Monsters Review

Wanna know where I’ve been? Busy. Mostly with a production, but sometimes, with Netflix. Here’s a movie I found last year that just popped up again on my watch list, due to a potential sequel. So let me tell you all about it, after the break. But beware possible spoilers.

This is a fantastic but of sci-fi IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GETTING INTO. A lot of people were infuriated by the marketing campaign, which mostly sold it as a giant monster action thriller. See the trailer below:

As you can guess, many people were pulled in by the promise of terror and went to see it, but were disappointed by the actual movie. Here’s why:

THE MOVIE ISN’T A GIANT MONSTER ACTION THRILLER.

More accurately, it’s a philosophical character piece which follows two people falling in love in the middle of dire circumstances. If you go in expecting that, then the movie is utterly fantastic.

Yes, there are giant aliens, but they don’t dominate the screentime at all. Quite the contrary. But when they are seen, they’re pretty cool, like bioluminescent land octopi…or dodecapi…there’s more than eight…the point is, the CGI is done well.

The script, the direction, and the cinematography themselves deserve awards. The movie wonders to itself whether the creatures are the true monsters, or we are. And that in itself is worth watching.

Another thing that attracts me to this movie is that it (mostly) doesn’t take place in the United States. Its portrayal of Mexico is well balanced. These are actual people, not just caricatures written in for fun.

The actors were not picked from the ranks of Hollywood celebs that we would all instantly recognize. They too, did a phenomenal job, carrying the movie forward, because it was in fact all about their characters and relationships.

Obviously, I was very impressed. Watch it yourself and form your own opinions, currently on Netflix instant.

– JV out.

The Most Badass Women of Scifi

In this article, we pay tribute to twelve of sci-fi’s most kickass women.

See who’s in the club, after the break.

12. Dr. Ellie Sattler (Jurassic Park)
            – Now some of you may be confused as to why I chose Dr. Sattler, but hear me out. I draw from the book as well. She is an expert on paleobotany, and agrees to visit the Jurassic Park facility. But through all the shit that goes down, she stays determined the entire time. She runs into an underground bunker to turn on the power, with Compsagnathus and Velociraptors running around in the dark. She escapes several velociraptors, and then (in book) volunteers to go out to the fence and BAIT them to buy everyone some time. This ends with her jumping off the roof of the building to escape. And then of course, she willingly walks into the velociraptor nest and doesn’t get eaten. No big deal. They cut out her coolest exploits in the movie, but she definitely qualifies as a total badass. In her universe, other female badasses include Sarah Harding (The Lost World).

11. Agent Carter (Captain America: The First Avenger)

           – This one is fairly obvious. Out of all the Marvel girlfriends, she is the only one who runs around with the boys shooting at things. At the same time, she maintains her feminine side in the midst of a job usually dominated by men. She’s a crack shot, and in the end, she runs through a hail of deadly blue laser fire right along with the soldiers. She’s a soldier herself, and in her time, that’s quite admirable. Also, she’s has a British accent, which automatically adds cool points.

10. Number Six/Caprica Six (Battlestar Galactica)
          – Six is a Cylon (or cybernetic organism) who was sent in to inflitrate human defenses and facilitate the fall of humankind. She’s a smart, sexy, kickass killing machine who will not hesitate to do what is necessary to get what she wants. But (SPOILERS) halfway through the show she shows her moral side, advocating peace with humanity and becoming a symbol for other Cylons to follow. She is also one of the only Cylons (exlcluding Number 8) who becomes pregnant, although she loses the child, she remains brave until the end.

9. Ellen Ripley (Alien)
          – A while back we did a tribute article just to Sigourney Weaver, who portrayed a normal woman in extraordinary circumstances. She was a scientist aboard the Nostromos when she had to face Xenomorphs and rogue AI. She survived it all (by being a badass) and even went back to the planet, saving a little girl named Newt from certain death and defeating a nasty Xenomorph Queen. She never had children, but she would’ve made an awesome mother. A landmark character in sci-fi history.

8. Josephine Lupo (Eureka)
          – Jo is the deputy sheriff for a town full of geniuses. She’s ex-military special forces, with a vengeance. She’ll take whatever crisis comes her way and handle it, all while trying to find the perfect man. She’s a total kickass, ’nuff said.

7. Zoe Washburne (Firefly)
          – Zoe is the first mate aboard the ship Serenity, and boy is that a job. She survived the war for independence with Captain Malcolm Reynolds and they’ve worked together ever since, getting out of more crazy shenanigans than normally possible. She stays calm under fire, and always does the right thing. She also wants to start a family, with her husband Wash, the ship’s pilot. Always prepared for any sticky situation, Zoe’s got your back no matter what.

6. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games)
          – Katniss went to the Hunger Games (a fight to the death between 24 kids) in order to save her sister. She is an expert archer and survivalist. She’ll kill if she has to, but she doesn’t enjoy it, which puts her above some of the opponents she has to face. She does everything out of love, and SPOILER it inspires a revolution.

5. Black Widow/ Natasha Romanoff (Iron Man 2, The Avengers)
          – Natasha is a secret agent working for SHIELD who has dealt with a lot of crap (not to mention Tony Stark’s attitude). She’ll kick your ass, and she’ll do it with smooth grace, without even messing up her hair. She plays a key role in saving the world in The Avengers.

4. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)
          – “I’m your best shot, in or out of the cockpit”. She’s a badass star pilot who survived the Cylon holocaust. She gets lots of kills and lots of men. While she may not always be the best role model (drugs, alcohol, sex, etc) she will accomplish the mission at whatever cost. She returns to a war zone just because she promised to save Anders, and she’ll disobey orders if it means saving lives.

3. Alice (Resident Evil franchise)
          – She kills zombies. In strappy clothing. With snarky attitude and slinky outfits. With shotguns filled with quarters. Sometimes with psionic superpowers. With katanas and throwing knives and guns and everything else she can get her hands on. She just keeps coming after the bad guys, and protecting her friends from mutants. How is that not badass?

2. Olivia Dunham (Fringe)
          – She’s an FBI agent recuited to Fringe division. She’s also a brilliant shot and an intelligent woman. She’s got some past issues with her stepfather, and being experimented on as a child, but no matter what happens, no matter what universe she’s in, every version of her is a total kick ass investigator. She’ll get to the bottom of any mystery, no matter how strange. And she might even get the guy along the way.

AND THE MOST BADASS SCI-FI WOMAN AWARD GOES TO:

1. River Tam (Firefly/Serenity)
          – She’ll fuck you up.

Of course, these are only twelve of the many badass women scifi has to offer. There are many others, and many in fantasy as well. Didn’t see your favorite up here? Post a comment and let us know! Tune in next time for the most badass women of fantasy!

– JV out.

Prognosis: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

I remember going to see this movie in theatres, cautiously optimistic. I figured, hey, this could be great. The original, made in 1951, was a great little movie that I thought had the potential to make a solid reboot, giving a modern reinterpretation of the actions that take place in the film. While the posters and trailers of the older movie advertised the robot-attack as the feature of the movie, most of the film was a commentary that discussed peculiarities of human society from the perspective of an alien, such as family dynamics, societal norms, and war. In the end, it left us with a hopeful message of global reform to encourage a unified planet. A reboot would be an excellent opportunity to reinforce this message while reiterating more relevant modern societal issues.

Oh, how wrong I was.

The movie was nothing short of disappointingly generic. There were no reasons given to care about anything that was happening. The action scenes were generic and could have been taken from any fugitive movie. Characters don’t pass even the most basic “personality tests,” having no particularly notable personality traits. If movies were food, this movie would be refried beans. It’s fit for consumption and has some limited degree of substance, but still manages to be particularly lackluster and bland.

Now, a lot of people like to blame this on the acting of Keanu Reeves, but I completely disagree with this line of thought. The movie suffered from sub-par writing more than anything. Keanu Reeves is a more capable actor than for what most give him credit; he has almost exclusively been given flat, blank characters after the unbelievable success of The Matrix at the box office. Films always cast him as the wordless cold badass in hope of lightning striking twice. Spoiler for you directors out there: The Matrix wasn’t a success because of Keanu Reeves, but because it was a damn good movie.

How could you go wrong with something this cool?

But I digress.

The major factor that led to this being a particularly mediocre movie is that a creative, stimulating premise was dumbed down to a banally formulaic action flick. We know a good movie can be made on this concept, since we’ve had marvelous revisitations of older franchises like Watchmen (2008) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). Both movies stay fairly faithful to the original spirit of each franchise, making alterations to each story to make them more relevant to modern issues. For example, while it did anger many die-hard fans of the popular graphic novel, the ending of the Watchmen film definitely made more sense in the context of the movie (and relatively famous internet people agree with me). For those of you familiar with the original ending, I think we can agree that most people new to the franchise would have thought it was a bit of an arse-pull, even if it was relevant to the Silver Age deconstruction pervasive throughout the novel. It’s just doesn’t make sense in the movie, and the film ending ends up making a particularly solid alternate conclusion to the story with more modern relevancy.

Now that I think of it, that sounds like good article on its own. Hmm…

Seriously, guys. We gave you one job.

