Category Archives: Science Fiction

BOOK REVIEW: Justice League Vol. 1: Origin by Geoff Johns

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Justice League, Vol. 1: OriginJustice League, Vol. 1: Origin by Geoff Johns

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

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Amazon had the Kindle edition of this graphic novel on sale recently. With all the talk of a Justice League movie, and whether it can ever get off the ground, my curiosity in these characters was piqued.

This volume was released in August of 2011 as the leading edge of a reboot of the entire DC comics line called “the New 52.” This is the origin story for the Justice League as a team, though all but one of the individual characters–Cyborg–is an existing hero at the time the story begins. The other characters, i.e. Batman, Green Lantern, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are familiar to the world but are not well liked. (and are introduced into the story arc in that order.)The volume consists of Issues #1 – 6 of the Justice League [New 52] reboot.

In the beginning, there’s only one dyad among this group who knows each other personally, the Green Lantern and the Flash–we don’t really know how they know each other. Most of the other characters are aware of each other’s existence (or myth), but have never met. Of course, Cyborg doesn’t exist at the beginning of the story, and his individual origin story is woven in throughout the book as a subplot so that he can be introduced into the arc at the climax. The characters are assumed to each operate in his (or her) own domains, i.e. Gotham City, Metropolis, Coast City, Central City, etc.

As the story opens, Batman is chasing down a stocky, non-human creature on the roof tops of Gotham in order to try to figure out what the nefarious character is up to. Green Lantern is inexplicably introduced into the middle of this chase scene. Batman and Green Lantern viscerally despise each other from the get go. This isn’t surprising as Green Lantern is an arrogant ass throughout the entire story. Perhaps the highlight of the book (which is sad as it happens so early) is when Lantern is busy mocking Batman, and the Dark Knight steals his ring–the source of his power–right off his finger.

The Green Lantern and Batman witness the inhuman creature planting a piece of alien-looking technology (later revealed to be a “mother box”), and Green Lantern’s ring confirms it to be otherworldly. The pair decide to pay a visit to the Earth’s resident alien, a.k.a. Superman. Green Lantern immediately runs afoul of Superman, arrogantly thinking he can subdue the Man of Steel, and has to call his old friend the Flash. The quartet finally stop fighting and begrudgingly agree to put their heads together.

After seeing a piece of the Cyborg origin story, we are introduced to Wonder Woman. She is probably the character that we get the greatest sense of. (Besides Lantern, who is unlikable throughout.] The Amazonian seems more alien than Superman. She’s never had ice cream but loves it, but not quite as much as a good fight. She’s not emotional about fighting, neither fearful nor angry, but is at her most happy when fighting. She’s the character most out of touch with the world she is occupies. She joins up with the four in the chase for the winged, alien monsters, forming a quintet and instilling some gender equity.

The Cyborg origin story comes to a head when Silas Stone, a brilliant defense industry scientist, turns his dying son, Victor, into the Cyborg, thinking it the only way to save the young man after he suffered severe burns from a mother box explosion. The former star football player is now a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, part himself and part autonomous machine. There’s a cacophony in his head as he can now pick up various radio signals.

It’s shortly thereafter that Aquaman is introduced. Considerable artistic effort was put into manning up Aguaman, who always seemed the weak link in this team. The group happens to be standing around near the water when Aquaman and his fish minions chase some of the evil army to the surface

The enemy is Darkseid, a juggernaut warlord from another world (or a parallel universe), whose army of evil minions have been the ones that the newly formed League have been fighting both individually and as a group. When Cyborg goes running away from his father–and his creator as a machine-man, he runs into the six superheroes, and the team of seven is fully assembled. Darkseid’s power is so great that he relatively easily captures and subdues Superman.

Batman goes to rescue Superman as the rest of the team regroups. The Dark Knight’s tactic is letting one of the evil, winged, juggernaut minions capture him–as they have been capturing others.

I won’t spoil the ending, but will say that it was pretty weak, and a large part of the reason I gave this work such a low rating.

