Robot Revolution: The one that's a killer robot musical

 

 

Title: M3GAN

What Year?: 2022

Classification: Mashup/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been going through more movies than usual trying to settle on one I would review. I finally decided it was time to do two things I hadn’t done in a while if at all. First, I’m starting a new feature, albeit one I had thought about for a very long time. Second, I’m kicking it off with a movie that is not only out in theaters but well on its way to becoming a “mainstream” hit. I’m going to be talking about robot movies, and the first in line is M3GAN, a killer robot movie that mostly delivers what it promises… with musical numbers.

Our story begins with an ad for the latest electronic/ AI toy, a Furby with an ipad interface. It turns into tragedy when a girl is left an orphan, and it just happens the lead designer for the toy’s manufacturer is her aunt. Of course, the girl ends up with her aunt, who clearly has no business taking care of a hamster under ideal circumstances. To deal with her new responsibilities without in any way distracting from her career, the narcissist-minded inventor brings home an android prototype named Megan (sorry, I am not using the gimmick spelling) to comfort her ward. The orphan quickly bonds with the AI, convincing a fire-breathing boss who specifically asked for something else to publicize a launch event. Meanwhile, the bond between the android and the kid deepens, to the point that the bot preemptively takes out the neighbor’s dog. When humans start turning up in the body count, the inventor considers pulling the plug, only to find that her foster daughter already favors Megan over her. But the real question is, will this be a tense drama/ psychological horror piece about near-future technological ethics, or another slasher crossover about a Frankenstein analog run amuck? Well, did I mention the robot sings???

M3GAN is a 2022 science fiction/ horror film by New Zealand filmmaker Gerard Johnstone from a script by Akela Cooper and James Wan. The film was a multinational coproduction between Blumhouse Productions and Wan’s Atomic Monster Productions, filmed mainly in Los Angeles and Auckland, New Zealand. The film starred Allison Williams as Gemma and Ronny Chieng as the boss David, with Violet McGraw as the orphan Cady and dancer Amie Donald credited as the android Megan. An animatronic puppet and other effects for the android were created by Adrien Morot, whose previous credits included The Adventures of Pluto Nash (you really can’t win them all). Additional CGI effects were provided by the Weta Workshop, best known for the Lord of the Rings live-action franchise. The film was given a general theatrical release in January 2023 after an LA premier on December 7, 2022. As of February 2023, it has earned $161.5 million against a $12M budget. A sequel has been announced for 2025.

For my experiences, this review is the result of two converging threads in my reviews. First, I have inevitably reviewed a fair number of movies in the “killer robot” genre, notably The Terminator, Hardware, Saturn 3 and The Mitchells Vs The Machines, as well as “adjacent” films that featured robots as significant antagonists, like The Black Hole, Logan’s Run and Lily CAT. From the very earliest date, there were movies that I passed over because they did not fit what I was doing, and these continued to pile up even after I had broadened my horizons considerably. On the other side of the equation are my very conflicted feelings about “mainstream” filmmakers taking on “genre” subjects, as in the likes of The Space Between Us and A Quiet Place.  With that backdrop, I was very skeptical when I began to see word of mouth building around the present film. What I freely allowed in its favor is that robot movies have in fact been the source of some inarguably excellent science fiction films with “mainstream” talent and polish, which I won’t go into while I’m still planning out this feature. I decided it was worth a look and a possible review. I came out pleasantly surprised, up to a point.

Moving forward, what really stood out to me is that this is the kind of “near-future” sci fi that could work just as well without the sci fi part, if it wasn’t already ambiguous. That right there gets to both the strengths and certain weaknesses of the film. There is compelling drama and undertones of domestic farce in the interplay of the inventor, the girl and the machine that would still work if Megan was “supposed” to be nothing more or less than a very realistic toy. There is also very good satire that keeps the focus on the “real life” tech and the corporate culture behind it, incidentally earning Chieng the star status I’m according him here. The real problem is that the film rarely if ever offers any corresponding ambiguity about Megan, which is an especially baffling oversight from the “mainstream” filmmakers otherwise known supernatural horror. We could have had a doll as an imaginary friend and proxy for the child’s anxieties and darker impulses (see, if anything, Picture Mommy Dead). We could have had a clearly powerful AI whose motives are complex or unknown, like HAL or Skynet. (The berserk phone in Mitchells comes close…) Or, we could have had a “real” robot whose sentience might or might not go beyond their masters’ wishful thinking, like the femme bot Alicia way back in The Twilight Zone. (Wait, did Rod Serling get a pleasure robot on 1950s television???) The common denominator with my usual rants is that there is little sign that the mainstream newcomers understand what made the best in the genre great, if they are aware of them at all. The result is a film that answers its own questions long before the end. That is why a film like this is good for jump scares, not so much for sheer existential terror.

Inevitably, one must deal with the effects and character of Megan herself. On the technical front, this is unquestionably among the best of the very best, especially for a “medium budget” film. What’s most noteworthy is that the film regularly references 1980s/ ‘90s robots, both on-screen and “real life”, without ever coming across as trying to mock or outdo them. In the process, the film lays down quite realistic abilities and limitations for the bot, at least for about the first half of the film. On this vein, it is especially intriguing to see the quite believable reactions of the bystanders in the film’s world, who usually either accept and ignore Megan if they aren’t paying attention or react with shock and outright horror if they get a closer look. Recognition is also in order for non-anthropomorphic touches like running on all fours, as well as her completely terrifying ability to mimic the human characters’ voices (identical to the Terminator!). My inevitable rant is that the finale compromises on the realistic limits introduced before, which paradoxically makes the later scenes far more predictable. It’s interesting and original while Megan treats even the dog as an adversary who could damage or destroy her on equal terms. When she is literally throwing healthy adults around without effort in the final act, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, albeit done well.

