?

Black Panther
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Black Panther in the pages of Fantastic Four in 1966 — issue 52, for those of you keeping track at home (inciting a trend that would one day be the bane of Chasing Amy's Hooper X).

He seemed to be a villain at first: inviting the FF to his fictitious African nation of Wakanda to "arrange the greatest hunt of all time," only the FF themselves, in a four-color twist on The Most Dangerous Game, turn out to be the hunted.

War for the Planet of the Apes
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

Six years ago, 20th Century Fox mounted an Oscar campaign for Andy Serkis, for his digitally-enhanced, performance-capture supporting role in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. He didn't get nominated, in part because the whole concept of p-cap was still relatively new and not completely understood. In an assessment of his chances, I said roles like his, and that of Zoe Saldana in Avatar, are only going to increase, and a point would come when they'd be hard to ignore come Oscar time.

Ever since, we've seen franchises such as Pirates of the Caribbean, The Hobbit, The Avengers and Star Wars employ p-cap technology, among other films, but it's Serkis and his character Caesar that, I believe, remains the most memorable, partially because it doesn't involve robots or dragons or aliens, but something real and familiar, apes - but mostly because the humanity of the character comes through so clearly. After awhile you forget Caesar is something that can't exist in real life; you see the things he does and you accept him on his own terms. That's because of Serkis.

Will that mean any kind of awards recognition, however? In War for the Planet of the Apes, the latest installment of the Apes saga, Serkis and the wizards of WETA Digital continue Caesar's evolution as the ape-human war escalates into a struggle for survival. 


Director/co-writer Matt Reeves, who also helmed Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, portrays Caesar as both Jesus and Moses. The metaphor isn't subtle, but I can accept that. He understands the meaning of self-sacrifice in the name of his people, yet he and his lieutenants are also capable of compassion and empathy towards innocents, like the human girl they encounter. (It didn't take long for me to figure out who she becomes. If you think about it, the answer is obvious to anyone who saw the '68 original.)


WETA is outstanding. The landscapes of Avatar were digital; WETA went one step further by taking the p-cap suit and bringing it outdoors, away from the studio. Throughout all three prequels, they render Caesar and his ape army within a variety of natural locations, in all kinds of weather, day and night, and you are never less than completely convinced of their reality.


War injects some welcome humor into the story. The talking, clothes-wearing chimp Caesar and company meet skirts near Jar Jar territory, but never crosses that line, thank Zod. He's not as cloying, nor as desperate for attention, and he's actually useful. Plus, there's a thread of sadness through him that gives him a gravity Jar Jar thoroughly lacked.


Will all this add up to major Oscar recognition - beyond the technical awards, that is? Due to the critical and commercial success War has received so far, I could see a possible Best Picture nomination, but Serkis for Best Actor would signal a seismic shift in the way roles like his, and films like this, are regarded. I think it's more possible now than it was in 2011 - but it's way too soon to tell. Ask me again in December.

Total Recall (1990)
IFC viewing

The work of Philip K. Dick has been a Hollywood go-to source for decades, even today. The current Amazon series The Man in the High Castle is based on Dick's 1962 Hugo-winning novel. This fall, a sequel to the hit movie Blade Runner - based, of course, on the short story "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" - will be released. 

I've never read any of his work, so I can't speak to how much (or how little) Hollywood has changed his material. I imagine there's a substantial difference. Prose sci-fi, especially from the mid-20th century, is fairly dense. Sci-fi movies tend to go more for broad strokes, though that's slowly changing.

Dick was born in Chicago. He went to high school in California with future SF peer Ursula LeGuin. His literary career began in the 50s. Though he wrote SF, he aspired to do more mainstream stuff. He married five times and tried to kill himself once. He was a heavy user of amphetamines.



He had some pretty wacky ideas throughout his life: he thought he had lived a past life in ancient Rome; he believed he was possessed by the spirit of a Biblical prophet; he subscribed to "panentheism," which basically means God is everywhere and in everything. You can read more about his beliefs here.