A two star rating may seem a little harsh. The dialogue in this work is better than most comic books. There’s relatively less “As you know, Bob,…” style exposition. There is some, as when Green Lantern feels the need to explain to Batman about how there are other Green Lanterns and this is his space sector. However, there are also clever uses of action to present background, as when Lantern begins to admit that he’s a show-off and it turns out he’s brushing up against Wonder Woman’s truth lasso. (This is a much better way to do it than Wonder Woman saying, “And now my lasso is around you and you’ll have to tell the truth, for whosoever the lasso touches cannot bear false witness.” Which would be the typical comic book way of revealing the lasso’s power.)

There are two problems with this work that are too serious to overlook. First is the deus ex machina ending. The authors make a bold choice as to who will save the day, perhaps to create surprise and perhaps to highlight the character. But the whole resolution strains credulity. Second, there is no good explanation for why these characters keep piling into each other (except for the Xenophobic thought processes of Batman and the Green Lantern that Superman must know about anything alien.) These evil minions are supposedly everywhere, and yet the individual superheroes keep running into each other–and continuing to stay together despite the fact that most of them clearly don’t like the others. I think the author takes this “we hate each other, but are begrudgingly working together” trope a little too far. It feels as if this Wizard of Oz cast hadn’t come together by commonly following the yellow brick road, but rather that seven separate and randomly moving tornadoes picked up one each and just happened to stack them in a neat pile.

Besides Green Lantern being arrogant and unlikable and Wonder Woman being endearingly alien, we get very little sense of individual characters. Batman and the Flash are the voices of reason of two differing type, but Superman and Aquaman are just muscle.

I have a black and white Kindle, but the art looked good to me–but that’s not my forte. I applaud the artists for getting rid of Superman’s red tighty-whities and making Aquaman look more manly. At the end there’s some alternative artwork and info on costume development for those who geek out on such things.

If there’s any hope for a Justice League movie, it’s not to be found in this story line. If you’re a DC fan, you’ve already read this–like it or not. If you’re wondering whether to become a DC fan, I wouldn’t start here.

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BOOK REVIEW: Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes by Deepak Chopra

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The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes: Harnessing Our Power to Change the WorldThe Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes: Harnessing Our Power to Change the World by Deepak Chopra

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Amazon page

This is Deepak Chopra’s attempt to capitalize on society’s fascination with superheroes. By “capitalize” I’m not necessarily saying to “make money off of,” but perhaps to “use to his advantage in conveying his lessons.” [I’ll leave it to the reader to make judgments about the former.] There are books on the physics of superheroes, the philosophy of superheroes, and the mythology of superheroes, so why shouldn’t there be a book on the spiritual life of superheroes?

The book uses both the superheroes of mythology—i.e. Indian, Greek, Judeo-Christian, Muslim, and others—as well as the superheroes of comic books. While Chopra’s knowledge of the former is considerable, he enlists the co-authorship of his son Gotham (not named after Bruce Wayne’s hometown) to offer insight into the latter.

This book is also intended to capitalize (again, take that as you see fit) upon Chopra’s best-selling book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, but without rehashing the same laws. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes format is as straightforward as its title. There are seven chapters, each corresponding to one of Chopra’s laws. Said laws address balance, transformation, power, love, creativity, intention, and transcendence.

As I read the book, there was something that rubbed me the wrong way about the writing. It wasn’t that I had major disagreement with Chopra’s ideas, but rather the way he was stating them. At first I thought this was the use of gratuitous assertion. He often began chapters with detailed statements about what superheroes are, do, believe, and understand without much—if any–substantiation of these claims. However, as I got into the first chapter I noticed that he would put one section in each chapter that discussed an example in-depth, offering at least anecdotal support for his claims.

This still left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It was because he used general statements like “superheroes know…” and “superheroes understand…,” and then provided a solitary example that fit his statement well, but leaving a vast cast of heroes that didn’t. It seemed a low form of inductive reasoning. In other words, he was attributing an enlightened way of thinking and acting to characters like Hulk and Wolverine.

