Futures Past special: Was the Landkreuzer practical/ feasible/ sane???

 

As I write this, I am in the third week of a break from blogging. I decided that this was the time and place for something different that I had really been considering all along, a post on history and tech. This particular post will be on something I already covered in a Youtube rant, the Landkreuzer project, and whether giant land vehicles ever have and ever will be viable.

Now, the facts of the project mentioned will really be only a prologue here. At some point during World War 2, there was a request within Nazi Germany for designs for a tracked vehicle or vehicles weighing over 1000 tons, reportedly at the request of the Reich’s dictator. Everything from there has been unclear, particularly the extent to which any of it was taken seriously. At any rate, two major designs with nominal designations emerge in the lore. One is P1000, a tracked chassis mounting a battleship turret with 28cm guns. The other is the P1500, a self-propelled version of the actually built 80cm Gustav railway gun. And this was the extent of “super tank” development in real life.

But, of course, the idea has taken on a life of its own in science fiction. Even before the first tanks were fielded, H.G. Wells portrayed very large armored vehicles in “The Land Ironclads”. In the 1960s, the concept took on new life with Keith Laumer’s Bolo series, which portrayed the titular battleship-sized, AI-driven tanks with “hard SF” realism. Giant tanks and tank-like vehicles continued to appear in a range of subgenres and media, like The Legacy of the Aldenata, Warhammer 40K, and the Kenner Megaforce toy line. I personally threw in my hand with Aliens Vs. Exotroopers, featuring the 10,000-ton mobile lab Omega Aleph. Meanwhile, real life intermittently matched fiction with the development of giant tracked vehicle like NASA’s “crawler” and the Bagger 288 mining machine.

So, was all this ever “realistic”, either by the minimal definition that such vehicles can be built and function or in the stricter sense that they could have a useful purpose in war? On the first question, the answer must be a qualified yes. Vehicles like the Bagger 288 have exceeded 200 meters in length and 10,000 metric tons in weight. Given this precedent, there is no reason to doubt that human industry could build terrestrial military vehicles as large as naval craft if sufficient demand arose. On the second question, the real question becomes one of definitions. Of course, one can imagine a far future or alternate universe where battleship-sized craft launch ICBMs or Harrier jets or railgun slugs able to reach outer space. But does this meet the definition of a “tank”? This is where things get complicated, and this is where we can consider something that was actually built, the Maus tank.

The Maus, in brief, was an experimental tank developed and built from 1941 to 1944, principally by Ferdinand Porsche. It was the furthest development of Nazi Germany’s “superheavy” program. The final prototype weighed 188 metric tons, more than three times the size of a Tiger I and six times the size of a T34.  This made it the largest terrestrial military vehicle ever built, though it never saw combat. Both a 128mm anti-tank gun and a 15cm howitzer appear to have been considered for armament, though only the former is known to have been fitted on a working turret. Tests showed that it would run reliably, to the dismay of vocal opponents of the project in the Wehrmacht. However, its highest reported or plausible speed was 20 km per hour, and its weight posed severe problems for existing infrastructure. This was not, however, the reason that this was an obvious dead end I am annoyed even to have to talk about.

To see why the Maus was not workable as a tank, we must consider the problem of armament.  It is an observable fact that tank armament has always plateaued around 12cm, and the exceptions serve to show why this was the case. The KV-2 was a Soviet attempt to put a full-powered 152mm howitzer in a rotating turret on an existing heavy tank chassis, but this strained the base design so severely that it was reportedly prone to tipping over. On the Nazis’ side, the Sturmtiger/ Sturmorser mounted a mindboggling 38cm rocket launcher in a heavily modified Tiger hull, but it was universally classified as a self-propelled artillery piece rather than a tank. Finally, the much later Sheridan light tank mounted a short-barreled 152mm gun originally intended to launch a missile. Though this weapon was much lower-powered than that of the KV-2, it still produced severe recoil that could reportedly lift the lightly-built vehicle off the ground. The utility was further limited by low ammunition storage capacity. In light of this running problem, the bottom line for the Maus was that it had more than three times the weight of a more ordinary armored vehicle, but even with the 15cm gun, it could not offer more than twice the caliber or killing power of such a vehicle.

That is the practical problem, which might have been overcome. The deeper one is theoretical. The conceptual role of a tank is offensive and linear, which in turn means engaging an enemy at relatively close range. The noted 12cm limit for tank armament is very much the upper limit for what is necessary or useful in this role. Beyond that, you are transitioning to indirect fire, a jump as fundamental as that from a battleship to an aircraft carrier. There is conceptual and tactical room for a hybrid “howitzer tank” that can do both to some degree, as long as the fairly specific flaws of the KV-2 and Sheridan are dealt with. However, when the range of a vehicle’s primary weapon exceeds 16km, the best protection is to be at least as far from enemy forces of any size. If anything larger than a reconnaissance vehicle formation is close enough to engage with direct fire, let alone do so from behind, something has already gone wrong.

And that brings us to by far the most actually interesting superheavy vehicle of World War 2, the Karl. This was unarmored platform for a 60cm howitzer originally intended to demolish the Maginot Line, ultimately used at the siege of Sebastopol and the Polish uprising. At 11.4 meters long and 125 metric tons, this is the indisputable but unacknowledged record holder for the largest fully self-propelled vehicle ever used in open warfare. (And no, the claim that the Maus might have been used in an improvised last-ditch defense against the Soviets would not change that.) Its chief defect was that it was more movable than mobile, with a top speed of 10 kilometers per hour, and depended on rail to move any distance. The latter limitation specifically prevented its use in the particularly insane plan to demolish as much as possible of Paris before the German army withdrew from the city.