Now for the “one scene”, I noticed a lot of very good moments that I could easily find online. But, as usual, the one that interested me was one I absolutely could not find, and that’s impressive to say considering the only other film I reviewed from a theatrical viewing was Everything Everywhere All At Once. Right at the end, Megan and Gemma are sizing each other up before the inevitable. In the mist of it, Megan reveals that she can “remember” her own evolution from software that predates the bot. From there, recounts the mother figure talking and reading stories to her developing base AI, before shifting priorities and neglect took hold. It’s the first time we get a sense of her relating to anyone besides the kid, further confirming patterns in what we’ve already seen. In the process, we also get some groundwork that earns certain sequel hooks already being discussed. It’s a twisted picture of domestic dysfunction laid over the Promethean archetype of the Frankenstein myth. It’s why even I will freely admit that this is a good movie.

In closing, after going longer than usual, I come less to the rating than to where this fits in the ranks of robot movies. In the bigger picture, if I had to pick a “best” out of the robot movies I have reviewed so far, with further adjustments for where a robot counts as a “main” character, my honest choice would be The Mitchells Vs. The Machines. (Okay, Terminator would be at least a tie, but technically, I didn’t rate that one…) That film will further suffice to show why I find the present one flawed by comparison, to a degree that gets mutually embarrassing when dealing with an animated film that didn’t even get a theatrical release. As I will show, there are still plenty of better robot films, both “recent” and vintage. In their company, this is the kind of movie that earns its place with the best without quite rising to the top, and that should by all means be more than good enough. With that, I have said enough.

Fiction: The Space Guys Adventure, Part 16!

I was planning on one post for this week, so of course, it's more Space Guys. If it seems longer than usual, it's because I'm finally consolidating the ideas I haven't used so far. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The voyage went on. As the Janus accelerated past Jupiter’s outermost moons, word came that Jill Lightower had delivered a son. Jax showed the crew the video of the mother holding his child. It was cause for celebration across the ship. When it was over, Jason went back to their cabin. He found Jax in Dr. Cahill’s arms. She was holding him while he cried.

The ship made its closest approach to Saturn at Christmas time. They passed within the orbits of the ringed planet’s most distant moons, but Titan, the only inhabited satellite, was on the far side. The common area around the captain’s cabin became the scene of yet another celebration. The corridor was festooned with improvised decorations, notably tinsel made from padding for pressure suits and blankets and a string of landing lights. Gift-giving was limited to reserved items from the rations store. Alek made an exception, presenting Jason with his own model of a brontosaur. A festive time was had by all, ultimately stretching for days. As the festivities wound down, Moxon made a rare visit to Alek’s cabin.

“So, I’ve been hearing, you know a lot of languages,” the officer said. “The scientists and the crew are saying you’ve been trying to talk to them in their own languages.”

“Of course,” Alek said. “It’s the best way to be friendly, no?”

“It can be,” Moxon said, his tone clearly neutral. “I’m pretty good with languages myself. I’d like to see how I measure up to you.”

“Sure,” Alek said. “What language do you want to try?”

Moxon was silent for a moment, as if thinking. Jason was sure he had made his decision long before. “How about Albanian?” he said. “It’s from your part of the world.”

“I know a little,” Alek said, still enthusiastic.

“Good,” Moxon said. He began to speak, in a tongue Jason knew just enough of to recognize. Alek answered an evident question. The officer spoke back, more sternly. As the back and forth continued, it quickly became evident that Alek was confused. Soon, she became visibly distressed. Still, she pressed on earnestly until Moxon said, “Stop.”

He shook his head. “You’re speaking the northern dialect,” he said. “I suppose because you learned from a Kosovar, so that’s not your fault. You’re still getting it wrong.” He spoke several sentences. By then, Alek looked close to tears. Jason put an arm around her. “It’s always the same. You can get the basics mostly right, but the details are what matter. You aren’t that much better in Hrvatski, either. He knows that.”

The officer rose. “Here’s the thing about living in the age of world government. You don’t have to know a dozen languages to make your way around. I do myself, and I’ve only ever used four of them. So stick to English. You need enough practice with that.” He walked out across from where he had entered, as if it had all been a minor detour. Alek promptly turned to Jason.

“Look,” Jason said, “you’re brilliant. You amaze me. I’m smart, and you still make me feel like a talking mule. But you can’t be great at everything.”

“Why not?” Alek said. She promptly rose and went to the lab where Chopper and Tik Tok were plugged in. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Look, I taught them a new trick.” Jason laughed as Tik Tok and his towering counterpart pantomimed the meeting of Anne Darrow and King Kong.

 

Not long after, they were invited to dinner by Donald and Anastasia. He showed his favorite film in his quarters, at the far end of the corridor from the captain’s cabin. Also invited were Jackie and Sandra, who had been seen together without announcing or denying a relationship. In an undisputed coupe, Professor and Dame Futura also attended. The cabin was dominated by an L-shaped dinette that could convert into a bed. The professor and his lady were seated on the short leg, while Donald, Anastasia and Alek sat on the long leg. Jackie sat with Sandra directly across from Anastasia, with no sign of awkwardness on his own part. Jason sat at the end of the table. His real hope was to catch up with Sandra, but the Professor quickly drew the others’ attention.

“I know you don’t see much of me,” the professor said. “I have been receiving rejuvenation treatments, for some time now. The technology is similar to your bio-enhancements; in fact, the development of both was interdependent. It requires a 4-hour session at least twice a week. The side-effects are significant enough that it can take a full day to get back to full functioning.”

“You know,” Jackie said, “my parents came from the Lincoln City commune. My dad met with you, once. They say your company was the first one to bring real money in.”

“I remember,” Futura said. “A bit of an overstatement. A number of industrialists were investing in regional development. I do try to keep track; how is your settlement doing?”

“We do all right,” Jackie said, pointedly not looking at Anastasia. “We’re up to 20 families, still pretty much off on our own. In another year, we should have our own pipeline in. Dad says it’s as much as we ever wanted back home.”

“So, wait,” Donald said. “Your folks had a whole new planet, and you decided to segregate yourselves?”

Jackie looked at him coolly. Anastasia was clearly ready to elbow him. “Where are you from?” he said. “New England, thereabouts?”

“New Jersey,” Donald said.

“So you came from the Pilgrims,” Jackie said. “Leastways, you live where they landed. So weren’t they the ones who went to another continent to be by themselves?” When Donald was silent, Jackie pointed to Anastasia and Alek. “I’ll tell you something else, the Refugee laws said Russians couldn’t marry Anglos without them both being expelled. Your senator helped pass them. That wasn’t anything to do with us, was it?”

