Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies and Series Reviews, Part 42

Note: This will probably be the last review post I’ll publish for a while. In the early days when I was recovering from shoulder surgery, I tried to read as much as I could but there’s a limit to that when you’re in pain and/or on painkillers. It was much easier to watch TV to pass the time. I don’t particularly like movies or TV shows all that much; there’s very few I like enough to rewatch, but there was really not much else I could do. But as I watched more and more I found myself figuring out what worked and what didn’t work from a practical storytelling perspective, and I think more importantly, the details of what I liked and disliked and how I would’ve made the bad or unfavorable stories into something more appealing. I went back and watched a lot of things I saw before but forgot, or things I knew I liked or disliked, so not everything I reviewed was new to me. It’s all very much subjective, but it became such a huge mental exercise that I had to write things down to work it out in a “external media” sense, hence why these review posts were born. So for now, aside from a few upcoming things, there’s not a lot I’d like to see, so those things will be likely be reviewed in individual posts.

Life (2017)

A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station recover Martian soil samples and discover a rapidly-growing lifeform.

I’m almost certain I reviewed this before, but I can’t search for the film’s unispired title within my blog posts without coming up with a lot of irrelevant results.

This was really just Alien, except for the ending, which was quite good. Jake Gyllenhaal basically slept through all his lines until he got to the part where, paradoxically, he reads Goodnight Moon. His character had spent a long period of time in orbit, alone, so maybe that was all point of his arc? Besides him, the only one people would care about is Ryan Reynolds, and his character is what you’d expect from him. Reynolds was actually supposed to play Gyllenhaal’s role, which would’ve made for a very different movie.

The big distinction between Life and Alien was that while the crew in Life were scientists and engineers, Alien’s crew were blue-collar types. Life, like every Internet-age movie, is quickly-paced so you don’t get to know the characters as well as you do in Alien, where you are a fly on the wall in the opening scenes as they banter and discuss mundane matters.

Yeah, on the title: I would’ve named it Life On Earth. It’s only a little more exciting than Life so why that name, when all the scenes take place completely in space, and it’s about the discover of Martian life? Audiences would only understand the title’s wordplay after the ending.

Lonely Castle in the Mirror

A group of strangers in high school meet in a mysterious castle in a mystical realm, where a girl in a wolf mask will either eat them, or grant one of them a wish if they can find the key to a hidden room.

This is what I imagine Lost is like—I never watched even an episode it it—except without the unresolved loose ends I keep hearing about. Something about a smoke monster? Anyways, this was quite good, but it’s easy to miss clues or lose track of what you need to keep track of if you fail to pay attention. I think I may have fallen asleep for a minute, because I don’t remember why the husky boy was suddenly yelling at the rest of his peers.

I felt the final realization of what was going on could’ve been spread out a little more. You kept getting character development all throughout, but they never sat down and figured things out until what I thought was much later in the runtime than I thought it should be (the second act was really drawn out). There was a bit of borderline lampshading in that the Wolf Queen, the antagonist who was the sort of “gamemaster,” pointed out explicitly to all the kids that they were kind of slow. I don’t know what kind of trope it was, maybe a Chekov’s gun or one of the misdirection types, where you think the big mysterious character reveal would be directly involved with the protagonist, but it was really a prominent figure in the deuteragonist’s life. There was one of those curveballs near the end.

Regarding the “you’ll lose memories of everything when this is done” plot devices, I wanted the characters to figure out how to outwit that rule and subsequently add some mystery in the third act. I would’ve had one or two of them, after they hear about the rules in the beginning, write down everything that happened while they were still in the castle, like a diary of sorts, and keep it with them the whole time so that they’d have a record of what happened. I’d have the Wolf Queen find out about it at the end and try to take their diaries from them to prevent them from learning about it all, and she is mostly successful, but what’s this? Kokoro secretly tore a page from the diary, or a loose page completely detached and someone else picked it up. Nothing much is written on it, maybe an important phrase or a sketch of one of the rooms, but she was able to keep the page after returning from the castle. If she sees the paper, will it trigger something within her, especially maybe after she meets Rion on her way to school at the end? I really want to write a story where this sort of this happens.