With this frame of reference, what becomes clear is that the  P1000 was a non-starter, even factoring in calculations that the vehicle as designed would have been far more than the nominal 1000 (metric???) ton weight. Putting a turret on a vehicle this heavily armed was simply redundant, while full armor would inevitably be too much and not enough: 10 or 20mm of plate would be enough to protect the crew from small arms fire, but even the armor of a Maus wouldn’t stop concentrated bombing. The P1500, on the other hand, was in the realm of the remotely sane. The Reich had already built not only the Gustav railway gun but more prosaically sized artillery like the famed and feared “Anzio Annie”, a 283mm railway gun actually of about the same caliber proposed for the P1000. With that frame of reference, we can at least figure out how big such a thing would really be.

That does bring us to some daunting considerations. The Gustav was over 47 meters long and weighed an astonishing 1,350 metric tons, obviously very close to the nominal 1500 tons proposed for the Landkreuzer equivalent. It also had 8 distinct sets of wheels. Anzio Annie, officially the Krupp K5, came in at 218 tons, still well over half again the weight of a Karl, carried between two sets of wheels. The Karl itself offers both a plausible means of construction and an “eyeball” range for size: Just strip down a few Karl platforms to no more than 100 tons each (for some reason, no precise figures for the platform minus gun are in circulation), and use it to replace at least one set of wheels on a railway gun. We can therefore extrapolate a weight of 400 to 500 tons for a self-propelled Anzio Annie, which is not a lot more than the mass for the two Maus tanks known to half been built. For the actual P1500, on the other hand, we are definitely looking at not less than 4 and possibly more than eight Karls worth of additional mass. That puts the minimum plausible weight somewhere between 1800 and 3000 (metric) tons, which is extreme but not entirely unfeasible.

That leaves the essential question, what could such a monstrosity actually do? In fact, we can at least deal with the obvious objections. If you’re already over 400 metric tons, there would be no reason not to throw in a few machine guns and light cannon for self-defense, which would be enough to deal with infantry and perhaps lone aircraft. It would still probably need to use the increasingly bombed-out rail infrastructure for most of its movement, but it wouldn’t be a sitting duck if there was a hole in the tracks. As for the usually cited problem of Allied bombing, it could be camouflaged (and for that matter partly dismantled) against discovery by routine raids and reconnaissance flights. If it came to that, it would be so much bigger than anything else that simply hiding in plain sight takes on a counterintuitive element of plausibility. After all, if your enemy’s common airmen don’t already know you have a vehicle the size of warehouse with the armament of a battleship, a weird platform with a giant tube on top isn’t going to look that much more interesting than a tank factory on the left or a munitions train on the right.

On the other hand, there are problems that don’t go away so easily. The existing weapons systems of the Third Reich were already running into the practical limits of their technology, evidenced conspicuously in the short barrel life of the Gustav guns. At the same time, there were technologies that were still unavailable, notably practical submunitions. (As I go into in the video version of this, the most significant experiment on that vein was, of all things, the United States’ surreal “X Ray” program to develop bat-deployed explosive devices.) Finally and most fundamentally, as seen with the Karl and the Sturmtiger, the Third Reich was simply running out of useful targets that weren’t already bombed to rubble. Given enough lead time, they could have turned a formations of Landkreuzers on the urban centers of Leningrad and Stalingrad, the concentrated armored forces at Kursk, and even the landing craft at Normandy. But without a nuclear bomb they didn’t have or chemical weapons even the Austrian painter feared to use, they probably weren’t going to do more damage than they could have with the same tonnage of Stukas, Panther tanks and V2s.

So, what of the future of the super-heavy military vehicle? The self-evident reality is that, for as many times as the tank has been proclaimed “dead”, there is still nothing better for what tanks are actually meant to do. Indeed, even tasks well outside a tank’s role, from carrying troops to launching ICBMs, have proven feasible for vehicles not greatly different in size and configuration. To get to a vehicle ten or more times the size of a tank, we would have to envision either a new mode of combat, an exceptional new threat, or both. Short of slugging it out with aliens in low orbit, any mission parameters we could envision would probably lead to a vehicle very different from what we would call a tank. Again, the tactical and conceptual leaps could be as great as that from a battleship to an aircraft carrier (maybe literally with VTOL aircraft and now drones in the equation), and we are free to admit we may not know what’s on the other side until we get there. The responsibility of the futurist is to think outside the box, and we are definitely due for something more than a battleship on tracks. Dream big, and reach for the sky… Just watch out for whatever is coming back down.

Unidentified Found Objects revisited: Late Nineties Star Wars bootleg ships???

 

As I write this, it's time for a weekend post and still actually the weekend, and it happens that I still have a loose end from  previous post on Star Wars ships. I mentioned in the course of that post that I had recently acquired certain kind-of bootleg ships from that franchise. This will be my follow-up report, which fell under a feature that never got off the ground: Unidentified Found Objects (see the first and last posts), dedicated especially to the realm of strange and often all but untraceable "generic" and bootleg/ knockoff spaceships. This lineup in particular might be the most egregious case of all. To get into things, here's another pic of the core group in full, ah, glory...

