Scientific American offers up a short survey of apocalyptic visions to supplement their September issue, which I haven’t seen yet. Did your favorite apocalypse make the list?
Meanwhile, Web Urbanist offers up another slew and a half of apocalyptic visions, with lots of great (and horrific) imagery to back it up. I’ve had this tab open for more than a week. I just keep going back to it as I make notes for Razed.
Did you read this thing I posted on my tumblelog? I may be wholly foolish to even write this out loud, this call for perspective on the subject of mediocre stories, but it just sort of fell out of my head onto the page this way, and I’m not afraid to be wrong for a little while if it’ll help me be right in the future.
Look at this list of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories from Wikipedia. It makes me feel hardly qualified to have my own vision for a post-apocalyptic world, for Razed, looking at how many of these stories I haven’t read or watched. Granted, it’s one hell of a list, and I’m not sure that I need to see Transmorphers before I’m qualified to use my own imagination, but still. Staggering.
How many post-apocalyptic stories do I need to consume before I’m ready to conjure my own and, more importantly, inspire others to conjure theirs? It’s obviously a ridiculous question. The goal of Razed isn’t to allude to the maximum number of apocalypses. The true answer, I think, depends on how real can I make the apocalypse seem during play, and how viscerally scary — and freeing! — can that apocalypse be made to feel in the text.
So that’s my goal right now: to be visceral.
Late last week, Wil Wheaton tweeted about this article at io9, “The Real Problem With Midichlorians,” which brings up, after ten years, why The Phantom Menace’s midichlorians are lame. Nevermind that the article can’t decide if it’s about Lost or Star Trek or what; it’s lashing out because Damon Lindelof had the gall to mention midichlorians at all. But whatever. That’s not why I’m finally opening my mouth on this subject, after ten years of nodding politely while my fellow geeks bond over their hatred for those little Force-sensitive microbes.
Understand that I say this knowing full well that it’ll get me banished from the cool-kids table for the crime of not hating on the prequels.
The reason I’m writing is to tell you why, even though midichlorians are lame, you’re wrong when you claim that they represent everything that’s wrong with the much-mocked Star Wars prequels. Here’s my argument, in three parts:
These notes were made from a couple of viewings of the pilot movie that was released on DVD in 2009. Some scenes have apparently been re-shot or added for the broadcast pilot, which I haven’t seen at the time of this writing.
The futuristic backdrop of Caprica City.
It’s significant that we are now posited to be the direct descendants of these people, rather than a parallel society — the 13th tribe — which transforms some portion of the cautionary tale into an escapable conclusion. That’s dramatic, but is it the kind of dramatic that I like? I’m waiting to see the series before I make up my mind.
With this show we get a weird and wonderful hybrid, part Rome and part Gattaca. We get the escapist fantasy of futurism in design and effects, and the provocative, mysterious historical fantasy of glimpsing a vanished culture that’s eerily familiar but does things different from us. The alien ancestors. We get the culture shock that comes from watching people arrive at a similar, but meaningfully different, mix of conclusions about the universe, humanity, and what’s important in life than we’ve arrived at now. The only other show I can think of that recently played itself actively for culture shock as a source of drama — for generating conflict not between characters but between the show and the audience — was the intriguing but underutilized Kings.
The typically wonderful BLDG BLOG has a typically insightful and provocative article up today about Die Hard, calling it “one of the best architectural films of the past 25 years.” I’d agree, but the site’s Geoff Manaugh makes the argument so well that you should just read his piece. Plus, you’ll read about militant tunneling through urban fabric and the horrors of warfare permeating notionally solid barriers.
In the comments, I argue a bit in defense of Die Hard With A Vengeance, though I probably lose points by defending Die Harder in a neighboring breath:
I’d argue, though, that the second two Die Hard pictures are still meant to be explorations of place and defiance of traditional movement, to some extent. The second film uses the redefinition of sea level as a weapon to destroy a passenger plane, for example. It otherwise doesn’t try very hard, I agree.
The third film, Die Hard With A Vengeance, though, is full of illicit urban movement and things masquerading as other things, especially as traditional urban tropes like police officers that turn out to be thieves and playgrounds that turn out to be bombs. Again, I don’t think it’s as successful, but the third film (also a McTiernan picture), is, I think, pursuing a similar agenda at least. I think it’s restrained by its script (which was not originally written to be a Die Hard movie at all, as I understand it) and by the difficulties in pulling off the same ideas on an urban scale, but I admire its attempts to pursue the idea.
