Sci-fi and Fantasy Movie and Series Reviews, Part 3

Transcendence
A mildly interesting depiction of a human achieving singularity and becoming more or less a really powerful AI, like The Lawnmower Man, though with slightly more realism and considering the practical matters an AI has to accomplish in the real world to make things happen. Might require more than one viewing but it didn’t interest me enough for that.

Expelled From Paradise
Finally! A different take on the “AI achieves consciousness” trope. The results aren’t what you expect, and the ending is rather touching for a sci-fi action film. Lots of animated bouncing boobs, which I’ve never seen in American films, live action or otherwise. I’m not a prude but it can be distracting.

Serenity
The movie that wrapped up the Firefly series. I aped a ton of stuff from this universe when I was coming up with Pale Blue Scratch. The movie is in the same vein as the series, but with a little more advanced production values. Special mention to the set (or CGI “set”) design. A lot of sci-fi tend to make future tech minimalist and too clean. Firefly’s tech is more like cosmic construction equipment—it looks as if it might actually work in the real world. Film also features an ingenuous way of pitting the stellar navies of two foes against each other.

Children of Men
A realistic dystopia, i.e., there’s no supermodel kids entering tournaments for food, no alien invasions for no reason, etc. There’s sort of a meanie fascist government but not all the way. There was a nuclear war in most of the major world population centers—”Only London Soldiers On”—and the other thing about women not being able to get pregnant. So you can imagine the slow decay and the fun that ensues. Good portrayal of near-future tech. Director Alfonso Cuarón thankfully avoided stupid Hollywood moralizing, and instead gave us ridiculously-shot scenes like this one. The book that inspired the movie is also great.

The Thing (1982)
Peak paranoia/survival horror flick. Pre-CGI gross out mutated creatures. The funniest scene was when Kurt Russell pours his scotch into his computer (an entire computer just for chess?) after losing a match to it. It’s an analogous little vignette of the entire film and its theme. And the computer smokes and sparks, just like computers in real life when you pour booze inside of them.

The Thing (2011)
The prequel to the film of the same name, takes place entirely the station that’s visited in the 1982 film, so it’s kinda fun to scavenger hunt all the bits of scenery to recognize. CGI this time, and you know where that dog came from.

9
Is it a kids’ movie? Not sure; it’s borderline. I wrote a post about how 9’s (the character’s) foil is actually the protagonist, but we’re watching the movie from 9’s POV, so we’re sympathetic to his plight.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The aliens at the end come off as neutral-to-decent beings, but they’re anything but. All that advanced tech and (presumably) knowledge, and they don’t know how to communicate very well with us Earthfolk. Instead, they traumatize whole communities, kidnap kids and terrorize their parents, traffic their prisoners to God knows where for decades, does who knows what to them, then returns them (un-aged) in something of a catatonic state. Not to mention implant knowledge into witnesses that drive them paranoid and bonkers. The aliens are dicks.

Akira
Landmark anime. The dubbed versions are awkward to watch because their mouth movements are too articulated towards Japanese phonetic patterns. This film is one instance where I’ll be a snob in favor of the subtitled version.

White Fang
Not really fantasy or sci-fi, but close. A sanitized version of the excellent book, with decent CGI. Predictable characterizations: naive but angelic native Americans, high-empathy Anglo women, and self-sacrificing white dudes. Meh.