As usual, my experiences with these begin a long time back, though still pretty late in my life. Right at the end of the 1990s, when I was just out of high school and beginning to experience public transportation, I wandered into a dollar store near the site of a long-defunct mall and saw something odd that I did not buy at the time. They were cheap pullback toys (also the genre of the Spiff ship and its Gobot-adjacent adversary), at least some of which were clearly based on Star Wars. These had been a fairly routine sight in my experience from the 1980s through the '90s, with something of an increase in the Nineties. These, however, were a bit different. For one thing, they were actually pretty good, both in faithfulness to the franchise sources and overall quality. For another, they covered a wider range than usual, with several that had been portrayed relatively infrequently, like the A-Wing seen here, and certain others that didn't appear to be Star Wars ships at all. (I will get back to that...) Finally, several of them still had very odd features, and not just the kind that would be thrown in as a defense against being sued (my area of expertise, in theory). To give a frame of reference, here's one more pic of the group.

"George Lucas's lawyers are incoming, prepare to retreat!"

And an extra A-Wing in the lot...

Inevitably, one issue that can't be avoided is where these fall in the bootleg/ knockoff/ ripoff spectrum. As I have said before, I prefer to avoid the "ripoff" designation as negative and usually useless. The vast majority of the time, "knockoff" and "ripoff" can be used interchangeably. Furthermore, for toys in particular, the issues that I would see justifying the "ripoff" label are issues that can apply in any line: Poor or entirely dangerous quality; misleading packaging and advertising; and especially prices that far exceed the overall value of the product. The last is obviously not an issue when you are down to this level. The "bootleg" label, by comparison, is not "judgmental" but still can be problematic. By the strictest definitions, it means an unauthorized and direct copy of an original product, like the infamous Turkish "Uzay" line (see the Star Wars Collector Archive page). It can broadly apply to a product that is made to resemble an authorized product, which these do come close to. Sure, the X-Wing is simply cartoonish, and the Millennium Falcon has a second cockpit and other extra junk, but it's quite obvious what they are based on and that the designers imitated them in ways far beyond general inspiration. In a crowning irony, the case for a "bootleg" is strongest for the A-Wing, specifically because the size and quality is actually competitive with authorized toys at the time. And that brings us to the crown jewel, a Rebel/ Mon Calamari cruiser.

"It's a- actually pretty good toy???"

Now this is truly a weird pinnacle of knockoff/ bootleg toys. It's an accurate representation of the ship to anything but scale-model standards (even there, I've definitely seen worse), and it's big to boot. In fact, it could very well be the largest representation of any of the Mon Cal ships I have encountered, definitely bigger and in many ways better than the 1990s Micro Machines versions which were otherwise the only game in town for secondary Star Wars capital ships. Then there are a few things only obvious on inspection that turned out in the toy's favor. Even after this much time, the friction mechanism works when tested. Also, though the sculpt and paint look like they belong on a cheap toy, a good part of it is made of diecast metal as advertised on surviving packaging. Here's a few more pics of the awesome.

Naturally, there are plenty of mysteries around this line (investigated most thoroughly if at all by Youtuber Mighty Jabba's Collection), which have contributed to the cost and difficulty of collecting. It has been confirmed that these ships were sold under the name Star Force, though only specimens in original packaging are particularly likely to be listed under that name. No reports have confirmed their first or last production, beyond the general 1990s-early 2000s range. A significant proportion of surviving specimens are from the UK and/ or Europe, which may mean they were sold in greater numbers there. The most significant datum is that they were sold both on card like the ones I encountered and in boxed sets, the latter still under the Star Force name and with the brand name Knight. These sets, in turn, give our best clue to the full extent of the line. From pictures and listings, there were additional ships based with wildly varying accuracy on Darth Vader's TIE fighter, Jabba's sail barge, the speeder bike, Cloud City (!) and Slave One. For maximum confusion, I have encountered several pictures of boxed sets that include completely prosaic military planes, which I suspect means that these were a late attempt by the manufacturer or an intermediate distributor to sell off a substantial quantity of backlogged stock in one go.

Then, of course, there is one more twist. Do these look familiar?

If you haven't placed these, I will admit that I can't remember for sure if I recognized them back then, either. If you got it or just aren't sure, these are indeed the escape craft Narcissus and the freighter Nostromo (or part of it) from Alien. The striking thing is that notwithstanding the plastic junk on the underside (Mighty Jabba theorizes these were meant to be an "action" feature...), these are probably the most screen-accurate and well-done of this whole motley group. Given that fact, these are also definitely the ones that definitely push furthest into the actual "bootleg" zone. One might wonder why anyone thought they could get away with this. One fairly obvious consideration is that this franchise's merchandise was always centered on the monster rather than the ships. Another is that Fox had already faced controversy whenever franchise merchandise that appeared aimed at kids came out, so there was tactical sense in presenting themselves as disinterested in the toy scene. The bigger picture is that the Eighties and Nineties were simply a different and mindboggling time, where any number of litigation-worthy antics were tolerated or ignored, as witnessed by any number of the films in my Space 1979 files (see Deep Space egregiously). While I'm at it, here's a few more pics.

"I don't care if you aren't technically in this movie, PUNCH IT, BISHOP!!!"

So, that ends this tour of my memories. All I can say is, if I remember something nobody else seems to know ever existed, never put the odds against me. I will also admit, even as proof of my own sanity, I'm glad I got these for as low a price as I did. That's enough to wrap things up. To better things ahead!

Movie Mania Special: "Realistic" Star Wars ships???