Chopra and his supporters might make the claim that saying, “The Hulk understands X [insert any of the laws here]” doesn’t necessarily mean he understands them as an intellectual exercise, but rather that he shows this understanding through his behavior. Let me give a story that may make my meaning clearer.

An economist is giving a lecture on consumer behavior. Someone in the audience says, “Professor, how could consumers possibly behave in the way you suggest? Your theory requires complex Lagrangian optimization mathematics, which very few of them understand?”

The Professor replies, “Most of them don’t understand Newton’s work either, but they obey the Law of Gravity without fail.”

I thought about Chopra’s statements from this perspective, but concluded that his point was probably something entirely different. As an author of self-help books about the mind, when Chopra says “Superheroes understand X,” he’s not saying “Each and every superhero understands X,” but instead he’s saying, “If you want to be a superhero, you need to understand X.”

Accepting that that’s what Chopra meant, only one more qualm with the book remained. Laws can be clearly stated (OK, perhaps not tax law, but laws of physics—which seem to be more the kind of law he seeks to emulate), but Chopra’s discussion of his “laws” is vague and ill-defined. Each chapter begins with a large-font italics statement. I don’t know if this is supposed to be “the law” or not. It usually begins with a definition (some vaguely stated) and then statements that superheroes comport themselves in accordance with said definition. Maybe the unstated laws are supposed to be, “Superheroes live a life of balance,” and so on for the other chapters. As one trained as an economist, I’m well-aware of the wide-spread overuse of the term “law,” and maybe the ill-defined nature of Chopra’s laws is a recognition of this.

This book is written for Chopra’s usual audience of seekers of enlightenment. I don’t know that it’ll do well with hard-core science fiction or comic fans, and I don’t know that the Venn intersect of “spiritual self-help readers” and “comic book fans” is as big as Chopra would like. (But, I could be wrong.) Some of Chopra’s ideas about the potential spiritual ramifications of “quantum entanglement” are quite popular with sci-fi fans, but I’m not sure that that offers this book a clear audience. (It might. Chopra is a trained physician, and has some scientific bona fides—unlike many who share shelf space with him and who exist in a spiritual plane entirely unrelated to the world as we know it.)

All this being said, there are some thought-provoking ideas in this book, and the superhero and mythological examples help entertain and—in doing so—become the spoon of sugar that makes the medicine go down. Another testimonial is that I read most of this book in a single sitting, and I tend to jump from a chapter in one book to another book unless something really holds my interest.

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BOOK REVIEW: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

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Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Ender’s Game is the story of a boy, Ender Wiggin, whose intelligence and capacity for ruthlessness lead the military establishment to believe that he’s the last hope for mankind. The book is set in a future after the Earth has been invaded twice by an alien species called the buggers, and now the Earth is planning its own “preemptive” invasion to end the bugger threat once and for all.

The novel follows Ender’s life from his short home life as a “third”—a rare third child for which special permission must be granted—through his post-war life. (This entire timeline transpires before adulthood.) The bulk of the novel takes place in Battle School, where Ender receives his training in military tactics and strategy and spends much of his time in zero gravity war games. He rises up through the ranks quickly, as expected, but not without stirring some animus in the process. He learns strategy both through war games and through the mind-field of real world animosity by others who are jealous or feel insulted by his brilliance.

As Commander material, Ender is considered to be in the Goldilocks zone. His older brother, Peter, is too cruel; his sister, Valentine, is just too kind. (All three Wiggin children are geniuses.) Ender has the right mix to fight the buggers. His problem is that the world forces him to be ruthless and his compassionate side makes it hard to cope.
While Ender leaves home young and early in the novel, there is a subplot involving the older Wiggin children that is revealed over the course of the book—showing the reader more of the tormenting brother and the loving sister who shaped his worldview. Ender does interact with Valentine in person on a couple of occasions, but his only interaction with Peter is a brief mention of correspondence at the end of the book.

Ender is an intriguing character. He is always the outsider, by birth as a third and then through isolation in Battle School that is facilitated by the conflicted head of the Battle School, Col. Graff.

