SFF Heroes: Neo

Actually I prefer Trinity...brrr!  But let's not go there.

Neo is the coolest of the cool. He is Christ (aka the One), he is kick-ass, he wears shades, he has superpowers, and he is here to rescue us from the horrible terrible place that is The Matrix.

I love The Matrix; Matrix 2 (Reloaded) not so much, Matrix 3 (Revolutions), let's not go there.  But the first Matrix film came as an absolute shock; who could have thought cinema could be so kinetic, so visually wonderful, so like a comic book? 

There's a lot of great writing in the script by the Andy and Larry (or Lana, if you believe the rumours) Wachowki. Not great dialogue (why don't they get Joss Whedon to write dialogue for ALL science fiction movies?) but really clever ideas. The movie borrows ideas from Buddhism, Joseph W. Campebell's book on myth, Alice in Wonderland, and gnosticism.  And it weaves that into a narrative that makes computer geeks look cool. 

There's one flaw in the story - the good guys are all trying to destroy the Matrix. But I LOVE the Matrix. Who wants to live with the boring rebels in their boring hideaway, when you could be on the inside of a whizz-bang computer game where people can have superpowers?

The screenplay can be read here; and now here's some pretty pics of brooding Keanu in what may be his best ever role, following by the wondrous trailer.

Inglourious Paintings

Stuart McGregor kindly sent me the link for these wonderful images - artworks inspired by Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

Is James Cameron a Traitor to his Own Species?

 Let me get one thing straight, before I commence my rant for today: Avatar is one of the best things to happen to the science fictional world in years.  It's raised the credibility of the genre in the movie theatres - after all those Harry Potters and Hobbits in Pursuit of Rings movies and other fantasy epics of recent years. It's got the world excited about aliens and space exploration. And it's at the vanguard of a whole new generation of incredibly exciting and visually extraordinary blockbusters.  To cap it all, James Cameron is a director I admire enormously.

But he is, as I say, a traitor to his own species.

And he's also made a film that in my view - despite breaking all box office records, and although it's  pretty damned good - isn't THAT good, or that special.  It's fun, it's certainly beautiful, the ending is exciting.  But I don't really 'get' what's so revolutionary about the 3D effects. Compared to Up, it's no big deal; that movie set the bar for CGI 3D movie spectacle and Avatar comes nowhere near it.

Nor do I think the film is as visually extraordinary as everyone claims. The scenery and action scenes are marvellous, but it all lacks imagination. How come the aliens are blue, but the trees are made of bark and the leaves are GREEN? It could all be, well, much more alien. 

There's nothing in this film to compare with Predator, perhaps the most visually spectacular SF film ever made. Director John McTiernan and cinematographer Donald McAlpine created a movie that is both a nail-biting kick-ass actioner, and a piece of modern art - by which I mean that every time we switch to Predator-POV the screen becomes filled with colours as vivid as a Kandinsky. 

But Predator plays a cleverer game.  It isn't just about the scenery, it's built around mythic concepts - chiefly, Arnie as the mud-coated (think woad-coated Celt) warrior going mano a mano with an alien.  The explosion scenes in that movie, too, are astonishing - visions of a Dantesque Hell on Earth.

Avatar, by contrast, has blue gazelle-like creatures running through what looks like the Amazon rainforest. Sweet - but not astonishing.

But that's just my opinion - which in view of the box office triumph of the film, shouldn't be taken too seriously (and, indeed, won't be).  There's no doubt that SOMETHING extraordinary is happening with this film to make it such a phenomenon.  And the media coverage in the press has been awesome. 

Online, too, Avatar has been covered extensively, and I've been taking a peek at some of the comments to be found out in cyberspace. There have been rave reviews, like this one in the Hollywood Reporter.     Fantasy SF Blog revealed that Cameron's volcanic temper eclipses that of our our British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (once you've clicked the link, scroll down to 'James Cameron, Benevolent Tyrant'.) John Scalzi got pretty much what he was expecting, and (unlike me!) felt no moral outrage at the 'noble savage' strand. Ann Wilkes' Cherokee blood boiled at the way the natives were treated, and she loved the story. Revolution SF drew attention to the alarming phenomenon of Avatar fans who feel like committing suicide because they can't live on the planet of the Na'vi. SF Gospel made some very smart points about the movie's provable theology, and asks - would it be okay to kill the Na'vi if they DIDN'T have a provable God?

And the definitive review came from Richard Morgan. (He said it was 'Very pretty.')

But my final take on Cameron's masterwork is, as I say: TRAITOR!

I'm referring of course to the second part of the film when (SPOILER ALERT! BUT I THINK THIS HAS ALL BEEN GIVEN AWAY IN TRAILERS) our hero dons the body of a blue-skinned alien and goes to war against the humans.

Think about it. Our main character is human! We are human. And yet we're being asked to root against our own species, in favour of the aliens?

It's not as if this is a minor spat between alien and human. It's a brutal war.  Dozens and dozens of human beings die horribly, and we are invited to cheer.  Almost as many aliens die in the carnage, and we are clearly meant to be sad as each of them perishes.

This defies all the rules of rooting. You root for you own team, not the opposition. As a Welshman, even of the non-sporting variety, I am obliged to root for Wales every time there's  Wales v. England rugby match. If I cheered on the English, I would be surgically de-Taffed.

The disloyalty to humankind comes, of course, cloaked in liberal good intentions.  The Na'vi are, you see, noble savages; they are metaphorical of the Native Americans and the Australian aboriginals and all the other Stone Age tribes who have been wretchedly treated by invaders from Europe.  And the movie manages to function simultaneously as a) a shoot-'em-up kickass action movie and b) as an ecological hymn to the glories of the nature, and the crapness of being an evil corporation that wants to destroy the rainforest and doesn't care how many natives die in the process.

Well, I'm all in favour of hating those who pillage the natural world; and I certainly don't condone the way the Native Americans or the aboriginals were treated.  So at one level, I'm certainly on Cameron's side.

But on other hand - per-lease! Couldn't the morality be a little more subtle?  The guy from the corporation virtually slavers with evil, his treatment of the Na'vi is both incompetent and buffoonish, and there's a complete absence of moral ambiguity.  Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) and Dr Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) and a couple of others are good;  all the Na'vi are good; but all the soldiers and the horrible white capitalists who run the mining corporation are all utterly and irredeemably evil.

This kind of black & white morality is forgiveable, of course, in an action movie where you don't look for rich characterisation and moral subtlety.  But in a movie that proclaims itself to be a moral force for good - well, maybe the script could have had just a LITTLE more work done on it. 

But that's not my gripe. My gripe is - what's so bad about humans? I mean - I'm human,  my friends are human:  all the people I like and  admire,  alive and dead, are human. Humans are - well, what can I say? We're not SO very bad.

But in science fiction, we get a bad press, as the ignoble history of colonialism gets writ into stories set among the stars.  And Avatar is for me part of this syndrome - of neglecting the virtues and glories of humankind. 

And the chief virtue and glory of  humankind is - we're not all jocks. We're not all heavily bicepped, macho monsters who are so obsessed with gadgets and weapons of war that we lose sight of the finer things in life - like Nature, and art, and being nice to each other.  In fact, none of the people I know are like that.  All MY friends are weedy, cowardly, bookish, kind, and, well,  nice.

But in Cameron's parallel universe, all humans are either soldiers or cruel capitalists (admittedly Signourney Weaver is a scientist and there are a couple of other scientists helping Jake Sully fight his good war - but these characters don't really have much character.)

Contrast this with the weedy science graduate geek played by Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, cursed with a wisecracking dad, and always banging on about scientific things. A broad caricature yes - but there's hope for humanity if there are a few of THESE entertainingly anal-retentive guys about.

Avatar would, in my view, been a richer and better film if there'd been more diversity among the characters, and less idealisation of the Na'vi.  They are supposed to be like the Native Americans - but they aren't, not really. The Native Americans were a Stone Age tribe with a flair for war, especially of the sneaky variety;  as I recall from my past reading, ambush was considered by many tribes to be a worthy way of attacking an opponent. And, once confronted by an invasion of white-skins, the Native Americans proved themselves to be adaptable and savage; they learned to ride horses, they learned to shoot guns, they even copied the invaders' trick of scalping their enemy.

All of which makes the Native Americans REAL, and flawed, and complex, as opposed to the holier-than-thou Na'vi, who can't kill another creature without an act of gaian communion.

Cameron over-eggs it all in other words; the Na'vi are so perfect that I hate them. They don't even LOOK like real aliens; they have the wide-eyed blank-faced look of characters in a manga comic.  For all the much vaunted brilliance of the CGI, I never forgot for a moment that I was watching blue simulations.  Indeed, in some ways I felt these aliens felt less 'real' than the animatronic aliens in Farscape.

Of course, I freely concede that in my own novels I don't shirk from making the humans the bad guys -  it makes for a better story that way.    But I think we shouldn't forget to celebrate the best of humanity - the geekiness, the wit, the camaraderie, the cleverness, and the heart-bursting loyal love of which humans are capable. 

Admittedly, Jake DOES fall in love, with the girl alien Neytiri, who IS quite pretty in an eerie 'she looks like a blue Bambi, is he really going to do it with a deer?' kind of a way.  But he's a pretty dull character in other respects; we root for him because he's the hero, not because he's all that interesting.

A sequel to Avatar is being planned, I gather; I'd love to think that it involves a spaceship full of Jewish comedians who are airlifted down to teach the Na'vi the skills they clearly lack; self deprecation, grumbling, and the cruel taunting of the afflictions of others.  Not to mention, cake!

For my part, living on the planet of the Na'vi would be like living in the English countryside: beautiful, spiritually uplifting, and BORING.  I'd rather live in New York and eat bagels and pastrami with the aforesaid Jewish comedians, and indulge in daily rituals of sarcasm and ironic hyperbole. 

That's what it is to be human.

Marvellous Misfits

Why I Love Misfits by Danny Stack

** MINOR SPOILERS **

Five teenagers get struck by lightning and develop strange super powers, blah, blah, blah. On paper, Misfits, E4’s new supernatural series, shouldn’t work. We’ve seen this idea before. Or at least, it certainly feels like it. Anybody within a five feet radius of the spec script pile will tell you it’s groaning from the weight of similar sci-fi ideas. All of a sudden, thanks to Heroes (the American smash hit series) superheroes were thrust into vogue. The geeks hadn’t just inherited the Earth, they’d taken over the TV.

In the UK, the success of Dr Who, Torchwood and Merlin (BBC) and Primeval on ITV meant that hey, the audience must really want to see these kind of shows, right? ITV tried again with Demons, which didn’t exactly work out, but at least ITV2’s sitcom No Heroics was a playful send-up of the genre. Still, enough superheroes. Time to move on, yes? And so, when it came to E4’s Misfits, the heart didn’t exactly jump with excitement. ‘Heroes meets Skins’, apparently. Hmm, an easy pitch, sure, but it would be so easy for Misfits to misfire. Luckily, within minutes of the first episode, you just knew that the show was going to get everything right. An instant classic was born.

First, why it works. The show is created and written by Howard Overman (a TV regular: Merlin, Spooks, Hustle, amongst others). You can’t over-emphasise the importance of the writing for a show like this to succeed. Right from the very start of Misfits, you can tell it’s got a style and assurance all of its own. You think: ‘yeah, Heroes meets Skins… but better’.

The characters are a bunch of teenage ASBOs, enslaved to community service. There’s gobby Nathan, chav Kelly, sexy Alisha, athletic Curtis and meek Simon.

Episode 1 pep talk

When they get hit by lightning, they discover they’ve got supernatural traits but their powers are far from cool or useful. Sexy Alisha gets a disturbing power where anyone who touches her skin is consumed with violent lust for her. Or as meek Simon puts it when Alisha touches his neck: “I want to rip off your clothes and piss on your tits”. This dialogue edge continues in its unashamed and bold fashion, making you do a double take of ‘did they just say that?!’ on a regular basis. The gobby Nathan won’t stop talking but thankfully what he has to say is always cheeky and witty. “I’m pretty sure this breaches the terms of my ASBO” he says when burying their community officer. Fun, fun, fun.

Oh, did I say they had to kill their community officer? Self-defence, obviously, because he had turned into some kind of crazed zombie who was going to kill them all. You begin to realize that the ‘Heroes meets Skins’ pitch is totally off. This has no American overtones whatsoever. This is ‘Dead Set meets Skins in a bastard world of Heroes’.

Meek Simon

Kelly holding Nathan's, um, wank sock.

Why it works, the second. The direction. It seems if you want a show to have a distinctive look and feel, then you got to hire directors called Tom. In this instance, Tom Harper and Tom Green. They give Misfits a delicious cinematic vibe with their careful composition and grading. ‘Let’s give it a cinematic look’ is a phrase often heard in the early rounds of TV development, only for the execs to change their minds in the edit suite as they panic whether the audience will hear the dialogue when the action stays in a wide shot. Thankfully, we get no such interference here as Misfits establishes a visual style that just reeks of class and cool. These are two hip directors to watch out for. Tom Harper has the film Scouting Book for Boys in the bag and we haven’t seen the last of Tom Green, that’s for sure.

Why it works, the third. The actors. Robert Sheehan (Nathan), Lauren Socha (Kelly), Antonia Thomas (Alisha), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis), Iwan Rheon (Simon). They may be misfits, but they’re perfect. Then you have the brilliant Alex Reid out to find the truth about her missing boyfriend (the dead community officer) and guest star Amy Beth-Hayes who nearly steals the show in episode two. The main cast is where it’s at though. They’re characters we care about, and want to spend time with. Most importantly, we want to know what happens next.

