Lucy In The Sky With F-14s . . . Or, Top Gun Reboot

Recently, I got to thinking about what would make an interesting film.  Ideally, it would be engaging, decently plotted, fast paced and fun. 

Let me back up a bit.  Me and my buddy were hanging out and I said something like, "Even though I thought it was a terrible movie, I really want to see Pacific Rim."  Something about the swaggering ridiculousness of that movie appealed to me. 

But then he commented that all the bad parts would still be bad, but wouldn't be moderated by being unexpected.  I'd know when to cringe and when to sigh.  All I really wanted was to have fun.

So I said something like, "You know what would be fun?" 

That's the idea I want to talk about for a second.

What if we remade Top Gun?  Yep, bring back Maverick and Goose and Iceman and Joker and all the rest.  Exact same story, exact same script.  Update it just a bit by putting them in F-22s and make the MiGs Chinese planes. 

Except instead of this . . .

The only difference is that Maverick is a woman.

Think about it for a second.  Charlie is still a woman.  Goose is still a dude.  The love story remains unchanged except that in the new world where "Don't ask, don't tell" has been repealed, this kind of story makes sense.  (I'd even keep the music.)  But instead of a testosterone fueled romp, it takes on a whole new meaning and there's no inherent reason to even change the dialogue.  (Except for a few pronouns here and there.)

We get this.

It's still a great movie.  It is still full of great action, cheesy dialogue, intense rivalry and random volleyball game in the middle of the movie.  And lest you concern yourself that much of the narrative occurs in the men's locker room--easy fix!  Instead they banter in the gym (or if you want to go CRAAAZY just make it coed). 

So here's your homework for the weekend.  What's your favorite action movie and how does it change (or better yet, how does it remain the same) if you make your protagonist a woman?

Attempt No Landing Here . . . Or, Europa Report Movie Review

Don't let the title of this blog fool you.  Europa Report, which was initially released to video on demand (in my case, Amazon Direct) lacks much of the daring that would have made it great, but it's still a far better science fiction than anything else on the market right now.

And as the title alludes to, Europa Report basically picks up 2010 if there hadn't been any monolith.  The central conceit isn't that humanity is trying to figure out some giant slab in space, but exploring for the simple joy of exploration.  Yeah, that's it: Space is just cool, and expanding the bounds of human understanding is worth a little risk.  It's the kind of moral the more science fiction needs to take, and makes the ending both inevitable and unforeseen.

The plot is pretty simple.  An international corporation (since the nations of the world no longer seem to care) has been assembled to explore some interesting heat signatures discovered on the surface of Europa.  Cue giant space ship (which actually looks like something we'd send to another planet).

The problems pile up within the first few minutes.  Communications are knocked out by a solar storm, but the crew is unharmed and decides to continue without any word from Earth.  (Though I'm forced to wonder what else they really thought they could do.  It's not like you can just turn around in space.  But I digress, it's not a big deal.)

Director Sebastián Cordero gives us three distinct story-lines.  Using "found footage" is less of a trope here, since it makes perfect sense that everything would be filmed, and getting hold of that footage is adequately explained in the film so the fourth wall remains intact (a problem Apollo 18 had).  The first story line is pure documentary, and interviews the directors of the Europa corp as well as chief engineers to help give context to the story--they're basically exposition.  

The second story line is a bit of a mystery.  We're quickly informed that shortly after losing contact with Earth, something bad happened.  A quick count of characters reveals that someone is missing but we're not told how that person went missing.  Instead, we're left to dwell on the loss and gradually immerse ourselves along with the astronauts in the vast emptiness of space.  It's a compelling emotional appeal which is unfortunately cut short.  Nonetheless, it remains a gripping second act.

The final story line (and most of the third act) is landing on Europa, drilling into the ice and in the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, waiting to see what licks the camera lens.  The film could have easily devolved into horror farce, but instead of cultivating worn out horror tropes it expands on the central theme of sacrifice in the face of human understanding.  And the final shot, while completely inevitable remains unexpected and the ultimate sacrifice is rendered triumphal.  

Should you see this movie?  Do you like good science fiction in a form that is intelligent without being oblique?  If yes, then definitely.  If you love action and 'splosions and not much else, then go see Pacific Rim instead. 