I won’t get into the ending except to say that there is a twist at the novel’s climax. I will say that the reveal of this twist felt a little anti-climactic to me. However, as the real story isn’t about fighting the buggers, but Ender’s internal struggle, this isn’t as dismaying as it might otherwise be.

One can tell that this is a series book because it climaxes and resolves relatively early, leaving a fair amount of space to set up the next book. This actually helps the twist offer some surprise because the reader sees that there are so many pages left for the novel to resolve itself.

Card does an interesting thing in making the central character stronger than everyone around him–at least until he’s introduced to his new guru, Mazer Rackham–the Commander who won the key battle of the second bugger invasion and who is alive by virtue of a relativistic trip. Ender’s superiority seems like a recipe for boredom, but it works because what we don’t know is whether Ender is stronger than everyone else pitted against him combined, and, moreover, we don’t know whether he is strong enough inside to withstand all the horridness to which he is subjected. A lot of the tension of the novel is really internal to Ender. Unlike Peter, who would revel in ruthlessness, Ender is tormented by all of the violence he must perpetrate.

I’d recommend this novel. It has its flaws, but it is quite readable and Ender’s character is intriguing from start to finish.

The movie version is coming out tomorrow. I haven’t seen it, but here is the trailer.

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BOOK REVIEW: American Gods by Neil Gaiman

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American Gods (American Gods, #1)American Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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American Gods is the story of a hapless and gentle brute who goes by the nickname “Shadow.” We meet Shadow as he is being released from prison a few days early because the wife that he loved dearly has passed away. While the description of Shadow’s imposing size and criminal activity might lead us to believe he’s an unsavory character, we find him sympathetic from the outset–though we don’t learn that it was virtue more than vice that landed him in prison until late in the book.

Given that the name of the book is American Gods others who’ve read it may wonder why I say it’s about Shadow instead of being about a war between America’s old gods and its new ones (e.g. technology and mass media.)The latter statement is more likely what one will read on the dust jacket. However, for me it was the character of Shadow that kept me reading. As with any great novel’s main character, Shadow is put in predicament after predicament, and one must see how he’ll handle them. Eventually, we suspect that enough will be enough and he will have to choose to act in his own best interest rather than in the moral manner.

The importance of character in this novel doesn’t mean that it’s lacking a plot. Early on we are given a great hook when Shadow is introduced to the character of “Wednesday.” The hook is that Wednesday seems to know things about Shadow that no one could, and he makes a proposal to Shadow. The reader is thus drawn in and wants to know how Wednesday knows the impossible and whether Shadow will agree to the vague offer. While we don’t know what agreeing will mean for Shadow, we suspect that it’s tailor-made to land him back in hot water.

While Shadow seems to be always ending up with the short end of the stick, what makes things interesting is that he’s not dumb. He doesn’t stumble into these traps unwittingly. Rather, Shadow defies convention and, by some measures, is really quite a sharp man. Often, he sees the folly of his decisions but is compelled by virtue to act in ways that put him at risk.

Shadow is on a journey of self-discovery throughout the book, and what he ultimately discovers about himself is spectacular.

In a way American Gods is Neil Gaiman’s commentary on America, and Shadow represents America at its most virtuous. We see plenty of America’s faults and failings in the process, its vainglory and hunger for power. But in Shadow we see a character who is honor bound to do what he thinks is the right thing–even when it comes at great personal cost and even when he knows he is being manipulated.

I found this novel to be highly readable and would recommend it. It has Gaiman’s characteristic humor, darkness, and dark humor.

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BOOK REVIEW: Man of Steel by Greg Cox

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Man of Steel: The Official Movie NovelizationMan of Steel: The Official Movie Novelization by Greg Cox

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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This is the first novelization of a movie I’ve reviewed. In fact, I haven’t even seen the movie yet. However, from the trailers I can see a little of how the book describes the events of the movie. In the afterword the author, Greg Cox, indicated that he hadn’t yet seen the completed movie. (Not surprisingly, considering the desire to get the book out in time.) He presumably worked mostly from the screenplay, and perhaps some unedited scenes from the movie. At any rate, unlike a movie adaptation of a novel, one expects a novelization to be spot on with the movie’s story.

