The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
This remake of a classic SF movie (which I can’t comment on since I’ve never seen it) completely blows. Fundamentalist aliens come to earth to play God and vanquish humanity for its sin against the earth with grey goo. I don’t have per se a problem with aliens trying to kill humanity because of their ideology (as a plot device), but the movie tries to sell it as if the aliens have the higher moral ground, which I found dubious to say the least. Any culture that accepts mass murder as a solution for real or perceived problems isn’t better than us.
Their argument that they need to act now because the biosphere is dying rings quite hollow in the face of their technology. But even if that were true, I can imagine countless other ways to solve the problem instead of mass murder. But then, a really advanced culture would probably solve the problem in a way involving less spectacle. And that’s not very suited for such a special effects heavy movie.
And then there’s the ending. Humanity got saved because the alien made human flesh aka Keanu Reaves realizes that there’s another side to humans, more than just violence and destruction. This is almost comically, as he running around all the time with a face that shows as much emotion and sympathy as my floor carpet. And in the scene where he says that there is more to us, his face still looks completely devoid of emotion, which makes it a bit surreal and weird.
Babylon 5: Point of No Return (1995-1996)
In the third season the conflict with Earth comes to a head and the station goes independent. Also the conflict with the shadows grows hotter. This feels like the middle book of a trilogy, the themes and story threads of the first book are consequently advanced, the tension is slowly but quite perceivably rising and everything is preparing for the big climax in book three. Only one annoying episode (Arthur’s comeback, an attempt to outdo the whole searching for the grail episode of season two), while the rest always manage a high quality. Even Sinclair got a big, brilliant sendoff.
But while I really love the show, there are some things that to some extend really irk me. I’m never really comfortable with time travel, because often it seems to imply that the future is predestined. Even if different outcomes are possible, it seems the characters can either choose between fated option A (a tragic personal end, but the rest of your people are saved) or B (aka the really bad future, personal and universal misery all about), but never chose something entirely new. This goes as much for Sinclair as for Sheridan, G’Kar or the others, whose futures seem pretty much laid out. There’s also a tendency to force tragic destinies on all mayor characters in the show, which I find annoying and manipulative.
But if there’s one element I really dislike it’s the whole vitalism aspect that runs through the show. I said before that I like how spiritual the show is, but there are times when the show becomes completely unhinged from science and goes completely into a new-age-mysticism-mode that makes it look extremely stupid. In those moments I can still appreciate the show as a big fantasy epic, but they considerably weaken its grounding as a SF show. That’s not a biggie for most people, but I’m always annoyed when SF shows go completely bonkers and portrays completely inane or stupid ideas as part of a science fiction setting.
I Can Hear the Sea (1993)
Also known as Ocean Waves, this lesser known movie by Ghibli tells a very quiet and mundane story of love and growing up, without any of the typical fantasy elements of Ghibli movies. It’s one of these movies that I can watch again and again without the feeling that the experience diminishes with each rewatch. Every element of the movie – the character development, the story, the plot, the pacing, the art direction – is perfect. It’s a movie that makes me feel good without being too sappy, a movie that makes me nostalgic about school days, yet one that isn’t trapped there. I look forward to the next time I watch it again.
The Ultimate History of Video Games (2001)
It’s a rather hefty book chronicling the history of video games from the earliest forerunners of video games up through to the sixth video game console generation. It’s the perfect book for everyone who loves gaming and history, full of countless lovely anecdotes and information on all the people and all the big and small events that shaped this part of history. While it mostly concentrates on consoles, since computer and video gaming are two distinct entities, there’s an overlap and the book gives the impression that computer gaming is somehow an offshoot of video gaming, something which is debatable. But that’s okay with me, as it’s not a big deal (the title itself says from which perspective the history is told) and the book is such a good read. It gives something that could easily be a dry presentation of facts a compelling narrative that makes it hard to put down.
As I grow older I have become more interested in history than I ever was in school, but not the common idea of history that seems entirely dominated by politics and wars, but the history of other things, like for example video games. There was a time when I was only interested in the games itself, but reading about how these games came to be, what shaped them and how they influenced other things in return makes me appreciate gaming even more. And the book shows how rich the history of even only a slice of our culture can be. A truly great book.
Reaper S2 (2009)
The second and possible final season of Reaper ends with a cliffhanger that affirm something that I’ve always suspected, that there’s a deeper scheme going on (or the creators wanted to end with a bang). It’s not very satisfying as things go and makes me really want to see more. On the whole the show hasn’t much changed in the second season. Sam’s buddies got more screen time and while I liked them as secondaries in the first season, I must admit I always groaned when took center stage. Ben is a complete wimp who only develops a little bit of backbone in the last episode and Sock manages to get creepier and creepier with each episode. I know that they’re going for sympathetic asshole with his character, but they only manage the second without the first.
