A review of Lucy.

Lucy is a strange science-fiction movie. Not so much because of its subject matter, more because it flirts with so many science-fiction sub-genres. But more about that latter. The film begins in Taiwan where Lucy, Scarlett Johansson, is exposed to a new experimental drug and finds her brain capacity greatly expanded. This increases her ability to acquire knowledge and opens up abilities like telekinesis. To find out what is happening to her brain she contacts a brain researcher played by Morgan Freeman. 

Lucy does not seem to know what sort of science-fiction film it wants to be. It starts out as a thriller with Lucy’s boyfriend trapping her in a very dangerous situation. For most of its running time the movie is very much an action/adventure movie, as Lucy attempts to extract herself from the mess she is in. In amongst the action, the film superficially explores the potential of an expanded human brain. Near the end the movie attempts some revelations about the meaning of life. 

The film was written and directed by mega-film maker Luc Besson, who also wrote and directed the excellent The Fifth Element. Some of his direction seems a bit bizarre, like his use of scenes of animals that are about to be trapped or attacked, or are copulating at the beginning of the movie. These scenes jar the viewer out of the movie. They seem designed to emphasise that humans who use only ten percent of their brains are motivated by primitive animal instincts. The movie than asks the question, what would motivate a human if they used more than ten per cent of their brain? 

Scarlet Johansson is believable and involving as her character’s terror transforms into the emotional indifference of a seeker of knowledge. Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman. The special effects are realistic. 

The ending of the film is reminiscent of Altered States and 2001: A Space Odyssey, as Lucy goes on a visual trip while her brain ponders the universe. There is a very obvious tribute to 2001 involving a USB flash drive. It is a pity Lucy doesn’t attempt to answer the big questions like 2001 did.

Lucy is enjoyable to watch, but will disappoint those hoping to be challenged by ideas. Once a viewer exits the cinema, their animal instincts will quickly replace any examination of the film’s superficial meanings.

A review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is set just over a decade after Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In that movie, a scientist experimented with a cure for Alzheimer’s on apes. The cure increased the intelligence of the apes. The apes eventually escaped and fled into the forests near San Francisco. The Alzheimer’s cure also caused a virus that wiped out most of humanity.

Dawn of the Planet of Apes returns to the ape’s forest refuge, where they have created their own primitive society. They are lead by Caesar, an ape raised by the scientist who created the Alzheimer’s drug. The apes haven’t seen humans for a few years and suspect that they are all be dead. But they aren’t.

A group of human survivors lives in San Francisco, and they are running out of fuel. They send a team into the forest to attempt to restart a hydro-electric generator. Their team encounters the apes, fear causes misunderstandings and violence ensues.

A committee of four writers wrote the film. They include the husband and wife team Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa who both also wrote Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The other two writers were Mark Bomback who wrote The Wolverine and the remake of Total Recall, and Scott Z. Burns who wrote Contagion. So the writers have a decent science-fiction pedigree. Matt Reeves directed. Among other films, he also directed Cloverfield.

Andy Serkis returns in the role of the ape Caesar that he played in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. His performance and excellent CGI create a believably proud and caring character.

Australian Jason Clarke plays Malcolm, a thinking man of action who leads the humans attempting to restart the hydro-electric generator. This appears to be Clarke’s first lead role in a movie. Previously he was the male CIA interrogator in Zero Dark Thirty. He also has appeared in a bunch of television shows including Farscape.

Gary Oldman makes an appearance as the thoughtful, but pragmatic, leader of the human survivors. 

The film looks magnificent in 2D. The apes look and sound real, especially when they talk. Their pronunciations of words are more like grunts, unlikely the English accented Roddy McDowall in the original Planet of the Apes.

The apes aren’t into democracy, Caesar leads them like the chief of a primitive tribe of humans. In fact, very little imagination is required to substitute American Indians for the apes and turn the movie into a film about colonisation. Caesar could easily have been an Indian chief raised by white settlers.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes does not have the excitement of new ideas that Rise of the Planet of the Apes had. That film was all about intelligence. It explored ideas around the battle to prevent brain diseases. And it explored what might happen if animal intelligence is increased to something like human intelligence.