As I’ve said in other posts, it’s hard to do Superman really well. Stories are all about tension, and it’s hard to build tension if your hero is indestructible and has god-like powers. [The sequel is supposedly Batman v. Superman, and one has to wonder how this can be done well. Batman is formidable, but the Joker sometimes gets the best of him, and the Joker is no Superman.] At any rate, I think this rendition does a better job than most, and vastly better than the epicly-awful 2006 Superman Returns.

The story begins on a dying planet Krypton as a coup led by General Zod takes place. Both Jor-El (Superman’s father) and Zod believe the planet is dying, and that urgent steps need to be taken to save the Kryptonian race. However, they differ vastly on how to go about saving the race. Zod believes in saving certain blood lines, and Jor-El believes in a much more balanced and progressive approach.

When we are introduced to Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman, he is a young man who is living a secret life. He engages in episodes of heroic derring-do, but has not yet donned the costume and is forced to move nomadically from one dead-end job to the next as his powers are revealed. There are also many flashbacks to cue us in to his troubles and dilemmas as a child.

Shortly after Kent realizes who he is and gets some Kryptonian backstory, Zod and his band of zealots shows up–newly escaped from the phantom zone. The climax and resolution of the movie involve Superman’s battles with Zod and the General’s fierce underlings–with a love interest subplot between Lois Lane and Superman.

What this story does right is to introduce a strong foe for Superman to battle. Not only does Zod have a numerical advantage, he is a life-long warrior and is thus more experienced. Zod’s second-in-command, Faora Hu-ul, is a worthy adversary in her own right. This is not Superman versus a green, glowing rock.

The challenge of this type of story (as with movies like The Avengers) is that, having set up an “immovable object meets irresistible force” scenario, it’s extremely hard to resolve the tension in a manner that is both logically and emotionally satisfying. While I have criticized movies for this, if the visuals are impressive enough it seems to work with viewers. It works because it creates enough emotional satisfaction for one to suspend concern about whether the resolution makes any sense based upon what is known from earlier in the story. It’s harder to reliably do this in writing. Therefore, you may find the ending a bit flat after an intriguing build up.

I doubt it’s worth reading the novelization and seeing the movie, except if one is interested in how one’s internal view of it matches with the movie (in which case one should avoid the trailers and read the novelization first.)

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For those who do want to view the trailer.

BOOK REVIEW: Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

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Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide, #5)Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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[NOTE: If you would like to read my reviews of the first four books, you can do so by following the hyperlinked title: 1.) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2.) The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  3.) Life, the Universe, and Everything 4.) So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish]

This is the fifth and final installment in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (not including Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing, which I don’t.) Fans of the series will recognize “Mostly Harmless” as the sum total of the Earth’s entry in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The story focuses on a trio of characters from the original book’s cast: Arthur Dent (of course), Tricia McMillan (a.k.a. Trillian), and Ford Prefect–with the Random addition a new fourth feature character. As the series had already begun trending, this story is more human-centric than the earliest installments. The central story could be divorced from the sci-fi genre with relatively minor modifications. However, as Restaurant at the End of the Universe uses time travel as a sci-fi plot device, this book uses the concept of a parallel universe.

The story begins with our main characters separated from one another. Arthur Dent is making sandwiches of Perfectly Normal Beast (an Orwellian turn-of-phrase as one might expect) on the planet where he crash landed. Trillian, or one of them, is reduced to doing an interview with an astrologer. Ford Prefect is breaking into his place of employment to avoid the accountants in his usual manner of hijinks.

Adams throws each of these characters a monkey wrench. Dent finds out he has a daughter, Random Dent, and that her mother–Trillian–is dropping her on his doorstep. Ford discovers that the Guide is under new and nefarious management, and that they have created an edition with dire ramifications. Trillian, or one of them, gets her big break being picked up by a Grebulon ship only to discover they want her to advise them on astrology.