“We did what we could,” Donald said, glancing at his wife. “If there hadn’t been a compromise, things would have been worse.”

Jackie nodded. “That’s always the story, isn’t it?” he said. “Funny thing is, they never say how.”

That was enough for a few minutes of merciful silence. “Is it really true,” Sandra finally said, “that you hold the patents on the video record, the microcomputer and the data disc?”

“I can tell you this,” Donald said. “He has the patent on the fusion reactor I helped my professor design.”

“Come now, I have never been unfair,” Futura said. “In the atomic age, there are no more inventors. Everything important gets done by teams, labs and whole organizations. I made my capital on a few patents refining existing technologies, as well as royalties from my biographical writings. The rest was a matter of directing and financing research. Everyone involved in the technologies my company developed has received both recognition and payment. Quite generous payment, in fact.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Donald said. “Just setting the record straight.” He looked over Sandra. She was neither Anglo nor morena and plainly attractive, which usually left men guessing in vain at her heritage. Jason knew that her parents came from the country of Belize, and nothing more.

“Now that I think about it,” Futura said, “I need to take back what I said. There’s one inventor left. That would be Aleksandra, the smartest supergenius on Gaia or off.”

Alek giggled. “Oh, you,” she said. “You are much smarter than me.”

“A smart man knows when someone else knows something he doesn’t,” Futura countered. “As it happens, my analysts say you’ve been on track to be richer than me, for quite a while now.”

Jason looked uneasily between the two. “Is that really true?” he asked Alek. “You’re rich, back on the Homeworld?”

Alek shrugged. “I don’t no keep track,” she said. “I have, how to say, quite a bit. Everybody on this ship is rich. You have a lot of money; leastways, your mother and father do. I had my people check, when we started writing.”

Jason was silent, trying to shrug it off. By some thread of conversation he had not followed, Alek blurted out, “You know, Jason says on Mars, a man can have two wives.”

That got a moment of awkward silence, especially from the Martian men. It was Jackie who spoke up.  “Okay, that never happened anywhere near where I live,” he said. “But I heard about in the Olympus Mons sector. We don’t really talk about it.”

Jason blushed as Alek looked at him along with the others. “Well, it’s just not like people think,” he said. “The thing is, it can only happen if the woman he marries first agrees to, well... share.” He looked away as Alek giggled.

“What’s the big deal?” Donald mused. “I tell Ana, I’m fine if she wants to have a boyfriend. Heck, I’d be cool if she had a girlfriend. As long as I’m Numero Uno…” That did get an elbow.

They got back to the Professor’s rejuvenation treatments. “The details are still not generally known to the public,” he said when Jason mentioned it. “We have gone to significant lengths to keep it that was. Like your enhancements, really. Some people say the people would riot if they knew it existed and wasn’t available. For myself, I would rather go without it, but if I had, I could not have come.”

“You know, you were already the first on Mars, Ganymede and Titan,” Jason said. “They say you probably would have been first on Luna, if the Russians hadn’t landed Bergovol. Nobody would blame you if you stayed home this time.”

The Professor glanced at his wife, then shook his head. “No,” he said. “I was in this at the start. I’m staying through to the finish, whatever may come.” He gave a wistful smile. “I’m yesterday’s hero, like Jason from the old story. You must know how it ends. That is what I would be if I stayed home. If I wasn’t out here, I would be either making trouble or doing nothing. They let me come because they know that. Who knows? I just might find a place I can rest.”

 

Jason was silent and pensive when they returned to Alek’s quarters. “What is it?” Alek said. She stepped in front of him, and scowled when he evaded her gaze. “What? Are you unhappy I have more money than you?”

“No,” he said instinctively. “I mean… all right, maybe. Just not like that. I’ve just been thinking, we’re different. I mean, literally, we’re from different planets. It hasn’t mattered out here, but when we go back? Where would we even go to?”

Alek smiled and kissed him. “You already told me,” she said, “don’t worry. Home is where you are, when I am with you.”

Jason opened a storage closet and pulled out a knapsack of gear. In his absent-mindedness, he knocked over a box half-buried at the bottom. The lid came open. He flinched as a triple-curved flame dagger went skittering across the floor. It was followed by a cascade of leaflets.

“It must be Moxon’s,” Alek said in her flat voice. “Put it back.”

“I am,” Jason said. He used a rag to pick up the dagger by its sine-curve blade. It was spotted with rusted, despite evidence of reasonably frequent care. When he tapped the grip against the floor, there was an audible rattle. “It’s just plain junk,” he mused. “Why do you think he would carry it all this way? He already has that silly knuckle thing, and leastways, it’s made well enough…” He looked up and found Alek shaking her head.

“I know what it is,” she said. “Put it back.” Before he could act, she took the blade from him and slid it into a side compartment. She turned the box upright. She closed a small, narrow box that held a selection of medals, then fitted it neatly over the compartment. She turned her head, to find Jason examining the pamphlets. He held up a single-sheet item the size of a large postcard. It showed a little, brown bespectacled man hanging on a cross, with an expression of patient endurance. The arms of the cross were labeled “Pakistan” and “Indo-Burma” in English. A sign at the top read, “United Hindustan”. The title above declared unnecessarily, “WHAT PRICE?”

Alek took it from his hand with a sigh, and began gathering the others. “They are nationalist propaganda,” she said. “They are illegal, most places. In the enlightened lands, there are usually no penalties for possession. Moxon would have been required to read them when he was in the Strato Corps, many more than this. I suppose these are ones he save.”

She allowed him to look at several more. Most were in English, rarely good. One of the more eloquent showed a moreno in a rocket ship labeled “Separationist”, lowering a rope to his fellows who looked upward from the ground. It was inspiring at a glance, until one noticed that the rope ended in a noose. “They are in English, usually,” Alek confirmed. “It is because many of the separatists never learned each other’s languages.”

She laughed at another in Cyrillic script, addressed to the Jugoslavs. Its crude yet dynamic illustration showed their union as something like a winged jackelope, warily sniffing a carrot held out in the nearly immobile limb of an even more jumbled chimera that was the Federation. “That is Junius,” she said, pointing to a scrawled signature. “The name is for an Englishman who wrote against their king. All it means is, nobody never know who is he. Lots of people try to find him. Quite a few try to be him. The real one, they never came close.”