Extraction II

A mercenary is hired to rescue the family of an abusive Georgian gang leader, who are held in prison with him.

I didn’t see the first one, but the Drinker recommended this sequel and the scenes didn’t look too bad. Much has been said about the 20-ish minute real time scene, where the protagonist pulls the family out of the prison, through a prison riot, out of the prison grounds, chased through a forest while in their getaway SUVs, chased through some kind of steel mill, then chased on a train by helicopters and gang boarders. It was a “virtual” one take; only a few edits that can escape attention. Doubtless some CGI was used but the camerawork itself must’ve been a Gordion Knot of logistics and planning to get right. It’s a great scene, nonetheless.

There were a few times when Tyler gave tactical commands to his superior, Nik, but that was in the field. She was definitely experienced in combat, but she wasn’t a field operative regularly, I don’t think. I’m not a mercenary and I don’t know anything about doing all of that kind of work, but I assume that could be a common reversal of authority?

There was another time when Tyler, the “package,” and some other operatives were entering the exfil point as they were being chased by Nagazi gang. Nik, before sliding a steel door open, said into the comms channel, something like “friendly opening the door.” That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a line like that, but it makes perfect sense to do that in a combat situation. If you’re entering an area with armed friendlies, who know you are being chased, they’re gonna be watching all those entrances and will engage with anyone who doesn’t ID themselves immediately.

Thankfully, there’s non of the out-of-place humor you see in any Marvel movie; intense or serious-mood scenes are kept that way, so you’re able to actually know some conflicts and motivations without the sentiment getting deflated. It’s good for immersion.

Unpopular opinion: action movies, and perhaps animated science fiction- or fantasy-action movies most of all, are the epitome of the cinematic artform. Here’s why: there’s no other way to depict complicated scenes of things like firearm violence, or cosmic phenomenon, or fantastical or supernatural events, as accurately in any other medium other than cinema. Yes, you can have a complex narrative to support the sounds and visuals and depict them accurately, but you can also get a narrative often expressed better through the written word or graphic novels. Big action movies aren’t mindless at all; they make chaotic physical interactions easy to understand. They are more universal, too. You could take an uncontacted people, show them the prison yard riot scene, and they’d be able to eventually figure out what’s going on even with the modern weaponry and minimal dialogue. Danger, violence, desperation, fire…all universally-understood things.

Howl’s Moving Castle

A young milliner travels with an infamous, iterant wizard in his magical castle, as she figures out how to break the curse a witch placed on her.

Besides Spirited Away, Howl is probably the runner up for most-liked Studio Ghibli film, because, let’s be honest, Howl is just so dashing. I can’t blame any woman for liking this movie just for his presence: he’s a boyish, elegant, powerful, famous Chaotic Neutral. An uncaring jerk at times, but not so destructive to be considered abusive. He’s just begging to have his inner traumas healed, which is partially what Sofi does. Or rather, what Sofi’s curse helps him realize about his own curse. Don’t forget to add in a turn-of-the-century setting with some light intrigue with war, magic, airships, and royal figures.

Like Cowboy Bebop, everyone crammed aboard the Main Vehicle don’t seem to get along half the time, but they manage to make it work. Despite all the different personalities, there’s not one of the four or five people in the castle that are unlikeable. We even learn to sympathize with that blob of a witch after she joins the entourage.

Some trivia: Howl is Welsh, as is his English voice actor, Christian Bale, but Bale used his American accent in the film. His performance was excellent, though, probably one of the best English language performances in an anime dub I’ve heard.

Special mention should be made of the namesake book, the source material for this movie and the first of a trilogy, by Diana Wynne Jones. I read all three books and they sit firmly in the tradition of fantastical British books for younger folks.

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

Cyborg investigator Batou investigates a murder committed by a sex doll against its owner.