 

It’s the off-week on this blog, and I have again decided to do something a little different. It’s time for Star Wars, which I really cover a lot less than might be expected, and this time I’m doing a research piece that I already put out there as a Youtube rant. We’re going to be looking at the urgent question of whether any Star Wars ships are “realistic” as spacecraft. Along the way, we will be considering the nature of the franchise and where it’s been over 4 decades and counting. So to hold momentum, I’m starting with my rating/ category system.

 

Not That Bad: I’m using this especially for ships that are already criticized both for “real world” science and “in-universe” considerations. I give this to ships that meet two minimum criteria: They “look” designed for what they are doing on-screen, and they have some features that would work on a “real” spaceship.

Mostly Good: This is for ships that meet the above criteria and go a little further. In particular, they have distinct parts with definite functions that all fit the ship’s indicated purpose. A further criteria is simply that these look interesting, attractive and generally “cool”.

Actually Okay: The highest level, these are ships that would “work” in reality, with certain “fudge factors” for in-universe things like deflector shields, hyperdrives, etc.

 

So, here are the ships in approximately chronological order.

 

Blockade Runner: This one gets to a major rabbit hole in the lore, as the design and actual models were originally intended for the Millennium Falcon. My guess as to why this quite late change was made is that Lucas simply chose to move away from realism toward the “science fantasy” of the pulps and serials. There can be no argument that this marked a profound decision in the aesthetic of the franchise. What we got was one of the most functional designs in the franchise. It’s laid out in a linear form that has so far dominated “real” spacecraft design, with several discrete parts that have clear and rational functions. As a bonus, the final design and implied scale fills an actual gap between the fighters and enormous capital ships, which is reflected by frequent appearances in the later films. Meanwhile, the original design was immortalized in the Marvel comic, and finally got an authorized release when Hot Wheels released a line based on the models of the late Colin Cantrell (shown below with the Kenner diecast Falcon). If I would have one wish, it would be to have seen the unmodified model in action. We can still dream…

Rating: Actually Okay

 

Y-Wing: This is the SW fighter that has always intrigued me the most. What I find most noteworthy is that it has been consistently portrayed as a multi-role ship, broadly comparable to fighter-bombers like the P61, which in turn make sense for an in-universe workhorse. It also offers a modular design that could easily be modified, and individual parts that have clear and realistic functions. It could easily make the highest tier except for those weird cages at the back of the nacelles. You can impose some reason on it if these are assumed to be capable of accelerating the propellant like an actual railgun, but the rudders would simply be parts to overheat. Overall, it’s a sensible design that would benefit from just a few tweaks.

Rating: Mostly Good

 

TIE Fighter: This is the big target, literally, having long since gone through the cycle from a credible threat to disposable targets several times over. My big rant here is that the whole original point of the concept and design was to throw out Earthly analogies in favor of something that would only make sense in space, and in the original trilogy consistently remained there. (I know, Cloud City, I covered that in the video.) In those terms, there is at least enough functionality to discuss how well it would work whether than whether it would work at all: There are the solar panels for power, weapons shown to fire rapidly, and the combination of computerized sensors and targeting and a large cockpit window. Overall, these are lean and mean ships that were built for blowing Rebels to junk and would continue to do so until and unless the Empire’s good pilots were already dead.

Rating: Not That Bad

 

Executor: I already covered this in a post on the toys, this is Darth Vader’s flagship, estimated as either 8 or 19.6 kilometers long. In many ways, it exemplifies even more than the Death Star the ability of the franchise to write its own rules and still manage a semblance of logic. When you have a ship with the dimensions of an asteroidal moon, practicality is already out the window. Yet, it has a sleek and appealing design, with no canonic weaknesses besides the exposed bridge common to the franchise. Even there, we actually see the pros and cons of protection versus situational awareness and the psychological effects of visible vulnerability. What I love (already a long rant in the video) is the hangar bay. Even for Star Wars, it is too huge for comprehensible function, but here, that lends itself to imagination. It could hold a regular cruiser, for rescue or capture. It could drop prefabricated fortifications from orbit. If there wasn’t a war on, it could reel in asteroids and mine them. It’s just cool, and that’s what has made the franchise last.

Rating: Mostly Good

 

TIE Bomber: When it came to the TIEs, I was able to lump them together in the video in a way that wasn’t going to work here. For a second round, I’m covering the bomber, my personal favorite Imperial ship after the Executor. Famously conceived as an unused shuttle concept for the first movie, this one takes the TIE concept and gives it a lot more space for the parts that would really matter. As a bonus, it offers a multi-role design that could do quite a few things beyond dropping munitions and carrying troops. The only real downside is that we didn’t see more of it.

Rating: Actually Okay

 

A-Wing: Now getting into the third film, this one got an iconic turn taking out the Executor. It has the benefit of a compact and streamlined design that looks like the fast, light interceptor it is supposed to be. If there’s a “problem”, it’s that it still isn’t that aerodynamic for a craft that seems designed for the possibility of atmospheric flight, and the broad, flat body would limit visibility from an otherwise well-designed cockpit canopy. The apparently mobile weapons are also iffy, though they at least offer a real compromise between fixed guns and a full turret. It’s decent if you don’t ask too many questions.