Dawn of the Planet of Apes is a much simpler film about fear of the other, a theme that occurs regularly in movies. The movie’s tension, pace and action will suck most viewers into its story. It is just a pity that it did not attempt to explore a few more ideas. Still it is an exciting film to watch.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes keeps the Planet of the Apes’ mythology going. It is very easy to imagine how the apes in this movie evolve to the apes and civilisation in the original Planet of the Apes. So unless other ideas and themes emerge to explore, the franchise should be given a rest.  

In the Planet of the Apes lexicon, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes would come in third, behind the original Planet of the Apes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. These movies are way ahead of the rest, especially the Tim Burton directed turkey.

Review of Edge of Tomorrow.

 

Edge of Tomorrow is a gripping, fast-paced, action science-fiction movie. It has time-travel, aliens and Tom Cruise being killed over and over again. What more could you want? It’s not exactly original, with a premise very similar to Source Code, except aliens replace the terrorists. For those who missed Source Code, think Groundhog Day, only in Edge of Tomorrow the conceited main character has to die to reset the day, and the stakes are slightly more than bedding Andie MacDowell. Cruise has to save the world, once more.

Cruise plays a different kind of hero here. He is not the Joe Everyman of War of the Worlds, or the inquisitive technician of Oblivion. In Edge of Tomorrow he is a media spin doctor for the army, Major Bill Cage. He is a man who knows how to spew out propaganda for the war effort, but has no intentions of going anywhere near the war front.  

The aliens are called Mimics. Their navigation system must have malfunctioned because they did invade Los Angeles, but Europe instead. Perhaps one of their many reptilian tentacles hit the wrong button on the navigation console while watching Independence Day. Most of Europe is occupied by the Mimics and if something isn’t done to stop their advance, they will soon threaten Los Angeles.    

The Americans, with the aid of one Aussie, plan to stop them. They decide to launch a massive D-day type invasion to re-take Europe. Cage is ordered to go in with the troops to report on the invasion. He refuses, so he is demoted and sent to the disembarking point for the invasion force, an airfield. There he is placed in a squad of other malcontents. The next morning he is quickly fitted out in a battle exoskeleton suit and marched onto a paratrooper plane. He is dropped into the front line and dies quickly.

Then the fun part of the story begins. When he dies he immediately travels back in time to the day before the invasion. He runs into a true war hero, Rita Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt. For such a petite actress, she is surprisingly convincing as a battle hardened warrior (the exoskeleton suit helps).  Together she and Cage set about trying to win the invasion, resulting in Cage dying and resetting over and over.

Aussie Noah Taylor makes an appearance as scientist who is slumming as a battle suit mechanic. He helps provide some of the technical information needed to explain the time loops. He also has some ideas on how to defeat the aliens.

The movie has some very nice twists as the story moves along at a great pace. No time is wasted in this movie. And it concludes with a realistic, logical ending. Well at least if you pay attention it does. Oh, and the special effects are excellent, unlike Avatar, the aliens look real and different. And I watched the 2D version. 

Edge of Tomorrow is based on the Japanese graphic novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The movie was written by a commitee of Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. It is directed by Doug Liman who, among other films, directed the okay science-fiction film Jumper.

If you enjoy Star Trek you will enjoy Edge of Tomorrow. Come to think of it, I am sure one of the Star Trek series had an episode with a time-travel looping story similar to Edge of Tomorrow. If you hate Tom Cruise, just get over it: you are missing some great science-fiction movies. So go and see Edge of Tomorrow and have a great science-fiction time.

My writing week: Issue one, year five.

Hi all,

This is my annual best of the previous years science fiction and new year’s resolutions post.

2011’s Science Fiction Books.