I was able to see this in the theaters nearly 20 (!!) years ago, when it was first released. It’s not quite an action movie that you need to see in a setting like that, but there were lots of interesting sound design things going on that you could miss at home if you’re not using headphones. The design language doesn’t match what was in the first movie: in the span of 3 years in the universe’s timeline, Tokyo went from near-future cyberpunk to something-future art deco. I guess it could happen but it brought me out of the universe a bit. Maybe something happened to director Mamoru Oshii’s vision of a technological future, or maybe he needed to differentiate it from The Matrix after Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum admittedly stole his ideas from the first GitS.

This movie obviously takes place in the cinematic GitS universe, so there’s a little bit of variation in a few characters compared to the series. Togusa seems to be the newbie all throughout the series but in Innocence, he’s as even-keeled and philosophizing as the veteran Batou. If you boiled down the plot to just the investigation, the runtime would be halved. That’s an asset, because the rest is filled with subtle dialogue back-and-forths, said philosophizing, some soliloquys, and extended landscape or travel shots.

The 2D cel animation combined with the 3D could feel dated to some, but I actually think the accidental aesthetic works in its favor. Similar to GitS 1, there’s existential examinations galore, and the man versus machine dichotomy aligns with the mismatched animation style. The trippy Locus Solus mansion/headquarters scene in the tail end of the second act, as well as the requisite cyberbrain hacking and false memory/perception with which GitS stories are rife, also align with this idea.

Either way, there’s some interesting musings extending to extend the “what is humanity” dilemma from GitS 1. It really feels like everyone is trying to dig out of their nihilism. I suppose it could work as a Marxian opiate but it doesn’t work without a force outside the material system and human intellect (God). That Batou and Togusa, etc., all spin their wheels on the issue of defining what a human is I guess exemplifies that.

The whole movie has been uploaded to Youtube here: Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence

Halo 3:ODST (video game)

Taking place during and after the events of Halo 2, a space marine has to find out what happened to his new team after the mission drop into New Mombasa goes awry and they are scattered.

This was a combo breaker for the Halo franchise in a number of ways. The gameplay is non-linear, taking place half of the time after the other members of Rookie’s team have done their thing, while there are flashback missions when Rookie finds artifacts belonging to his teammates. The soundtrack, at least during the Rookie gameplay, is sleepy jazz to accompany the noir private investigator aesthetic. Lastly, there’s the humor and romance that you never get with the stoic, by-the-book(ish) Master Chief.

The narrative doesn’t add too much to what is already revealed through the other games, since the focus is on the team dynamics and trying to get back to “normal.” We find out why the Covenant invaded New Mombasa in Halo 3 (and sort of in 2) and did all that excavating; you just experience that invasion firsthand in ODST.

Super Mario Odyssey (video game)

Bowser captures Princess Peach like always, and Mario has to travel the world and fight Bowser’s new rabbit hoodlums to save her.

I think this was the first time Bowser kidnapped Peach to actually marry her. Usually he does that out of spite for her or Mario or just monarchies in general. Since this is labeled as an “odyssey,” there’s an element of traveling that’s emphasized, though the gameplay is essentially as a lot of the other openish-world Mario games. There’s a few interesting environments you get to run around in, with some inverted tropes. There’s a desert with ice (I don’t know why they just don’t do an arctic desert, because that’s a real thing, but there’s already the Snow Kingdom in the game, so…), and a forest inhabited by clunky caretaker robots and a large metal installation.

It took me a bit to get why Bowser’s rabbit minions were called the “Brood”als—I just thought it merely a sensational spelling of “brutals.” Usually, a brood is most commonly the collective name for fertile hens, so I think a group of sister hens would’ve played up the pun a little better. Nintendo is generally neutral about being PC or anti-PC about things, but casting hens and making a wordplay based on their sexuality will make some midwits very upset, in the future, at least, if not at the game’s release. But then they could also be referred to as “hen”chmen at points in the game for extra yuks.