She closed the box and returned it to the locker. “I know, I look, once,” she said. “He knew I would. He don’t no care, or he would no leave it here.” She led him to bed, where they flopped down together.

“You must be powerful, back on Earth,” Jason said. “Leastways, you could be. You know that. So why did you write to me?”

“Because,” she said, “you were the one person who wouldn’t care.” Then, for a while, they were silent.

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!

Part 11: The Space Nazis!!!

Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!

Part 13: The wedding!!!

Part 14:  The spicy chapter!

Part 15: The bad guy backstory!

Featured Creature Special: The one where the werewolves have guns

 

 

Title: The Howling

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Runnerup/ Parody/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As I write this, I have been taking longer than usual to decide on a film to review. What’s different is that I have actually gone a good stretch without watching a movie at all. That brought my decision down to whatever I finally watched, and as often happens, I already had a rental that I was not looking forward to. So with that glowing endorsement, I’m wading into a movie that I had watched exactly once and still remembered being disappointed by. I present The Howling, the movie that deconstructed the werewolf ahead of An American Werewolf In London, and boy, did they not do it better.

Our story begins with a reporter named Karen who goes out on an obviously hare-brained attempt to catch a serial killer that ends in a last-minute rescue that leaves the killer bullet-riddled in the morgue. After the traumatizing experience, a psychiatrist sends Karen and her husband out to the Colony, a counterculture settlement where people go to reconnect with nature. But all is not well, as the inhabitants mutter of dark secrets and a resident maneater. Meanwhile, the body of the killer has disappeared, leading the reporter’s colleagues to suspect that he might not be as dead as the authorities believe. In fact, the killer and the inhabitants of the Colony are all werewolves, living a conflicted existence under the doctor’s direction. It’s up to the reporter and her work friend to get out alive- but her husband is already one of the lycanthropes!

The Howling was a 1981 horror film directed by Joe Dante (see InnerSpace, Gremlins 2), based on the first of a series of novels by Gary Bradner. It was the first of three werewolf films released in 1981, preceding Wolfen and An American Werewolf In London. No serious allegation emerged that any of the films had copied each other. The film starred Dee Wallace as Karen and Patrick Macnee as the psychiatrist Dr. Waggner, with Robert Picardo (see Dead Heat) as the killer Eddie Quist. Other cast included John Carradine (Shock Waves), Dick Miller (Terminator, Night of the Creeps), and Elisabeth Brooks (Deep Space???) as Marsha. Creature effects were created by Rob Bottin, after Rick Baker (see King Kong 1976) left the project for American Werewolf. Additional stop-motion effects were created by David Allen (see Dungeonmaster, Robot Jox, etc, etc, etc), all of which were cut or replaced except for a shot of a group of werewolves at the end of the film. The film was a commercial success, earning $17.9 million against a $1.5M budget. It received 7 official sequels, none of which appear to have followed Bradner’s additional books. The movie is available for streaming on AMC Plus.

For my experiences, this is a film I watched on VHS in college, probably before American Werewolf. What has remained most interesting is that the two films represent an already undisputed case of what I call a “runnerup”, as well as a much rarer case where two such parallel productions were roughly equal in their impact and stature (compare to AntZ and A Bug’s Life). To me, what has been most intriguing in a sad way is that the two films are in every important respect opposites to each other. One was a highly polished medium-budget film from a “mainstream” director. The other was openly a low-budget genre film by a newcomer who never outgrew his roots. Unfortunately, this is an especially clear-cut case where the establishment unquestionably produced far better results.

Moving forward, the most significant and counterintuitive comparison to be made between this film and American Werewolf is that the latter was a “horror comedy” but not a horror parody. The present film is in itself proof of the difference. It aims to be knowing and subversive in its genre references and inside jokes, the best by far being a lead villain who hands a gun back to the nosy guy reporter. The “problem” is that there is not a lot here that is funny on its own terms. The most effective satirical elements come, tellingly, not from the gags but from the domestic dysfunctionality of the werewolves. They are set up as leftovers from another time (which could have worked far better if we knew something about their aging if any) trying to adapt to modernity. Left to their own devices, they present an unsettlingly mundane picture of a cult: Banal, petty, bickering and often simply bored. It’s an intriguing angle greatly improved by strong acting and dialogue, but on a certain level, it never goes anywhere. In the final confrontation, it’s quite clear all the arguments among the pack are merely a half-hearted delay before the inevitable. The real surprise is that the lone dissenter doesn’t get lunched by his own side.

Meanwhile, my personal beef has always been with the effects, and that only got worse when I looked into the history of the production. At best, the creatures are outdated off the drawing board, adding to an already strong vibe of a 1970s movie that happened to come out in the Eighties. At worst, they are inert and distractingly odd. (And dear Logos, what were they thinking with those ears???) Before the inevitable objections, this was only a year before the same guy made The Thing, and two years after Alien. They could definitely do better. What’s worse is that the more rudimentary makeup effects are far more menacing, especially as seen on Picardo (whom I did not recognize despite noting his presence on many other occasions). His full transformation is the biggest washout, to the point that his intended victim easily deals with him while he is still standing there. A further indictment comes from the tryst between Marsha and the newly turned husband, which for all its awkwardness manages to achieve the stylized surrealism the film clearly intended to give. My true rage moment came when I found unused stop-motion by Allen in a bonus feature. The final insult came as I discovered that what I remembered as the only shot where the wolves looked good was in fact the only remnant of his work on the film.

Now for the “one scene”, I decided it was long past time to feature the late Dick Miller, the greatest cameo artist in history. He appears around the mid-point as proprietor of an occult bookstore. The clip I found starts with him talking to the secondary reporters about the patrons of his store, allegedly including a certain real-life cultist. When the lady reporter asks about grave robbery, he matter-of-factly gives them a book. Of course, the conversation turns to werewolves, and a case of silver bullets whose origin should count as a plot hole yet actually works. In the process, he lays out the werewolves’ strengths and weaknesses. For me, what makes the scene is when the guy reporter comes out and asks if he actually believes anything he has been saying. His reply is better heard than described. Suffice to say, it’s as good a deconstruction of the genre and underlying mythology as anything in the film.