Curtis and Alisha

Why it works, numero four. The setting. A community centre on the banks of a murky river. Possibly London, who knows, it could be anywhere, but what’s particularly genius about the choice of setting is that it keeps the action contained. This means that the production budget doesn’t spiral out of control, especially as it has to cough up some wonga for special effects. It’s also testament to the two Toms (directors) that they keep everything visually interesting. You never get bored of looking at what would be a very drab location in real life.

The drama and fun of the action zips by at a thoroughly enjoyable pace, and there’s effective character development for all concerned. The only Misfit misgiving is that the main arc of the series ends a bit sooner than you might expect, leaving the final episode to introduce something new and not altogether satisfying. Still, the final pay-off reveals Nathan’s super power and leaves things nicely open-ended to ensure that series two can pick up where they left off.

‘Nuff said. Stop reading. Get thee to your nearest DVD outlet and purchase Misfits immediately. Enjoy.

SFF Heroes: Kara Thrace

Ripley was the trail-blazer; but Kara Thrace (call sign 'Starbuck') is, for many of us, the quintessential female SF action hero.  She's a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, maverick daughter-of-a-bitch who hates authority and always breaks the rules - but is, just, the best.  The bravest, the boldest, the best at piloting, the most-tattooed - what's not to love?

By the last season of Battlestar Galactica, the show which made Kara famous, the plot twists were so complex and so numerous that any actor who dared to ask 'Er, what's my motivation in this scene?' would receive a 400 page email in response.  Kara's character suffered more than any other from this plot-monster syndrome - her character arc was abandoned in favour of a narrative twist so immense it actually squelched all the drama.  But before then..Kara's on-off relationship with Lee Adama, her daughter-father relationship with Admiral Adama, and her open contempt for Colonel Tigh (who she punches in, I think, the pilot episode), all these are compelling and bewildering - in the way that real people ARE bewildering.  Kara is brave - but she's also a mixed up kid. 

So frak all detractors; Kara Thrace (played by actor Katee Sackhoff) is my SFF Hero of today. 

Why Scalzi is Wrong: the Great Basterds Debate

I woke up mulling about the John Scalzi column I read yesterday about why Quentin Tarantino's movie Inglourious Basterds is NOT a science fiction movie as some (e.g. me) claim it is. 

As always, Scalzi is judicious in his diatribe, so though he does a comprehensive job of demolishing the 'Basterds is SF' argument, he also acknowledges that if fans want to claim it as SF, they should feel free to do so. As he puts it, 'Hey, if you mess with the timeline, the geeks are going to come out of the woodwork and start chanting, "One of us! One of us!" I wouldn't suggest that scifi fans shouldn't feel as if Basterds fits into their genre. Take it! Love it! And, if it wins the Best Picture feel free to claim it as yours.'

I've written a rebuttal to Scalzi's comments in my Comment to his blog; but I'm still left feeling there are big issues here to be thrashed out.  It takes us into the murky waters of genre theory. And it involves asking some major questions: What is genre? What is SF? What is the difference between SF and fantasy?  Millions of words have been expended on answers to these questions and yet, no one seems to agree.

And at some level, that fact kind of annoys me.   Healthy disagreement is, well, healthy; but this level of disagreement reeks of mental chaos. And as someone who loves science, and the rigour and logic of scientific methodology, it irks me; because if scientists were this 'open-minded' about every topic under the sun, there would be no science.  (To put it another way: if arts graduates had invented the space rocket, it would look exceedingly pretty, but it wouldn't fly.)

So let me go through Scalzi's points one by one; and then I'm going to put my head on the chopping block and offer my own attempted answers to all those big questions. 

Scalzi argues that Basterds isn't SF because:

'1) It wasn't marketed as SF.'

'2) The science fictional aspects of the story are not necessarily essential to it.'

'3) It's kinda more like fantasy than SF anyway.'

'4) If Inglourious Basterds is science fiction, so are most historical movies.'

For those new to this debate, who haven't seen the movie, the point to bear in mind is: Tarantino's film is set in World War II, and tells a fictional but plausible story about a team of US guerrillas (the 'Basterds') operating in Hitler's Germany; but certain events that take place in the movie most emphatically DID NOT happen in real life. In other words, it's an alternate history drama; and alt-history is a recognised sub-genre of science fiction.

Okay.

Scalzi's point 1) is a good one. It's generally acknowledged that 'genre' is something that is in part created by marketing.  The  crime genre wouldn't be as vividly defined as it is if the publishers didn't market their tales of criminal activity under the banner of Crime Fiction. There are Crime bookshelves in bookshops; specialist Crime awards, etc etc.  And it's a fact that a Margaret Attwood novel with 'science fictional' elements will be treated as a literary novel; but a Philip Palmer or a John Scalzi with SF elements will be sold, marketed, and branded as 'SF'.

But that's not good enough.  Genre is more than a marketing tool; it's a vivid, real thing, a slippery but true concept that adds value to the fiction we read, and the movies we see.  Genre is like language; you can't 'explain' it, but you can learn to understand it. 

To back up that opinion, I will call upon my second favourite Professor (after the ineffable Professor Nicole Peeler - hi Nicole!) namely Professor Rick Altman, of the University of Iowa, whose book Film/Genre is a definitive and brilliant analysis of what genre is, and how it works, and how it changes depending on the way it is perceived.

In Altman's film theory jargon, 'Genres are most commonly taken to come into being when a body of texts shares a sufficient number of semantic and syntactic elements. This production-driven definition needs to be matched with a reception-driven definition recognizing that genres do not exist until they become necessary to a lateral communication process, that is until they serve a constellated community.'

 Ouch. That was ugly! Sorry to inflict the jargon on you - but bear  in mind, this is a specialist academic book and these guys feel the need to talk that way. Elsewhere in the book, however, Altman is more readable; and the reason I think THIS GUY KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT is because he actually does research.  He uses a literary version of the scientific method; he studies a great deal of data, he finds the patterns that are hidden there, and thus draws his conclusions from evidence, not out of his own arse. 

And much of the data Altman assesses is to do with actual movies produced by actual movie studios.  He's sifted through the files of  most of the major studios to find out how THEY define genres.  And the conclusions are startling.  The genre of 'musical' for instance, didn't actually exist in the early days of movies.  Instead, it was used as an adjective, modifying nouns like comedy, romance, or melodrama.  Here's an abbreviated version of a list of movies of the 20s and 30s and the genre descriptions that were attached to them in their publicity material:

Weary River - epic

The Broadway Melody - all talking, all singing, all dancing dramatic sensation.

The Vagabond Lover - romantic musical comedy

Devil May Care - romance punctured with subtle comedy.

The Tender Foot - a Merry Western Comedy full of Laughs and Ginger.

The Love Parade - light opera.

The Rogue's Song - operetta.

Roadhouse Nights - melodrama  and button-busting comedy

College Love - 100% talking, singing, college picture.

There are two points here; The first is that we wouldn't now necessarily define the genres of those films according to the way they were marketed THEN.  So Scalzi's Point 1) falls off a cliff.

Point 2) is that genre is clearly evolutionary.  The very words we use to describe genre can change over time; and as far as movies are concerned, new genres are born all the time.  Altman is particularly brilliant about analysing this; he points out that Hollywood studios love to copy their own hits, and the hits of others. So one successful movie about gladiators (a 'history drama') will spawn a dozen more movies about gladiators (creating the 'gladiator movie genre'.)  In the same way, the film Rififi is a brilliant movie about a gang of low lives staging a heist; and it's now a template for the entire 'heist movie genre'.

In the UK film industry, this 'genre born out of coypcatting' tendency is most clearly examplifed by the movie The Full Monty. It was a hugely successful movie; so for years UK producers have tried to produce other movies that are 'like' The Full Monty - ie ensemble comedies with quirky loveable British characters and rude moments based on an unlikely but true story. Now I know that doesn't sound like a genre - but it is!  My friend Geoff Deane wrote one of the most successful of the Full Monty copycat movies - Kinky Boots, an ensemble comedy with quirky loveable British characters and rude moments based on an unlikely but true story. (The inspiration for the movie was a documentary about a guy up North who owned a shoe factory and started making fetish footwear.)  I'm not decrying the movie by saying it's a copycat picture, nor I am in any way undervaluing the fabulous job Geoff did on the script. But that was always the deal - Geoff was told from the start that the producers wanted a 'Full  Monty type hit' and they got one.

Thus are genres born...

That's a long rebuttal to Scalzi's point 1).  But my underlying intent here is to suggest that you can't define genre by what it says on the poster.  Any serious film scholar has to have a beady eye for what the genre really is, according to the actual material in the movie.

Point 2) is, I'm sorry, a dubious argument. The ending of the film is great, and it depends TOTALLY on this alt-history twist. Take that away, and the story collapses,  and becomes a less good movie. So yes, it IS essential to the movie.  A similar argument applies to Ken MacLeod's splendid The Execution Channel, much of which takes place in a world that is very like our contemporary world, but which has a dazzling SF twist in the closing chapters.  If Ken had written a different ending, his publishers might have queried whether this was 'really' SF; but he didn't! He knew all along the coup de roman he was going to pull off, and he pulled it off.

Point 3) is a tricky one.  Does alt-history have to have a scientific explanation to be SF? Does The Man in the High Castle have such an explanation? Does The Yiddish Policeman's Union have such an explanation? Okay in Star Trek stories there were often tales that take place in alternate histories that depend on the Enterprise passing through a black hole, or some such.  But alternate history stories to my mind work best if they're just presented 'as if'. 

So does that make them fantasy, or SF? Strictly speaking, the answer should probably be neither: Alternate History could and maybe should be treated as a separate genre. But because it's a subgenre that evolved out of SF, it kind of fits there.  And  of  course 'science fiction' is a term that by no means covers the full range of possibilities of the genre it describes.  It drives me mad  when people say: '1984 can't be an SF novel because it has no science' (though in fact it does.)  For SF is about more than just science! It's about speculation, and extrapolation - hence the attempt by some writers to rename the entire genre as 'speculative fiction'.

But this gets to be angels dancing on pins stuff.  Alternate History IS Science Fiction, in my view, because that's the genre that spawned it. It can also be fantasy (as in Naomi Novik's fantasy series about the dragon Temeraire that fights in seabattles in Napoleonic times.)

Scalzi's Point 4) is that lots of historical movies get the history wrong; so can't they be classed as SF too? The answer; no they can't.  That's just, sorry, dumb-ass sophistry.  All drama relies on fictionalising, even the historical stuff!  And when in doubt, print the legend; that's the golden principle of storytelling.  John - it's just not the same thing!

This leaves one final question; does this actually matter? I mean, really?  I don't think it matters hugely to Scalzi, to be honest. He's just having fun, sounding off, teasing geeks  like me.  Scalzi is a guy I admire hugely; he's a fine writer, and a master polemicist, who does one of these columns every week and is a master of arguing the contrary point just to get everyone talking.  So why, let's be blunt about this, am I getting so genuinely hot under the collar?

The answer is: for me it DOES matter.  It matters because Inglourious Basterds is a fine film, and a valuable film. Yet though it's had commercial success and Oscar nominations, it was pissed upon by all the critics I read, who mocked its excessive violence (which is in fact essential to its genre!) and Tarantino's woeful ignorance of history.

But Tarantino knows his history! And he's deliberately falsifying it, as part of his artistic strategy of 'genre-mashing', and playing games with the audience.  So though I'd argue it's technically correct to class this as an 'SF movie', it's equally correct to call it a war movie, and an action movie, and a B-movie hommage.  It's all those things,  all at the same time.  That's the game Tarantino plays; he makes movies for a sophisticated audience who know genre, and love genre, and enjoy the rollercoaster ride experience of totally changing genre a reel before the end.

Genre is a label but it's not a straitjacket; it's a creative tool, that offers a direct route to the audience's imagination via their own insights and knowledge and expectations of 'this kind' of film.  Ultimately, many of Tarantino's films (excluding Jackie Brown which plays a different game) constitute a genre of their own - the postmodern, genre-hopping, genre-mashing 'Tarantino movie' genre.

And smarter critics, steeped in the traditions and tropes of speculative fiction/science fiction/fantasy fiction, would have spotted all that, and not written such dumb reviews. 

Inglourious Basterds is in my view, a  fine and startling piece of work.  Like Hitchock's Psycho - which also changes genres in mid-movie - it shocks by doing the truly unexpected just when you least expect anything  so unexpected to occur....

SFF Heroes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to find Miss Buffy Summers on my list of SFF Heroes. The heroine of Joss Whedon's seven series epic TV show has everything you'd expect in a hero - a smart mouth, a maverick attitude, a proficiency for kicking ass, and a total disrespect for authority. But she's also a generous friend, emotionally vulnerable, and keeps falling love with unsuitable guys (check the teeth first, girl!) She's also cute and dinky which, admittedly, can't be said of more traditional heroes - like Conan. (See below.) But that all adds to her appeal; huge physical strength in a small girl body.

In the course of seven series, Buffy Summers grows up, as does Sarah Michelle Gellar; it's an amazing journey to watch, and experience.

And to get you in the mood, let's start with the theme tune for the show, played by rock band Nerf Herder.

SFF Heroes: Conan the Barbarian

Today's SFF Hero feature is dedicated to Lilith Saintcrow, who was blogjay on this site yesterday and chose the wonderful Banned in Argo by Leslie Fish.  (See below, or click SFF Song of the Week to the left or click here. Come on, come on, I can't make it any easier - find it!)

When writing the intro for her song choice, Lilith sent me an email telling me of her love for the soundtrack of Conan the Barbarian by the genius composer Basil Poledouris  And this reminded me how much I love Arnie's movie of the classic Robert E. Howard tales.  Never has Schwarzenegger been so muscly, so almost naked, and so utterly right for the role.  (Well, except for his Terrminator role.)  It's a smart, exciting, morally challenging movie, directed by John Milius who co-wrote it with  Oliver Stone; and it defines Conan as the quintessential fantasy hero.