Rating: Mostly Good

 

B-Wing: Now we get to one that feels intended for a bigger role than it ever got, either in the original films or the wider mythos. It’s the most heavily armed Rebel fighter, with the possible exception of the Y-wing, with a very modular design that would presumably allow for a range of missions. The most interesting element is the rotating cockpit, which offers an actual solution to the problem of disorientation during maneuvers. Its implied upright orientation offers a further departure from the plan-in-space paradigm. The big bonus is the attractive and not quite Earthly design, which often comes out as far more prosaic in the models and toys. It’s a nice ship that deserves more attention.

Rating: Actually Okay

 

The Mon Cal cruisers: These ships are my favorites of the capital ships. What they accomplish is to create an aesthetic that is non-human but appealing, in keeping with the franchise theme of casting aliens in “friendly” rather than villainous roles. (Must suppress Yuuzan Vong rant…) They look both organic and adaptable, and present a further contrast with the Star Destroyer’s angular form. As much as a spaceship the size of 3 or 4 aircraft carriers can make sense, these are a functional and truly attractive design. By my further rant, there are ample indications that Home One is quite a bit larger than either the regular cruisers or the Star Destroyers. Without these, the Rebellion clearly wouldn’t stand a chance.

Rating: Actually Okay

 

And here’s a bonus round of ones that didn’t get their own spot in the video…

 

Imperial Star Destroyer: This is the definitive franchise capital ship, literally a mile long with oddly limited armament. For all its issues, it is at least a linear and well-differentiated design. The one really problematic point is the unnecessary division between dorsal armament and ventral fighter bays. It doesn’t help that the main guns are shown with superstructure across half their arc. However, there is room for debate whether the underbelly is as defenseless as it looks, while the topside guns do defend the easiest routes of attack against the bridge and engines. One more rant in order, it was always absolutely clear that these are not meant to enter an atmosphere. All in all, it could have been worse for a ship originally intended to have just a few minutes of screen time.

Rating: Not That Bad

 

Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter: This one did get in the video, as the excellent Action Fleet version. It shows the TIE design filled out to more functional proportions, if anything more than was strictly needed outside the Expanded Universe narrative that standard TIEs have almost none of the things that Rebel ships do. It’s a cool ship that shows that the base design can be adapted.

Rating: Mostly Good

 

Medical Frigate/ Nebulon B: This is one I didn’t cover in the video, in part because the only physical representation I ever found in my usual price range was a Micro Machine. This was the first real Rebel capital ship we got to see, and it’s an appealing and functional design. A deceptive strong point is the narrow midsection, which gives ample room for ships of a range of sizes to dock. Its still unsung high point is exchanging shots with a Star Destroyer point-blank in RotJ, which I picture ending with the kamikaze crash recorded in the novel and script. There’s a little too much kit-bashed pseudorealism for the top tier, but it’s still a worthy part of the fleet.

Rating: Mostly Good

 

Cloud Car: Now the one that’s the actual joke, I just love this one and I will not be shamed for it. It may not do anything, it may not make sense, but it’s an attractive, streamlined design that at least would produce less drag than an actual brick.

Rating: Not That Bad

 

So, that’s my lineup. The real bottom line is that Star Wars always did have a unique aesthetic that usually gave some consideration to functionality. Even the franchise’s lesser efforts still stand above many others from before and long since. (My object lesson in the video, the Nostromo from Alien…) They might not work by “real world” physics, but they still capture our dreams. With that, I’m signing off. Here's one more pic!

The Franchise File 3: The one that was the most hated sequel

 

 

Title: Ghostbusters 2

What Year?: 1989

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been finishing up the last few loose ends from Halloween, and the present lineup has been right at the top. What crosses my mind was that sequels have always been where I diverge from the crowd. Sure, I trash actually bad sequels as avidly as anyone else, though very few have been anywhere the bottom for the kind of movies I deal with. The flip side is that there are a great many polarizing or entirely unpopular sequels that I regard favorably even compared to the original films. In my reviews, I have definitely focused on the sequels where I’m willing to argue. For this lineup in particular, I decided to take my time to come up with one that really needed my kind of treatment. That brought me to a case that I have long regarded as perhaps the most unaccountably hated of them all. I present Ghostbusters 2, quite possibly the most despised sequel I actually like.

Our story begins with a reintroduction to the heroes of the last film, now split up by bankruptcy and legal troubles. Peter Venckman is a basic cable host, Egon is doing conventional if sadistic psychological research, Ray and Winston are reliving the glory days at kids’ birthday parties, and Dana is a newly single mother by a guy who has come and gone off-screen. But something is brewing under the city, a pink slime that seems to feed on anger, strife and misery. It’s all just a harbinger of the emergence of Vigo, the ghost of a tyrant residing in a painting at the museum where Dana works. With help from her unrequited would-be love interest, the evil spirit prepares for his return, with Dana’s son Oscar as his vessel. It’s up to the Ghostbusters to save the day again- but they will have to beat a court order first!

Ghostbusters 2 was a 1989 fantasy/ science fiction film by Columbia Pictures, produced as the first and only direct sequel to the 1984 film Ghostbusters. The film was directed by Ivan Reitman (see Heavy Metal), with Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson (Congo) returning as the Ghostbusters. Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie also reprised their roles as Dana Barrett, Louis Tully and Janine Melnitz respectively. Max Von Sydow (see Flash Gordon, Never Say Never Again) performed as the voice of Vigo, with Peter MacNicol of Dragonslayer appearing as his minion Janosz. The film was released in parallel with the fourth and fifth seasons of the animated series The Real Ghostbusters, which the live-action sequel diverged from on a number of points. Official merchandising included games for NES and Game Boy. The film was commercially successful, earning over $215 million against an estimated $30-40M budget, but was poorly received by critics and fans. Reitman reportedly refused to take part in further installments of the franchise based on problems with the production. The second film has received some reappraisal among modern critics. It was not directly referenced in the 2016 reboot. It remains available on digital platforms.