In closing, what I decided was worth coming back to is what makes a parody. Obviously, that has become far more pertinent in a landscape where revisionism, deconstruction and “meta” humor have become a genre in themselves. As I have shown regularly, we were already in the same cycle long, long ago. The one lesson worth learning is that a “good” genre satire has to be something more, and the best explanation of what works is to look at the examples that already succeed.  If you had never seen a Star Trek episode, Galaxy Quest would still be funny. If you cut all the jokes out of Shaun of the Dead, it would still be a good zombie movie. By comparison, The Howling is and always was going to be the “runnerup” to American Werewolf. I can get why people like this one and might even find it more entertaining than its competitor, or I would probably give it a lower rating than I have. It still remains a film that struggles to be decent, let alone “great”. And with that, I can finish for another day.

Futures Past: Marx 1950s -futuristic building???

 

It's Friday and I still don't have a mid-week post. I decided it was time to cover one of my most recent acquisitions before it got any deeper into the backlog. It's my biggest score yet, and in theory the one that might actually be useful for my current projects. Here is the Marx Cape Canaveral building, and it is even more awkward than it looks. To kick things off, here's a pic from the back.

Now for the backstory, this is a tin litho building introduced with the Marx Cape Canaveral playset, first released in 1958. It based on a similar structure included with the Tom Corbett/ Rex Mars playsets (see my "revisionist" post on same). The big change is that it incorporated an "overthrust" split-level extension that stretched in front of the rest of the structure. It also included a spire introduced with the very popular and now very expensive skyscraper playset released in 1957, plus a pylon piece to support the front of the extension. Of course, the latter was missing from my item, and I will be going into just how important that is momentarily. Here's a few more shots of this thing from multiple angles.

Now for this item, it came in two parts, the main building and the extension. I knew from pics of complete and unused sets that they would have come as three separate metal sheets that kids were presumably expected to fold by hand, one big one for the main structure and two for the extension. From inspection, I had no doubt that it was assembled and played with in the "vintage" period, based on both its obviously "used" condition and several minor errors in assembly. The spire was already attached to the extension, along with two other pieces. However, it was evident that the two parts had never been connected. I suppose they might have originally come from entirely different sets, though the condition of both is quite consistent. I made the fateful decision to complete the assembly, which quickly revealed two things. First, this was never intended to be disassembled. Second, without the above-mentioned support, this thing will not stay upright by any means short of putting it directly against a solid wall or surface. Here are a few detail shots.

The oddest detail here is that there are two plastic accessories on top of the extension that I have not seen on any other specimen. One is clearly the  base of the spotlight in the previously-covered space accessories, a fact I confirmed by actually attaching the top part. The other might be the base of an item usually referred to as an antenna that I maintain looks like a lamp. At first, I accepted these as attached at the factory, until I reviewed photos of other specimens. I'm still not satisfied that this was simply something a kid would have done. These are attached very solidly, enough that I am sure any attempt to remove it would end in serious damage. (Okay, I started to try. Once.) That leaves the spire, and here's one more shot of it.

Now this is very possibly the most amazing thing Marx ever made, big enough to be a retro-future tower all on its own. I had spent a good deal of time trying to get hold of one before I found the actual building on sale. By my best measurement, this is just under 5 1/4 inches tall. It would originally have been even taller thanks to an antenna that apparently had a 99.9% casualty rate in the wild. The grime alone on this one leaves no reasonable doubt that it is indeed a vintage item. This one was clearly repaired at some point, yet still ended up shorn by the time it got to me, which is really saying something if it was done at the same time and with the same materials used to attach the accessories to the roof. (Definitely be suspicious of anyone offering an "original" with the antenna still on.) I investigated whether it could be removed, before and after assembling the building, but as with most things here, this was just not meant to be taken apart. It's held in place with two tabs that can be reached from below, which might come loose if pushed or squeezed. However, I suspect they would be just as likely to break off.

That leaves the question, how well does this work with the Marx figures? Of course, I investigated that, after cleaning out the interior very carefully. What I found was that it is seemingly sized for a range of figures, without fitting any especially well. Here's a pic with the figures it would actually have come with, the already repurposed 45mm Air Force figures sighted briefly in my Robby the Robot revisit, plus the original Tomy wind-up bot. 

I confirmed that the box is tall enough to hold two of the little guys one above the other quite comfortably, which would make for something like a 12-foot ceiling in scale. And here it is with a 70 mm Space Guy and the reissue Tomy bot, plus a few very futuristic accessories.

This also gave me my first look at the very fine litho backdrop, recycled from the Tom Corbett sets. It's a very good backdrop. The obvious problem is getting any light into the back. There's also some odd details, especially the doors. At 70mm scale, they look more like lockers than functional doors. Even at nominal 45mm scale, they look odd, still a little on the small side for a door but big for anything else. Here's a reference pic with both sizes. Wow, that is dark.

I decided to see if I could hit a middle ground, and decided to try the 60mm astronauts. It's not a bad fit, but not a lot better. In any case, it's clear why Marx had phased out the Tom Corbett look.

This further convinced me that what will really help people who want to do what I do is a print-yourself template for the structure, ideally scanned from one of the unassembled flat plates still out there. Then one will have the freedom to choose lighting, backgrounds and even scale. There are already enough images out there that one could probably put together a composite, but it would still be preferable to have a single image freely offered rather than collectors swiping from each other. For now, we live and learn. How about one more pic?

"I'm mysterious. Also a mystery, why we don't have overhead lighting..."

That's all for now, still more to come!

Animation Defenestration: The other one from Netflix

 

 

Title: Pinocchio aka Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

What Year?: 2022

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Improbable Experiment

Rating: What The Hell??? (2/4)

 

As I write this, I’m just coming out of a spell that has beat the Hell out of my blogging, and well aware that I was having plenty of trouble before. One thing I remembered in the process ia that it has been a really long time since I did an animation review. That brought me to look through some new and old material I had been meaning to get to, and that led me to something truly different, except for the time I did the exact same thing. I present Pinocchio, the Netflix version, and it is… odd. Even for me.