If you want to hear a bit of the soundtrack and see the trailer, click on the arrow below. Some still images follow.

SFF Heroes: Clark Kent

I've never liked Superman.  I enjoyed the Richard Donner movies, I've read some of the comics, but as a character he's never worked for me - because he's too powerful, hence a bit smug.  Kryptonite is cleary the writers'  desperate attempt to give him some vulnerability, but it doesn't wash.  Superman is a lantern-jawed jock, and I kind of like it when he loses.

In Smallville,  however, the young Clark Kent is a shy, insecure, sometimes awkward kid - and he really is vulnerable.  He's coming to terms with his powers. He still lets his dad (initially) and his mom boss him around. He's crippled by his love for the beautiful Lana, but always get tongue tied. Clark Kent I like; Clark (as played by Tom Welling) is a hero I can identify with.

SFF Heroes: Ripley

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in Alien and its sequels was the  pioneer female action hero.  She has no superpowers, but she's tough and ruthless, she can run like hell, she loves big guns, and boy, she's determined. 

It was wonderful to see Weaver return to SF in Avatar - she's the best actor in it by far. 

Once upon a time, women in SF and Fantasy stories screamed fearfully and waited for the guy with the biceps to save the day. No more; thanks to Ripley.

SFF Heroes: Wolverine

Wolverine is the greatest ever Marvel super-hero; and Hugh Jackman is the coolest actor in the X-Men. Tragically, however, the character has never been written for properly in the X-Men movies (in my view). And the stand-alone X-Men Origins: Wolverine is enlivened by the wonderful Liev Schreiber as Sabertooth, and is wonderfully shot by director Gavin Hood and his cinemetographer Donald McAlpine; but is still, in my view,  a disappointment.

No matter; Wolverine is still the best there is at what he does.  Here are some pics:

Movie Zone: The Day the Earth Stood Still

I love movies, and I wish I'd seen them all. Or rather, all the good ones.

In pursuit of this ambition, I've been catching up on some classic movies, some of which I've seen before many times, some of which are new to me.

Today's blog is about the daddy of all SF films, the Robert Wise version of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951).

Stephen King writes about this in his wonderful book DANSE MACABRE. He compares it with the later movie EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS, an all action and terrifying tale of aliens invading Earth.  Like much movie SF, he argued, EVTFS is really a horror movie; THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL by contrast, 'is one of a select handful - the real science fiction movies.'  It's not, in other words, a futuristic version of a tale about the boogeyman. It's not like ALIEN, with its vagina dentata alien conjuring up primal fears that we didn't know we had.  It's not about The Fear of Strangers, or of Otherness. It's a cool, careful, masterly dissection of what shits humans are, and how and why aliens are right to fear us. 

This makes TDTEST sound rather cool and academic; but in fact, it's an amazingly taut film.  I was delighted, in fact, to find that - despite a small special effects budget, and the incredibly over-precise diction of all the characters, that it's not a dated or 'old-fashioned' kind of classic SF movie that is better left dust-covered in the archives.  Admittedly, the space suit worn by Klaatu the alien looks as if it was retained by some skinflint in order to be re-used by Cybermen in the sandpit in the early Dr Who eps.  And the interior of the ship is sadly inadequate compared to the Tardis.  But this film is, I discover, a masterpiece of suspense.

The plot, briefly, and without I hope too many spoilers: An alien  spaceship lands on Earth

and a humaniform alien called Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges, accompanied by a huge robot, Gort.  Klaatu comes in peace, but is treated with hostility by the authorities. And his attempt to summon a meeting of the leaders of the world is snubbed. So he escapes and - after befriending a young boy and her mother - explains to a kindly Professor with hair issues that the Earth is in deadly peril. 

That's all I can say - if you haven't already, see the film! - but the genius of this movie is how much is achieved by the simple act of Defining the Peril.  We know the Earth will be in dire danger unless certain things occur; and knowing that is enough.  It's the opposite of 2012, where we have to SEE houses fall down, cars fall into the sea, planes fall from the sky, people dying horribly, in such graphic detail that it becomes, pretty quickly, a bit ordinary. (What! Only a hundred people just died! - what a yawn!)

Here the jeopardy is defined; the clock is set ticking; and it's terrifying.  I was literally on the edge of my seat in the climactic sequence. Okay, the robot is not that scary - it has zappy eyes like Cyclops, but that's all it does - but we know what it might do. And because its potential power is so awesome, its very presence terrifies.

All this artfulness is of course - at one crude level - a result of budgetary constraints.  Even in 1951 audiences liked action, not chat; spectacle, not thoughtful speculation.  But with limited resources, director Robert Wise and writer  Edmund H. North (working from a story by Harry Bates) dug deep into their bag of storytelling tricks and made us fear a man who does nothing malicous, at all, in the course of the entire film. But though he's courteous, and pleasant, Klaatu is an utterly cold and decisive character. If he has to kill, he will kill, and he will kill vast numbers of those who deserve to die. 

Gulp.

For Klaatu is a rational being; and his rationality is the source of his scariness.  You can't reason with him; because he's right. And you can't defy him; because, as the setpiece sequence of the movie proves, his power, casually executed, utterly dwarfs that of the humble Earthlings.

The music is another key element of this movie. Composer Bernard Herrman - who also wrote the scores for many of Hitchcock's great suspense thrillers including PSYCHO, as well as providing the music for THE TWLIGHT ZONE and some of the 1960s LOST IN SPACE - creates a chilling, haunting soundscape of singing voices and jagged orchestral crescendos.  It's a style that's often imitated, but I have to say I don't think I've ever seen/heard a movie with such a brilliantly tense score.  The opening sequence, when the spaceship lands and the tanks take their position, is utterly nervejangling, like having someone run a cold knife blade down your spine to test how thick the skin is.

At other times, the film IS dated. There's a lot of talky stuff, the girl (played by Patricia Neal) is very much the typical 'pretty, good Mom' character you always see in 50s movies.  The army briefing scenes have a static, expository quality.  And, even in 1951, what Mom would let a total stranger wander off with her kid...?

But for much of the time, Wise and North show remarkable adroitness in the way in which they use newscasters and telephone operators and soldiers in jeeps to convey a rich, busy universe of action, without spending too much money.

I saw this movie on a lovely collector's edition DVD which I bought last year at Eastercon, in that wonderful little stall on the far right.  As always, I bought a bunch of old movies thinking, 'I must watch these some day.'  Fortunately, that day, for this movie, was yesterday.

Did you know? (I know you did):

The band Klaatu, named after the alien in this movie, wrote the song 'Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft'.

The 2008 remake (a stinker, allegedly) stars Keanu Reeves, who actually IS an alien!

Does Whatever a Franchise Can: Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy

Here's the latest guest blog in our Movie Zone feature...from the talented and irrepressible screenwriter and blogger Adrian Reynolds.  Adrian's thoughts on life and movies and other stuff can be found on his beautifully named youdothatvoodoo blogsite.

Take it away Adrian:

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DOES WHATEVER A FRANCHISE CAN: SAM RAIMI'S SPIDER-MAN by Adrian Reynolds

Timely Comics, established in the 1940s, produced titles about crime, romance, monsters, and cowboys as well as superheroes, whose role was to take on the Nazis in wartime pulps.  It was under the guidance of Stan Lee two decades later that the publisher -- by now known as Marvel -- created a new generation of winning superhero titles: Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man.  They were a clear departure from DC's heroes Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, who were archetypes seemingly divorced from regular human experience.  By contrast, the characters Stan Lee concocted in collaboration with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were easy for their teenage readers to identify with.  The Hulk was effectively a teenage boy struggling to control a body undergoing transformation.  The Fantastic Four were a family as dysfunctional as your own.  And as for Spider-Man...

Spider-Man artwork by Steve Ditko

Peter Parker is a high school kid consumed by unspoken love for Mary Jane Watson, a science nerd living with his Aunt May and Uncle Ben.  Then he is bitten by a radioactive spider and rather than acquire leukaemia gains arachnid powers for himself, gifted with impossible acrobatic skills, heightened strength, able to scale vertical walls and sense danger.  Adding to that nifty repertoire, Peter's invention of webfluid allows him to zip round the city suspended from ropes of web.  But...he still can't talk to Mary Jane, and adding superheroics to his repertoire just means he has less time for college work, and that his life gets more complicated.   

 OK, the characterisation might be as two dimensional as the pages Spider-Man's stories appeared on, but that's one more dimension than DC's leading icon, Superman, had back then.

 All of this, more or less, is present in Sam Raimi's trio of Spider-Man films.  The first presents the story of Peter's transition from human to superior human to superhero.  The distinction is important: he gains his powers first, but it's following the death of Uncle Ben that he becomes a superhero, whose values inform his actions.  The bit about Ben telling Peter that "with great power comes great responsibility" is frequently quoted, but just as important is what Ben says before that: "these are the years a man changes into the man he's going to become the rest of his life -- just be careful who you change into."

 Those two quotes anchor the trilogy, with every aspect of Peter Parker's progress relating to those themes of maturity and honour.  The films chronicle a teenager growing into young adulthood, dealing with the responsibilities of work and the complexities of being a family member, and the distinction between the dream of love and its day to day reality.  Which serious business is thankfully leavened by a healthy dose of wisecracking, acrobatics, and fights with grotesque supervillains.  Phew.

 Something that distinguishes Peter Parker from the likes of Batman is that he has read superhero comics.  When Peter gets his powers, he tries out catchphrases such as 'Shazam' and others associated with classic comics heroes in the hope that it will reactivate his webbing -- produced organically from his body in the films...adding to the squicky adolescence of this singular hero, Peter oozes sticky fluids -- which takes a while to get under control.

 Reading comics is one thing, emulating their protagonists is quite another.  Bringing together superheroics with teenage tribulations was a stroke of genius on Stan Lee's part.  Buzzing on his new powers, and realising he can use them to win money to buy a car to impress Mary Jane, Peter takes part in a wrestling tournament -- and wins.  His jubilation is short-lived: the fight organiser weasels his way out of giving Peter the full prize money, and the consequences of that form a straight line to the murder of Uncle Ben. 

So, Spider-Man is haunted by his past actions, giving him the requisite dose of angst that adolescents thrive on.  And at the same time, he -- literally -- masks that guilt and adopts a joke-a-minute persona with the bad guys he takes on, seen to its fullest effect in the second film, when Peter is relishing his powers.  That mix of jauntiness and emo despair will be familiar to anyone who has been a teenager, or has one in their house.

 Any hero is defined by the calibre of their villain, and Spider-Man has a rogues gallery of bad guys on his tail.  In the first film it's Norman Osborn, a zillionaire scientist entrepreneur whose son Harry goes to high school with Peter.  Norman sees Peter's intellect as outranking his son's, and the two get on fine initially.  But in designing a weapons system for the military, Norman Osborn is driven mad and becomes the Green Goblin, who after being thwarted by Spider-Man appoints himself as Peter's nemesis.

As a rationale it works well enough, but there's another motivation underlying the Green Goblin: merchandising.  Conveniently, Green Goblin's armoured outfit looks just like a kids' toy, complete with accessories.  Ideal for rolling out as actual toys to children worldwide, accompanying Happy Meals, essential in a franchise like Spider-Man.  Ho hum. 

Green Goblin gets killed in the first film, and Harry takes on his father's mental mantle in the third, sworn to take down Spidey, who he mistakenly believes murdered him.  That kind of continuity is exactly what superhero comics are made of, somehow straddling soap opera and Greek drama at the same time.  Which is good: it gives the films a feeling of connectedness, and there are all kinds of easter eggs dotted in the trilogy for readers of the comics. 

One of the biggest assets of the trilogy is its lead actor, Tobey Maguire.   

It's an inspired piece of casting: Tobey is credibly nerdish as Peter Parker, and has a physicality that suits Spider-Man, very much in line with the way that Steve Ditko drew him -- he's got a wiry build, not a muscle man's.  

Maguire convinces as a harried young man trying to do the best he can, with a touch of puppy dog in his genetic make-up, quizzical at the curve balls life throws him.  And if he doesn't always perform to his best as Spider-Man, that's because in a lot of the longshots when he's swooping through the city you're actually looking at a digital simulation that sometimes has a rubbery feel. Other actors also turn in strong performances.  Kirsten Dunst is delectable as Mary Jane, and has her own character arc across the trilogy, experiencing the ups and downs of the acting profession, falling for Spidey and discovering that he and Peter are one and the same.  She has such a transparently good heart that it's credible when, under her watchful eye, a bank employee puts back cash that bursts out everywhere during a robbery.  Of the supporting characters, the best is newspaper publisher J. Jonah Jameson, brilliantly brought to life by actor J.K. Simmons, a foghorn-voiced penny-chiselling petty tyrant who hires Peter Parker to take photos of Spider-Man, only to use them in a campaign against Parker's alter ego.  Which is typical of Peter's luck, and gives rise to some great scenes in the offices of the Daily Bugle. The third film sees a rival compete with Peter to bring images of Spidey to Jonah's attention -- Eddie Brock, whose emnity towards Parker has tragic consequences. 

The relationship between Peter and Mary Jane is at the heart of the films.  That and the bond between Peter and Aunt May provides an emotional core to the story that grounds it in recognisable human feelings, important when there'd otherwise be a danger of getting lost in larger than life action.  One of the keynotes is a special moment between Spidey, hanging upside down, and Mary Jane, who pulls up the bottom half of his mask to give the hero an iconic kiss.    