"We Can Remember It For You Wholesale," the 1966 short story that was the basis for the film Total Recall (both versions), is emblematic of the kind of stories Dick favored, in which what we think of as "reality" is ephemeral and highly subjective. In Paul Verhoeven's adaptation, we never know for certain if everything that happens to Arnie is real or simply implanted memories. I like that aspect; it seems important for this kind of story.



Verhoeven movies are always a trip because of their over-the-top nature. He'll have his characters do the craziest things, often out of nowhere: a gentle, friendly lady scientist violently slaps her milquetoast young assistant to keep him from freaking out; a little old lady tries to steal Arnie's briefcase and curses him when she fails. Scenes like these, campy and funny as they are, don't seem completely out of place.

Can I get some love for Ronny Cox? Scenery chewer par excellence, he made for some memorable and scummy bad guys, both here and also in Verhoeven's RoboCop. In both films, he's paired with a henchman: the stern Michael Ironside in Recall and the slick Kurtwood Smith in Robo. Cox has more of a relationship with Smith, though. Ironside just takes orders from him. Cox is better when he has someone equally smarmy to play off of, like Smith and Miguel Ferrer. It's always good to see Cox being bad!



Is reality subjective, like Recall and Dick's writings, would have you believe? Maybe, but if so, I think we still gotta go on living as if it wasn't - because how else can we relate to each other? There are way too many stupid things we hairless apes fight over to begin with, like skin color, or whose invisible sky fairy is the best. If one group suddenly decides grass is blue and another says it's green, we'd be in even worse shape. Some things we simply have to accept as givens until proven otherwise.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

For almost as long as I can remember, comic books have made me want to create a sci-fi epic. I've tried, more than once: As a kid, I made my initial foray into self-publishing comics. Among my attempts included a Fantastic Four-inspired yarn set in space. I did them strictly for myself. I made no attempt to reproduce them. That would come much later.

In recent years, I started (but never finished) a comic that was a SF remake of The Wizard of Oz (substitute a wormhole for a cyclone) and an SF graphic novel originally meant to be a pitch to Marvel until I changed the names and made it an original. I have a bad habit of not finishing stuff, which kinda irks me. That's why I'm so determined to complete my novel (almost two-thirds done as of this writing!).

Comics were great for these kinds of tales growing up. Post-Star Wars, the movies were starting to get a better handle on the special effects, costumes, sets, props and makeup necessary to create better alien worlds, ships and beings. Comics, however, could go anywhere and do anything, on a way smaller budget.


To a ten-year-old kid like I was, these four-color sagas blew my mind. They also fired my imagination, right around the time I began to discover my artistic ability. The fantastic worlds and strange dimensions depicted in comics made me want to create a few of my own.

Comics are still capable of going anywhere and doing anything, but these days, so are the movies. While watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, I had to take a moment to, pardon the pun, marvel at what I was seeing: a talking raccoon with ray guns; a plant-like child alien; a godlike being and his heavenly home planet; a giant squid monster; sophisticated weapons and ships that move and function in ways that would've been impossible to depict thirty years ago.

Once, comics were the best at visualizing such things. Now, they're not only possible to create for the movies, they've practically become commonplace. I don't think we properly acknowledge this minor miracle enough. (I found it telling that the new Marvel Studios logo contains images from the Marvel movies instead of from the comics, like it used to.)

What does this mean for comics? Well, no one's stopped reading books because of the movies; I suspect the same will be true of comics. They still have their own unique properties - the comics theory books of Scott McCloud go into great detail about this - that should be emphasized if they're gonna move further in the 21st century. That's gonna mean way more than superheroes. But that's an argument for another day.


Director James Gunn wrote G2, as he did the first film. This feels a bit more like a Marvel Universe movie. Kurt Russell's character is one I never thought I'd see in a movie, because of its obscurity and its cosmic scale, but this is a franchise tailor made for both. Gunn found a way to not only bring him closer to human scale, but to tie him to the Guardians in a convenient way. In a series so eager to celebrate 70s/80s pop culture, casting Snake Plissken (and Sly Stallone too!) was a good call.

So what did Stephanie Zacharek think of G2? Previously, the film critic (now working for Time) sneered at "Fun! with a capital F" movies like Guardians. This time, sad to say, her opinion hasn't wavered: "[G2] feels not so much crafted as squirted from a tube.... This is a movie that praises viewers for being cool enough to show up and then proceeds to insult them - but only ironically, see?"