The best science fiction book I read last year was The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood, a prequel to her equally as good Oryx and Crake. It’s not about global warming, the flood is a genetically engineered plague. I also enjoyed Stephen King’s Under the Dome – which did sag a bit in the middle - and Dave Kitson’s self-published ebook Turing Evolved, which had a great story, it just needed a good edit.

Overall, I made very good choices for reading in 2011, except for the very much overrated Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. Its story took way too long to develop into anything interesting. It should have been cut to half its 600 pages. 

2011’s Science Fiction Movies.

Apart from the excellent Rise of the Apes, was any other science fiction movie released in 2011? At least that’s the question I asked myself. When I checked what else was released, I did remember other movies I had seen last year.

Source Code was good, but not the sort of film that got my imagination going. Paul was a good laugh. I expected more of a Philip K. Dick story with The Adjustment Bureau. X-men Origins was a good but instantly forgettable movie. The same goes for Super 8 and Cowboys and Aliens. There currently seems little appetite to make science fiction movies that get a viewer thinking. I want more movies with grand themes and ideas like Inception, Moon and District 9.

Two absolute stinkers released last year were Battle Los Angles and I am Number Four.

2011’s Science Fiction Television.

Easily the best science fiction on television last year was series four of Torchwood: Miracle Day. It was a ten part miniseries that slowly built up the tension before reaching a satisfying conclusion. A series that made you think about the prolonging of life for those with little quality of life.  

Doctor Who improved as the year went on. There were some good episodes, but none as good as those with the previous two doctors. Suspense has been thrown out the window with the current doctor. As we all knew the doctor wouldn’t die, although I was hopeful he would regenerate, the continuing story of his death generated zero suspense. I did enjoy the non-alien invasion Christmas episode.

Terra Nova is too predictable and like Falling Skies has been made as a family drama (soap), rather than a science fiction series. The lead characters and families in both series act exactly like other current television families. They even have the same clichéd dialogue. The writers seem to have put no effort into exploring how families might behave in the future or in a world destroyed by aliens. Instead, the writers have said, let’s write characters who today’s teenagers can identify with.

I enjoyed Fringe, and look forward to its return this year. I also enjoyed the low-brow Warehouse 13, Eureka and Chuck. I think the last two will struggle for originality in future episodes.

Two movies I saw on cable stood out, both British. Monsters was an excellent character based movie, set in Mexico, where two people get to know each other as they try to cross a no-go zone full of aliens to get back to the US. I also found Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel very funny, and clever for a story about a group of drunken yobs who step into the lavatory and find themselves in the future. 

Last Year’s Resolutions/Goals

I didn’t make any writing resolutions last year. The previous year I had a goal of writing every day, which I did achieve.

The only new year’s resolution I made last year was to download no ebooks that were less than $5. My next post will tell you how I went with that resolution.

Last year I signed up for the Goodreads reading challenge. My goal was to read 26 novels/anthologies. I only read half that due to tiredness and choosing long books – they averaged 400 pages. This year I will again challenge myself to read 26 novels/anthologies, hopefully the tireds won’t intervene again.

2012 Writing Goals.

My writing goals for this year are many. I want to finish the first draft of Jack Logan, Astronaut. I am about half way through it at 67,000 words. I then want to rewrite it, get it critiqued, rewrite it, and then edit it.

I also hope to edit a 25,000 word novella, get it critiqued, and rewrite and edit it. The same goes for a 6,000 word short story.

I want to do all that writing before NaNoWriMo in November which I plan to do again.

If I have time, I want to return to rewriting another novel, which I was halfway through rewriting last year. 

When I am writing new words my aim is 1000-2000 words a weekday. When I am rewriting and editing, obviously the word count will drop.

I also aim to again get 12 paid articles published in DiVine magazine and to look for other freelance writing jobs.

I want to critique a lot more this year and be more of a contributor to a couple of writing communities I am involved in. In the last two years I have only critiqued a couple of novels and a few stories. I need to do more.
 

I want to do all this before the world ends on December 21, according to the Mayans anyway.