For my experiences, I covered this franchise in most depth when I wrote up the reissues of the Kenner toys. As with many things, I knew of the franchise without really experiencing it first-hand, though for once, I can definitely recall seeing the original film at a quite early date. For me, the real experience was the animated series, and to the extent I can recall having an opinion at the time, I greatly preferred the cartoon. Once the show and the toys trailed off, the franchise slipped from my consciousness until one afternoon in ca 1998 I can clearly recall, when I found both movies being aired back to back on network TV. It was a rediscovery of the first film and my first encounter with the present one, and where I found far more to appreciate in the original, I felt the sequel to be on its level if not better. Ever since, I have been baffled by the hate it gets… up to about the time I bought a copy.

Moving forward, my foremost reaction is the already running theme, what the Hell did people want, anyway? In terms of the franchise parameters, this doesn’t build on the original like the undisputed “best” sequels such as Dawn of the Dead, or reconceptualize as boldly as the likes of Predator 2. What it does do is put the characters in new situations without changing their nature, which is plenty in itself. From the outset, we find the Ghostbusters in the aftermath of fame, leaving some of them wiser and others just disillusioned. The further story arc that emerges is one of far more complex problems that require both new tactics and genuine character development. That, in turn, offers some surprisingly sophisticated social/ political commentary. The mood slime becomes a symptom and symbol of human problems that can’t be defeated with proton packs. The apathy and flat hostility the Ghostbusters meet as they try to rally the city leads to both the funniest and most poignant moments of the film. A quote from the mayor is up there as my favorite from either film and in line for the “one scene”, “Being miserable and treating each other like dirt is every New Yorker’s God-given right!”

On the con side, this certainly one of the clearest cases of a sequel that was forced to be “trendy” at the expense of both creativity and faithfulness to the original. A curious consequence is that many of its “meta” gags and references specifically fail to account for the continued popularity of the franchise and especially the number of kids like me who were getting into it through the show. (The He-Man reference is probably nothing more or less than an indicator of how old the script must have been…) The big chip on my shoulder is the music. The original had a balanced mix of old and new pop music and a traditional orchestral score by Elmer Bernstein (see… Robot Monster?). The score by pop composer Randy Edelman is not an improvement, to put it mildly. Then there are repeated intrusions of the still-young rap craze, which I have long held up as responsible for the worst music in the history of modern media. (I’ve heard 1920s alleged jazz that’s about as bad, but how many people hear that spontaneously?) This isn’t even “that” bad, given that someone apparently paid enough for actual rap/ hip hop artists instead of a pastiche of a studio suit’s impression of the genre, but it’s one more thing that makes the movie feel more dated now than it would have at the time of its release.

That still leaves the simple question, what could they have done better? This is one thing I am actually good at. The first thing I would say, covering a major area I didn’t get to above, is that the effects should stay as they are. There’s already some very good touches, especially the bathtub of slime, the spectral nanny and a zombified fur coat that missed the cut in the first film, that don’t slow things down. On the other hand, we could have done with a lot less of Janosz. (I have a whole other rant about the same guy declaring himself ashamed of being in Dragonslayer…) My most radical idea is quite simply to lose Vigo entirely. The first act already does fine with the focus on the mood slime, so it was completely feasible to keep it there. The “what if” that rises to my mind is to have the slime evolve into a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man analog, and make the Statue of Liberty sequence an actual kaiju fight. It might not have “worked”, but this is the kind of creativity that should have been in play if the minds behind the franchise had been given free reign.

That leaves the “one scene” very late, and my choice was settled in the first viewing. A few minutes in, Dana seeks out Egon, who has gotten back in at the university. He is observing a man and woman from behind one-way glass who are clearly unhappy. He matter-of-factly explains that they have been waiting over two hours for what they think is a marriage counselling appointment. We only get brief glimpses of the couple, but that’s enough to make it clear that they probably need real counselling and definitely don’t need any more stress. It’s a brief glimpse of domestic and institutional dysfunction that sets up the more mature themes of movie. As the conversation winds down, Egon comes to another room where a little girl is happily cuddling a puppy. There’s every sign of enjoyment as he says, “Now, take away the puppy…”

In closing, what I come back to is the nature of sequels. The real common denominator is that they are set up to fail at both ends. It’s well-established that the studio system rarely backs a sequel ambitious enough to improve even modestly on the original.  On the other hand, audiences rarely help; they will say they want a sequel that is “better”, but routinely complain when it is different enough to have a shot at it. The culminating irony is that, if you judge the sequel by the ones considered at least arguably “best” in their franchises, you get an astonishing column of successes: Empire Strikes Back, Wrath of Khan, Aliens and even the odd “threequel” like Day of the Dead and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (see my Raiders review/rant). If it takes 5 or 10 Futureworlds to get one Dawn of the Dead, it’s a small price to pay. In that company, Ghostbusters should stand as an example of how to be good enough. That’s enough for me to give a respectful farewell to a quite good lineup. “Choose and perish!”

Fiction: The adventures of Sidekick Carl, Part 23!

 To round out the month, I kind of had to get in Sidekick Carl. Nothing to say, beyond the acknowledgement that this could be the first chapter when Carl has done something. As usual, here's links for the first and previous chapters.