 Comparing that kiss to one from her beau in the second film proves to Mary Jane that she really isn't committed to the relationship -- but she doesn't get to kiss Peter and discover the whizzbang she feels when they lock lips as that's when the bad guy turns up, a perennial problem of dating superheroes.  And the kiss is a touchstone once again when Spidey demonstrates the same move with a rival in front of a crowd celebrating what he's done for New York -- the city might be impressed, all Mary Jane sees is Peter cheapening 'their' kiss.  Impressive, on director Sam Raimi's part, that something so apparently simple can be called back through the trilogy to demonstrate different facets of Peter and Mary Jane's romance over time. 

Raimi is an interesting director, who started out with the horror classic Evil Dead, but is also a pal of the Coen Brothers, co-writing their The Hudsucker Proxy and being a sounding board for them as they are for him.  He's more steeped in pop culture than the Coens, with a love for comics and tv and genre films that clearly comes out in his own work: the first Evil Dead film (which Joel Coen worked on) was very much a cheap horror, its sequel had comic elements to give it broader appeal, and he's followed that pattern since: shocks leavened by humour, as seen to good effect in Drag Me To Hell. Maybe it's Raimi's relish for pulp fiction that makes him so adept at handling villains.  None are better than the second film's bad guy, Doctor Octopus, played magnificently by Alfred Molina.  He starts out as anything but plain old Otto Octavius, a scientist dedicated to harnessing fusion technology to create cheap power for the world.  But as soon as he declares that he holds "the power of the sun in the palm of my hand" you know that hubris is going to bite him on the ass.  And it does.  An experiment -- funded by Norman Osborn's son, and Peter's friend, Harry -- goes wrong.  Result: the four robotic limbs that Otto uses for his experiments are fused to him, and lose the ability to be overridden by his conscious mind.  The snakish extensions are an amazing creation, and bring out a darker side of Otto, fuelled by the death of his wife in the experiment that went wrong.  He's a tragic figure, and one who with Spider's guidance comes to redeem himself when it counts, humanity winning out over baser instincts, saying with dignity "I will not die a monster" as he seeks to right what he has done. 

The third film is perhaps weakened by having three villains.  Sandman is a stunning creation, run of the mill baddie Flint Marko escaping from the cops and leaping into a pile of sand that's being used for an experiment (those scientists insist on messing with forces they can't comprehend).  He gets zapped, and becomes a creature of sand, the effects for this transformation first class, and used to convey pathos as well. Less successful is the alien symbiote that turns Spider-Man's costume black and boosts his powers, before moving onto another host in the form of photographer rival Eddie Brock.    

When the symbiote is with Spidey it's a brilliant opportunity to showcase more of Tobey Maguire's range, as a darkly seductive side to Peter comes to the surface, seen to fantastic effect in a scene set in a jazz bar where Mary Jane is singing.  Peter saunters in, accompanies her on piano ('does whatever a spider can' evidently includes keyboard wizardry), and launches into a dance routine in which he humiliates Mary Jane by flirting with a love rival in front of her.  The cad. But when Eddie Brock bonds with the symbiote, it's not so interesting. 

Except, that is, for the matter of his defeat.  The crittur turns out to be vulnerable to certain sound frequencies, which Spider-Man discovers by accident when he wallops the Brock symbiote with a hollow metal pole.  Realising it's effective, Spidey gets a bunch of similar poles and puts Eddie within a circle of them -- the first time to my knowledge that an enemy has been defeated by tuned percussion since my uncle Len played the Mike Oldfield album Tubular Bells to drown out the carol singers at his door. 

The final villain of the trio is Green Goblin.  Kind of.  Norman Osborn died in the first film, and son Harry replaces him in the third.  But only after he has amnesia and forgets that he hates Peter, reigniting their former friendship for a while.  It's a cute device, and of course it doesn't last -- Harry realises what the score is, and sets out to avenge his dad...or is that extend the franchise given the merchandising undertones of all this?  In the end, Harry has a change of heart and pairs up with Spidey to take on Sandman and the symbiote-boosted Eddie Brock. If it all seems rather fraught and melodramatic, it works because these costumed weirdos stay true to their characters.  Harry Osborn reverts to being Peter's good pal.  Otto Octavius reasserts control over his serpentine limbs and dies a hero.  Sandman is forgiven by Peter for his involvement in Ben's death and gets to live on, free to love the daughter he misses so much.  It's only the symbiote that dies, and good riddance: it's icky.  Besides, its function is to bring out the worst in people. 

The Spider-Man trilogy is a fine addition to the superhero movie canon, one of its more honorable entries given the amount of garbage out there (I'm looking at you Catwoman, you Daredevil, and -- sad to say -- Fantastic Four, whose comics can be fine stuff).  It's a kinetic funfair ride with Spidey swooping between buildings, having cool fights in alleys, and on and in subway trains zooming through the metropolis, zinging out one-liners as he does.  What could be more fun?  Add an ongoing romance with a great looking girlfriend that takes us from teenage crush to real relationship with credible problems, and you've got a series that suits both genders, and every age.  Perfect family viewing, and worth going back to for some of the subtleties Raimi and his writers bring to the films that give the films a lingering fizz you might not be expecting. 

Copyright Adrian Reynolds, January 2010

THE MOVIES: 

Spider-Man (2002): Screenplay by David Koepp. Directed by Sam Raimi. 

Spider-Man 2 (2004):  Screen story by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar & Michael Chabon, screenplay by Alvin Sergeant.  

Spider-Man 3 (2007): Screenplay & screen story by Sam Raimi and Ivan Raimi; screenplay by Alvin Sergeant. Directed by Sam Raimi.  

If Jackals Ruled the World

I've finally seen Avatar, and it's as amazing and spectacular as everyone says.  The 3D experience is exhilarating, the plot is tight and smart, and the concept is brilliant.  It's one thing to write a story from an alien's point of view; but Cameron has gone one step further, by allowing a human being to become an alien.  (I know that also happens in District 9 - but in Avatar you really start to see and feel the world from this new, extraordinary perspective.)

I do have a couple of gripes about the movie though.   And I accept that my criticisms probably say more about me than they do about James Cameron.

But really,  who would actually want to live on that ghastly planet full of simpering size zero models?  They're all so skinny!  Where are the tubby aliens!

I also have a problem with the sheer unremitting niceness of the aliens.  Admittedly, Neytiri the cute alien love interest, does get to snarl and be cross from time to time, and those indeed are her sexiest scenes. But the deal is: humans, especially American soldier humans, and American mean-minded bureaucrat humans, are a Bad Thing (except for our small team of liberal-leaning American nice guys, including one Hispanic woman.)  And the aliens, by contrast, are a Good Thing. For they are 'primitive', at one with nature, in touch with their feelings, and receptive to the gaia of the planet in the way that rich materialistic Westerners (like me and, quite possibly, you) simply aren't.  

Well okay, it's a movie, and that's the story, and I'm not going to knock it.  But there's something about this vision of the sacred primitive that has always got my goat.  Because in reality, lots of ancient and primitive cultures have been violent and warmongering.  Some civilisations, like the Maya, died out because of greed and war.  The Incas and the Aztecs were also brutal violent cultures; and their Spanish invaders were no better, morally speaking, but also not that much worse.

And that's humans for you. We are a violent, predatory, competitive species, and there's never been a time in history or pre-history when that hasn't been the case.  And no wonder: we are products of an evolutionary system that privileges survival over all else.  Nature is red and tooth and claw - damn, I wish I'd said that! - and the only way to stay alive is to kill better, flee better, or hide better than all the rival species. 

If primates had remained in the trees, and jackals had become sentient - would the world really be a better place?  Would capitalism be more humane and fair, if snarling hyenas in suits ran the banks and the financial institutions?  Would the streets be safer if wolves were in charge of the Neighbourhood Watch scheme?  Or wouldn't they just - being wolvish by nature - steal and kill and mug unsuspecting elderly wolves?

Lions are the kings of the jungle; but they are lazy, arrogant and savage beasts.  Would sentient lions do a better job of this planet?  Or wouldn't they just sleep for eighteen hours a day then nuke all the other lions for two or three hours before going to bed again? 

Evolution is a cruel schoolteacher; and for that reason, my guess it that most aliens we encounter - all of whom will have been subject to evolutionary forces - will be just as violent and selfish and brutal as we, as a species, are.

Of course I like to believe that humanity is capable of better things.  Humans can be wise, poetic, liberal, gracious, and kind.  (I'm not saying I am any of those things though.)  But generally, I would say - looking around a post-Iraq War world, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Copenhagen summit, at a time when greedy bankers who almost destroyed our financial system are being rewarded by massive bonuses and new highly paid jobs - I'd say we are a species that has a long way to go before we can call ourselves a civilisation. 

In Avatar,  the balance of nature is vividly dramatised as a bond between all living things.  In evolution, I would more cynically argue, the balance of nature is that if there are too many herbivores, the predators will catch them more easily and then there will be fewer live herbivores.  And if the predators get too skilful, they'll kill too many prey; and then they'll die of starvation. 

Evolution is a battlefield littered with corpses; it's really NOT that nice.

That doesn't mean I'm defending the humans in Avatar.  Nor am I denying the beauty of Nature, and the extraordinariness of the way so many diverse creatures sustain life in a complex web of inter-relationships.  But 'one-ness' with Nature only gets you so far; it takes hard work, and moral courage, to pursue and enact the ideals of justice, peace, cooperation, democracy and fairness. 

So we, as a species, have a long way to go; but I'm betting that most other species in the universe will have the same problems, and the same flaws, as we do.  For that reason,  I'd prefer a less rose-tinted view of alien life.  Let them have flaws; let them make mistakes.  Let them be the slaves of their own evolution - whether they are predators, prey, parasites, or symbiotes. 

And let's also hope that they, and we, learn to work together and with others, to build a culture that isn't based around the desperate desire to thwart and humiliate others, in order to be 'top dog'. 

Movie Zone: Guest post from Archie Tait

I've recently started opening up this debatable space to guest blogs...most recently, Stuart Angell McGregor's splendid piece on The X-Files and his own original, never-broadcast show The Flashlight Department.

Watch out for more of these guest pieces, which will generally be grouped under the heading of Movie Zone, TV Zone, and Book Zone.  And if you look to the left of this page, under Debatable Archives, you can enter any of these zones to read these blog-essays, or 'blessays', as I like to call them, though I doubt that word will catch on. 

And here, in a mighty blog, is Archie Tait - cineaste and producer, who has worked as a pioneering film distributor and scheduler (at the ICA Cinema in London), and as a television producer and executive producer has created a staggeringly large and diverse body of work - from Bomber, to The Paradise Club, 99-1, The Uninvited, Chimera, and Heartbeat.

Archie and I have been talking a lot in recent years about science fiction and movies and,  well,  all sorts really.  And here's his take on
 

Why Science Fiction Movies Aren’t More Like the Written Word

Take it away, Archie....
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Any Science Fiction maven, however old or young, knows the complaint.  Science Fiction is an enormous genre, covering philosophical, metaphysical, sociological, psychological, historical and spiritual speculation.  So why do so many people, not Science Fiction mavens, still think it’s about men in shiny suits shooting ray-guns?

Hmmm.  Maybe it’s because of this kind of thing…
 

 Or this kind of thing…. 

 Could be this….

 It doesn’t even have to be men, and the suits don’t have to be shiny…

 
 But it’s all pretty much the same image isn’t it?

In a recent Movie Zone blog  about The Watchmen, Philip Palmer concluded with this hope: ‘…that we get some rich science fictional variety in the movie theatres in the years to come - character-based SF that moves us, and touches us, existing side by side with Snyder-style (Watchmen) eye-banquets.’

 I agree with Phil’s pluralist demands.  Still, Science Fiction isn’t just one or the other – emotions or images.  It’s about ideas too. Isn't it?

In passing, though, I have to admonish young Philip on his late-onset adolescent infatuation with Snyder's soft-core eye-candy in WATCHMEN.  The extended sex sequence not only stops the story dead in its tracks  but also quite contradicts the overall theme of the film: ageing Superheroes, and how they decay physically and morally.  In a film that has so much story, it can't afford the time for any asides,  Snyder takes an extraordinary dog-leg away from the thematically-driven narrative to reveal that,  far from ageing,  Laurie Jupiter and Dan Dreiberg are actually remarkably well-preserved hot young things, who recover their youth and get it on before you can blink an eye.  I am certainly not against sex (where would we be without it),  and not at all against sex sequences in movies (which are always entertaining). But I am against filmmakers who include sex sequences that contradict their own narratives and themes, to placate an imaginary audience of adolescent boys who can't watch any movies that doesn't feature this scene.

Ahem... Now, where was I? Yes -  can Science Fiction movies articulate or develop ideas? Or will it always be about the power of the movie image to astound us?

 Let’s consider this question…
 

Ray-Guns

 Science Fiction by its very nature is a zone of infinite possibility.  So what about these ray-guns?  Why do these action-packed, violent images hold such sway in the popular imagination?

 The short answer is – the movies.

 Whatever else the movies do – they move.  They require action.  Science fiction in the movies tends to involve marauding monsters, alien invasions and star-fleet battles.
 

Back-in-the-Day-Guns

 But hold on – surely even before the Movies, the very template of the genre was set by Jules Verne, the Father of Science Fiction, who yoked together the Speculative with Adventure?  Verne’s scientists – Professor Lindenbrock in Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1871), Michel Ardan in From the Earth to the Moon (1867), Nemo in 20,000 Leagues (1872) and The Mysterious Island (1874)– were explorers, adventurers in the world of the Future.  Men of Action.