Nonetheless, whenever the show concentrates on Sam and the Devil, things are gold. It feels sometimes like they are stretching the main storyline mightily thin, but it doesn’t matter, because the Devil played by Ray Wise is perfect: smart, vain, manipulative and yet somehow lovable. His son Sam is the perfect counterpart, a good kid who’s trying to live an ordinary live but is pushed by his father to become evil, with sometimes hilarious effects.
Tenchi Muyo OVA 1-2 (1992-1995)
This is the kind of show that throws everything it can into the mix in the hopes that some of it works. You have comedy, romance, science fiction, action and whatnot. It starts with Tenchi awakening a dormant creature that turns out to be a mischievous female android from space with magic-like powers. Soon after other characters turn up, most of them women and from space. It’s not very coherent, the first six episodes of the first OVA are more space opera with an action driven narrative, the following episodes fall into a more mundane environment where the stories concentrate on Tenchi and his friends doing normal everyday stuff. Later the big action rears its head again.
One reason that the show works is that, despite all these seemingly disparate elements, the characters are quite likable. That’s probably the main reason, as nothing else in the show is particularly original or compelling enough. There’s nothing deep there and the few times the shows tries itself at more dramatic characterization it looks completely ridiculous, but the rest of the time it’s just fun to watch.
Babylon 5: The Coming of the Shadows (1994-1995)
The second season of Babylon 5 managed the magic feat of exchanging one of the most important characters without too much ado. Other shows have been broken by something like this, but somehow it worked out quite well. One good reason was how the stuff handled the exchange. Ivanova had worked under Sheridan, so she trusted him already and the people who watched the show and who immediately liked him could fall in line with her response. Those who where less enamored by him could fall in line with Garibaldi who was more suspicious about him. Another aspect that helped was that Sinclair wasn’t just killed off screen, but still an important aspect of the setting.
Again, the show is quite good. There are some clunkers in the second season, like in the first, but overall it’s still extremely enjoyable. I really like the pacing, you really have the feeling things develop toward a big goal, but not with haste. Everything takes exactly the amount of time that is needed. The slow reverse in the positions of Londo and G’Kar, the growing threat of the shadows, the worsening of the situation on Earth.
Another aspect I really like about the show is how it manages to be quite spiritual without being religious. That’s something that seems an entirely unique aspect of the show, something that with this depth has rarely achieved in prose SF or other SF show for example. Sometimes the show manages to go over board, for example the episode with the guy searching for the grail, but overall I really like the emphasis on the search for meaning without trying to preach a special dogma.
Final Fantasy 8 (1999)
By the time I played FF8 I was reasonably inured to the peculiarities of the modern incarnation of the Final Fantasy series to the extend that, while it’s objectively not much better than FF7, I did enjoy it much more in the end. The story is still a mess, trading convoluted metaphysics for good storytelling, relying entirely on incomprehensible plot-twists and a style-over-substance approach that is all attitude with no real foundation. But notwithstanding that the whole game feels like a fever dream it managed to captivate me and even the ending, again, objectively speaking as inane as the ending of FF7, managed to satisfy.
The one thing I really liked was the new magic system, which allowed you to catch spells from enemies. It wasn’t perfect, since it effectively forced you to fight again and again to get the spells you wanted, but it was a neat idea. Ideally would have been a system where you could only learn spells from enemies, but once you’ve learned one execute them via a mana point system.
Advent Children (2006)
The computer-animated follow-up movie to Final Fantasy 7 sports a similarly convoluted mess of a story as did the game it succeeded. I think it’s the first time I ever thought that watching the Japanese version of the movie was a considerably improvement over watching the subtitled or dubbed version, because not understanding a word enhanced the movie. As breathtaking and impressive as the visuals are, each time one of the characters said something, I wanted to bang my head against the nearest wall. The writing is truly abysmal.
Final Fantasy 7 (1997)
The one thing I remember about FF7 is how disappointing the ending was (or to be more precise, the point from which on most of the story threads got finished, like the end of Shinra corporation). Mind you, I really enjoyed the rest of the game, probably the first 80 percent of it, despite the overly convoluted story and the typical FF-setting that mixes widely different elements from SF and fantasy, sometimes successful and sometimes not. But for all the fun I had, the ending really tainted all that.
It was an annoying deus ex machina ending with Gaia (aka the lifestream) saving the world and it implied a subsequent disapperance of technology from the planet. This might be the wet dream of any spiritual inclined green activist, but to me it looked like they tried to sell something horrible as a happy ending (see the end of Battlestar Galactica). One could argue that a merely bad ending shouldn’t taint the fun I had with the rest of the game, but since the narrative is such an essential part of the game, it really made me go sour on the whole thing.