***

Update (15 Aug, 2013): The Mary Sue has an intelligent review out now. 

The Gift . . . Or, More Awesome Sci-Fi

Movies this good make me wonder just what writers and producers in Hollywood spend all their time up to.  It's so rich and spare and well-developed that I can't believe I don't see this on my TV every night.

Batman: Puppet Master

 

With the end of the Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, I thought the Dark Knight was done until the next franchise re-boot.  And since I've never given credence to fan films I doubt I would have stumbled across this on my own.  But Nolan's universe is still alive and kicking.  Pairing the ventriloquist and Scarface up with E. Nigma was a stroke of genius, and the acting of the ventriloquist was more than enough to watch this video.  I'd never given much thought to seeing a live-action sequence with a tommy-gun toting dummy, but after this I think it might be worth a spin.

Originally found at io9.

Wheel of Time

 

The Wheel of Time series is done.  Now, I know there are no ends in the Wheel of Time, this is just an end, but out here in the world where these works are read and loved, the series has reached a conclusion.  I have to say, this is a bitter-sweet moment.  Fourteen years ago I discovered Robert Jordan's immense body of work.  And when I say immense, I mean truly epic (in the literal sense of that word).  Every book is bigger than the Bible; a hardback in your book bag could stop a car.  I've seen them used to prop open blast doors.  They are incredible.  And they are engaging and fun.

My first foray into writing came about through the Wheel of Time.  I wrote fan-fiction (yeah, I'll admit it) set during the time of the Trolloc Wars.  Set a couple hundred years before the main story set in the novels, but frequently mentioned, this gave myself and small cohort that wrote with me, ample opportunity to experiment without the constraints of playing entirely in someone else's sandbox.  I wrote hundreds of thousands of words there, perhaps more, and it taught me important lessons that I've carried into my writing today.  You could say that Robert Jordan was my literary instructor, the mentor I emulated with every written word.  As the years between books dragged on, however, I became disillusioned.  I decided that what I needed to do was put the books down and wait until they had all been published so that I could read the entire series in a single orgy of reading.  But then Robert Jordan died.

I remember feeling a great loss--the sense that something great had left the world and would be left unfinished.  I knew from Jordan's comments that he had written out the entire framework of the plot in his notebooks, so the story would survive, but I couldn't imagine that the Wheel of Time would ever be completed in a way that was truly satisfying to me, as a reader.  I was reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings, never truly completed in his lifetime, and I feared that the Wheel of Time (which the blurb on the first book blatantly declares is the successor to Tolkien's magisterial works) would suffer the same fate.

Then, when Tor and the Jordan estate (through his wife, Harriet) announced that they had found someone to complete the series I was annoyed.  In fact, I was miffed.  How could any author have both the chutzpah and the audacity to think he could finish another author's work?  Furthermore, the guy they picked I'd never even heard of--and at that time I was steeped in the genre.  I knew all the names, all the titles, and had probably read most of them, and this new guy was simply unknown to me.  Brandon Sanderson.  It turned out he got the gig because of a letter, a eulogy really, that he'd written.  I went to his website when I heard he'd be finishing the series and I read that letter.  You can read it here.  I had something of a flabbergasm.  His sincerity, humility and good grace gave me hope that he could not only handle the series, but make it something that would astound and delight me all over again.

I've continually said that when the last book was finished, I would re-read the series.  I never really gave it much thought; I somehow suspected that it would never end.  And now it's over.  Sanderson posted today on all his social media outlets that he'd completed the last word and sent it off to the publisher.  I've got to wonder what it means to the genre to have something this immense finally completed.  It represents two decades of the genre; fantasy has come a long way since then; it's gone meta with Patrick Rothfuss, and noir with Joe Abercrombie and still continues the epic tradition with Steven Erikson's ten-book cycle, Malazan Book of the Fallen.  But Jordan was always the cornerstone.  He was the modern foundation of our fantasy genre.  And for that contribution I will always be indebted to him.

What's Sci-Fi Got To Do With Global Warming?

Tobias Buckell's "Arctic Rising" has been on my radar for a while now, and I recently got his book so when I saw the below review, I figured it was fate telling me something.  Also, recently taking a class that was basically "Geography of How People are F*cking Up the Planet" got me thinking along this vein.  Take a look.

MIND MELD: Ecological Sci-Fi