The notion that no one escapes the feeling of being without a home is a central theme in the book.

This isn’t Adams’ best work. The story has grown stale. It lacks the creative brilliance derived from plot devices like the Infinite Improbability Drive, and–while there may be something to be said for a story with more humanity– it leaves one missing idiosyncratic characters like Zaphod and Marvin. That being said, even at his worst Adams is amusing and thought-provoking. If you enjoyed his earlier books, you could certainly do worse than to finish the series. In the unlikely event that Adams isn’t your cup of tea, this final installment probably won’t revise your assessment.

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Are Action Movies Dazzling Us Stupid?

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AvengersJust like everyone else, when I first watched The Avengers, I was awed. As I digested the experience, however, I realized how appallingly flawed the story was. Can a film that is visually impressive enough dance over the hard parts of story?

Alright, it’s not just being visually impressive. If it were, then the Transformers movies (I’m thinking particularly of the second one) wouldn’t be so sucktacular. No. Filmmakers also need clever quips. This feeds an inexplicable urge of young people to repeat the witty remarks of movie characters ad infinitum. (Confession: I’ve always longed for an excuse to say, “I’m your Huckleberry,” as per Doc Holliday’s words to Johnny Ringo in Tombstone.) It’s not just that the Hulk bashes a marble floor to dust using Loki’s lanky frame, but that he delivers that witty, two-word rejoinder. Together the CGI and the quip seal the scene in one’s mind.

[Spoilers ahead] If one looks up deus ex machina in the dictionary, one learns that it means: “someone or something that solves a situation that seemed impossible to solve in a sudden and unlikely way, especially in a book, play, movie, etc.” If one’s dictionary is online, one would then probably be treated to a video clip of the scene in which Professor Selvig is knocked on the head, becomes unenslaved, and consciously realizes that his subconscious built a backdoor that will allow him to shut down the portal that were previously told can’t be shut. The clip could then continue through the end of the movie (minus the post-credit shawarma scene.)  The following are key incidents of deus ex machina in this film:

-a bump on the noggin releases one from the mind-control of a god (A “puny god,” indeed.)
-a conscious mind (in a waking and non-meditative state) knows in great detail what happened in the subconscious
-an attack on the mothership disables all troops on the ground, Independence Day style (worst command and control ever.)

One may be thinking that I’m just one of those douches who picks nits, but I’m really not. These flaws are fundamental to how the story is resolved. They are cheats that make everything that happened leading up to the climax irrelevant. Think about it; if the Professor had gotten knocked on the head 20 minutes earlier, the massive Avengers battle through Manhattan would never have been necessary. They could have called the movie “Professor Selvig’s Magical Mind” and left the Avengers out of it all together.

I’m willing to sustain disbelief about the small things. There are plenty of critics who get into the minutiae of continuity gaffes and the like. A couple of my favorites are below.

Lest one think that I’m picking on The Avengers, that’s only because it’s the third highest grossing film ever and first in the superhero genre. If you’re spending hundreds of millions on a film, you’d think you could throw some chump change into good story-building.  I realize that filmmakers have a jaded audience to contend with, and that they have to ramp up the peril to impossible heights to impress. Maybe they are forced to then throw away the resolution of story. Those who read my recent review of The Wolverine, will know that my criticism isn’t restricted to The Avengers.

Well, I’ve got nits to pick.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Wolverine

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I don’t normally do movie reviews because, for one reason, I don’t watch that many movies–at least not in the timely fashion necessary to be relevant. However, I figured I’d do one for The Wolverine because I did a book review of Clairmont & Miller’s Wolverine.

The Wolverine shares superficial common ground with the Clairmont & Miller book.  The setting for each is largely Japan. The movie and the book share almost the same slate of major characters. However, the characters don’t necessarily have the same relationships to each other or the same personalities as in the book.

