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Back in 1989 a high school friend of mine who had an interest in underground comix, brought over an issue of RAW. Featured within was a short four or five page set of panels with labels indicating the year that you were seeing in different parts of the same panel from the same single vantage point. It was genius. Robert McGuire's concept was pure genius. I remember thinking that it would make a great movie.

Fast forward to 2024 when Here was released and I was thinking, "this HAS to be based on the comic I saw back in the 80s". I didn't know for sure, but when I saw the credits and it was mentioned that this was based on a graphic novel, I had to look up the creator, and found out that he had expanded his original concept into a full graphic novel in 2014. I have to wonder if Tom Hanks' character, Richard, is based on Richard McGuire to some extent.

I really liked the movie a good deal. It executed the story exactly the way I would have expected. There was stuff that was left out of the movie that would have pushed this into science fiction territory. But overall, this was a great film. I think the reason a lot of people didn't seem to like it that much, isn't a failing of the film itself but a failing of the audience. These days most people seem to crave a lot of fight scenes in films, and this movie doesn't provide much of that at all (thankfully).

Certainly, some of the audience just wouldn't get the story because they don't have the life experience required to relate to it. Once you hit your later 40s or early 50s and you're a thinker, you do start to think of everything you're aware of and find, to your surprise, that you have about 100 years worth of experiences that you've absorbed from others around you and the media. Some of the first movies I watched with my parents as very young child were movies from the 1920s and 1930s. And why not? That would be like someone today watching movies from the 1970s and 1980s.

But, I believe, the more disappointing reason for the dislike is that people just aren't smart enough to understand and appreciate the idea of being a static viewer in a single spot who sees events over millions of years. It's a super cool concept and a unique story telling device. There isn't much reason for anyone to think it's uninteresting unless they just didn't comprehend the concept and the story. Didn't you ever have any curiosity about what was happening in the house where you live 100, 200, 1000, 10000 years before you existed? If you don't, then you have little appreciation for life.

This movie would have done better if our western society had done better. But given our decent into fascism nearly everywhere in the world today, it's clear that there is much lacking in the intelligence of most people in the western world. The film itself is a masterpiece both technically and story-wise. It captures what it means to be a regular, everyday person in a way that SHOULD resonate with everyone. That it doesn't means that most people are incomplete.

I found a full version of the film which was a total of three hours. While the actors in the film are some pretty notable giants of the day, the poor set design and poor dialogue make for a really hard to watch film. I grew up watching this stuff, and I can say the production is incredibly low grade compared to its contemporaries.

Consider this, the movie was made in 1979 and aired in 1980. Star Wars was released in 1977 and The Empire Strikes Back in 1982. This movie feels lower in production value than Tom Baker Doctor Who programmes (which has excellent writing and were far more enjoyable).

I will admit, I have not read BNW, the book. This is my second attempt at trying to get the story and I have to say I feel like this film failed. The first attempt was a book on tape in the 1990s that was incomplete so it made no sense at all. Now I feel like I have the bones of the story from this film, but am missing a lot of detail.

My wife and I discussed this a bit. This is one book she gave a hard pass to because when she was a teen all the guys who liked it were libertarians (we are far left of center). I never had much interest in the book itself other than wanting to see this film because of an article in Starlog magazine that made it look interesting.

On the libertarian side of things, I read and understood what Ayn Rand was saying in Atlas Shrugged. I find it comical that Trump has turned out to be everything she was warning people against, but I am sure most libertarians don't see it. However, as much as I disagree with Ayn Rand, I think Atlas Shrugged could have made a decent 1940s film.

The horrid attempt in the 2000s to make Atlas Shrugged into a movie reminds me of this BNW iteration. Poor teleplay writing. Poor acting, by otherwise decent actors. And a really low budget. At this point, I will have to make time to read BNW so I actually get what Huxley was trying to say. I don't think it was what this film presented. Just like Atlas Shrugged, the three part movie didn't present what Any Rand was talking about at all.