Again, John Carter flew into the night. This time, however, three other agents flew with him, all in the same powered armor. “We’re within 50 kliks of the installation,” he said. They followed a series of ridges that blocked their target from view. Still, a display inside his helmet highlighted the mall and the warehouse. He could see signs of the neomorph colony in the near distance. “Damn it, Audrey must have known there was something here all along,” he said to nobody in particular. “We’re making our final approach from the north. Get your weapons powered up...”

That was when the warehouse exploded, in a brilliant column of white. In the midst of the flame smoke and debris, he made out a twisted rag doll form pinwheeling through the air. “Carl,” he said. He added, “You idiot.”

* * *

Carl tumbled and rolled as he landed, though there would have been little risk of harm. He stayed in a crouch as he surveyed the warehouse. It was as empty as he had thought on arrival. However, there were offices that looked less certain. He found a door locked. At a touch, one of his wholly artificial fingers shaped itself into a perfect facsimile of a key. As he stepped inside, he called out, “I know someone’s in here.”

He advanced into another room, where a light shimmered just out of sight. It proved to be a small bank of monitors showing the feeds from the security cameras. Before he could turn his head, a voice said, “Yeah, you found me.”

He turned is head and beheld a rather slight man in the yellow suit and incongruous hat of the Toxo Warriors. Of course, he already wore a gas mask. “I know you,” he said after a moment. Already, the nanites had brought up a precisely recorded memory. “Back at the construction site, I saw one of you, alone, looking around. We figured we were spotted. Then we saw two of you, only they came out of that silly shed. I thought that was odd, but then I hadn’t seen anyone else, yet.”

“Like I said, you got me,” the Toxo Warrior said. “And I’m sure you can figure out, if I was supposed to kill you, I would have tried already. I just want to talk.”

“About what?” Carl said. “Old times?”

“No,” he said. “The past is in the past. Even back then, it was nothing personal. Not to me.”

“Maybe I do want to talk,” Carl countered. “Like the time you gassed all those people to get at a chemical that wasn’t any good. We knew you were cold, but it never made sense that you would make that kind of mistake. Except, we never thought about there being someone else.”

“Maybe I did the research, but I never did anything like that,” the Toxo Warrior said. “That was the other guys; you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know about them.”

“What about the lab?” Carl said. “That never made sense, either. Whatever the Hell the experiment was, somebody should have been watching it. And if it had been watched properly, there definitely wouldn’t have been a bucket left out.”

“So I bailed,” the Toxo Warrior said. “They could have done the same thing. They were the ones who got off on the supervillain schtick.”

“Then what about the other other guy?” Carl mused. He peered at the figure. The bright suit made him very visible, but also made it harder to discern details. Even so, it was clear there was a small chemical tank slung over his back. He could just make out a hose and a sort of pistol grip. “We know there’s two of you, again, and I can already tell you’re not the type who would just pop out of retirement. So did he find you, or was he in it all along?”

“Maybe, maybe, a little of both,” the Toxo Warrior equivocated. “We had help from a lot of people back then. Some knew more than others.”

“Listen to me,” Carl said firmly. “You know what you did then was wrong.  You know what you’re doing now is wrong, and dangerous, too. You can still put a stop to it all, if you surrender and come with us. We might even be able to help you stay out of prison.”

“To be honest?” the Toxo Warrior said. “I only do this because I’m a follower, not a leader.  What I am is curious. There’s big things happening, really, just wow. I’m giving you a heads up, just stay out of it. We won’t even try to kill you any more. Well, maybe not.”

“I can’t do that,” Carl said.

“No,” the Toxo Warrior said. “I suppose not.” He was already reaching over his shoulder. He came up with a long, thin nozzle. Carl had barely a second to weigh his options, which he knew was still far too long. He pivoted in a kick, narrowing his profile. A spray of liquid shot past him, close enough for perhaps a few dozen droplets to hit him. The chemical, which could only be acid, burned a line of tiny pinholes through the outer layers of his suit, which the nanites rushed to seal. The bulk of the spray hit the wall, melting plaster and brick into a uniform brown mass. Then his foot caught the Toxo Warrior’s hand, knocking the nozzle from his grip.

The Toxo Warrior cast the tank aside. A trail of drips followed its arc, ending in a small puddle that sizzled beneath the damaged nozzle. Carl sidestepped again, then he lunged forward. Already, the Toxo Warrior had another weapon in hand, a rusty but clearly effective axe. It crossed Carl’s mind that in the old days, he would have taken the blow just to entangle the the weapon; that, of course, was so Constructor or one of their allies could go for the real target. Now, he dodged a devastating blow that could have dismembered an ordinary man, so quickly that the villain gaped in surprise as the blade scraped the concrete. Carl countered with a second kick that caught his opponent in the abdomen, knocking him back with an audible groan. He closed for a punch that staggered the Toxo Warrior. There was a crack, and one glance confirmed that an eyepiece of the gas mask had broken.

But time was already against him. The pool of acid was still spreading, in fact doing so faster. Carl recognized that the floor beneath the tank must have already been reduced to an inert crust that the acid ran over without being absorbed. On examination, there were signs that the tank itself was taking damage. The Toxo Warrior had clearly made the same calculations even faster; he was darting for the door. Carl hopped over a long, thin rivulet of acid to continue the pursuit… and stepped in a bear trap.

“Seriously?” he said.