Our story begins with an introduction to Geppetto, a toymaker who tragically loses his only child to war. Fast forward, and we find him as an old man wishing for a second chance. Somehow, his wish reaches the Blue Fairy, a freaky entity that looks half old-school fairy and half hard-core Biblical angel, who as usual does what nobody asked for and won’t necessarily help by bringing one of his wooden puppets to life. In this variation, the townspeople actually notice a fully sentient magical entity in their midst and prepare to destroy the abomination. The love of Geppetto wins them over, however, at least for the time being. Things go awry when the father tries to send his son to school for no obvious reason, only to have him wander off with a literal slavemaster of a showman who still actually puts the puppet to productive work. As the misadventures continue, Pinocchio discovers the price of the miracle that brought him to life: He can die after a fashion, as explained by the actually helpful Queen of the Netherworld, but he is destined to return to life every time. This soon attracts the interest of the military, which turns out to be the forces of Mussolini, while Geppetto is swallowed by the enormous Dogfish. Pinocchio must escape the actual Fascists and save his father from the sea monster, but the price of his choices may be forever!

Pinocchio is a 2022 Claymation film by Guillermo Del Toro (see Mimic 2, kind of) and Jim Henson Productions, based on the novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (see… Pinocchio In Outer Space?). Del Toro had reportedly developed the project since 2008, before securing funding from Netflix (see The Mitchells Vs. The Machines). It was released for streaming in 2022, coinciding with a Disney remake of the 1940 film of the same name (no way in Hell…) and at least one other adaptation of the book. In contrast to the Disney film, the Netflix film was well-received by animation fans and critics. It remains available for streaming on Netflix.

For my experiences, what stands out in my mind is that I had a reverse of the usual pop culture experience: When I was a kid, I obviously knew of the Disney film, but my one direct experience with the strange mythos was reading an apparently faithful storybook version of the novel. In full hindsight, I came to two conclusions. First, the Disney film is the all-around best the studio ever made, which is like a confession under torture for a lifelong Fantasia junkie like me. (See Allegro Non Troppo, if anything…) Second, almost everything the film achieved was in spite of source material that is, to use “authentic” Serbo-Croatian, absolute kaka. Sure, I didn’t read the “real” book, but I got through the original story without prejudice, and it couldn’t win over kid me. Moreover, every account I can recall from those who have credibly claimed to be familiar with the  novel are even less favorable than mine, to the point of raising the question if the author qualifies as proto-Fascist. (Oh yeah, everybody hates the Blue Fairy.) With all that unloaded, I freely admit to being puzzled why such an inauspicious book has been adapted repeatedly, before and after the Disney film, and why, outside of the Disney influence, it would continue to attract interest today. If you’re asking these questions, the present film offers some answers, but still won’t help.

Moving forward, the obvious thing to say about this film is that it is both beautifully animated and strikingly mature. This surely accounts for why it has won over animation reviewers, who have long since tired of both mindlessly cute “kids” animation and gross-out gags posing as “adult” animation. If there is a problem, it is that this is neither fish nor fowl. The very freaky animation is not going to win over kids, while the story is still not as dark as the novel or even the Disney original. Then there are two specific choices that can be considered bold yet don’t deliver a proportionate payoff. First, the literally rough-hewn design of Pinocchio himself is an odd point to depart from both Disney and the novel, which can border on distracting. The only real “plus” to come with it is that it’s easier to accept the nose of this unsanded wooden boy sprouting into a sapling. Second, the Pleasure Island episode is entirely replaced with a new anti-war narrative. This removes the most famous, memorable and flatly horrifying scenes of the core narrative, and with it admittedly a number of effects that could have turned out badly in the Claymation medium. Of course, the question is and should be what we get in return. The explicit depiction of Fascism gives the film a much stronger political bite, in many ways on par with the actual Disney propaganda cartoons. Even so, the return is modest at best, and again, it just feels like a poor compromise. It isn’t nearly edgy enough to push this into adult-oriented satire, yet it falls even further short of the sheer existential terror of the allegedly all-ages Disney “original”.

That still leaves the bigger question, what does this do with the story and especially the character? If there’s a distinct “take” here, it is that this Pinocchio has even fewer moral flaws than the Disneyfied version, without losing all nuance. He is seemingly incapable of the foul temper and outright malice of the novel’s antihero (you can bet I always knew what happens to the cricket, but he can most certainly be manipulated, deceived and coerced. What one is tempted to look for is any sign of the story questioning the very skewed “lessons” of the novel. We get a little of this in a late sequence where Pinocchio freely uses his growing nose to good purpose, in the process clearly delineating between obvious fantasy and damaging untruths. The greatest potential lies in Pinocchio being sent to school. Here, we are given a clear rationale, which could have been an intriguing if Pinocchio actually got into the classroom. What would have been most interesting, however, would have been a legitimate debate over whether human education would benefit an entity who demonstrates the power to speak at a minimum within moments of his creation. That leaves one more unavoidable rant on Del Toro, who has rarely turned out anything I didn’t promptly see and like. In light of that history, this film felt like the epitaph of a good friend who died doing something stupid. There’s all the wonder and weirdness he brought to Mimic, Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy. But with it is the inescapable feeling that even then, he was hitting the boundaries of his own limitations as much as what the studio system would support.

That leaves the “one scene”, and the one I decided to come back to was his first meeting with the Queen of the Netherworld, who has no name within the film. After Pinocchio is carried into the underworld, he emerges from a ceremonial coffin and talks to a group of odd characters who brought him in. One of them comments that he will have to see “the boss”, without interrupting a card game. Sure enough, a red light shines on Pinocchio, and he comes into the presence of the Queen. At first, she is only evidenced by two glowing spotlight eyes and her voice, the latter courtesy of Tilda Swinton. The form comes into full view as the most strange and memorable creature in the movie, something like a manticore with horns, semi-vestigial wings and a surplus of eyes. The most unsettling feature is that there is no movement of her lips as she explains Pinocchio’s plight with far more clarity and empathy than the Blue Fairy, referred to as her “sister”. One can read reincarnation or resurrection into her description of Pinocchio as a “wooden boy with a borrowed soul”, but nothing more is said to clarify the issue. Her final reveal is that Pinocchio will spend more time in the Netherworld each time he dies, shown with an ominous hourglass. The wooden boy declares that he has a question, but of course, his time has run out. It’s a great scene in a generally good movie, and that sums up why I find the whole less than its parts.