Some day I would really like to be smart enough to be able to write the book on Die Hard that I’ve long wanted to read.
A few years ago, Rian Johnson gave us the high-school detective noir, Brick. I’m a fan of Brick. It was the kind of indie debut that begged one to wonder what that director’s next gig would look like.
Johnson’s next gig is the screwball con-man yarn, The Brothers Bloom — big enough and wise enough to snag a great cast in Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rinko Kikuchi, Maximillian Schell, and Robbie Coltrane. Brody and Ruffalo play the titular flimflam siblings, Bloom and Stephen. Weisz plays their eccentric and wealthy mark, Penelope Stamp.
When The Brothers Bloom debuted, critics were quick to make Wes Anderson references, for good or ill, and that’s a fair comparison. Adrien Brody’s brotherly angst and train-bound antics show immediate (if shallow) comparability with Darjeeling Limited, I suppose. Both directors have somewhat similar visual voices, too — old-school zooms, charmingly composed ensemble shots, steady looks of measured action, dry comedy, carefully managed palettes — but I think critics implying that Johnson is aping Anderson’s style are limiting the field. We have room enough for both directors to maneuver without having to dedicate the yard to Anderson. Put another way, the comparison is apt and in Johnson’s favor; he’s made a good-looking and witty picture here. (Props, certainly, to DP Steve Yedlin, too; everything from the one-hat burg to Jakarta at midnight looks lovely.)
Faulting The Brothers Bloom for its obvious influences implies that the likes of David Mamet and The Sting should not be influential; as if being influenced by them was somehow problematic. That’s crazy talk. In fact, let me pay The Brothers Bloom the compliment of saying that it doesn’t just reveal the influence of Mametian gamesters and classic con-man pictures, it wears its love like a badge. Ricky Jay’s voice is that badge.
The Brothers Bloom is a sometimes classy, sometimes silly swindler’s fable told with dry wit and handsomely disheveled aplomb. It gets its suits made at the same shop as some other films, but it’s a good-looking suit so what do I care?
(Thinking about it now, by the way, Rian Johnson’s oeuvre to date seems to be a terrific portfolio to take with him on an audition for the gig directing Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I’d be just fine if the film adaptation of that book landed at the intersection of Brick and The Brothers Bloom — it’d do well to be a mix of hard-boiled visual jargon and eccentric charm.)
That’s the review for those of you who haven’t seen the movie. What follows is what occurred to me while watching the movie, and is rife with spoilers. Fair warning…
I’ve seen Star Trek three or four times now, and the more I see it, the more I like it. Or, more accurately, the easier I find it to ignore the improbabilities in its plot and the stupid asides like Scotty caught in a Looney Tunes short. But whatever. The movie ultimately works, and I want more.
Some things that occurred to me during recent viewings:
The new Trek is an understated motion picture.
John Connor survives another disaster.
You’ve read some of the stories about all the various scripts and permutations the film went through on its way from pre-production through to the theatrical cut. Some version of the script apparently focused on Marcus, finding John Connor in a smaller, more distant role as a rarely seen leader. Some version supposedly saw John Connor’s consciousness being downloaded into a cyborg body at the end, or something to that effect, as some kind of shocking twist. If you haven’t read the reports of how the film was allegedly revised around things like Internet leaks and the expansion of the Connor role for actor Christian Bale, then get Googling. I’m not about to rehash all that here.
What I am going to do is direct your attention to the sequence, early in the film, just after the shift to the post-apocalyptic setting, from when Connor arrives on helicopter to when he crashes in what may be the same helicopter.
Maybe my favorite moment in the film, L.A. Confidential, comes after Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) has just delivered the monologue about why he became a cop. It involves the murder of Exley’s father by a killer who was never identified—a killer that Exley has given the made-up name of Rollo Tomasi, just to have something to call him. Tomasi represents all those guys who get away with it. Once Exley has given this speech that explains his character, which David Mamet might call a Dead Kitten Story, Exley asks the older, semi-crooked vice detective, Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), why he became a cop.
Vincennes’ face slowly falls, his eyes drifting away, and he says, “I don’t remember.”
Great bit.
Will Hindmarch is a freelance writer and designer.
It rhymes with "blind march."
Email: word(at)wordstudio(dot)net.
Twitter: @wordwill
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Co-Founder: Gameplaywright.net