 It was from Jules Verne that the Movies borrowed not just plots, but the template for the Science Fiction Serials that developed the iconic figures of the Mad Scientist, opposed by the Two Fisted Adventurer.  FLASH GORDON (1936 and onwards) was the pinnacle, but dozens of others were churned out by poverty-row studios, incorporating stock footage plundered (usually abandoning any sense of continuity) from newsreels and European spectacles.

 The Serials and the Poverty Row Programmers are the movie equivalent of the literary Pulps.  But unlike the sometimes beguiling, haunting and intellectually challenging stories that appeared from time to time in Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories, the Serials were all about Action.  Frequently contradictory in their story-telling, often senseless in their characterisation, the Serials are concerned only with moving to the next cliff-hanger, from which the Hero is extracted with little regard for science or logic.

 From the serials, Science Fiction movies adopted the templates of Adventure and War.  Adventure plots would lead to the discovery of unknown monsters [KING KONG (1933) remains the greatest]; the War template was used for alien invasions [EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956), 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957)]. Spectacle is the name of the game.
 

But it all came from the Father of Science Fiction himself…

Dad                                                                           Mum

Attack of the Five-Foot Woman

But hold on again.  Let’s go further back into the pre-history of the genre – to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.  She published ‘Frankenstein: Or The Modern Prometheus in 1818 – fifty years before Verne published his first novel. Obviously her tag-cliché should be ‘the Mother of Science Fiction’ (though it’s not).   Here is an iconoclastic Explorer – Frankenstein – who through science questions the rules and assumptions by which we all live. Once he takes that step, and unforeseen forces are unleashed, it is not long before we meet Science Fiction’s equal and opposite requirement of the Active Protagonist – the fear that ‘There Are Some Things Man Is Not Meant To Know.’

We have entered the realm of Transgression:  an essentially moral arena,  a world of consequence,  in which our protagonists encounter the philosophical and the metaphysical.  We are going down a different road here.  We will not meet any ray-gun-blasting,  shiny-suited spacemen on it.

 The Incredible Two-Headed Monster

 In Frankenstein, we discover the invention of two major movie genres in the same story. Not only the Science Fiction movie, but also the Horror movie.

Though Science Fiction is generally about ‘The Outward Urge’, and Horror generally takes us into Inner Space, it is an indication of the richness of the genres that Science Fiction can take us on inward journeys [John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS (1966)], and Horror movies can take us outwards on a huge scale [George Romero’s LIVING DEAD movies; Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s PULSE (Kairo) (2001)], Horror and Science Fiction are two sides of the same coin. They are parallel explorations of speculative fiction through the rational and the irrational.

And it’s often hard to tell one from the other.  The SF Serials are themselves warehouses of the irrational; Arthur Crabtree’s FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958) and Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979) are at least as much Horror movies as Science Fiction.  And over on the other side, the Hammer FRANKENSTEIN cycle, a key set of horror iconography, is an extended portrait of scientific ambition and discovery.

It is arguable in this Horror/Science Fiction overlap – in these smaller films –  that the cinema often finds its equivalent of those beguiling, haunting, intellectually challenging stories of the Science Fiction Pulps.

Literary Gold to Movie Tinsel: Alchemy in Reverse

Olaf Stapledon’s remarkable Science Fiction novels range from the then-unprecedented scale of ‘Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future’ (1930) and ‘Starmaker’ (1937) to the inner richness of ‘Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest’ (1935) and  ‘Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord’ (1944).

In ‘Last and First Men’ he traces the history of humanity across 2 billion years, and 18 successive species of humans; ‘Starmaker’ is nothing less than the entire history of life in the Universe.  By contrast, ‘Odd John’ is the life of one man, from birth to death, an intellectual superman; and ‘Sirius’, probably still his best-known work, the life of a dog born with the intelligence of humans, yet with entirely different instincts.

 It is no accident that Stapledon was a moral philosopher; his novels are philosophical fictions of a radical kind.  In cinema, only Kubrick and Clark’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) has attempted anything approaching the enormous scope of ‘Last and First Men’, and then only in snapshot.  Despite the scale of Fritz Lang’s silent masterpieces METROPOLIS (1927) and WOMAN IN THE MOON (Frau im mond) (1929), he was never able to tell stories on the sheer scale of Stapledon, Robert Heinlein or Frank Herbert.  Arguably, only the Serials would have had the time and scope to be able to tell such epic stories, had they not been bound by budget and market to two-fisted ‘space western’ stories.

Since Lang,  cinema’s storytelling,  derived from silent movie grammar,  has speeded up,  but not advanced significantly beyond the narrative devices evolved by Edison,  Griffith,  Pudovkin and Eisenstein.  In fact, it could be argued that cinematic story-telling has actually regressed since Griffith’s INTOLERANCE (1916) and Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927).  It has devolved back into the earlier story-telling tropes of Lang’s (still eye-popping) earlier films DR. MABUSE THE GAMBLER (Dr. Mabuse der Spieler) (1922), SPIES (Spione) (1928) and THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) (1933).  In these films Lang created the Mad Scientist / demagogue figures adopted by the poverty-row serials, and subsequently by the James Bond movies.

 Small is Beautiful

Instead, it is in pockets of relative obscurity that we find cinema’s ability to tap into the most poetic and challenging areas of Science Fiction – in  

Chris Marker’s LA JETEE (1962) [the source for Terry Gilliam’s 12 MONKEYS (1995)]; and in Andrei Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS (Solyaris) (1972), STALKER(1979) and SACRIFICE (Offret) (1986).   And in those boldly dystopian small movies that invariably failed to find an audience when first released (Arch Oboler’s FIVE (1951); John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS (1966); Joseph Sargent’s COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970); George Lucas’s THX 1138 (1971) and Saul Bass’s PHASE IV (1974).
 


 
 
 
These are all ‘small movies’ – character-driven movies, scratching under the surface of their protagonists. 
 

The Shrinking Man With the X-Ray Eyes

Let’s consider two beautiful, small-scale Science Fiction movies whose narrative trajectories are strikingly similar (and along the way, continue to consider how movies differ from prose).  Richard Matheson’s screenplay THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957), directed by Jack Arnold; and Ray Russell and Robert Dillon’s original script X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963) directed by Roger Corman.  The titles are pure pulp exploitation.  The films are exciting, haunting and sad. Both are small-scale stories about single protagonists; yet each film metonymically invites the viewer to contemplate huge subjects.

 The Shrinking Man Becomes ‘Incredible’

 In Richard Matheson’s original novel ‘The Shrinking Man’ (1956) and in his own adaptation THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, size and scale are themselves the subject.  Scott Carey inhales insect spray, and is accidentally exposed to a radioactive cloud.  Then he begins to shrink. 
 

That’s just about all the ‘science’ in this ‘Science Fiction’ story, which Stephen King argues in ‘Danse Macabre’ (1981), would be more accurately classed as a fantasy.  (I’d say he is largely correct, though when we get to considering the story’s conclusion, it’s really not quite as cut-and-dried as that).

The story, told in both versions from Scott’s point-of-view, is about what happens to your perception of yourself when something you have always accepted as immutable turns out not to be the case. Scott’s shrinkage is a great, multi-valent metaphor for just about everything in life we accept without too much thought.  It is a story about change – in ourselves, and in the world around us – and how we choose to adapt to it, or not.

Book vs. Film

Although both novel and film tell almost identical stories – the Big Events in the film are all drawn from the original novel – the book and the film have different emphases, and different outcomes.  And it is interesting to note Universal’s insertion of that extra word into the title.  As though the novel’s content – extraordinary as it is – weren’t quite enough.   As though for the movies, credibility isn’t quite enough – they have to be incredible; they have to challenge the very suspension of disbelief on which they rest. 
 

 In the novel, a medium in any event able to convey the detail of characters’ thought-process and state of mind, the emphasis is on Scott’s self-perception.  The metaphor of shrinkage is identical in both book and film.  But in the book Scott is not only married, he has a daughter; and his daughter has a teenage babysitter. As Scott shrinks, his relationship with his wife changes – his dominance in the marriage, as in the home, recedes, and with it his sexual confidence.  The sexuality of his marriage becomes nightmarish as he perceives his size – his ability to satisfy his wife sexually – shrinking.  As sex becomes a no-go area, his wife begins to treat him asexually, as a child; which puts the reverse-dominance through another cycle. 
 
 Scott becomes infatuated with his daughter’s teenage babysitter, but his knowledge that he is continually shrinking, more than his moral qualms, keep him from doing anything about it.  Finally, even his own 5-year-old daughter becomes a threat – she treats her father like a doll.  Compared with this, the next phase of Scott’s traumatic descent – threatened by a cat, and fighting off a giant spider with implements from a sewing basket – seems almost like a respite.

 None of this psycho-sexual detailing is available to Matheson the screenwriter.  In the mid-50s, even if any Universal Pictures studio executive wanted to explore sexual themes in a special effects picture (they didn’t), the MPAA Production Code precluded them from doing so.  In the movie THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, Scott and his wife have no daughter, so no teenage babysitter either.  Scott’s wife’s attitude moves directly from shock to sympathy.  The movie is therefore quite short (81 mins), and more interested in Scott fighting off giant beasts.

 However, this is not to dismiss the movie as inferior to the novel. The movie is simpler than the novel, and because of that, the huge metaphor of the Shrinking Man, expressed visually, has its own remarkable power.  Shorn of much of the inwardness the novel allows Scott, the film allows us to form our own ideas about the significance of his shrinkage (though the movie does have a voice-over narration that simply and powerfully allows us access to Scott’s thoughts and feelings).

The novel achieves a remarkable intertwining of the stages of Scott’s realisation of his changes (derived from a parallel time-structure, as the story unfolds simultaneously in the present travails of a Lilliputian man, and in ruefully accounted flashback).  He is dogged by regret, and driven by anger.  In the present, he fights the spider for survival, constantly alert.  But he is constantly diverted by thoughts of the past – regret for what he didn’t value, or didn’t achieve; anger that his future has been stolen from him.

The movie follows a linear course from the encounter with the glittering cloud, through Scott’s perception that he has changed, which no one else shares; and through his ever-diminishing incarnations.  In the movie, we need no prompts, no inward reflections: we see the metaphor in action, unexplained. We understand Scott’s dawning fear, his realisation of sexual inadequacy, his loss of dominance in society and in the home, and his increasing apprehension of further weakness.  The metaphor of shrinkage, simply observed, signifies different meanings at different stages – it is a shifting metaphor, but enormously powerful because of that.

Stripped of the searing intimacy of Scott’s memories, which constantly interrupt his quest for survival, the film becomes an oddly contemplative journey towards accepting fate. It is in all ways a more positive account of Scott’s journey, making the stages of his descent a journey, towards the transcendence of all his previous beliefs. It is dark poetry, a parable, emotionally moving in its embrace of the inexorable, and the inevitable. It strips away from its protagonist all physical limitations, all human relationships, to arrive at spiritual simplicity.

 (We can compare THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN with the shifting, unspecified metaphor of Jack Finney / Don Siegel’s magisterial INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERS (1956) – a metaphor strong enough to induce cold sweat after dozens of viewings, yet unspecific enough to be justifiably interpretable as both anti-communist and anti-McCarthy).

 The differences between the book and film become clearer as both move on to Scott’s encounter with a character common to both versions – the midget girl, Clarice.  In the novel, Scott has a sexual affair with her – he discovers that he has not lost his sexuality with his height – he is still ‘himself’. In the film there is no sexual dimension to their friendship – Scott discovers that he is not a human freak – he finds acceptance.  And just as important as his acceptance as a fully viable person, is where he finds it – in the carnival.

 Dark Carnival

 In American movies, the carnival is invariably ‘the Other Side’. It is a place of night in a brightly-lit society; it is the violent and unpredictable obverse of a rigidly organised, stable world; it is the world of the impoverished and the dispossessed, outsiders from the ‘overground’ world of wealth and comfort.  When Emil Jannings’ stuffy professor is ruined by his infatuation with Dietrich’s Lola-Lola in von Sternberg’s THE BLUE ANGEL (1929) he ends up in the carnival. Tyrone Power starts as a carnival barker in Edmund Goulding / Jules Furthman’s NIGHTMARE ALLEY (1947) – so how can he fall further?  We see how far – he ends up a geek, biting the heads off live chickens.  When psychopathic playboy Rob Walker murders tennis-star Farley Granger’s errant wife in Hitchcock’s STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951), it is at the carnival; to which Granger must return to exorcise his guilt by destroying it.  And it is where Ray Milland’s Dr Xavier finds his home after exercising his hubristic power in Corman’s X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963).

When Scott gets to the carnival, he has fallen beneath the lowest level of American society: he has joined the Underclass.  In the novel, he regains his sexuality – and loses his wife’s love.  In the movie he discovers – as Todd Browning had mapped 20 years previously in his long-suppressed FREAKS (1936) – that ‘freaks’ are human too: more so than many ‘normal’ people. (It is probably significant that in the movie’s more upbeat account of Scott’s encounter with Clarice, he meets her not at the carnival, but in a diner next to it – a lighter, brighter place.)

 The midget girl and the carnival mark the end of the metaphor of ‘descent’.  Whatever Scott’s shrinkage means from now on, it is understood relatively.  He is going through stages of understanding his human condition – and of the Human Condition.
 

The End – And Beyond

And finally – the end of the book and film are different, in significant ways.  Actually, both end their narratives in the same way – there is no end.  There is no arrest of Scott’s shrinkage; certainly no miracle cure, no reversal, no return to former social and personal equilibrium.  Those things are left behind.   Particularly for a film in 1957, this is an astonishingly radical conclusion.  The horror the story elaborates turns out to be never-ending;  but also, when fully embraced, beautiful.

 The novel ends with a haunting passage, as Scott recounts his realisation that his journey through change will not end even in death – and that it is a good thing.  Unlike his former existence, his life is an unending process of reinvention and discovery. 
 