“It was what we could come up with,” the Toxo Warrior said. He had already opened a trapdoor. “For what it’s worth, I told them you’ll probably live.” The door slammed.

 

The blast came 10 seconds later.

Futures Past: Fisher Price sci fi franchise?

 

In the course of this blog, I've created quite a few "features". The common denominator is that usually, I have decided at the outset whether a feature will be a regular thing or just a few installments. This feature has been a major exception, in no small part because I had never decided just where it would go. I started it fora post on World's Fair architecture, and got in one more for a terrible 1980s comic. But most of the other things I might have considered ended up in other new and old features, most recently the Anthology Anthology. What has brought me back is an acquisition that would have been easy to cover in a toy blog. However, I felt that this time, I had something more, and this was the place to cover it. To get things going, here's the figure that started everything.

The backstory is that this is a figure from the famous/ notorious Fisher Price Adventure People line, previously sighted way back in my Dropped Pilots post. This figure was evidently made and released specifically for a vehicle called Alpha Probe, Fisher Price's 1980 Star Wars cash-in. I personally can't say for sure if I ever even saw this damn thing, but it's easy to see why many people remember it fondly. At face value, it's a space shuttle with a little more flare than average. On a deeper level, however, it has a quite unique aesthetic, especially for the knockoff-heavy environment, in many ways closer to The Black Hole than anything else. Here's links for posts on the ship at This Old Toy, Flashbak and Plaid Stallions. Also, here's a vintage ad from Flashbak.

Needless to say, I ordered this figure as an alternative to getting the ship. From my research, the ship was consistently sold with a man and a woman astronaut, in itself an intriguing dynamic for vintage action figures (see the No Girls post). The woman is known in two variants, one blonde and the other usually described as brown-haired, I would say reddish. What very quickly stood out was that this is far below my expectations. The detailing is low, and several points are strange, particularly the lower legs and the collar piece. Presumably, they were cutting corners to get the ship to the market, yet there are clearly far better FP figures from the same time. Here's the lady with Husky and the Adventure People diver, note especially the detail on the diver.

And here's Sidekick Carl while we're at it!

One more detail that only clicked after I ordered the figure is that the helmet has to be a copy of what I call the tank helmet, common to the Marx "Space Guys". It's a very odd "retro" touch that I suspect was intended to appeal to adult nostalgia. Here's a lineup to show what I mean.

Inevitably, the success of Alpha Probe led to more space toys, and things soon went downhill. The next in line were Alpha Star 1 and Alpha Recon, a sort of mini rig fighter and moon buggy that fit in with the retro-hard sci fi look established by the ship. Things stayed in the gray area with the Alpha Star buggy set (see here for one of the better posts I've found on the whole subline), despite the addition of an alien dino creature and a clunky robot. The one I can't figure out is the Alpha Interceptor, which looks like the chassis of a construction crane with the mini rig fuselage bolted on. In the process, we also got the previously sighted "second wave" astronaut figures, which I got one more of in the bargain with the lady astronauts. Here's a pic of the pair.

The very odd thing about this is the design, which looks less like a suit than a miniature space capsule. The latter interpretation would make a fair amount of sense, especially if any of the hardware in back is taken as a propulsion system. The annoying part is that these are things I would have thought of as a kid, but the designers clearly weren't looking that far ahead. Something else I quickly realized is that the figure I had featured in Dropped Pilots is in immaculate condition, a point that got driven home when I accidentally scratched one of the useless shapes in the back. Here's a detail shot.

And here's an unnecessary-detail shot...

Something I'm going back just to add is the implied dynamics for the space exploration set. The easy, fan fic-style solution is that this is a husband-and-wife team. We know even better now that this would really create at least as many problems as it would solve. But if this is a long-haul expedition, lasting years or even decades, how else would you deal with the psychological and biological stresses and needs of the crew? It's a random train of thought, yet it's the kind of question precocious kids would ask that adults still struggle to answer.

Meanwhile, things really got weird when FP tried turning out individually sold figures. These are egregiously Eighties, either psychedelic or nightmare fuel. I won't really be going far into these, because they're well-covered elsewhere. Here's some card art to give you a feel for the tone.

Then there's a couple I can't resist. First, there's Clawtron. I've joked about the origin of Sidekick Carl, whom I decided would be an unkillable cyborg because I had no other way to resolve the real hero's plight. That made me all the more amused to see this, an undisputed recolor of a biker figure with some extra robot parts slapped on. Sure, I was incredibly lazy... but Fisher Price did it first. Here's the pic, credit to the page at This Old Toy already linked to.

Second is the X-ray woman, supposedly an android. They came as both male and female, and the lady is even more freaky. It hasn't exactly been confirmed, but I'm convinced their heads are recycled from the astronauts. (Edit: From further research, it looks like both were based on a sculpt from an earlier figure, probably a common denominator with the space figures.) Here's a pic from Battlegrip.

With that to give you nightmares, I'm ready to wrap this up. In hindsight, this little line is an egregious example of a property caught in the middle, on one hand drawing on the Star Wars boom and on the other trying to revive the older toys and media that undoubtedly laid the way for it. The predictable result was an especially strange evolutionary dead end, only really comparable to Galaxy Laser Team. The darker flipside is that it marked the final slide of a groundbreaking manufacturer, from making innovative products that provided the groundwork of an industry to throwing out knockoffs of a toy line that had copied its own success. It was a sad end, but probably an inevitable one. Now, I'm calling it a day. That's all for now, more to come!