Needless to say, I did not feel insulted, ironically or otherwise, and neither did the audience I saw it with (who applauded at the end). G2 expands on the surrogate-family theme in the first film, contrasting it with conflicts within actual families. Granted, this is not unfamiliar territory, but it's all about execution. Gunn gives us enough human moments (for non-human characters!) in-between the humor to let us believe in these people and care about what happens to them. Special kudos go out to Michael Rooker, who was particularly dynamite here.


Then there's the songs. Zacharek says: "Freed from their original contexts and given flimsy new ones, if any, they toil in the service of a movie that's invested in little beyond smirking at its non jokes." I tend to agree with the part about the music. Outside of the song "Brandy" by Looking Glass, which plays a significant role, one does get a feeling the music's there in G2 because it's what we've come to expect now, not because it impacts the story in any way. This is always a risk when pop songs are a big part of your soundtrack. I would hope Gunn becomes more judicious in how he employs music in the future. Look at the way "Hello Stranger" is used in Moonlight and you'll know what I'm talking about.

Also, after a post-credit cameo in the last film, Howard the Duck makes another brief appearance in G2, a slightly longer one this time. Howard was a character from the 70s who was unique in that he had a very countercultural bent, reflecting the sensibilities of his creator, the late Steve Gerber. Unfortunately, he's remembered more these days for that awful George Lucas movie from the 80s. Could Marvel be setting us up for a Howard reboot - one in which he's done right? Sure seems possible!

Cinemart started screening G2 Thursday night, May 4, so I took advantage. Their renovation has continued; they upgraded their bathrooms, which was nice. Not that they were sub-par before, but this is better. I was dismayed to see, however, that their popcorn comes pre-salted, without a salt-free option. I sampled a really small bag. Couldn't taste the difference, but I won't eat it in the future, even if they are giving it away - which they were. Points off, but there's always candy. Perhaps they'll add healthier options to the menu in the future. I hope so.

Sandi and I watched the season premiere of Doctor Who last Saturday night. It was the endpoint of a long day together. She's a fan. I'm... well, I've had an interest in the show in the past, but it never stuck, so I doubt you could call me a fan. A lot of my friends like the show, however. Given its great longevity and staying power, I feel obliged to provide a few, perhaps long overdue, observations about this, the granddaddy of SF franchises.

I first discovered the show as a kid in the 80s, on one of the upper-band UHF channels from somewhere out of state. It might have been the first foreign TV show I ever watched. Don't ask me which Doctor it was; they all look alike to me anyway. I remember thinking it looked low-budget and kinda cheesy (which Sandi agreed it was). I watched it for a little while, but I don't think I fully understood what was going on most of the time. Plus, the picture quality was never great. I gave up on the show and forgot about it shortly.

Then came the Internet. Suddenly it seemed like Who fans were everywhere. I re-learned the very basics about the show - long-lived alien, travels in a spaceship disguised as a phone booth, reincarnates in different bodies, etc. - from online conversations and articles. John and Sue are uber-fans. They love talking about Who. Being the contrarian that I am, however, my lizard brain automatically looked upon it with suspicion: if it's popular, it can't be that good.

Peter Capaldi, the current Doctor

I might have watched an episode or two with John and Sue, but otherwise, I've felt no compulsion to get back into the show. John has tried explaining it to me more than once, but because it's been on so long, there's a great deal of continuity that I can never get straight.

Sandi said last Saturday's ep was atypical. Doc's laying low, teaching at some university on Earth. He meets this chick named Bill (not Billie). She has a friend who gets sucked into a puddle of goo (which may be a two-way dimensional portal of some kind) that changes her into some kind of non-human, liquid creature. Bill needs Doc's help to save her. Sandi said Doc's new status quo as a professor, the pace of the story and even the music seemed like a departure from how the current Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi, had been depicted previously. I certainly couldn't notice anything different...