‘But to nature there was no zero. Existence went on in endless cycles.  It seemed so simple now. He would never disappear, because there was no point of non-existence in the universe.

 ‘It frightened him at first. The idea of going on endlessly through one level of dimension after another was alien.

 ‘Then he thought: If nature existed on endless levels, so also might intelligence.

 ‘He might not have to be alone.

 ‘Suddenly he began running towards the light.’

 And it is here that the novel, from its cursory beginnings in a ‘scientific’ explanation of Scott’s condition, re-connects with the concept of Science Fiction.  In this, it is more Science Fiction than Stephen King gave it credit for.  As Einstein observed, there are always new worlds to be discovered. (1)
 

 Say Hello to God

 The ending of the film is haunting too, in a different way.  In a voice-over passage reportedly added by director Jack Arnold, Scott’s constant transformation is accounted significance by being recognised - by God.  ‘And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears locked away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God there is no zero. I still exist.’

 This lurch into religiosity is entirely typical of American movie Science Fiction, and is a hallmark of the genre’s representation in mainstream cinema. It occurs almost identically in the George Pal / Byron Haskin version  of H.G. Wells'  WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953), written by Barre Lyndon.  WAR OF THE WORLDS is at the opposite end of the budgetary spectrum to HE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES. Wells’ ‘scientific’ deus ex machina – exposure to the common cold destroys the invading Martian war-machine – is characterised by ‘germs – the littlest things that God, in his wisdom, had put upon our planet.’  H. G. Wells wrote the line, almost verbatim; but it was written by a character, it was not Wells’ judgement on the story; and it was not accompanied by a swelling hymn and chorus.

X-Ray Eyes 

 Roger Corman’s 1963 film X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES is based on a screenplay by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon, from an original idea by Roger Corman. It began as a saleable exploitation title in the imagination of James H. Nicholson, who with his partner Sam Arkoff ran the legendary drive-in studio American International Pictures.  AIP produced many of then finest examples of off-Skid-Row pulp SF movies, many directed by Corman.  Their titles are a cornucopia of ‘must see’. Many don’t live up their monikers, but many do: THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS,  I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF,  THE BRAIN EATERS,  HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER,  PANIC IN YEAR ZERO. And Corman and Richard Matheson’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle, from HOUSE OF USHER (1960) to THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1965).

 But if THE BEAST WITH A MILLION EYES (1955) turned out to have rather fewer (no – let’s be honest – it is one of the shabbiest monsters ever seen), at least TEENAGE CAVEMAN (1958) had a spectacular final twist, hijacked to historic effect by Rod Serling for his 1968 adaptation of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel PLANET OF THE APES.

 And X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES  is a film that dwarfs even its magnificent title.  Ray Milland is Dr Xavier, who experiments on himself with a serum be believes will cure blindness.  Xavier is a driven scientist, whose own blindness is moral – he cannot ‘see himself’.  His punishment for hubris is success; and his ‘success’ will reveal to him ‘What Man Is Not Meant To Know’.

 Xavier’s experiments lead to an addiction – he wants to see better, he wants to see more:  soon he discovers that he can see through solid objects and materials.  At first the discovery is the source of illicit fun – the promise of nudity (unfulfilled) the movie was selling to its drive-in audience. Then it puts him further at odds with his medical colleagues when he uses his new powers to contradict their diagnoses.  But Xavier’s addiction leads him accidentally to kill his boss: he flees, confident his newly acquired power will protect him from the law.

This is where Xavier’s ability to ‘see through’ things acquires a metaphorical resonance.  Pursued by the law, rejected by sympathetic friends and fellow scientists he insults and demeans, he is forced, like Scott Carey in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, into the sanctuary of the carnival, where he uses his X-ray powers to diagnose illnesses.  And here he re-discovers his affinity with ordinary people – re-discovering his original vocation as a doctor.  Just as in THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, the carnival is a place of re-orientation; but it is also, in more conservative movie terms, a place of damnation. 

 The metaphor of ‘seeing through’ is growing, it cannot be stopped:  Xavier ‘sees through’ people to their psychic pain, and it begins to swamp him. He flees to Las Vegas, enriching himself through his ability to see when slot machines will pay out, and the next card to be dealt; he justifies his acquisitiveness by claiming to ‘see through’ the casino’s system for fleecing ordinary people.  

 There is a further level of seeing for Xavier to penetrate. He has seen through the physical world, ‘seen through’ its false ideology; ‘seen through’ the masks people create for themselves.  Now he begins to see through ‘reality’ itself – and he has the increasingly inescapable sense of ‘being seen’ himself.  Dimly at first, then in a horrific blast, he sees God.

In their indispensable Overlook Film Encyclopedia Vol 2 – Science Fiction (ed. Phil Hardy), Hardy and/or Paul Willemen have many perceptive things to say about X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES and the metaphor of sight, a theme they first explored in their book Roger Corman: The Millennic Vision (ed. David Will, Paul Willemen). But their final observation that X’s special effects are ‘weak’ is a quite inexplicable judgement.

 The visual effects of this very low budget ($250,000 says Corman – probably even that is an exaggeration) are really outstanding.  Cinematographer Floyd Crosby’s prismatic colour separations are simple, but exceptionally strange and disorienting.  They are highly effective throughout the film, and it says a lot that Xavier’s ultimate vision tops them all.  Xavier’s vision is not a benign God.  Abstract colour has rarely been used to such effect in cinema.
 

 Xavier is driven by this vision to his final apocalypse.  It takes place in a fundamentalist religious gathering on the edge of the desert.  It is Old Testament, utterly punitive.  Shocking though it is (and I still remember my jaw dropping and my hair standing on end when I first saw it) there is speculation (by Stephen King, supported to an extent by Corman) that the original ending went even further.

Like THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and WAR OF THE WORLDS, X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES begins in the realm of Science Fiction, but unlike them, it is then drawn inexorably into the supernatural.  The film lives in the overlap between Science Fiction and Horror.  It seems fairly easy to reconcile Science Fiction and the Spiritual.  While it is possible for Science Fiction to co-exist with the supernatural, it is not possible for Science Fiction to embrace it.

 However, this takes us right back to Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ (and it is worth remembering that Roger Corman’s final film as director was an adaptation of Brian Aldiss’s Frankenstein Unbound – a story by a Science Fiction absolutist, directed by a man who could only direct THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE and THE RED BARON (Von Richthoven and Brown) as horror films.

In Science Fiction there is also Horror – but it is horror of the rational and material kind. From Fritz Lang to David Cronenberg, it is a legitimate pedigree.  Yet from the same sources, pushed further than the spiritual into the supernatural, we find the connected but distinct realms of fantasy and horror.

It is important to say that while ‘…that God in his wisdom…’ and  ‘To God there is no zero.’ may invoke the supernatural, neither story relies on it.  It is equivalent, in the development of English philosophy, to Bishop Berkeley’s answer to the question of how we know the world around us actually exists, and it is not merely an imaginative construct of the mind. He concludes that we understand that the world still exists, even if we cannot see any more of it than our own vision reveals, because of the existence of God.  God sees all.  Therefore he sees the World.   Therefore the World exists.

We would say now that Berkeley was mistaken: that there are many other scientific proofs of the existence of the material world, independent of our perceptions of it; and that even if he were unaware of those proofs at the time, his proof is based on unproveable faith, which he could not see beyond.  (Yet if Berkeley were alive today, he could still legitimately argue that ‘scientific proofs’ might equally be the product of imagination.  Just a really good imagination.)

 We should also compare the Bishop’s idea of God with the view of Stanton Carlisle, played in Edmund Goulding’s 1947 film by Tyrone Power, in William Lindsay Gresham’s original novel ‘Nightmare Alley’ (1946):  ‘What sort of God would put us here… in this stinking slaughterhouse of a world? Some guy who likes to tear the wings off flies? What use is there in living and starving and fighting the next guy for a full belly?  It’s a nut house.  And the biggest loonies are at the top. (2) ’

 Needless to say, that speech did not appear in Jules Furthman’s still searing screenplay of the film.  Gresham’s idea of God is close to Xavier’s vision in X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES.  Corman’s film may embrace the supernatural, but it is not conventionally religiose.

 Religiose or not, we are still in the world of Science Fiction.  More than being logically possible, it is logically probable that there are new worlds, presently wholly unimaginable, awaiting discovery.  These are not only physical worlds, presently defined, like distant planets, or beneath the oceans.  There are also worlds that may exist within and between the  dimensions we currently believe we know and understand. The worlds waiting for us, in Gene Roddenberry’s immortal split infinitive,  ‘to Boldly Go’…

The Beginning of The End

This blog started out asking whether Science Fiction movies could articulate or develop ideas, and ends up pitting William Lindsay Gresham against Bishop Berkeley.  Who will win?  There's only one way to find out!  Fight! Fight! Fight! (3)

So - yes, these movies invoke ideas, and trigger new ones.

However, the question of whether movies can develop ideas, in a more complex 'dialogue' with the audience, is still open.  In the comparision between the novel the Shrinking Man and the movie THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, we can see that in the movies, action tends to replace reflection.

Except for Bruce Lee, to whom action IS reflection.

This does not mean that ideas are evacuated, replaced by images: it means that ideas are expressed in images, edited together.  Ideas expressed in images tend towards the general: towards big, inclusive statements.  Moving images lead us towards the biggest, the most abstract (and most vague) commonly understood ideas - hence the sudden lunges towards religiosity. This is not a quality that leads to the development of debate or ideas.

      Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Contact: 'Big, Abstract and Vague' - we love it.

Yet, while we have seen how long-form movie serials are resolutely uninterested in anything other than thrills and action (pleasurable though they are), TV series have engaged in extended debate with the audience. Most obvious in this respect is LOST, which triggers in the viewer an extended series of speculations on 'What's It All About?'  Also BATTLESTAR GALACTICA explores a post-9/11 metaphor of building a New World Order.  HEROES and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, over their many seasons, have developed a complex set of rules and qualifications for teenagers dealing with their supernatural/emotional sides: for their target audience, the equivalent of scanning all the relevant bits of Freud and Salinger.

Finally, The End

And to return to the movies: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN and X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES - just because the images are often bold and simple does not mean that they cannot reflect quite complex ideas. The ideas are metaphoric: they conjure ideas in the mind of the viewer, in the memory as much as through direct viewing experience.

Those images become embedded in the reflective consciousness of the viewer, in an effect more akin to the experience of poetry than of prose. We are haunted by them, and they trigger in us unexpected moods.  Chris Marker's LA JETEE may be only 28 minutes long, but it is as rich in imagery as any feature film, or many novels.

So Scott Carey's reflection on his continued experience at the end of Matheson's novel can apply also to the different qualities of ideas expressed by movies and prose.  They are parallel but different; different but connected. Each produces a different quality of meaning, uniquely through its medium.  The proposition is not 'either/or', but each alone, and both together, in the expression of the genre Science Fiction.

The Final Question

The Final Question: would you trade the existence in the world of the novel The Shrinking Man for the movie THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN?

Of course not.

And that is why Science Fiction movies shouldn't be more like the written world.

 - Archie Tait, copyright 2009
 **************************************************************************************************
(1)   While writing this blog, I came across Zack Handlin’s splendid comparison of Shrinking Man book and film on badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks.  It was a bit like the American astronauts finding a ragged Union flag on the moon at the beginning of First Men in the Moon (but the other way round).  Of course I think it’s splendid – we say very similar things.  But Zack says them more briefly and wittily.  Which is why I leave my acknowledgement to the end.
 
(2)   Quoted in Woody Haut’s terrific essay in Eureka Video’s characteristically immaculate Region 2 DVD Nightmare Alley (2005).
 
(3) A British joke.  Apologies to non-UK readers.

Best SFF Film of 2009

It's coming to that time of year when the pundits start issuing their lists of the Best of '09...I thought I'd add to the pile with my own three favourite SFF films of 2009.

Well actually I can't manage 3 - I have to stretch to 4.  And in reverse order:

Number 4) is District 9, a wonderfully funny and also terrifically exciting action SF set in South Africa, in which the hero turns into an alien.  Peter Jackson executive produced this gem, and it was directed by Neil Blomkamp and written by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell.

Number 3) is Star Trek, directed by J.J. Abrams and written by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman.  I've seen some negative comments about this on the web - on the lines of,  it's 'just' a Hollywood blockbuster.  But I thought it was fast and furious and funny and very clever.  I love the fact that Abrams - with his US TV background - has the courage to mix slapstick humour, like Kirk's balloon hands, in with moments of intense drama. I watched this in a packed cinema, and the audience oohed and aahed just as audiences ought to...This is space opera and it rocks.

Number 2) is The Watchmen, a faithful (thought purists might say otherwise) version of Alan Moore's comic book which was visually extraordinary, and morally challenging.  Some found it a bit slow-paced and digressive; I thought it was a work of drama that had the courage to take its time.  And it was sexy too - great to see a Hollywood movie that isn't afraid to admit that humans have bare bodies beneath their lycra.

But up there as number 1), my favourite film of the year, as well as being my favourite SFF film, is Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. 

Despite the dumb spelling of the title (it's an in joke that is so "in" only Quentin gets it),  this is a serious, intelligent, thought-provoking, exciting, hilarious piece of a work from a film-maker who just gets better and better.  (Death Proof worked perfectly, in my view, as a B movie with real characters and great performances; and Kill Bill is kick-ass action rendered into astonishing visual poetry.)