In closing, I come as usual to the rating. This is one case where I freely admit that my rating is harsher than the objective quality warrants. However, I have always said that my reviews are on a curve that can swing both ways. Given what I’m usually dealing with, that means I’m being generous far more often than not, but that doesn’t mean I have gone so nose-blind that I cannot hold truly talented creators to a higher and completely appropriate standard. For me personally, the rating is first and foremost an expression of my disappointment. It’s obviously not bad, it’s certainly better than other movies I have given the same rating (see Chicken Little), it’s just not the same from a creator who can usually hit my soft spots even on his off-day. For me, that’s enough to count as closure. “If I had legs…”

The Space Guys Adventure, Part 15!

 It's the end of a bad week, and I decided to get one post in. Naturally, what that left me with is yet another installment of the Space Guys. Hey, this is actual space stuff. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.

The last and largest delivery was a 50-meter xenon tank straight from Jupiter, to be launched Europa, the next major moon inward from their holding orbit over Ganymede. “It’s so big, none of the tenders could handle it,” the captain explained. “They finally decided to attach it to another tank full of ice wired with thermite. The charges will vaporize the gases and blow it into a suitable orbit. The Pegasus will separate to pull into a matching trajectory, then two crewmen will descend from the main hold of the Pegasus to secure it with tethers. Moxon has volunteered. We need one more.”

Jax agreed to be the second person, without any objection. Jason and Alek were assigned to the Pegasus cockpit/ command center. Old Yuri was in charge of the communications, from the rear station. The ship’s course kept a blind side to Jupiter. It did offer a good view of the moon Io, still further in. Its surface made Jason think of a pear in a still life painting: Faded yellow, covered in pores and pockmarks that were in reality immense mountains and craters. From over 200,000 kilometers range, he could see the flare of an ongoing eruption. “There was a plan to put our main base on Io instead of Ganymede,” Yuri remarked. “It has the highest gravity of any satellite. The downside is, it has over 400 active volcanos. It’s a nice enough place to visit, not so much to stay.”

Europa came into view ahead. It was the gloomy gray of a weathered ball bearing. The surface was rock and ice, much of the latter actual solidified dihydrogen monoxide. That was novel enough to justify a base with a whole fifty crew, normally employed in carving out ice to supply ships and other settlements. A video feed showed the final preparations for the launch. Two tracked crawlers pulled the enormous tank assembly on what amounted to a trailer, on four balloon-like tires as big as the crawlers themselves. A third crawler was finishing scraping a flat surface for a launchpad. When the tank reached the center, a dozen crew raced out. They quickly attached cables that led to a titanic crane. The camera pulled back to show the improvised rocket pulled upright. In the near distance, the base could be seen, a single dome with two adjoining half-cylinders that looked just like Quonset huts from a war movie.

Yuri’s voice cut in. “We have an audio feed from the hold,” he said. “It must be a mike that turned on automatically when Moxon and Lightower came in. I can patch it through or shut it down; what’s your call?”

Alek spoke up before Jason could decline. “Send it through,” she said.

The feed began abruptly with Jax in mid-sentence: “-ing is okay. Jill will probably have the baby in another week, maybe two.”

Moxon spoke then: “How do you feel about that?”

“I’m happy, of course. I’m glad everything is all right.”

“That’s happy for them, not you. How do you really feel about having a kid with her?”

Jason cut back to Yuri. “Yuri, are you hearing any of this?” he said.

“No,” the old spacer said, quite innocently. “The circuit goes directly to the cockpit. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” Jason said. He switched back to the feed. Whatever Jax had said, Moxon was talking again.

“-Course, you want to take care of the woman who gave you a son. Just remember, that doesn’t mean your options aren’t open. These are enlightened times, and that runs both ways.”

After a moderately long silence, the officer changed subjects. “You know, I can see why you and Jason are friends,” he said. “I do like him, really, even if he doesn’t like me.”

Jason turned to Alek. She glanced pointedly at the switch that would kill the feed, then reached for it. “He has to know,” he said with a shake of his head. She shrugged and withdrew her hand.

“You and me, I think we understand each other,” Moxon continued. “Between you and me, I think you could be a Jain one day. Maybe a Brahmin. The ones who do always know the way, even if they haven’t been taught.”

That got a laugh from Jax. “Do all Brahmins quote their own TV show?” he said.

Moxon laughed in turn. “Trust me, the High Brahmin would have done the same thing,” he said. “He loved cartoons, Sparky, Mickey, Jasper and Jinx. He worked them into his sermons all the time. He said that wisdom was everywhere. You could say he was a grandstander, only grandstanding out the other end. He would preach in the streets in just a jockstrap; he only wore the jockstrap because he would have been arrested without it.”

There was a pause. “You know what you and your friend Jason have in common?” Moxon resumed. “Neither of you have asked about the scar.”

“Okay,” Jax said. “Did you want to talk about it now?”

Moxon laughed. It was his natural, braying laugh, which had long since become unnerving to Jason. “You could say I’m used to it,” he said. “I can usually see it coming. They almost always wait till things are private, like now. Now, here’s the difference between you and your friend. Jason wouldn’t do it, because he’s too honest. If he has a question, he will ask in the open, like Donald tried to. You wouldn’t do it because you know when to ask questions and when to just listen. I appreciate that. It’s usually a survival trait.”

 

“Okay,” Jax said. “Maybe I heard about it from someone else. Maybe I heard about it from a few people.”

That got another laugh, this time a short, sophisticated bark. “You are good at listening. You could call that an experiment. I tried telling the truth, at first. I still do, sometimes. Later, I tried coming up with different stories. I made sure it was never the same one twice; it started as a way to know if they ever talked. I have enough mates I let in on it to keep track; Harrison is one of them. Most of them don’t. Later on, I made it into fish stories, just to see what people would believe. The funny thing is, the stories I tell don’t account for half the ones that get back to me. I’ve overheard people I didn’t know from President Kennedy tell lies sillier than I ever thought to try that they insisted they heard it from me.”