If you’ve seen the trailers, my synopsis will be largely spoiler/surprise free. The movie opens with Logan saving a young Japanese officer. It then flashes forward to Logan living in the wilderness of the Pacific Northeast. The primary reference to the earlier films is that he is tormented by killing Jean Grey in X-men: The Last Stand (a.k.a. X-Men 3.) Yukio (a female warrior who the movie makes friendly to Logan from the get go) tracks Logan down to take him to see her employer, the same individual he saved during the war. That individual offers him mortality. After their meeting, Logan’s principal goal shifts from living by a vow to not kill to one of keeping Mariko safe. Mariko is the granddaughter of the officer Logan saved and she becomes his love interest. As in the book, Mariko is tangled in intrigues of family and company (i.e. kairetsu), but the nature of these intrigues is somewhat updated in the movie. In the book, Mariko is a helpless damsel-in-distress, but in the movie we see her strength.

The biggest strength of this movie is that Wolverine becomes mortal in the film–at least for a time. This creates stakes for Logan where none usually exist. The problem with Wolverine’s combination of rapid healing and indestructible skeleton is that there’s no nail-biting over his fate. You know no matter how much he gets tossed around, he’s going to get up and within a minute he’ll be right as rain.

In my opinion, the biggest flaw of the movie is the creation of a twist ending that fails to surprise but yet requires distorting a character. I realize it’s hard to write a good twist ending. If one foreshadows too much, one gives away the surprise. If one fails to foreshadow, then one annoys the audience with a “gotcha” type ending. In this case, one of the characters behaves in a manner that is out of character with the first act portrayal. This is a “gotcha,” but one that one couldn’t help but thinking was a possibility. There are a number of little forgivable sins that I won’t discuss, and which may be inevitable in film.

The film also contributes to the general continuity muddle of X-men films. Because this film attempts to be a standalone film, it may not seem fair to critique this point. However, by using the aforementioned piece of the X-Men 3 timeline, I think they open themselves up to this criticism. As an example, while in the X-Men Origins: Wolverine film we are told that Wolverine can’t grow back his memories, he apparently grows back his memories of what happened in WWII just fine. There’s a post-credit scene which happens three years after The Wolverine timeline that is a set up for X-Men: Days of Future Past and Professor X appears in it, but they hint that there may be an explanation for this (Xavier died in the same X-Men 3 that this film references through about half a dozen dream sequences.) This is not so much an example of  discontinuity, also because the upcoming film features time travel prominently, but may or may not be example of the general X-Men muddle.

I’d recommend seeing this movie, but only if one goes in thinking of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. If one does that one will find it an enjoyable step up. However, if one goes in expecting a movie of The Dark Knight caliber, one will be sorely disappointed.

Sharknado: or, the Rock Band or Cheesy Movie Game

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Somebody on Facebook made an offhand reference to Sharknado the other day.  I had no idea what a “Sharknado” could be, except the mind-numbingly stupid idea suggested by the phonetics of the “word.” It turns out that is exactly what it was. Despite the fact that sharks exist in places like Florida and tornadoes exist in places like Oklahoma (not a lot of overlap there), the movie is about tornadoes that pick up sharks and throw them through the air at unsuspecting people. (The sharks are, of course, still alive and hungry contrary to everything we know about biological entities that get picked up in twisters.)

I once wondered why the “Sci-fi” channel changed its name to the “Syfy channel.” I now know that it must have been the threat of false advertising lawsuits that spurred this change. (Of course, this doesn’t explain why the “History channel” isn’t the Sasquatch Alien channel.) Sci-fi is short for science fiction. Let’s break that down. First, the reference to “science” means one would expect some speculative universe which is constrained by scientific laws–either the laws of physics as we know them or some reasonable set of scientific principles by which a universe could be held together. It is not a magic universe, as required by Sharknado. The target demo for science-fiction is geeks and nerds (said in the most complimentary sense of those words)–in other words, people who overthink (or, at least, think.) The target demo for Sharknado seems to be pubescent boys failing science and in need of an opportunity to masturbate to Tara Reid.