I read quite a lot of hostile reviews of Basterds, taking exception to the fact that a) Brad Pitt's men keep scalping Nazis, which is not very nice, and didn't happen in real life and b) the final sequence has an event (I SHAN'T SPOIL IT!) that also didn't happen in real life.  Oh, and lots of reviewers seemed to think that Tarantino had lost his mind, and simply shot random scenes from different films then tried to splice them together in a last minute frenzy.

However, I found it to be a very carefully constructed, rich, and utterly entertaining piece  of cinema.  And I loved the fact it is  based on an alternate history scenario in which the course of the Second World War was changed by a bunch of characters out of a Sam Peckinpah movie. (The fact the film uses alternate history means that - like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle - it most emphatically counts as SF, not just 'war movie.')

Basterds begins with a shockingly suspenseful sequence in which a Nazi colonel murders a family of  Jews - all bar one, Shosanna, who escapes, and plans a dark revenge.  She is the heroine of the movie, and the best thing in the movie; this is a luminous and wonderous performance from Melanie Laurent, who is even better than Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa.

The story of Brad Pitt and his Apache style guerrilla warriors is woven around Shosanna's story, skilfully and beguilingly.  But Tarantino - a master of postmodern genre-mashing - is too smart to make a dumb 'scalping Nazis' movie.  He makes the dumb scalping Nazis stuff his enjoyable B-movie-style subplot, and THEN builds a structure of complex drama around it. 

I adore Brad Pitt for giving such a selflessly comedic performance; he stomps around like Popeye in an Ingmar Bergman movie. He knows it's silly, and Tarantino knows it too. That's the gag; diversity of tone and clashing of genres are the things that light Tarantino's fire.

So here's to the Basterds!  And let's hope next year brings as many great movies.

My Number 4: Beware, spaceship over Jo'burg!

Er, Mum, I have a lobster's hand, is that normal?

Why can't I get my head into this poster?

Space...the final frontier....SO cool.

The Watchmen, in their jim-jams.

He's definitely a basterd.

 

Actually, she's not, but she fights on their side.

 

And this is Shosanna, our feisty Jewish heroine.

Movie Zone: The Red Shoes

As a post-Christmas treat, I went to see a classic movie at the BFI (formerly the National Film Theatre).  It was The Red Shoes,

by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, an oldie and goldie.

It's a sweet, colourful, beautiful film with acid in its veins.  It tells the story - the deceptively simple story - of a young composer who writes the music for a ballet based on the Hans Christian Anderson legend of the red shoes.  And it intertwines that with the story of the young ballerina who dances the lead role in that ballet, and is acclaimed.  It's the classic 'star is born'  formula which Simon Cowell milks to this day, but which he did not invent.

As always with Powell and Pressburger's movies, I watched this piece growing amazement.  For the films of these two men - close collaborators who wrote, directed and produced their films jointly in Coen Brothers style - are not structured or conceived in orthodox ways; they don't fit the template for 'popular movie'.  They are simple, yet complex; conventional, yet bafflingly weird. In A Canterbury Tale, the main story concerns a man who pours glue on women's hair in wartime England; but the real story is about England itself, its buildings, its music, its people.  And in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp we are introduced to the old fartiest of old farts - an elderly, bald moustachioed military man (who resembles the period newspaper cartoon caricature known as 'Colonel Blimp', a by-word for reactionary military types) and then we flash back in time to see what the old fart was like when he was young, and dashing, and magnificent.

I saw a screening of Colonel Blimp in front of an audience of young screenwriters in Yorkshire - and they were visibly stunned at the strangeness of the approach, and the acidity of the wit.  These Powell and Pressburger films are the most bizarre blend of hokey oldfashionedness and audacious art. 

And so The Red Shoes - which I saw many years ago, and vaguely remembered as being a rather pretty ballet drama - slowly and eerily evolved into a tragedy about the mania of art.  The driving force of the story is Boris Lermontov,  impresario and chief of the Ballet Lermontov, whose genius is such that he can transform other, ordinary mortals, into geniuses.  He's a talent spotter and a mentor rolled into one; he inspires the young composer Julian Craster into creating a work of shimmering wild brillance; and he has total faith in an untested ballerina who he has discovered, despite the reservations of all his trusted advisors - and his judgement is totally vindicated as she dances with passion and grace and terrifying frenzy.

A long section of the movie consists of an uninterrupted but edited version of the final ballet, merging stage magic and movie magic, and conjuring up poetry and colour in motion of a kind that would give James Cameron's Avatar a run for its money.

And that, pretty much, for a good hour or so, is the story of the movie!  The ballet company goes about its business. They stage a ballet. It's successful. And the legend of the red shoes - magic red shoes that dance and dance and dance until the dancer who wears them dies of exhaustion - helps launch the career of two artists.

But then, slowly, the real story unfolds.  I won't give away the final twist;  but I will say that there's a reason this is one of Martin Scorsese's  favourite movies.  For this is a movie about power, and about art. And above all it's about the mania of art - the belief that nothing, nothing, nothing matters more than creating beauty that will last for eternity.

This, of course, is not true.  Friendship is more important than art; love is more important than art; raising a child is a greater achievement than writing a poem, or making a movie, or writing a novel. 

But it doesn't always feel that way.  Every time I read a blog or an article about the process of writing, I can smell the heady exhilaration of creation; the supreme conviction that nothing matters more than the white-hot frenzy of creating a work of fiction, or a piece of screen drama.  Often, for much of the time in fact, the process of writing is boring; much of it is sheer hard labour; but every now and then, the work writes itself - the characters come to life - the dancer becomes the dance - and very few things can beat that joy.

That's why writers write; it's not for fun, it's for the opposite of fun. It's for those moments of exaltation.  Creativity is a dangerous drug; though, fortunately, a legal one.

And this is the real story of The Red Shoes.  It's about a man - Boris Lermontov - who forsakes his humanity in order to enable others to create great art.  He is of course a madman, and a fool, and a devil.

But sometimes, I have to admit, it seems like a tempting trade...

On Misfits

Ep 4 of Misfits screens tonight. If you've missed it so far, you can catch up here.

I'm in love with this show. It's funny and dark and nasty, and all the main characters are totally unlikeable - and hence, I love them all.  There's the gobby Irish one, the gobby chav one, the sexy slutty one,  the socially incompetent nerd, and the (actually rather pleasant) black athlete - all of them serving Asbos,  They are the much feared underclass; if they moved up a social tier, they'd be yobs; and they are never ever nice to each other. But I care about them, each and every one.

The brilliant conceit of the show is that they all have superpowers which are useless for fighting crime, and essentially just exaggerate the anxieties and fears these characters have anyway.  The telepathic girl (Kelly) is constantly enraged when she hears people thinking she's a slag. The nerdy one (Simon) can become invisible - but no one notices him anyway.  And the black athlete (Curtis) can turn back time - and don't we all wish we could do that, when we see what a mess we've made of our lives?

Ep 2 was my favourite so far - so very rude, and shocking, and yet with a big big heart.

This show is made by Clerkenwell - producers of the John Hannah Rebus, and the supernatural drama Afterlife.  I worked with Clerkenwell 'head honcho' (as movie people like to say) Murray Ferguson during my time at Scottish Television - he's a softly spoken gent with impeccable taste. And my friend Petra Fried is now Head of Drama at Clerkenwell, and Executive Producer of Misfits.

Together with the equally rude True Blood, this is my favourite show on telly at the moment.

On 2012

Roland Emmerich has just announced his new movie project - a disaster movie in which THE ENTIRE DAMNED SOLAR SYSTEM falls to pieces, spectacularly, and only a handful of A List Hollywood actors survive, floating on a plank in empty space. 

This is the only way he could top 2012, a disaster movie which features the end of the world, in astonishing graphic detail.  A supermarket splits in half; cities fall into the sea; the South Pole moves to Minnesota; and Everest looms in the middle of an ocean.

It's a great spectacle, but it's also a classic example of a Hollywood movie built by story engineers, not written by real writers. A real writer would have found some pain and pathos in this story of the End of Days.  A real writer would have created characters who you didn't want to punch because they're so damned noble. (The evil Russian oligarch with the big lips was the only character I liked - because he was so flawed.)  And a real writer would, quite possibly, have found a place for passion and eroticism and love, amidst all the falling buildings - because if the world's about to end, wouldn't you want to find a quiet place, and drink a bottle of wine, and make gentle elegiac love with your partner?  I mean - don't these people have any emotion other than blind panic?

But story engineers do know how to engineer a good story.  The thrills thrill, the spills spill; all the characters have journeys (from A to A 1/2), and yes, I did have a tear in my eye when Danny Glover did the noble thing half way through the story.

It's a shame, though, that Emmerich didn't feel able to call upon the many brilliant screenwriters in Hollywood who can infuse genre material with real truth and wit. 

Oddly, it feels like an oldfashioned movie because it's not in 3D. After Pixar's Up, I can't believe that all blockbuster movies aren't made that way.

For a fabulous image of Apocalypse, as painted by John Martin, see Paul McAuley's highly perceptive blog, and scroll down to 4th November.

TV Zone: The X-Files

I've recently introduced a new feature on this blog...consisting of longer and more researched pieces on favourite books, movies and TV shows written by me and the co-geeks amongst my acquaintance.  At some point, I hope to create a separate section for these pieces, under the headings Movie Zone, TV Zone, Book Zone etc. But, er, I haven't done that yet.

So far I've written about Outland and The Watchmen, enthused over The Bloody Red Baron, and drafted a short essay on one of my fave SF classics, Orwell's 1984.  But this is going to be the first guest contribution to the Zones; and it is written by my former screenwriting student, a screenwriter and comic book reviewer of considerable flair.  His name is Stuart Angell McGregor, we all call him Angell, and this is what he has to say about the cult SF show The X-Files:

THE FLASHLIGHT DEPARTMENT (A boy's own adventure within The X-Files)

from the fair hand of Stuart Angell McGregor

PART ONE - BATTERIES AND BULBS

I was 13, and had snuck lively into mother's bedroom, when it happened.  Her TV, colour and heavy with channels, has always been far better than my own, with its constant teeth-buzzing hum, the two working channels and strange air of instant destruction about it.  Late night television was a refuge back then, a secret place with secret adult wonders, nudity and swearing, with liberal dashes of saucy violence. More valuable to a newly minted teen than gold. That night's fresh wonder seemed different, a tall man and compact woman, be-suited and frantic with guns drawn, hunting for lost twins in a dark truck-stop parking lot.  I was hooked, drawn instantly to a world of twisting story, little genetic freaks with super powers, and shadowy government intrigue.  The tall man was Mulder, the fire-haired woman Scully, and this was my induction into The X-Files.

The show premiered in the States a year earlier, and had grown two-headed and strange from the bloated corpse of old mystery favourite Kolchak the Night Stalker, thanks to the fervent mind of Chris Carter, a Californian with the surf and spray of Big Sur salting in his veins, and memories of Watergate, the backward dealings of Tricky Dicky Nixon marked indelibly upon his formative years.

The addiction, for me, came thick and fast. This was new, a stand-out, and drew me back week after week to the secret confines of that after-dark bedroom.  I recorded the show over old home movies, and showed my allegiance by wearing X-Files t-shirts with pride. But only at home. The street was a different matter, my tees worn as they were beneath thick jumpers of geeky shame.  I fell hard in love with those two agents of American weirdness, the rabid believer and the scientific sceptic. It was great to learn just how backward and beautiful the world could be, and, to be honest, it was a relief to discover that there were things out there stranger than me, in the heady flurry of my early teenage years.

I wanted desperately to live in that world, to hunt down bizarre things that defied explanation, to be a high-flyng Fed with his own roguish approach to solving cases that no-one else would teach. But, at 13, where could I go, and what could I possibly do? I decided I was too young and fragile for such frantic field work (I did, also, have to be back home and ready for bed by a modest 9), not quite cut out for a life of constant danger and narrow brushes with extraterrestrial induced death.  No, there were more important things ahead for me, a position of such importance that Mulder, Scully and even the chrome-domed, brick shithouse-built superman A.D. Walter Skinner, would crumble pathetically and weep without my aid.  I would become the head, the number one man, the top dog of the Flashlight Department.

'I mean,' I thought to myself as I set about crafting my own winning ID badge from an old passport photo, a bag of crusty felt tips and liberal abuse of the school's laminator, 'they would be lost without those bloody flashlights, amount of dark and ominous tunnels that lot wander down.'  I would form part of the integral backbone of the FBI. Stuck in a dank hole?  Whip out the handy dandy flashlight my team had provided and find your way to freedom. Stretchy man-beast slavering at your heels and trying to scarf down your liver? A few hard smacks with a torch from my boys will put that freak down for good.

Yeah...The Flashlight Department. That was totally the way to go.

My completed badge wasn't so much winning; having looked for the entire world to have been crafted by a gibbering monkey in the final spastic throes of a grand mal seizure...using only his teeth...but it was unique if nothing else. I wore it with as much pride as I could muster, but my desire to hand out replacement bulbs and fresh batteries soon drew its last breath, and turned quietly from rabid geekdom into a simple, but loving, appreciation of the show.

With little more than a muted whimper, the Flashlight Department was closed down.

You there! Writer guy! Come out with your hands up!!

PART TWO - DO YOU THINK I'M SPOOKY?

The X-Files broke a year later, with avid fans in over forty-two countries naming their dogs, rats, goldfish, children after those two daring agents, and urging them to answer the call for romance and resolution that were so deftly avoided on the show itself.  This was a programme that, as I was all too well aware, inspired something deeper, and sometimes darker, in its fan base, and gave that hardcore yet another reason to distrust their shaky governments and turn their wan and hopeful eyes skyward.