“What do the people you tell the truth say?”

“They’re the ones who never talk. Literally, not one, leastways that I ever heard of. Of course, I’ve gotten to be a pretty good judge of that beforehand. The thing about that is, they never react any differently than the rest. Ever notice how stories are always about why people are the way they are?  That’s what people want when they ask about the scar. They see it, and they think the story is going to tell them who I am, why I am who I am. Once they hear it, they know there isn’t an answer, so they just kind of forget about it. I can tell, most of them still haven’t learned. They still treat people like questions with an answer, even if they couldn’t tell you why they had eggs instead of cereal for breakfast.”

Jax laughed at that. “The stories weren’t always like that,” he said. “Nobody in a Solomon Kane adventure ever asks Solomon Kane why he’s Solomon Kane.”

“Exactly.” There was silence. “You know, here’s something to think about. You know what it costs Gaia to keep the Mars colonies going?”

“What do you mean?” Jax said. “It’s not expense, it’s investment. We’re close to all our goals for self-sufficiency. We’re even sending raw materials back to Gaia. That’s not even counting what the asteroid miners are bringing back.” As he spoke, Jason found himself nearly saying the same thing verbatim.

“I know, I’ve seen the numbers,” Moxon said. “If you could triple them, our spending would only be $1 million US dollars per colonist… per day.”

Jason did speak out loud. “That… that can’t be,” he said. “We’re out here. We would go it alone if we had to…” Even as he spoke, he looked to Alek. She only shook her head.

“It is worse than he says,” she said in a flat tone. “Much worse. Worse than he could know. His numbers are for the Union only. I have seen the Federation’s spending.”

“So what?” Jax said. That jarred Jason more than what Alek had said. “What else were they going to do with the money? Build ballistic missiles again? Make a bigger F Bomb? Send another intervention to Indochina?”

That made Moxon bray long and loud. “That is thinking like a Gaian,” he said. “If we didn't waste money on one thing, what else would we waste it on? Just don’t say it like that.”

Jason looked at Alek. “You never told me,” he said. “We never talked about it.”

Alek shrugged. “You never told me your father was in the Baton Rouge Intervention,” she said.

He shook his head. “That was different,” he said.

She looked back at him almost blankly. “Why?” she said.

They both started at the sound of Moxon’s voice. “You know, I can tell you a story,” he said. “About the time I was a firefighter.”

“Really. What city?”

“Not a city. We were the kind of firemen that fight forest fires. We were called the Mogollon Smoke Jumpers.”

There was another silence. “I’ve heard of them. I thought they were all dead.”

“It was a close thing, believe me. Thing is, we were good at our job. We were just like the Corps, putting out little fires before they got big. We didn’t think about how there were more and more little fires every season. We didn’t think about the dead trees that weren’t cleared out, the underbrush that wasn’t thinned, the secondary growth that would go as dry as beef jerky at the first sign of a drought. When the big one came, there were places where it went faster than our helicopters. All told, a tenth of the state burned. We were dropped right in the middle of it.” As they listened, Jason looked at Alek. She nodded, wide-eyed.

“The real story, though, was what happened before. There was an old native who helped out, we called him the Shaman. You could say he was our chaplain. I suppose the way we treated him was more like a mascot. There was one day when the captain was showing us a map of all our stations, the observation posts, the fires we had put out, all the contingency plans for putting out the next one. In the middle of it, the Shaman stood up. That was enough for the captain to stop talking; we had that much respect for him. He only shook his head and said, `Sometimes, the forest just wants to burn.’ He walked out. He knew then what was coming. But when the day came, he still went out with us. He was the reason I made it back.

“So, here’s all you need to know about the Motherworld, farmboy. Gaia is a forest that just wants to burn. It’s been that way for a long, long time. In the Corps, we did just enough to stop the big one. The price was leaving the real problems unfixed. We propped up rulers who deserved to be overthrown. We kept people who hated each other under one government when they wanted to go their own way. We made dead institutions stand when they should have been cut down and carved up. We all did it because we knew, as bad as it was, what was coming would be worse. The fire is coming. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m telling you this now. We’re headed for the only place that’s far enough away not to get burned.”

Jason finally looked back to the feed from Europa. The spacers had withdrawn to a safe distance. The countdown was at 10 and dropping. Alek suddenly swore. She hastily unlimbered her microphone and said, “Hey everyone, all hands are go go go!” As she spoke, the camera tumbled and twisted as if in freefall, then went dead. Jason could make out the expanding cloud of vapor on the rapidly approaching moon.

“Opening bay doors,” he said. The payloader shook as the atmosphere departed in a rush. There was a noise like the snap of a sail from the microphone. For better or worse, there would be no more sound.

“Preparing for a drop,” Moxon said over the radio.

“Ready,” Jax affirmed. A moment later, there was a howl as he jumped. From Moxon, there was only silence.

Jason looked at Alek. “What do you think?” he said. “What do you really think?”

“I think,” she said in her flat voice, “that I know madness better than people think. It takes one kind of madman to make money building bombs to blow up the world, and them and their money along with it. It takes another kind, like your father, to drop it. They are the first ones that Gaia sent out here. Why not? We made a deal with the Devil, so what to do when you do not need the Devil anymore? Pay him even more, to go far, far, far away.”

She took his hand. “But it is not all bad,” she said. “Really not bad at all. Maybe you are mad, to them. It is because you can see things in a way they don’t. That is why I love you, farmboy. I think I love you even before you love me. I came out here, to be with you.” 

As she spoke, she turned off the cabin lights. He squeezed her hand tightly as they gazed at the stars.

Table of contents

Part 1. The demo!

Part 2. The villain!

Part 3. The world-building!

Part 4. The romance!

Part 5. The killer robot!

Part 6: The shuttle ride!

Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!

Part 8: The launch!

Part 9: The girl talk!

Part 10: The domestic disturbance!!!

Part 11: The Space Nazis!!!

Part 12: The inevitable geography lesson!

Part 13: The wedding!!!

Part 14:  The spicy chapter!