Second, fiction is a creatively-engineered story, and I’m not even sure Sharknado qualifies on this front either. The creative component seems to be limited to cramming two things that terrify people together into one word or phrase. This may work in some cases, such as with the term “divorce lawyer.” However, the two concepts that one smashes together have to have some credulity as a unified threat. The fact that motherf#$%ing Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t save Snakes on a Plane, should have made this apparent to all.

As a thought exercise, let’s try some examples:

1.) Which of the following terror-inspiring dualities are devices around which a movie plot could be built, and which are just awesome rock band names?

a.) Clown-Pirates

b.) Hobo-Scorpions

c.) Black Mamba-Teen Driver

d.) Bear-Proctologist

e.) Spiders in a Tuk-tuk

f.) Karaoke-Mugger

g.) Robo-gynecologist

h.) Newborn-Arsonist

i.) Mother-in-Law / Attorney-at-Law

j.) Anthrax-blizzard

By the way, if the Syfy channel comes out with any of the above movies or series, please shoot me an email so I can claim my Executive Producer credit. It’s more likely this will be the starting line up for Lollapalooza 2025.

Bear with bubbles

BOOK REVIEW: World War Z by Max Brooks

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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie WarWorld War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

World War Z, as the subtitle suggests, is written as a series of interviews of key (or in some cases typical) people involved in the Zombie War. The viewpoints addressed include various political leaders, military service members of various branches and nations, strategic planners, doctors, and even civilians caught up in the diaspora that resulted from the plague.

The approach of the novel is unusual. To the degree there is a lead character, it’s the UN employee who conducts all the interviews. However, we don’t experience the interviewer’s story arc and are left with very little insight into this individual. Rather, the story is a global arc of mankind’s experience of zombies from “patient zero” through the clean up in the years following the war. And, it is a global tale. The stories of these individuals take one to places like Chongquing, Meteora, the Amazon, Barbados, Johannesburg, the Alang ship breaking yard (an excellent choice for a post-apocalyptic setting, I must say), Denver, and even onto a ballistic-missile-toting submarine sitting on the ocean floor.

Where Brooks’s book excels is in making one think, and in that regard it does an excellent job. This isn’t about edge-of-the-seat adrenaline injections to which most Zombie book authors aspire. I don’t deny that there are emotional parts to the book, but the tension is reduced by virtue of being a collection of survivors’ tales. That is, we know the story-tellers survived more-or-less intact. Also, because of the intrusions of the interviewer and the authenticity of responses (some are more skilled and open story tellers than others), we never lose sight of the fact that this is a couple of people talking war stories.

That being said, we take a cook’s tour of gut-wrenching food for thought over the course of the novel. Consider a government that abandons its citizenry, and even uses some as bait to help save others. Brooks tugs at the readers’ heartstrings through an interview with a K-9 soldier who describes the role of man’s best friend. Brooks portrays the best and worst that mankind has to offer–as one would surely expect to experience them in such a world gone wrong.

I must admit, some of the topics may be more interesting to me as a social scientist than they will be to others. One interviewee discusses the mismatch between job skills needed and job skills available in a rapidly evolving post-apocalyptic landscape. This speaks to present-day society as much as it does to a dystopian future. The author devotes an interview to questioning the man responsible for reestablishing trust in the dollar in an economy that has by necessity reverted to barter. There is also discussion of revolutions in governance that find their catalyst in the Zombie War. There are intriguing turns of events such as the makeshift flotillas of U.S. citizens converging on Cuba because Fidel’s authoritarian regime was uniquely prepared to close itself off during the earliest days of the outbreak.

With the movie coming out this Friday (June 21), I will say that I can’t see much in common between the book and the trailers for the movie that I’ve seen to date. However, I can imagine the movie being an extension or outgrowth of one of the many vignettes expressed in the book. This is not to say that the movie will be bad (or that it won’t be), but if one sees the movie one will still be left with impetus to read the book.

I enjoyed World War Z because it makes one think–a feat that isn’t the strong suit of Zombie literature.

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