The first season reeked of a show finding its feet, and episodes such as 'Fire' and 'Space' fall flat when compared to later triumphs, but it had enough going for it to warrant the second season starting with a massive 42% jump in the Nielson ratings. The X-Files was an infection, and had spread virus-like throughout our culture, across the new frontiers of the internet, and the front pages of newspapers and magazines across the world.

The second season was savage, with more of a focus on the backward adventures of murdering America than the quaint abductees of the first. The Greys returned, of course, in 'Little Green Men' and the 'Duane Barry/Ascension' two-parter, but for the most part the screen was daubed unmistakably in the blood of cannibals, demons, and other twisted broken souls.

'3' remains a stand-out, a dark and overtly sexualised tale of a Scully-free Mulder's encounter with beautiful vampires living the fanged life in LA.

'Blood' and 'Humbug', the first story credits for one of the show's most consistently inventive writers, Darin Morgan, were equally as evocative. The former a grim examination of the horrors of mind control, the latter a wonderful mystery set amongst a community of retired circus freaks and sideshow attractions.

This blood hungry season segued easily into a confident third; The X-Files was no longer a show unwilling or afraid to take overt risks.  Two episodes showed this aplomb, both coming once more from the special mind of Morgan, brother of the show runner/writer/producer Glen Morgan, and the dabbling actor brought on previously to play the shit-dwelling albino flukeman of 'The Host'.

'Clyde Bruckman's Finale Repose' featured Young Frankenstein's Monster himself, the late Peter Boyle, as the titular Bruckman, a humble and down-at-heel insurance salesman blessed, or blighted, with the ability to look deep into a person's future and predict with stunning accuracy the way that they will die.  The episode sings not only for its laudable acting, sharp writing, and honest sentimentality, but also for its focus on comedy, arguably one of the show's first episodes to yet give chuckles any credence ('Humbug' being more odd than laugh out loud funny). Here we see the Uri Gellar analogue The Stupendous Yappi ponce wonderfully around a crime scene, and learn that Mulder will die an amazingly filthy death thanks to the marvels of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Or so says Bruckman, whose record, let's be honest, is pretty damn solid so far.  Such lightness of touch and sweetness of spirit earned Morgan an Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series, and the episode itself a none too shabby 10th place in TV Guide's countdown of the Greatest Ever TV Episodes.

'Jose Chung's From Outer Space' runs further with the comedic ball, employing a Rashomon-like approach to tell a tale of alien abduction and possibly rape from several highly skewed perspectives. This one has everything, from Harryhausen-esque monsters to aliens smoking fags and weeping.  There were even cameos from greying Jeopardy host Alex Trebek, and the steroidal muscle-bound man mountain cum politician, Jessie 'The Body' Ventura (who, as anyone who has ever seen Predator can attest, is a 'goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus') as ominous men in black.  Chung is wonderfully mocking, flashing a hairy and uncaring arse to the usualy stuffy conventions of the series, and giggling with impish glee as it does so.

The real meat and potatoes of the infamous 'mytharc' episodes - those that served to further the story of the shadowy Syndicate and their attempts to prosper in the face of impending alien invasion - were served lavishly for the first time in season three.  With oodles of black space oil, shape shifting alien bounty hunters, and naughty men in dark rooms.  The X-Files was going from strength to strength to strength, with more people tuning in now than ever before. It was a world rapt, the word conspiracy on the tip of everyone's tongue.

Season four stood up well to the mighty third, with more twisted tales kicking the often laborious mytharc episodes hard and firm in the teeth. Inbred baby killers murdered and merrily humped one another to the languid strains of Johnny Mathis in 'Home', while surgeons steeped in icky black magic sliced and diced for jollies and lumbering golems slapped some serious Hasidic bum in 'Sanguinarium' and 'Kaddish' respectively.

By far my favourite at the time though was 'The Field Where I Died', a touching exploration of past lives, notable for a wrought turn from Space: Above and Beyond's (hands up who remembers that one) pouty sad-face Kristen Cloke.  David Duchovny infuses the normally laconic Fox Mulder with real emotional weight here, and though Gillian Anderson has little more to do than turn Scully's patented sceptic-o-meter way past 11, and practice her disapproving looks, the episode works well, remaining for me one of the most effective pieces of the show's entire run.

However, as good as season four could be, it ended badly with 'Gethsemane', a mindless and uninteresting wet fart of a thing, that hung Mulder's apparent suicide in front of the viewers like a limp brown carrot.  Dangle all you want, Mr Carter, no donkey's going to be nibbling on that monstrosity.

If 'Gethsemane' proved anything, it was that The X-Files was never quite infallible.  The finest and most enduring television shows have always been about ideas, pondering strange and imaginative 'what ifs'. Much like Gene Rodenberry's Star Trek, Kirk maliciously laughing his arse off as he watches the Enterprise's computer sputter and fizz in an attempt to define love,  The X-Files would sing gloriously when wrapping a

story around a simple but imaginative idea.  As such, the standalone episodes, cut free from the laboured mythology of the show, were where Mulder and Scully soared.  Indeed, it was the irascible rise of the mytharc that would ultimately pummel with such ferocity the final nails into the series' coffin.

PART THREE - FONZIE'S SPEEDOS

A lot of things happened in 1977.

The press-studs and safety pins of the punk movement pogoed across a unsuspecting world,  a tiny film called Star Wars opened to some acclaim, and James Earl Ray, the pale-eyed assassin of Martin Luther King, spent three days with both freedom and sun on his skin after escaping from his Tennessee prison, soon to be captured once more.

What failed to set the world on fire, however, was the daring jump that King of Cool Arthur 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli made over a confused shark while water skiing.

Think about that for a second.

The Fonz had come, through TV wonder Happy Days, to epitomise everything that was winning about 50s cool.  He was a handsome, anti-authoritarian rebel and loyal friend to both hipster and nerd alike.  The man was dripping in sex and awesome haircuts, yet to cram this man-god into garish Speedos (along with trademark leather bomber) and have him turn aquatic tricks over a rubber shark? This was all part of the strange 'Hollywood' three-parter, the bastard chlid of the fevered minds that broke Happy Days.  You could virtually hear the hearts of a million teeny boppers shatter.

20 years later, radio personality Jon Hein would coin the term 'jump the shark', a nod to that mess of a stunt that went against everything that made Happy Days what it was. and an umbrella term that would come to signify, simply, that point at which a once popular show had taken a sharp right turn off the straight and narrow, and out into the bounding unknown of babbling inanity.  The point at which, when nobody was looking, popular culture would eat itself.

It's not quite fair to point to the fifth season as the moment where The X-Files bravely leapt across that gaping Great White of TV, but look at the face too closely, and you can clearly see the worrying cracks of decline.  There are some wonderful moments to be sure: Carter's own 'The Post-Modern Prometheus', a stylish black and whilte chronicle of a Frankenstein's Monster-like creature (The Great Mutato) obsessed with Cher and Jerry Springer, is both funny and touching, while 'Chinga' and 'Killswitch' prove to be strong efforts from King of Horror Stephen King, and Cyberpunk guru William Gibson (actually Gibson's second dalliance with the show.)

However, much of the season is mired in ongoing mytharc concerns, with more abductions, double crosses, and requisite strangeness galore.  These are solid episodes, well crafted and performed, but they do little to attract new blood, even proving somewhat unforgiving to the faithful who, thanks to abductions and space adventures of their own, may have missed an episode or two. No, stumble along the way for even a moment and you are picked off, The X-Files demanding an unwavering amount of loyalty.

'Fight the Future', the feature film that bridges seasons five and six followed, but never quite proved itself the jumping on point for new viewers that the creators had hoped for. Nor did it offer the long sought after resolution that fans clamoured for. It looked great, Mulder and Scully upgraded to natty suits, and the sheen on A.D. Skinner's head showing extra sparkly polish (see above), but in the end it did little but add an extra layer of murk to the show's muddy mythological waters.

Season six comes sweeping in like a cool breeze, refreshing and welcome.  To say that The X-Files here reaches the top of its game would be to do such hard work a disservice.  To say it actually dances merrily to the top of its game while whistling Dixie is kind of closer to the mark.

Those mytharc outings are general eschewed here for confident and experimental standalones.  'Drive' is a fabulous Speed-flavoured dash across America to stop Brian Cranston's head from exploding into sticky bits, 'Triangle' is a kooky Nazi time-warp drama, while the two-part 'Dreamland' is a fantastically funny look inside Area 51 and the faltering private lives of those pesky men in black (and features a randy turn from David St. Hubbins himself, Michael McKean).  The list goes on too, with 'How the Ghosts Stole Christmas', and Duchovny's (on writing, directing and acting duties) own 'The Unnatural' among the very best episodes ever produced.

But for all these positives, and indeed there are many, The X-Files basically kills itself halfway through the season, with the 'Two Fathers/One Son' double bill bringing a swift and unsatisfactory end to the ongoing deeper arcs of the show. The members of the deadly Syndicate, that mystery shrouded agency that spearheaded the coming alien apocalypse and confounded Mulder and Scully at each fresh turn, are all unceremoniously offed by scrappy alien rebels from Uranus...or somewhere.  One cannot help but watch and wonder how this happened.  Had Carter and Co. simply become bored with a thread that would seemingly never end? Or were they, as some have suggested, making up this shit as they went along?

The X-Files labours from this point on, and becomes an aimless thing with little sense of actual direction, stumbling painfully across our screens sucking its thumb and hoping that someone with more sense will be along soon to tuck it lovingly into bed.  As such, season seven, the media-poking joy of 'X-Cops' and 'Hollywood AD' aside, doesn't quite know what to do with itself.  There's a sense of grouding ties being cut desperately.  The disappearance of Samantha Mulder, Fox's long lost sister, is resolved in a frankly puzzling mid-season attempt at fan service.  Always thought she was abducted by those little green men? Well, more fool you.  No, she was rescued from a scummy painful fate by spiritual creatures who released her soul into starlight.

Yes, she became a star.

There's no denying that Mulder's brief reunion with his sister's peaceful soul (set to the magical strains of Moby's 'My Weakness') is emotionally affecting, but there's also no doubt that there's little justice in such a long running story arc, and such an important motivational factor for a main character, being resolved in such a ham-fisted slipshod manner.

The show was, by this point, heading ever closer to a final end point, with contractual disputes with Duchovny, and many a faltering storyline, seemingly spelling out a sticky end.  Major plot threads continued to be tied off (though the bows weren't always pretty or neat), and recurring characters, such as grizzled nemesis The Cigarette Smoking Man, were written out or summarily dropped.  'Requiem', the season finale that returned the agents to the lush Oregon woods from their very first case together, was supposed to act as show finale too, with Agent Mulder finally being taken by the beings he had so determinedly chased for seven years.  He was gone.  Scully was alone, and The X-Files were over.

But behind the scenes, the Fox network (never one to let a dead thing stay that way) were offering Carter incentives to bring the show back and keep it running.

Mulder remains missing as season eight wheezes its way to a start, and though Anderson's Scully carries the focus well there's something sad and almost pitiful at work in his absence.  The show's dynamic is reversed as she is paired with Robert Patrick's John Doggett, she now the believer, and he, every inch the no-nonsense G-Man, the sceptic.  Though her newfound openness makes sense in the greater context of the things she has both seen and experienced, it all sounds so wrong coming out of her mouth.

'Oh Agent Doggett! It's obvious that these people were eaten by a scabby old bat monster. Why are you so closed to such a possibility?'

It's rather unsettling, and somewhat akin to having your mum compliment you on the shapely curve of your arse.

Doggett himself is a worthwhile character, played with a hardness and compassion by Patrick.  He comes to form a quick bond with Scully, caring more than he lets on (see how devastated he seems upon seeing Scully happily comfort the new returned Mulder in 'Deadalive'), and is actually more open to the influx of super-soldiers and weirdness than the show gives him credit for.

His presence in these later seasons does little to allay a bothersome problem I've always had with Mulder's character. Namely, that for all his suave intelligence and adventuring bravado, he can often come across as eminently unlikeable.  He has a grand and unenviable ability to lapse into moments of petulance and pomposity so severe that one feels simply compelled to punch his mouth shut.  The antagonistic relationship he shares with Agent Doggett, for no good reason, proves how he can be a bloated know-it-all just as easily as he can be an admirable voice of dissension within a corrupt and harmful government system.

So, it's John Doggett who proves to be the one to watch in those last two bumbling seasons, with Scully sidelined with her miracle baby, William, and Mulder's relevance slowly dwindling.  It was Dogget's brief tenure on The X-Files, along with Annabeth Gish's Monica Reyes, that thankfully threatened to reignite the dull spark of  a show that had long since lost its way.

But that further reinvigoration and promise was scuppered by the show's ultimate cancellation in 2002.  It ends well enough, with a feature-length finale that finally sees Mulder and Scully escape to some kind of freedom together, but there's little here in the way of resolution.  The carrot still dangles.

EPILOGUE

I don't tend to watch TV now, or certainly not as fervently as I once did The X-Files.  The land of terrestrial television is full of easy missteps, the great and the good of modern programming often lost in the late night wastelands of their channels, with few around to watch, except the wide-eyed and sleepless, and the devoted hardcore.

Massive boxsets now bring us the whole thing, from bounding start to whimpering finish, in one go.  So I'm currently revisiting The X-Files, over 200 episodes of savage strangeness and conspiracy, and for the most part it's a joy.  There's brightness in the best episodes that few other shows have been able to match since, an enthusiasm and candour that's all too rare.  I know that as I move on and make my way through we'll eventually fall out of love again, that caring will turn to bitterness and disappointment, but that doesn't matter. Right now, the show and I have a flush on our cheeks and a spring in our step.

You know, maybe I'll head down to the cellar and dig around for my old mess of an ID.  I mean, the amount of tunnels those two go down...someone needs to be in charge of the flaslight, right?