...unless you compare the show to how it looked in the 80s. The current model is much less cheesy. It looks and feels like a modern SF show, with impressive special effects. Thing is, though, there are so many genre shows on TV now, on so many channels, that Who no longer appears unique. I find I'm almost nostalgic for the low-budget look.
As for the content, Sandi gave me the impression that Doc's a quirky character. He did seem that way, but even in this he's no longer as distinctive. Joss Whedon writes his characters with a similar sly, knowing, cockeyed sensibility. Kevin Williamson of the Scream franchise is the same way.

In the ep I saw, Doc spent more time running from the monster-of-the-week than anything else. He didn't have much of a plan for saving Bill's friend. Sandi said Doc's weapon of choice, the sonic screwdriver, can do anything (though I find this hard to believe), yet he only used it to scare off a Dalek. Captain Picard would've studied the creature's behavior to determine what it wants, tried to communicate with it, and if that didn't work, and he thought it was a threat, then he'd attack it. Doc just ran until he couldn't run anymore. I'll allow for the possibility this was an unusual ep, but if so, is that how you wanna present your star character the first time out of the gate in a new season? The little bald guy wasn't much help either.

I did like Bill - I understand she's the first gay girl Friday of the Doctor's - though it's unclear what assets she'll bring to the show. My impression was that Doc's companions were ordinary people, but they pulled their own weight somehow.

I don't hate Who (though I do get sick of hearing about it from Fandom Assembled all the time). I just don't see what makes it different from the hundred other genre shows out there. Nothing about it makes me go "Yeah! Awesome! I want more of that!" and I suspect at this point it doesn't know when to get off the stage. Perhaps the producers don't know how to end the show, or more likely, it's cruising on its reputation, knowing the TruFans® will stick around no matter what.

Thoughts?

Arrival (2016)
seen @ Cinemart Fiveplex, Forest Hills, Queens NY

One of the biggest complaints about movies or TV shows with outer space aliens is the artistic license granted to make extraterrestrials communicate with humans. As far back as the silent classic A Trip to the Moon, it was always taken for granted. Slowly, as our knowledge about the cosmos grew, and sci-fi literature became more popular, adjustments had to be made. In the 50s, aliens in movies always said something like, "We have studied your language" to at least pay lip service to the idea they're different from us.

Close Encounters had the clever idea of using light and sound as a basis for communication. Within the movie's context, its purpose was to indicate we are an intelligent species, even if we were incapable at the time of traveling who-knows-how-many millions of light years in giant Christmas-tree ornaments. Contact used prime numbers the same way - mathematics being a language all its own.

Arrival might be the first movie I've seen where humans make a concerted effort to decipher a written alien language; where it's the film's raison d'etre. I have to admit, half the time I watched it, I kept expecting Amy Adams to discover "to serve man" is actually a cookbook, metaphorically speaking, but the inevitable twist ending was quite different.


As a kid, I liked cryptograms. You know, where there's an encoded message, where X stands for A, Q for B, J for C and so on, and you have to decipher the code before you read the message. Sometimes entirely different symbols stood in for our familiar English alphabet. Sometimes, I'd try to make my own code, but I never had anyone with which to share the code. I liked cryptography as a game, a puzzle, but I never aspired to pursue it as a career.

The alien languages invented for fictitious books, TV shows and movies all have one thing in common: they require human actors to speak these words. Arrival acknowledges up front humans are incapable of speaking the aliens' language, therefore the need for a written language is established.


It's a clever conceit. I can't help but wonder if it could've been enough to carry the whole film. The climax of Close Encounters, after all, relied on that first contact moment. Here, Adams and Jeremy Renner succeed in that task, but then the stakes are raised. I can't say more without revealing spoilers, though I will say while I got the twist ending, I didn't grok whether it was something within Adams' character, or if it was the result of the aliens' intervention. It was pretty weird.

Star Trek Beyond
seen @ New Paltz Cinema, New Paltz NY

SPOILERS

New Paltz, New York is a small college town in the Hudson Valley. Bibi and Eric have lived there for many years. It suits their temperament. It's ultra-liberal, scenic, close enough to New York that it doesn't seem too far away, yet distant enough to feel autonomous. I visit them once or twice a year. Sometimes they come down here to New York to visit me. Bibi and I were debating what to do during my trip up there last Saturday when we realized we had an opportunity to see Star Trek Beyond together. That settled the problem of what to do.