In any case, the way The Day the Earth Stood Still completely fumbles the ball is not by including action, but by changing the core premise of the film. In the original, the alien protagonist Klaatu (who looks an awful lot like Michael Rennie) has come to Earth to deliver a warning to the unified leaders of the planet. When American politicians tell him it’s an impossible task, they more or less imprison Klaatu in a hospital to treat his wounds, determine his origin, and keep him off the streets. He soon escapes and assumes an alternate identity, finding a family to live with while he figures out a way to deliver his warning to the world. From there, it all rolls downhill to the famous abduction scene with Gort the robot and a satisfying conclusion that leaves one with a feeling of hope for the future of humanity.

The newer film does fine for a while. The landing had neat effects and and quite a bit of substance, and while I was fairly skeptical with their introduction of Gort the robot, the story remains fairly loyal until Klaatu is forced to take a polygraph test. They even go out of their way to give a canon explanation as to why Klaatu looks so human. There’s nothing inherently wrong here, but from this point onward, Klaatu goes on the lamb and maims or kills anyone who gets in his way as he dives headfirst into his unexplained goal, the antithesis of the original Klaatu’s sympathy and diplomacy. The iconic abduction scene is replaced by an unrelated plague of mechanical locusts, which, while it bears its own relevance to modern society, does not give back as much as it takes away by leaving out the original scene. I mean, they didn’t even make Gort a robot. They made him some kind of swarm collective. Which is cool. But it’s not Gort.

That cloud? Yeah, that’s Gort. I don’t get it either.

All things considered, this should have been a wonderful, introspective reboot that could have given Keanu Reeves his big break in the for the 2010’s. Sadly, this simply isn’t the case. It’s just another boring action movie that doesn’t really achieve anything remarkable. Is this to say that they should have omitted all action? Not in the slightest! There’s plenty of tension in several parts of the original movie, but it comes across as a bit cliche, if not outright comical, to the modern viewer. Revamping those scenes held back by special effects, the past levity of the genre, and the direction in the original could have greatly enhanced the original story, they could have given Keanu Reeves a chance to revamp his career with a new role, creating an intriguing film that glides seamlessly between scenes of suspense, action, and philosoph-…wait, what movie are we talking about again?

Doc Watson is one of the co-editors of this blog and and runs his personal blog at The GameRx Pharmacy. If you have a question or a topic idea, comment on a post or send him a Tweet @DocWatsonMD

Sigourney Weaver: Playing with Aliens Since 1979

Hello, this is Junior Varsity, stardate…Saturday…It’s my turn to post anyway.

So, if we’re talking sci-fi, there’s only a few women out there who really inspired awe in me with their roles. So I thought I’d dedicate my post to one of my favorite kickass sci-fi heroines of all time: Sigourney Weaver. I mean, she did Alien, and Aliens, which are both on the top 50 sci-fi films of all time (going by IMDB here…) The character of Ripley was so determined and awesome, that they even brought her back from the dead in Alien: Resurrection. But I haven’t seen that, so I can’t judge if that was a good or really terrible decision. Sorry.

But another great Weaver role came with the popular Star Trek satire: GalaxyQuest (also costarring Alan Rickman, one of my other faves…in general, not from sci-fi. Although we should get him into a sci-fi movie stat. Besides GalaxyQuest of course. But now I’m just rambling parenthetically.)

Anyway, GalaxyQuest’s insane hilarity and general awesomeness captivated me in particular, being raised properly on Star Trek. (I love Star Wars too, and yes that is perfectly okay with me. People who say you can’t love both confuse me, because they’re completely different. Space opera versus social commentary? Oranges and apples, anyone?)

Not technically aliens, but still worthy of note is Weaver’s contribution to the Ghostbuster series. Because, yes. It happened. I hear there’s a third movie in the making and I’m like ew, no, why would you do that? But the first two were pretty cool.

And now, James Cameron gets Weaver to play with even more Aliens in the super-famous Avatar movie. He even turned her blue. I don’t always get why people hate on the Avatar movie. When it came out, we were all like: “Whaaaaa?!?! MIND BLOWN!” But now people don’t want to admit liking it. WHAT HAPPENED? Sure the story isn’t all that original, but WHAT IS THESE DAYS? You’ll talk about Human Centipede rather than Avatar? Avatar is stunningly pretty! They put years of work into making it VERY VERY PRETTY! And on the plus side, since they spent all that time making the movie absolutely perfect for themselves, there’s very minimal risk of anyone pulling a George Lucas and changing something randomly!

I liked Avatar a lot when I saw it. I think it’s a very tangible contribution to sci-fi movies. And, yeah there are awesome classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien to contend with, but like my aforementioned addictions to Star Wars and Star Trek, I don’t have to choose! I am perfectly within my rights to obsess about all of them.

So, now that I’m finished with my rant, I can end this post by saying that sci-fi would not be the same without one Sigourney Weaver kicking some alien asses. So, thanks Sigourney. You go girl.

This is Junior Varsity, signing off.